(March 16, 1828–November 30, 1864)

“Fighting Pat” Cleburne, the Irish-born druggist-turned-soldier, was popularly known as the “Stonewall of the West.” Adored by men and officers alike, he seemed destined for high Confederate command—until he suggested using African Americans as soldiers. This remark halted his advancement, yet Cleburne nonetheless served as the highest-ranking foreign-born officer in the South.

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne was born in County Cork, Ireland, on March 16, 1828, the son of a respected Protestant druggist. Cleburne tried following into his father’s profession by pursuing pharmacology at the University of Dublin, but he failed his entrance exams. Ashamed by this lapse, he joined the British army in 1846 by enlisting in the 49th Regiment of Foot, the famous Green Tigers from the War of 1812. Cleburne served three years as a private, but he grew tired of performing constabulary work in Ireland and purchased his release in 1849. He migrated with his family to the United States the following year and briefly worked as a clerk at a drug-store in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1850, he was offered a similar post in Helena, Arkansas, where he settled. His outward, Hibernian disposition won him many friends, and in 1855 he became a naturalized citizen. Having also studied law, Cleburne opened a successful legal practice in 1855 and prospered. By 1860, the storm clouds of Southern secession were gathering, and he helped organize a militia company, the Yell Rifles. He was promptly elected captain, and when it joined nine other companies to form the First Arkansas Infantry Regiment, Cleburne gained appointment as colonel on May 14, 1861. Within weeks the regiment was amalgamated into a larger force commanded by Gen. William J. Hardee, a long-term professional soldier, and the two men became fast friends. In many respects, Hardee’s subsequent success as a Confederate leader became closely tied to Cleburne’s.

By the fall of 1862, Cleburne accompanied Hardee’s command to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where they fell under the jurisdiction of Gen. Albert Sydney Johnston. There Cleburne took command of a brigade within Hardee’s division with the rank of brigadier. Subsequent Union maneuvers forced the Confederates to fall back on Corinth, Mississippi, until the Battle of Shiloh (April 6–7, 1862). This was the first large encounter of the war, and Cleburne singularly distinguished himself by driving Union forces out of their camp right up to the Tennessee River. The following day a counterattack by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant forced the Confederates from the field. But the gallant rear-guard action by Cleburne’s brigade—reduced by losses to only 800 effectives—prevented the withdrawal from becoming a rout. His total casualties were 1,013 out of 2,700 men present, but Cleburne’s fine performance and coolness under fire garnered him a promotion to major general in November 1862. This act made him the highest-ranking soldier of foreign birth in Confederate service.

Shortly after, Cleburne joined the newly formed Army of Tennessee under Gen. Braxton Bragg, then marched north for an invasion of Kentucky. In this capacity he commanded a division fighting under Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith at the Battle of Richmond (August 30, 1862). The Confederates were victorious, but Cleburne was seriously wounded in the jaw. Fortunately, he rejoined the army in time for the severe engagement at Perryville on October 8, 1862, where he broke the enemy line and was twice more wounded. Two months later Cleburne again distinguished himself in the bloody Battle of Murfreesboro (December 31, 1862–January 3, 1863), where his men routed the Union right wing and drove it back four miles. He then accompanied Bragg’s retreat back to northern Georgia the following spring and summer. Like many other officers, Cleburne came to despise Bragg, who was a close friend and personal confidant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

On September 19–20, 1863, Cleburne confirmed his reputation as an outstanding combat leader at the bloody Battle of Chickamauga. He so ferociously assailed the Union position that its commander, Gen. William S. Rosecrans, pulled units from other parts of the field to reinforce it. This, in turn, enabled the corps of Gen. James Longstreet to come crashing through the center, routing the entire force. Cleburne scored an even bigger success during the Battle of Chattanooga (November 25, 1863). With his single division he prevented Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s force of four divisions from advancing. General Grant then authorized the feint up Missionary Ridge by Gen. George Thomas’s corps, and the entire Confederate line fell back, but Cleburne’s command assumed the rear guard. On November 27, 1863, he violently repelled Gen. Joseph Hooker’s Corps at Ringgold Gap, allowing Bragg and the remnants of his army to escape toward Dalton, Georgia. This performance enshrined Cleburne’s reputation as the “Stonewall of the West,” and the Confederate Congress twice voted him its thanks. During the bleak winter of 1863–1864, his advancement to high command seemed all but assured.

