In his 1904 memoir “Reminiscences of the Civil War,” Confederate General John B. Gordon offered a vivid and deeply personal portrait of his friend and fellow officer, Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell, a man he described as one of the most unique and contradictory figures in the Confederate army. Known affectionately as “Old Bald Head” or simply “Baldy” to his friends, Ewell was a West Point graduate and a brave, intelligent officer in the Mexican War and on the western frontier. He proved an effective commander early in the Civil War, but suffered a severe wound during the Second Battle of Manassas that led to the amputation of his left leg.
His military career perhaps peaked after Chancellorsville, when he took command of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia following the death of Stonewall Jackson. At Gettysburg, however, his reputation suffered after alleged failures to press advantages against a retreating Union army on the first day of fighting, and whether he deserved that criticism remains debated to this day. Gordon’s account focuses on Ewell’s character, beginning with the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. According to Gordon, a critical order from General P.
G. T. Beauregard directing Ewell to launch an attack on the Union left never reached him. This strange failure, Gordon believed, prevented a movement that would likely have significantly increased the disaster suffered by Union General Irvin McDowell that day.
Gordon wrote that he had already received instructions from Ewell to conduct a reconnaissance in the direction of the expected attack, but he was suddenly recalled at the moment his skirmishers opened fire. He was called back because Ewell had not received the promised order. Gordon considered this a lucky summons, as his isolated position might have led to his small force being cut off and destroyed. Upon his return, Gordon found Ewell in a state of painful anticipation.
He paced restlessly like a caged lion, mounted his horse and dismounted again, walking back and forth and muttering to himself: “No orders. No orders. ”
Gordon characterized Ewell as a bundle of contradictions and the most peculiar genius in the Confederate army. He was a friend to whom Gordon was sincerely and deeply attached.
He wrote that no one had a kinder heart or a worse way of showing it. He was in reality as tender and compassionate as a woman, but at the slightest provocation, he could appear as rough as a polar bear. His spoken orders, especially under great excitement, were nearly impossible to understand, even though his written orders were full, precise, and clear. In such moments, his eyes glittered strangely, and his mind raced far ahead of his tongue.
His thoughts jumped across wide gaps that his words did not touch, and he expected his listeners to fill them by intuition, with harsh consequences for any slow subordinate who failed to grasp his meaning. When Ewell first took command at the beginning of the war, he had just returned from fighting Indians on the western frontier, where his experience had been limited to regular army soldiers. Gordon noted that those wild frontier experiences, far from churches, civilization, and the influence of refined women’s society, had not been favorable for developing the gentler side of his nature. He became a very pious man in his later years, but at that time, he was not careful in his choice of words.
Gordon recounted that Ewell invited him to a quick breakfast before expecting an order from Beauregard to cross Bull Run and attack McDowell’s left. His literal invitation was: “Come and eat a biscuit with me. We will breakfast together here, and sup together in hell. ” For a young officer who had not yet faced enemy fire except at long distances, Gordon recalled, this was hardly an inspiring or appetizing invitation, but Ewell’s spirits seemed agitated and elated.
About an hour later, after being recalled from his dangerous reconnaissance, Gordon found Ewell in a state of near frenzy because the expected attack order had not arrived. Ewell ordered Gordon to send him a rider intelligent enough to find out what was going on. Gordon dispatched a trooper from the Governor’s Horse Guard, a unit made up of some of Virginia’s finest families, many of them college graduates who had volunteered at the first sign of war. The young, intelligent soldier, selected directly by Ewell, rode his spirited horse to where the general waited impatiently at his temporary headquarters on the hill.
Before the young man could even raise his cap in salute, the general was gesturing violently with tongue and finger, delivering instructions so rapidly and tersely that the youth’s thoughts became completely confused. When Ewell finished, he quickly asked, “Do you understand, sir? ” The young man, of course, did not understand and timidly began asking for clearer information. The angry old soldier cut him off, saying: “Get out of my sight, and send me a man with a little sense.
”
Gordon later experienced a very similar situation while commanding a division in Stonewall Jackson’s old corps, then led by Ewell, during one of the battles between Lee and Grant in the Wilderness. Gordon noted that Ewell’s spirit, like an eagle’s wings gaining strength in a storm, seemed to rise higher as the battle grew fiercer. Gordon’s division was advancing under heavy fire when Ewell rode up at full speed and asked to borrow one of Gordon’s staff officers, having sent all of his own with orders to different parts of the field. Gordon pointed to an officer who had learned to interpret the general’s words fairly well.
Ewell, in his customary excited manner, began telling the officer what to do. The staff officer, trying to understand his meaning, once stopped him and said, “Allow me, sir, to see if I understand you. ” The general, furious at the implication that he was not expressing himself clearly, turned sharply without a word of explanation, merely raising his hand and dismissing the young officer with a peculiar snort that Gordon said was impossible to describe. Even amid the fierce battle, the rest of Gordon’s staff burst into laughter as the comical warrior and eccentric genius rushed off to another part of the field.
Gordon concluded his portrait with one more incident from First Bull Run. While Ewell waited for the order from Beauregard that never came, Gordon sat on his horse nearby as the general directed an artillery position to cover the crossing and fire on a Union battery on the opposite hills. As the guns were being prepared, a young woman who had been caught between the two army lines rode up to Gordon and the general and began telling them what she had seen. She had ridden her horse ahead of General McDowell’s forces, which were expected to attempt a crossing.
The Virginia girl, who appeared to be seventeen or eighteen years old and was in a state of enthusiastic excitement, was convinced she had something important to say. She was determined to deliver information she believed was of great importance to the cause. Ewell listened for a few minutes, then drew her attention to the Union batteries rushing into position and preparing to open fire on the Confederate lines. In his strange, rapid manner, he told her to look at the men in blue at the edge of the woods and the big guns they were carrying, warning her that they would fire quickly and directly toward her position.
He told her she would be dead in less than a minute and ordered her to leave immediately. The girl looked at the blue coats and the big guns, but paid them no attention and ignored his urgent warning, continuing her story. Ewell, who Gordon noted was at the time a rough bachelor who knew far less about women than he did about Indians, was astonished by this display of feminine courage. He stared at her in silent wonder for a few minutes, then turned to Gordon and said in a broken tone: “I tell you, sir, women would make a magnificent brigade if it were not for their fear of snakes and spiders.
” Then, after deeper thought, he added: “They are not afraid of bullets. Women are not afraid of bullets, but one big black snake would put a whole army to flight. ”
Gordon remarked that Ewell was not far wrong, noting that it takes serious dangers, especially when they threaten a cause or something tied to a woman’s affections, to bring out such astonishing courage. Under such circumstances, he wrote, women would face death itself without trembling.
These were the memories General John B. Gordon preserved of the old soldier and eccentric genius, Richard Ewell.