supremely happy in battle

This is Colonel William Ransom Johnson Pegram, one of the remarkable young men produced — and then taken, sadly when the outcome was already decided — by our Civil War. ¹ He was known as “Willy.” ² Looks more like a school boy or the professorial type than a warrior gunner, don’t you think? But he was one of the most fierce fighters in the Army of Northern Virginia. General Harry Heth would even remark that Pegram was “one of the few men who, I believe, was supremely happy when in battle.”

A law student at the beginning of the War, at the tender age of 19 (he would not turn twenty for several months), Pegram joined the Richmond “Purcell Artillery” in April 1861. Because he suffered from severe near-sightedness, he had to wear gold rimmed spectacles — even in the heat of battle.

This bookish appearing fellow was an especial favorite of A.P. Hill. ³ During the Gettysburg Campaign, Pegram had fallen ill with fever. He then had to ride to catch up with his men. “General Hill,” Lee said, “I have good news for you; Major Pegram is up.” Hill responded, “Yes, that is good news.” When a staff officer recited the exchange to Pegram, the officer noted that “Pegram valued those few words from the General of the army and the General of his corps more than another star upon his collar.”

Yet, Pegram would have liked promotion and it was richly deserved. Upon seeing a recommendation that Pegram be promoted to command of a brigade near the end of the War, Hill endorsed it: “No officer of the Army of Northern Virginia has done more to deserve this promotion than Lieutenant Colonel Pegram.”

But because Pegram served in the artillery and because he was a young man, he was not ever promoted above the rank of colonel. Speaking to Heth, Lee asked, “He is too young–how old is Colonel Pegram?”

Heth replied, “I do not know, but I suppose about 25.”

Lee answered: “I think a man of 25 as good as he ever will be; what he acquires after that age is from experience; but I can’t understand, when an officer is doing excellent service where he is, why he should want to change.” And the recommendation for promotion was thus returned, camp gossip had it, with the statement that “the artillery could not lose the services of so valuable an officer.”

And so on April 1, 1865, Pegram found himself still in command of his battalion of artillery at the battle of Five Forks. Freeman would recount the day thusly: to the artillerists, it was a day of disaster not to be recorded solely in terms of four guns lost or of good soldiers captured.

Willy Pegram had once sworn that his guns would not be taken from his while he lived; he finally suffered the loss of a gun at Five Forks, but it was only while lying mortally wounded, shot through the left side. He died the next morning. With great feeling his friend Gordon McCabe remembered his final hours,

At about 10 o’clock we reached Ford’s, and I obtained a bed for him . . . I had given him morphine in small quantities until he was easier, and he soon fell into a doze. The enemy advanced on the place about 12 o’clock, and I was left alone with him. I sent off our sabres, horses, spurs, etc., as I felt sure that we would be captured. I shall never forget that night of waiting. I could only pray. He breathed heavily through the night, and passed into a stupor. I bound his wounds as well as I knew how and moistened his lips with water. Sunday morning he died as gently as possible.

His men liked to say no bullet had been molded that could ever take down their young commander who had survived so many sharp fights and so many hails of lead; sadly, it was not so.

Like Pender, Willy Pegram was a devoted Christian and a pious, brave young individual. Of Pegram it was said, “he fell in the discharge of his duty, and died with the philosophy of a Christian.” Many would agree with John C. Haskell that Pegram was the best artillery officer in the Army of Northern Virginia. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, near his brother, General John Pegram, killed a few weeks before.

The following day, likely not knowing of Pegram’s fate, A.P. Hill was killed. Seven days after that, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox.

The true scope of the tragedy of the Civil War was that it cost our country young, brilliant men like Willy Pegram, who would have been destined to be the country’s leaders. Pegram sadly illustrates that it was often the best and brightest who were killed. And adding to the senseless of his death was the timing — the outcome had been decided by that point, it had only become a question of when and where the final end would come.

1. Willy’s older brother, John, was a West Point graduate, class of 1854. He was a Confederate general and was killed at the battle of Hatcher’s Run in February, 1865, soon after his marriage to the “most beautiful woman of her generation,” Hettie Cary. The death devastated Willy who had always been close with his brother. [↩]
2. D.S. Freeman refers to Pegram as “Willie,” but his biographer Peter Carmichael points out that Pegram usually was called “Willy” by his family.  Although Freeman was a careful historian, a very good historian, I am deferring to Carmichael as a Pegram expert. [↩]
3. And as Hill was known to the men for his red shirt, so Pegram was known for his specs. Upon sighting Pegram, infantryman were said to remark “there’s going to be a fight, for here comes that damn little man with the ’specs’.” Pegram was cut of the same cloth as Hill, and if Pegram flaw it was he was sometimes too aggressive and eager in a fight. [↩]

Mrs. A.P. Hill

A number of women had the opportunity to become Mrs. A.P. Hill, most notably the future Mrs. George McClellan and the future Mrs. G.K. Warren.

But Hill’s heart eventually went to a woman by the name of Kitty Morgan McClung.  If you don’t know much about A.P. Hill, you probably know little about his beloved wife, the woman Powell called “Dolly.”

Not long after he lost the hand of the future Mrs. George McClellan, Hill was back out attending parties in Washington.  Apparently, he was of somewhat delicate health even prior to the Civil War and as such he had been assigned to duty with the Coast Survey in the capital.  At one of these Washington parties, Hill met a young widow named Kitty Morgan McClung.

She was a Kentuckian, the sister of future Confederate cavalry general John Hunt Morgan; Kentucky was a border state and divided sympathies were common, but the Morgan family was thoroughly Confederate in allegiance with another sister marrying yet another Rebel cavalry general named Basil Duke.  In 1855, Kitty married a cousin from St. Louis named Calvin McClung.  He died suddenly soon after, however, and Kitty found herself at a young age a widow.  It was in this capacity that the 23-year old met A.P. Hill.

