A routine baggage screening at an Alabama airport turned into an unexpected Civil War mystery after TSA officers discovered five stolen cannonballs hidden inside a passenger&#8217;s luggage. 
Lead TSA Officer Justin Dupree spotted a large opaque object while reviewing X-ray images at Gulf Shores International Airport on July 18. At first, he thought it looked like a medicine ball. Instead, he found five cannonballs wrapped in paper towels, with the largest being the size of a grapefruit.  
“My first thought was, ‘I couldn’t see a fuse and need to get some help quick,’” Dupree <a href="https://www.tsa.gov/about/employee-stories/cannonball-run-indiana-jones-esque-discovery-tsa-alabama-airport">said</a>. “I couldn’t see the entire item but was scared I might have been holding a live explosive.”
“I had never seen anything quite this unique,” he added. “I’ve seen inert grenades and training munitions but never an Indiana Jones-esque stolen artifact-type situation.”
Dupree alerted a supervisor, who contacted the TSA&#8217;s regional explosives specialist. The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office also responded to determine whether a bomb squad would be needed.
Authorities determined the roughly 150-year-old cannonballs were inert, meaning they posed no explosive threat. Even so, artillery ammunition is prohibited in luggage. 
Investigators identified the cannonballs as artifacts stolen from nearby Fort Morgan after recognizing paint markings the historic Civil War site uses to catalog its collection. 
The Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/travel/tsa-officer-sees-alarming-shapes-x-ray-before-stolen-civil-war-mystery-unravels">told</a> Fox News that a juvenile stole them from the fort’s storage area and put them in his grandmother’s luggage. Fort Morgan&#8217;s director declined to press charges, and the artifacts have since been returned. 
“I am very proud of the great catch and teamwork by Officers Dupree and Cash and TSA Alabama along with our tremendous partnership with the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office and Gulf Shores Police Department,” TSA Alabama Federal Security Director Tara Corse said. 
“Even if inert and not active, travelers should avoid bringing weapons of any kind, including replicas, to the airport. They can cause security alerts, flight delays and safety concerns.”

Screenshot 2026-07-30 at 1.18.43 PM

A Routine TSA Bag Check Turned Into An ‘Indiana Jones’ Mystery

Air and Space

airport

Airports

Alabama

Civil War

Indiana Jones

Transportation

U.S.

Before Donald Trump stunned the legacy media by winning the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton reassured Americans that “the challenges we face today do not approach those of Lincoln’s time. Not even close.”
Measured by bloodshed alone, she was right. Nothing today rivals the carnage of Antietam or Shiloh. Yet in a deeper sense — culturally, psychologically, and spiritually — the United States may now be more divided than it was when Americans were literally leveling rifles at each other.
The reason is profound: in 1861, both sides still believed in the legitimacy of the American experiment itself.
That may sound counterintuitive. How could the Confederacy — founded on secession and slavery — have believed in the principles of 1776, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights that followed? The answer lies in what the Confederates themselves said. In their Declarations of the Causes of Secession, Southern states were explicit. Mississippi declared, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.” Across the declarations of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia, preserving slavery appears more than eighty times as the central justification for rebellion. Taxes appear once. Tariffs not at all.
This clarity explains a historical paradox: how the country could fight a war of extraordinary savagery and yet reconcile with relative speed once it ended.
The South believed — wrongly and catastrophically — that it was defending the founding principle of self-governance. In its view, states retained sovereignty and thus the right to secede if the federal government threatened their interests. That those interests included the enslavement of millions was morally rationalized or ignored. The North, meanwhile, increasingly understood the war as a test of whether the Declaration’s claim that “all men are created equal” had any binding meaning at all.
As Abraham Lincoln recognized, both sides could not be right. But both believed they were acting in service of America. The Civil War resolved a single, defining question: whether self-government extended to the right to enslave others without due process. The ruling was handed down with prejudice at Appomattox.
The defeated South accepted the verdict — grudgingly, imperfectly, but decisively enough to prevent endless insurgency. By the end of the nineteenth century, former Confederate states had become among the most patriotic regions of the country. Former Confederate general James Longstreet captured that reconciliation when he wrote in 1899, “Barring a little family misunderstanding of a generation back, the South has never been anything but loyal.”
That sentence would be unimaginable today.
Reunion after the Civil War was possible because, once slavery — the central issue — was settled, North and South still shared a reverence for the nation’s founding. They disagreed violently about its application, but not about its legitimacy. They still loved and believed in the innate goodness of their country.
Now consider the present.
What comparable issue divides us today — one that, once resolved, would allow the country to heal? What shared assumptions remain beneath our disputes?
The uncomfortable answer: very few.
We no longer merely disagree over policy. We disagree over whether the United States itself is a moral enterprise. Americans increasingly do not share a common origin story. When one looks at John Trumbull’s painting of the presentation of the Declaration of Independence, one side sees flawed but courageous men risking everything to found a republic that, despite its contradictions, expanded human freedom. The other sees little more than oppression: “racist, sexist, slave-owning hypocrites” whose words about liberty are dismissed as fraudulent from the outset.
<div id="attachment_1041603" style="width: 901px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041603" class="size-large wp-image-1041603" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-891x576.jpg" alt="John Trumbull's oil painting, 'Declaration of Independence', 1818, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress, 28th June 1776. The committee are (left to right) John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. They are presenting the draft to Charles Thomson (standing) and John Hancock (seated). (Photo by Universal History Archive/Getty Images)" width="891" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-891x576.jpg 891w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-300x194.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983-768x497.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-113494983.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 891px) 100vw, 891px" />Universal History Archive/Getty Images</div>
These are not policy disagreements; they are competing realities. They cannot be resolved by elections or concluded by a surrender ceremony. There is no Appomattox for a conflict this diffuse.
Today’s divide is not organized around a single issue like slavery. It is cultural and perceptual. It plays out not on battlefields but across classrooms, workplaces, media, and daily life. Even our fiercest moral debates — abortion, immigration, gender — are symptoms rather than causes. They reflect a society that no longer agrees on truth, limits, or even basic definitions.
The Civil War removed a localized moral cancer, and the body politic survived. Today’s divisions resemble something more metastatic, dispersed throughout the entire system. There are no clear fronts, no decisive battles, no final terms — only endless skirmishes.
Lincoln urged “charity toward all and malice toward none.” But charity requires reciprocity. It requires a shared belief that persuasion matters and that one’s opponent is still a fellow citizen.
Whether such an audience still exists is the question that will define the years ahead.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Daily Wire, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">books</a>. You can also follow him on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a> and <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Lee Surrenders To Grant At Appomattox Court House

