Frederick, Maryland
Frederick is a city in, the county seat of, Frederick County in the U. S. state of Maryland. It is part of the Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area. Frederick has long been an important crossroads, located at the intersection of a major north–south Indian trail and east–west routes to the Chesapeake Bay, both at Baltimore and what became Washington, D. C. and across the Appalachian mountains to the Ohio River watershed. It is a part of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, part of a greater Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area; the city's population was 65,239 people at the 2010 United States Census, making it the second-largest incorporated city in Maryland, behind Baltimore. Frederick is home to Frederick Municipal Airport, which accommodates general aviation, to the county's largest employer U. S. Army's Fort Detrick bioscience/communications research installation. Located where Catoctin Mountain meets the rolling hills of the Piedmont region, the Frederick area became a crossroads before European explorers and traders arrived.
Native American hunters including the Susquehannocks, the Algonquian-speaking Shawnee, or the Seneca or Tuscarora or other members of the Iroquois Confederation) followed the Monocacy River from the Susquehanna River watershed in Pennsylvania to the Potomac River watershed and the lands of the more agrarian and maritime Algonquian peoples the Lenape of the Delaware valley or the Piscataway and Powhatan of the lower Potomac watershed and Chesapeake Bay. This became known as the Monocacy Trail or the Great Indian Warpath, with some travelers continuing southward through the "Great Appalachian Valley" to the western Piedmont in North Carolina, or traveling down other watersheds in Virginia toward the Chesapeake Bay, such as those of the Rappahannock and York Rivers; the earliest European settlement was north of Frederick in Monocacy, Maryland. Founded before 1730, when the Indian trail became a wagon road, Monocacy was abandoned before the American Revolutionary War due to the river's periodic flooding or hostilities predating the French and Indian War, or Frederick's better location with easier access to the Potomac River near its confluence with the Monocacy.
Daniel Dulany—a land speculator—laid out "Frederick Town" by 1745. Three years earlier, All Saints Church had been founded on a hilltop near a warehouse/trading post. Sources disagree as to which Frederick the town was named for, but the likeliest candidates are Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore, Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, or Frederick "The Great" of Prussia. In 1742, Maryland's General Assembly made Frederick the county seat of Frederick County, which extended to the Appalachian mountains; the current town's first house was built by a young German Reformed schoolmaster from the Rhineland Palatinate named Johann Thomas Schley, who led a party of immigrants to the Maryland colony. The Palatinate settlers bought land from Dulany on the banks of Carroll Creek, Schley's house stood at the northwest corner of Middle Alley and East Patrick Street into the 20th century. Schley's settlers founded a German Reformed Church; the oldest house still standing in Frederick today is Schifferstadt, built in 1756 by German settler Joseph Brunner and now the Schifferstadt Architectural Museum.
Schley's group was among the many Pennsylvania Dutch who migrated south and westward in the late-18th century. Frederick was an important stop along the migration route that became known as the Great Wagon Road, which came down from Gettysburg and Emmitsburg, Maryland and continued south following the Great Appalachian Valley through Winchester and Roanoke, Virginia. Another important route continued along the Potomac River from near Frederick, to Hagerstown, where it split. One branch crossed the Potomac River near Martinsburg, West Virginia and continued down into the Shenandoah valley; the other continued west to Cumberland and crossed the Appalachian Mountains into the watershed of the Ohio River. Thus, British General Edward Braddock marched his troops west in 1755 through Frederick on the way to their fateful ambush near Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. However, the British after the Proclamation of 1763 restricted that westward migration route until after the American Revolutionary War.
