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“It Was Perfect Murder”: Stephen D. Lee at Ezra Church Bruce S. Allardice ON JULY 28, 1864, MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN HEARD THE THUNDER presaging yet another Confederate attack on his army, the third in eight days. A staff officer rode up and reported that the Confederates had attacked his one-time command, Major General Oliver O. Howard’s Army of the Tennessee . Unlike many generals, Sherman welcomed news of the attack, barking out in his peculiar, rapid, staccato way, “Good. That is fine—just what I wanted, just what I wanted. Tell Howard to invite them to attack, it will save us trouble, save us trouble, they’ll only beat their brains out, beat their brains out.” A nearby staff officer recalled how Sherman “talked on gaily. . . . He understood his own strategy was working.”1 Well should Sherman have seemed “gay.” At this stage of the war, who on the Confederate side would have been foolish enough to throw his troops into a frontal assault against Sherman’s larger army? The Confederate “brain-beating” assault had in fact been ordered by Stephen D. Lee, a West Point–trained professional, a newly minted lieutenant general, and the Confederacy’s newest corps commander. How Lee came to command this corps and the reasons for this ill-fated assault are the subjects of this article. Stephen Dill Lee was one of those rare individuals of whom nobody ever seems to have said a bad word. Major General W. Dorsey Pender found him “the pink of honor, in morals above the ordinary standard at least, in sobriety unquestionable, and in goodness of heart unequalled.”2 West Point classmate Porter Alexander thought Lee “a splendid handsome six-footer . . . universally popular . . . a natural born soldier . . . an excellent officer.”3 Born September 22, 1833, in Charleston, South Carolina, Lee graduated seventeenth in the West Point class of 1854. Assigned to the 4th Artillery Regiment “out West,” Lee’s management abilities often led to his being detailed Bruce S. Allardice 222 as regimental quartermaster. Resigning upon secession of his native state, Lee served on Brigadier General Pierre G. T. Beauregard’s staff during the attack on Fort Sumter. Desiring front-line duty, he accepted command of the artillery battery of Hampton’s South Carolina Legion. Promoted to major and battalion commander, he won golden reviews from superiors and fellow soldiers. During the Seven Days’ Battles, he led the artillery of Major General John B. Magruder’s corps-sized command. After promotion to colonel and a brief stint leading the 4th Virginia Cavalry Regiment, he transferred back to the artillery. At Second Manassas, Lee’s gunners blasted with flank fire a Union assault that threatened to overrun Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s lines, earning the entire army’s notice and praise. “Never, in the history of war, had one man commanded so much artillery, with so much skill and effect as he did.”4 When President Jefferson Davis asked General Robert E. Lee (Stephen’s distant cousin) for an artillery officer who could be promoted to brigadier general, Lee recommended his young relative. Lee took command of an infantry brigade defending Vicksburg, Mississippi, again winning plaudits as “an officer of industry and ability.”5 He was credited with winning the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs, his brigade repelling Sherman’s attack almost single-handed. At Champion Hill his brigade did most of what little effective fighting the Confederates did on that unfortunate field. Slightly wounded there, he participated in the siege of Vicksburg. After capture and exchange, Davis promoted Lee to major general and assigned him command of the cavalry in the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. When department commander Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk left with most of the department’s infantry to reinforce the Army of Tennessee, Lee took over the department. He performed energetically, and on the whole successfully, in defending Mississippi against numerous Federal incursions. Long after the war, President Davis proclaimed the youthful Lee “one of the best all-round soldiers which the war produced.”6 Lee ended his life with the Lost Cause’s highest honor, as national commander of the United Confederate Veterans. In July of 1864, near Atlanta, General John Bell Hood, who had been at West Point with Lee, had been elevated to command of the Army of Tennessee , superseding the soldiers’ favorite (though not President Davis’s), General Joseph E. Johnston. Hood had previously commanded a three-division corps in...

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