There Is No Appomattox For America’s Current Conflict

Abraham Lincoln

American History

Culture

Southern States

United States

Woke Culture

The situation in Minnesota continues to roil the waters.
We are looking at the very real possibility of a standoff between the state government led by Governor Tim Walz — the failed vice presidential candidate who just had to step away from a third-term run in Minnesota because of the allegations of fraud — and the federal government.
On Thursday, Walz — who is in a world of hurt politically right now because of the Somali fraud scandal — compared this moment to the Civil War. Apparently, it is now the Civil War if you send ICE to enforce arrest warrants against criminals in this country.
Walz <a href="https://x.com/theblaze/status/2009324277053755577?s=20">stated</a>:
<blockquote>When things looked really bleak it was Minnesota&#8217;s first that held that line for the nation on that July 3rd, 1863. And I think now we may be in that moment; that the nation is looking to us to hold the line on democracy, to hold the line on decency, to hold the line on accountability, and more than that, to rise up as neighbors and simply say, we can look out for one another. We can have differences. But we proved to the world going on 250 years that our democracy could hold. It feels to me like we&#8217;re at one of those inflection points.</blockquote>
I&#8217;ve said many, many times that when you have high-level politicians talking this way, it is truly bad for the country. When you say we are at the point where we are going to go to war with one another and a civil war is about to break out, and it&#8217;s the end of the country, these statements turn into self-perpetuating prophecies.
That’s because the more people believe they can&#8217;t get along with their neighbors, that there is no basis for a common Americanism, the more they are likely to see each other as enemies and not political opponents.
Walz <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdZR7zeWX5Y">also said</a>:
<blockquote>I&#8217;d ask everyone to pause for a moment of silence to remember Renee Good, also to remember all that&#8217;s good and right about this nation. And, I&#8217;m going to ask folks if they can, I&#8217;d ask employers to give their people some space. I&#8217;d ask each and everyone to find a way to contribute in your community. Might be shoveling your neighbor&#8217;s walk. It might be being at a food bank.
It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven&#8217;t talked to before, but to show the goodness, to rise up to make sure that we&#8217;re being very, very clear about this, that we expect our constitutional rights to be respected, that law enforcement is local, that we expect accountability of our elected leaders and that we are not going to go quietly and we&#8217;re not going to give up on those things that matter so much to us. And chief amongst those is human dignity, respect, rule of law. All of the things that we know make this country great. </blockquote>
That’s bizarre, Orwellian language. Walz moves very quickly from “we should take this moment of silence, to go work at a food bank or talk to someone you&#8217;ve never talked to before,” to “we need to respect rule of law” while holding a moment of silence for a person who, at the very least, was involved in obstruction of the performance of law. When he says that law enforcement must be local, what he means is that federal law enforcement shouldn&#8217;t do its job.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2343-the-ben-shapiro-show?contentProgram=The%20Ben%20Shapiro%20Show&amp;contentType=ShowEpisode&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;location=Home%20Tab&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Home%20Featured%20Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And when he says that we should “rise up,” when he says that we have an obligation to stand up for our constitutional rights — you do not have a constitutional right to be in this country illegally, nor do you have a constitutional right to thwart federal law enforcement’s pursuit of criminal illegal immigrants and their deportation. You do not have the right to do any of those things.
All of this is part and parcel, of course, of Tim Walz&#8217;s broader agenda, which is to label ICE as the Gestapo, which is what he did last year.
You wonder why people are out there confronting ICE? When you put people in a moral position where they feel they must confront federal law enforcement and do it over and over and over again, the basic rule is: the more people are confronting law enforcement, the more there will be bad situations that emerge from those confrontations.
This is just the way the world works.
Listening to Tim Walz talk about morality is astonishing, considering that just last year <a href="https://x.com/cspan/status/1933545681580409048">he said</a> that China — a true authoritarian state — might be the global moral authority.
He said: 
<blockquote>Who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that, because we are not seen as a neutral actor and we maybe never were. I don&#8217;t want to tell anybody that; I think there&#8217;s a lot of people say you always lean one way in this, but I think there was at least an attempt to be somewhat of the arbitrator in this. We saw President Carter do it with Begin and Sadat. We&#8217;ve had certain wins along the way that were actually mutually beneficial both ways. Now I ask who that is. And I mean consistently over and over again, we&#8217;re going to have to face the reality. It might be the Chinese.</blockquote>
Unbelievable. That person is the person who&#8217;s now the moral authority talking about authoritarianism? Remember, he presided over the riots in 2020 that shut down a city in his state because he was unable to handle basic law enforcement functions in his state.
The reason that Tim Walz is going so hard here is because he recently had to step away from running for a third-term because of the fraud in his state — a fraud scandal largely emanating from the Somali community, which, of course, is the community at issue in these immigration raids from ICE.
For Walz to preach about morality and the rule of law, he has to ignore his own history.
And he’s doing just that.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) killing, Minneapolis, January 2026

Tim Walz Warns Of ‘Civil War’ And Proves He Has No Moral Authority Left

Ben Shapiro

Fraud

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Minneapolis

Minnesota

Opinion

Protests

Somalis

Tim Walz

&#8220;The View&#8221; host Sunny Hostin claimed during a Monday broadcast that President Donald Trump was &#8220;militarizing&#8221; the U.S. Army National Guard when he deployed troops to quell the violent protests in Los Angeles, arguing that by doing so, he would ultimately set the stage for a &#8220;civil war.&#8221;
Hostin discussed the ongoing protests in Los Angeles — as well as the Trump administration&#8217;s efforts to protect federal agents as the protests got more and more violent — with her fellow cohosts on the ABC midday talk show, and they complained that Trump&#8217;s plan to deport criminal illegal aliens was the real problem.
&#8220;The Defense Department has the U.S. Marines on high alert right now,&#8221; cohost Whoopi Goldberg began in mocking tones. &#8220;Now, you know, is it warranted or does this sort of escalate the situation? I mean, whatever happened to state&#8217;s rights?&#8221;
&#8220;I thought that what&#8217;s you do, &#8217;cause you tell the state that this is what you&#8217;re thinking, you know, you don&#8217;t just send people in, you don&#8217;t just send troops in,&#8221; Goldberg claimed. &#8220;But what do I know, I&#8217;ve never run a state? But I don&#8217;t really — when you come in and everyone is — when you go into the doughnut shop to look for people and you&#8217;re dressed in tactical gear, you&#8217;re creating an issue. You&#8217;re creating a problem.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Sunny Hostin decries Trump &#8220;militarizing&#8221; the National Guard and claims he&#8217;s going to have them start a &#8220;Civil War.&#8221; 
Ignoring the riots and violence, she claims the Guard is there &#8220;for the purpose of policing Americans&#8217; protest activity, our freedom of speech, our freedom of… <a href="https://t.co/3vEWwMIKSf">pic.twitter.com/3vEWwMIKSf</a>
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) <a href="https://twitter.com/NickFondacaro/status/1932104165712339004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Hostin jumped in then, claiming that Trump was &#8220;militarizing&#8221; the National Guard — despite its existence as a state-based military force since 1636 and being attached to the United States Army officially in 1933 — by sending troops to keep the peace after protesters attacked ICE agents and their vehicles.
&#8220;I think what really matters from sort of a long view here is the fact that he is militarizing and deploying the Guard for the purpose of policing Americans&#8217; protest activity, our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly,&#8221; Hostin insisted, suggesting that the National Guard had been brought in to silence the protesters rather than to keep them from damaging more property and hurting people.
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>
Hostin went on to argue that &#8220;an army turned inside&#8221; to police the citizens within the country would ultimately result in &#8220;chaos and fascism.&#8221;
&#8220;And civil war,&#8221; she agreed as Goldberg prompted her. &#8220;I think that&#8217;s the way we need to look at it because deploying the National Guard is supposed to be a last resort.&#8221;
Hostin then claimed that Trump had promised to deploy the National Guard anywhere in the country that protests occurred. What Trump has actually said, on a number of occasions, was that the federal government would step in and shut down violent riots if and when it became apparent that local authorities — in this case, Mayor Karen Bass (D-LA) and Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) — were either unable or unwilling to do so.

