Revelations of a Confederate Artillery Staff Officer: Coupland R. Page’s Reminiscences of the Battle of Gettysburg

Abstract

Revelations of a Confederate Staff Offi cer married Lucy (as his second wife), daughter of Virginia governor Th omas Nelson. Carter Page’s fi rst wife, Mary Randolph, was reportedly descended from Pocahontas. Th eir grandson, Mann Page, was Coupland’s cousin; he served on Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early’s staff at Gettysburg. Mann’s brother, Richard Channing Moore Page, was likewise at Gettysburg, commanding a battery attached to the division of Maj. Gen. Robert E. Rodes.2 Coupland left his studies behind in the summer of 1861 to join the Liberty Hall Volunteers, a company comprised mainly of students from Washington College (now Washington and Lee) in Lexington, which was to become Company I of the Fourth Virginia Infantry. He fought at First Manassas (Bull Run), where he witnessed Th omas J. Jackson earn his sobriquet, Stonewall. In June 1862 Jackson personally informed the then corporal Coupland of his advancement to sergeant major and reassignment to the artillery. When Coupland expressed a wish to decline the assignment in order to remain with his unit, Jackson looked him squarely in the eye and replied that a soldier’s duty was to accept promotion, which promptly ended the discussion. Coupland reported to the army’s artillery chief, Brig. Gen. William N. Pendleton, on whose staff he served until February 1864.3 Coupland begins his account of the Battle of Gettysburg on the night of June 30, when he was encamped with Pendleton and other staff members near Cashtown, Pennsylvania: