CHAPTER FIVE

I Did Not Think to Look in the Rear

Although he had not given up his efforts to have Henry Coleman appointed colonel of the regiment, Alfred Iverson focused most of his attention throughout the spring of 1863 on the impending military action along the Rappahannock River. His anticipation ran especially high because he still had not faced major combat as a brigadier general. Following the fighting at Sharpsburg, the troops from Garland’s former brigade briefly went into camp near Bunker Hill, Virginia. Soon afterward, they moved farther into the upper Shenandoah Valley, where they were assigned to guard the passes through the mountains.

During their stay in the Shenandoah Valley, the men endured nearly constant marching over the steep mountain roads. After heading south to New Market, their route took them over the Massanutten mountains and into the neighboring Luray Valley. From there, the North Carolinians “twisted and turned” their way over the “great Blue Ridge” before reaching the area around Gordonsville. The repeated forced marches proved so “hard and tough” that many of the men longed to return to eastern Virginia. “We are now in the Valley of Virginia, where I had been wanting to visit for some time before our raid in Maryland,” Capt. Isaac Pearce from the 5th North Carolina explained in a letter to his sister. “But I assure you I never was as anxious to visit the Valley of Virginia as I am now to leave it.”¹

In early December, the men from the brigade finally received orders to rejoin the main part of the army at its winter quarters along the Rappahannock River near Port Royal, Virginia. This soon turned into a trip that none of them would ever forget. Private J. L. Wallace from the 23rd North Carolina noted that they were “almost naked and barefooted” as they started their long journey through the mountains. Private James Ireland from the 20th North Carolina recalled that a line of “bloody footprints” in the snow marked the route by the time they reached their destination three days later.²

Conditions proved almost as difficult following their arrival in the area of their new camp. One soldier from the 23rd North Carolina reported in a letter to his hometown newspaper that they initially “suffered from exposure from a snow, not having any tents.” The men in the brigade quickly moved to alleviate the situation. “We did not long remain idle, but went to work and built winter quarters, which were constructed after the collier huts,” he explained. Within days, the men settled into their improvised shelters where they enjoyed themselves as “best we can.”³

When a major engagement broke out at nearby Fredericksburg on December 13, the newly arrived troops shifted from their camp into the area just outside of Hamilton’s Crossing as a reserve force. “During the fight our Regiment was posted on the right, some five miles below Fredericksburg where the fighting was extremely severe & where the enemy lost thousands in killed and wounded & our loss was very small,” Maj. Charles C. Blacknall from the 23rd North Carolina commented in a letter to his mother. “We lost but few in our Regiment & that from cannon shot.”⁴

Even from his position behind the front lines, Blacknall found the sights on the battlefield to be “horrible beyond description.” He noted that “the enemy advanced through an open smooth plain upon our lines, when the columns were mown down by the hundreds by our artillery & infantry.” Many of the wounded were left lying on the ground all night in the cold winter weather. “The suffering on their part was immense,” he said. “We took many prisoners, and much in the way of arms, blankets &c. Our men went to work robbing the dead without ceremony and many were stripped of all their clothing, presenting a strange appearance lying on the field.”⁵

Following the battle, Iverson’s men set up new quarters a few miles south of Hamilton’s Crossing. They spent most of their time there keeping a close eye on the Federal troops, who remained in force just across the river. The only major problems resulted from the severe weather that they endured throughout much of the winter. “Our regiment did a great deal of shivering picket duty on the Rappahannock below Fredericksburg,” recalled Capt. Vines Turner from the 23rd North Carolina. “The winter was one of great rigor.” He noted that “the men, though pretty well hardened, suffered severely from want of proper clothing and food and from exposure.”⁶

As the weather continued to deteriorate over the months that followed, the situation on the Rappahannock River lapsed into an uneasy stalemate. The routine of constant patrols along the winding waterway was interrupted only by a brief foray during early February to counter a Federal probe in the area of Mine Run. The harsh conditions during the advance led to open grumbling from the men in the brigade. “The boys suffered extremely from cold weather in this move, being held in line of battle several days and nights, in sight of the enemy, and without fire or blankets,” a soldier from the 23rd North Carolina recalled.⁷