Other westward migrants continued south from Frederick to Roanoke along the Great Wagon Road, crossing the Appalachians into Kentucky and Tennessee at the Cumberland Gap near the Virginia/North Carolina border. Other German settlers in Frederick were Evangelical Lutherans, led by Rev. Henry Muhlenberg, they moved their mission church from Monocacy to what became a large complex a few blocks further down Church Street from the Anglicans and the German Reformed Church. Methodist missionary Robert Strawbridge accepted an invitation to preach at Frederick town in 1770, Francis Asbury arrived two years both helping to found a congregation which became Calvary Methodist Church, worshiping in a log building from 1792. Frederick had a Catholic mission, to which Rev. Jean DuBois was assigned in 1792, which became St. John the Evangelist Church (built in 1
1st Maryland Infantry, CSA
The 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA was a regiment of the Confederate army, formed shortly after the commencement of the American Civil War in April 1861. The unit was made up of volunteers from Maryland who, despite their home state remaining in the Union during the war, chose instead to fight for the Confederacy; the regiment saw action at the First Battle of Manassas, in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, in the Peninsular Campaign. It was mustered out of its initial term of duty having expired. Many of its members, unable or unwilling to return to Union-occupied Maryland, went on to join a new regiment, the 2nd Maryland Infantry, CSA, formed in its place. After the bombardment of Fort Sumter on April 12–14, 1861, President Lincoln called for the states to send troops to preserve the Union. On April 19, Southern sympathizers in Baltimore attacked Union troops passing through by rail, causing what were arguably the first casualties of the Civil War. Major General George H. Steuart, commander of the Maryland State Militia, most of his senior officers were sympathetic to the Confederacy.
He ordered the militia to turn out and uniformed, to repel Federal soldiers. Knowing of these sympathies, that public opinion in Baltimore was divided, Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks did not order out the militia. During the early summer of 1861, several thousand Marylanders crossed the Potomac river to join the Confederate Army. Most of the men enlisted into regiments from Virginia or the Carolinas, but six companies of Marylanders formed at Harpers Ferry into the Maryland Battalion. Among them were members of the former volunteer militia unit, the Maryland Guard Battalion formed in Baltimore in 1859. Captain Bradley T. Johnson, commander of Company A. refused the offer of the Virginians to join a Virginia Regiment, insisting that Maryland should be represented independently in the Confederate army. When the regiment was organised the first commander was Colonel Francis J. Thomas, a graduate of West Point in the class 1844, his choice as commander was vocally objected by several company commanders, on June 8 he was relieved of command.
It was agreed that a seasoned career officer from Maryland, would take command. His executive officer was the Marylander George H. Steuart, who would be known as "Maryland Steuart" to distinguish him from his more famous cavalry colleague JEB Stuart; the 1st Maryland Infantry Regiment was formed on June 16, 1861, and, on June 25, two additional companies joined the regiment in Winchester. Its initial term of duty was for twelve months. In June 1861 General Johnston evacuated Harper's Ferry, the 1st Maryland was ordered to assist in destroying its arsenal of weaponry. At the First Battle of Manassas known as the First Battle of Bull Run, on July 21, 1861, the 1st Maryland was combined with the 13th Virginia Infantry, 10th Virginia Infantry and 3rd Tennessee Regiments to form the 4th Brigade, led by Brigadier General E. Kirby Smith. Smith's men were late in arriving at the battle and approached the Confederate left near Chinn Ridge; the battle got off to a bad start when Elzey was forced to assume temporary command of the brigade, as General Smith was shot from his horse and injured by enemy fire.
However, Elzey was able to bring his men into line facing the flank of the Federal army, the brigade commanded by General Oliver O. Howard, his men advanced to the edge of a wood without being detected by the Union army and opened fire, after which they charged over open ground into the Union position. Soon they were joined by Colonel Jubal A. Early on the Confederate left flank and shortly afterwards Howard's line began to disintegrate; as the federal forces fled, General Beauregard congratulated Elzey, commending him as "the Blucher of the day". After the battle Elzey was promoted to Brigade Commander, Colonel George H. Steuart was given command of the 1st Maryland Regiment. Major Bradley Johnson was appointed his second in command. During the winter of 1861-2 the regiment was quartered at Centerville. In April 1862 it was marched back to the Rappahannock River, assigned to the command of General Richard S. Ewell, following which the regiment joined General "Stonewall" Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, meeting him at Luray, Virginia.
At this point an unsuccessful attempt was made to form a "Maryland Line" in the CSA, uniting all Maryland units under one command. Under Steuart's command the regiment was drilled relentlessly. Steuart soon began to acquire a reputation as a strict disciplinarian gaining the admiration of his men, though unpopular as a result. Steuart was said to have ordered his men to sweep the bare dirt inside their bivouacs and, rather more eccentrically, was prone to sneaking through the lines past unwitting sentries, in order to test their vigilance. On one occasion this plan backfired, as Steuart was pummeled and beaten by a sentry who claimed not to have recognized the general. However, Steuart's "rigid system of discipline and conduced to the health and morale of this splendid command." According to Major W W Goldsborough, who served under Steuart at Gettysburg: "...it was not only his love for a clean camp, but a desire to promote the health and comfort of his men that made him unyielding in the enforcement of sanitary rules.
