Blood Image: Turner Ashby in the Civil War and the Southern Mind

Images

Turner Ashby in his days as a young merchant, probably between 1856 and 1859; photographer unknown. Courtesy the author The “handsome and winsome” Richard Ashby, portraitist and date unknown. Courtesy Virginia Historical Society James Battle Avirett and servant late in Avirett’s life. Turner Ashby’s regimental chaplain and first biographer, Avirett later gained renown as an Old South apologist. From William McDonald, Laurel Brigade A. R. Boteler, Turner Ashby’s great congressional ally and patron, late in life, after the war. Courtesy Library of Congress Angus W. McDonald, Ashby’s onetime superior who preferred hatchets to swords for close combat. From William McDonald, Laurel Brigade An illustration from John Esten Cooke’s Wearing of the Gray depicts Ashby’s “Adventure at Winchester,” in which Ashby supposedly escaped by main force from two enemy soldiers. The “Charge of the Black Horse Cavalry” at Bull Run was one of the first “glamor” events of the war in both northern and southern imaginations, despite the fact that it never happened. Courtesy Library of Congress Ashby’s charge at Middletown. From William McDonald, Laurel Brigade Turner Ashby as photographed in Port Republic, Va., soon after his death; photographer unknown. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society; ambrotype: ICHi-09437 The image of legend: a beplumed Ashby astride his famed white charger. From William McDonald, Laurel Brigade ...