The huge snowstorms that hit the area during January and February added to their problems. “Well sister, you ought to just see this country now,” Lt. Oliver Mercer from the 20th North Carolina wrote at the end of January. “It is nothing but a white mass of snow ½ leg deep; its beautiful but Oh! How cold. It commenced night before last and snowed until last night in the night. It would have been 2 ft. deep if it had not rained before hand.” He found the weather much worse than what he had ever experienced at home. “I don’t suppose you have any such thing with you,” he commented to his sister.⁸

Following one storm in mid-January, a gigantic snowball fight broke out between Iverson’s Brigade and some Georgian troops from their division. “The battle, though brief, was sharp,” Captain Turner recalled. “Many of us were knocked down and several quite seriously hurt, but the snow fort was stormed, our opponents routed and chased back through their camp. Many prisoners were taken.” The captain went on to note that “the horse play was ended by rolling in the snow a supercilious general officer participating in the fun.” Whether this was Iverson or not remains impossible to know.⁹

Other major snowball fights within the brigade took place as the days of January passed. In some cases, they turned into pitched battles between the various regiments involved. “The snow hear was very deep and the twelfth Regt came up into our Regt in a line of battle,” Pvt. John Coghill from the 23rd North Carolina remarked in a letter to his family. “We formed our Regt and went to fighting with snow balls.” He noted that they soon “made a charge on them and wee ran them to thare camp and thare they ware reinforced by the 20th Regt and finely we whiped the hole Brigade.”¹⁰

By mid-February, the storms became so severe that all outside activities virtually ceased. “The weather is absolutely intolerable, the worst I have seen or felt,” Major Blacknall declared in a letter to his brother-in-law. “We were just visited by a tremendous snow full ‘two feet deep’ which tapered off into a rain, which all together makes such a mixture as I have never before experienced.” He pointed out that “the ground is now wetter, muddier & more ungetaboutable than at any former time this winter and the roads are actually impassable, being in many places from three to six feet deep in mud.”¹¹

With the men largely confined to camp because of the heavy snow, their daily work details quickly turned into mind-numbing routines. The situation soon proved more than some of them could take. “It is Just Drill [and] Drill and carry wood and cook,” Pvt. Charles D. Sides from the 5th North Carolina griped in a letter to his wife. “This embraces the whol day. We have to carry our wood about one quarter of a mile.” He complained most of all that their meager daily rations of flour and rancid beef were not “fit for dog to eat and a dog at home would not nigh eat it.”¹²

One of the few distractions from the grueling routine and weather came from the Federal observation balloons that could be clearly seen floating in the sky along the opposite side of the Rappahannock. The balloons were the brainchild of a self-styled professor named Thaddeus S. C. Lowe. He first used them to good effect during the spring of 1862 in the Peninsula Campaign, where the balloons became a common sight above the Federal lines. They were regularly deployed throughout early 1863 as a means of keeping watch for unusual movements by the Confederate army in the region just west of Fredericksburg.¹³

Although Iverson’s men became quickly accustomed to the balloons, one soldier who arrived with a group of conscripts in mid-March still found their presence startling. “He says he never saw anything of the kind before,” Adjt. Fabius Haywood from the 5th North Carolina informed a friend. “He halted his detachment near Col Garrett’s quarters in order to get a fair view of it.” He noted that “the old men of the Regt. collected around his detachment, making all kinds of remarks about the conscripts, and when they found out what Fred had halted for, they thought him the most verdant man they had seen in many days.”¹⁴

Despite the difficult conditions, Iverson maintained his policy of strict discipline within the brigade. In mid-March, Pvt. Daniel Moose from the 5th North Carolina described in a letter home how three deserters from his regiment were forced to run shirtless between the men of his company assembled in ranks on both sides. “Each man had a hickory and as they came along gave them a lick,” wrote the private. “Their backs looked tolerably red until they got through and the colonel said the next man that would desert had to run the lines of the regiment and the next then had to be shot.”¹⁵

The 23rd North Carolina’s Pvt. John T. Thompson also witnessed this public display of “gauntlet” discipline, and what he saw sickened him. He noted that each of the unfortunates making the run received numerous hard blows as they maneuvered between the two long lines of soldiers. “I tell you they made the Blood fly,” he declared in a letter home. “It looked horrid.” Private Leonidas Torrence from the same regiment was struck most of all by the severity of the injuries inflicted by their comrades. “One of them died the 8th day after he was whipped,” he told his mother in a letter home. “The Dr. said it was the whipping killed him.”¹⁶

