January 19th is a State Holiday in Florida, Monday in Alabama and Mississippi, Friday Nov 29th in Georgia.

Robert E Lee was born on January 19th 1807 in Stanford Hall Virginia. He was a Colonel in the US Army and a General in the Confederate States of America. He was best known as a commander of the  Confederate States Army. He commanded the Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865. A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III, Lee was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. During this time, he served throughout the United States, distinguished himself during the Mexican–American War, and served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy.

His father was known as “Light Horse Harry Lee”, a Revolutionary War hero. In 1812, Harry Lee was badly injured in a political riot in Baltimore and traveled to the West Indies. He would never return, dying when his son Robert was eleven years old.

His mother was the daughter of a plantation owner and grew up at Shirley Plantation, one of the most elegant homes in Virginia

Robert E. Lee graduated second in his class at West Point, earning no demerits for discipline infractions during his four years there. At the time, the focus of the curriculum was engineering; the head of the Army Corps of Engineers supervised the school and the superintendent was an engineering officer. In June 1829, Lee was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers.

Abraham Lincoln, who later became president of the United States, offered Robert E. Lee command of the Union Army in 1861, but Lee refused. He would not raise arms against his native state. Lee resigned his commission and headed home to Virginia, where he served as adviser to Confederate leader Jefferson Davis, and then commanded the Army of Northern Virginia.

After the (corrected from death) wounded of Joseph Johnson in the Battle of Seven Pines, June 1st 1862 Lee became the commander of the army, which he renamed Army of Northern Virginia, his opportunity to lead an army in the field.

Lee’s fame soared when he beat back McLellan out of Virginia in a a series of battles. Subsequently he pushed back into Maryland and Pennsylvania to the battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863. The Confederates suffered great losses and beaten back. McLellan flinched and did not finish the job allowing the war to continue. On February 6, 1865, Lee was appointed General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States.

After four years of death and destruction, on April 9th 1865  Robert E. Lee met Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, where the generals ended their battles. Lee told his comrades, “Go home and be good Americans”.

While Lee held slavery to be an evil institution, he also saw some benefit to blacks held in slavery. While Lee helped assist individual slaves to freedom in Liberia, and provided for their emancipation in his own will, he believed the enslaved should be eventually freed in a general way only at some unspecified future date as a part of God’s purpose. Slavery for Lee was a moral and religious issue, and not one that would yield to political solutions

Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to persons who had participated in the rebellion against the United States. Though there were difficulties on December 25, 1868, Lee was fully pardoned. 

Lee was asked to serve as the president of Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia, and served from October 1865 until his death. His name was used in large-scale fund-raising which transformed the University’s curriculum. During his tenure he is depicted with dignity and respect he commanded among all.

Death:On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke. He died two weeks later, shortly after 9 a.m. on October 12, 1870, in Lexington, Virginia, from the effects of pneumonia.

A number of monuments, heritage sites, and institutions (including schools) are named after General Robert E. Lee. Among the a prominent statue in New Orleans, sadly torn down in 2017. Arlington House, Robert E Lee Memorial was Lee’s home the Curtis Lee Mansion, the grounds were selected for Arlington National Cemetery in part to ensure that Lee would never again be able to return to his home. In 1953, two stained-glass windows – one honoring Lee, the other Stonewall Jackson – were installed in the Washington National Cathedral

Political leaders in modern history have been quoted to honor him. Winston Churchill said that Robert E. Lee was one of the noblest Americans who ever lived. Lee’s motto is known to be “Duty, Honor, Country.”

General Lee was a great American, American soldier, confederate solider, statesman, leader and figure. He was dignified, respectful and honorable. Today we say HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

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Union General Garrard’s cavalry had occupied Roswell, Georgia.

The tiny town had two cotton mills that manufactured sheets, canvas and rope. But they also made grey-colored cloth used for Confederate uniforms.

The men off to war, women and young girls were doing the mill work.

A Frenchman had temporary ownership of one of the mills. He hoped that flying a French flag over it might save the mill. It was not to be: Garrard ordered the mills burned.

