Nine Men In Gray

By Charles L. Dufour

In this volume of biographical essays, all vividly written, extensively researched, Charles L. Dufour recounts the lives of nine Confederate officers, who served their cause with dedication, skill and bravery.

“Porter Alexander is not a household name today, but he should be remembered as one of Robert E. Lee’s most valuable officers. Bold and imaginative, Alexander was an artillerist whose service was requested by every Confederate army commander. He and eight other “men in gray” come to life in vivid sketches by Charles L. Dufour. Singled out are Dick Taylor, the handsome son of former president Zachary Taylor who led the Louisiana Brigade; Turner Ashby, an expert horseman whose death in battle typified the doomed gallantry of the Rebels; Pat Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee, who was called “the Stonewall of the West”; “Savez” Read, a navy man who terrorized the Atlantic seaboard in a one-gun sailing vessel; Willie Pegram, a shy Virginian who was a bold cannoneer; Lucius B. Northrop, whose abrasive personality complicated his task of feeding the army; William Mahone, whose ferocious fighting spirit belied his bantam size; and Henry Hotze, who served brilliantly as a Confederate agent and propagandist.”-Print ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Release date: Nov 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781786254344

Charles L. Dufour

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Text originally published in 1963 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

NINE MEN IN GRAY

BY

CHARLES L. DUFOUR

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PREFACE 6

AUTHOR’S NOTE 8

PHOTOGRAPHS 9

1—The President’s Brother-in-Law: GENERAL DICK TAYLOR 10

I 10

II 12

III 13

IV 17

V 21

VI 23

VII 30

VIII 32

IX 34

X 41

XI 44

2—Beau Sabreur of the Valley: GENERAL TURNER ASHBY 47

I 47

II 49

III 51

IV 56

V 60

VI 64

VII 66

VIII 70

IX 75

3—Stonewall of the West: GENERAL PAT CLEBURNE 78

I 78

II 81

III 85

IV 89

V 91

VI 99

VII 104

VIII 106

IX 111

X 114

4—Confederate Corsair: LIEUTENANT SAVEZ READ, C.S.N. 119

I 119

II 119

III 124

IV 128

V 136

VI 139

VII 146

VIII 148

IX 151

5—The Cannoneer Wore Specs: COLONEL WILLIE PEGRAM 158

I 158

II 159

III 161

IV 165

V 179

VI 184

VII 188

VIII 191

IX 194

6—The Peevish Commissary: COLONEL LUCIUS B. NORTHROP 200

I 200

II 201

III 205

IV 209

V 213

VI 216

VII 221

VIII 223

IX 228

7—Every Inch a Soldier: GENERAL BILLY MAHONE 231

I 231

II 233

III 235

IV 238

V 241

VI 246

VII 249

VIII 252

IX 258

X 263

8—Rebel Propagandist: HENRY HOTZE 265

I 265

II 266

IV 271

V 275

VI 278

VII 282

VIII 284

IX 287

X 291

9—The Articulate Artillerist: GENERAL E. P. ALEXANDER 293

I 293

II 296

III 299

IV 301

V 305

VII 311

VIII 314

IX 319

X 321

XI 325

XII 328

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 331

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 332

MANUSCRIPTS 332

Library of Congress: 332

National Archives: 332

Tulane University Archives: 332

Virginia Historical Society: 332

Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina: 332

Duke University Division of Manuscripts: 333

North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Raleigh: 333

Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland: 333

New Orleans Public Library: 333

Chicago Historical Society: 333

Virginia Military Institute: 333

University of Virginia: 333

Public Record Office, London, England: 333

Individual: 333

OFFICIAL RECORDS (Published) 333

UNPUBLISHED THESES 334

NEWSPAPERS 334

New Orleans: 334

Mobile: 334

London, England: 334

Charleston, Mississippi: 334

New York: 334

Portland, Maine: 334

PERIODICALS 334

GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS 335

BOOKS AND ARTICLES 335

DEDICATION

For

MARINE JEANNE DUFOUR

who really didn’t lose her father in the Civil War.

PREFACE

THE nine men who are the subject of this book will not be unfamiliar to Civil War enthusiasts but, to the average American, they are little remembered if not, indeed, forgotten. Yet each in his way played a dramatic role in the Confederate service.

Three of these Confederates—Turner Ashby, Pat Cleburne, and Billy Mahone—have had books written about them, but none has been widely circulated.

Two others, Dick Taylor and E. Porter Alexander, wrote about the war in which they served so brilliantly. But whereas many know Taylor’s Destruction and Reconstruction and Alexander’s Military Memoirs of a Confederate, how many know these two remarkable soldiers themselves, or their exploits throughout four years of bitter fighting?

Parts of the astonishing saga of Charles W. Savez Read of the Confederate Navy have been told in various places, but the entire career of this fantastic young Mississippian has never before been extensively treated.

The same is true of the careers of the much-despised Lucius B. Northrop, Commissary General of the Confederacy, and the much-loved Willie Pegram, a dazzling cannoneer.

The remaining member of the Nine Men in Gray did not, after the first three months of the war, wear a Confederate uniform for he was sent to England as the Confederate propaganda agent. In that capacity, young Henry Hotze distinguished himself to such a degree as to emerge as one of the ablest of all persons in the Confederate service.

Six of the nine came into the Confederacy from civilian life—Taylor, Ashby, Cleburne, Pegram, Mahone, and Hotze. Northrop and Alexander, West Point graduates, resigned from the United States Army, while Read, a graduate of Annapolis, resigned from the United States Navy, to cast their lot with the South. Six of the nine survived the war, Ashby, Cleburne, and Pegram being killed in action.

