(1824-1861)
Barnard Bee was the Confederate 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 General Stonewall Jackson in the Confederate army.
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.
Barnard Bee (1824-1861)
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 Barnard 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 nickname.
The only fact that remains in question is whether or not the name given was positive or negative? It’s impossible to know, but the name stuck and is viewed then as it is now as positive.