51st Annual Daytime Emmys Awards – Arrivals

‘The View’ Host Claims Trump Is ‘Militarizing’ National Guard, And ‘Civil War’ Is Coming

Donald Trump

Media

National Guard

Politics

Sunny Hostin

The View

Whoopi Goldberg

On December 13, 1862, during the U.S. Civil War, the Union Army suffered its most calamitous and tragic defeat to date at the hands of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on the frozen fields south of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
After taking over for the paradoxically arrogant yet timid Maj. Gen. George McClellan following the blood-letting at Antietam in September, the new Union Army commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside was tasked by President Lincoln to vigorously pursue and destroy CSA Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army now encamped in the Shenandoah Valley in that state. Despite harboring doubts about his own abilities as an army commander, the affable and dapper Burnside concocted a plan to dash due south and lay a pontoon bridge over the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg. His aim was to get ahead of Lee’s army farther to the west and race for Richmond, the Southern Confederacy’s capital.
<div id="attachment_843789" style="width: 597px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843789" class="size-large wp-image-843789" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-587x576.jpg" alt="UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1863: Warrenton, Virginia. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and staff officers (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)" width="587" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-587x576.jpg 587w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-300x294.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933-768x754.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-90001933.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 587px) 100vw, 587px" />UNITED STATES &#8211; CIRCA 1863: Warrenton, Virginia. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and staff officers (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)</div>
But Burnside&#8217;s plan that relied on speed and surprise almost immediately went awry. The pontoon bridges needed to affect the river crossing were delayed by ten days. By the time they arrived and construction began, Lee had marched his army to Fredericksburg. The Rebels took up a nearly impregnable position south of the town on a rise called Marye’s Heights that presented the defenders with a commanding view of the city and open ground before them.
<div id="attachment_843801" style="width: 837px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843801" class="size-large wp-image-843801" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-827x576.jpg" alt="13th December 1862: Union troops attempting to cross the Rappahannock river during the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" width="827" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-827x576.jpg 827w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-300x209.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033-768x535.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090033.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 827px) 100vw, 827px" />13th December 1862: Union troops attempting to cross the Rappahannock river during the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)</div>
Despite his plan being foiled — his anxious engineers found themselves laying the pontoon bridges under fire from Rebel snipers who occupied the town along the river bank — the unimaginative Burnside pressed forward anyway. Following a bombardment that all but destroyed the little town, Yankee troops marched over the bridges and fought their way through the streets, whereupon many shamelessly looted the abandoned homes and shops until officers could corral them back into their ranks. The Yankees then formed up for the doomed assault against Lee’s lines.
What the Union troops faced was the suicidal prospect of crossing a half-mile of open, sloping ground to assault a solid line of veteran Rebel troops massed behind the protection of both a sunken road and high stone wall backed by artillery lined hub-to-hub along the crest of the hill before them. While watching the lines of Union blue forming up to make their attack, Lee’s First Corps commander on the Marye’s Heights sector of the line, Gen. James Longstreet, asked his young artillerist, Col. E.P. Alexander, if he thought the position was defensible. Alexander assured him: “General, a chicken can’t live in that field when we open up on it!”
<div id="attachment_843811" style="width: 765px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843811" class="size-large wp-image-843811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-755x576.jpg" alt="A Union Army battery makes final preparations on the day before the Battle of Fredericksburg, on Marye's Heights, Virginia, USA, December 1862. (Photo by Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="755" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-755x576.jpg 755w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-300x229.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593-768x586.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-103011593.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 755px) 100vw, 755px" />A Union Army battery makes final preparations on the day before the Battle of Fredericksburg, on Marye&#8217;s Heights, Virginia, USA, December 1862. (Photo by Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)</div>
And so began a series of ill-advised charges up the slopes of Marye’s Heights by a Union Army that proved itself to be as brave as any army in any field; but they were doomed nonetheless. The Confederate lines were so concentrated that for every man at the wall shooting down into the slowly approaching Union lines, two stood behind them with loaded and rammed rifles at the ready to hand the marksman one weapon after another, giving the stone wall’s rate of fire the effect of a machine gun — with the same grisly efficiency. As Alexander predicted, whirring, bouncing projectiles fired from his overheating guns tore into the compact blue formations, killing and maiming groups of men with each round. Thousands of Union troops totaling six divisions were fed into the Rebel meat grinder, one brigade at a time.
Watching the slaughter from his vantage point above the fighting, Gen. Lee, his stirred warrior blood struggling for equilibrium with his humanitarian nature, offered somberly: “It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.”
<div id="attachment_843805" style="width: 468px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-843805" class="size-large wp-image-843805" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-458x576.jpg" alt="7th November 1862: Confederate General Robert E Lee (1807 - 1870) at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lee was offered the command of the Union Army but although personally opposed to both slavery and secession, his loyalty to Virginia led to his taking command of the Confederate forces. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" width="458" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-458x576.jpg 458w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-239x300.jpg 239w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032-768x965.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-3090032.jpg 815w" sizes=" (max-width: 458px) 100vw, 458px" />7th November 1862: Confederate General Robert E Lee (1807 &#8211; 1870) at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)</div>
After fourteen assaults some 13,300 Union dead and wounded lay strewn in a veritable carpet of blue before the smoke-obscured Confederate lines (to the South&#8217;s 4,500, many of whom listed as &#8220;missing&#8221; had just slipped away to nearby homesteads for Christmas). Although he contemplated continuing the forlorn attack, Burnside was convinced by his corps commanders that any new assaults would be just as fruitless and bloody so he called the battle off. (Burnside actually wanted to lead a final charge himself, so distraught was he over the carnage he’d unnecessarily inflicted on an army he sincerely loved).
The Union attack against 2nd Corps Commander &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson&#8217;s more exposed lines east of Marye&#8217;s Heights situated in lower swampland on Lee&#8217;s right did actually make some progress, but this attack too was repulsed.
For two days in the bitter December cold, the shivering Union survivors trapped in the no-man&#8217;s land between the heights and the town, hunkered down on the frozen ground. Many shielded themselves from Rebels taking shots at them from behind the stone wall by piling up the bodies of their fallen comrades to act as macabre breastworks. Soldiers would always remember the sound of .566 rounds thudding into the stiff cadavers. At night the eerie lights of a rare Southern aurora borealis flashed overhead in the starry sky, which the Confederates took as a sign that God Himself was celebrating their astounding one-sided victory.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a></h3>
The surviving Union troops eventually withdrew from the corpse-laden field and made it back through the town and across the Rappahannock to safety.
Col. Joshua Chamberlain of the 20th Maine recounted the retreat under the shroud of night. &#8220;We had to pick our way over a field strewn with incongruous ruin; men born and broken and cut to pieces in every indescribable way, cannon dismounted, gun carriages smashed or overturned, ammunition chests flung wildly about, horses dead and half-dead still held in harness, accoutrements of every sort scattered as by whirlwinds. It was not good for the nerves, that ghastly march, in the lowering night!&#8221;
After one more botched offensive in late January, during which his plans were foiled by a torrential rainstorm rather than Rebel bullets (forever remembered to history as the &#8220;Mud March&#8221;) Gen. Burnside resigned as army commander. He was replaced by Gen. Joe Hooker — Lincoln’s fifth new commanding general in two years.
When the Confederates re-occupied the shattered and ransacked Virginia town, Lee asked Jackson how they could put an end to this terrible war and all its needless desolation. “Kill them,” Jackson said coldly while surveying the ruins. “Kill them all!”
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a fund manager and author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD" target="_blank" rel="noopener">three books</a>. His articles have appeared on the pages of Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, The Blaze, Breitbart, Zerohedge and other outlets.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