You might influence him in some things, but never in this". George Wilson Booth, a young officer in Steuart's command at Harper's Ferry in 1861, recalled in his memoirs: "The Regiment, under his master hand, soon gave evidence of the soldierly qualities which made it the pride of the army and placed the fame of Maryland in the foreground of the Southern States". On May 17 the initial 12-month term of duty of C Company expired, the men began to clamor
Confederate States Army
The Confederate States Army was the military land force of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, fighting against the United States forces. On February 28, 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress established a provisional volunteer army and gave control over military operations and authority for mustering state forces and volunteers to the newly chosen Confederate president, Jefferson Davis. Davis was a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, colonel of a volunteer regiment during the Mexican–American War, he had been a United States Senator from Mississippi and U. S. Secretary of War under President Franklin Pierce. On March 1, 1861, on behalf of the Confederate government, Davis assumed control of the military situation at Charleston, South Carolina, where South Carolina state militia besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, held by a small U. S. Army garrison. By March 1861, the Provisional Confederate Congress expanded the provisional forces and established a more permanent Confederate States Army.
An accurate count of the total number of individuals who served in the Confederate Army is not possible due to incomplete and destroyed Confederate records. This does not include an unknown number of slaves who were pressed into performing various tasks for the army, such as construction of fortifications and defenses or driving wagons. Since these figures include estimates of the total number of individual soldiers who served at any time during the war, they do not represent the size of the army at any given date; these numbers do not include men. Although most of the soldiers who fought in the American Civil War were volunteers, both sides by 1862 resorted to conscription as a means to force men to register and to volunteer. In the absence of exact records, estimates of the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were draftees are about double the 6 percent of United States soldiers who were conscripts. Confederate casualty figures are incomplete and unreliable; the best estimates of the number of deaths of Confederate soldiers are about 94,000 killed or mortally wounded in battle, 164,000 deaths from disease and between 26,000 and 31,000 deaths in United States prison camps.
One estimate of Confederate wounded, considered incomplete, is 194,026. These numbers do not include men who died from other causes such as accidents, which would add several thousand to the death toll; the main Confederate armies, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee and the remnants of the Army of Tennessee and various other units under General Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered to the U. S. on April 9, 1865, April 18, 1865. Other Confederate forces surrendered between April 16, 1865 and June 28, 1865. By the end of the war, more than 100,000 Confederate soldiers had deserted, some estimates put the number as high as one third of Confederate soldiers; the Confederacy's government dissolved when it fled Richmond in April and exerted no control of the remaining armies. By the time Abraham Lincoln took office as President of the United States on March 4, 1861, the seven seceding slave states had formed the Confederate States; the Confederacy seized federal property, including nearly all U.
S. Army forts, within its borders. Lincoln was determined to hold the forts remaining under U. S. control when he took office Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. By the time Lincoln was sworn in as president, the Provisional Confederate Congress had authorized the organization of a large Provisional Army of the Confederate States. Under orders from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, C. S. troops under the command of General P. G. T. Beauregard bombarded Fort Sumter on April 12–13, 1861, forcing its capitulation on April 14; the United States demanded war. It rallied behind Lincoln's call on April 15, for all the states to send troops to recapture the forts from the secessionists, to put down the rebellion and to preserve the United States intact. Four more slave states joined the Confederacy. Both the United States and the Confederate States began in earnest to raise large volunteer, armies with the objectives of putting down the rebellion and preserving the Union, on the one hand, or of establishing independence from the United States, on the other.
The Confederate Congress provided for a Confederate army patterned after the United States Army. It was to consist of a large provisional force to exist only in time of war and a small permanent regular army; the provisional, volunteer army was established by an act of the Provisional Confederate Congress passed on February 28, 1861, one week before the act which established the permanent regular army organization, passed on March 6. Although the two forces were to exist concurrently little was done to organize the Confederate regular army; the Provisional Army of the Confederate States began organizing on April 27. All regular and conscripted men preferred to enter this organization since officers could achieve a higher rank in the Provisional Army than they could in the Regular Army. If the war had ended for them, the Confederates intended that the PACS would be disbanded, leaving only the ACSA; the Army of the Confederate States of America was the regular army and was authorized to include 15,015 men, including 744 officers, but this level was never achieved.