In the sketches of those who lived through the war, a brief summary of their postwar careers has been given; in all pieces the pre-war lives have been outlined. But the emphasis throughout has been on their Confederate careers.

The author is under great obligations to many persons and institutions for assistance during the researching of this book. Robert Talmadge, librarian of Tulane University and his staff, specifically, Mrs. Connie Griffith, Miss Betty Mailhes, Mrs. Dorothy Whittemore, Mrs. Patricia Segleau, and Bill Nañez, have put the author deeply in their debt by their cheerful cooperation and innumerable services.

So, too, have Mrs. Carolyn A. Wallace of the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina; Miss Mattie Russell, Curator of Manuscripts, Duke University, and her assistant, Mrs. Virginia Gray; and Howson W. Cole, Curator of Manuscripts, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, and his staff.

Ray D. Smith of Chicago, who has undertaken the monumental task of indexing The Confederate Veteran, graciously furnished the author with many references to each of the nine Confederates in that publication.

Valuable help is acknowledged from the following:

Vergil Bedsole, director of the Department of Archives and Manuscripts, Louisiana State University, and his staff; Arthur Ben Chitty, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee; Don Dosch, National Park Service historian at Shiloh, Tennessee; Gilbert E. Govan of Chattanooga; Tom Harrison, National Park Service historian at Petersburg, Virginia; Congressman F. Edward Hébert of Louisiana; Robert W. Hill, Curator of Manuscripts, New York Public Library; Stanley F. Horn of Nashville; William Kay, National Park Service historian at Richmond, Virginia; Dr. Grady McWhinney of Northwestern University; E. B. Pete Long, Oak Park, Illinois; Mallory J. Read of Arlington, Virginia; John R. Peacock, High Point, North Carolina; Ray Samuel of New Orleans; Frank B. Sarles, Jr. of Omaha, Nebraska; Miss India Thomas, regent, the Confederate Museum, Richmond, and her assistant, Miss Eleanor Brockenbrough; Mrs. E. M. Trigg of Savannah, Georgia; Lee Wallace, National Park historian, Washington, D.C.; and Dr. T. Harry Williams of Louisiana.

As always, the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division and the National Archives provided matchless service. The usual fine cooperation came from the New Orleans Public Library, Jerome Cushman, librarian.

Kenneth T. Urquhart, director of Memorial Hall of the Louisiana Historical Association, New Orleans, was generous in the loan of valuable source material.

To my colleagues on the New Orleans States-Item, Hermann B. Deutsch, Crozet Duplantier, and Dan Galouye, go thanks for reading the galley proofs. Previously, Mr. Galouye read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions.

Also lending a vigilant eye to the proofs were Mrs. Tess Crager, Leonard V. Huber, René LeGardeur, Jr., and Donald Schultz, all of New Orleans.

Edison B. Allen of Tulane University, a keen student of the Civil War, accompanied the author on field trips to many of the battlefields, and he read the manuscript, detecting errors and making valuable suggestions. He also read the proofs.

To Ezra Warner of La Jolla, California, the author is indebted for the loan of pictures from his valuable Civil War collection. A similar debt is acknowledged to Miss Regina Rapier of Atlanta, Georgia, who supplied a photograph of Henry Hotz.

Special thanks are due Polly LeBeuf for her patience in typing the manuscript and also for reading proofs.

For whatever errors remain after the careful assistance of these gracious friends, the author assumes full responsibility.

CHARLES L. DUFOUR

AUTHOR’S NOTE

In many cases, Civil War battles bear two names. Usually, the Confederates named them after man-made objects or places, while the Union employed natural features, e.g.:

Shiloh (Confederate) and Pittsburg Landing (Union)

Murfreesboro (Confederate) and Stone’s River (Union)

Sharpsburg (Confederate) and Antietam (Union)

Mansfield (Confederate) and Sabine Cross Roads (Union)

In all cases, except that of Antietam, the Confederate names for battles have been used.

PHOTOGRAPHS

General William Mahone

General Turner Ashby

General Patrick Roynane Cleburne

Colonel William Ransom Johnson Pegram

Henry Hotze

Colonel Lucius B. Northrop

General Richard Taylor

General Edward Porter Alexander

Lieutenant Charles W. "Savez" Read

1—The President’s Brother-in-Law: GENERAL DICK TAYLOR

I

DOWN the Valley Pike, stepping jauntily as if on parade, the Louisiana Brigade marched, 3000 strong in new uniforms and white gaiters. Regimental bands played at the head of their units and not a straggler broke the smooth, precise movement of the columns, the polished bayonets of which caught the declining rays of the sun. Along the pike, the battle-tested men of Stonewall Jackson stood and gaped as the trim, disciplined Louisianans passed by and wheeled from the road into their bivouac area.

Brigadier General Dick Taylor pridefully noted the impression his men made on the Shenandoah Valley soldiers and years later he expressed in print what he felt at the time: Indeed, it was a martial sight, and no man with a spark of sacred fire in his heart but would have striven hard to prove worthy of such a command.