Cleburne’s sterling reputation took a decided and unexpected turn for the worse in January 1863. Faced with the prospect of growing manpower shortages, he innocently and rather naively proposed that the South should abolish slavery and recruit African American slaves to fight in exchange for emancipation. Cleburne may have been Southern in outlook and allegiance, but he was no racist. In fact, during his entire tenure in Arkansas, he never owned slaves. His suggestion was based more on practicality than outright altruism: Such a move would potentially tap half a million new soldiers as well as facilitate British and French diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy, which in turn held the potential of direct military intervention on the South’s behalf. It was a common-sense suggestion, one that the Confederacy ultimately adopted in the waning months of the war. However, at this juncture Southern leaders were shocked by his proposal, and it remained stillborn. Moreover, Cleburne forfeited whatever reputation he had previously enjoyed with President Davis, who had Cleburne’s suggestion officially quashed. Worse yet, Davis took steps to deliberately withhold him from a corps command.

Cleburne continued functioning effectively as a division commander throughout the bloody and decisive Atlanta campaign. He helped Gen. Joseph E. Johnston repulse Sherman’s main attack at Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864, and performed similar work at Bald Hill on July 22. Command then changed over to the aggressive Gen. John Bell Hood, who made repeated and futile attacks against Sherman’s superior forces. When Atlanta was evacuated on September 1, 1864, Cleburne accompanied Hood on an ill-fated campaign against Sherman’s lines of communication in Tennessee. On November 30, 1864, the ragged Confederates prepared for an all-out assault against dug-in Union positions at Franklin. Cleburne’s division, as usual, would spearhead the attack, only this time across two and a half miles of open terrain. Losing heavily at every step, the surging Confederates nonetheless overran the two lines of Union works. Cleburne, who had two horses shot from under him, led the final charge on foot—sword in hand—when he was struck and killed. He became one of six Confederate generals to fall that day. Greatly mourned, Cleburne was initially buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Columbia, Tennessee; after the war his remains were relocated to Helena, Arkansas. His tactical adroitness rendered him, quite possibly, the finest Southern divisional commander of the Civil War.

Bibliography

Evans, E. Raymond. Cleburne’s Defense of Ringgold Gap. Signal Mountain, TN: Mountain Press, 1998; Farley, M. Foster. “The Battle of Franklin.” Military Heritage 1, no. 5 (2000): 60–67; Fessler, Paul R. “The Case of the Missing Promotion: Historians and the Military Career of Major General Patrick Cleburne, C.S.A.” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 53, no. 1 (1994): 211–231; Hess, Earl J. Banners to the Breeze: The Kentucky Campaigns, Corinth, and Stone’s River. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000; Hull, Mark N. “General Cleburne and the Emancipation of Slaves.” Alabama Heritage 41 (1996): 33–41; Joslyn, Mauriel. A Meteor Shining Brightly: Essays on the Life and Career of Major General Patrick R. Cleburne. Macon, GA: Mercer, 2000; Sword, Wiley. “The Other Stonewall.” Civil War Times Illustrated 36, no. 7 (1998): 36–44; Symonds, Craig. Stonewall of the West: Patrick Cleburne and the Civil War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997; Woodworth, Steven E. Jefferson Davis and His Generals: The Failure of Confederate Command in the West. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990; Woodworth, Steven E. This Grand Spectacle: The Battle of Chickamauga. Abilene, TX: McWhinney Foundation Press, 1999.