Who killed Tom Cobb? The Georgia general fell at Fredericksburg, but was it from artillery shrapnel, a sniper -- or fragging? These 8th graders were determined to find out

Cobb's and Kershaw's troops at the stone wall (Library of Congress)

This much is indisputable: On Dec. 13, 1862, Confederate Brig. Gen. Thomas R.R. Cobb bled out after he was wounded while leading his men along Fredericksburg’s Sunken Road.

“I am only wounded boys,” said the 39-year-old Georgia officer as he was rushed to a field hospital. “Hold your ground like brave men.” Hit within sight of where his mother was born, Cobb was dead shortly after he received medical care.

What is debated is how he was wounded and by whom. Most historians – including staffers at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia -- attribute the ghastly wound to shrapnel from a Federal artillery shell. Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw and Col. E.P. Alexander, however, reported that Cobb was felled by a sharpshooter.

Nearly 40 years would pass before a zinger of a claim came to light. In 1901, a veteran of the war told the Marietta (Ga.) Journal that a member of Phillips Legion, commanded during the battle by Cobb, killed the general in retribution for an incident that occurred weeks before the battle.

T.R.R. Cobb (NPS photo)

Gen. Cobb, whom contemporaries said had a promising military career ahead, was fragged by one of his men?

The revenge story is mentioned in the book “To Honor These Men: A History of the Phillips Georgia Legion Infantry Battalion.” It’s occasionally discussed in Civil War forums.

John Hennessy, chief historian and chief of interpretation at Fredericksburg, isn’t buying it. He and Eric Mink, also with the park, cite sources of information, including from J.H. Lumpkin, Cobb’s father-in-law, to show he died from shrapnel.

“I think the evidence is clear that he was not wounded by his own men,” Hennessy said this week.

The fragging theory was the subject of a summer 2017 article in the magazine of the Watson-Brown Foundation, which operates the T.R.R. Cobb House in Athens, Ga.

Sam Thomas, curator at the home, wrote of all three theories, and left the debate a little open. So he and home’s staff decided to throw the whodunit to a group that would have no bias or prejudice – a class of eighth-graders.

“I was watching an episode of ‘Law and Order’ one night,” Thomas told the Picket. “This is kind of like the death of Tom Cobb. You have several men claim they saw him killed but there is nothing definitive. What if we do an investigation into his death?

The “Who Killed Tom Cobb?” project was on.

From politician to military officer

Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb came from a prominent slaveholding family. Cobb was an ardent secessionist and he and his brother, Howell, were well-known on the political stage in the years leading up to Fort Sumter.

Thomas Cobb’s “An Inquiry into the Law of Negro Slavery in the United States of America” was a rigorous defense of the institution and presented racist views of African Americans. Cobb was a professor, lawyer, author and helped write the Confederate constitution. 

Within months of secession, he turned toward military service and formed Cobb’s Legion. He led the regiment in Virginia and Maryland, but felt Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee were not treating him fairly.

“Cobb was keen for promotion and equally paranoid of people seeking to undermine him. He felt that General Lee condescended to him and his political enemies were withholding his promotion,” the National Park Service says. “Unknown to Cobb, Lee personally recommended him for promotion, and on November 1, 1862, Cobb rose to the rank of Brigadier General within James Longstreet's Corps.

T.R.R. Cobb's home in Athens, Ga., is open to the public.

'Glorious light went out forever'

Just over a month later, Cobb was at the center of the maelstrom at Fredericksburg – the Sunken Road, which was bordered by a stone wall and just below Marye’s Heights.

“His men successfully repulsed repeated Union assaults on their position throughout the day on December 13, the park says on its website. “Between the first and second major wave of attacks against the Confederate position, Cobb was hit with shrapnel and mortally wounded. He had been standing behind the Stephens House when an artillery shell exploded through the house.”

In the book, “The Gallant Dead: Union and Confederate Generals Killed in the Civil War,” Derek Smith cites both the shrapnel and sniper accounts.

