His beard, although impressive, is actually one of the least remarkable things about Stonewall’s general physical appearance. Convinced that one of his arms was longer than the other, he usually held one arm up in order to improve his circulation. He also chewed lemons in an attempt to ease his chronic indigestion, although his typically serious expression may have had more to do with his famously devout Christian faith than his taste for bitter citrus fruit.
An early Confederate hero, Jackson got his nickname at the First Battle of Bull Run, when his brigade of Virginians stood firm against a fierce Union assault. His Shenandoah Valley campaign, in which he skilfully manouevred his smaller force to a series of victories over much larger Union armies, gave him the reputation as one of the great generals of the war. Although undoubtedly eccentric and sometimes unpredictable (his rather sketchy performances during the Seven Days battles have been criticised by historians), his death in 1863 was a serious setback to both Southern morale and Confederate military capability. He was hit by friendly fire in the immediate aftermath of one of his greatest victories, the routing of the Union right at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
The American Civil War was notably influenced by the Napoleonic Wars half a century earlier, particularly in the way many of the battles were conducted. Several generals who had learned all about Napoleon at military school modelled themselves on the great man to a greater or lesser extent. But none shared both of his names, with the exception of the immaculately bearded Napoleon Bonaparte Buford.
Buford had only spent four years in the US Army after graduating from West Point, leaving to become an engineer in 1835. A quarter of a century later he returned to the colours on the outbreak of war, and perhaps his most notable achievement came at the Battle of Island Ten on the Mississippi in early 1862, where he commanded a brigade of infantry on board Union vessels. His younger brother John Buford achieved greater fame, playing a prominent role at the Battle of Gettysburg.
Beards being so popular during 1860s America, prominent individuals explored a variety of styles in their attempts to look both fashionable and distinguished. Here, Alcorn shows off a bushy beard-and-moustache combo without any sideburns. With his hair still dark around the sides, you imagine his grey beard must have looked quite striking.
Alcorn himself wasn’t really a soldier. A lawyer and politician in Mississippi, he was an opponent of secession but joined the Confederate Army anyway, serving as a Brigadier General. Not having any military experience, he spent most of his time in uniform engaged in raising recruits and garrison duty, although he was a prisoner of war for a time in 1862. Given parole by the Union Army, he went back to his plantation and made a lot of money trading cotton. After the war he was a notable Scalawag - a Southern supporter of the Republican Party and its Reconstruction policies - and served in the US Senate and as Governor of Mississippi.
Relatively speaking, Campbell’s Civil War military record was solid but unspectacular. This was in stark contrast to his beard, which was clearly neither of those things. I’d like to think that if you saw him head-on, you’d be able to see his bow tie through the little gap in the middle of his beard. I’d further like to think he planned it that way deliberately.
Campbell began the war as a Lieutenant in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry. After serving throughout the conflict at western battles including Shiloh, Perryville and Franklin, he was made a Brigadier General in the closing weeks of the war. It was the springboard to a successful post-war career. He was a journalist before returning to the regular army, then becoming the first Governor of the Wyoming Territory.
War is no laughing matter, but the photographic evidence suggests John B Gordon was a stern, unsmiling sort of fellow, even by the standards of the age. Just look at the dark hair, dark eyes, and that impressively dark and bushy goatee.
Soldiers with professional military experience were at a premium when the Civil War broke out, and Gordon didn’t have any. Not that it mattered. A lawyer and businessman from Georgia, he joined the Confederate Army in 1861 and rose through the ranks impressively, finishing the war as a major general. His aggressive style saw him personally wounded several times, including at Antietam where he was hit in the legs, arm, shoulder and then face, almost drowning in his own blood. A prominent Southern politician and white supremacist after the war, he served as Governor of Georgia and twice in the US Senate, as well as, according to some sources, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Of all the union generals to have lined up against Robert E Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, perhaps none suffered as infamous a defeat as John Pope did at the Second Battle of Bull Run. But then, none had a beard quite like this, bushy and surprisingly extensive, despite the absence of either sideburns or a moustache.
Pope took command of the Union army in Virginia in the summer of 1862, as President Lincoln reacted to the failure of the famously cautious George McClellan’s efforts in the Peninsula Campaign. Pope, flush with military successes over the Confederates on the Mississippi River, promised to aggressively pursue the enemy in Virginia too. But he fell into a trap near Manassas, was hopelessly outmanoeuvred, and the Union suffered arguably its most humiliating defeat of the war. Pope was immediately sent into a virtual military exile, fighting Indian tribes in Minnesota.
Lovell was a man who apparently did his best, both during the war and in terms of growing a sideburns-and-moustache combo. However, in both cases, his best wasn’t nearly good enough.
