Fighting Tigers...you should like this.

Major Chatham Roberdeau Wheat’s Louisianans assaulted Federal artillery on high ground now famous as “The Coaling”. Wheat was seriously wounded at First Bull Run, leading his men in the critical action on Matthews Hill. He was shot in the chest, through and through, and was told he would not recover. The 275 pound commander of the 1st Special Louisiana Battalion responded: “I don’t feel like dying yet.” So he didn’t. He recovered and once again led his battalion in Richard Taylor’s brigade of Ewell’s division of Jackson’s army in the Valley in 1862. On page 412 of R. K. Krick’s Conquering the Valley is this description by a Louisianan of the scene around the Coaling on June 9, 1862:

Men ceased to be men. They cheered and screamed like lunatics – they fought like demons – they died like fanatics…It was not war on that spot. It was a pandemonium of cheers, shouts, shrieks, and groans, lighted by the flames from cannon and muskets – blotched by fragments of men thrown high into trees by bursting shells. To lose the guns was to lose the battle. To capture them was to win it. In every great battle of the war there was a hell-spot. At Port Republic, it was on the mountain side.

Wheat and his even larger cohort, 300 pound Lt. Col. William R. Peck of the 9th LA, moved among the Federal guns on the Coaling. The Louisianans had determined that killing the battery horses would prevent the enemy from removing the guns should they be able to retake the ground. Wheat used his own knife, and was reported as looking “as bloody as a butcher” while doing the job.

Rob Wheat would eventually meet his end at Gaines’ Mill on May 25, 1862. He’s buried in Richmond’s Hollywood Cemetery.

These men fought gallantly and are known in the annals of history as some of the most brutal combatants every to grace the field of battle.

Glad we are able to remember them with pride.