Garrard reported what he had found to General Sherman, who wanted revenge on the Frenchman for raising the flag. Sherman wrote to Garrard:

“Should you, under the impulse of anger, hang the wretch, I approve the act beforehand.”

Sherman also ordered Garrard to “arrest all people, male and female, connected with those factories, no matter what the clamor… I will send them to the North… The poor women will make a howl. Let them take along their children and clothing, providing they have the means of hauling, or you can spare them.”

Sherman said the women were “tainted with treason” and “are as much governed by the rules of war as if in the ranks.”

Hundreds of women and children were loaded into boxcars and sent north, where the women struggled on their own to live. Not all of them survived the war.

Only a few were able to make their way back home after the war. Husbands returned to find their wives gone with no way to trace them.

Adeline was heavy with child when she was exiled. But there is a happy ending to her story. It took her five years but she and her child Mary made their way back after the war, mostly on foot.

The outrage was reported in several northern newspapers, but Sherman just went on and burned his way to the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1998, a group of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans did a project to identify the Roswell women and their descendants. Most were identified, and many of the descendants were located, mostly in the North.

The City of Roswell erected a monument to the women, shown here.

Let’s hope no one thinks it should be torn down.

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“When you charge, yell like furies!”

That’s the order Stonewall Jackson gave his men at the Battle of First Manassas (Bull Run to the Yankees out there).

Many a Federal learned to dread that sound.

Shouting during a charge was as old as war, but the Southern Boys in Gray created their own distinctive sounds. A Union captain at Chancellorsville explained “the heavens seemed filled with hot-breathed, shrieking demons.”

One Rebel tells us this:

“I always said that if I ever went into a charge, I wouldn’t holler. But the very first time I fired off my gun, I hollered as loud as I could and I hollered every breath until we stopped.”

Today we imagine that there was only one sound that was the Rebel Yell. Yes, Johnny Reb everywhere made it his business to adopt a terrifying holler, but it varied from one group to another.

The one we know best today was a “quick succession of high-itched yelps.” Another was an “ape-ilke grunt that rose gradually into a piercing howl.” Then again there was the “blood-curdling, full-throated caterwaul.”

Whatever was used, anyone who heard it knew Confederates were coming.

Rebels even had names for them. One officer told his men at Chickamauga to charge “with a regular Mississippi yell.” At the same battle, a Tennessee colonel ordered “three times three of Old Tennessee and charge.”

Whatever version, it was a mighty weapon. General Jubal Early was preparing a charge at Richmond when his officers told him the men were out of cartridges. Early roared, “Damn it, holler them across.” Bayonets fixed, his men charged, yelling like the devils they appeared to be.

One Billy Yank recalled it as “that terrible scream and barbarous howling.” Another said the sound “made the hair stand up on my head.”

The Union boys often shouted things like “Huzzah!” But they were no match for the Rebels.

The Rebel Yell made many a man’s blood run cold.

(The photo was taken at a 1904 Reunion in Crawfordville, Florida.)

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Sherman was confident of a quick and easy victory. He had forced General Hood back, at the Battle of Kolb’s Farm north of Atlanta.

The Union General was only a couple of dozen miles from Atlanta, sure that the Rebels were now stretched too thin to resist him.

At eight in the morning 27 June 1864, the Union attack began. Troops charged forward to storm the Rebel trenches.

Within 90 minutes it was evident that the assault had failed.

Sherman had miscalculated. The Confederates were dug in at Kennesaw Mountain, with fortifications that blunted everything the Yankees could throw at them. You can see the mountain and some of the earthworks below, in a photo taken not long after the fight.

The Federals lost 3 men for every Confederate loss. Sherman said it was “the hardest fight of the campaign up to that date.”

His frontal assault failed. It was a bloody lesson for Sherman. The Rebels were far from a defeated rabble that he could run over.

When Sherman got to Atlanta, he took a different tactic. The scoundrel didn’t want another black eye from a direct assault, so he had his artillery begin a bombardment that lasted for months.

Confederate army positions were forward of the city itself. Sherman targeted them, but he also rained fire on the populace and their homes – civilians well behind the military fortifications.

