Chapter VI: Lee and Jackson: 1862-3 (2)

Sigel's Germans, supported by the splendid Pennsylvanians under Reynolds, advanced from the Henry Hill to hold Jackson till Pope could come up and finish him. The numbers were about even, with slight odds in favor of Jackson. But the shock was delivered piecemeal. Each part was roughly handled and driven back in disorder. And by the time Reynolds had come to the front Lee's advanced guard was arriving. Then eighteen thousand Federals marched in from Centreville under Reno, Kearny, and "fighting Joe Hooker," of whom we shall hear again. Pope came up in person with the rest of his available command, rode along his line, and explained the situation as founded on his ignorance and colored by his fancy. At this very moment Longstreet came up on Jackson's right. Reynolds went into action against what he thought was Jackson's extended right but what was really Longstreet's left. Meanwhile the Centreville troops attacked near Bull Run. But that dashing commander, Philip Kearny, was held up by Jackson's concentrated guns; so Hooker and Reno advanced alone, straight for the railroad line. The Confederates behind it poured in a tremendous hail of bullets, and the long dry grass caught fire. But nothing stopped Hooker till bayonets were crossed on the rails and the Confederate line was broken. Then the Confederate reserves charged in and drove the Federals back. No sooner was this seen than, with a burst of cheering, another blue line surged forward. Again the Confederate front was broken, but again their reserves drove back the Federals. And so the fight went on, with stroke and counterstroke, till, at a quarter past five, twelve hours after Pope's first men had started from the Henry Hill, his thirty thousand attackers found themselves unable to break through.

Pope wished to make one more effort to round up Jackson's supposedly open right. But Porter quite properly sent back word that it was far too strong for his own ten thousand. In reply Pope angrily ordered an immediate attack. But it was now too dark, and the battle ended for the day.

Strangely enough, Lee was also having trouble with his subordinate on the same flank at the same time, but with this difference, that Porter was right while Longstreet was wrong. Lee saw his chance of rolling up Pope's left and ordered Longstreet to do it. But, after reconnoitering the ground, Longstreet came back to say the chance was "not inviting." Again Lee ordered an attack. But Longstreet wasted time, looking for needlessly favorable ground till long after dark. Meanwhile the Federals were also feeling their way forward over the same ground to get into a good flanking position for next day's battle. So the two sides met; and it was past midnight when Longstreet settled down. Lee wanted a sword thrust. Longstreet gave a pin prick. We shall meet Longstreet again, in the same character of obstructive subordinate, at Gettysburg. But he was, for the most part, a very good officer indeed; and the South, with its scanty supply of trained leaders, could not afford to make changes like the North. The fault, too, was partly Lee's; for his one weak point with good but wayward subordinates was a tendency to let his sensitive consideration for their feelings overcome his sterner insight into their defects.

At noon on the fatal thirtieth of August, Pope, self-deluded and self-sufficient as before, dismayed his best officers by ordering his sixty-five thousand men to be "immediately thrown forward in pursuit of the enemy," whose own fifty thousand were now far readier than on the previous day.

Then the dense blue masses marched to their doom. Twenty thousand bayonets shone together from Groveton to Bull Run. Forty thousand more supported them on the slopes in rear, while every Federal gun thundered forth protectingly from the heights behind. The Confederate batteries were pointed out as the objective of attack. Not one glint of steel appeared between these batteries and the glittering Federal host. To the men in the ranks and to Pope himself victory seemed assured. But no sooner had that brave array come within rifle range of the deserted railroad line than, high and clear, the Confederate bugles called along the hidden edges of the flat-topped Ridge; when instantly the great gray host broke cover, ran forward as one man, and held the whole embankment with a line of fire and steel.

A shock of sheer amazement ran through the Federal mass. Then, knightly as any hero of romance, a mounted officer rode out alone, in front of the center, and, with his sword held high, continued leading the advance, which itself went on undaunted. The Confederate flank batteries crossed their fire on this devoted center. Bayonets flashed out of line in hundreds as their owners fell. Colors were cut down, raised high, cut down again. But still that gallant horse and man went on, unswerving and untouched. Even the sweeping volleys spared them both, though now, as the Federals closed, these volleys cut down more men than the cross-fire of the guns. At last the unscathed hero waved his sword and rode straight up the deadly embankment, followed by the charging line. "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" shouted the admiring Confederates as his splendid figure stood, one glorious moment, on the top. The next, both horse and man sank wounded, and were at once put under cover by their generous foes.

For thirty-five dire minutes the fight raged face to face. One Federal color rose, fell, and rose again as fast as living hands could take it from the dead. Over a hundred men lay round it when the few survivors drew back to re-form. Pope fed his front line with reserves, who advanced with the same undaunted gallantry, but also with the same result. As if to make this same result more sure he never tried to win by one combined assault, wave after crashing wave, without allowing the defense to get its second wind; but let each unit taste defeat before the next came on. Federal bravery remained. But Federal morale was rapidly disintegrating under the palpable errors of Pope. Misguided, misled, and mishandled, the blue lines still fought on till four, by which time every corps, division, and brigade had failed entirely.

