I recently gave a talk to residents of my retirement village about my family in the Civil War. Readers of this blog may already be familiar with the story, but I repeat.
This was my talk.
Good morning. My name is Edwin Saunders Jordan. I go by the nickname Sandy, and I’m a resident of Brookside 139. I had the pleasure of meeting many of you during the last meeting of the Roundtable..
Last month I told Elizabeth that I would be pleased to tell the story of my family’s Civil War experiences, so here I go. I hope you will find it interesting, but it’s possible I will give you far more information than you truly want. Along those lines, I’m reminded of the story of Nicollo Machiavelli and his History of Florence. It comprised seven volumes – excruciatingly detailed and so incredibly boring that in the late 16th century two Italian noblemen got into a heated dispute about whether or not anyone could actually read Machiavelli’s history. The dispute ended in a bet. One of the noblemen had a condemned scholar in his dungeon awaiting execution. The man was brought up and offered freedom in exchange for reading the volumes and writing a brief synopsis of each. The man fell on his knees in gratitude, and he was placed in a lighted room to begin his work. Late on the second day he sent a note to his captor requesting immediate execution.
I hope you good people won’t have a similar reaction to my presentation.
By the way. I welcome interruptions. Please stop me when you have a comment or question.
It appears that I’m a bit of a rarity in this group. I understand that most of you hail from north of the Mason Dixon Line. I’m a southerner. I was born in North Carolina. Even more rare is the fact that I had a grandfather who fought in the Civil War. My Grandfather Clement Jordan and his five brothers all served in the Army of Northern Virginia. My Great Grandfather, Elijah Jordan, was in the home guard
It happened this way. I’m 96 years old, born in 1929. My father was 56 when I arrived. He came into this world in 1873 and his father, my grandfather Clement Hopkins Jordan was born in 1841, just the right age to be caught up in the Civil War twenty years later.
But first I will talk of my mother’s family, the Rives.
My mother, Annie Belle Rives, was born in 1891. The first information I have on that side of my family dates from when the Rives were residing near the village of Blandford in Dorsetshire, southwest England, around 1550. During the following century many Rives sided with King Charles during the English civil war and probably lost land and possessions when Charles I was executed and Cromwell took power. Some of them came to America in the mid 1650s and settled in middle Virginia. Many Rives still live in that area, but my particular branch of the family migrated from Virginia to North Carolina about 20 years after the American Revolution. There they mixed with other English, Scot and German immigrants in Chatham County, North Carolina.
My great grandfather, Robert Rives, moved from North Carolina to Arkansas in the late 1850s, and he died there in 1861 just as the Civil War began. Several of Robert’s brothers fought for the Confederacy, but one fought for the Union. Robert’s youngest son Edwin Rives, my maternal grandfather, was born in Arkansas in 1859, so he was a child during the war. During or after the war, his mother returned to North Carolina to be with family, and Edwin grew up there.
Now for the Jordans. The first of my Jordan relatives to appear in America came to Jamestown in 1610, three years after that colony was established. More Jordans arrived soon thereafter, most of them coming from Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, counties in southwestern England, some of them from the vicinity of the Rives family homestead. Strange to think that my father’s and mother’s ancestors may have known each other in Dorset circa 1550.
By the way, our Jordan family relationships have been confirmed by DNA testing.
My direct Jordan forebearers, cousins of the Jamestown Jordans, settled in tidewater Virginia, between the York and Rappahannock rivers, before the mid-1700s. When the Revolutionary War erupted, some of them took up arms in the Patriot cause, but others, including my great-great grandfather Robert Jordan, stayed out of it. During the war he moved west from tidewater Virginia to Halifax County, Virginia, close to the North Carolina border. There he acquired land and reared a large family. The last of his eight sons, my great grandfather Elijah Jordan, was born in Halifax County in 1804. Elijah married Martha Faulkner in 1825, and they were the parents of six sons and two daughters. My grandfather, Clement Jordan, was the fifth son, born in 1841.
One of the Jamestown Jordans had nine sons. Robert Jordan had eight sons, then Elijah had six sons. All of these Jordan boys survived infancy. Other Jordan men also had sons and daughters.
WHO says that George Washington is the father of our country?
Elijah Jordan became a prosperous farmer. In 1860 he had more than 400 acres of good farmland valued at approximately 20,000 dollars, and his personal wealth was estimated to be 32,790 dollars. Though he was not fabulously wealthy, those dollar amounts were very impressive for those times, probably ranking him somewhere in the second highest tier of Virginia plantation society.