The Mud March

‘It Is Well That War Is So Terrible’: The Battle Of Fredericksburg

'It Is Well That War Is So Terrible': The Battle Of Fredericksburg

American General

Confederacy

Robert E. Lee

U.S. Military

Virginia

On November 24, 1864, Union Lieutenant Samuel Nichols, 37th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, prepared for the nation’s first Thanksgiving Day, as the fourth Thursday of November had been officially declared a day of celebration by President Lincoln.
The morning, Nichols wrote, “dawned beautifully upon civilians and soldiers. Starting wildly from our slumbers at the unearthly sound of &#8216;Reveille&#8217;…we found ourselves with an appetite adequate for the occasion and fully equal to that usually demanded on that auspicious and chicken-stuffed day.”
Still encamped at Winchester, Virginia, where two months before his regiment helped lead the Union Army to victory and seize the town, Lt. Nichols appreciated that he and his comrades were enjoying relatively peaceful duty. However, soldiers are a wary lot, especially combat veterans. They understand that the tranquility of a clear, crisp November morning can be very quickly shattered by the unpredictable nature of war.
Most in the regiment, Nichols remembered, had opted to pass on breakfast so they could save their appetites for the much-anticipated Thanksgiving feast. But Nichols, being a veteran and used to having meals interrupted by the sudden call to action, wasn’t waiting until the official dinner time, which was 2:00 p.m. “At one o’clock, therefore, I dined in company with three of my companions. We all ate a sufficiency and had a good time.”
No sooner had he finished his meal than the Yankee lieutenant’s cautious instincts were vindicated. The regiment received an order to be “in readiness to move at a moment’s notice.” In about ten minutes, he recalled, “we were moving at quick step.” They reached the destination at 6:00 p.m. only to receive yet another order to countermarch back to Winchester, where the column didn’t return to their bivouac area until 9:00 p.m. For many in the regiment, Thanksgiving came and went with no meal or fanfare and at great disappointment.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a></h3>
Such is army life, as any veteran will tell you. Besides the grind, the long periods of stifling boredom that are only occasionally broken up by the terrors of front line combat, perhaps the deepest sacrifice of national service beyond risking life and limb, is separation from loved ones for long tours of duty. The separation is especially felt during holidays like Thanksgiving. Even those troops not under fire know they are missing precious times with dear family and friends — times they can never truly reclaim.
But Nichols’ unit was lucky, even if most of them lacked the foresight of their hungry lieutenant. Some in the regiment missed out on a hardy meal, but they did not have the experience of their descendants in the U.S. Army hunkered down 80 years later in the wet and cold and endless shelling and artillery tree bursts of the Hürtgen Forest. For the members of the 121st Infantry Regiment, 8th Infantry Division, Thanksgiving Day, 1944 would be remembered as a preventable tragedy, courtesy of the high command’s misplaced attempt to bring a semblance of home to the men in the foxholes.
The regiment was on the very front lines, acting as the tip of the U.S. spear, one that had snagged itself into the stubborn ribs of the Hürtgen Forest’s determined German defenders dug in among the expansive woodland’s dense foliage and frozen ravines. When 1st Lt. Boesch, crouched down in his hole, picked up the phone from HQ he was astonished to hear a cheery rear echeloner’s voice on the line: “Happy Thanksgiving! We’ve got a hot turkey dinner here for every man in the outfit.” The staff officer informed the lieutenant that the food was on its way to his company.
Boesch couldn’t believe it. “Are you guys nuts?” he said with incredulity. “It’s almost dark and my carrying parties have already made the trip up the hill with rations and water. I can’t send them up there again. Besides, they can’t feed a hot meal in the positions they’re in now. Good God, they’re right on top of the Jerries!” 

Those were the orders, the staff officer said. And didn’t the men want a nice taste of home? Boesch shook his head in frustration before screaming into the handset, “I want to see them get three hot meals a day and a dry bed every night and a babe to sleep with, but let’s save the turkey until they can pull back where they can enjoy it!”
Despite expressing fears to the battalion commander that the kind gesture might get men killed when the Germans saw them bunching up for their meal, the orders stood. Hot turkey meals were delivered to the men right on the front lines. Those delivering the meals had only the lowering darkness as cover, otherwise they were in clear line of sight of the Germans.
As Boesch warned, German artillery and mortar shells soon rained down on the hapless GIs bunched around the turkey canisters to get their fill, killing many and wounding more.
In 1978, a retired Major William Freeman who was with the 121st caught an interview with Gen. Jim Gavin, in which the young general confesses that the high command didn’t know what the GIs were dealing with in the Hürtgen Forest. He informed the general of what happened next, thanks to the misplaced gesture from the top brass.
&#8220;Jerry turned all hell loose! Branded in my mind is position after position with men torn to shreds around busted up turkey canisters—as many as ten in one place.&#8221;
In the same letter Freeman tries to unburden himself.
&#8220;Hindsight says I could have stalled off the dinner and I doubt that the higher echelons would have known about it—but I didn’t. Granted that greater control could have been used all down the line… but dangle hot turkey to men in a cold, wet forest, that have had nothing but K rations, and it’s not that easy to keep them from bunching…
&#8220;For many, many years after the war I would go to one of my relations for Thanksgiving dinner, and before I could touch a bite I would get up and go to the back yard and cry like a baby, I passed up a helluva lot of turkey dinners.&#8221;
Two different American regiments, two different wars, two different enemies, two different Thanksgivings. The same sacrifice for country and each other. As the Holiday Season begins in earnest, let’s take a moment to reflect on those who walk the line so that we can enjoy one another without fear of enemies with malicious intent. 
Happy Thanksgiving to all who will be serving in dangerous, faraway places. We are thankful for you.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a fund manager and author of three books. His articles have appeared on the pages of Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, The Blaze, Breitbart, Zerohedge and other outlets. His best-selling novel, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Brad-Schaeffer/dp/1642939420">The Extraordinary</a>, tackles the subject of living with a veteran father with PTSD as told by his autistic teen son.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Soldiers of the 87th US Division line up for food, on their drive towards Laroche