Earlier in the year, another deserter from the brigade had even been scheduled for execution. Private Sides from the 5th North Carolina found the incident especially upsetting. “We were all ordered out last Saturday to the field, our whole Brigade to see a man Shot, one of our own men in the 12th Regt,” he penned his wife. “But as good luck would have it, he was Reprieved, so he was not shot.” Sides noted that he “was very glad for I did not want to see such work as that for there is no fun in seeing men shot and I think men die fast enough in this Confederacy.”¹⁷

The bad weather that kept the men confined to camp persisted throughout early spring, with heavy snow falling as late as the first week in April. “We are now having terrible weather,” Maj. Blacknall wrote his brother-in-law at the beginning of the month. “Moved our camp yesterday about two miles, and before the men could get well settled in the woods, a severe snow storm commenced. It fell all night & is now 6 inches deep, so the troops are having quite a rough time, as they have not erected huts or sheds as usual.” Blacknall went on to note that “we have no indication of spring, not a bud or flower.”¹⁸

By the end of the month, however, the conditions had finally improved enough for the Federal Army of the Potomac under Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker to open the campaign season along the Rappahannock. On April 29, Hooker sent a large portion of his army across the river upstream from Fredericksburg. General Lee countered the move on May 1 by marching Stonewall Jackson’s Second Corps along the Orange Plank Road in the direction of Chancellorsville. Following a flurry of fighting, the Federal troops pulled back into a defensive position amid the tangled wilderness just west of Fredericksburg.

The chance for Iverson to prove his leadership abilities in combat finally arrived on May 2, when the men from Rodes’ Division responded to the presence of the enemy troops on their front by moving “higher up the river” along the Furnace Road southwest of Chancellorsville. “We knew not where we were going, but a great many of us rightly conjectured that we were making for the enemy’s rear,” Capt. Claudius B. Monk from the 20th North Carolina remarked in a letter to his brother. “The march was very rapid and pretty long. Any quantity of blankets, old clothes, etc. were thrown away.” He pointed out that “the road was strewn with them.” What none of the men realized was that they were taking part in one of the greatest flanking operations in military history.¹⁹

Captain Turner of the 23rd North Carolina remembered that “strict silence” was enforced throughout the long journey, with only a whisper allowed and only then when it was necessary to issue an order. “Occasionally a courier would spur his tired horse past us as we twisted through the brush,” he later wrote. “For hours at the time we neither saw nor heard anything. Great was the curiosity to know where we were going and what ‘Old Jack’ was about. But we agreed that he did know and that the novel march meant much.” Captain John Brooks from the 20th North Carolina finally realized what was transpiring once the long Southern column turned north and headed toward the Orange Turnpike. Only then did he know for certain that “old Jack was going to the rear of old Joe.”²⁰

Their target was the right flank of Joe Hooker’s army, held by Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s XI Corps. Southern cavalry reported that Howard’s flank was not anchored to any strong point and completely vulnerable to an attack. By late in the afternoon, Iverson’s men were directed to a point north of the turnpike on the edge of the tangled wilderness that stretched along their front. Iverson noted that the brigade “came up with General Rodes about 4 p.m., and was posted on the extreme left, in the front line.” The 5th North Carolina held the right flank, with the 12th North Carolina directly on its left. The 20th North Carolina moved into place on the left center of the line, while the 23rd North Carolina took up position on the far left.²¹

Jackson quickly assembled the men from Rodes’, Raleigh Colston’s, and Ambrose Powell Hill’s divisions for the assault against the enemy troops in the nearby woods. Iverson’s Brigade occupied the left-front in the first rank of the attack. The rest of Rodes’ Division formed along a line extending south from there to just below the turnpike. The brigades commanded by Edward O’Neal, George Doles, and Alfred Colquitt, from left to right, moved into place at the front of the attack. Stephen Dodson Ramseur’s Brigade set up slightly to the rear on the far right. Another heavy line of battle took up position directly behind them, while a third began taking form farther to the rear.