Then, at the perfect moment and in the perfect way, Lee's counterstroke was made: the beaten Federals being assailed in flank as well as front by every sword, gun, bayonet, and bullet that could possibly be brought to bear. Only the batteries remained on the ridge, firing furiously till the Federals were driven out of range. The infantry and cavalry were sent in--wave after wave of them, without respite, till the last had hurled destruction on the foe.

As at the First Bull Run, so here, the regulars fell back in good order, fighting to the very end. But the rest of Pope's Army of Virginia was no longer an organized unit. Even strong reinforcements could do nothing for it now. On the second of September, three days after the battle, its arrival at Washington, heralded by thousands of weary stragglers, threw the whole Union into gloom.

The first counter-invasion naturally followed. Southern hopes ran high. Bragg's invasion of Kentucky seemed to be succeeding at this time. The trans-Mississippi line still held at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Richmond had been saved. Washington was menaced. And most people on both sides thought so much more of the land than of the sea that the Federal victories along the coast and up the Mississippi were half forgotten for the time being; and so was the strangling blockade. Lee, of course, saw the situation as a whole; and, as a whole, it was far from bright. But though the counter-invasion was now a year too late it seemed worth making. Maryland was full of Southern sympathizers; and campaigning there would give Virginia a chance to recuperate, while also preventing the North from recovering too quickly from its last reverse. Thus it was with great expectations that the Confederates crossed the Potomac singing _Maryland, my Maryland!_

But Maryland did not respond to this appeal. The women, it is true, were mostly Southern to the core and ready to serve the Confederate cause in every way they could. But the men, reflecting more, knew they were in the grip of Northern sea-power. Nor could they fail to notice the vast difference between the warlike resources of the North and South. Northern armies had been marching through for many months, well fed, well armed, and superabundantly supplied. The Confederates, on the other hand, were fewer in numbers, half starved, in ragged clothing, less well armed, and far less abundantly supplied in every way. A Northerner who fell sick could generally count on the best of medical care, not to mention a profusion of medical comforts. But the blockade kept medicines and surgical instruments out of the Southern ports; and the South could make few of her own. So, to be very sick or badly wounded meant almost a sentence of death in the South. Eighteen months of war had disillusioned Maryland. The expected reinforcements never came.

Lee had again divided his army in the hope of snatching victory by means of better strategy. On the thirteenth of September Jackson was bombarding the Federals at Harper's Ferry, Longstreet was at Hagerstown, and Stuart was holding the gaps of South Mountain.

The same day McClellan, whose whole army was at Frederick, received a copy of Lee's orders. They had been wrapped round three cigars and lost by a careless Confederate staff officer. Had McClellan forced the gaps immediately, maneuvered with reasonable skill, and struck home with every available man, he might have annihilated Lee. But he let the thirteenth pass quietly; and when he did take the passes on the fourteenth it cost him a good deal, as the Confederate infantry had reinforced Stuart. On the fifteenth Jackson took Harper's Ferry. On the sixteenth he joined Lee at Antietam. And on the seventeenth, when the remaining availables had also joined Lee, McClellan made up his mind to attack. "Ask me for anything but time," said the real Napoleon. The "Young Napoleon" did not even need the asking.

Antietam (so called from the Antietam Creek) or Sharpsburg (so called from the Confederate headquarters there) was one of the biggest battles of the Civil War; and it might possibly have been the most momentous. But, as things turned out, it was in itself an indecisive action, spoilt for the Federals, first, by McClellan's hesitating strategy, and then by his failure to press the attack home at all costs, with every available man, in an unbroken succession of assaults. He had over 80,000 men with 275 guns against barely 40,000 with 194 guns of inferior strength. But though the Federals fought with magnificent devotion, and though the losses were very serious on both sides, the tactical result was a mutual checkmate. The strategic result, however, was a Confederate defeat; for, with his few worn veterans, Lee had no chance whatever of keeping his precarious hold on a neutral Maryland.

October was a quiet month, each side reorganizing without much interference from the other, except for Stuart's second raid round the whole embattled army of McClellan. This time Stuart took nearly two thousand men and four horse artillery guns. Crossing the Potomac at McCoy's Ford on the tenth he reached Chambersburg that night, destroyed the Federal stores, took all the prisoners he wanted, cut the wires, obstructed the rails, and went on with hundreds of Federal horses. Next day he circled the Federal rear toward Gettysburg, turned south through Emmitsburg, and crossed McClellan's line of communications with Washington at Hyattstown early on the twelfth. By this time the Federal cavalry were riding themselves to exhaustion in vain pursuit; while many other forces were trying to close in and cut him off. But he reached the mouth of the Monocacy and crossed White's Ford in safety, fighting off all interference. The information he brought back was of priceless value. Lee now learned that McClellan was not falling back on Washington but being reinforced from there, and that consequently no new Peninsula Campaign was to be feared at present. This alone was worth the effort, risk, and negligible loss. Stuart had marched a hundred and twenty-six miles on the Federal side of the Potomac--eighty of them without a single halt; and he had been fifty-six hours inside the Federal lines, mostly within four riding hours of McClellan's own headquarters.

