Welcome the Hour of Conflict: William Cowan McClellan and the 9th Alabama

458 Pages·2007·3.29 MB·English

by  William Cowan McClellan

Welcome the Hour of Con®ict

Welcome the Hour of Con®ict
William Cowan McClellan and
the 9th Alabama
EDITED BY JOHN C. CARTER
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Tuscaloosa
Copyright © 2007
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Typeface: Bembo
∞
The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McClellan, William Cowan, 1839–1869.
Welcome the hour of con®ict : William Cowan McClellan and the 9th Alabama /
edited by John C. Carter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1521-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8173-1521-7 (alk. paper)
1. McClellan, William Cowan, 1839–1869—Correspondence. 2. Soldiers—
Alabama—Correspondence. 3. Confederate States of America. Army. Alabama
Infantry Regiment, 9th. 4. Alabama—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal
narratives. 5. Virginia—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives.
6. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Personal narratives, Confederate.
7. Alabama—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 8. United
States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 9. Virginia—History—
Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. 10. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–
1865—Campaigns. I. Carter, John C. II. Title.
E551.59th .M33 2007
973.7′461092—dc22
2006017799
The maps in this volume are taken from the Atlas of American History, James Truslow
Adams, Editor-in-chief, Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1943. © 1943 Charles
Scribner’s Sons. Reprinted by permission of The Gale Group.
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments and Dedication ix
Introduction 1
1. Preparing for War: Alabama to Richmond,
January 14–June 20, 1861 16
2. Waiting for the Great Battle: Richmond to Manassas,
June 21–July 21, 1861 24
3. Manassas to Centreville, Virginia: July 22–September 21, 1861 37
4. Camp at Centreville, Virginia: September 27–December 31, 1861 76
5. The Road to the Peninsula: January 8–March 24, 1862 121
6. The Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles:
March 25–July 27, 1862 149
7. The Second Battle of Manassas to Fredericksburg, Virginia:
August 9–November 18, 1862 171
8. The Fredericksburg Campaign:
December 3, 1862–February 9, 1863 194
9. Chancellorsville, Virginia, to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania:
February 20–July 9, 1863 211
10. Orange, Virginia, to Petersburg, Virginia:
August 22, 1863–October, 1864 240
11. Prison and Home Again: January 2–June 2, 1865 272
Epilogue 280
Appendix A: List of the Letters 283
Appendix B: 9th Alabama Regiment Casualties/Enlistment Totals 293
Appendix C: 9th Alabama Regiment Of¤cers and
Infantry Assignments 297
vi / Contents
Appendix D: Pvt. William Cowan McClellan’s Military Record 299
Appendix E: 9th Alabama Regimental Roster for
Companies F and H 301
Notes 333
Bibliography 397
Index 407
Illustrations
Following Page 189
1. William Cowan McClellan
2. Robert Anderson McClellan
3. Thomas Joyce McClellan
4. Martha Beattie McClellan
5. Thomas Nicholas McClellan
6. Matilda Joyce McClellan
7. Charlie McClellan White
8. Willie McClellan
Maps
Virginia, 1864–1865 17
Kentucky and Tennessee, 1862–1864 122
The Peninsula, 1862 150
Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, 1862–1863 172

Acknowledgments and Dedication
I ¤rst heard of William Cowan McClellan while listening as a young
boy to the stories my grandmother Carter told while on the front porch
of her home in Pulaski, Tennessee. Nancy White Carter was not above
stretching the truth a little bit about her favorite ancestor who was a
veteran of Robert E. Lee’s army. According to her, William was seven
feet tall and was captured on the Round Tops at Gettysburg, where he
was putting his size to use as a signalman. She also mentioned that he
had been sent to prison and had written letters home to his family. As
William had no further history presented in his behalf, I always assumed
that he had died in prison. Over the years I had remembered bits and
pieces of the story that would come back to mind whenever someone
brought up the subject of the family in the Civil War, but I never took
the time to look into it further.
Some years later, having developed an interest in the history of the
early Virginia frontier and its explorers of the seventeenth century, I had
attempted to ¤gure out the exact routes that many of these explorers
had taken in crossing through the Virginia Colony. After running out of
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources, I turned to letters and
journals of Civil War soldiers who served in the area hoping they might
shed some light on the problem. While the effort was not productive, it
did revive my interest in the Civil War, and from a new perspective of
the soldier and not the battle¤eld. I remembered my grandmother’s sto-
ries, and I wondered if the family still had the letters. About the same
time, a visit to Gettysburg sent me scrambling to discover the regiment
in which my ancestor had served.
A few years later at a Carter family reunion my aunt Polly Harwell
Carter handed me a large shoe box tied up with a piece of string.
She thought I might be interested in the contents of the box. Inside
were photocopies of the Civil War letters of my great-great-grandfather