After attending to necessary camp details, General Taylor sought out Stonewall Jackson, whom he had never met. A figure sitting on the top rail of a fence by the side of the road was pointed out to him. As he came up, Taylor first noticed a pair of cavalry boots covering feet of gigantic size, a mangy cap with visor drawn low, a heavy, dark beard, and weary eyes.{1}

Had Jackson regarded the handsome, well-groomed young general striding toward him with attention, he would have noted a slightly built man, about five feet eight inches tall, with high forehead, deep-set hazel eyes, and a dark brown beard and hair. {2}

Taylor saluted and gave his name and rank, noticing as he did so that Jackson had in his hand a lemon on which he was sucking.

The lemon-sucker acknowledged the salute, asking in a low gentle voice the distance Taylor had marched and the route he had taken.

Keazletown Road, six and twenty miles, replied Taylor.

You seem to have no stragglers, commented Jackson.

Never allow straggling, answered the Louisianan confidently.

You must teach my people, said Stonewall Jackson. They straggle badly.

Taylor bowed in acknowledgement of Jackson’s compliment. At that moment the regimental band of the 8th Louisiana struck up a gay waltz and Taylor’s Cajuns, as was their frequent custom in camp, paired off and danced in couples with as much zest as if their arms encircled the supple waists of the Célestines and Mélazies of their native [Bayou] Teche.

Jackson tugged at the lemon contemplatively for a moment and then said: Thoughtless fellows for serious work.

Taylor expressed the hope that the work would not be less well done because of the gay nature of his troops and when Jackson returned to his lemon without reply, Taylor saluted and retired. {3}

Before many days passed, General Jackson would see that the thoughtless fellows could attend to serious work as well as any troops in his little army in the Shenandoah Valley. In less than three weeks, they and their brilliant civilian commander would win the admiration of the Mighty Stonewall for their marching, discipline, and fighting.

Dick Taylor, the son of a President of the United States and the brother-in-law of the President of the Confederate States of America, was one of the bright young men of his day. Highly educated, and well-read and traveled, Dick Taylor’s only military experience was in the Mexican War, when he served his father, General Zachary Taylor, as military secretary. By his wide reading of history, Taylor learned much from the great captains of the past. And he self-educated himself by two practices to which he adhered throughout the Civil War:

The first was to examine at every halt the adjacent roads and paths, their direction and condition; distances of nearest towns and crossroads; the country, its capacity to furnish supplies, as well as general topography, etc., all of which was embodied in a rude sketch, with notes to impress it on memory. The second was to imagine while on the march an enemy before me to be attacked, or to be received in my position, and make the necessary dispositions for either contingency. My imaginary manoeuvres were sad blunders, but I corrected them by experience drawn from actual battles, and can safely affirm that such slight success as I had in command was due to these customs. {4}

How well this wealthy Louisiana sugar planter and politician succeeded in mastering the techniques of war is evidenced by the fact that among the 17 officers who gained the rank of lieutenant general in the Confederacy, Dick Taylor was one of three who did not attend West Point, the other two being Nathan Bedford Forrest and Wade Hampton.

That his promotion from colonel to brigadier general stemmed from his close relationship with Jefferson Davis is unquestioned. Davis’s first wife was Taylor’s older sister, Sarah Knox Taylor. Had Taylor proved a failure, the same sort of criticism leveled at the President for his stubborn support of General Braxton Bragg, Secretary Judah P. Benjamin, and Commissary General Lucius B. Northrop would have surely resulted. But Taylor did not prove a failure and his future recommendations for promotion came from those under whom he served.

Actually, Taylor possessed marked attributes for leadership—an active and incisive mind, a broad liberal education, courage, confidence and determination. Although only thirty-five years old when the Civil War broke out, he had been active for many years in the civil affairs of Louisiana. His absolute self-reliance, wrote a close friend, amounted to a total irreverence for any man’s opinion...He was marked in the expression of his friendships and of his antipathies—these regard the conduct of men rather than the men themselves... {5}

Shortly before he died in 1879, General Taylor published his war memoirs, Destruction and Reconstruction. The noted historian, Douglas Southall Freeman, called Taylor the one Confederate general who possessed literary art that approached first rank, and hailed his book as written with the unmistakable touch of cultured scholarship. {6}

II

The youngest of Zachary Taylor’s four children, and his only son, Richard Taylor was born in New Orleans on January 27, 1826.

Some accounts of his early life assert that he was born at Louisville, but Taylor himself referred to Louisiana as the state of my birth. It has also been said that he was educated in Edinburgh and in France, but one of his oldest intimate friends, D. H. Maury, wrote at his death that Taylor’s scholastic experience was confined to America. {7}

He entered Harvard, transferred to Yale, from which institution he was graduated in 1845. Although he was what later generations would call an Army brat, Dick Taylor showed no inclination for the Army. However, his three sisters had all married Army officers. One of them, Sarah Knox Taylor, died just a few months after marrying a dashing young lieutenant, Jefferson Davis.

When the Mexican War broke out in 1846, young Taylor, despite bad health, insisted on joining his father, General Taylor, in Texas. But as the climate did not suit his condition, General Taylor sent him back to New Orleans. Two years later, Dick was assigned to manage his father’s cotton plantation in Jefferson County, Mississippi.

In 1851, Dick Taylor married Myrthé Bringier and he bought a plantation of his own, having inherited a substantial fortune from his father’s estate. This plantation, Fashion, was situated in St. Charles Parish, about thirty-five miles above New Orleans, on the west bank of the Mississippi River. During the Civil War it would be devastated by Federal troops and confiscated.

