The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson: In Which is Told the Part Taken by the Rockbridge Artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia

The opening of this memoir finds Edward Alexander Moore as a student at Washington College, watching Virginia tear itself apart over secession. Within months, the young student becomes a cannoneer in the Rockbridge Artillery, one of the most celebrated batteries in the Confederate Army. What follows is an intimate, ground-level account of war: the backbreaking labor of hauling cannon over muddy roads, the deafening chaos of bombardment, and the strange friendships forged in shared danger. Moore encountered Stonewall Jackson early and often, serving under him through some of the war's bloodiest campaigns. His account captures Jackson the man, not the legend: the peculiar habits, the religious intensity, the moments of almost childlike kindness. This is history from inside the cannon smoke, told by someone who carried the shot and lit the fuses. The book endures because it offers something no textbook can: the texture of survival, the boredom between battles, the way boys became soldiers.