Palmetto Past & Present: The Mother of All Snowball Fights

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

by MARK POWELL

***

The winter storm that blanketed much of our state over the weekend brought a rare bit of winter fun for Palmetto youngsters. Snow is a special occasion in South Carolina. Given that some places hadn’t seen any in four years, it was the very first exposure to the white stuff for some children. And they’re making the most of it while it lasts.

More than 160 years earlier, their ancestors also enjoyed similar fun. What started out as a case of “boys will be boys” ended up as something for the record books. Here’s how it happened…

January 1863 was the midpoint of the Civil War. With both armies hunkered down in winter quarters in central Virginia, soldiers on each side faced a common enemy: boredom. A relentless soul-crushing sameness. Week after dreary week came and went with nothing to do but stand guard on picket duty – watching for an enemy that would not come, and trying to stay warm. That was it.

In the mid-nineteenth century there was no television, no movies (not even silent ones), no radio and no recorded music. All books and available newspapers were devoured from cover to cover – and often reread several times. Soldiers even swapped their personal letters with one another to ease their intellectual starvation for new reading material.   

Amid this seemingly endless tedium, though, Mother Nature decided to come to the rescue.

***

Soldiers awoke on Thursday morning, January 29, to a heavy coating of thick, wet snow blanketing the landscape. At last, something different! Then as now, snow was a novelty to soldiers from the Deep South. So perhaps what happened next was inevitable.

Goofing around, some men of the 4th Texas Infantry began pelting their rivals in the 5th Texas with snowballs. Guys in the beleaguered 5th Texas shouted to their comrades for reinforcements. The 4th did likewise. In minutes, a snowball fight among a handful of soldiers had exploded into dozens, then hundreds. 

The 5th rallied and drove the 4th back to their tents. A brief truce ensued, but the fight was far from over, with each side furiously rolling fresh “ammunition” while frantically summoning support.

Camps inside the Army of Northern Virginia sprang to life. Bugles were blown, battle flags were unfurled, and soon entire regiments were drawing up on battle lines. In practically no time, the conflict had morphed into the size of an actual engagement. General Lafayette McClaws, a division commander from Augusta, Georgia, drew his saber and personally deployed and directed his men – including several thousand South Carolinians.

Kershaw’s Brigade, commanded by General Joseph Kershaw of Camden, consisted of the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th, and 15th South Carolina Infantry. All of these units were in the thick of the action, hurling snowballs as fast as they could roll them. Before long, piles of rolled snowballs were stacked like pyramids to facilitate the fighting, complete with charges and countercharges. 

***

RELATED | REMEMBERING THE ‘BIG SNOW’

***

But the men didn’t just aim at the troops opposing them. They also enjoyed going after the officers who ruled over them in their daily lives. Most accepted it good naturally. One colonel admitted later, “I knew I would have to be snowballed at some time, so I thought it best to take part in the fighting.”

“All distinctions were leveled, and the higher the officer, the more snowballing he received,” the colonel added.

Some 9,000 men were said to have participated in the massive melee, making it the largest snowball fight of all time. As with roughhousing in any generation, a few bad apples took things too far. Some men were injured, and eventually General James Longstreet – in whose corps the snowballers served – ordered them to knock it off for the duration of the war.

Mock battles waged with frozen precipitation weren’t limited to the Confederates, however.

My new book, “Witness To War: The Story of the Civil War Told By Those Who Lived It,” relates a similar, though much smaller, affair in a Union regiment the previous winter.

***

***

George Westfall, a young private in the 17th New York Infantry, wrote to his future wife from outside Washington, D.C., on February 8, 1862:

“You said the talk was up there that we was going to have a battle here soon,” he noted. “That is the talk here as well. The sooner we do, the better, for I am tired of staying here penned up in camp.”

Westfall wasn’t too tired to engage in some good-natured mischief in the snow, though.

“We had some snow, and the colonel got the men out on Monday morning and rolled snowballs, and built a snow fort,” he wrote. “They worked all forenoon, and in the afternoon, he had the men divided into two parties and put one party in the fort and the other party outside of the fort.”

Westfall estimated there were 800 participants in the melee, armed to the teeth with stacks of snowballs.

According to Westfall, he fought with “the party outside the fort” – which emerged victorious from the frozen scrape.

“We whipped the other party and drew them out of the fort,” he gloated. “It was the biggest snowball fight I ever saw. I got one black eye and was glad to get off with just that. It was in the Washington papers the next day.”

Still, it was nothing compared to what became known in history as ‘The Great Snowball Fight of 1863.’

***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

***

WANNA SOUND OFF?

Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.