Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
In a violent denouement to the enormous set-piece battles of Second Bull Run and Antietam in the summer of 1862, that fall cavalry clashes raged across Northern Virginia. In dozens of farm villages and crossroads communities, roving bands of Union and Confederate horsemen engaged in a series of brief and often bloody skirmishes. One such fight took place near the hamlet of Little Washington on Nov. 8, 1862.
The action began when a squadron of Union Army regulars collided with an enemy picket composed of a Georgia lieutenant and 10 of his men. The Yankees charged the outnumbered rebels, but the rebels “gallantly met the onset, falling back slowly to a narrow lane, stubbornly contesting the ground,” reported an unidentified Confederate in a pamphlet published during the war. The mingled sounds of battle were heard by the main body of Georgia troops at their nearby camp, who hurriedly formed a column and rode to the relief of their endangered comrades. Among the first to saddle up was one of Georgia’s most admired horse soldiers, Will Delony.
Raw aggression coursed through the veins of this beau idéal of a Southern cavalryman. “His full brown or mahogany beard and high massive forehead, intellectual face and eagle eyes, marked him as a man among men, resembling the finer full-bearded engravings I have seen of Stonewall Jackson,” noted one Georgian soldier, Wiley C. Howard.
That day Delony was to prove himself worthy of such a comparison. Indeed, what occurred next was “one of the bloodiest little fights that the history of our great struggle for right and liberty will ever record,” Howard wrote.
The unidentified Confederate observer reported that “Delony, putting spurs to his horse, left the column behind and dashed up into the melee, and hand to hand with his own boys, nearly all of whom had been cut down, was delivering his blows right and left.” Howard remembered that Delony “was fighting like a mad boar with a whole pack of curs about him, having his bridle hand dreadfully hacked, his head gashed and side thrust.”
The bluecoats called on him to surrender, but Delony barked back at the federals to lay down their own arms instead: “Surrender! By God! I am the best man!” and felled one enemy soldier with a blow of his sword.
Suddenly Delony was attacked by another saber-swinging federal. “His new antagonist’s blows were dexterously dealt, and an instant parry saved his head; a quick, heavy blow, partially warded off, fell broadside and deadened his sword arm, causing it to fall by his side,” Howard reported. But just then the column of Georgians thundered upon the scene, led by Pvt. Jimmie Clanton, mounted “on a little keen black charger.” He made a beeline for the federal cavalryman, who was raising his sword to send the vulnerable Delony to his maker. Clanton, “with upraised gleaming sabre, arrests the fatal blow by cleaving the confident antagonist’s head in twain, and half raising it for another stroke, a pistol shot sends the noble lad, too, reeling from his saddle dangerously wounded.”
The rebel column tore into the Yankees. The unidentified Confederate reported that the federals “began to yield and give ground, when a body of our dismounted men gained their flanks.” He added, “Here our artillery came dashing up and completed the success and sent them scampering down the road at a most inconvenient speed.”
The next day in camp, Delony sat on a log in camp with his head and hand bandaged. Howard recalled that he “showed me a small metallic flask, which he carried in his inside coat pocket, near the region of the heart and lungs, which showed an entire saber point thrust nearly a quarter of an inch wide clear through the metal.” Delony remarked “that he had sometimes felt that he would hate for his wife, in case he fell in battle, to know that it was there; but, with a humorous smile said he now thought it a good idea for every man to have one on him at the vulnerable spot where the cold steel struck with such force.”
Neither Howard nor Delony mentioned if the flask was full or empty before the enemy saber pierced it. Chances are Delony had taken a deep draught before the fight; his habitual drinking had prompted several officers to express concern to Delony’s colonel, Thomas R.R. Cobb. Delony’s fondness of the flask disturbed Cobb very much. “I don’t know what to do about it,” he confessed in a letter to his wife.
No evidence exists that Delony drank before he joined the military. An honor graduate from the University of Georgia and a successful attorney in Athens, he raised a cavalry company known as the Georgia Troopers in 1861. The rank and file elected him captain, a common practice in the volunteer army. Delony and his men then joined the “Georgia Legion,” a force of artillery, cavalry and infantry designed loosely around a Roman legion and organized by Colonel Cobb, a popular and charismatic leader (in fact, the unit became better known as “Cobb’s Legion”).
