| Summary |
The purpose of this study is to analyze the development of Major General William Dorsey Pender as a soldier, as a Christian, and as an individual. This gradual three-fold maturation may be traced through the intimate letters that he wrote to his wife during the Civil War. This correspondence reveals important aspects of his personality which developed during the war, such as a powerful sense of duty, a compelling ambition to excel, and a carefully suppressed vanity. Pender was born in 1834 and raised in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. At age sixteen, he procured an appointment to West Point, and graduated nineteenth in the illustrious class of 1854. He entered the service as a Second Lieutenant in the artillery, and in 1855 transferred to the First Dragoons. For four years, he was engaged in frontier service in the New Mexico and Washington territories. In 1858, he won promotion to First Lieutenant for gallantry in two battles against the northwestern Indians. The following year he married Mary Frances Shepperd, sister of a former classmate. In March 1861, Pender anticipated the course of his state and resigned his commission in order to offer his services to the Confederacy. He was rewarded with a captaincy in the Provisional Army and ordered to supervise recruitment in Baltimore. When North Carolina seceded in May, Pender was assigned to drill the officers of the first regiment organized in the state. He was later directed to establish a camp of instruction near Weldon, and was elected colonel of one of the regiments organized there. While the first year of war was relatively uneventful for Pender, it was a critical period in his development in which he learned to deal with greater responsibilities and with his own sudden importance. His initial zeal for the cause flagged in the dullness of drill in the backwaters of the war, but his sense of duty emerged triumphant to hold him to his post. In his desire for a more active command, he requested and was granted the colonelcy of the Sixth North Carolina. After he was transferred to the front line, the danger of instant death prompted him to look to his future salvation, and stirred a religious awareness in his unchurched soul. |
| Summary |
The Sixth was in a desperate condition when Pender assumed command, but under his concerned administration the regiment gradually regained its strength and morale. While his regiment passed a quiet winter guarding batteries near the Occoquan River, Pender attracted the attention of his superiors with his firm discipline, polished drill, and orderly camp. In the spring of 1862, the Sixth served in the campaign around Richmond. Pender had his first combat of the war at Eltham's Landing. At Seven Pines, he won promotion on the battlefield. His brigade was assigned to the division of A. P. Hill, and Pender was propelled into the mainstream of the war in the east. Pender earned his reputation in the battles of the Light Division from the Peninsula Campaign to Gettysburg. He may have erred in judgment in his first fight as a brigadier, but he restored his good name and his self-esteem in the subsequent battles. At Cedar Mountain, he was instrumental in the charge which swept the enemy from the field, and demonstrated his willingness to readily cooperate with his fellow brigadiers. At Manassas Junction, he personally led his brigade in single file across a stream to the attack. At Second Manassas and Harpers Ferry, he showed the capacity to direct several brigades in battle, as Hill repeatedly turned to him as his most reliable subordinate. At Chancellorsville, he enjoyed his supreme moment as a brigadier when he seized a flag and led a regiment over the enemy works. There he won promotion to Major General and, when the army was reorganized after the death of Jackson, he was given the vestige of the Light Division. As Pender matured as an officer, he became cognizant of the larger aspects of the struggle and urged the adoption of harsher measures to enforce conscription, punish deserters, and prevent straggling. As the war settled into a desperate fight for southern survival, his hatred towards the enemy and North Carolina Unionists grew increasingly bitter, and he became an advocate of an invasion of vengeance. In his only battle in command of a division, Pender distinguished himself on the first day at Gettysburg, when his brigades provided the culminating blow which carried the day. He was mortally wounded the next day, and his absence for the remainder of the battle was a critical blow to the Confederacy. Pender's deathbed words evinced a strong Christian faith. Initially, his religious awareness was fostered by the desire to please his wife, but under the constant threat of death it gradually evolved into a sincere effort to assure his salvation. When he died, Pender was recognized as one of the most intensely devout men in the army, which enhanced his popularity with his fellows. The eulogies delivered in his honor by his peers give evidence of the high esteem in which Pender was held. The military virtues of personal leadership, concern for discipline and order, sense of honor and duty, and fearlessness in battle excited the admiration of all who knew him. It was obvious that he had not yet reached the zenith of his development as a soldier, a Christian, and a man when he was struck down, and this is the ultimate tragedy of his brief life. |
