Originally aired on August 15, 1997 - In part 155 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson chronicles the career of William Ransom Johnson Pegram and the young man’s rise from Private to Colonel of Artillery.
#155 – Colonel Willie Pegram
A half-century after the Civil War, a veteran from the Army of Northern Virginia declared: “I think even the infantry itself would admit that the artillery, though appearing to afford least opportunity for personal distinction, yet furnished, in proportion to its numbers, perhaps more officers below the rank of general who were conspicuous for gallantry and high soldiership” than either infantry or cavalry.
In the forefront of those artillerists stands William Ransom Johnson Pegram. His name flashes across the pages of any history of the war in Virginia. Born into prominent Richmond society in 1841, William Pegram was finishing his freshman year at college when Virginia left the Union. He had been active in the state militia, a fact that led to his appointment as the drillmaster for a new artillery unit. It became the Purcell Battery, and Pegram at nineteen was its lieutenant.
Promotion to captain came the following spring. To a sister Pegram wrote: “I don’t intend to allow anything, except my duties to God, to interfere with my duty to my country.”
His first action came in June, 1862, at Mechanicsville. His battery fought a duel with six Union batteries and lost 47 of 90 men, half the horses, and four of the guns. Throughout the carnage, one observed noted, Pegram “remained motionless in the saddle, no more concerned at the shells ploughing up the dust about him than if he had been lounging” on a front porch in Richmond.
Pegram won official praise for being “always eager, always alert”, going to “every action where opportunity offered”. By 1863, he was a major and second-in-command of a battalion of five batteries. His exemplary conduct at Chancellorsville inspired at least one painting of the fight at Hazel Grove. Yet “The Boy Artillerist” hardly looked like a warrior.
Only twenty-one, he had a “boyish form and face” plus what a friend described as “the voice and manners of a school-girl”. Pegram was reserved in nature to the point of shyness. He was also so nearsighted that he habitually squinted through thick spectacles.
General Henry Heth thought Pegram “one of the few men…supremely happy in battle”. That was true. Soldiers never tired of telling how, one afternoon when Pegram rode down his line of guns, an artilleryman waved his hat aloft and shouted: “Come on, boys! Here comes that damned little man with the glasses! We’re going to fight ‘em now!”
The young Virginian left a sickbed to be in the battle at Gettysburg. In February, 1864, he was given command of the largest battalion of guns in A. P. Hill’s Third Corps. Pegram met the challenge. In all the combat from the Wilderness to Petersburg, he was not only conspicuous but oblivious to danger. At one engagement where the issue was in doubt, he snatched a battle flag, galloped 50 yards in advance of his line and yelled: “Follow me, men!” They did, to victory.
Several petitions urged Pegram’s promotion to general. General Lee had to say no. Pegram was too young, and he was too valuable with cannon to be transferred.
In February, 1865, the twenty-three-year-old became a full colonel. He remained dedicated and determined to the end. On the afternoon of April 1, 1865, in heavy fighting at Five Forks, Pegram fell mortally wounded. He was buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery beside his brother John, an infantry general killed less than two months earlier.
One who knew Willie Pegram later commented: “In his boyhood he had nourished noble ambitions, in his young manhood he had won a fame greater than his modest nature ever dreamed, and at last there was accorded to him on (the) field of battle the death (he) counted ‘sweet and honorable’”.