William Edmondson "Grumble" Jones (May 9, 1824 – June 5, 1864) was a Confederate cavalry general with a reputation for being a martinet to his troopers and fractious toward superiors, but acknowledged to be a good commander.

Stuart, Jones's brigade was set to guarding supply lines and unavailable during a crucial juncture of the Gettysburg Campaign when Lee suffered from a lack of capable reconnaissance cavalry.

At the start of the Civil War, Jones joined the 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment as a captain, commanding the Washington Mounted Rifles, a company William Willis Blackford (later JEB Stuart's adjutant) had raised for him.

That October he was appointed to command the 7th Virginia Cavalry in the Shenandoah Valley, where he briefly replaced the ailing Angus W. McDonald, and led the regiment operating along the Potomac River during the early winter months of 1862.

[5] Rejoining Stuart, he fought in the largest cavalry engagement of the war, the Battle of Brandy Station, June 9, 1863, at the start of the Gettysburg Campaign.

Gen. John Buford, but it held its own and ended the fight with more horses and more and better small-arms than at the beginning, capturing two regimental colors, an artillery battery, and about 250 prisoners.

Accustomed to good press, Stuart found himself criticised for ordering outrageous pageantry and then failing to maintain Confederate cavalry supremacy in a real battle.

[7] John S. Mosby, once a protege of Jones, but now leading his own partisan ranger detachment, had given Stuart optimistic intelligence, which he seized on to propose a showy raid around the Union army.

[8] Lee had twice found similar cavalry probes by Stuart lasting a few days useful, and gave him discretionary orders for a new operation as part of the major offensive into the North.

Confederate blindness to the disposition and movements of Union forces during Stuart's eight day absence was a harbinger of insouciant reconnaissance that was widely thought to have been a major factor in Lee's tactics at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Gen. Wesley Merritt's brigade departed from Emmitsburg with orders from cavalry commander Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton to strike the Confederate right and rear along Seminary Ridge.

Reacting to a report from a local civilian that there was a Confederate forage train near Fairfield, Merritt dispatched about 400 men in four squadrons from the 6th U.S. Cavalry under Major Samuel H. Starr to seize the wagons.

Robert E. Lee was, by this time, aware of the personality clash and intervened to have Jones exonerated and transferred to the Trans-Allegheny Department in West Virginia.

The song was co-written by band members Buddy Woodward, Brandi Hart, and Blue Highway guitarist Tim Stafford.