“However it was sustained, the general’s wound was severe. The projectile had ripped his left thigh, shattering bone and slicing the femoral artery,” Smith writes. A chaplain accompanied the semiconscious Cobb to the rear and said, “He could not be aroused, and soon the glorious light went out forever.”

Old soldier details incident at the creek

In their Mercer University Press book about Phillips Legion, Richard Coffman and Kurt Graham include details of the 1901 Marietta Journal article entitled, “Who Killed General Cobb?”

An unnamed veteran of Phillips Legion told the paper that Cobb had confronted him and a soldier named Sam during a march. They had dropped out to fill canteens at a creek and Cobb ordered them to empty them, the article.

The newspaper article says: “This Confederate soldier noted for his courage, told General Cobb he wouldn’t do it. General Cobb drew his sword and told him he would use it on him if he didn’t obey. The Confederate soldier replied to ‘use it.’ General Cobb put up the sword, drew his pistol and rode up to the defying soldier and said, ‘If you don’t pour that water out of that canteen at once, I will shoot your head off.’

“The soldier madly replied, ‘Sir you can kill me, but you can’t scare me. I will not pour out the water. Now shoot me.’ … General Cobb put up his pistol and rode off. The Confederate soldier called out to him, ‘I will kill you the first opportunity I get.’”

(In his 2017 article, Thomas, of the Cobb House, said the general wrote to his wife in late October 1862 that he had had problems with stragglers.)

The 1901 article continued: “At the battle of Fredericksburg, this gentleman tells us that he and another Confederate soldier were sent back to the rear to get some ammunition.” They saw Cobb ride up, a shot rang out near where Phillip’s Legion was in line, and Cobb fell from his horse, according to the account.

“This old Confederate soldier, on returning to the ranks, accosted the soldier who had threatened General Cobb’s life and asked, ‘Sam, did you shoot General Cobb?’ ‘Well, I got him.’ Shortly after that Sam was shot by a Federal through the breast and was placed in the hospital. This old Confederate soldier went to see him and said, ‘Sam, you are going to die and I want you to tell me did you kill General Cobb?’ He replied, “I did. I always do what I say I will.’ The man died, and in the ‘great beyond’ the private and general met face to face, the avenger and the victim.”

Coffman and Graham identified Sam as Pvt. Samuel Drake of Company M, Phillips Legion. The soldier died on Dec. 24, 1862, and is buried in Richmond.

Other Confederate veterans fire back

The claim was immediately disputed after it was published in the newspaper. (Drake was a 28-year-old farmer from Cobb County, which is home to Marietta.)

An article in The Atlanta Journal, under the headline “General Cobb was a Gallant and Magnanimous Soldier,” quoted veterans saying they didn’t believe the story and that Cobb was kind to his troops and would not have ordered a soldier to empty his canteen. .. “The shot which caused his death was fired from a cannon of a Federal battery," the veterans said.

One veteran who wrote to reject the Drake story did say the canteen incident did occur, but that Cobb stopped the soldiers from filling them because of possibly poisoned or tainted water.

Coffman and Graham wrote: “One question that troubled us is why the old legion veteran would come forward in 1901 to relate such a story if it were not true. It is hard to believe that he could have anticipated it would bring him any great acclaim, as Cobb had, by then, become an icon of the Lost Cause."

8th graders weigh in on debate

Bear Creek Middle School students at Cobb House

Earlier this year, and after a first session at their school, the Cobb House invited a class of middle schoolers from Bear Creek MIddle School in Barrow County to come to Athens. They broke into teams and examined the death theories. They worked from a map, personal accounts, a painting, photographs and other papers.

“What we were teaching kids was primary documents,” Thomas said. “A lot of what you get from these generals' reports was second-hand.”

Their school teacher, David Kendrick (right in photo), handed out certain bits of information as the students did their research. “They weren’t given everything at one time. Sort of like a murder investigation goes,” said the curator.

