"A soldier should always seek the most desperate post that has to be filled."
William Ransom Johnson Pegram would die by the age of 23 for the Nation he loved and was loyal too. He was the greatest artillerist of the Civil War, and therefore the world as none was his equal.
He would die by his cannon, as he told his men, that if he ever lost a gun, his corpse would be found next to it.
Colonel Pegram was a pioneer in what would later become Patton Warfare. Patton would phrase it as grab them by the nose and kick them in the pants. Patton would phrase it as walking artillery in always advancing and driving the enemy back.
That is how Willy Pegram fought to the astonishment of his commanding Generals. He always said, "It may seem dangerous that I dash up close as I can to the enemy with my cannons and fire upon them, as in the end, it is safer to fight that way and it saves lives".
Willy Pegram rose through the ranks from private to colonel of artillery in command of sixty guns. There was a movement afoot to make him a general, but nothing ever came of it. It is said that both division level commanders Henry Heth and Richard H. Anderson separately asked for his promotion and assignment to command of an infantry brigade, and A.P. Hill endorsed Heth's recommendation of Pegram: "No officer of the Army of Northern Virginia has done more to deserve this promotion than lieutenant colonel Pegram." But Lee did not promote Pegram, saying, "He is too young—how old is Colonel Pegram?" Heth had answered: "I do not know, but I suppose about 25." Lee replied: "I think a man of 25 is as good as he ever will be; what he acquires after that age is from experience; but I can't understand, when an officer is doing excellent service where he is, why he should want to change." And so, the recommendations for Pegram to be promoted were returned with the statement that "the artillery could not lose the services of so valuable an officer." Indeed, many thought that Pegram was the best gunner in the Army of Northern Virginia.
Many note the passing of Stonewall Jackson or Jeb Stuart in the turning points in the Civil War for the South, but the passing of these two young Confederate gunners in John Pelham and William Pegram were the foundation that led to the deaths of their superiors, and the crippling of the Army of Northern Virginia.
One of the most important features of these seven days of battle was that it was the first prolonged wrestle of the Army of Northern Virginia, the struggle that really gave birth to that army; that gave it experience of its own powers, cohesion, character, confidence in itself and in its great commander--proper estimate of its great opponent, the Army of the Potomac, and its commander. Then, too, these days of continuous battle tested the individual men, and especially the officers of the army, winnowing the chaff from the wheat and getting rid of some high in command who did not catch the essential spirit of the army or assimilate well with it, or bid fair to add anything of value to it; at the same time this week of continuous battle brought to the front men who had in them stuff out of which heroes are made and who were destined to make names and niches for themselves in the pantheon of this immortal army.
Among those in my own branch of the service who came prominently to the front, besides Tom Carter, who never lost the place he made for himself at Seven Pines in the affectionate admiration of the artillery and of the army, were the boy artillerists Pegram and Pelham, both yielding their glorious young lives in the struggle--Pegram at the very end, Pelham but eight months after Malvern Hill. The latter, an Alabamian, was commander of Stuart's horse artillery, devotedly loved and admired by his commanding general, the pride of the cavalry corps, one of the most dashing and brilliant soldiers in the service, though but twenty-two years of age when he fell. He was knighted by Lee himself in official report as "the gallant Pelham."
The other, Pegram, was a more serious and a more powerful man, who came of a family of soldiers who had rendered
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distinguished service, both in the army and navy, prior to the war; an elder brother, a graduate of West Point and a singularly attractive man, rising to the rank of major-general in the Confederate service, and also losing his life in battle. The younger brother, the artillerist, a student when the war began, enlisted as a private soldier in a battery raised in the City of Richmond, which he commanded when the Seven Days' battles opened, rendering with it signal and distinguished service. Eventually he rose to the rank and command of colonel of artillery, and was recommended for appointment as brigadier-general of infantry, General Lee saying he would find a brigade for him just as soon as he could be spared from the artillery; but meanwhile he fell in battle at Five Forks in the spring of '65, even then hardly more than a stripling in years.
He had always been such a modest, self-contained and almost shrinking youth that his most intimate friends were astonished at his rapid development and promotion; but it was one of those strongly-marked cases where war seemed to be the needed and almost the native air of a young man. He was, in some respects, of the type of Stonewall Jackson, and like him combined the strongest Christian faith and the deepest spirituality with the most intense spirit of fight.
As commander of an artillery battalion he built up a reputation second to none for effective handling of his guns, his favorite method, where practicable, being to rush to close quarters with the enemy and open at the shortest possible range. He admitted that it seemed deadly, but insisted that it saved life in the end. When stricken down he lived enough to express his views and feelings, briefly but clearly, with regard to both worlds, and there never was a death more soldierly or more Christian.
Christian though is what defined William Pegram, in life, his coming to death, and his passing. He defined the epitome of manhood in this boy of America. His bravery was second to none and his virtue was second to none.
When one considered the treacherous Soros rioters in all they are tearing down, which is the legacy of William Pegram in all of it's Christian American Virtue, it is beyond the pale to have this part of a Hillary 2020 campaign, especially since such intrigue and manipulation would never have come to mind in the character of the soul who is William Pegram as such a thing would have repulsed him as unAmerican.
William Pegram, the greatest of Americans.
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