Barnard Bee

Stonewall Jackson

(1824-1861)

Barnard Bee was the Rebel General, who is attributed with giving one of the most famous generals of the Civil War, his sterling nickname, General Stonewall Jackson. General Bee was a Confederate army officer, who commanded the 3rd Brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, during the First Battle of Bull Run. During that battle, he tried to rally his troops by screaming out the famous words "rally around the Virginians, there stands Jackson like a stone wall". From that time on, General Thomas J. Jackson of Virginia would be better known as the famous General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate armed forces.

Tragedy struck Bee shortly after he yelled those famous words, as he was wounded and died the very next day. The irony of the situation was that General Barnard Bee would be known more for his attribution to Stonewall Jackson's name-sake than to his true battle heroics. This cannot be overstated and he was a hero in light of overwhelmingly superior Union forces charging the Confederate lines at Bull Run. The course of the life of Bee was one that started in a small Southern town and ended up in the glorified fields of battle that was the Civil War. Born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1824, he could trace his family roots all the way back to the American Revolution.

He is buried in Pendleton, South Carolina, which was also his home state. Although a true Virginian by nature, the affable General Barney Bee would later be immortalized with General Stonewall Jackson and the Confederate cause in the Civil War. After muttering those words and dying the way he did on the battlefield of the First Battle of Bull Run, he will always go down in Civil War history as the man that gave ‘Stonewall” his namesake. The only fact that remains in question is that of whether or not the namesake given was positive or negative? The only sure thing that can be said about the entire ‘Stonewall’ affair was that the name was kept proudly by General Stonewall Jackson, and for all intensive purposes, was positive in his eyes, the only set that mattered.

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