Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

by S.C. Gwynne

While Jackson was leading his army through the last phase of the valley campaign, an event of singular and momentous importance had taken place in Richmond. That event was not, as one might have expected, the wounding on June 1 of Major General Joseph E. Johnston at the Battle of Seven Pines, a bloody eleven-thousand-casualty stalemate fought after Johnston had attacked McClellan’s left wing east of Richmond. Though that might have been a crippling blow to a Confederacy already short of competent generals, it turned out to be a wonderful piece of good fortune. The transformative event was an order, issued by Confederate president Jefferson Davis at 1:30 p.m. on June 1, appointing Robert E. Lee to replace Johnston as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. This was by no means an obvious move. Lee, while widely respected, had not performed well in his only prior field command in western Virginia in 1861, and had spent the war in a desk job as Davis’s military adviser.