Originally aired on October 24, 1997 - In part 165 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of James J. Archer who was known by his men as “The Little Gamecock”.
#165 – James J. Archer
Some 1,000 men were generals in the Civil War. Scores have exalted places in the American heritage. Dozens should have never been general officers. Then there were those who served quietly, but with devotion and distinction. James J. Archer belongs in that category.
Born in 1817, Archer was the fourth son of a Maryland physician. He graduated from Princeton at the age of seventeen and obtained an engineering degree three years later. Unsatisfied Archer studied law under an older brother and gained admittance to the Maryland bar.
He entered the Mexican War as a captain of infantry and earned a brevet promotion for gallantry. Archer then resigned his commission to return to law. That was unrewarding, so in 1855 he went back to the army. Archer was commanding a garrison on the Pacific coast when civil war exploded. He turned over his post to Lieutenant Phillip Sheridan and made his way across the continent to Richmond. There Archer received a captaincy in the Southern army.
In late September, 1861, he was promoted to colonel and given the command of the 5th Texas. Uneventful duty followed until June, 1862, when Archer was elevated to brigadier general and assigned to lead the only Tennessee brigade in Robert E. Lee’s army.
It took Archer several months to win the admiration of his regiments. He was a bachelor and so attractive in his younger days that friends called him “Sally”. Mrs. Mary Chestnut noted in her journal, “The service and consequent rough life in the west have destroyed all softness and girlishness.” Archer was slightly built, heavily-bearded, humorless, and no-nonsense when it came to duty. A Tennessee soldier recalled, “so cold was his manner that we thought him at first a martinet, very non-communicative and the bearing and extreme reserve of an old army officer, made him for a time one of the most intensely hated of men”.
The Tennessee brigade was an anchor in General A. P. Hill’s famous light division. Archer became one of the most reliable field officers in an army known for outstanding leadership. Archer and Hill were never friends. Possibly because in their aggressiveness and audacity they were too much alike.
Archer was conspicuous in the battles of Mechanicsville, Gaines’ Mill, and Cedar Mountain. At Second Manassas in August, 1862, he led a furious counter-attack and had a horse killed under him. Three weeks later, at Antietam, Archer was so debilitated by diarrhea that he arrived on the field in an ambulance. Somehow he managed to stay in the saddle throughout that bloodiest one-day in American history.
At Chancellorsville, in May, 1863, Archer’s brigade seized Hazel’s Grove, the artillery position that was key to the entire battlefield. By then the stern Marylander had acquired the nickname and reputation of “The Little Gamecock”.
On July 1, of that year, Archer’s men were in the van of Lee’s army when it collided with Union forces at Gettysburg. Archer was near exhaustion when Federals overran his lines, routed his brigade and took him prisoner. A year’s incarceration followed at notorious Johnson’s Island Prison.
That ordeal shattered Archer’s health. Exchanged in the summer of 1864, he rejoined his command in the trenches at Petersburg. Yet physical weakness forced him to the rear. Mrs. Chestnut noted at the time, “He has a hard face with the saddest black eyes. His manners are quiet. He is abstracted, weary looking in mind and body, deadened by long imprisonment.”
Archer died October 25, 1864 in Richmond. He was a soldier who pursued his duties with an intensity that allowed no distractions. Because he did not broadcast his own deeds Archer’s accomplishments have remained obscure in Civil War history.
