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Charles Marshall (October 3, 1830 – April 19, 1902) was a Confederate States Army officer during the American Civil War. Marshall served as an aide de camp, assistant adjutant general and military secretary to General Robert E. Lee.
Charles Marshall in The Guns of the South[]
Charles Marshall was Robert E. Lee's close confidants, serving as Lee's aide-de-camp during the Second American Revolution, and later as Lee's secretary after he was elected President of the Confederate States. In these capacities, Marshall witnessed or participated several of the crucial moments in the birth and early infancy of the C.S.A.
On January 20, 1864 Major Marshall, along with his fellow staff officers, watched Andries Rhoodie's demonstration of a new rifle for General Lee. He assisted in placing human cut-out targets in a firing range out to 500 yards. As he returned to the firing line, he began to jokingly refer to the cut-outs by the names of various Federal generals. His fellow staff officers joined in. After the demonstration, he helped collect the cut-outs.
For whatever reason, Marshall took an immediate dislike to Rhoodie. When Rhoodie claimed he could deliver 100,000 AK-47s, Marshall expressed skepticism. Lee asked what he would do if Rhoodie failed to deliver. He replied a good horsewhipping to teach him to not brag. Rhoodie, however, was willing to risk it.
A few days later, the first shipment of AK-47s arrived. General Lee instructed Marshall to draft a letter to Colonel Josiah Gorgas asking him the feasibility of manufacturing copies of the rifles. He also directed Marshall to send a rifle and a stock of cartridges to Colonel George W. Rains to see if he could duplicate the strange smokeless powder that the rifle used.
Marshall stayed on Lee's staff for the 1864 Campaign. The Army of Northern Virginia engaged the Federals at the Wilderness, and again shortly after at Bealeton. After the second battle, during which the Union had deployed multiple regiments of United States Colored Troops, Lee learned that the Confederate Army had taken several Black prisoners. Lee had Marshal draft an order for the army to treat these captives as they would any other prisoner, out of fear that mistreatment would provoke the Federals into mistreating Confederate prisoners held in the North. Marshall wrote the order showing clear discomfort, and admitted when Lee questioned him that he found the notion of blacks in uniform abhorrent. Shortly after, the ANV captured Washington City and ended the Second American Revolution in the CSA's favor.
Even in peacetime, Charles Marshall stayed close to Lee as most officers were relegated to duties at a desk. He accompanied Lee to Kentucky and Missouri to monitor the referenda on which nation each state would prefer to join, and witnessed both an assassination attempt on Lee's life and the attempt by the Rivington Men to smuggle guns into the state. When the vote was concluded with Kentucky joining the CSA and Missouri the USA, both men returned home.
When Lee resigned to pursue a career in politics, Marshall, despite his misgivings on the subject, helped Lee by informing him of legislation in slave holding Brazil he could use for reference for his own semi-abolitionist plans. When Lee was elected President of the CSA in 1867, Marshall resumed his post as a wartime secretary to the new Commander-in-Chief. Marshall was present at the Richmond Massacre on March 4, 1868, but survived.
He was also involved in the "conspiracy" to help Lee get new medicine once Rhoodie stopped supplying him. He retrieved an empty bottle of nitroglycerin tablets from the general's trash and gave it to one of Lee's daughters, who then gave it to Colonel Rains to reproduce.
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