Iverson’s men soon found that the heavy undergrowth along their front obscured their line of sight. “I think I never did see chinquapin bushes so thick,” Captain Monk later remembered. “We were ordered to throw off knapsacks, &c. The General told us, just a little hard fighting and all will be over.” Captain Brooks estimated that they completed preparations for the attack about five o’clock in the afternoon. According to Brooks, the Confederate pickets soon thereafter “commenced firing on the enemy.” He reported that it was less than five minutes later when the Southern line of battle unleashed “a volley that will last them until peace is made.”²²

In the wake of the volley, Iverson’s troops rushed headlong through the woods directly into the rear of Howard’s XI Corps. It would be a day that none of them would ever forget. “Immediately after getting into position, the line moved forward to the battle of the ‘Wilderness,’” was how Iverson described the action that day. He reported that the soldiers advanced directly “through the dense and tangled undergrowth.” According to his account, the skirmishers from his brigade were “soon engaged, and the whole pressed hotly and quickly to the attack.”²³

Lieutenant Mercer was just as ecstatic about what they accomplished in the opening phase of the attack. “Very soon our whole sight was engaged,” he reported to his sister. “The noise was terrific. In a few minutes we also were at them and here it commenced. We poured it into them and they to us for a short while.” Mercer and his comrades soon “charged them and they fled like dogs leaving everything behind—knapsacks, trunks, arms, about 25 fat beeves already skinned and cannon and horses and everything valuable.” According to the young lieutenant, they “pursued them hotly until after dark.”²⁴

The 23rd North Carolina’s Captain Turner recalled that the men in his regiment were “ordered to yell our loudest” as they moved at the “double quick” into the woods. “We struck their very rear, chasing over their beef slaughtering and cooking detail,” he wrote. “The enemy began jumping up before us and holding up their hands to surrender. But little resistance was met with, the surprised enemy surrendering or breaking before us in the wildest rout and disorder. Chasing them like hares, our boys surged forward.” The captain noted that the field along their front soon became a place of utter confusion through which “rushed helter-skelter cannon, wagons, loose horses, dogs, men, everything.”²⁵

Iverson gloated in his report of the campaign that Howard’s Federals “made no organized resistance” and “the whole affair from the moment of attack was a wild scene of triumph on our part.” He declared that “hungry men seized provisions as they passed the camps of the enemy, and rushed forward, eating, shouting, and firing.” At least one wounded soldier from the brigade, however, clearly recalled seeing the brigade commander well to the rear while his men were pursuing the fleeing Federal troops. “I went first to the field hospital station to have my wound dressed,” recalled Pvt. George Rabb of the 12th North Carolina. “As I was going to the hospital, I passed by Brigadier Gen. Iverson, and told him the Yankees were running like turkeys.”²⁶

Iverson’s apparent absence from the front lines notwithstanding, the initial attack proved to be a remarkable success. Private Ruffin Richardson from the 5th North Carolina proclaimed in a letter home that “we whiped the yankees like dogs.” Another private, John C. Ussery of the 23rd North Carolina, reported colorfully in a letter to his father that the enemy troops “commenced the second edition of the Bull Run races” as they fled in terror from the field. “I tell you we carried them two miles and a half at 2.40 speed and would believe have routed the whole army if we made the attack three hours earlier,” Ussery explained.²⁷

The area along their front line quickly swarmed with untold hundreds of Federal soldiers fleeing for their lives. As Captain Monk described the scene in a vividly worded letter to his brother, the chase took place amid the sounds of “musketry, artillery and cheers of the men” coming from the middle of the woods. “The surprised Yankees ran in dismay before us–the brave men of our army rushed on them while the cowards, plunderers, &c. got behind trees,” explained the officer. “We drove them through woods and fields, right by splendid breastworks, for about 2½ miles.” The captain added that they continued the pursuit until “it was dark, and our troops were almost exhausted.”²⁸

Captain Turner remembered being startled amid the “frenzied flight” of the Federal troops along their front by the bizarre sight of a large cannon hanging precariously from a tree limb. The scene was unlike anything he had experienced during the war. “In the panic it had been driven over a small tree which bent under its weight, but finally broke it loose from the caisson in front,” Turner explained. “Then the upspring of the tree raised the entangled gun from the ground. There it hung as eloquent an attest of mad flight as perchance war has ever seen.”²⁹