Taylor settled down to the life of a well-to-do planter. He built up a large library, acquired an extensive knowledge of English, French, and Spanish literature, established a racing stable, and dabbled in politics, first as a Whig, then in the American party, and finally as a Democrat. He was elected to the Louisiana Legislature in 1855 and was still a member of the Senate when the secession crisis developed in 1860. {8}

At the National Democratic Convention in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860, Taylor was a delegate from Louisiana. When the split over the platform seemed imminent, Taylor pleaded in vain for peace and harmony. But the unity of the Democratic party was shattered when Alabama led the Southern States out of the Charleston Convention. The election of Lincoln in November as President of the United States was inevitable.

Taylor also participated in the rump convention which, meeting successively in Richmond and Baltimore, finally nominated John C. Breckinridge as the Democratic South’s presidential standard bearer.

Shortly after the election of Lincoln, Governor Thomas O. Moore called a special session of the Louisiana Legislature to determine the relations of the state to the Federal Union. On the opening day, December 10, 1860, Senator Dick Taylor introduced a bill calling for a state convention and setting January 7 as the date for an election of delegates. Elected a representative delegate from St. Charles Parish, Taylor, among several assignments, was made chairman of the Military and Naval Affairs Committee.

When the ordinance of secession was adopted on January 26, 1861, by a vote of 113 to 17, Taylor voted with the majority. Although he was not nominated as one of the commissioners to the convention in Montgomery of the seceded states, when the balloting came he received a complimentary vote from Alexandre Mouton, president of the convention.

Taylor reported to the convention that the State was found to be utterly defenceless, and presented an ordinance creating a standing army of between 1700 and 1800 men for Louisiana, consisting of a regiment of artillery, a regiment of infantry and the necessary general and staff officers. The bill passed easily.

Convinced that war was inevitable, Taylor urged that Louisiana make immediate preparations, but to no avail. In Destruction and Reconstruction, he recalled his efforts: As soon as the Convention adjourned, finding myself out of harmony with prevailing opinion as to the certainty of war and the necessity for preparation, I retired to my estate, determined to accept such responsibility only as came to me unsought.

An invitation from his friend, General Braxton Bragg, to visit the Confederate forces at Pensacola drew Taylor from his retreat at Fashion. While in Florida, he received a telegram from Governor Moore which removed him from the ranks of civilians and cast him in a military role in which he would become one of the Confederacy’s most successful generals. {9}

III

As soon as Dick Taylor received news that he had been appointed colonel of the 9th Louisiana Infantry Regiment, he returned to New Orleans and received his commission on July 2, 1861. He hastened to Camp Moore, 80 miles from New Orleans, to inspect his regiment, which was mustered into the Confederate service on July 6, and ordered immediately to Virginia. {10}

Instructing Lieutenant Colonel E. G. Randolph to move the regiment to Richmond by the first available transportation, Taylor returned to New Orleans to procure equipment for his troops and to put his business affairs in order. Realizing that the heavy concentration of troops in Virginia would create a scarcity of small-arms ammunition there, Taylor obtained 100,000 rounds for his regiment from Louisiana authorities.

Reaching Richmond on July 20, Colonel Taylor found that the 9th Louisiana, about 1000 strong, had just arrived and gone into camp. Everywhere he went, Taylor heard rumors of an impending battle at Manassas, where his fellow Louisianan, P. G. T. Beauregard was in command.

A multitude of wild reports, all equally inflamed, reached my ears, he narrated. ...Reaching camp, I paraded the regiment, and stated the necessity for prompt action, and my purpose to make application to be sent to the front immediately. Officers and men were delighted with the prospect of active service, and largely supplied want of experience by zeal. Ammunition was served out, three days’ rations were ordered for haversacks, and all camp equipage not absolutely essential was stored.

Having prepared the regiment for an immediate move to the front, Colonel Taylor then called on Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker to inform him of its readiness. The latter was happily surprised to find that the 9th Louisiana Regiment needed nothing except transportation. So many of the troops assembled in Richmond were unable to move forward because of lack of ammunition and other shortages. But Colonel Taylor’s regiment was ready and eager and the Secretary of War did everything he could to speed its departure. He thought that a train would be ready by 9 P.M.

Doubtless the Greeks before Troy had a word for the now well-established military maxim: Hurry up and wait. If GI Joe of 1861-65 did not employ it, it was not for a lack of reason or occasion. Taylor marched the regiment to the railroad station well before 9 P.M., and then began a long and exasperating wait. It was not until well beyond midnight that the train put in an appearance. When it finally huffed and puffed its way out of the station, Taylor was hopeful that his men would reach Manassas fairly early in the morning, as the run normally required only six hours. ...But this expectation, our engine brought to grief, he wrote. It proved a machine of the most wheezy and helpless character, creeping snail-like on levels, and requiring the men to leave the carriages to help it up grades.

What made the tortuous trip even more exasperating to Taylor and his men was the realization that they were missing the big battle that everyone in Richmond had talked about the previous day. At every halt of the wretched engine, said Taylor, the noise of battle grew more and more intense, as did our impatience. At dusk on July 21 the weary engine wheezed into Manassas Junction. The 9th Louisiana Regiment had missed the Battle of Manassas.

Bivouacking his men by the railroad, Taylor went off in the dark in search of General Beauregard’s headquarters to report his arrival and receive orders. These came the next day, instructing Taylor to select a suitable camp, a clear indication that no follow-up of the Confederate rout of the Federals was contemplated.