Two Thanksgivings On Two Different War Fronts: Same Sacrifice

Soldiers

Thanksgiving

U.S. Army

World War II

“Star Trek” actor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/celebrities">LeVar Burton</a> was shocked to discover that one of his ancestors was a white <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/confederacy">Confederate</a> soldier.
The 66-year-old TV star was told the surprising fact about his lineage during an episode of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/pbs">PBS</a> series “Finding Your Roots.” The former &#8220;Reading Rainbow&#8221; star told show host Henry Louis Gates Jr. that he didn’t know much about his family tree as he was estranged from his father, Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, since he was 11. Burton also mentioned that his mother, Erma Gene Christian, wasn’t forthcoming about the family’s background, <a href="https://people.com/finding-your-roots-recap-levar-burton-journey-made-him-feel-closer-to-father-he-hadnt-seen-8430586">according</a> to People.
“You grow up with just blanks, right? No information, no clue and no real way to overcome that blind spot,&#8221; Burton said of his family history, per the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2024-01-17/levar-burton-descendant-confederate-soldier-white-america-finding-your-roots">Los Angeles Times</a>. &#8220;This information is stuff that we need in order to feel whole.&#8221;
Gates told Burton that the team used a combination of a genealogist and DNA experts to come up with their findings about the actor’s past.
The “Star Trek: The Next Generation” alum had no idea one of his ancestors was a white man. Gates <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/levar-burton-discovers-hes-descended-024715272.html">told</a> Burton that his great-grandmother on his mother&#8217;s side, Mary Sills, was not related to the man she listed as her father on a Social Security application in 1940.
Her biological father was, in fact, a man named James Henry Dixon, a white farmer who was married with several children. &#8220;So Granny was half-white,&#8221; Burton said in surprise, per <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/tv/levar-burton-white-confederate-ancestor-finding-your-roots-rcna133422">Today</a>.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1705604838822000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2_j2KMpwVRLCzwAoGaYKL5">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
What’s more, Dixon, who was living in North Carolina, joined the Confederate Army after he turned 17, serving in the junior reserves.
“Are you kidding me? Oh my God, oh my God. I did not see this coming,” Burton said upon hearing the news. While Gates said it was likely that Sills never went into battle, the fact remained that he was aligned with the pro-slavery side of the Civil War. He later had a child with a woman born into <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/slavery">slavery</a>.
“I often wonder about white men of the period and how they justify to themselves their relations with black women, especially those in an unbalanced power dynamic. There has to be a powerful disconnect created emotionally and mentally,” Burton replied.
&#8220;The two major commercial DNA tests almost never have tested an African American who was 100% sub-Saharan African,&#8221; Gates told Burton. &#8220;We all have white ancestors.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s some conflict roiling inside of me right now,&#8221; Burton continued, per Today. &#8220;But oddly enough, I feel a pathway opening up. &#8230;Knowing what I know about the history of this nation, I&#8217;ve wanted, especially in this current time frame, I believe that as Americans we need to have this conversation about who we are and how we got here.&#8221;

