I was first introduced to the legendary soldiers of the Late Unpleasantness as a new Civil War reader in the 1960s. Lee, Jackson, and Stuart; Grant and Sherman, certainly, but also more accessible lesser deities like Mosby, Pelham, Forrest, Semmes, and Gordon. For the generations before mine, particularly in the South, those and dozens more were household names. Today, most beyond the Big 5 are largely unknown.

JH Chamberlayne in Confederate Uniform
From an oil portrait by John Elder

One of the heroes I remember from that period, and still find often in my reading, was the young artillerist John Hampden (Ham) Chamberlayne (1838-1882). I expect his prominence is due to a collection of his war-era letters published by his son in 1932. These letters are quoted in later works on the Civil War in the East, as well.

He may not have been well known during the War, but his letters have helped make him immortal. Let me see if I can put some flesh on his bones. (more…)

Rev. Robert Hall Morrison, DD (from Davidson College portrait)

The Reverend Doctor Morrison (1798-1889) was father-in-law to three Confederate general officers: D.H. Hill (m. Isabella S. Morrison 1848), Rufus C. Barringer (m. Eugenia 1854; she d. 1858, typhoid), and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (m. Mary Anna 1857).

I know of no other patriarch of that distinction.

Hard core students of the American Civil War already know that D.H. Hill and “Stonewall” Jackson were brothers-in-law, though not always happily so. Most will probably not have seen how wide that family net spreads. (more…)

In a December 1905 piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Senator John W. Daniel, introducing Emmett M. Morrison’s memoir of the Battle of Sharpsburg, wrote

… In many a nook and cranny in Virginia, too, is a valiant leader of his neighbors, who commanded and guided them in the battle shock, and stepped behind the scenes to the work of restoration when war’s dread thunders stormed no more.

One of these is Colonel E. M. Morrison, of the 15th Virginia Infantry, who now resides at Smithfield, in the Isle of Wight County, and who is yet busy with his tasks.

The 15th Virginia lost at Sharpsburg 58 per cent. of its men, which is 23 per cent. more than the Light Cavalry Brigade of the English army, lost in the world-heralded “Battle of Balaklava.” Our folks write poems in honor of the Light Brigade and our schoolboys declaim Tennyson’s verses; but what do we know of our own boys who stood proof on this red day at Sharpsburg?

Lt. Colonel Emmett Masalon Morrison (c. 1863-65)

At Antietam on the Web we’ve made it our mission to remember some of those ‘boys’, like Emmett Morrison, who indeed stood proof …

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