The men serving in the highest rank as Confederate States generals, such as Samuel Cooper and Robert E. Lee, were enrolled in the ACSA to ensure that they outranked all
George H. Steuart (brigadier general)
George Hume Steuart was a planter in Maryland and an American military officer. He joined the Confederacy and rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Nicknamed "Maryland" to avoid verbal confusion with Virginia cavalryman J. E. B. Stuart, Steuart unsuccessfully promoted the secession of Maryland during the conflict, he began the war as a captain of the 1st Maryland Infantry, CSA, was promoted to colonel after the First Battle of Manassas. In 1862 he became brigadier general. After a brief cavalry command he was reassigned to infantry. Wounded at Cross Keys, Steuart was out of the war for a year while recovering from a shoulder injury, he was reassigned to Lee's army shortly before the Battle of Gettysburg. Steuart was captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, exchanged in the summer of 1864, he held a command in the Army of Northern Virginia for the remainder of the war. Steuart was among the officers with Robert E. Lee when he surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House.
Steuart spent the rest of a long life operating a plantation in Maryland. In the late nineteenth century, he joined the United Confederate Veterans and became commander of the Maryland division. George Hume Steuart was born on August 1828 into a family of Scots ancestry in Baltimore; the eldest of nine children, he was raised at his family's estate in West Baltimore, known as Maryland Square, located near the present-day intersection of Baltimore and Monroe Streets. The Steuart family were wealthy plantation owners and strong supporters of slavery, which they depended on for labor; the Steuarts shared a long tradition of military service. He was the son of Major General George H. Steuart, of Anne Arundel County, who served in the War of 1812, with whom he is confused. Baltimore residents referred to the father and son as "The Old General" and "The Young General." The elder Steuart inherited 2,000 acres of land in around 1842, including a farm at Mount Steuart, around 150 slaves, a high number in the Upper South.
Steuart was the grandson of Dr. James Steuart, a physician who served in the American Revolutionary War, the great-grandson of Dr. George H. Steuart, a physician who emigrated to Maryland from Perthshire, Scotland, in 1721, was lieutenant colonel of the Horse Militia under Governor Horatio Sharpe. Steuart attended the United States Military Academy between July 1, 1844 and July 1, 1848, graduating 37th in the class of 1848, aged nineteen. Steuart was assigned as 2nd lieutenant to the 2nd Dragoons, a regiment of cavalry that served in the frontier fighting Indians, he served in the Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, in 1848, carried out frontier duty at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1849, participated in an expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1849. He participated in the US Army's Cheyenne expedition of 1856, the Utah War against the Mormons in 1857–1858, the Comanche expedition of 1860, he married Maria H. Kinzie, granddaughter of John Kinzie, founder of the city of Chicago, on January 14, 1858.
The couple had met in Kansas and, once married, lived at Fort Leavenworth, although they were separated for long periods while Steuart was on campaign duty and stationed at distant frontier posts. They had two daughters: Marie Hunter, born in 1860 and went on to marry one Edmund Davis, Ann Mary, born in 1864, who married one Rudolph Aloysius Leibig; the coming of war would place considerable strain on the Steuarts' marriage, leading to "unfortunate differences", as Maria's sympathies lay with the Union cause. Though Maryland did not secede from the Union, Steuart's loyalty lay with the South, as did that of his father, he commanded one of the Baltimore city militias during the riot of April 1861, following which Federal troops occupied Baltimore, an incident, arguably the first armed confrontation of the Civil War. Steuart resigned his captain's commission on April 16, 1861 and soon entered the service of the Confederate army as a cavalry captain, he and his father were determined to do their utmost to prevent Union soldiers from occupying Maryland.
