Pelham, the Cannoneer

He Loosed the Thuderbolt
of the Horse Artillery
on a Hundred Fields of Action

By Marshall Andrews

Seventy-four years ago this past month, a boy died violently at Culpeper Courthouse. Had he lived three weeks longer, he would have been a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate Army; he was 24 years old.

The spark John Pelgram of Alabama struck in the Army of Northern Virginia blazed and grew mightily and spread with some of his own dazzling brilliance South and North and across to war-wise Europe.

History has dealt poorly with this boy, and Virginia has accorded him no more attention than it has other non-Virginians who fought in the army which bore its name. Though John Pelham did not come out of uncurried West, his great-grandfather, Peter Pelham, was organist of Burton Parish Church nearly half a century.

Among Virginians who loved him was Jeb Stuart, who called him "immortal" and named a daughter after him. Among Virginians who knew him and saw him fight were Stonewall Jackson who found him "ever" vigilant," and Lee, who named him "the gallant."

And there was a Virginia girl who waved from her window when he rode out to his death and another who left a single white blossom on his bier while he lay dead in Virginia's capitol.

Tall, slender and fair, with wavy brown hair and clear, bright blue eyes, John Pelham was a lovable youth; that is one thing you learn about him quickly, because no one who knew him and left any record has failed to say so. He was modest and shy, painfully so, but in battle he was a thunderbolt.

The Genius At the Guns

But when he died at 24, there died genius of a rare sort and his country and his people lost another of those fine young men so needed and so prodigally wasted. In that manner did John Pelgram live out to the end his soldier's destiny.

Though Pelgram is but casually known today, contemporary official records are full of somewhat astonished reports of his exploits.

First as a battery officer and then as chief of Stuart's horse artillery, with the rank of major, this young Alabaman traced his brief career in flame and smoke from First Bull Run to Fredericksburg, in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. He fought in more than 100 battles and skirmishes and outpost actions where men are killed as dead as ever they were at Gettysburg. Into two years of war he crowded a warrior's lifetime of fighting.

Pelham was born September 14, 1838, in Benton County, Ala., and entered West Point in 1856 in the only five-year class ever admitted there.

At Montgomery, Ala., provisional capital of the Confederacy he was commissioned first lieutenant in the artillery of the regular army and sent to the Valley of Virginia as drillmaster to Alburtis' battery. Rushed with Johnston's army to the field of Bull Run, he so fought his little popgun that he attracted the attention of Colonel J. E. B. Stuart of Virginia cavalry, who had by then decided he needed a horse battery to help his troopers chase Yankees.

It was formed, then, from the Newton, Va., battery at Centreville in November, 1861, while Johnston watched the Yankees in the Washington defenses. Every man was mounted and Pelham was in command, though he was not commissioned captain until March 23, 1862.

The cannoneers and teamsters who made up this battery were a wild and unregenerate crew. Its bugler was a Richmond boy not 16 years old and there was a patriarch of 87 riding in a gun team. Jailbirds and fine gentlemen rubbed elbows in its ranks and served its guns with fierce delight.

As finally organized, there were men in its ranks from Virginia, Maryland, Alabama and Kentucky. James Breathed, who later became its commander was a private.

But from among them stands out the Napoleon Detachment, a gun's crew of Creoles from Mobile, Ala., who gloried in battle and fought their gun whooping the Marseillaise with all their lung power.

Pelham at Williamsburg

When Johnston retreated before McClellan from Yorktown, it became necessary to stand at Williamsburg May 5, 1862, and there the burly, stubborn Longstreet held back the blue wave until troops and trains were clear. And fighting on the left of the line was Pelham, who took three guns and ripped the Yankee line to shreds.

After a Skirmish in June between 75 dismounted troopers of Stuart's and two boatloads of sharpshooters from U. S. S. Marblehead, which lay at White House Landing, Stuart decided, he wrote later, "to expose this Yankee bugaboo called gunboat," and ordered Pelham up with one gun. Pelham dashed forward with a howitzer and opened fire on the "bugaboo" so effectively that the sharpshooters were recalled and the Marblehead steamed down the river with the howitzer in hot pursuit. Limbering up to dash ahead, unlimbering to throw a few more shot at the gunboat, Pelham chased it out of range.

Rank Now Major

John Pelham became a major by then; his commission dated August 9, 1862, reached him August 16, and he was in command of all three batteries of the Stuart Horse Artillery. These were Chew's (Virginia), Hart's (South Carolina) and Pelham's (nominally Virginia).

After standing with Stuart at Waterloo Bridge on the Rappahannock all of August 25, banging away at aggressively curious blue cavalry while Jackson streamed through Thoroughfare Gap, Pelham took up the march for Birstoe and Manassas Junction August 26. He arrived at Manassas Junction after Jackson had occupied the place, and among happily stuffed and boozy infantry, found four fine draft horses attached to a sutler's wagon and confiscated them for his gun teams.

In the Second Battle of Manassas, young Pelham was told by Jackson to use his horse artillery battalion "where fitting opportunity should occur," an amount of discretion Old Jack is not known to have accorded any of his brigade or division commanders.

At Chantilly, where an effort was made to complete the defeat of Pope, Pelham fought his guns in a blinding thunderstorm at night and pursued the Yankees next day to Fairfax Courthouse.

On into Maryland he took his guns with the cavalry and fought constantly from Urbana to Frederick and Middletown and Boonsboro. After McClellan, with Lee's orders for division and reconcentration of his army in his pocket, unexpectedly perked up and forced the passes of South Mountain September 14, Pelham's guns disputed every mile of the way to the little village of Sharpsburg on Antietam Creek.

