Naked Bowie Knife Fighters?

In an article on Stonewall Jackson published in Putnam’s Monthly in December 1868, E. A. Pollard wrote:

Jackson had only the idea of the soldier--to fight, and to fight in the most terrible manner. It is a curious circumstance that he once recommended a night-attack to be made by assailants stripped naked and armed with bowie-knives, suggesting that the novelty and terror of such an apparition would paralyze the enemy. The writer was disposed to doubt an anecdote so remarkable, until it was confirmed to him by the testimony of a well-known and most truthful gentleman; and he must confess that he perceives in it something characteristic of Jackson’s gloom and fierceness. It was not a natural cruelty, a constitutional harshness, but a stern conception of war and its dread realities--the soldier’s disposition for quick, decisive, destructive work.

In July 1870, the magazine published a letter from  General J. A. "Jubal" Early, CSA, who took it upon himself to set the record straight:

I can undertake to assert, 
with the most perfect confidence, that 
General Jackson could not have made such a 
proposition as that mentioned by Pollard, because 
it was a moral impossibility for him to 
have done it. Gladiators, in ancient times, or 
the members of the prize-ring, in modern times, 
might strip for their brutal contests; but there 
is a sentiment among all civilized, Christian 
people, which would prevent a decent man 
from being as brave, when stripped naked, as 
when his nakedness is concealed by his usual 
covering. A naked sword is more terrible than 
a sheathed one; but there is no reason why a 
naked man should be more terrible than a well-
clad one; and, certainly, at the battle of Fred
ericksburg, in the middle of December, a body 
of naked assailants would soon have become so 
paralyzed by the cold, that the enemy would 
have had no trouble in dealing with them. 
General Jackson not only could not have 
made so foolish, so absurd, a proposition, at 
Fredericksburg, or anywhere else, for these 
reasons; but he could not have done it for the 
simple and conclusive reason that, at no time, 
were the Bowie-knives to be had. In the very 
beginning of the War, some men carried with 
them, into the service, Bowie-knives; but they 
were never very plenty, and the only military 
use I ever knew to be made of them, was in 
aiding to throw up a slight entrenchment, the 
day after the fight at Blackburn's-ford, on Bull Run. After that time, they were generally 
abandoned, or, if used at all, used only for 
chopping beef. I don't think that, in General 
Jackson's entire Corps, enough could have been 
found to arm one Company; and there were 
certainly none in the Ordnance Department.

Big Knives Stop Bullets

One of the side benefits to carrying a heavy steel knife two inches wide and a foot long is that it may occasionally stop a bullet.
   
--At the Siege of Bexar in December 1835, a picket named Pen Jarvis was struck by a Mexican musket ball. He cried out and fell to the ground and his comrades initially thought he must have been killed or severely wounded. However, it turned out the ball had struck his bowie knife, inflicting painful cuts and a large bruise on his leg but nothing more serious. After this, he was dubbed "Bowie Knife Jarvis."
   
--On August 1, 1843, when the abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay was shot by Sam Brown, he too was saved by his bowie knife, or rather, its scabbard. The bullet was stopped by the scabbard's silver tip, leaving a red spot just over his heart.
   
--In gold rush days, a man named Carder, the editor of the Columbia (California) Gazette, was saved by a bowie knife he carried. As the newspaper article reports, "John Cardinell, alias Long John, and [first name omitted] Shaw, were standing in Pete Ferguson's door, in Columbia, on last Tuesday about noon, and Mr. Carder, of the Gazette, was passing by. Cardinell stepped behind some boxes, took deliberate aim at Carder with a derringer, and fired, the ball striking the blade of a small bowie knife, which Carder hid in his bosom immediately over the heart. The ball flattened to about the size of a quarter dollar, and glanced downward, inflicting a flesh wound about five inches in length. Carder drew and fired once at Cardinell, missing him. Shaw then drew his revolver and commenced firing at Carder. Seven or eight shots were fired, none of which did any damage except the one fired by Cardinell. Cause: 'an old grudge.'"
   
--Sergeant William F. Potts, who was wounded in the foot on September 17, 1862, at the Battle of Antietam, describes how a bowie knife saved a comrade, William T. "Bill" Daller: "The company was lying down, and two of us started out in front to find out where the balls were coming from: we found that some bushes along a ridge of rocks were full of Rebels, and they hit us both. I think it was 'Bill' Dollar [sic] that was with me, and they hit him on a heavy bowie knife that I had given him to carry for me -- it was bent nearly double, and, no doubt, saved his life."
   
--In a firefight on February 5, 1970, in A Shau Valley, Lance Corporal Tommy Sexton, USMC, was the only member of his four-man recon team to emerge unscathed, thanks to his KA-BAR knife. Sexton recalls: "When they opened up on the team, I was in a kneeling position and immediately began firing back. Suddenly I felt a round strike me in the chest. It sent me twisting to my left, and as I turned back into my original position, I reached over to grab my knife out of its scabbard, only to discover that I now had half a knife. The bullet that hit me had gone through the day-night flare that was taped to the sheath of the K-Bar, which was positioned upside down on my shoulder harness for a quick release. The bullet had broken the steel blade of my knife in two."
   
--A similar incident occurred during the Battle of Mogadishu on October 3-4, 1993, when a Randall bowie knife worn by Navy SEAL John Gay on his right hip stopped an AK-47 round. The blade was shattered, and fragments of it broke the skin on his right hip, but Gay was able to return to the fight. For his actions that day he was awarded a Bronze Star with V (Valor) device.