The concept of a legion proved impractical, and it was not used as such during the war. The cavalry from Cobb’s Legion served with Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, where Delony proved himself a caring leader. Howard exclaimed, “How his men loved him, and how he stood by them, contending always for their rights and looking after their comforts, when others would treat them indifferently! His heart and purse were ever open to their needs.”
As he showed that day in Little Washington, Delony was at his very best in combat. He could always be found in the hottest part of a battle, and inspired the ranks by his deeds. “He was a game fighter and dared to attempt anything,” Howard said, “even though it seemed impossible to others.”
Howard recalled Delony’s actions on June 9, 1863, at Brandy Station — the largest cavalry battle of the war. By this time Delony had advanced to lieutenant colonel, and Pierce M.B. Young had replaced Cobb as colonel. At one point during the engagement, the Georgians charged federal cavalry, “and soon their splendid line was all broken and each man of us was fencing and fighting for the time his individual foe, the fiery and impetuous onslaught of the Southron was too much for the steady courage of the Northman, and quick and fast as the blows fell and the cold steel slashed, the most of the enemy were making to their rear.”
Howard observed Delony “smiting Yankees right and left as he charged along in advance. He sat on his charger grandly, his fine physique and full mahogany beard flowing, he looked a very Titan war god, flushed with the exuberance and exhilaration of victory. He called to me to rally with others of his old company about him and on he led us pressing the retreating foe.”
On they charged until caught in devastating cross-fire by dismounted federals. Colonel Young ordered Delony to withdraw. “But,” Howard wrote, “shaking his head and lion-like beard Delony said, ‘Young, let’s charge them,’ and in two or three minutes five horses fell and a number of our men had been shot. By this time, however, the enemy’s whole line in sight were giving way and on we went, those not unhorsed or crippled. So fierce and fast was the fighting, we had not time to accept surrender offered by many Yankees — just rode on and left them behind.”
Several weeks later, in Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign, Delony led a similar charge mounted on his bay, Marion. This time he went up against Union forces led by the newly minted brigadier general George Armstrong Custer in a cavalry fight at Hunterstown on July 2, 1863. Federal lead struck Marion, and the horse toppled onto Delony. He extricated himself with great difficulty and barely managed to escape the enemy.
His luck ran out at the Battle of Jack’s Shop, in Virginia, on Sept. 22, 1863. A Minié ball struck Delony in the left thigh, and, in a Gettysburg repeat, his horse was also hit and fell on top of him. This time, though, he could not get away and fell into federal hands. Transported to nearby Culpeper for a brief stay, he was then carried by ambulance to Washington. He was admitted to Stanton General Hospital and given a bed in a ward full of Union boys, where he befriended one of convalescing soldiers, John A. Wright of the 140th Pennsylvania Infantry.
Delony’s wound turned gangrenous. On Oct. 2, 1863, surgeons informed that his condition was mortal. Wright recalled that Delony then asked him to read from the Bible. “The 14th Chapter of John was selected, and the reader began: ‘Let not your heart be troubled…’” Delony broke down. “‘Oh, I could die in peace, I could died in peace,’ he sobbed, ‘if only I were home with my wife and children. But it is so hard to die away from home and among strangers.”
Delony was transferred to another hospital later that day, and died that night. He was 38 years old. Union authorities buried his remains in a numbered grave in the hospital cemetery. They were later disinterred and returned to his family in Athens.
Wright survived the war and became a minister, perhaps the last man touched directly by the charismatic Delony.
Sources: Ulysses R. Brooks, “Stories of the Confederacy”; Wiley C. Howard, “Sketch of Cobb Legion Cavalry and Some Incidents and Scenes Remembered”; William B. McCash, “Thomas R.R. Cobb: The Making of a Southern Nationalist”; William G. Delony military service record, National Archives and Records Service; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies; George F. Price, “Across the Continent With the Fifth Cavalry”; John F. Stegeman, “These Men She Gave: Civil War Diary of Athens, Georgia”; Robert L. Stewart, “History of the One Hundred and Fortieth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers”; Francis S. Reader, “Some Pioneers of Washington County, Pa.: A Family History.”
Ronald S. Coddington is the author of “Faces of the Civil War” and “Faces of the Confederacy.” His new book, “African American Faces of the Civil War,” was published in August. He writes “Faces of War,” a column for the Civil War News.