All about Manassas, Colonel Taylor discovered that the Confederates were tremendously disorganized by their victory. With a fine eye for description, he noted:

The confusion that reigned about our camps for the next few days was extreme. Regiments seemed to have lost their colonels, colonels their regiments. Men of all arms and all commands were mixed in the wildest way. A constant fusillade of small arms and singing of bullets were kept up, indicative of a superfluity of disorder, if not of ammunition. One of my men was severely wounded in camp by a ‘stray,’ and derived no consolation from my suggestion that it was a delicate attention of our comrades to mitigate the disappointment of missing the battle.

Taylor heard fine things about Louisiana troops in the battle, troops with which he would soon be closely associated. Roberdeau Wheat, famed soldier of fortune and filibuster, whom Taylor had known in the Mexican War as a mere boy, and his madcap Louisiana Tigers had fought valiantly at Stone Bridge and Wheat was critically wounded. Colonel Harry Hays’s 7th Louisiana arrived on the field in mid-afternoon to help swing the tide of battle. Colonel Henry B. Kelly’s 8th Louisiana was under heavy fire along Bull Run in the center of the Confederate line. On the Confederate right, Colonel Isaac G. Seymour’s 6th Louisiana marched and countermarched without getting into action. The crack Washington Artillery Battalion from New Orleans was busy and brave all day long. {11}

Just four days after the rout of the Federals at Manassas, the Confederate Army was reorganized and Taylor’s 9th Louisiana was brigaded with the 6th, 7th, and 8th Louisiana and Wheat’s Battalion, the Louisiana Tigers. Officially, this became the 8th Brigade in Beauregard’s 1st Corps, but it wasn’t long before it was generally known as the Louisiana Brigade. Temporarily in command was the gallant old Isaac G. Seymour, editor of the Commercial Bulletin in New Orleans and one-time Indian fighter.

However, the command of the Louisiana Brigade soon devolved upon Brigadier General William H. T. Walker, a Georgian who had graduated from West Point, served gallantly in the Mexican War, and later acted as commandant of cadets at the Military Academy. A distinguished-looking figure, Walker was an excellent instructor and his new brigade was quickly impressed with the way he prepared them for action.

During the fall of 1861 disease swept through the camps like a forest fire. Measles, mumps, whooping cough, chicken pox—all children’s diseases—vied with typhoid fever, dysentery, and other virulent maladies in laying the troops low. Taylor’s regiment was particularly hard hit and he spent many hours in the hospitals helping to nurse the sick and comfort some dying lad, far from home. The ordeal was more than he could take. He fell ill, a low fever sapping his strength and impairing the use of his limbs. When General Joe Johnston heard of his condition, he ordered Taylor to Fauquier Springs, near Warrenton, to recuperate. {12}

On October 21, 1861, Taylor was promoted to brigadier general and the next day general orders shifted General Walker to command Georgia troops and assigned Taylor to command of the Louisiana Brigade.

Walker was furious and rightly so. He had in two short months turned the Louisiana Brigade into one of the best in the Army and the officers and men were devoted to Fighting Billy as they called him. In an indignant letter of resignation Walker denounced President Davis and Secretary of War Benjamin for promoting over him men whom he had ranked in the Old Army and his transfer from the Louisiana Brigade he considered to cap the climax of insults and indignities.

To Taylor, his promotion to brigadier general was gratifying but terribly embarrassing. Of it, he wrote:

Of the four colonels whose regiments constituted the brigade, I was junior in commission, and the other three had been present and ‘won their spurs’ at the recent battle...Besides my known friendship for President Davis, with whom I was connected by his first marriage with my older sister, would justify the opinion that my promotion was due to favoritism.

He had rejoined his regiment on October 30, but immediately asked permission to visit Richmond to confer with President Davis. Taylor had truly sensed, and quickly, the resentment in the brigade over the shift of commanders. The hold on the imagination of the Louisiana soldiers that Fighting Billy Walker had was amply shown before he bade them farewell. Taylor learned of the delegations of officers from the 6th and 7th Louisiana Regiments who had called on Walker and expressed their confidence in him and their sorrow on his departure. And he heard, too, how the band of the 8th Louisiana had serenaded the general.

As soon as he was ushered into President Davis’s office Taylor explained the situation, told of his feelings and those of the brigade and requested Davis to rescind the promotion. It was a fact, which Taylor knew, that Davis had planned for some time to organize regiments from the same state into brigades and to place in command a general from the state. Accordingly, Walker, a Georgian, had been assigned to a Georgia brigade. This created the opening for a brigadier general in the Louisiana Brigade. And Davis had picked his brother-in-law. But what about the three other colonels, all of whom ranked him, all of whom had fought at Manassas?

The President listened patiently and said that he would take a day to reflect before deciding on the matter. The next day Taylor returned to the Army, and shortly thereafter President Davis’s reply came. Taylor wrote:

The President had employed the delay in writing a letter to the senior officers of the brigade, in which he began by stating that promotions to the grade of general officer were by law intrusted to him, and were made for consideration of public good, of which he alone was the judge. He then, out of abundant kindness for me, went on to soothe the feelings of these officers with a tenderness and delicacy of touch worthy of a woman’s hand, and so effectually as to secure me their hearty support.

Taylor was gratified to learn that General Walker bore him no ill will. In keeping with the rest of the brigade, he held Walker in high regard and cordial relations had existed between them. That they still existed, Taylor had ample evidence when General Walker left his own tent and field equipment for Taylor’s use.