His facial hair shows promise, but is completely trumped by his Union contemporary Ambrose Burnside. If Burnside had been clean-shaven perhaps we’d be talking about ‘lovells’ rather than 'sideburns’ to this day. But he wasn’t, and we aren’t. In battle, Lovell was the Confederate military commander at New Orleans and took the blame for the Union capture of the city in early 1862, a crucial incident that deprived the Confederacy of its largest city for the rest of the war. Historians now suggest it was unfair to pin it all on Lovell, but that’s what the Confederate government did, and his reputation never recovered during his lifetime.
To describe Rawlins’ beard as straggly would be an understatement. It’s curiously asymmetrical, with a huge chunk at one side which seems to veer off at a strange angle. Given the novelty of photography in the 1860s, you’d think he’d have put a comb through it, at least.
When the war began Rawlins was a lawyer, not a soldier. He became a volunteer aide to Ulysses S Grant, and soon joined the Union Army, staying with Grant throughout the war and beyond. This was the equivalent of backing the right horse, as it was Grant who ultimately succeeded where several others had failed in defeating Robert E Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Rawlins was promoted to Brigadier General but his main role was as an administrator rather than a soldier. History also credits him with keeping Grant off the booze - if true then perhaps his most valuable achievement in the Union cause. When Grant became President he chose Rawlins as Secretary of War, but he died of tuberculosis shortly after.
The most senior general on either side to be killed in action during the war, Albert Sidney Johnston was one of the less hirsute military commanders. He had a long military career as a general in the Army of the Texas Republic as well as the US Army, and favoured just a moustache, albeit an immaculate one.
Johnston was put in charge of the huge western part of the Confederacy early in the war. He led his men into battle at Shiloh in April 1862 and was killed during a cavalry charge, apparently by friendly fire. His wound probably needn’t have been fatal, but he’d sent his personal doctor away to deal with injured Union prisoners, and the officers who went to his aid apparently had little idea of how to tie a tourniquet. One tried pouring brandy into his dying general’s mouth, unsurprisingly to little effect, and Johnston bled to death.
For a man pushing 60 when the war broke out, General Greene could still show off an impressive head of hair to go along with his remarkable beard and moustache. His uniform was in rather tattier shape when this photo was taken, as a couple of buttons appear to have got lost somewhere.
Greene had originally left the military in 1836 to become an engineer, but he returned to the colours after a gap of 25 years and served prominently at the battles of Cedar Mountain and Antietam. The oldest Union general at Gettysburg, he put his engineering experience to good use by ordering the construction of fortifications on Culp’s Hill, which his brigade successfully defended against fierce Confederate attacks. He lived until he was 97.
The Louisiana general was one of several Civil War figures to be likened to Napoleon. And there’s certainly a European look to his stylish moustache-and-sliver-of-a-beard combo.
Beauregard was a star Confederate general in the early days of the war, overseeing the bombardment of Fort Sumter that kicked the whole thing off, and then assuming command at Shiloh following the death of Albert Sidney Johnston. Beauregard arrived at Shiloh with Napoleon’s line of battle from Waterloo in his pocket, and like his hero he had to spend some time in exile when he was relieved of command following his decision to withdraw from Corinth without a fight. His later defences of Charleston and Petersburg restored his reputation, and after the war he declined offers to take charge of the armies of Brazil, Egypt and Romania.
The undoubted master of American Civil War facial hair, Burnside’s distinctive whiskers were originally known as ‘burnsides’ which turned into 'sideburns’ over time.
His career as a general was rather less successful. He was given command of the Union’s Army of the Potomac after George McClellan was finally removed in November 1862. He’d previously refused the job believing himself not up to it, a low opinion of his abilities shared by others after the costly defeat at Fredericksburg the following month. Burnside soon resigned, although he remained in the Army. He later copped the blame for the high Union casualties during the disastrous Battle of the Crater outside Vicksburg in July 1864, and finished the war on extended leave.
“I wonder if our white fellow men realize the true sense of meaning of brotherhood? For two hundred years we had toiled for them; the war of 1861 came and was ended, and we thought our race was forever freed from bondage, and that the two races could live in unity with each other, but when we read almost every day of what is being done to my race by some whites in the South, I sometimes ask, “Was the war in vain? Has it brought freedom, in the full sense of the word, or had it made our conditions more hopeless?…
There are still good friends to the negro. Why, there are still thousands….Man thinks two hundred years is a long time, and it is, too; but it is only as a week to God, and in his own time…the South will be like the North, and when it comes it will be prized higher than we prize the North to-day. God is just; when he created man he made him in his image, and never intended one should misuse the other. All men are born free and equal in his sight.”
A number of Massachusetts Reform School boys locked bayonets with the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market. I wrote about three of these forgotten soldiers for a recent guest article on Irish in the American Civil War.
Detail from a Harper’s Weekly illustration showing member of the 6th New York Infantry (”Wilson’s Zouaves”) along with US Regulars and sailors inside Fort Pickens, Santa Rosa Island, Florida, 1861.
