The Story of One Confederate Soldier's Incredible Act of Mercy
“If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.” (Proverbs 25:21)
This week marks the anniversary of the Battle of Fredericksburg during the American Civil War.
On Dec. 13, 1862, Confederate troops inflicted a costly defeat on their Union enemies at the base of Marye’s Heights, a ridge line overlooking the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and beyond it the Rappahannock River.
The Civil War had raged for nearly two years. In Virginia in 1862, Union forces had suffered one disastrous reversal after another. From the Peninsula Campaign that spring and summer to the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, Confederate General Robert E. Lee had repeatedly outmaneuvered his Union counterparts.
As winter approached, Lee awaited another attack from his headquarters atop Telegraph Hill.
Desperate for a breakthrough on the Rappahannock, General Ambrose Burnside — the latest commander of the Union Army of the Potomac and also the namesake of the bushy facial hair known today as “sideburns” — ordered a series of doomed frontal assaults on the heavily fortified Confederate position along Marye’s Heights.
The men in blue uniforms had no chance. “A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it,” one Confederate artillery officer predicted before the battle.
Indeed, wave after wave of Union troops suffered the same fate when Confederates opened fire. Union survivors fled in retreat, while thousands lay dead or wounded.
“It is well that war is so terrible — we should grow too fond of it,” Lee reportedly remarked in homage to his enemies’ courage.
A cold darkness fell early over eastern Virginia in mid-December.
On the very long night of Dec. 13-14, Confederate troops at the base of Marye’s Heights heard cries of agony. From behind a stone wall along what came to be known as Sunken Road, they listened as their wounded and suffering enemies pleaded for help.
Finally, one Confederate soldier could take no more of it.
According to multiple reports, 19-year-old Sgt. Richard Rowland Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment risked his life by jumping the stone wall and bringing water to his wounded enemies.
For his incredible act of mercy, Kirkland earned the nickname “The Angel of Marye’s Heights.”
Alas, the young hero did not live to see peacetime. On Sept. 20, 1863 — nine months and one week after his act of mercy — Kirkland died at the Battle of Chickamauga.
Historians and history buffs, of course, have a well-earned reputation for pedantry. Thus, writers have scrutinized every aspect of the Kirkland legend.
For instance, as author Pat Leonard noted in The New York Times in 2012, not all modern historians accept the Kirkland story.
A key point of contention lies in the story’s primary source.
In 1880, a South Carolina newspaper published the recollections of Gen. Joseph Kershaw, Kirkland’s brigade commander.
According to Kershaw’s account, Kirkland first approached the general for permission to undertake the errand of mercy. Kershaw gave reluctant approval, and then Kirkland made his way into the no-man’s land between Union and Confederate lines.
“Unharmed he reached the nearest sufferer. He knelt beside him, tenderly raised the drooping head, rested it gently upon his own noble breast, and poured the precious life-giving fluid down the fever scorched throat,” Kershaw wrote.
Kershaw, however, could not have witnessed the act of mercy from his nearby headquarters, where Kirkland sought him out for permission before returning to the stone wall along Sunken Road.
Nonetheless, Kershaw did not provide the only source for the story. Years later, other South Carolina soldiers also identified Kirkland as “The Angel of Marye’s Heights.” Furthermore, according to the poet Walt Whitman, in early 1863 a wounded Union soldier reported several Kirkland-like acts of kindness from Confederates at Fredericksburg.
Indeed, not all historians question the Kirkland legend. On Virginia public radio in 2019, for instance, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson told the story as true.
Since 1965, a bronze statue in memory of Kirkland has stood at the Sunken Road.
In sum, the Kirkland legend remains not only plausible but likely true. Kershaw, for instance, might have embellished details, but he had no reason to invent the exchange with Kirkland at headquarters. Likewise, every South Carolina source — those closest in proximity to the act of mercy — identified Kirkland as its author.
Still, readers may evaluate the evidence as they see fit.
In some respects, of course, the details make little difference. The story’s repetition over time matters a great deal more.
But most important of all is our desire to believe it.
After all, the key to living close to God lies not in imagining ourselves in Kirkland’s role. Nothing would flatter our vanity more than to picture ourselves bringing water to our enemies.
Instead, the key to living close to God lies in imagining that our enemies might bring water to us. In such moments, we squelch the sins of resentment and hatred.
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