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March 17, 1863. Major John Pelham, “The gallant Pelham,” was 24, and there was no more bold a soldier on the field on either side of the struggle between the states.
I was driving down to see where he caught the splinter in the brain. He was a man of parts, you see, with monuments all over this part of Virginia. There are stones that mark some of his heroics, and one that marks where he was wounded, and a plaque that marks where he expired.
He was a handsome young man, you can see it in his portrait, and high spirited as his fellow Alabamans.
He had not been a cadet of note at West Point, at least for the book-learning side of the academy of the martial arts. But there were others who fought as he did- with élan and innate skills that far surpassed any ability to pass a written examination.
A Union officer named Grant, one of the most indifferent students of his class at West Point, was demonstrating exactly that in the West that season, and had directed the flanking maneuver that captured great-great Uncle Patrick and much of the 10th Tennessee Irish in the Fort Donaldson campaign.
The older Grant and the young Pelham were warriors, not students.
But for all that, Pelham was a young man. The stories are that he was in Culpeper as much to call on Becky Shackleford, the Judge’s daughter as he was to support the trial.
When the sound of gunfire was heard in the distance, he waved to Becky in the big house across the street and rode out on a borrowed horse with FitzHugh Lee’s 9th Virginia cavalry, a spectator at the fight.
In his short time as a Rebel officer, Pelham had participated in over a hundred skirmishes and a dozen major battles.
The Federals decided the matter of timing for the Confederacy, as they would until the boot of Washington crushed the serpent of Secession.
April 22, 1861 he resigned from the Academy and made his way to Alabama. Commissioned a lieutenant, he was sent to Joseph E. Johnston’s Confederate Army in the Valley of Virginia.
From then on, beginning July 21 at the encounter at First Manassas, he “dazzled the land with deeds.”
During November of 1861, J. E. B. Stuart made Pelham a captain and gave him a battery of horse artillery, the nucleus of that arm in Stuart’s Cavalry Corps. Horse artillery, with every man mounted, achieved a speed, and mobility impossible for the heavier field artillery.
Pelham brought new audacity to horse artillery tactics. His flair for the innovative use of mobile guns made the generals marvel.
Through 1862, the seven days around Richmond in the spring, Second Manassas (August 29-30), Sharpsburg (September 17), his fame and ability progressed accumulatively. Ambrose E. Burnside, newly appointed Federal commander, was bringing a large force of union troops south, and sought to cross the Rappahannock.
Pelham’s guns, highly mobile, harassed the mass of troops, setting up, firing and constantly on the move. Later artillery doctrine calls the tactic “Shoot and scoot,” and is the preferred manner of dealing with a superior and better armed foe.
The Prussian giant Heros Von Borcke, comrade and friend, was with him in the camps as the maneuvering season drew to a close in December. Stonewall Jackson was in winter quarters as well, resting up from the exertions of his “foot cavalry” in the Maryland campaign.
In late December of 1862, the holidays coming on, both armies settled down to winter quarters on their respective sides of the river.
Jackson lived in the hunting lodge on James Corbin’s Moss Neck plantation for a couple months of relative peace. He struck up a family-like relationship with one of the young Corbin girls, who contracted scarlet fever and died after the general and his troops departed.
On March 17, 1863, Saint Patrick’s Day, Heros Von Borcke, was riding by the river and, heard distant shots upstream.
What he was hearing were the first shots of the Battle of Kelly’s Ford. The Federal horse had splashed through the stream and struck Fitz Lee.
“At dawn on 17 March 1863, Brig. Gen. William W. Averell led 2,100 Union cavalrymen across the Rappahannock River at Kelly’s Ford. Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee with about 1,000 Confederate horsemen counterattacked northwest of here about noon. Noted Confederate artillerist Maj. John Pelham accompanied Lee’s men and fell mortally wounded while impetuously taking part in a charge. The battle ended in a draw, marking the first time Confederate cavalrymen had not defeated their Union opponents, resulting in new confidence for the Union cavalry. It foreshadowed another Union crossing at Kelly’s Ford during the much larger battle of 9 June 1863 at Brandy Station.”
That is what the sign says, anyway. There is a lot more to it, but I will have to get to that tomorrow.
Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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