On April 22 Steuart wrote to Charles Howard, President of the Board of Baltimore Police: "If the Massachusetts troops are on the march I shall be in motion early tomorrow morning to pay my respects to them". However, events did not move in their favor and, in a letter to his father, Steuart wrote: "I found nothing but disgust in my observations along the route and in the place I came to – a large majority of the population are insane on the one idea of loyalty to the Union and the legislature is so diminished and unreliable that I rejoiced to hear that they intended to adjourn...it seems that we are doomed to be trodden on by these troops who have taken military possession of our State, seem determined to commit all the outrages of an invading army." Steuart's efforts to persuade Maryland to secede from the Union were in vain. On April 29, the Maryland Legislature voted 53–13 against secession. and the state was swiftly occupied by Union soldiers to prevent any reconsideration. Steuart's decision to resign his commission and join the rebels would soon cost his family dear.
The Steuart mansion at Maryland Square was confiscated by the Union Army and Jarvis Hospital was erected on the estate, to care for Federal wounded. However, Steuart was welcomed by the Confederacy as "one of Maryland's most gifted sons", it was hoped by Southerners that other Marylanders would follow his example. Steuart soon became lieutenant colonel of the newly formed 1st Maryland Infantry, serving und
George B. McClellan
George Brinton McClellan was an American soldier, civil engineer, railroad executive, politician. A graduate of West Point, McClellan served with distinction during the Mexican War, left the Army to work in railroads until the outbreak of the Civil War. Early in the war, McClellan was appointed to the rank of major general and played an important role in raising a well-trained and organized army, which would become the Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater. Although McClellan was meticulous in his planning and preparations, these characteristics hampered his ability to challenge aggressive opponents in a fast-moving battlefield environment, he chronically overestimated the strength of enemy units and was reluctant to apply principles of mass leaving large portions of his army unengaged at decisive points. McClellan organized and led the Union army in the Peninsula Campaign in southeastern Virginia from March through July 1862, it was the first large-scale offensive in the Eastern Theater.
Making an amphibious clockwise turning movement around the Confederate Army in northern Virginia, McClellan's forces turned west to move up the Virginia Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers, landing from the Chesapeake Bay, with the Confederate capital, Richmond, as their objective. McClellan was somewhat successful against the cautious General Joseph E. Johnston, but the emergence of General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia turned the subsequent Seven Days Battles into a partial Union defeat. General McClellan failed to maintain the trust of President Abraham Lincoln, he did not trust his commander-in-chief and was derisive of him. He was removed from command in November after failing to decisively pursue Lee's Army following the tactically inconclusive but strategic Union victory at the Battle of Antietam outside Sharpsburg and never received another field command. McClellan went on to become the unsuccessful Democratic Party nominee in the 1864 presidential election against Lincoln's reelection.
The effectiveness of his campaign was damaged when he repudiated his party's platform, which promised an end to the war and negotiations with the southern Confederacy. He served as the 24th Governor of New Jersey from 1878 to 1881, became a writer, vigorously defended his Civil War conduct. Most modern authorities have assessed McClellan as a poor battlefield general; some historians view him as a capable commander whose reputation suffered unfairly at the hands of pro-Lincoln partisans who made him a scapegoat for the Union's military setbacks. After the war, subsequent commanding general and 18th President Ulysses S. Grant was asked for his opinion of McClellan as a general. George Brinton McClellan was born in Philadelphia, the son of a prominent surgeon, Dr. George McClellan, the founder of Jefferson Medical College, his father's family was of Scottish heritage. His mother was Elizabeth Sophia Steinmetz Brinton McClellan, daughter of a leading Pennsylvania family, a woman noted for her "considerable grace and refinement".
The couple had five children: Frederica. McClellan was the great-grandson of Revolutionary War general Samuel McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut. McClellan attended the University of Pennsylvania in 1840 at age twelve, resigning himself to the study of law. After two years, he changed his goal to military service. With the assistance of his father's letter to President John Tyler, young George was accepted at the United States Military Academy in 1842, the academy having waived its normal minimum age of sixteen. At West Point, he was an energetic and ambitious cadet interested in the teachings of Dennis Hart Mahan and the theoretical strategic principles of Antoine-Henri Jomini, his closest friends were aristocratic Southerners such as James Stuart, Dabney Maury, Cadmus Wilcox, A. P. Hill; these associations gave McClellan what he considered to be an appreciation of the Southern mind and an understanding of the political and military implications of the sectional differences in the United States that led to the Civil War.