Walker went home to Georgia, returned later to the Army and was killed in the Atlanta Campaign in 1864. In his book, Dick Taylor wrote affectionately of Fighting Billy:

No enterprise was too rash to awaken his ardor, if it necessitated daring courage and self-devotion. Truly, he might have come forth from the pages of old Froissart. It is with unaffected feeling that I recall his memory and hang before it my humble wreath of immortelles. {13}

IV

On November 4, 1861, Brigadier General Richard Taylor assumed command of the Louisiana Brigade. All of his units, except his former regiment, had already been under fire. Not having as yet demonstrated his ability to command a regiment, it was now up to Taylor to prove up as a brigade commander. {14}

These were the do-nothing days as far as the war was concerned, for outside of picket duty and a skirmish here or there, neither the Federals nor Confederates made a move in the winter of 1861-62. One Southern soldier summed up the situation this way: The only reason we did not fight was that the enemy was afraid of us and we of them and that was all that kept us apart.

But General Dick Taylor was busy, continuing the work with the brigade which General Walker had started. Picking up where Walker left off, Taylor spent many hours in the instruction of the men in the use of their weapons and in marching, the only military quality, he remarked, for which Southern troops had no aptitude.

Taylor had a double incentive to make good. His own innate qualities of leadership dictated one; the circumstance of his promotion the other. He was conscious that people were saying, as Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote in her diary: The President is accused of making a place for his brother-in-law, Dick Taylor. He knew that Davis’s enemies were watching him for a slip. {15}

During the time that the Army lay around Centreville, close to Washington, Taylor not only trained his regiments but with the instinct of an expert psychologist, he studied the men and officers of each unit, instilling confidence in all and deriving from the experiment pride and confidence in his brigade. The 6th Louisiana, commanded by the much-loved Colonel Isaac Seymour, was composed mainly of New Orleans Irishmen, stout, hardy fellows, turbulent in camp and requiring a strong hand, but responding to kindness and justice, and ready to follow their officers to the death. The 7th Louisiana, commanded by a New Orleans lawyer, Colonel Harry Hays, was, in Taylor’s eyes, a crack regiment. Taylor derived much amusement from the 8th Louisiana, commanded by Colonel Henry B. Kelly. It was composed partially of Acadians—Cajuns, in popular parlance—from the Bayou Teche country, southwest of New Orleans. From long experience in Louisiana, Taylor knew them as simple, home-loving folks, who spoke French and little English, and who had all the light gayety of the Gaul. Taylor’s old regiment, now commanded by Colonel Leroy A. Stafford, was made up of planters and planters’ sons from northern Louisiana, the Anglo-Saxon part of the state. Many of them were wealthy and to all soldiering was a hard task to which they only became reconciled by reflecting that it was ‘niddering’ in gentlemen to assume voluntarily the discharge of duties and then shirk. {16}

The remaining unit of Dick Taylor’s Louisiana Brigade was the Louisiana Tigers, a battalion commanded by a giant of a man, Roberdeau Wheat, clergyman’s son turned soldier of fortune, who had soldiered in Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Italy, whenever, as Taylor expressed it, the pleasant business of killing was going on. Wheat’s Tigers were wild and unruly, and, as one observer wrote of them, made not a pious crew, but they fought. Indeed, when Yankees weren’t available, they’d compromise by brawling with another Confederate unit, and that failing, they’d fall back upon rioting among themselves.

One Virginia soldier noted in his diary that they neither fear God, man or the Devil, while a youngster from South Carolina called them the worst men I ever saw...mostly wharf rats from New Orleans, and Major Wheat was the only man who could do anything with them.

So villainous was the reputation of this battalion that every commander desired to be rid of it, wrote General Taylor, and General Johnston assigned it to me, despite my efforts to decline the honor of such society. With delicate sarcasm, Taylor called them his gentle Tigers, and the day was not long off when he would be happy to have them in his brigade whenever there was fighting to be done. {17}

The Tigers were the cause of the first disciplinary problem that Taylor had to handle. Late in November, some of these obstreperous fellows created disorder after tattoo and several Tigers were arrested and confined in the brigade guardhouse. Another group of Tigers, hearing of the confinement of their mates, desired to free them. Two reckless young Irishmen, Dennis Cochrane and Mike O’Brien, led the assault on the guardhouse and, in the ensuing fracas, the officer of the guard was rudely handled and struck.

The attempt failed and the ringleaders, Cochrane and O’Brien, were subdued and put into irons for the night. The next day, November 29, a speedily called court-martial found them guilty of violating the Articles of War and sentenced them to be shot.

Immediately, the Tigers’ commander, Major Wheat, besought clemency for the two condemned men. He begged that some other punishment be given them, however severe. In vain did he plead that one of the men had saved his life at the Battle of Manassas. Taylor was adamant. A grievous offense against discipline had been committed, the guard had been manhandled and its officer assaulted. He felt the discipline of the brigade, even that of the Army, called for the extreme penalty. Taylor ordered the firing party to come from the Tiger Rifles, the company to which the two men belonged.

Wheat and the other battalion officers begged Taylor not to impose such a hard task upon them, and even suggested that perhaps the firing squad would refuse to fire on their comrades. I insisted for the sake of the example, wrote Taylor, and pointed out the serious consequences of the disobedience by their men.

The execution took place on December 9, before Taylor’s and other brigades under arms and thousands of other troops, many in trees or on the roofs of nearby houses. One of the soldiers who witnessed it returned heavyhearted to his tent and wrote in his diary of the effecting sight and heart rendering affair. He sensed the moral in the seemingly harsh sentence:

These two men I think are the first that have been shot and I hope the last. My idea of this decision is that the men are now going into winter quarters and to prevent them slipping off home for they thought they would have to make an example of someone and they concluded this the best time and it fell to these poor Tigers to share such an unfortunate lot.

