How the Charleston Mercury Gave St by Stephen Davis Newspapers, as the saying goes, write the first draft of history. Such was the case of the Charleston Mercury’s reporting on the battle of Manassas, and Leonidas W. Spratt’s article on “Stonewall” Jackson. Everyone knows the story, but there are variants in the literatu “The story was circulating three days after the battle,” writes Dr. Freeman.1 This explains how Mary Chesnut could write in her diary entry of July 24 that her husband James had told her that in the battle, Colonel Jackson’s regiment “stood so stock-still under fire they were called a stone wall.”2 It didn’t take long, however, before the yarn got a positive spin. “Look! there is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer!” Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee is said to have yelled in John Esten Cooke’s early biography (1863).3 But there are variants: “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall” (SHSP, 1891); “There he stands like a stone wall!” (Mary Anna Jackson, 1892); “Look there at Jackson standing like a stone wall” (Allen Tate, 1928); “Look, there stands Jackson like a stone wall” (Burke Davis, 1954); “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall” (Frank Vandiver, 1957; David Detzer, 2004); “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall” (Hennessy, 1989); “Come with me and go yonder where Jackson stands like
l His Nickname a stone wall” (JoAnna McDonald, 1999).4 Given all this, it’s probably good to trace back to the story’s first appearance in print: the Charleston Mercury of July 25, 1861”: “There is JACKSON standing like a stone-wall. Let u determine to die here and we will conquer. Follow me!”5 The Mercury’s correspondent went unsigned, but we know it was Leonidas Spratt.6 Leonidas William Spratt was born near Fort Mill, S.C. on Aug. 3, 1818. He graduated from South Carolina College (now USC) in 1850, earned his law degree and began practicing in Charleston. There in 1853 he became copublisher and co-editor of the Charleston Southern Standard, in which he argued for reopening the slave trade. His book, The Foreign Slave Trade: the Source of Political power and of Materia Progress, of Social Integrity, and Social Emancipation in the South, was published in 1858, the year after he sold his intere to Robert Barnwell Rhett, Sr., owner of the Charleston Mercury. An ardent secessionist, he was the only newspaperman to sign the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession.7 Shortly after the war started, he signed on as reporter for the Mercury, and headed for Virginia. Sensing a looming battle, he travelled to Manassas Junction in late June. There he watched the battle unfold on July 21, and reported it in
bulletins sent to the Mercury, starting at 10 a.m.: “Generals BEAUREGARD, JOHNSTON and BONHAM, have just come to the hill where I have been standing”; “the firing now is at its height” (12:30). Afterward he interviewed an officer on General Bonham’s staff and in Richmond composed a long article on the battle, which he telegraphed to his paper. “Latest Particulars of the Great Battle” appeared on the Mercury’s front page July 25, including the famous paragraph: Gen BEE immediately rallied the remnant of his brigade, and his last words to them were: “There is JACKSON standing like a stone-wall. Let us determi to die here and we will conquer. Follow me!”8 “Preserving this story was Spratt’s major contribution to Civil War journalism,” writes Patricia G. McNeely in her article on Spratt that appears in Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting (2010).9 Soon afterward Spratt quit the Mercury and joined the army as a private, but was soon promoted to major. He was assigned to General Longstreet’s staff, in which he served until the close o the war. Afterward Spratt practiced law in Charleston raised a family (he got married in June of ’62) and wrote three books of a rather philosophical nature, to judge from the title of the first one i 1894: Man in Continuation at
Inscription on Bee’s gravestone: Front: General Barnard Elliott Be Carolina. Commander, Third Brigad Shenandoah, was killed here July his death, to rally his scattered command “Form, form, there stands wall, rally behind the Virginians Taliaferro Thompson Southern Memo of Washington, D.C. July 21, 1939 Clay, Chairman. Alice Boswell Mor Streater. Maude Bird Phares. Norm November 2022
Someone got wrong—an irony upon a Souther who captured o great stories, literature.
South rmy of the 1861. Just bef ops, he gave t kson like a st resented by th Association ar: Lucy Steel n. Julia Neaso rdy Britton.
all shaft of white marble ma tally wounded at the Battle empting to rally his broken Jackson and his Virginians a s christening both Jackson a his wounds the following day assas. The monument was erec orial Association of Washing otes Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942-44) vol. 1, 733. C. Vann Woodward, ed., Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 108 John Esten Cooke, Stonewall Jackson (New York: G. W. Dillingham, 1894 [1863]), 68-69. William M. Robins, “The Soubriquet ‘Stonewall’: How It Was Acquired,” Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 19 (1891), 166; Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (Dayton OH: Press of Morningside Bookshop, 1976 [1892]), 179; Allen Tate, Stonewall Jackson The Good Soldier: A Narrative (New York Minton, Balch & Company, 1928), 86; Burke Davis, They Called Him Stonewall: A Life of Lt. Gen T.J. Jackson, C.S.A. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1954), 149; Frank E Vandiver, Mighty Stonewall (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1957), 161; John Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence July 1821, 1861 (Lynchburg VA: H. E. Howard, 1989), 83; JoAnna M. McDonald, “We Shall Meet Again”: The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run), July 18-21, 1861 (Shippensburg PA: White Mane Books, 1999), 128;
spot where General Barnard E t Manassas (Bull Run) on July on Henry Hill, Bee pointed to ared, “There stands Jackson l brigade with their famous sob s the highest-ranking officer the Mary Taliferro Thompson S C., on July 21, 1939. David Detzer, Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run 1861 (Orlando FL: Harcourt, 2004), 337. Douglas Southall Freeman treats the origin of the “Stonewall” nickname in Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942-44), Vol. 1, 73334. Two more good accounts are James V. Murfin, “How Stonewall Got His Name,” Civil War Times Illustrated, vol. 1, no. 4 (July 1962), 39-40; and John Hennessy, “Stonewall’s Nickname: Fact or Fable?,” Civil War, vol. 8 no. 2 (March-April 1990), 10-17. “BY TELEGRAPH. Latest Particulars the Great Battle. OUR SPECIAL ACCOUNTS FROM RICHMOND. [FROM OUR OWN C O R R E S P O N D E N T. ] Charleston Mercury, July 25, 1861. J. Cutler Andrews, The South Reports the Civil War (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 83. Patricia G. McNeely, “Leonidas W. Spratt Preserving the Legend of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson” in Patricia G. McNeely, Debra Reddin van Tuyll and Henry H. Schulte, eds., Knights of the Quill: Confederate Correspondents and their Civil War Reporting (West Lafayette IN: Purdue University Press, 2010), 14059. A brief announcement of Spratt’s death is in
fell 61. While al Thomas stonewall!”, . Bee died e at First n
Confederate Veteran, vol. 11, no. 11 (November 1903 517, which informs us that Spratt was a cousin President James K. Polk. 8. Mercury, July 25. 9. McNeely, “Spratt,” 156. 10. Ibid., 159, 163 n.90.
Stephen Davis is our “Critic’ Corner” columnist. His latest book is The Atlanta Daily Intelligencer Covers the Civi War (University of Tennessee Press). Dr. Gordon L. Jones, Senior Military Historian for the Atlanta History Center, h called it an “immersive voyag into a wartime South you’ve never seen before. Fascinatin and groundbreaking!”