While negotiating the treatment of civilians in Atlanta, Hood wrote to Sherman:

“…there are a hundred thousand witnesses that you fired into the habitations of women and children for weeks, firing far above and miles beyond my line of defense.”

General Hood knew the horrors of battle, having lost a leg and the use of one arm already. But now his enemy was taking the battle to women and children.

Hood knew evil when he saw it. Sherman slashed and burned his way through Georgia, then moved on to South Carolina where he burned a couple of dozen towns. Southerners will NEVER forget what evil this man was.

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If you are a regular reader you know I like history as seen through the eyes of the men who lived it.

David Johnston was 15 when Virginia’s debate on secession began. But he was 16 and a Confederate soldier when the first shots were fired on Virginia soil. You can see him in the photo below. He fought to the bitter end.

David tells us that Virginia sentiment strongly leaned in favor of remaining in the Union, even after Fort Sumter:

“Virginia was still for peace and the Union, endeavoring by every means within her power to avert the awful calamity of civil war.”

Then word spread “that the Federal Administration was anxious to see her shorn of her power… by the formation of West Virginia out of her territory, and this by the aid of the Federal power.”

David explains that Virginians did not take kindly to the notion of being split asunder.

“Virginia’s son was foremost in fanning the flames of revolution, leading to the overthrow of British tyranny and the establishment of American independence.

“Her son had written the Declaration of Independence.

“Her son had led the Continental armies during the Revolution, and her son was active in the framing and ratification of the Federal Constitution.”

David was speaking of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison.

Here was a state with a long tradition of great contribution to the nation, including seven Presidents of the United States. Virginia had already given up territory stretching northwest to Canada, from which six more states had been formed. And now there was talk of taking more of its land away.

Still, the Virginia Secession Convention voted 89 to 45 to remain in the Union.

Then on the 15^th of April, 1861, the newly installed president called for states to raise troops to put down the rebellion. Virginia was to contribute 2,400 men.

In David’s words:

“Virginia was a Southern state, in sympathy with her sister states of the South, and could not be induced to make war on them, nor on the Northern states of the Union.

“The conduct of the Federal Administration had not only forced her out of the Union, but to take sides in the impending crisis. It was not a Southern Confederacy that Virginia sought or her people fought for, but to uphold and maintain the integrity and sovereignty of the state, and this necessarily meant separate government.

“I am sure at no time did the people of Virginia think of becoming the aggressors upon the rights of the other states of the Federal Union.

“….The die was cast. There could be no further hesitation. On April 17th the Ordinance of Secession, amid anguish and tears, was adopted by a vote of 81 to 51.”

Five weeks later the people of Virginia ratified the Ordinance of Secession by a yes vote of 96,750 out of a total vote of 161,1018, sixty percent.

Eight days later, David’s company of volunteers was formed.

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Major John Harman (above) was described as a “man of strong convictions and uncompromising in his beliefs, caring little for the opinion of others.”

A good summary, but I would add he was short-tempered and his language turned the air blue.

Harman had been many things before the Civil War: butcher, farmer, and stage line operator among them. Unafraid of adventure, he had joined the Texas Rangers and served in the Mexican War.

In 1861, Harman became Stonewall Jackson’s Chief Quartermaster.

Religion had a strong influence on the Army of Northern Virginia, and General Jackson was one of the fiercest faces of religious conviction. Stern and disciplined, he didn’t tolerate impiety around him. Cursing in his presence did not go unrebuked, repeated only at one’s personal risk.

Harman was a man of strong opinions and force of will. He had raw manners and liked to get things done with unrestrained enthusiasm, intimidation and profanity fit for a sailor.

Managing a 14-mile-long wagon train during a military campaign was not a job for the weak of will. A fellow officer said Harmon was a “big-voiced, untiring, fearless man who would have ordered Jackson himself out of the way if necessary to obey Jackson’s orders.”

On a hot day in 1862, Lee’s army was crossing the Potomac to invade Maryland during the Antietam campaign. When Jackson rode up he found the fording of the river completely blocked by Major General D. H. Hill’s wagon train.