LeVar Burton

LeVar Burton Reacts To Discovery That His Ancestor Was A Confederate Soldier

Celebrities

Entertainment

General Grant

America’s Top 11 Generals: #3 Ulysses S. Grant

America's Top 11 Generals: #3 Ulysses S. Grant

Readers Pass

Ulysses S. Grant

West Point

WAR AND CONFLICT BOOKERA:  CIVIL WAR/LEADERS

America’s Top 11 Generals: #4 William T. Sherman

America's Top 11 Generals: #4 William T. Sherman

William T. Sherman

Over the years, the United States has produced many remarkable generals and admirals, but only a few have stood out as world-class strategists and leaders of troops. As Veterans Day approaches on November 11, let’s remember and celebrate them. Here is my list of America’s finest 11 commanders.
This series is about military prowess and those who excelled on the battlefield. The inclusion of any Confederates in this list should not be misconstrued as in any way supporting the cause of the self-described Slave-Holding Confederacy itself for which such men fought. The preservation of the monstrous injustice of slavery in North America and the stated goal of the seceding states had to be destroyed. But this does not diminish the achievements of certain Southern generals on the field of battle, which is solely what this series seeks to examine.
<h2>Thomas J. &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson, 1824 &#8211; 1863 (Civil War)</h2>
Once again, I risk incurring the wrath of all good Union men and women when I include a Confederate on my list. But how can I not? Like Lee, the West Pointer and Virginia Military Institute (VMI) artillery instructor Thomas Jackson initially opposed secession, but when his home state of Virginia seceded, he opted to serve the Confederacy. His reputation and nickname “Stonewall” was forged on the river of gore at First Bull Run. During the height of the fighting, when the rebel lines began to waver, Jackson’s men held firm. Rebel Gen. Bernard E. Bee exhorted his own men by calling out, “There stands Jackson, like a stone wall!” And thus the legendary sobriquet was born.
<div id="attachment_649355" style="width: 373px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649355" class="size-large wp-image-649355" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3070274-363x576.jpg" alt="circa 1850: Thomas Jonathan Jackson (1824 - 1863), better known as Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Original Artist: By Desmaisons. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="363" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3070274-363x576.jpg 363w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3070274-189x300.jpg 189w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3070274.jpg 646w" sizes=" (max-width: 363px) 100vw, 363px" />circa 1850: Thomas Jonathan Jackson (1824 &#8211; 1863), better known as Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Original Artist: By Desmaisons. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
Although his sterling conduct in the first battle of the war earned him praise from a grateful South, it was Jackson’s brilliant Shenandoah Valley Campaign in the spring of 1862 that demonstrated just how formidable a military man the Bible-thumping, lemon-eating, eccentric Stonewall could be. The valley was a lifeline for the South, a vital corridor of provisions as well as a natural Union invasion route. As such, he was tasked with keeping the area out of Northern control. Husbanding his strength, the stern disciplinarian marched his men up and down the valley at such a grueling pace over such vast distances they were called “Jackson’s Foot Cavalry.” 
To his enemies’ chagrin, his small army would suddenly appear miles away from where his baffled Union adversaries would expect and inflict one punishing defeat after another, only to disappear and pop up again somewhere else. His fetish for secrecy was such that he would keep his officers in the dark as to his plans until the last minute, and often camp his men at roadway intersections to confuse any Yankee spies as to his destination. Throughout the course of some 48 days of the Valley Campaign, Jackson’s contingent rarely numbered 15,000 men, marched over 700 miles, and engaged and defeated three separate Union armies numbering a combined 80,000 enemy troops coming at him from several directions. Bewildered Union commanders believed that Jackson had to have more men, that it couldn’t be the same army striking them here, then there, then over there at all hours of the day and night in over a dozen battles. 
<div id="attachment_649377" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649377" class="size-large wp-image-649377" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-90018461-864x576.jpg" alt="UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1862: The First Battle of Winchester, fought on May 25, 1862, in and around Frederick County, Virginia, and Winchester, Virginia, was a major victory in Confederate Army Maj. Gen. Thomas J. &quot;Stonewall&quot; Jackson's Campaign through the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-90018461-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-90018461-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-90018461-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-90018461.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />UNITED STATES &#8211; CIRCA 1862: The First Battle of Winchester, fought on May 25, 1862, in and around Frederick County, Virginia, and Winchester, Virginia, was a major victory in Confederate Army Maj. Gen. Thomas J. &#8220;Stonewall&#8221; Jackson&#8217;s Campaign through the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)</div>
His exploits made him arguably the most famous general in the world; the very name Jackson became synonymous with an extremely dangerous phantasm who could be in several places at once and who struck fear in the Union ranks, as well as Washington D.C. Northern mothers would even threaten naughty children with “Jackson will get you if you misbehave.”
Not only did Stonewall demonstrate he understood how to get the most from his men and inflict the most damage with bodies of troops small enough to stay nimble and unpredictable, his campaign had the very real impact of preventing tens of thousands of Union reinforcements from leaving the valley to aid the Union general McClellan currently marching ever closer to Richmond. In June 1862, the wily Jackson then slipped away with his victorious army to join the new rebel commander Robert E. Lee in helping to repel the Yankee invaders from the gates of the capital during the Seven Days battle. His valley army would become Second Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. The partnership he formed with his commanding officer and the reliable and steady First Corps commander Gen. James Longstreet (who himself just missed making the list) became one of the most storied, and successful, in military history.
<div id="attachment_649357" style="width: 805px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649357" class="wp-image-649357 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-91243862-795x576.jpg" alt="UNITED STATES - CIRCA 1862: Bull Run battlefield with the disposition of Union and Confederate forces. Union Gen. Pope's command faced that of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, unaware that Longstreet's command had arrived to reinforce Jackson's position. On the second day of fighting, an assault by Pope's forces was repulsed by Jackson's troops, while Longstreet attacked Pope's unprotected left flank. Pope was defeated, but was able to retreat across Bull Run with the bulk of his force intact. Hand Drawn Map (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)" width="795" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-91243862-795x576.jpg 795w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-91243862-300x217.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-91243862-768x557.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-91243862.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 795px) 100vw, 795px" />UNITED STATES &#8211; CIRCA 1862: Bull Run battlefield with the disposition of Union and Confederate forces. Union Gen. Pope&#8217;s command faced that of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, unaware that Longstreet&#8217;s command had arrived to reinforce Jackson&#8217;s position. (Photo by Buyenlarge/Getty Images)</div>