When the country divided in 1860-61, there were many economic reasons, but the critical issue was slavey.
Why did southerners fight so desperately in defense of an evil institution? Slavery had been around since the beginnings of civilization, but it had gradually disappeared in western Europe and in the northern American states. However, the south’s economy was built mainly on cotton and tobacco cultivation, and the large farms were heavily dependent on slave labor. Most Southerners owned no slaves, but the big planters had political power, dominated state governments, and were determined to defend their wealth and way of life. As for allegiances, the typical citizen’s loyalty was to family, community, state, and nation in that order. The union was relatively low on the pecking list. Confederate commander Robert E. Lee and my grandfather’s brigade commander, Richard Garnett, provide excellent examples. Both these men were opposed to secession and wished to preserve the union, but when their state seceded and their choice was between state or union, they chose their state. Most southerners made the same choice.
Most southerners had no slaves, and those who did usually had only one to three. As to my own family, I must confess that it was deeply involved and profited from slavery. The 1860 census shows Great Grandfather Elijah having 43 slaves, a considerable number. I neither brag nor apologize for this fact. It’s simply the way it was. Elijah was a product of his times. I know nothing else that might impugn his character.
Elijah’s family was totally committed to the southern cause.
Virginia seceded on April 17, 1861, three days after the fall of Fort Sumpter and two days after Lincoln issued his call to arms. Elijah’s four eldest sons all quickly volunteered for military service. They joined the Black Walnut Dragoons, a unit that was soon redesignated as Company C of the Third Virginia Cavalry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia. Confederate cavalry volunteers were expected to provide their own horses and often their own weapons, meaning that Confederate cavalrymen were often sons of more affluent planters.
The Third Cavalry was quickly involved in heavy combat. It served with Stonewall Jackson in 1861, and in 1862 it was engaged in the Peninsula Campaign. During the next two years it fought in the Valley of Virginia, at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and other major battles. It performed well and was on the winning side in most engagements.
In the early spring of 1864 General Ulysses Grant began to apply unrelenting pressure on the Army of Northern Virginia. The Confederates continued to win their fair share of battles, but instead of withdrawing and reforming as his predecessors had done, Grant continued to press forward, pushing Lee steadily south towards Richmond. As for the Third Virginia Cavalry, the men were beginning to find themselves outgunned by Phil Sheridan’s men. Many Federal cavalrymen had recently been equipped with breech loading, fast shooting Spencer repeating rifles. The Confederates continued to rely principally on single-shot, muzzleloading carbines. The glory days of the Confederate cavalry were over.
It’s interesting to consider the role of the Spencer repeating rifles. They were available at the beginning of the war, but the Union army failed to adopt them for logistical reasons. The army’s Chief of Ordnance doubted military suppliers’ ability to produce and deliver ammunition in sufficient quantities to serve a large number of rapid firing weapons, As a consequence, both Union and Confederate armies remained primarily equipped with single shot muzzle-loading rifles.
The inventor of the Spencer rifle gave a demonstration to Lincoln in late summer of 1863, and the President pressed for the gun’s adoption. Army ordinance continued to resist because of supply concerns, but many Federal cavalry regiments equipped themselves with Spencers during the last year of the war. George Armstrong Custer was one of the first to use them. The Confederates managed to seize a few Spencers, but they had no way to acquire ammunition, so they continued to rely principally on single-shot, muzzle loading carbines. The Spencers gave Federal cavalry a significant tactical advantage in the war’s final engagements.
Another repeating rifle of this period was the Henry. It could hold even more rounds than the Spencer, but it was not quite so sturdy and was not designed to accommodate a bayonet. It was also quite expensive. Nevertheless, a few Federal units manage to equip themselves with fast firing Henrys. The rifle gained its greatest fame during the late 1864 Battles of Franklin and Nashville when Henry equipped Union soldiers inflicted devastating casualties on their Confederate opponents, especially their officers, helping to virtually destroy John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee.
In the east, Spencers did much of the bloody work in cavalry engagements. On May 11, 1864, J.E.B. Stuart, brilliant Confederate cavalry leader, was mortally wounded during the Battle of Yellow Tavern. In this same battle my great uncle John Jordan was also wounded. However, John survived and was soon back in the saddle. Shortly afterwards, John took command of Company C of the Third Virginia Cavalry, and fought on until the end of the war.