Jackson rebuked Hill for the mess. Apparently Hill explained something to Jackson that implied “it was no part of his business to get tangled wagons out of the river.”

Jackson instantly had Hill placed under arrest and summoned Major Harman.

Harman splashed into the water and the tangled mass of wagons. Brigadier General Imboden tells us that the Major “poured out a volume of oaths that would have excited the admiration of the most scientific mule-driver.

“The effect was electrical. The drivers were frightened and swore as best they could, but far below the Major’s standard. The mules caught the inspiration from a chorus of familiar words, and all at once made a break for the Maryland shore, and in five minutes the ford was cleared.

The General witnessed and heard it all. Stonewall Jackson was not known to ever let cursing go without a rebuke.

Harman rode back to the Stonewall, steeled for dressing down. Touching his hat, Major Harman said:

“The ford is clear, General! There’s only one language that will make mules understand on a hot day that they must get out of the water.”

The General smiled, said, “Thank you, Major,” and dashed into the water at the head of his staff.

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It happened just south of Nashville, right in the middle of Tennessee. The Rebels called it the Second Battle of Murfreesboro. The Federals called it the Battle of Stones River.

(The Union Army frequently named battles after rivers and creeks that played a role in the fighting. Confederates generally used the names of nearby towns or farms.)

Private Sam Watkins, Company H of the First Tennessee Infantry tells us his “line of battle was formed on the north bank of Stone’s River—on the Yankee side. Bad generalship, I thought.

It was Christmas. John Barleycorn was general-in-chief. Our generals, and colonels, and captains, had kissed John a little too often. They couldn’t see straight. They couldn’t tell our own men from Yankees. The private could, but he was no general, you see.

But here they were—the Yankees—a battle had to be fought. We were ordered forward. I was on the skirmish line. We marched plumb into the Yankee lines, with their flags flying.

It seems there was some confusion about who was who.

“I called Lieutenant-Colonel Frierson’s attention to the Yankees, and he remarked, ‘Well, I don’t know whether they are Yankees or not, but if they are, they will come out of there mighty quick.’ “

But at this point the Yankees marched back over the hill, out of sight. Sam’s regiment moved forward, and suddenly they right on the Federal lines.

“The Yankees were shooting our men down by scores.”

Of course, the Rebels shot back.

It seems, however, that the Confederate officers, experiencing the aftereffects of whiskey, had not figured out that they were in them midst of the Federal lines, and called out for the Yankees to cease firing “on your own men.”

Sam knew better:

“I hallooed; in fact, the whole skirmish line hallooed, and kept on telling them that they were Yankees, and to shoot; but the order was to cease firing, you are firing on your own men.

“We were not twenty yards off from the Yankees, and they were pouring the hot shot and shells right into our ranks.”

The confusion continued. Orders were still going out to cease firing.

“Oakley, color-bearer of the Fourth Tennessee Regiment, ran right up in the midst of the Yankee line with his colors, begging his men to follow.

I hallooed till I was hoarse, ‘They are Yankees, they are Yankees; shoot, they are Yankees.’ “

Finally everyone got on the same page.

General Cheatham came up and advanced. I did not fall back, but continued to load and shoot, until a fragment of a shell struck me on the arm, and then a minnie ball passed through the same paralyzing my arm, and wounded and disabled me.

“General Cheatham, all the time, was calling on the men to go forward, saying, “Come on, boys, and follow me.”

Despite his wounds, Sam was inspired by the sight.

“The impression that General Frank Cheatham made upon my mind, leading the charge, I will never forget. I saw either victory or death written on his face.

“When I saw him leading our brigade, although I was wounded at the time, I felt sorry for him, he seemed so earnest and concerned, and as he was passing me I said, ‘Well, General, if you are determined to die, I’ll die with you.’

“We were at that time at least a hundred yards in advance of the brigade, Cheatham all the time calling upon the men to come on. He was leading the charge in person.”

Then it was that I saw the power of one man, born to command, over a multitude of men then almost routed and demoralized. I saw and felt that he was not fighting for glory, but that he was fighting for his country because he loved that country, and he was willing to give his life for his country and the success of our cause.”

