May 2 

 

          On this day in 1863, Major Franklin Hull (1834-1929), a private in Company A, 18th North Carolina Infantry, was wounded in the hand at Chancellorsville during Stonewall Jackson’s famed flank attack against the Union army. The 5’8, fair-skinned, dark haired Hull, a teacher in Hickory, in Catawba                                                                             County, who owned one slave, lived with his wife and three small                                                                           children–the youngest just three months old–when conscription                                                                           officers came for him and compelled him to enlist on August 14,                                                                             1862. He had been in the army for less than a month when he                                                                                 was wounded and captured in Maryland during the Antietam                                                                                 campaign. He was exchanged in November 1862 and returned to                                                                           his regiment in time for its participation in the Chancellorsville                                                                               campaign. During the climax of Jackson’s charge at                                                                                                   Chancellorsville, Hull was wounded seriously in the right hand.                                                                             In the smoke and chaos of the aftermath of battle, as twilight                                                                                   descended on the victorious field, Hull would have been getting                                                                             his wound dressed at the moment when members from his regiment accidentally shot and wounded Stonewall Jackson, who was returning from a scouting mission–though no one in regiment recognized that evening what they had done. The Confederate general died eight days later, while Hull took nearly two years to fully recover from his wound, spending the last months of 1864 serving light duty as a hospital steward. Unlike the general, Hull survived the war and lived a full life. He and Mary had eleven children, and he held several elected positions in the county and served for a time as a judge. Yet during the war, he had perhaps been an unwitting observer of a pivotal moment of the war.  

 

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​​​​​​​​​Sources: 

Weymouth T. Jordan, Jr., comp., North Carolina Troops, 1861-1865: A Roster, 6:314-15; 1860 U.S. Census: Catawba County; Charlotte Observer, January 20, 1929; Hull’s gravesite webpage

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