Despite the rout of the Federal forces, the fighting in the woods remained disorganized and chaotic. Iverson’s regiments, in particular, became widely scattered during the headlong advance through the dense woods. The problem grew much worse when the brigade behind Iverson advanced too quickly, throwing the two commands together into a mixed-up jumble of often indistinguishable infantrymen. “The second line, commanded by Brigadier-General Colston, closed in with us at that point, and caused great confusion, the two lines rushing forward pell-mell upon the enemy, and becoming mingled in almost inextricable confusion, no officer being able to tell what men he commanded,” Iverson reported.³⁰

The men soon had no recourse other than to push blindly forward. Lieutenant Mercer admitted in a letter home that “our Brigade was all mixed up and no one knew where his company or regiment was; everything going on their own hook.” He added that “some parts of the lines were engaged off and on all night; not knowing how things were arranged, our men fired into each other.” By the time darkness was falling, recalled Pvt. Benjamin B. Carr of the 20th North Carolina, the brigade had turned into “a disorganized rabble, every one his own commander doing as pleased him but going forward all the time.”³¹

Stonewall Jackson was already planning his next move. Although his surprise attack had smashed Howard’s command, it did not destroy it or even cripple the Army of the Potomac. The effort came too late in the day to deliver all that it could have. While the Federal XI Corps was shoved back about two miles, Jackson’s men were also in a chaotic state and remained separated from the troops operating under General Lee. Even so, the aggressive Jackson wanted to reorganize for a night attack. The pitch darkness, the confusion in the ranks, the mixed up commands, the low ammunition, the heavy casualties, and the sheer exhaustion from the long march, along with the powerful Federal artillery positions at Fairview and Hazel Grove, all determined otherwise.

Any chance for an attack that evening ended when troops from Brig. Gen. James H. Lane’s North Carolina Brigade accidentally wounded Jackson and several of his staff as they were performing a reconnaissance along the Plank Road. Other firing in the darkness subsequently wounded Gen. A. P. Hill. “Our wonderful success made us greedy of more and we rushed in until Oh! an awful calamity befell us,” Lt. Col. John W. Lea of the 5th North Carolina lamented in his diary. “Jackson’s left arm was broken and A. P. Hill wounded in the leg (left) by the firing of our own troops. Lane’s Brigade had marched almost into the enemy and halted when they were fired on with shell.” He noted that “this created an alarm and they fired on nothing–for several minutes our troops cut each other to pieces.”³²

After a fitful night of rest, Iverson’s men immediately ran into trouble when they returned to action north of the Orange Turnpike the next day. The undergrowth proved so heavy that the 5th North Carolina quickly became separated from the rest of the brigade, its flank exposed to attack. Colonel Daniel Harvey Christie from the 23rd North Carolina complained in his official report that “alas, our left had not been taken care of,” which was a thinly veiled reference to Iverson’s failure to supervise the attack. According to the 20th North Carolina’s Captain Monk, “by some mistake some of the regiments of our brigade got detached, and the enemy came very near flanking us.” He added that his regiment soon “got into the hottest sort of fight.”

The fragmented nature of Iverson’s front battle line exposed his brigade to the real danger of being defeated in detail, one regiment at a time. Major Nelson Slough from the 20th North Carolina reported that “the enemy out-flanked us on our left, and poured destructive volleys into our left flank, which compelled us to fall back.” As Colonel Christie described it, the regiments “on my left came doubling back upon my line, pressed with overwhelming numbers.” Calling it “the hardest fight of the war,” Private Ussery from the 23rd North Carolina told his father that “the enemy flanked this regiment completely and cut us up terribly.”³³

Captain Monk explained that the pressure from the Federal troops “compelled” them to fall back toward some breastworks that the enemy had abandoned in the heavy woods. “We reformed and went up again,” he reported. “The Yankees were vastly superior to us in numbers, and had good breastworks, but we held them in check and had them running when our other troops came to our assistance.” According to Pvt. William H. Brotherton from the 23rd North Carolina, his regiment maneuvered around the rear of the abandoned breastworks and “then we charge[d] on them and drove them back.” The North Carolinians soon pressed forward and captured several of the enemy’s guns.³⁴

Although the Confederate attack on May 3 eventually swept the enemy troops from that part of the field, Lieutenant Colonel Lea still blamed Iverson for ordering the charge that nearly led to disaster. For him, the general’s decision to launch the attack into the middle of the thick undergrowth proved impossible to forgive. “This order was given strange to say when a dense pine thicket and forest was immediately in our front,” Lea openly complained in his diary. “As was to be expected, the Brigade became very much separated, and the 5th N.C. was entirely lost from the rest of the Brigade.”

