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Maj. John Pelham, CSA
  P elham
was a skinny, freckle-faced, country boy from Benton County Alabama.
He was either blessed or cursed with soft blue eyes, thin red lips and
fine blond hair that he had to keep cut short so as not to be mistaken
for a 16-year-old girl. In a word, John Pelham was “pretty.” But his
cherubic appearance was a perfect irony. As a boy he broke bulls – for
riding – for fun. At West Point he championed in fencing and boxing,
and at twenty-five years old he was a major in the Confederate army
where he commanded Jeb Stuart’s artillery – and his respect. He had
won the admiration of both sides for his fearless actions at Manassas,
on the peninsula, at Manassas again, at Sharpsburg, and while covering
Stuart’s crossing of the Potomac after his most recent circumnavigation
of George McClellan’s army – an humiliation that turned out to be the
last blow to the final nail in the Young Napoleon’s coffin.
For
his courage and skill on the field of battle, Stuart called him “brilliant.”
For
his pretty-little-girl good looks, everyone else called him “Sallie.”
The preceding
passage is an excerpt
from No Greater Courage, and may not be reproduced or reprinted
without permission in writing from the publisher.
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