He graduated at age nineteen in 1846, second in his class of 59 cadets, losing the top position to Charles Seaforth Stewart only because of poor drawing skills. He was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. McClellan's first assignment was with a company of engineers formed at West Point, but he received orders to sail for the Mexican War, he arrived near the mouth of the Rio Grande in October 1846, well prepared for action with a double-barreled shotgun, two pistols, a saber, a dress sword, a Bowie knife. He complained that he had arrived too late to take any part in the American victory at Monterrey in September. During a temporary armistice in which the forces of Gen. Zachary Taylor awaited action, McClellan was stricken with dysentery and malaria, which kept him in the hospital for nearly a month; the malaria would recur in years—he called it his "Mexican disease". He served as an engineering officer during the war, was subject to enemy fire, was appointed a brevet first lieutenant for his services at Contreras and Churubusco and to captain for his service at Chapultepec.
He performed reconnaissance missions for Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, a close friend of McClellan's father. McClellan's experiences in the war would shape his political life, he learned that flanking movements are bette
Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee was an American and Confederate soldier, 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, served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy; when Virginia declared its secession from the Union in April 1861, Lee chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, Lee served as a senior military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Once he took command of the main field army in 1862 he soon emerged as a shrewd tactician and battlefield commander, winning most of his battles, all against far superior Union armies.
Lee's strategic foresight was more questionable, both of his major offensives into Union territory ended in defeat. Lee's aggressive tactics, which resulted in high casualties at a time when the Confederacy had a shortage of manpower, have come under criticism in recent years. Lee surrendered his entire army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. By this time, Lee had assumed supreme command of the remaining Southern armies. Lee rejected the proposal of a sustained insurgency against the Union and called for reconciliation between the two sides. In 1865, after the war, Lee was paroled and signed an oath of allegiance, asking to have his citizenship of the United States restored. Lee's application was misplaced. In 1865, Lee became president of Washington College in Virginia. Lee accepted "the extinction of slavery" provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment, but publicly opposed racial equality and granting African Americans the right to vote and other political rights. Lee died in 1870.
In 1975, the U. S. Congress posthumously restored Lee's citizenship effective June 13, 1865. Lee opposed the construction of public memorials to Confederate rebellion on the grounds that they would prevent the healing of wounds inflicted during the war. After his death, Lee became an icon used by promoters of "Lost Cause" mythology, who sought to romanticize the Confederate cause and strengthen white supremacy in the South. In the 20th century following the civil rights movement, historians reassessed Lee. Lee, a white Southerner, was born at Stratford Hall Plantation in Westmoreland County, Virginia, to Major General Henry Lee III, Governor of Virginia, his second wife, Anne Hill Carter, his birth date has traditionally been recorded as January 19, 1807, but according to the historian Elizabeth Brown Pryor, "Lee's writings indicate he may have been born the previous year."One of Lee's great grandparents, Henry Lee I, was a prominent Virginian colonist of English descent. Lee's family is one of Virginia's first families, descended from Richard Lee I, Esq. "the Immigrant", from the county of Shropshire in England.
Lee's mother grew up at one of the most elegant homes in Virginia. Lee's father, a tobacco planter, suffered severe financial reverses from failed investments. Little is known of Lee as a child. Nothing is known of his relationship with his father who, after leaving his family, mentioned Robert only once in a letter; when given the opportunity to visit his father's Georgia grave, he remained there only briefly. In 1809, Harry Lee was put in debtors prison. In 1811, the family, including the newly born sixth child, moved to a house on Oronoco Street, still close to the center of town and with the houses of a number of Lee relatives close by. In 1812, Harry Lee was badly injured in a political riot in Baltimore and traveled to the West Indies, he would never return. Left to raise six children alone in straitened circumstances, Anne Lee and her family paid extended visits to relatives and family friends. Robert Lee attended school at Eastern View, a school for young gentlemen, in Fauquier County, at the Alexandria Academy, free for local boys, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics.