It was not just Sam that caught the excitement of the general. The rest of the Rebels “raised a whoop and yell, and swooped down on those Yankees like a whirl-a-gust of woodpeckers in a hail storm, paying the blue coated rascals back with compound interest.”

The Southern boys charged, overwhelming the Federals

“The victory was complete. The whole left wing of the Federal army was driven back five miles from their original position.”

Sam was patched up to fight another day.

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Late Spring 1864: Grant wanted to take the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.  He had been trying to slip around the Rebels, but the wily Lee kept blocking him.

Now Grant made a wide swing to flank the Rebels and seize Cold Harbor.

Not a real town, Cold Harbor was just an intersection of roads, ten miles northeast of Richmond. It got its name because of a tavern where guests could “harbor,” but no hot food was offered. You can see the inn in the photo below, taken on the 4th of June, 1864.

Grant arrived, but again Lee had beat him to the punch.

No one was better at building fortifications than Uncle Billy and his battle-hardened Rebels. In just days, they had built six miles of artillery emplacements, trenches and fortifications.

Now Grant made a crucial mistake: he thought Lee’s army was on the ropes, “really whipped.”  Nothing could be further from the truth, as he was about to discover.

An all-out attack was ordered for the next day. That night Union Lieutenant Colonel Porter watched men writing their names on paper and pinning them inside their uniforms. The privates knew better than their commander what was in store.

The Federals advanced at 4:30 AM, through thick fog. Confederate cannon and rifle fire soon had most of them pinned down.

One of Yankees described the assaults as “a wild chain of doomed charges, most of which were smashed in five or ten minutes.”

Another later wrote, “We felt it was murder, not war…”

One man saw all of the men around him suddenly drop to the ground. Assuming orders had been given, he dropped too. It was only then he realized the other men were dead.

In the span of one hour, 7,000 Union men were killed or wounded. No other hour of the war saw such a loss. By 7 AM, it was obvious to the Federals on the field that the attack was hopeless. When Union Major General Smith received orders for his 16,000 men to advance further, he refused, calling it a “wanton waste of life.”

When the assault was called off, many of the Union men could not retreat for fear of being killed. They had to somehow dig in where they were, creating what protection they could.

The difference in casualties was staggering. A Union army of 108,000 had been stopped in their tracks: 1,844 dead, 9,077 wounded, 1,816 captured or missing.

The 62,000 men of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia suffered 83 dead, 3,380 wounded, 1,132 captured or missing.

The Union army remained for nine more days, the front lines sometimes only yards apart.

It was a mistake Grant remembered for the rest of his life: “I regret this assault more than any one I have ever ordered.”

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Lieutenant Alexander Douglas could it no longer. The cries stirred him to action.

Douglas had been born on Christmas Day of 1833 in South Carolina, a land that was first settled by the English in 1670.  Early Americans battled Redcoats there in the Revolutionary War, and later, in 1865, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman burned two thirds of the beautiful city of Charleston. But I digress

Before the war, Douglas had been an attorney and had served as editor of the Spartanburg Express. But today he was a far cry from that world.

It was a hot day in July, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Douglas was in command of an ambulance corps.

Peering out from behind the fortification where he lay, Douglas spotted the source of the pleas: a Union soldier lying in the open field between the Confederate and Federal lines.

Douglas rallied four of his men. Together they dashed out into the open where the wounded enemy soldier pleaded for help.

Shots rang out, but somehow none of them found their mark. The five brave men reached the wounded man, lifting him onto a stretcher.  The firing stopped as the Yankees realized what the Rebels were doing. Douglas and his men carried the wounded man back to the Confederate lines where he could get water and treatment.

Douglas was on the fields of battle for two more years, and was there with Lee’s Army at Appomattox in April of 1865. And this despite his own battlefield wound sustained a year a year after Gettysburg.

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Union General McClellan had just come into some key intelligence. Now he thought he had Robert E. Lee right where he wanted him, in enemy territory with his forces divided:

“Here is a piece of paper with which if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee, I will be willing to go home.”

What was that piece of paper?