Was Cobb hit by artillery from a Rhode Island unit? Was he hit by a bullet fired from a member of the charging 116^th Pennsylvania (Irish Brigade) or by an Ohio sharpshooter? And what about Sam Drake?

Their findings? “Half of them wanted the fragging (scenario) and half was sharpshooters," said Thomas.

They presented to a local historian, an archivist with the University of Georgia and Vince Dooley, the legendary Bulldogs football coach and a Civil War enthusiast. The children asked questions of other groups and the discussion was spirited, Thomas said.

Evidence for an artillery round

Gen. Cobb (Library of Congress)

Hennessy, with the National Park Service, said he found two accounts supporting the shrapnel theory to be believable.

One was written on Dec. 30, 1862, by J.H. Lumpkin, Cobb’s father-in-law, to a daughter. “While he was not present at Fredericksburg, he writes with some knowledge of the condition of the body,” the park historian said.

Lumpkin described the shell exploding outside the Stephens house, the fragment hitting his son-in-law above the knee, the removal of the general from the field, the cause of death and the funeral in Athens, Ga.

An 1897 article written by Confederate veterans H.D.D. Twiggs, who was not present at the battle, provides a detailed description of Cobb’s wounds. He cited Maj. Gen. Lafayette McLaws’ and others’ memory of that day.

“(Cobb) sustained a compound, comminuted fracture of the thigh bone. The bone was completely shivered and the wound terrible. I was informed by members of his staff that after he was struck, he sank into collapse from the shock and that amputation was impracticable,” Twiggs wrote, adding the wound could not have come from a musket ball.

Twiggs was in Richmond when the general’s body arrived on its way to Georgia. He provided this graphic description:

“The broken leg could be moved in any direction, or even doubled upon itself, so complete was the fracture, and I, myself, kept it straight, by holding it in place. From the character of this terrible wound, I was not at all surprised at the shock which so soon resulted in death. The members of his staff told me at the time, that the fracture was produced by the large fragment of a shrapnel shell, which struck the ground, ricocheted and exploded immediately in front of the general, and I have no doubt from the nature of the wound of the accuracy of this statement.”

Fredericksburg battle map used by students (Courtesy of TRR Cobb House)

Back in 1995, David Preston, now a history professor at The Citadel on Charleston, S.C., wrote in the Civil War Regiments journal that Cobb was hit by artillery shrapnel.

“It has been a while since I have examined the evidence, but I definitely recall this story about the fratricide and dismissed it,” Preston wrote to the Picket in May 2020.

“It all boils down to this: Do we trust a single letter written in 1901, or do we trust the huge preponderance of evidence (including eyewitnesses!) from December 1862? As I pointed out in my essay, no contemporary source supports Cobb being wounded by another Confederate or being wounded by a musket shot (with the sole exception of Kershaw's report -- but Kershaw admitted that he was only reporting something he had heard second-hand).”

With these accounts, it seems, so much for the fragging theory.

What does Thomas of the Cobb House think?

He agrees with the shrapnel theory. The 1901 newspaper article, he said, is the earliest reference to the homicide story. “It doesn’t hold up under a lot of scrutiny.”

“Sam Drake is also the only one in the company who died in that battle. That seemed to be coincidental.”

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Addendum: A reader of this post (see 2021 comment below) cited an historical society page about Charles Lyman of the 14th Connecticut. It contends Lyman claimed he hit Cobb with a rifle shot. In December 2022, I asked John Hennessy, now retired from the park service, about this. Here is Hennessy's response:

Whenever a general died on the field, opponents rushed to claim credit. I do believe this is the first individual claim to killing Cobb that I have seen. In the mayhem that was the Bloody Plain -- the 14th CT attached at the climax of it all -- it's virtually impossible that any US soldier could have known he killed Cobb. We have probably two dozen such claims for wounding Jackson at Chancellorsville. I confess that absent some corroboration, I reject or at least set aside claims like this. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Not at all.