By maneuvering the 5th North Carolina “under a terrible fire of artillery,” Lea located the other regiments in the midst of the woods. To his surprise, Iverson “was no where to be found in my front or on either flank (I did not think to look in [the] rear).” After getting lost again, the lieutenant colonel finally managed to rejoin the rest of the brigade. “When I reached their position I learned they had been driven back in disorder,” he said. Iverson’s failure to lead his men into the action drew similar criticism from another veteran in the 23rd North Carolina. He noted, in fact, that it “has never been explained” exactly where Iverson was when the attack went forward.³⁵

The concerns voiced about Iverson’s performance on May 3 appear justified. Rather than lead his men into the fight, he again directed the action from well behind the lines. He claimed to have consulted with Rodes and Jeb Stuart, the acting commander of the Second Corps, while he was there. Iverson reported that he later assisted Brig. Gen. Edward L. Thomas in rallying some Louisiana and Alabama troops to meet the enemy attack from the left. Toward the end of the day, he “received a contusion in the groin from a spent ball, which made walking very painful, and, as the battle ceased shortly after, I requested Colonel Christie to take command of the till I could procure my horse.”³⁶

The stories about Iverson’s alleged cowardice at Chancellorsville soon spread beyond his own brigade and reached General Ramseur, who commanded the other Tar Heel brigade in Rodes’ Division. “Brig. Gen’l Iverson comd’g. a N.C. Brig I learned behaved badly himself, his brigade doing well,” Ramseur wrote to his best friend about three weeks after the battle. The rumors apparently involved more than just the widespread complaints about Iverson’s misconduct from the men in his brigade. Although there is nothing official to back up his claim, Ramseur heard that “charges will be preferred against him.”³⁷

The appalling losses suffered by the brigade that day made the situation even worse. Lea described the scene as “awful” all along their front lines once the fighting ended on May 3. “Everything looked like devastation, caissons exploded, horses in every conceivable position dying and dead, men groaning with the most horrible wounds,” Lea declared in his diary. “Many a gallant pale face boy could be seen who had breathed his last. Oh! the horrid sights! Heads shot off, limbs shattered, and blood streaming every where.”³⁸

The aftermath was just as upsetting for the 23rd North Carolina’s Private Brotherton, who lamented to his family that it was a “terrible thing to see the wounded men suffering with their legs and arms shot off and shot to pieces, it is awffell.” Private E. Faison Hicks of the 20th North Carolina recalled the distressing sights at the makeshift field hospital, where he was receiving treatment for his wounds. “At the back door of every tent piles of amputated limbs lay waist deep,” he wrote. “The sight was a sickening one, and I shuddered for my future.”³⁹

The intensity of the action scarred the Wilderness for years to come. According to a private in the 23rd North Carolina, the artillery and musket fire was so intense that it caused “the destruction, not only of humans but everything else” in the woods on their flanks. “On the one side, you will see a large body of woods completely torn to pieces, by artillery,” he explained in a letter to his sister. “Trees two & three feet in diameter, shot through or boughs broken off. On the other where the growth is smaller, trees are worn to a complete frazzle, by the incessant passing of the minie balls.”⁴⁰

The most horrific events occurred near the end of the battle, when the shelling ignited the thick underbrush along their front. One eyewitness reported that the raging inferno trapped several hundred soldiers from both sides. “Such was the exigency of the hour, the battle being at its fiercest, that none could be spared from the ranks to save the poor wounded wretches from the most horrible of deaths—being roasted alive,” he declared in a letter to a newspaper. The soldier went on to note, “as the flames approached them and they became aware of their situation, their frantic screams were distinctly heard above the roar of battle that raged around them.”⁴¹

The fire spread through the dry leaves and piles of debris littering the battlefield, leaving most of the bodies incinerated beyond recognition. “I can’t give you any idea what a sight it was to walk over the Battle Field and see men lying with their cloth[e]s burnt off, their hair burnt close to their Head, their Arms and legs all drawed up with the fire,” Private Torrence of the 23rd North Carolina wrote his mother. “I never saw such a distressing sight before and hope I may never see such another.” One of the Tar Heels who burned to death in the woods was Lt. Washington F. Overton, a member of Torrence’s regiment.⁴²

After the Confederate attack on May 3 that had reunited the wings of Lee’s divided army, another Federal column from Hooker’s army under Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick moved against Lee’s rear from Fredericksburg. Sedgwick’s thrust was rebuffed in heavy fighting at Salem’s Church on May 4. The tactical masterpiece that was Chancellorsville, which many regard today as one of Lee’s greatest battlefield achievements, ended on May 6 when Hooker withdrew his Army of the Potomac across the Rappahannock.