Jackson’s star continued to rise when in August 1862 he embarked on yet another series of forced marches up through central and into northern Virginia which landed his troops squarely in the rear of another Union army under the command of the bombastic Gen. John Pope. Once again, his Union adversaries found themselves racing this way and that across the sweltering countryside trying to locate the elusive Stonewall and his 28,000-man contingent. After raiding the federal depot at Manassas junction, he fell back to the old Bull Run battlefield and repelled a series of attacks by Pope while waiting for Longstreet’s corps en route to join him. Once reunited, the full power of the Army of Northern Virginia would face the Yankees at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run. A Union rout ensued and for the second time since June, a defeated enemy streamed back to the safety of Washington D.C.
When in September 1862 Lee took the victorious if weary and malnourished Army of Northern Virginia into Maryland, Jackson did his part. Taking almost two-thirds of Lee’s army on a long three-pronged march, one leg of which covered a grueling sixty miles back through now West Virginia, his men surrounded and captured Harper’s Ferry. He bagged 11,000 Union prisoners and scores of artillery pieces and other supplies. Never one for appearance, when the dejected Union garrison at Harper’s Ferry got a glimpse of the grey ghost who captured them, one Yankee was heard to say: “Boys, he may not look like much, but if we had him we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Then he re-joined Lee and Longstreet in time to fight at the Battle of Antietam. His line held firm through a series of powerful Union attacks, showing his capacity for defensive warfare when needed. After the battle was over, while eating a peach and surveying the scene of carnage that was the bloodiest day in American history, the pious warrior declared “God has been good to us this day.” 
Stonewall’s fierce reputation hit its zenith at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. With the Army of Northern Virginia caught between a Union pincer movement, outnumbered and outflanked, and missing Longstreet with several divisions on a forage mission, Jackson proposed to Lee that he take his entire corps, almost 30,000 men, on an arduous 12-mile march through the thick Wilderness and around the Union Army to hit them in their exposed flank. This left Lee with just a small force to face the brunt of the Union Army numbering some 100,000 men. It was a very dangerous plan for if discovered the Yankees could destroy the army in pieces. But Lee, trusting his subordinate’s judgment, gave him the nod. 
<div id="attachment_649371" style="width: 704px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649371" class="size-large wp-image-649371" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-96752925-694x576.jpg" alt="Illustration by William Ludwell Sheppard, captioned 'Lee and Jackson in Council on the Night of May 1,' first published in the four-volume series Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887�1888). It depicts Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. 'Stonewall' Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville working through plans for the next day's fighting. Chancellorsville, Virginia, USA. 1 May 1863. (photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images)." width="694" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-96752925-694x576.jpg 694w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-96752925-300x249.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-96752925-768x638.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-96752925.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 694px) 100vw, 694px" />Illustration by William Ludwell Sheppard, captioned &#8216;Lee and Jackson in Council on the Night of May 1,&#8217; first published in the four-volume series Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (1887 &#8211; 1888). It depicts Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. &#8216;Stonewall&#8217; Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville working through plans for the next day&#8217;s fighting. Chancellorsville, Virginia, USA. 1 May 1863. (photo by Fotosearch/Getty Images).</div>
Late in the afternoon Jackson’s Confederates poured out of the woods and smashed into the Yankees’ exposed right flank, sending the shocked and terrified Union XI Corps racing to the rear. It was an outstanding success. But as darkness fell, Jackson carelessly rode out between the lines with a small entourage to investigate a night attack. When he tried to recross back into his own lines, jittery rebel pickets, believing his group to be Union cavalry, opened fire, severely wounding him in the left arm that would soon be amputated. When hearing the news, Lee lamented, “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.” Although he appeared to be recovering after the operation, Stonewall Jackson took a turn for the worse and died of pneumonia a few days later.
<div id="attachment_649373" style="width: 980px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-649373" class="size-large wp-image-649373" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Death-of-Stonewall-Jackson-970x576.jpeg" alt="The death of Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Currier &amp; Ives., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons" width="970" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Death-of-Stonewall-Jackson-970x576.jpeg 970w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Death-of-Stonewall-Jackson-300x178.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Death-of-Stonewall-Jackson-768x456.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/Death-of-Stonewall-Jackson.jpeg 1387w" sizes=" (max-width: 970px) 100vw, 970px" />The death of Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson. Currier &amp; Ives., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</div>
There is much speculation in Civil War round tables about what would have happened at Gettysburg two months later had Jackson and not the timid Richard Ewell still been in command of the Second Corps. Some argue Stonewall would not have hesitated to take the commanding hills south of the town on the first day of the fight, denying the Union Army a defensible position and forcing it to retreat. Who knows? But what we can say is this: few generals had such an uncanny feel for battlefields and tactical situations — without the aid of GPS, aerial reconnaissance, or even accurate maps — as did Stonewall Jackson. Unlike Lee, there are no bloody missteps in Jackson’s record, no Malvern Hill, Antietam, or Gettysburg. Which is why I place him higher than his commander. His reputation is well-deserved.
One final thought. His more quirky eccentricities aside, Jackson had a dark, if fascinating, cold-bloodedness to him that belied his Christian values, and could intimidate those who served with him, yet might also be a clue to why he so excelled in waging war. When in December of 1862 he and Gen. Lee surveyed the destruction to Fredericksburg that the marauding Union troops left in their wake upon abandoning the city, Lee asked his deputy commander how they could put an end to this terrible war. “Kill them,” Jackson said. “Kill them all.”
* * *
America’s Top 11 Generals
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-11-curtis-e-lemay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #11 Curtis E. LeMay</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-10-matthew-ridgway" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #10 Matthew Ridgway</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-9-nathanael-greene" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #9 Nathanael Greene</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-8-george-patton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #8 George Patton</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-7-robert-e-lee">RELATED: #7 Robert E. Lee</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-6-admiral-chester-nimitz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #6 Admiral Chester Nimitz</a>
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of two acclaimed novels. His newest book, the fact-based <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pits-Rough-Tumble-Exchange/dp/B0CKPNCMQW/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1331509151681009&amp;hvadid=83219665089301&amp;hvbmt=bp&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=97755&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=p&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83219680392082%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=18892_13467888&amp;keywords=brad+schaeffer&amp;qid=1698162015&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LIFE IN THE PITS: My Time as a Trader on the Rough-and-Tumble Exchange Floors</a> will be published in December and is currently available for pre-order. You can also find more of Brad’s articles on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Stonewall_Jackson_in_the_National_Portrait_Gallery_IMG_4519

