The T.R.R. Cobb House in Athens, Ga., is reprising debate over who killed general at Fredericksburg. Clues and claims are featured each Wednesday on social media

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

Tune in this week tor another episode of “Who Killed Tom Cobb?”!!!

Tom Cobb, for the unfamiliar, was Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, an ardent Georgia secessionist and Confederate brigadier general killed at Fredericksburg.

On Dec. 13, 1862, Cobb bled out after he was wounded while leading his men along Sunken Road. Of some debate in subsequent years was the manner of death.

Most historians – including staffers at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park in Virginia -- attribute the ghastly leg wound to shrapnel from a Federal artillery shell. Brig. Gen. Joseph Kershaw and Col. E.P. Alexander, however, reported that Cobb (right) was felled by a sharpshooter. There’s at least one other story, though it was largely debunked by veterans and historians

Six years after the T.R.R. Cobb House in Athens, Ga., asked middle schoolers to weigh in, the topic is being reprised through a weekly video series (on Wednesdays) featuring former Cobb House interns laying out evidence and accounts.

Curator Ashleigh Oatts said the series has been in the works for more than a year. The impetus is to boost the house's social media presence, and videos are the best way to do that.

“We were hearing from some visitors that they had heard that Tom Cobb died in X way (usually not the correct answer) and realized that the general public might appreciate hearing from the primary sources and becoming detectives through this video series,” she said.

The general -- a lawyer and architect of the Confederate constitution before he joined the cause's army -- was mortally wounded within sight of where his mother was born in Fredericksburg.

The death theories first were 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, who was the curator then, decided to throw the whodunit to a group that would have no bias or prejudice – a class of eighth-graders. About half of them believed Cobb was killed by a sharpshooter, while others thought his death was result of friendly (or unfriendly) fire. You can read details of that claim here.

Cobb’s brigade 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.” The officer was 39.

The video series is running every Wednesday through Dec. 17, though there may not be one shown Thanksgiving week, said Oatts. Three have been rolled out as of this writing.

Peter Maugle, park historian and ranger at Fredericksburg, will present a “solution” talk on Dec. 10, and the museum will wrap up the series the following Wednesday.

“The solution isn't a specific person, rather narrowing it down to the battery that was responsible (but also correcting misinformation stating that he was killed by friendly fire.),” said Oatts.

Cobb Legion's flag at the Athens house is on loan from the Atlanta History Center (Picket photo)

Among the weekly subjects:

-- H.M. Reed, son of a 13^th Mississippi Infantry veteran, told author Margaret Mitchell in 1937 about his father: “He dropped down beside the general and shoved his thumb into the wound and pressed the ends of the artery together and stopped the bleeding…When they arrived at the hospital they had to lift the general and my father out together as he could not release the pressure on the artery for a second. They laid both of them down on a bed together and the general expired before he could remove his thumb from the wound. My dad said his thumb was numb for a week afterwards."’

-- A Confederate’s interview with the Marietta (Ga.) Journal in which he claims Cobb was killed by a Rebel soldier in retribution for an incident that occurred weeks before the battle.

-- The account of Edward Porter Alexander, who apparently heard second-hand an account claiming it was a sharpshooter. "The fatal shot came from a house some hundred and fifty yards in front and to the left, which was occupied by the Federal skirmishes.”

-- The Rev. Rufus Kilpatrick Porter, chaplain for Cobb’s Legion;

-- Capt. W.R. Montgomery (left) of Cobb's Legion: “The whole time of the engagement our brave and gallant General Cobb was encouraging his men until a shot from the enemy’s cannon gave him his mortal wound. He was on the right of our Co, only a few feet from me when wounded.”

-- A letter from Joseph Henry Lumpkin, Cobb’s father-in-law, to Lumpkin’s daughter “Callie” Lumpkin King. While he was not present at Fredericksburg, he writes with some knowledge of the condition of the body. 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.

A postscript from my 2019 article on the topic: The T.R.R. Cobb House displays the Cobb’s Legion flag used at the battle in Virginia. The flag reportedly covered his legs after his body was sent to Athens days later and he lie in repose in his library. Cobb, his brother Howell and their families are buried a few miles away in Oconee Hill Cemetery.