The honor of spearheading Stonewall Jackson’s surprise attack was balanced by the heavy damage inflicted upon the five brigades in Rodes’ Division. During the two days of vicious fighting that involved Iverson’s men, his four regiments sustained nearly 500 casualties. The losses proved especially heavy among the top regimental officers. Of the nine field officers present during the battle, six were killed, wounded, or captured. In the 5th North Carolina alone, Colonel Garrett, Lieutenant Colonel Lea, and Major Hill were all wounded. Major Rowe from the 12th North Carolina was mortally wounded on May 2, while Colonel Toon from the 20th North Carolina suffered a severe wound the following day. The 23rd North Carolina’s Major Blacknall was captured late in the fighting on May 3.⁴³

The other four brigades also suffered heavy losses. Brigadier General Stephen Dodson Ramseur’s North Carolina brigade sustained more than 700 casualties during the two days of combat. Rodes’ former brigade, temporarily headed by Col. Edward A. O’Neal from the 26th Alabama, lost almost 900 men in the battle to all causes. The last two brigades, both all-Georgia commands under Brig. Gen. George P. Doles and Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Colquitt, each suffered more than 400 killed, wounded, and missing.⁴⁴

The widespread devastation had a profound effect upon the men in Iverson’s Brigade. The 23rd North Carolina’s Pvt. Allie Clack openly acknowledged in a letter to his sister that he was “quite low spirited just after the battle.” If anything, the outlook appeared even worse for Private Thompson of the same regiment. Most of all, the private was dumbstruck by the large number of men killed or mortally wounded during the campaign. “I fear if peace is not soon made we will all be killed,” he declared in a letter to his wife in the days following their hard-fought victory. “I am so anxious for this distressing war to stop.”⁴⁵

Many of the soldiers in the brigade realized that the victory had done nothing to alter the strategic situation around Fredericksburg. “I fear the grand results of this fight are very few,” Pvt. John H. Fain from the 12th North Carolina concluded in letter to his mother less than a week after the end of the battle. Fain placed most of the blame on the substantial difference in the size of the two armies. As Fain saw it, “the smallness of our force kept us from pursuing the enemy,” and when all was said and done, “both armies have taken up their old positions.”⁴⁶

Adding to their sense of gloom was the death of Second Corps commander Stonewall Jackson, who finally succumbed on May 10 to the wounds he had suffered eight days earlier at Chancellorsville. “Sincerely do we all mourn the loss of our Jackson from the lowest private up,” Private Clack lamented to his sister. “It is not the confidence we lack in the military skill of our other commanders who I haven’t a doubt, some are his superior in planning, but it is his peculiar mode of fighting, always flanking, instead of risking a forward movement on a fortified enemy, thereby saving the lives of thousand[s] of his men.” Clack insisted “there is no man’s death, just at this time, which has caused such universal sorrow.”⁴⁷

A week after Jackson’s death, Iverson’s soldiers gathered for prayer services to honor their fallen hero. Surgeon William Marston from the 12th North Carolina noted in his diary that he heard “an eloquent discourse” on Jackson’s career during a memorial held that day at the nearby Round Oak Baptist Church. Lieutenant Mercer from the 20th North Carolina reported to his sister after the service that “the death of Genl. Jackson provides a sadness throughout the whole army.” He added that “it was a great loss, but hope his place can be supplied soon.”⁴⁸

The fighting at Chancellorsville had been so exhausting and brutal that many men in the North Carolina regiments succumbed to the temptation of returning home. The upsurge in desertions following the battle escalated into a major point of friction between Governor Zeb Vance and the Confederate authorities in Richmond. “I do not believe that one case in a hundred is caused by disloyalty—have no apprehensions on that score,” the governor insisted to President Davis. “Home sickness, fatigue, hard fare &c have of course much to do with it.”⁴⁹

