The Jackson-Pender meeting at Chancellorsville

   The story of Stonewall Jackson’s wounding on the night of May 2, 1863, is well known. During a lull in the fighting after Jackson had rolled up the flank of the Army of the Potomac, Jackson and his staff rode forward into the darkness to scout the Federal lines. How far he rode is not certain. The front Confederate line was held by the 33^rd North Carolina Troops, deployed as skirmishers. To their rear were the other four regiments of Lane’s brigade. It was dark and there was a lot of confusion. There was also a lot of skirmishing as the Federals constructed works. Things were so jumbled up that four or five members of the 7^th North Carolina State Troops were able to capture almost 200 members of the 128^th Pennsylvania Infantry. In the ensuing confusion, Jackson was wounded by his own troops and taken to the rear.

   Capt. James P. Smith wrote an account of the night of May 2 for Century Magazine entitled “Stonewall Jackson’s Last Battle.” Picking up Smith’s account, Jackson, after his wounding was taken behind the lines. The “litter was soon brought, and again rallying a few men, we essayed to carry him farther, when a second bearer fell at my side. This time, with none to assist, the litter careened, and the general fell to the ground, with a groan of deep pain. Greatly alarmed, I sprang to his head, and, lifting his head as a stray beam of moonlight came through clouds and leaves, he opened his eyes and wearily said: "Never mind me, Captain, never mind me." Raising him again to his feet, he was accosted by Brigadier-General Pender: "Oh, General, I hope you are not seriously wounded. I will have to retire my troops to re-form them, they are so much broken by this fire."[1]

   The difficulty with this story is that Pender’s brigade had yet to deploy when Jackson was wounded. Why would they need to retire and re-form if they were only harassed by a little stray artillery fire?

   Who was James P. Smith? Born in Ohio, Smith attended both Jefferson College and Hampton Sidney. When the war came along, he enlisted in the Rockbridge Artillery. On October 8, 1862, he was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to the staff of Jackson as an aide de camp. There is nothing in his record to indicate that he was not with Jackson that night.[2]

   Brig. Gen. William Dorsey Pender was commanding a brigade in A.P. Hill’s Light Division on May 2, 1863. The Light Division was the last of three divisions that accompanied Jackson on his celebrated flank march on May 2. Most historians do not discuss the order of march for the Light Division, save that two brigades, under Archer and Thomas, were left behind to deal with the threat at Catharine’s Furnace. That left Hill with four brigades: those of Lane, Pender, Heth, and McGowan.[3]

   Jackson commenced his attack at 5:30 that afternoon. In his deployment of brigades for the attack, Sears lost Pender’s brigade. In the most popular book on the battle, Sears writes that Jackson’s front line consisted of troops from Rodes’s division: brigades belonging to Iverson, O’Neal, Doles, and Colquitt. In the second line were Ramseur’s brigade from Rodes’s Division, and Warren’s and Jones’s brigades from Colston’s division. A third line, north of the Orange Plank Road, was composed of Nicholls’s brigade of Colston’s Division, and Heth’s brigade of Hill’s Division. “[A]nother of Hill’s brigades, James Lane’s was deployed in column on the Turnpike.” What happened to Pender? And McGowan? Schenck likewise is no help, only adding that as Jackson was deploying, “Hill’s Division was partly deployed and partly in column on the road. The two rear most brigades were still coming up.” Furgurson goes a little further, writing that Heth’s and Pender’s brigades were forming north of the Orange Plank Road, while Lane and McGowan’s brigades (in that order) were still on the road when the attack commenced. However, Furguson provides no source for the disposition of the Light Division.[4]

