The Bravest of the Brave: The Correspondence of Stephen Dodson Ramseur

Foreword

Foreword nearly thirty years have elapsed since I first encountered the Stephen Dodson Ramseur Papers at the Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill. I had chosen Ramseur as the subject of my doctoral dissertation, planning to examine his Confederate career as a case study of how able young officers rose to prominence in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. I knew that Douglas Southall Freeman, whose books on Lee and his army stood as monuments in the field of Civil War military history, had characterized the letters as “a large, fine series.” Freeman’s description led me to believe the collection would yield important information about Ramseur’s military development. I also hoped the correspondence would illuminate his personality, relationships with members of his family, and attitudes toward nonmilitary topics and issues. I soon realized the papers far exceeded my most optimistic expectations. Consisting of two groups of letters, one to Ellen Richmond (his cousin and later wife) and the other to David Schenck (his closest friend from childhood and later brother-in-law), the collection revealed Dodson Ramseur and his world in fascinating detail. All historians who work in unpublished materials dream of finding a rich, largely untapped lode of personal testimony— ​ which is precisely what awaited me in the many folders of the Ramseur Papers. Every day I spent in Wilson Library, which houses the Southern Historical Collection, proved to be a joy. I found it hard to believe that no one had decided to exploit the letters for a book or at least an article. Ramseur wrote to Ellen Richmond in such touching, intimate terms that I often felt like an intruder reading his words. The letters to Schenck, more concerned with political, military, and other public subjects, rivaled the personal ones in interest. xii Foreword The material relating to Ramseur’s service as a regimental, brigade, and division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia shed much light on how he advanced to the rank of major general just past his twenty-seventh birthday. He fit perfectly into the culture of command created by Lee and personified by “Stonewall” Jackson. Lee sought aggressive, risk-taking subordinates who emphasized rigorous training and brought well-disciplined, hard-hitting units to the battlefield. Ramseur drilled his men endlessly, looked after their well-being in camp, and led by example in the heaviest combat— ​ an approach that achieved gaudy success on fields such as Chancellorsville and Spotsylvania, brought multiple wounds (the last one fatal), and garnered praise from Lee, Jackson, and other famous superiors. The letters also sparked my long-standing interest in the question of Confederate national sentiment. Ramseur displayed an array of loyalties— ​ to the United States while a cadet at West Point ruminating about Revolutionary figures, to his native North Carolina, to the slaveholding South, and, finally, to the short-lived Confederate republic. His generation of men from slaveholding families, who grew to maturity in the midst of escalating sectional controversies , seemed less attached to the Union and more willing to embrace secession than many older white southerners. Ramseur’s letters reflect a strong sense of antebellum southern identity that quickly evolved into Confederate nationalism and a determination to sacrifice much to earn independence. Reading the letters helped explain why it took so long and so much blood and treasure for the United States to crush the southern rebellion. More than once over the past twenty-five years, I thought about editing the Ramseur letters for publication. I knew such a book immediately would take its place alongside the most-quoted sets of published letters by officers in the Eastern Theater, including those of William Dorsey Pender and Robert McAllister. Other commitments always intervened, however, and I wondered whether anyone else would pursue the project. Word that George Kundahl had taken on the task came as a welcome answer to my question. Because of his editorial efforts, generations of readers and scholars will find, as I did in Chapel Hill many years ago, that Dodson Ramseur wrote letters of surpassing interest to students of the Civil War era. gary w. gallagher ...