While Edmund Kirby Smith did fight in Virginia early on, (He was wounded as a brigade commander at 1st Manassas.) he left the Confederate army in the east before it became known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Generally that name wasn't used until R.E.Lee took command during the Seven Days Campaign in June 1862. By then Smith was invading Kentucky. Also by this time there were Texas troops in the ANV. Hood's Brigade contained the only Texans in the ANV, presumably where LeBoeuf would have served.
I wish producers, directors, writers, or even actors would research such things. I think Civil War fiction needs to get factual things like this right. Make up the plot, the characters, the setting, but if you mention historical fact, make sure it squares with the record.
Kirby Smith was an interesting fellow even so. A West Point graduate, he taught Mathematics there, fought in the Mexican War and on the Indian frontier. He served as a botanist on the Mexican Boundary Commission and while convalescing after Bull Run married the girl who made him a shirt on the joking promise that whoever made the garment would get the handsome colonel who went with it. They had 11 children. Smith basically ran his own war in the Trans-Mississippi, even appointing his own subordinate generals. At the end of the war, he surrendered the last Confederate force in the field and fled to Mexico and then Cuba. He returned to the states and became president of the University of Nashville and later taught at the University of the South. LeBoeuf could only hope for half as much adventure.
Fridays seem like a good day to preview worthy fiction offerings. Here's an excerpt, the beginning of Soldiers Just Like You. A 54th Massachusetts veteran talks about his part in the assault at Battery Wagner, the famous scene that ends the movie Glory.
Prologue: Centennial Hero
March 17, 1961-Hibernian Hall, Charleston, South Carolina
I saw a black-haired boy run along the Morris Island beach today. A rising wind off the Atlantic brought it all back to me. The ground shook and I staggered up the strand. Black men and white horses parted heavy salt surf. Booming shot and shell deafened me, but I saw the silent splashes. Out of the dark night, the rebel fort glowed in the distance and we kept moving, five thousand Union soldiers as one. It was a race now--a race to certain death. On this journey, immortal freedom would take the place of earthly bondage. That was what we wished for, the best we could hope for. And then the enemy cannons found us on the naked beach and an explosion raked our column. Blood and brains and flesh splattered across my face, the body and blood of a black man, an offering to other black men. His death seemed an act of freedom. Joining the army and fighting was the one free thing many of us had ever done. We kept going forward, frightened but determined to see an end to this.
The Rebel rifles opened on us as we neared the sand walls and more of us dropped like black birds on a field of seed. But on and on we galloped. We knew it was a matter of simple time now. Running, running like a wave of black avengers. God was with us or we would soon be with Him. The flashes of instant death along the Confederate line lighted our way, sucking us in like moths to a bloody flame. Men were screaming, their white teeth flashing fear in the darkness. Another line of cannons ignited in our front not thirty yards away and I watched a hundred men simply disappear, their entire earthly being ground to bloody pink mist. And still we stormed onward ‘til we reached the sloping walls of the fort and stopped. A moment for prayer, some wide-eyed glances at fellow survivors, and then we climbed those sandy ramparts like a host of holy angels rising up to heaven!
Reuben Jeffries, his voice fairly booming now, suddenly stopped his battle narrative and the air wheezed out of him in a deadpan chuckle. “It seemed that way at the time anyway.” He continued quietly. “But I knew I won’t no angel. I always knew I was just a man. A soldier as brave or stupid as any fightin’ man who ever lived. Problem was them Rebels had to be taught that part. That I was a man--a soldier just like them.”
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