Vance complained repeatedly that North Carolina was being unfairly criticized by other states. Most of all, he blamed those attacks on “a too ready disposition to believe evil of the state, when it is known that No. Ca. is the only State in the Confederacy which employs her militia in the arrest of Conscripts and deserters; that she has better executed the conscript law, has fuller regiments in the field than any other and that at the two last battles on the Rappahannock in Dec, and in May, she furnished more than half of the killed and wounded.”⁵⁰

These statements did little to dispel the widespread belief that Chief Justice Richard M. Pearson of the State Supreme Court had undermined the morale of the Tar Heel troops when he released several deserters on writs of habeas corpus and declared that the state militia had no right to enforce the Conscription Act. “News of Judge Pearson’s decision went abroad to the Army in a very exaggerated and ridiculous form,” the governor explained. He noted that “soldiers were induced to believe the conscription law unconstitutional and that they were entitled if they came home to the protection of the civil authorities.”⁵¹

Many in the Army of Northern Virginia blamed the increase in desertion on the movement for a separate peace, which was being pushed by populist editor William W. Holden in his Raleigh newspaper. Although his rhetoric was just beginning to heat up, it already had raised major concerns among the Tar Heel commanders. “Our N.C. soldiers are deserting very rapidly,” Gen. Dorsey Pender told his wife in late April. “I have had about 30 in the last 20 days, and all due to those arch traitors Holden and Pearson. Poor old N.C., she will disgrace herself just when the worst is over, and after two years faithful service.”⁵²

Whatever the cause, desertion among the Tar Heel regiments in Rodes’ Division escalated dramatically in the weeks following the Chancellorsville victory. Where once only one or two men would leave from a regiment at a time, the simultaneous desertions now numbered in the dozens. Private Coghill of the 23rd North Carolina reported in a letter to his sister that “our soldiers are running away most every night by squads.” Private Brotherton of the same regiment observed that in “some regiments 35 and forty leaves at a time.”⁵³

Following his promotion to company commander in late May, the 20th North Carolina’s Captain Mercer was shocked to find that seven of his men had “tried to get away but were apprehended in their mean design and arrested.” What troubled Mercer the most was that the would-be deserters were not skulkers or cowards but instead some of the best soldiers in his company. “They were men of whom I had no idea of ever thinking of such a thing as that,” complained the surprised captain. “They said they intended to come back. They only wanted to see their people. That may be true, but by no means it excuses the matter.”⁵⁴

The problem soon became so widespread that normal provost details proved inadequate. During the last days of May, Rodes assigned men from the 23rd North Carolina to round up the large groups of soldiers who were running away from their commands. “There is a great deal of desertion going on in our army, at this time,” Private Clack from that regiment remarked to his sister. “We have to send a large guard from our regt every day to the principal roads, forks, & crossings to take up all deserters.”⁵⁵

Similar efforts to stem the flood of desertions were implemented in the 5th North Carolina. “We must stand guard around the camp all the time and after dark let no man pass and then have another guard about two miles off for catching runaways,” Private Moose wrote in a letter home. During their first night on duty, the guards captured 13 Tar Heel soldiers from another brigade endeavoring to make their way home. His own regiment was not exempt from the problem. According to Moose, his unit “lost more runaways since the fight than they lost in the killed and wounded.”⁵⁶

Another major concern circulating through Iverson’s Brigade was the reduction in rations in the weeks following the battle. Although a few soldiers complained bitterly about the shortage of supplies, others found it more of an annoyance than a major problem. “We get enough to eat,” Pvt. Adam Seagle of the 23rd North Carolina insisted in a letter to one of his female friends. “We get a mess of fish every day or so. Some folks write home that we are starving. We get little enough to eat, it is a fact.” At the same time, he assured her that the men in his regiment were “nary Starving yet.”⁵⁷

The men might not have been starving, but the reduction in rations still proved to be a significant hardship. For some of Iverson’s men, the only alternative was to return home without leave. “There runaway fourteen men out of our Redgment since the fight and four runaway from our Company,” Private Richardson from the 5th North Carolina informed his sister. “They all ran off the same knight.” Richardson insisted that he would “stay as long as there is a pea in the dish and when they all leave then I will come home if life last[s].”⁵⁸