John’s brother Joseph Jordan was wounded and taken captive at Athens Station in the Battle of North Anna, May 23-26, 1864. He was imprisoned at Elmira, New York, where he recovered and managed to live out the war.
During the same week that John was wounded, brother William Jordan was wounded in an attack on Wilson’s Wharf (Fort Kennon). Interestingly, this was the first battle in which Confederates faced up against a Union force composed primarily of Blacks. The defenders fought well, and the Confederate attacks were repulsed. After recovering from his injuries, William was able to rejoin his company.
Three of the Jordan brothers had been wounded over the course of two weeks, and one of them was now a prisoner of war. Robert, the oldest brother, emerged from these bloody engagements with no major war wound, but he reportedly suffered from increasingly poor health.
The Third Virginia Cavalry slowly retreated south after these battles, and in late 1864 it became involved in defending the Petersburg-Richmond perimeter, fighting mostly as dismounted cavalry. After the Confederate defeat at Five Forks on April 1, 1865, Lee’s defensive line collapsed, and the Third Cavalry retreated with other remaining army units toward Appomattox. However, before Lee’s surrender on April 9, what was left of the regiment broke through Union lines and retreated in the direction of the Valley of Virginia. Only three soldiers of the Third Virginia Cavalry surrendered at Appomattox on April 9. The remainder of the regiment disbanded at Lynchburg on April 11, not very far from where the Jordan brothers had enlisted four years earlier.
What about the other Jordan brothers and my great-grandfather Elijah?
Grandfather Clement Hopkins Jordan, my great-grandfather Elijah’s fifth son, enlisted in the Danville Grays on April 23, 1861, four months before his 20th birthday. The Grays had just been formed as a company of volunteers, and a few weeks later they were incorporated as Company B, 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia. Clement served as an enlisted man in Company B.
In July 1861 Clement saw action at Manassas in the First Battle of Bull Run. His unit’s next major military engagement was in the defense of Richmond during George McClellan’s 1862 Peninsula Campaign. Either during or following those seven-day battles Clement contracted Typhoid Fever and was hospitalized in the Chimborazo military hospital in Richmond. He missed the battles at Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg, but he rejoined his regiment soon thereafter.
During the early months of 1863 the 18th Virginia Regiment was involved in campaigning in eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia under General Longstreet. The main purpose was to keep transportation lines open as necessary to supply Lee’s army with food and critical supplies. In May or June 1863 the regiment was ordered north to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia, and the afternoon of July 3, 1863, saw Clement forming with other members of the 18th for an assault on Federal lines at Gettysburg. His regiment was part of Garnett’s Brigade, Pickett’s Division. The division had not been engaged in the first two days of combat at Gettysburg, so this relatively fresh unit was chosen to lead the charge on Cemetery Ridge. My grandfather had the honor of being involved in that historic event, though I’m quite certain he would have preferred to be elsewhere. The upshot was, Grandfather started up the hill, got shot, and then came back down the hill. It was a serious arm wound, but somehow he evaded capture and avoided an amputation.
Because of the effect of large caliber minie balls fired from rifles used by both armies, arm and leg wounds frequently resulted in devastating wounds requiring amputations. 58 caliber rifles were standard in the Civil War. Compare that to the standard 30 caliber rifle of World War II.
Clement’s Gettysburg wound was caused by a minie ball striking the right arm just below the elbow and passing through the middle of the arm. Somehow it missed the bone, and Clement was able to keep his arm, but years later his daughter Elsie told me that after the war he could no longer raise that arm above his shoulder.
As to the severity of the wounds suffered by his brothers, they all somehow survived, but I’m not certain about their arms and legs, fingers and toes.
After Gettysburg Clement was out of action for several months, but by year’s end he was back with his regiment. Over the next fourteen months Clement witnessed and experienced the slow death of a once proud army. Rejoining his regiment in December 1863, he was promoted to corporal and became involved in heavy fighting in places like Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor as the Confederates were slowly pushed back toward Richmond. During the final months of the war the 18th Virginia Regiment was one of the units defending the Petersburg/Richmond perimeter.
On March 31, 1865, Clement suffered his second major wound in the fighting at Hatcher’s Run during the Battle of White Oak Road. This time a minie ball struck the back of his right hand and passed through the palm, shattering his hand bones. The wound was extremely painful and immediately rendered him hors de combat. Perhaps fortunately for Clement, no surgeon was available for amputations. The day after Clement was wounded the Confederate line was broken at Five Forks, and the army’s retreat to Appomattox began.