At this point in his life, Hill was not worn down and haggard from illness; he was a slim, dashing soldier with a red mustache and a charming manner that easily won over the opposite sex.  Hill was smitten by the lovely young widow from Kentucky.

Hill seems to have often poured out his deepest thoughts and feelings to his favorite sister Lucy.  He wrote her that, “I can reach you and you can reach me easily, that in case either of us be married, we can surely attend the other. Look out for mine at any time! You know I am so constituted, that to be in love with some one is as necessary to me as my dinner, and there is now a little siren who has thrown her net around me, and I know not how soon I may cry, ‘Pecavvi!’ and yield up my right to flirt with whom I please.”  Kitty, Powell noted, “is a sensible little beauty, and if the spasm will stay in me long enough, and she will say ‘yes,’ why I don’t believe I could do better.”  To his old friend McClellan, Hill opined that Kitty was “gentle and amiable, yet lovely, and sufficiently good looking for me;” he felt his old friend would “like her, and when you come to know her, say that I have done well.”  He closed the letter with an invite to the wedding, to be held at the Morgan family home in Lexington.

Kitty and Powell married on July 18, 1859.  Kitty wore a silk wedding dress; Hill wore his blue lieutenant’s dress uniform.

To Hill, Kitty was forever “Dolly.”  This was the nickname Kitty was given by a black servant charged with caring for the Morgan children.  He was proud of her musical talents.  She possessed the same sense of charm that Hill did, and the couple made friends easily in Washington society.

Undoubtedly, she must have known of Hill’s “youthful indiscretion,” for she knew of his other affairs.  Powell wrote Lucy to not “tease Dolly about Miss Wilson and my other affair.”  The other affair could only have been the infamous affair with “Miss Nelly” — that affair ended abruptly when Mrs. Marcy let out word that Powell had contracted a venereal disease at West Point.

When Hill resigned his commission to cast his lot with Virginia, Dolly dutifully followed him.  What her thoughts at the time were are uncertain, but she probably enjoyed being the wife of a successful Confederate general.  When their Culpeper home became untenable, Dolly attached herself to the Army.  General Scales noted, “Mrs. Hill is not satisfied with remaining here after all the ladies had been ordered away & all the other had left, but said she had no home & she might as well make Orange her home as any where else.”

Unlike Mrs. R.S. Ewell, Dolly apparently did not interfere with military affairs or with the staff of the Light Division or the Third Corps.

But she followed her husband closely.  She would roll her jewelry and other valuables into her chesnut hair for safekeeping and set out with the Army.  Sometimes she followed too closely and apparently she was a spunky woman with a nose for adventure.  According to legend, one night Dolly learned that cavalry general Philip Sheridan was expected in a hotel not far from Confederate lines. Dolly snuck into enemy territory in hopes of picking up useful military information. But, she quickly became an object of suspicion and had to flee with shots ringing out behind her.

The couple had four children, all girls.  Two of these daughters lived till adulthood; one was born after her father was killed at Petersburg.  Dolly and the Hill children were popular with General Lee.  In a letter, Dolly noted that Lee “comes very frequently to see me. He is the greatest and best man on earth, brought me the last time some delicious apples.”  J. William Jones recalled a story about Lee and Lucy Hill

In calling one day in Petersburg upon the accomplished lady of the gallant and lamented General A. P. Hill, his bright little girl met him at the door and exclaimed, with that familiarity which the kind-hearted old hero had taught her: ” O General Lee, here is ‘ Bobby Lee ‘ (holding up a puppy): ” do kiss him.” The general pretended to do so, and the little creature was delighted.

Lucy Lee Hill, one of his two daughters who survived to adulthood, had been christened with Lee as the godfather during the winter of 1863.

Dolly and Powell spent the night of April 1, 1865 together.  On the morning of April 2, Hill parted from his wife and rode out to attempt and rally his lines that were broken beyond possibility of repair.  Soon thereafter, he was shot through the heart and instantly killed.

Dolly was seven months pregnant.  Lee entrusted Hill’s trusted chief of staff, Colonel William Palmer, to tell Dolly the terrible news.  She was engaged in small household tasks and singing.  When she saw Palmer, she threw up her hands in anguish and cried, “The General is dead! You would not be here if he had not been killed!” Palmer tried to temper his news that he didn’t know if Hill was indeed dead or not only that he had been shot, but a few minutes later soldiers came back carrying his lifeless body. Members of his 5th Alabama Regiment had gone out and recovered Hill’s body. When his gauntlets were removed, Dolly noted how conspicuous his wedding ring looked on his mangled hand.  For two days she rode next to his body as first an attempt was made to bury him in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery, then as the body was transfered to Chesterfield for burial in a family cemetery.

It was probably this final experience that embittered Dolly towards the Confederacy and “The Lost Cause.” ¹  She did not participate in post-war activities, although she did give permission for Hill’s body to be buried underneath the statue it now reposes under in Richmond.  She never again went by the name Dolly after Hill’s death.  Not content to wear black for the rest of her life (like Mrs. Jeb Stuart, for example), she remarried in 1870, this time to a doctor, but again outlived her husband.

Despite her dislike for the “Lost Cause,” Mrs. A.P. Hill was among the longest lived of the Confederate generals widows.  She died on March 20, 1920 in Lexington, Kentucky.  She is buried there as “K. Forsyth” — under the surname of her final husband.

1. Dolly was also no doubt broken by the death of her brother John Hunt Morgan as well. [↩]