The shooting of the two hapless Tigers was, indeed, the first military execution in the Army. ...Punishment, so closely following offense, produced a marked effect, said General Taylor. {18}

About this time, General Joe Johnston sent Taylor to Richmond to make known his view to President Davis on the question of reorganization of the Army. Taylor failed to win Davis to Johnston’s ideas and he discerned for the first time the growing estrangement between the President and the commander of the Army. Both Davis and Johnston listened patiently to his appeals and he felt justified in hoping that the cloud, then no greater than a man’s hand, would evaporate. But Taylor was thinking wishfully. Destiny willed that Davis and Johnston should be brought into collision, and the breach, once made, was never repaired, declared Taylor. Each misjudged the other to the end. {19}

The bitter Virginia winter of 1861-62 found Taylor, habitually subject to rheumatism and nervous headache, suffering considerably. But he did not neglect his brigade’s training. When he was under the weather, he became impatient and irritable, but when he was in good health his spirits were high. Frequently, Taylor joined the men at their campfires, and, in rich melodious voice, would discuss historical events or witty passages from literature. One of his listeners later recalled that General Taylor seemed the most brilliant and fascinating talker...in the Southern army.

During the winter, the Louisiana Brigade was shifted from one division to another, but in the snowbound inactivity this really made little difference. Early in November 1861, the brigade was in General E. Kirby Smith’s division. On November 16, it was shifted to General Earl Van Dorn’s command. On January 14, 1862, it was back in Kirby Smith’s division. When General Smith was ordered west, the newly promoted Major General Richard Stoddert Ewell took command of the division on February 21.

The next day, the Confederate Army at Centreville and along Bull Run, began preparations to withdraw to the Rappahannock. Johnston and the Richmond authorities agreed this was defensively sound to meet any threat to Richmond by General George B. McClellan in the spring. Taylor’s brigade which was on lower Bull Run, not far from Manassas Junction, got its marching orders and on March 9, the Louisianans were in motion. The road assigned Taylor for his march was rough and tough and there were many small streams to cross, all of which, he said, drew heavily on the marching capacity—or rather incapacity—of the men.

Straggling, Taylor noted for the first, but not the last time, was the vice of Southern armies. So he bent every effort to prevent straggling in his brigade during the withdrawal from the Bull Run line. Frequent halts were made to allow the slow of foot to close up. And Taylor set an example for his officers by riding to the rear of the column to relieve weary men of their muskets or to hoist a footsore soldier upon his horse behind him. Morale had to be high in a unit whose commanding officer and subordinates showed such real concern for the welfare of the troops.

But Taylor’s solicitude didn’t stop there. He gave his men advice on fitting their shoes and urged cold foot baths to relieve fatigue. He instructed them in caring for abrasions, and generally taught them how to march. The men appreciated this care and attention...and soon held it a disgrace to fall out of ranks, wrote Taylor. Before a month had passed the brigade learned how to march, and, in the Valley with Jackson, covered long distances without leaving a straggler behind. {20}

No wonder, two months later, as his straggler-free brigade marched past a bearded lemon-sucker on a rail fence, Dick Taylor’s heart was filled with pride as he brought his hand up in salute to Stonewall Jackson.

V

If General Taylor had left nothing to readers of the future other than his magnificent character sketches of Dick Ewell and Stonewall Jackson, his contribution to Civil War literature, for all its brevity, would have been invaluable. These sketches provide some of the most entertaining reading in Destruction and Reconstruction, itself one of the two or three finest Civil War narratives written by participants. Douglas Southall Freeman said that Taylor presented pictures of Ewell that Thackeray would not have disowned and that no firmer, more accurate pictures are to be found in Confederate literature than those Taylor penned of Stonewall.

Taylor and Ewell had been friends for years, but now that they were brought into almost daily contact their friendship ripened. This close and constant association with Ewell afforded Taylor abundant opportunities to study one of the most original characters among the generals in gray. His description of Ewell is delightful:

Bright, prominent eyes, a bomb-shaped, bald head, and a nose like that of Francis of Valois, gave him a striking resemblance to a woodcock; and this was increased by a bird-like habit of putting his head on one side to utter his quaint speeches.

Because he fancied he had a mysterious internal malady, Ewell would eat only frumenty, a wheat preparation, and nervousness prevented him from regular sleeping habits. Taylor often saw him pass nights curled around a camp stool, in positions to dislocate an ordinary person’s joints. After long silences, he’d suddenly look at Taylor and with a sharp accent that ended in a gentle lisp ask some faraway question, such as: General Taylor! What do you suppose President Davis made me a major general for?

Ewell, Taylor said, was a superb horseman. Although he had a fine tactical eye in battle, he was never content with his own plan until he had secured the approval of another’s judgement. Ewell loved to get into the fight and he chafed under the responsibilities of command which kept him from rushing forward with the skirmish line. Wrote Taylor of this:

On two occasions in the Valley, during the temporary absence of Jackson from the front, Ewell summoned me to his side, and immediately rushed forward among the skirmishers, where some sharp work was going on. Having refreshed himself, he returned with the hope that ‘old Jackson would not catch him at it.’ He always spoke of Jackson, several years his junior, as ‘old,’ and told me in confidence that he admired his genius, but was certain of his lunacy, and that he never saw one of Jackson’s couriers approach without expecting an order to assault the north pole.

