Sorrel followed the fortunes of his chief, serving as adjutant-general of his brigade, division, and corps, with rank successively as captain, major, and lieutenant-colonel, and distinguished himself many times by his gallantry and efficiency. During the siege of Petersburg the tardy promotion which he had long deserved and for which he had been time and again recommended, came to him and he succeeded Brigadier-General Girardey, a gallant soldier, who had been killed in battle, as commander of a brigade in Mahone's division, A. P. Hill's Third Corps.
When promoted he showed the right spirit by making a faithful and brave courier his aide-de-camp. As a general, as well as while on the staff, Sorrel often had his "place near the flashing of the guns." At Sharpsburg he leaped from his horse, with Fairfax, Goree, Manning, and Walton, of Longstreet's staff, to serve as cannoneers at the guns of the Washington Artillery, whose soldiers had been struck down. While he was carrying a message to a brigade commander his horse was shot under him, and still later on the same field a fragment of a shell struck him senseless and he was for a while disabled. He passed through the maelstrom of Gettysburg, here and there upon that field of blood; the hind legs of his horse were swept away by a cannon ball, and at the same time he and Latrobe, of Longstreet's staff, were carrying in their arms saddles taken from horses slain under them.
At the Wilderness, May 6, 1864, he was at the side of his chief when that officer was badly wounded, and when General Jenkins, of South Carolina, and Captain Dobie of the staff were killed. He won his general's wreath that day, although it was some time before it reached him. At the crisis when Longstreet's corps was going to the rescue he was entrusted with marshalling three brigades to flank the advancing forces of General Hancock. Moving forward with the line of the Twelfth Virginia Infantry, of Mahone's brigade, he endeavored to take its colors as it advanced to the onset, but Ben May, the stout-hearted standard-bearer, refused him that honor and himself carried them to victory. When this battle was over General Lee saluted him as "General Sorrel."
He was wounded in the leg while commanding his brigade on the right of the Confederate line near Petersburg; and again he was shot in the lungs at Hatcher's Run in January, 1865, the same action in which fell the brave General John Pegram, then commanding Early's old division.
During the illness resulting from this wound, General Sorrel was cared for by relatives in Roanoke County, Virginia, and having recovered sufficiently returned to the field. He was in Lynchburg, Virginia, on his way back to his command when the surrender at Appomattox ended the career of the Army of Northern Virginia.
Scarcely any figure in that army was more familiar to its soldiers than that of General Sorrel, and certainly none more so to the soldiers of the First Corps. Tall, slender, and graceful, with a keen dark eye, a trim military figure, and an engaging countenance, he was a dashing and fearless rider, and he attracted attention in march and battle by his constant devotion to his duties as adjutant-general, and became as well known as any of the commanders.
General Sorrel has not attempted a military history. He has simply related the things he saw and of which he was a part. He says of his writings, "that they are rough jottings from memory without access to any data or books of reference and with little attempt at sequence." What his book will therefore lack in the precision and detail as to military strategy or movement, will be compensated for by the naturalness and freshness which are found in the free, picturesque, and salient character of his work.
General Sorrel was of French descent on his father's side. His grandfather, Antoine Sorrel Des Riviere, had been a colonel of engineers in the French Army, and afterwards held estates in San Domingo, from which he was driven by the insurrection of the negroes in the early part of the nineteenth century. He then moved to Louisiana.
His father, Francis Sorrel, became a successful business man in Savannah, Georgia, and his mother was a lady of Virginia. If he inherited from one those distinctively American qualities which were so attractive in his character, we can but fancy that he inherited in some degree at least from his sire the delicate touch with the pen which is so characteristic of the French. They have written more entertaining memoirs than any other people, and this memoir of General Sorrel is full of sketches, incidents, anecdotes, and of vivid portraitures and scenes which remind the reader no little of the military literature of the French.
No military writer has yet undertaken to produce a complete history of either the Army of the Potomac or the Army of Northern Virginia. Indeed, it has scarce been practicable to write such a history. The rolls of the two armies have not yet been published, and while the War Records have furnished a great body of most valuable matter and there are many volumes of biography and autobiography which shed light on campaigns and battles, the deposit of historical material will not be finished before the whole generation who fought the war has passed from earth. This volume will be useful to the historian in giving him an insight to the very image and body of the times. It will carry him to the general's headquarters and from there to the picket-line; from the kitchen camp-fire and baking-oven to the hospital and ordnance wagon; from the devices of the commissary and quarter-master to the trenches in the battlefield; from the long march to the marshalled battle line; from the anxieties of the rear-guard of the retreat to the stern array of the charging columns. He will find some graphic accounts of leading characters, such as Longstreet, Ewell, D. H. Hill, A. P. Hill, Jeb Stuart, Early, Anderson, Mahone, Van Dorn, Polk, Bragg, and many others who shone in the lists of the great tourney. The private soldier is justly recognized, and appears in his true light all along the line, of which he was the enduring figure. Lee, great and incomparable, shines as he always does, in the endearing majesty of his matchless character and genius.
General Sorrel's book is written in the temper and spirit which we might expect of the accomplished and gallant soldier that he was. It is without rancor, as he himself declares, and it is without disposition unduly to exalt one personage or belittle another. It bespeaks the catholic mind of an honest man. It tells things as he saw them, and he was one who did his deed from the highest and purest motives.
The staff of the Army of Northern Virginia (of which G. M. Sorrel, assistant adjutant-general, was a bright, particular star) was for the most part an improvised affair, as for the most part was the whole Confederate Army, and indeed the Federal Army was almost as much so. It showed, as did the line of civilians turned quickly into soldiers, the aptitude of our American people for military service and accomplishment. Even the younger officers of military training were needed in armies of raw and inexperienced recruits for many commands. The staff had to be made up for the most part of alert young men, some of them yet in their teens, and it is remarkable that they were so readily found and so well performed their duties.
At twenty-two years of age Sorrel was a clerk in a Savannah bank, and a private in a volunteer company of Savannah. He slipped away from his business to see the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April, 1861, and a little later we then find him at his father's country estate some ten miles from Manassas Junction, looking forward to a second lieutenancy as the fulfilment of his then ambition.
An introduction from Col. Thomas Jordan, the adjutant-general of Beauregard, to General Longstreet fixed his career with that officer, and he was by his side transacting his business and carrying his orders from the start to well-nigh the finish. On the Peninsula, and in the trenches at Yorktown, at Williamsburg and Seven Pines, in the Seven Days Battle around Richmond, at Second Manassas and Sharpsburg, at Suffolk in southeast Virginia, at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, at Knoxville, at the Wilderness, and in many combats along the Richmond and Petersburg lines, General Sorrel shared in many adventures and was a part of many matters of great pith and moment. Like Sandy Pendleton, the adjutant of Jackson, of Ewell, and of Early as commanders of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, and like W. H. Palmer, of Richmond, the adjutant of A. P. Hill, he had no special preparation for his military career; and all three of these valuable officers, like many others who might be mentioned, are simply illustrations of the fine inherent qualities that pertain to the scions of a free people.
I have not written this introduction in the hope that I could add anything to the attractiveness of General Sorrel's recollections, nor have I undertaken to edit them or to pass upon the