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1 Introduction LEE’S FIGHTING CAROLINIAN I am gradually losing my best men, Jackson, Pender, Hood. —robert e. lee, september 1863 Patriot by nature, soldier by training, Christian by faith. —epitaph on william dorsey pender’s gravestone R obert E. Lee had every reason to be distressed in the summer of 1863 as he tallied the butcher’s bill of the three-day battlefield ordeal of Gettysburg, particularly with regard to the toll it had taken on his command structure. In the past others had stepped forward to fill the void left by those who had fallen, but in terms of numbers and talent , many of the latter would be difficult to replace now. In September 1863, with those losses still present so painfully in his mind, the Southern field commander quietly revealed his emotions to the Confederacy’s chief executive. “I am gradually losing my best men,” Lee wrote plaintively to Jefferson Davis, “Jackson, Pender, Hood.” Students of the American Civil War might not be surprised that Lee mentioned the names of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson and John Bell Hood among the “best” subordinates who served under him in the first half of the conflict. But what of the name that the general inserted between the two more well known of his Army of Northern Virginia lieutenants? Who was Pender that the Confederate chieftain made a special point of lamenting his loss? Even while the conflict raged, and certainly since it concluded, contemporaries and students alike have chided General Lee for at least appearing to favor Virginians over subordinates from other Southern states. Yet two of the three names chosen for inclusion in this unique listing were not Virgin- confederate general william dorsey pender 2 ians. Only Jackson hailed from that vaunted Commonwealth. Hood was a Kentuckian by birth and a Texan by adoption. William Dorsey Pender was a North Carolinian. What all three of these officers had in common, aside from the ultimate sacrifice Lee thought that each had made to the cause of the Confederate States of America—the general fearing the worst from Hood’s severe wounding at Chickamauga—was that each had demonstrated himself to be a fighting general upon whom he could rely in the thickest of the action and under the direst of circumstances. Each had served conspicuously on the major battlefields of the Civil War in the eastern theater. Each had suffered lesser wounds before being struck down for a fateful, final time (as Lee mistakenly assumed in the case of Hood). The Confederate commander considered Jackson his “right arm” and trusted him implicitly to carry out orders often couched in wide discretion. Hood led some of the army’s finest shock troops for much of the early part of the war. Pender became Lee’s fighting North Carolinian, ever present in the heaviest combat and frequently wounded as a result of his exposure to enemy fire. Ironically, one of the strongest proponents of Virginia’s paramountcy in the Civil War also produced one of the grandest expressions of praise for North Carolina’s soldiers, including Pender. Jubal Early, the crusty ex-Confederate, observed after the war, “I can say in all sincerity, that there were no better troops from any state in all that grand army than the North Carolina soldiers, and of all that bright galaxy of heroes who yielded their lives for their country’s cause while serving with that army, the names of Anderson, Branch, Pender, Daniel, Ramseur, and Gordon of the cavalry, will stand among the foremost.” There were a number of talented young officers who rose through the ranks of both sides during the war. These men projected enormous promise, and some few managed to survive long enough to demonstrate that promise to one degree or another. Even so, it seemed that too many were unable to escape the terrible crucible of battle. Historians Grady McWhiney and Perry Jamieson may have placed more responsibility on the cultural heritage of the South than could be supported, but they were correct in noting that Southern officers were prone to risk themselves in combat in ways that led to an inordinate amount of self-sacrifice. “Confederate generals not only led their forces into battle,” McWhiney and Jamieson explained, “they died with them.” Indeed, the authors determined that the numbers were disproportionately high for this type of behavior and the seemingly inevitable outcome it engendered. “Twenty-one of...

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