Once, when Ewell ordered a bridge burned, Taylor’s countenance clearly recorded his disapproval. It was the only bridge for some miles up and down the stream which was fordable in many places.

You don’t like it, exclaimed Ewell.

At the close of the Napoleonic wars, answered Taylor, Bugeaud, a young colonel, commanded a French regiment on the Swiss frontier. A stream spanned by a bridge, but fordable above and below, separated him from an Austrian force four times his strength. He first determined to destroy the bridge, but reflected that if left it might tempt the enemy, whenever he moved, to neglect the fords. Accordingly, he masked his regiment as near his end of the bridge as the topography of the ground permitted and waited. The Austrians moved by the bridge, and Bugeaud, seizing the moment, fell upon them in the act of crossing and destroyed the entire force. Moral: ‘Tis easier to watch and defend one bridge than many miles of fordable water.

Why did you keep the story until the bridge was burnt? exploded Ewell.{21}

Whereas Dick Taylor had known Ewell for a long time prior to serving under him, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, called Stonewall after Manassas, was a total stranger. The legends had not yet grown up about him in May of 1862, when Taylor’s brigade joined Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley for the writing of one of the most brilliant chapters of the Civil War.

Taylor quickly learned the foibles of his new chief. If silence be golden, then Stonewall Jackson was a bonanza. He sucked lemons, ate hard tack, and drank water, and praying and fighting appeared to be his idea of the ‘whole duty of man.’ Whereas Dick Ewell sat his saddle as if born in it, Jackson was an ungraceful horseman who rode a sorry chestnut with a shambling gait. As he rode along in silence, his huge feet with out-turned toes thrust into his stirrups, Stonewall’s countenance, such as the low visor of his moth-eaten cap permitted to be seen, was wooden. Taylor was compelled to admit that his new commander was not prepossessing.

Once, when Taylor appealed to Jackson on behalf of General Winder, a splendid brigade commander, who had resigned in a huff over some interference in his command, he caught a glimpse, Taylor stated, of the man’s inner nature, for a brief instant. It was but a glimpse. The curtain closed, and he was absorbed in prayer. Yet in that moment I saw an ambition boundless as Cromwell’s, and as merciless. Continuing, Taylor summed up this complex man admirably:

I have written that he was ambitious; and his ambition was vast, all-absorbing. Like the unhappy wretch from whose shoulders sprang the foul serpent, he loathed it, perhaps feared it; but he could not escape it—it was himself—nor rend it—it was his own flesh. He fought it with prayer, constant and earnest—Apollyon and Christian in ceaseless combat. What limit to set to his ability I know not, for he was ever superior to occasion. Under ordinary circumstances it was difficult to estimate him because of his peculiarities—peculiarities that would have made a lesser man absurd, but that served to enhance his martial fame, as those of Samuel Johnson did his literary eminence. {22}

VI

After reporting to Stonewall Jackson, General Taylor didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity to study his new commander at informal close range. Late that night, Jackson came to Taylor’s campfire. He said that the army would move at dawn and then he asked a few questions about the marching of the Louisiana Brigade, with which he apparently had been much impressed. These answered, Stonewall lapsed into silence, broken only when he arose to leave after several hours of staring into the fire. {23}

Jackson’s Valley Campaign, in itself, was a masterful tactical operation, but it had far reaching strategic purposes. By demonstrating in the Valley, Jackson could strike the forces of Generals John C. Frémont and Nathaniel Banks in detail, before they could combine against him, and threaten to swoop down on Washington from the north. This would compel General Irvin McDowell’s 40,000 troops to remain in the defense of the Federal capital instead of marching toward Richmond to take the Confederates in flank while McClellan attacked frontally.

With the arrival of Taylor’s and Ewell’s other brigades, Jackson had a total of less than 18,000 troops. With these, by rapid marches and bold strokes, he was able to immobilize 70,000 Federals and throw official Washington into a panic.

Before sunrise on May 21, 1862, Jackson’s army was in motion with Dick Taylor’s brigade leading. The silent Stonewall rode at Taylor’s side as the devious march brought the army to Luray, where it camped for the night. After three long marches the Louisiana Brigade was but a short distance from where it had left to join Jackson several days before. I began to think that Jackson was an unconscious poet, Taylor wrote whimsically, and as an ardent lover of nature desired to give strangers an opportunity to admire the beauties of his Valley. But Taylor soon discovered that it was method not madness that motivated Jackson. He wanted to strike the Federals at Front Royal by surprise and capture the town so quickly that the small garrison could not escape or send a call for reinforcements.

On May 23, as they approached Front Royal shortly past noon, Taylor was riding alone at the head of the column, Jackson having been called to the rear. Out of the woods ahead, a pretty girl emerged, running breathlessly toward the advancing troops. She was Belle Boyd, the Confederate spy. She told Taylor, with much volubility...with the precision of a staff officer making a report, that the town was just beyond the woods, that it was filled with Yankees, that Banks was at Winchester, 20 miles away, and that the Federals had no idea where Jackson was, believing him miles off near Harrisonburg. She also said that the wagon bridge over the Shenandoah was covered by Yankee guns on the heights on the far side of the stream but that the nearby railroad bridge was not.

Convinced of the correctness of Belle Boyd’s information, Taylor ordered his command forward on the double. He hoped to surprise the enemy’s idlers in the town, or swarm over the wagon bridge with them and secure it. At this time, Stonewall Jackson galloped up and ordered Taylor to deploy his men as skirmishers on both sides of