On 13 September 1862, McClellan’s Union army was at Frederick, Maryland, camped in the same fields that had just been abandoned by Lee’s men. Private Mitchell was stacking rifles when he spotted three cigars on the ground, wrapped in a piece of paper.

The cigars were a good prize, but when Mitchell looked at the paper he saw, “Army of Northern Virginia, Special Orders No. 191.”

Within hours that paper was in the hands of General McClellan, who said, “Now I know what to do.”

Just the day before McClellan had wired his superior, “My columns are pushing on rapidly to Frederick. From all I gather, secesh is skedalleling, and I don’t think I can catch him unless he is really moving into Pennsylvania.”

That piece of paper changed everything. McClellan now knew that Lee had sent Stonewall Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry, and that other brigades had been sent to execute other actions. The paper showed that Lee’s forces had been split into five parts and scattered over a 30-mile stretch. At least eight miles separated each piece of Lee’s army, and McClellan was just a dozen miles from the nearest Confederate unit.

But McClellan had a problem: the orders were a few days old. He could not be sure whether Stonewall had returned or whether the other Confederate forces had rejoined the Confederates 12 miles away.

Still, McClellan knew where the enemy was, if not how strong he was. So he was cautious and advanced his 30 brigades so they were all available to attack the Confederates. Lee’s total force was only 14 brigades, so his caution should ensure victory.

But in fact, there were only five brigades 12 miles away. General D. H. Hill was in command of those brigades and later wrote:

“McClellan could have crushed my little squad in ten minutes but for the caution inspired in him by the belief that Lee’s main body was there.” 

Lee found out what the Federals were doing. He sent a division to reinforce his rear guard and delay McClellan. The resultant battle on 14 September slowed the Union advance enough for Stonewall Jackson to complete taking Harpers Ferry and race to join Lee along Antietam Creek on the 16th.

You can see a bridge over the creek in the photo above, where 450 Georgians under General Toombs held back several assaults by 14,000 men of  General Burnside’s Corps.

September 17th would be the bloodiest day of fighting in American history, as 75,000 Union troops attacked 38,000 Confederate troops. The Federals would call it the Battle of Antietam. Confederates called it the Battle of Sharpsburg.

No single day of battle in American history brought more casualties. The Union suffered 12,410 casualties, 25% of the Yankee force. The Rebels had 10,316, 31% of its men. But Lee’s army was able to cross the Potomac the next day.

The captured document could have given McClellan the opportunity to destroy Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, but it didn’t happen.

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A lot of folks tell us what the Civil War was all about. Professors and reporters and “very important” people tell us.

And with what conviction they tell us!

But I rarely hear from the scholars about why the man in uniform was fighting. Seems the soldier is simply forgotten. Sure, we hear “what the war was about,” and we hear the bad intentions of some assigned to the Confederate soldier.

As a historian, I most enjoy writing about individuals – people, men who were there and experienced what we call history.

Sure, I write about events, but when I do I like to brush in real people. I like to include what they said about what happened.

Private David Johnston (left) was 16 when he put on a Rebel uniform. Through hardship and serious wounds he fought, all four years of the war. He then went on to become a Congressman and a respected judge.

David wrote a book after the war, telling of his experiences. Towards the end of it he wrote this:

“In praise of the Confederate soldier, I do not for one moment mean or intend to detract from the laurels won by the heroic Union soldier, who stood in the firing line, faithfully discharging his duty; for he, as well as we, was contending for principles regarded sacred and for which we had risked our lives….

“All were American soldiers, and the glory and honor won by each is the common heritage of the American people, not to be obscured or clouded by the questions about which we differed. Each struggled to maintain the right as God gave him to see the right.

“We often talked along the skirmish lines with Union soldiers…. In opposition to our claim that we were fighting for independence—separate government—they insisted that they were fighting for the Union, a common, undivided country; did not want to see the country broken up by division; and I feel fairly safe in stating that this feeling and sentiment largely dominated the great majority of the Union soldiers.”

David’s words ring true, whatever the interests of the politicians and economic concerns of the times. Men fought for what they believed in, and hundreds of thousands sacrificed their lives “for principles regarded sacred.”

There were virtues on both sides, and people today remember them.

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