Clement was evacuated with other Confederate wounded on April 1st or 2nd, perhaps on the same train that took Jefferson Davis west to Danville. Thus, Clement once more evaded capture. Nor was he caught up in the last agonizing days of the Army of Northern Virginia that ended with its surrender on April 9. Since Clement could have arrived in Danville on the 1st or 2nd, it’s possible that he made it all the way back home before the end.
Clement’s younger brother, Samuel, only 14 when the war began, served for a time in the home guard and then joined the 18th Virginia Regiment shortly before the end of hostilities. He was captured at Sayler’s Creek a few days before Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. The regiment virtually ceased to exist after that battle.
Great-Grandfather Elijah Jordan also served in the home guard, and on June 25, 1864, he shouldered his rifle and joined other members of the guard and Confederate regulars to successfully defend the Staunton River bridge from a Federal attack. Elijah was 60 at that time.
As you can see, these records show the family’s total involvement in the conflict. Elijah’s name, along with the names of his five sons who were also buried at this place, is inscribed with those of other Confederate veterans on a memorial erected in the Oak Ridge Cemetery, South Boston, Virginia. Elijah’s son, Joseph, also a veteran, had moved to North Carolina and was buried there.
Elijah and his six sons all survived the war, though four of them suffered battle wounds. Considering Civil War death rates, the survival of the Halifax County Jordans was amazing. A family of close cousins in in North Carolina lost two of four adult sons. Cousins in Tennessee lost three of five. The sons of Elijah certainly lived up to the ancient Jordan family motto, Percussa Resurgo (When Stuck Down, I Rise Again).
Elijah died in 1885, 81 years old and in the sixtieth year of his marriage to Martha. Martha died the following year.
My grandfather Clement recovered from his wounds. Nevertheless, his use of one arm was permanently impaired, and his right hand was severely damaged.
On December 13, 1869, Clement married Loula Slate of Danville in a ceremony performed in Richmond. Through her mother Helena Fackler, Loula had roots in the Pennsylvania Dutch community, and she was well educated, but I have been told that she remained an unreconstructed rebel until the end of her life.
Clement died in November 1909 at the age of 68, 20 years before my birth. Grandmother Loula then took up residence in her daughter Elsie’s home in Greensboro, North Carolina. She lived there until 1933, but I have no memory of her.
Clement and Loula had five children. My father, Robert Saunders Jordan, born in 1873, was their only son. He became a physician, graduating from medical school in 1899. He went by the name of Saunders or Sandy. He married Sarah Poindexter of Mississippi in 1902, and after brief sojourns in Mississippi and Texas, he returned to Halifax County. Saunders and Sarah had three children. After the death of Sarah in 1926, Saunders moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. There he met and married my mother Annie Belle Rives Fields, a widow with four children ranging in age from eight to fifteen. I was the only child of this second marriage.
As one looks at the Civil War record of death and destruction, great-grandfather Elijah’s family was among the fortunate ones. Nevertheless, the war had a devastating effect on family fortunes. Remember, in 1860 Elijah had more than 400 acres of good farmland valued at approximately 20,000 dollars, with his personal wealth being estimated as 32,790 dollars. In 1870 Elijah’s remaining farmland was valued at 6,000 dollars and his personal wealth at 500 dollars. As with so many other Southern landholders, his money and former way of life had “gone with the wind.”
As the war ended, the entire South was in miserable condition. Most of the larger towns and cities were occupied by Union troops, some of them remaining there until 1877. Eleven Southern cities had been destroyed or severely damaged by military action, including Atlanta, Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond. Farms were in disrepair, and the prewar stock of horses, mules, and cattle was much depleted. Forty percent of Southern livestock had been killed. Also, the transportation infrastructure lay in ruins, with little railroad or riverboat service available to move crops and animals to market.
Worst of all was the terrible loss of life. Over a quarter of Southern White men of military age—the backbone of the White workforce—died during the war, leaving their families destitute.
It’s difficult for us to comprehend that sort of death rate. Let me illustrate by telling you a bit about my own state, North Carolina, the place I know best. South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860. Most of the other southern states followed in January and February 1861 and formed the Confederacy. They stated that they merely wished to leave the Union and be left alone. Nevertheless, a few southern hotheads decided to attack the federal fort in Charleston harbor – a foolish and dangerous provocation. The Fort Sumter bombardment began on April 12, 1861, and the fort surrendered on April 14. On April 15 Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion. Virginia seceded on April 17, and North Carolina was now caught between two seceding states, South Carolina to the south and Virginia to the north. Whereas states like South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama had slave populations that exceeded or nearly matched their numbers of white citizens, North Carolina’s slave population was only about 30% of the total. Also, it had more than 30 thousand free persons of color. Slaveless small landholders predominated in the piedmont and western counties, and Union sentiment was strong in those parts of the state. North Carolina’s leaders worked hard to avoid conflict. Nevertheless, their sympathies were with the South, and when war appeared inevitable, the state seceded on May 20, 1861.