America’s Top 11 Generals: #5 Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson

America's Top 11 Generals: #5 Thomas 'Stonewall' Jackson

Thomas Stonewall Jackson

Veterans Day

Over the years, the United States has produced many remarkable generals and admirals, but only a few have stood out as world-class strategists and leaders of troops. As Veterans Day approaches on November 11, let’s remember and celebrate them. Here is my list of America’s finest 11 commanders.
This series is about military prowess and those who excelled on the battlefield. The inclusion of any Confederates in this list should not be misconstrued as in any way supporting the cause of the self-described Slave-Holding Confederacy itself for which such men fought. The preservation of the monstrous injustice of slavery in North America and the stated goal of the seceding states had to be destroyed. But this does not diminish the achievements of certain Southern generals on the field of battle, which is solely what this series seeks to examine.
<h2>Robert E. Lee, 1807 &#8211; 1870 (Civil War)</h2>
An officer who served with Lee once said of him: “His name might be audacity. He will take more desperate chances and take them quicker than any other general in this country, North or South.” This was an apt description of the man the Northerners came to know as “The Gray Fox.” Yes, Lee was fighting against the U.S. and not for it. However, he was still very much the product of the American military tradition, and it would be remiss to not include him for brilliance as a battlefield commander, even if his choice of political causes was disastrous. The fact is, Lee, as the historian Shelby Foote noted: “Is a great general on both the offense and the defense.” And few commanders have managed to fight so long and effectively while being so out-manned, out-gunned, out-fed, and out-supplied as Lee.
<div id="attachment_648329" style="width: 364px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-648329" class="size-large wp-image-648329" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-114951008-354x576.jpg" alt="American Confederate Army general Robert E Lee (1807 - 1870), Richmond, Virginia, 16th April 1865. (Photo by Mathew Brady/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="354" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-114951008-354x576.jpg 354w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-114951008-185x300.jpg 185w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-114951008.jpg 630w" sizes=" (max-width: 354px) 100vw, 354px" />American Confederate Army general Robert E Lee (1807 &#8211; 1870), Richmond, Virginia, 16th April 1865. (Photo by Mathew Brady/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images)</div>
At the outset of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was America’s most prominent soldier. Son of the Revolutionary War hero “Light Horse Harry” Lee, he was from one of the first families of Virginia. Having turned down Lincoln’s offer to command the Union Army, Lee would end up taking over the premiere Confederate Army being pressed back against the capital of Richmond in June 1862 after Gen. Joe Johnston was wounded. Within two months Lee counterattacked Union general George McClellan’s advancing Yankees at the brutal Battle of the Seven Days on the outskirts of the city and sent him sailing back to Washington D.C., saving the rebel capital.
Then, while one Union army was effectively off the chessboard in transit, Lee pivoted north to face another threat. In a masterful campaign, he marched his army up northern Virginia to intercept, out-maneuver, and defeat a second Union army under Gen. John Pope at 2nd Bull Run (August 1862). In the three months he’d been in command, Lee had rescued the Southern capital, defeated two different armies while inflicting some 30,000 Union casualties, and cleared the entire state of Virginia of enemy troops. It was a remarkable turn of fortune that put the North on notice that a clever and dangerous foe was now in command of the South’s principal army.
<div id="attachment_648331" style="width: 892px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-648331" class="size-large wp-image-648331" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99645445-882x576.jpg" alt="An illustration of Thomas Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Bull Run, during the US civil war, circa 1863. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="882" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99645445-882x576.jpg 882w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99645445-300x196.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99645445-768x502.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99645445.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 882px) 100vw, 882px" />An illustration of Thomas Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Bull Run, during the US civil war, circa 1863. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)</div>
Although his vaunted Army of Northern Virginia was exhausted, ill-fed, and clothed from a poor supply chain and constant marching and fighting, Lee nevertheless gambled on an invasion of Maryland. Believing a Confederate victory on Union soil would convince Great Britain and France to form an alliance, his hopes were dashed when McClellan and his 87,000-man Army Of The Potomac, back from the peninsula and now infused with the remnants of Pope’s army, stopped him along the banks of the Antietam Creek in September 1862. In the bloodiest single day in U.S. history, Lee showed tactical brilliance in the field by holding off repeated attacks by a determined Union army twice his size, fighting McClellan to a stalemate. Nevertheless, Lee retired back into Virginia to recoup his losses and await the North’s next move.
In December 1862 a new Union commander, Gen. Ambrose Burnside, attempted to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg and march on Richmond. Lee was waiting and delivered the most one-sided victory of his command, laying waste to 12,000 Union troops with little loss of his own.
Burnside, like Pope and McClellan before him, was relieved of command and a new, confident Gen. Joe Hooker was next up as head of the Army Of The Potomac. This time Hooker surprised the Confederates with a well-conceived pincer attack, crossing the Rappahannock at several points to fall on both Lee’s flanks at Fredericksburg on the Confederate right and the Wilderness, a dense woods, on the left. Hooker confidently predicted that in the face of this squeezing attack, Lee would be compelled to either retreat or be destroyed in a pitch battle against overwhelming odds. Instead, the unperturbed rebel commander responded to Hooker’s boldness in kind and out-flanked the flanker. At the Battle of Chancellorsville (considered a military masterpiece) Lee divided his inferior army and took an enormous chance by sending half of it under his indomitable corps commander Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson to hit Hooker seven miles to the west on his exposed flank amidst the impenetrable Wilderness. The attack was a complete surprise and rolled up the Union Army’s shattered flank. Hooker, like the preceding generals who’d attempted to outfox the fox, retreated.
<div id="attachment_648337" style="width: 831px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-648337" class="size-large wp-image-648337" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-821x576.jpg" alt="1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)" width="821" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-821x576.jpg 821w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-300x211.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-768x539.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-1536x1078.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-3427049-2048x1437.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 821px) 100vw, 821px" />1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)</div>
Though bloody (Lee suffered 25% casualties) his stunning victory at Chancellorsville prompted Lee to head north again. This time, however, he faced an Army Of The Potomac now being led by the competent and cool George Meade. In July 1863, during a three-day struggle around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Lee was dealt his worst loss of the war, losing some 27,000 out of the 75,000 men he brought north. He retreated back into Virginia, never to go on “the aggressive” as he called it again.
<div id="attachment_648559" style="width: 782px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-648559" class="size-large wp-image-648559" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99858355-772x576.jpg" alt="Confederate prisoners at Seminary ridge during the battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania circa July,1863. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)" width="772" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99858355-772x576.jpg 772w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99858355-300x224.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99858355-768x573.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-99858355.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 772px) 100vw, 772px" />Confederate prisoners at Seminary ridge during the battle of Gettysburg in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania circa July,1863. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)</div>
By the summer of 1864, with no hope of foreign intervention, and lacking the strength for any more offensive actions in the face of an overwhelming Union superiority in manpower and industry, Lee would grapple with U.S. Grant, his final and most formidable foe. The two gifted commanders fought a series of brutal engagements across the Virginia countryside from The Wilderness and Spotsylvania (May 1864) to Cold Harbor (June 1864) and finally settling in for a siege at Petersburg that would last nine months. Although weakened, Lee saw that his situation was not so hopeless as it appeared. He’d effectively halted Grant’s thrust towards Richmond and now the two armies were at loggerheads southeast of the capital at Petersburg. And Lee had managed to inflict over 50,000 casualties on his Northern enemy.
Understanding that wars are political as well as military, General Lee realized that with the 1864 elections approaching, the high casualties the war weary North was suffering at his hands might be enough to vote out Lincoln and prompt a more pro-South Democrat administration which might welcome the rebellious states back into the Union, or even let the South go its own way. But due to the actions of another Union commander further up our list, this political upheaval did not come to pass. When Lincoln handily won re-election in November 1864, the South was doomed. A tired but resplendently-uniformed Robert E. Lee surrendered what remained of the surrounded Army of Northern Virginia to the mud-splattered Grant in April 1865.
<div id="attachment_648339" style="width: 798px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-648339" class="size-large wp-image-648339" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907-788x576.jpg" alt="Vintage illustration at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia depicts Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the American Civil War." width="788" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907-788x576.jpg 788w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907-300x219.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907-768x561.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907-1536x1123.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/GettyImages-1249715907.jpg 2025w" sizes=" (max-width: 788px) 100vw, 788px" />Vintage illustration at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia depicts Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendering his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865, effectively ending the American Civil War. Keith Lance. Getty Images.</div>
Lee went on to head Washington College (later renamed Washington And Lee) and died in 1870 of a chronic heart ailment.
Robert E. Lee has been called a “marble man” for his stoicism and almost impenetrable personality; following the Civil War, he was idolized in the South to the point of being a demigod. But, Lee was just a man, like any other, and as such showed flaws…some of which could be quite detrimental to his cause. Most damning was his tendency to be profligate with his men’s lives. Indeed, the historian James McPherson calculated that Lee suffered the highest casualties as a percent of those under his command than any other army commander of the war, North or South. Lee’s confidence in the almost superhuman capacity of his troops to overcome all odds prompted him to send them into suicidal charges against well-prepared Union positions at Malvern Hill (June 1862) and again at Gettysburg a year later. It was, in fact, a very dangerous business fighting for “Marse Robert”.
Still, his men adored him. One man in the ranks declared, “I would charge hell itself for that old man!” So commanding a martial figure did Lee cut that once when the Confederates were marching through a Pennsylvania town, a brave loyal Union woman was brazenly waving the American flag before them. Then Lee rode up to her and looked down from his white horse Traveller. She dropped the flag, clasped her hands together and said of Lee: “Oh how I wish he were ours!”
Although Lee fought for an unjust cause in the preservation of slavery — one that had to be destroyed — there is no doubt that his campaigns will be studied in military academies as long as such institutions exist.
* * *
America’s Top 11 Generals
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-11-curtis-e-lemay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #11 Curtis E. LeMay</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-10-matthew-ridgway" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #10 Matthew Ridgway</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-9-nathanael-greene" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #9 Nathanael Greene</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americas-top-11-generals-8-george-patton" target="_blank" rel="noopener">RELATED: #8 George Patton</a>
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities trader, columnist, and author of two acclaimed novels. His newest book, the fact-based <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Life-Pits-Rough-Tumble-Exchange/dp/B0CKPNCMQW/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1331509151681009&amp;hvadid=83219665089301&amp;hvbmt=bp&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=97755&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=p&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83219680392082%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=18892_13467888&amp;keywords=brad+schaeffer&amp;qid=1698162015&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LIFE IN THE PITS: My Time as a Trader on the Rough-and-Tumble Exchange Floors</a> will be published in December and is currently available for pre-order. You can also find more of Brad’s articles on <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Substack</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Vintage Civil War photo of Confederate Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

America’s Top 11 Generals: #7 Robert E. Lee

America's Top 11 Generals: #7 Robert E. Lee

American Civil War

Virginia Memorial Featuring General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg

Why The Destruction Of Statues Is A Proxy In The Overall War On American History

Charlottesville

Matt Walsh

Menu