Back in Virginia With Jeb Stuart

Back again in Virginia with the army, after taking part in Stuart's feint toward Hagerstown September 19 to uncover the Potomac fords, there were a few days of rest around Martinsburg. Then came another of those astonishing, paralyzing raids Stuart so loved.

The purpose of the Chambersburg raid, besides playing on McClellan's ready fears and muddling his communications, was to gather up fat Pennsylvania horses to replace animals used up in the hard campaigning of July, August and September.

Early in the morning of October 8, 1862, Stuart rode toward McCoy's Ford on the Potomac, some 30 miles from Harper's Ferry, with 1,800 picked troopers and Pelham with four guns. Brushing aside a cavalry picket at the ford, the column pushed on toward Mercersburg October 9, scooping up all Pennyslvania horses in reach, except those driven by women and reaching Chambersburg that night after riding 32 miles.

After spending the night at Chambersburg in a downpour of rain and destroying all Government property found there, Stuart started toward the passes of South Mountain, speeded by fear the Potomac would rise beyond fording before he could get back across to Virginia.

At Fredericksburg, where Burnside tossed regiments and brigades and divisions to destruction against the impregnable lines of Jackson and then Longstreet, Pelham reached the brilliant climax of his brief military career; Fredericksburg was his last great battle and his finest. With one gun, he all but broke up the attacks of Mead and Gibbon of the Federal left, though a half-dozen blue batteries threw their concentrated fire upon him from the heights of Stafford.

Here, as everywhere, Pelham demonstrated his uncanny eye for ground and position. More than any other artillery officer developed during the War between the States, he could bring his guns to the front at a mad gallop and there, in the terrific noise and the smoke and dust and confusion of battle immediately choose a point of effective fire at the same time most protected from enemy retaliation.

General Lee, watching Pelham fight his little popgun against Burnside's Left Grand Division and its powerful batteries, remarked, 'It is glorious to see such courage in one so young," and specified the youthful major in his report of the battle as "the gallant Pelham."

Called to Jackson the night of December 13, Pelham was told to take charge of fortifying the right of the long line. He labored at this task all that night with a degree of success which impelled Jackson to ask Stuart, "If you have another Pelham, general I wish you would give him to me."

After Burnside's army had butted itself all but unconscious against Lee's lines at Fredericksburg, Pelham with four guns took part in another of Stuart's famous raids. This time he joined 1,800 gray troopers the day after Christmas, 1862, and worked with them behind the Yankee lines about Fairfax Courthouse.

The weeks from then until spring hardened the roads and made war again possible, Pelham spent at Culpeper Courthouse with Fitz Lee's brigade and there met the only girl whose name is known in connection with his. Living at the Virginia Hotel on Main Street, he soon knew and often visited Bessie Shackelford, whose father, Judge Shackelford, owned the big house just across the street. She waved him off to his death 74 years ago.

St. Patrick's Day 1863, Stuart was in Culpeper as witness in a court-martial and Pelham, of course, saw his chief as soon and as often as he could. During the morning, word came that Yankee cavalry had appeared at Kelly's Ford on the Rappahanock, 12 miles from the town. Fitz Lee's brigade went out to give battle.

Although Pelham was not on duty, he went along to see the fun and to give whatever help he could to the battery of his artillery under Captain James Breathed, which was co-operating with Fitz Lee. In the party which rode toward Kelly's Ford in the bright March morning were Pelham, Stuart and Captain Harry Gilmore of Maryland.

when they found Fitz Lee's troopers disposed for battle, Stuart rode ahead to consult with their commander. Pelham halted beside the Second Virginia Cavalry, just gathering itself for one of those boot-to-boot sabre-to-sabre charges then the fashion.

As the regiment swept ahead, Pelham raised himself in his short stirrups, flung his hat about his head and cheered on the horse soldiers who so often had cheered his guns. that was the end.

A shell burst directly over him, hurling him to the ground; his horse ambled incuriously away.

Captain Gilmor, with the help of two other officers, lifted Pelham from the ground and carried him to his own horse, which had been caught. The young major's body was placed across the saddle, head down one side, legs down the other, and the horse was turned over to two dismounted men to be taken to the rear for medical attention. And here is the real tragedy of Pelham's death.

Two hours later, Captain Gilmor rode away from the battlefield, and, three miles to the rear, found his two troopers sitting in a fence corner holding the reins of Pelham's horse, across which the body still hung. Blood dripped slowly from the matted muddy hair; Pelham had lain there those two hours, bleeding slowly to death.

But Captain Gilmor discovered he was still alive. He was placed on the ground, an ambulance located, and he was taken at once to the home of Judge Shackelford, to the tearful Bessie who had waved him away those few hours before. There he died that night from a small sliver of steel which had entered the back of his head without damaging the brain.

Major Heros von Borcke, huge Prussian Adjutant of the Cavalry Corps and a close friend of Pelham, took the body to Richmond, where he was to turn it over to a member of Congress from Alabama. Von Borcke found an iron casket, had a window cut in it and covered with glass and, in this casket, his boy's face still smiling, Pelham lay in state in the Capitol of the Confederacy. Thousands of soldiers and civilians, men, women, boys and girls passed by and looked through the window at the dead face of a youth grown legendary in two years of battle.

They banked his casket with spring flowers and a girl, unknown then and now, left one white blossom over the still face.

Pelham was taken to Alabama and buried in the family cemetery at Jacksonville, where James Breathed, who succeeded to command of his battery and battalion, also was buried in time.

The last note in this tragedy was sounded by an enemy, a former classmate and now a Union cavalryman, from whose own death a few years later was to spring a legend still cherished. After Pelham was dead, a message came for him over from the blue lines.

"After a long silence, I write," was the message. "God bless you, dear Pelham; I am proud of your success."

It was signed "George A. Custer."