Although reluctant to secede, North Carolina became totally involved in the war, and it suffered its terrible consequences. Of its 661,000 White citizens, approximately 120,000 of them saw military service in the Civil War. I count only Whites in this tally because no Blacks were enlisted in the rebel military. Of the 120 thousand North Carolinians who saw service, the vast majority were in Confederate units. However, several thousand Carolinians, mainly from western counties, fought for the Union. Of course, there were also a few Federal Black units composed of freemen or freed slaves recruited in the state. I have no information on the number.
Of the 120 thousand North Carolinians known to have enlisted or been drafted, an estimated 40 thousand died during the war. Slightly less than half of this number were killed in action or died from wounds. The others succumbed to disease. Regardless of cause, this meant one dead out every three men who served, which is a truly devastating statistic. North Carolina’s Civil War losses among its white population would be equivalent to the United States losing more than 7.5 million dead in World War II. Our actual loss in that great war was little over 400 thousand.
Another fact for your consideration. As you probably know, during the Civil War men from a particular town or county usually enlisted in the same unit. Thus, you had the Danville Grays, the Black Walnut Dragoons, and so on. Black Walnut was the name of the small village near where the Jordan family lived. Danville was the largest nearby town. When a unit suffered heavy casualties in a battle or from an epidemic of typhoid, a community’s military age male population could be virtually wiped out. This happened with some frequency, adding to the overall misery.
Wounded soldiers were everywhere after the Civil war, and the provision of pensions and prosthetics was a big part of every southern state’s budget. In 1886 Grandfather Clement applied for a veteran’s disability pension from the state of Virginia, but we do not know if the pension was approved. After Clement’s death, Grandmother Loula applied for and evidently received a modest widow’s stipend from the state of Virginia based on the fact that Clement had been handicapped by his war wounds. There is evidence that good political connections may have helped secure her application’s approval.
I wrote this account of the Civil War with primary emphasis on its effect on my family and the Southern White population. But what about the Blacks? The former slaves were now on their own, trying to acquire land and scratch out some sort of existence in the shattered southern economy. Federal land grant programs were largely ineffective. Many Blacks were forced into sharecropping or became laborers, others fled northward. For those that remained, many of their former masters were now attempting to keep them in a state of subservience. This was mostly because of the determination of Whites to retain political control, but fear also played a part. Images of the bloody Haitian slave rebellion, the Nat Turner horror, and the alleged Murrell Conspiracy haunted the dreams of former slaveholders. These fears may have been exaggerated, but they were real. Blacks were suppressed, segregation and second-class citizenship became institutionalized, and a long struggle for equality lay ahead for the underclass.
It took many years for some areas of the South to recover, and progress was impeded by those attempts to keep Black citizens in a state of subjection. Eighty years ago, in the summer of 1946, I attended a Christian youth camp. One evening a Black pastor spoke to us, and I have always remembered his words. He said, “No man can keep another man in a ditch unless he gets in it himself.” The pastor was absolutely correct, but it took many years and some outside pressure for the South to learn that lesson. Only with the gradual elimination of repressive racial laws has the South begun to realize its true potential.
POSTSCRIPT: That about ends my story. From the account I have given you today, it might appear that I am well informed about the lives of my grandfather Clement Jordan, grandmother Loula, and my other Civil War family members. Unfortunately, that is not true. I know almost nothing about their private lives. Despite our age difference, my father and I were close, and I loved him dearly, but he never talked to me about his parents, uncles, aunts and cousins; and I asked him no questions. When the past was mentioned, he would always say “Those times are dead and gone.” I have always regretted not pressing him for information. Almost everything I now know is based on a few bits of information from an aunt and research done by my son Stuart. He is our family’s true genealogical expert.
Unlike my father, I have made certain that my sons and grandchildren are well informed about our family. I have written hundreds of pages of recollections concerning my parents, siblings and beloved nieces and nephews – as well about my own life journey. I hope they will appreciate my efforts, and none of them will request immediate execution
Jordans-Journey 