   What of the reports in the Official Records? A. P. Hill gives the slimmest of details, and nothing about the disposition of his division on the march or the battle on May 2. Heth, after his skirmish on the morning of May 2, writes that he was ordered to disengage, “crossing the plank road and [follow] the rest of division.” On reaching the stepping-off place for the late afternoon attack, Heth was ordered to “form line of battle on General Colston’s left.” However, Colston “advanced his line before” Heth could deploy. Heth then was ordered to deploy off Pender’s left. “This was done.” At some point, Heth and Pender advanced “1 ½ miles on the left of and parallel to the Plank road.” Heth makes no more mention of Pender’s brigade until after Jackson is wounded. Lane, in his official report, makes no mention of the order of march. Pender, in his report, does not write about the order of march, but does write that they were formed in support of Colston’s division on the left of the road. “In this order we advanced some distance, when orders were received to enter the road again and push on by the flank, in which order I moved until reaching the advanced position of our troops.” Since Lane’s brigade was in the lead at this point, Pender’s brigade must have been somewhere behind Lane’s men.[5]

   Both Lane and Pender write about the artillery bombardment. After Lane had been ordered to deploy, but before he could execute his orders, the Federals “opened a terrific artillery fire, which was responded to by our batteries.” It was Lane who suggested that Hill order his batteries to stop fire, and when they did, the Federals also stopped their fire. "All old soldiers know how difficult it is to maneuver the bravest troops in the dark under a murderous fire, through scrubby oaks & pine thickets, & over the abatis of the enemy's abandoned works," Lane wrote after the war. Pender, someplace further down the road behind Lane, writes that he was ordered to move to the left and deploy his troops. “Here, after my men were subjected to a most galling and destructive shelling from the batteries near Chancellorsville, I moved my regiments in to the left and formed line of battle…” Lane writes that the artillery duel lasted fifteen minutes. Once it ended, Lane deployed his troops, looked for Hill for further orders, found Jackson instead and received orders from him. Then Jackson and his staff rode maybe half a mile forward and partway back before being wounded by Lane’s men, who were still in front of Pender.[6]

   There was some Federal artillery fire later. Shrapnel hit Jackson’s litter bears at least once, forcing them to stop another time. Is this the “galling and destructive shelling” that Pender mentions?  Furthermore, most accounts have Capt. Benjamin Leigh being sent to the rear to find a surgeon and ambulance for Jackson. Leigh rode back 100 yards (through Lane’s brigade) where he found “Pender marching up the road with his brigade.” It is important to note that Leigh is writing on May 12, 1863. The events are still fresh in his mind. Pender, in both his official report, and in his letters home, made no mention of Leigh.[7]

   Back to Smith--He recalled Pender telling Jackson: “I will have to retire my troops to re-form them, they are so much broken by this fire." Much of this boils down to timing. How much time passed between the severe artillery fire that both Lane and Pender made mention of, and Pender encountering Jackson on the stretcher being carried to the rear in the darkness? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? How far back was Pender’s brigade? If Leigh is correct in finding Pender still stacked in the road, then why the need to fall back and reform? Lane’s brigade survived the artillery bombardment and was successfully deployed. Pender was someplace behind him, and had Lane’s brigade to provide cover while they reformed from an artillery barrage fifteen or thirty minutes before. Of course, we know that Pender did not retire. He went in on Lane’s left just a short time later. Smith’s account is often repeated or alluded to. Stephen Sears, Mathew Lively, and Ernest Furgurson all mention this account. The timing just seems odd. Maybe Pender compressed the timing and the artillery barrage into one event, without all of the gaps.

   Pender seems more interested in writing to wife about his prospects for promotion than about the battle. I understand wanting to protect his loved one from the atrocities of war, but history could have used a little more detail, detail we could use, nearly a hundred and sixty years later, to help us understand the movements of long-dead men on a dark, confusing battlefield.

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[1] Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, 3:212.

[2] Krick, Staff Officers in Gray, 269.

[3] Sears, Chancellorsville, 256; Schenck, Up Came Hill, 248.

[4] Sears, Chancellorsville, 260-61; Schenck, Up Came Hill, 248; Furgurson, Chancellorsville, 1863, 167, 168.

[5] Official Records, Vol. 25, 1:885, 890, 915-16, 935.

[6] Official Records, Vol. 25, 1:916, 935; James Lane to Marcellus Moorman, "Narrative of Events and Observations Connected with the Wounding of General T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson," SHSP, 30:111-13.

[7] Leigh, “Wounding of Stonewall Jackson,” SHSP, 6:233; Lively, Calamity at Chancellorsville, 72.