Although brought up to be a practicing Christian, he was not confirmed in the Episcopal Church until age 46. Anne Lee's family was supported by a relative, William Henry Fitzhugh, who owned the Oronoco Street house and allowed the Lees to stay at his home in Fairfax County, Ravensworth; when Robert was 17 in 1824, Fitzhugh wrote to the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, urging that Robert be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Fitzhugh wrote l
Stonewall Jackson
Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson served as a Confederate general during the American Civil War, became one of the best-known Confederate commanders after General Robert E. Lee. Jackson played a prominent role in nearly all military engagements in the Eastern Theater of the war until his death, played a key role in winning many significant battles. Born in what was part of Virginia, Jackson received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, served in the U. S. Army during the Mexican–American War of 1846–1848 and distinguished himself at Chapultepec. From 1851 to 1863 he taught at the Virginia Military Institute, where he was unpopular with his students. During this time, he married twice, his first wife died. When Virginia seceded from the Union in May 1861 after the attack on Fort Sumter, Jackson joined the Confederate Army, he distinguished himself commanding a brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run the following month, providing crucial reinforcements and beating back a fierce Union assault.
In this context Barnard Elliott Bee Jr. compared him to a "stone wall", hence his enduring nickname. Jackson performed well in the campaigns in the Shenandoah Valley during 1862. Despite an initial defeat due to faulty intelligence, through swift and careful maneuvers Jackson was able to defeat three separate Union armies and prevent any of them from reinforcing General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac in its campaign against Richmond. Jackson quickly moved his three divisions to reinforce General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in defense of Richmond, his performance in the subsequent Seven Days Battles against George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac was poor, but did not inhibit Confederate victory in the battles. During the Northern Virginia Campaign that summer, Jackson's troops captured and destroyed an important supply depot for General John Pope's Army of Virginia, withstood repeated assaults from Pope's troops at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862. Jackson's troops played a prominent role in September's Maryland Campaign, capturing the town of Harpers Ferry, a strategic location, providing a defense of the Confederate Army's left at Antietam on September 17, 1862.
At Fredericksburg in December, Jackson's corps buckled but beat back an assault by the Union Army under Major General Ambrose Burnside. In late April and early May 1863, faced with a larger Union army now commanded by Joseph Hooker at Chancellorsville, Lee divided his force three ways. On May 2, Jackson took his 30,000 troops and launched a surprise attack against the Union right flank, driving the opposing troops back about two miles; that evening he was accidentally shot by Confederate pickets. The general lost his left arm to amputation. Military historians regard Jackson as one of the most gifted tactical commanders in U. S. history. His tactics are studied today, his death proved a severe setback for the Confederacy, affecting not only its military prospects, but the morale of its army and the general public. After Jackson's death, his military exploits developed a legendary quality, becoming an important element of the ideology of the "Lost Cause". Thomas Jonathan Jackson was the great-grandson of Elizabeth Cummins.
John Jackson was an Irish Protestant from County Londonderry, Ireland. While living in London, England, he was convicted of the capital crime of larceny for stealing £170. Elizabeth, a strong, blonde woman over 6 feet tall, born in London, was convicted of felony larceny in an unrelated case for stealing 19 pieces of silver and fine lace, received a similar sentence, they both were transported on the merchant ship Litchfield, which departed London in May 1749 with 150 convicts. John and Elizabeth met on board and were in love by the time the ship arrived at Annapolis, Maryland. Although they were sent to different locations in Maryland for their bond service, the couple married in July 1755; the family migrated west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to settle near Moorefield, Virginia in 1758. In 1770, they moved farther west to the Tygart Valley, they began to acquire large parcels of virgin farming land near the present-day town of Buckhannon, including 3,000 acres in Elizabeth's name. John and his two teenage sons, were early recruits for the American Revolutionary War, fighting in the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780.
While the men were in the Army, Elizabeth converted their home to a haven, "Jackson's Fort", for refugees from Indian attacks. John and Elizabeth had eight children, their second son was Edward Jackson, Edward's third son was Jonathan Jackson, Thomas's father. Jonathan's mother died on April 17, 1796. Three years on October 13, 1799, his father married Elizabeth Wetherholt, they had nine more children. Thomas Jackson was the third child of an attorney. Both of Jackson's parents were natives of Virginia; the family had two young children and were living in Clarksburg, in what is now West Virginia, when Thomas was born. He was named for his maternal grandfather. There is some dispute about the actual location of Jackson's birth. A historical marker on the floodwall in
Confederate States
Confederate States Army
Brigadier General
1st Maryland Infantry
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 