This second stinging raid roused the loyal North to fury; and by November a new invasion of Virginia was in full swing on the old ground, with McClellan at Warrenton, Lee at Culpeper, and Jackson in the Valley.

But McClellan's own last chance had gone. Late at night on the seventh he was sitting alone in his tent, writing to his wife, when Burnside asked if he could come in with General C. P. Buckingham, the confidential staff officer to the War Department. After some forced conversation Buckingham handed McClellan a paper ordering his supersession by Burnside. McClellan simply said: "Well, Burnside, I turn the command over to you." The eighth and ninth were spent in handing over; and on the tenth McClellan made his official farewell. Next day he was entraining at Warrenton Junction when the men, among whom he was immensely popular, broke ranks and swarmed round his car, cursing the Government and swearing they would follow no one but their "Old Commander." McClellan, with all his faults in the field, was a good organizer, an extremely able engineer, a very brave soldier, a very sympathetic comrade in arms, and a regular father to his men, whose personal interests were always his first care. The moment was critical. McClellan, had he chosen, might have imitated the Roman generals who led the revolts of Prætorian Guards. But he stepped out on the front platform of the car, held up his hand, and, amid tense silence, asked the men to "stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me." The car they had uncoupled to prevent his departure was run up and coupled again; and then, amid cheers of mournful farewell, they let him go.

General Ambrose E. Burnside was expected to smash Lee, take Richmond, and end the war at once. He was a good subordinate, but quite unfit for supreme command, which he accepted only under protest. Moreover, he was not supported as he should have been by the War Department, nor even by the Headquarter Staff. While changing his position from Warrenton to Fredericksburg he was hampered by avoidable delays. So when he reached Falmouth he found Lee had forestalled him on the opposing heights of Fredericksburg itself.

The disastrous thirteenth of December was dull, calm, and misty. But presently the sun shone down with unwonted warmth; the mists rolled up like curtains; and there stood 200,000 men, arrayed in order of battle: 80,000 Confederates awaiting the onslaught of 120,000 Federals.

On came the solid masses of the Federals, eighty thousand strong, with forty in support, amid the thunder of five hundred attacking and defending guns. The sunlight played upon the rising tide of Federal bayonets as on sea currents when they turn inshore. The colors waved proudly as ever; and to the outward eye the attack seemed almost strong enough to drive the stern and silent gray Confederates clear off the crest. But the indispensable morale was wanting. For this was the end of a long campaign, full of drawn battles and terrible defeats. Burnside was an unpopular substitute for McClellan; he was not in any way a great commander; and he was acting under pressure against his own best judgment. His army knew or felt all this; and he knew they knew or felt it. The Federals, for all their glorious courage, felt, when the two fronts met at Fredericksburg, that they were no more than sacrificial pawns in the grim game of war. After much useless slaughter they reeled back beaten. But they could and did retire in safety, skillfully "staffed" by their leaders and close to their unconquerable sea.

Lee could make no counterstroke. The Confederate Government had not dared to let him occupy the far better position on the line of the North Anna, from which a vigorous counterstroke might have almost annihilated a beaten attacker, who would have been exposed on both flanks, beyond the sure protection of the sea. Thus fear of an outcry against "abandoning" the country between Fredericksburg and the North Anna caused the Southern politicians to lose their chance at home. But without a decisive victory they could not hope for foreign intervention. So losing their chance at home made them lose it abroad as well.

Burnside was dazed by his defeat and the appalling loss of life in vain. But after five weeks of most discouraging inaction he tried to surprise Lee by crossing the Rappahannock several miles higher up. On the twentieth and twenty-first of that miserable January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance of surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud March" came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was superseded by one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker, known to all ranks as "Fighting Joe Hooker."

Fredericksburg, the spell of relaxing winter quarters beside the fatal Rappahannock, and then the fatal "Mud March," combined to lower Federal morale. Yet the mass of the men, being composed of fine human material, quickly recovered under "Fighting Joe Hooker," who knew what discipline meant. Numbers and discipline tell. But disciplined numbers were not the only or even the greatest menace to the South. For here, as farther west, the Confederate Government was beginning to be foolish just as the Federal Government showed signs of growing wise. Lincoln and Stanton were giving Joe Hooker a fairly free hand just when Davis and Seddon (his makeshift minister of war) were using Confederate forces as puppets to be pulled about by Cabinet strings from Richmond. Here again (as later on at Chattanooga) Longstreet was sent away on a useless errand just when he was needed most by Lee. Good soldier though he was in many ways he was no such man as Stonewall Jackson; and, in this one year, he failed his seniors thrice.

It is true enough that the April situation of 1863 might well shake governmental nerves; for Richmond was being menaced from three points--north, southeast, and south: Fredericksburg due north, Suffolk southeast, Newbern south. Newbern in North Carolina was a long way off. But its possession by an active enemy threatened the rail connection from Richmond south to Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, the only three Atlantic ports through which the South could get supplies from overseas. Suffolk was nearer. It covered the landward side of Norfolk, which, with Fortress Monroe, might become the base of a new Peninsula Campaign. But Fredericksburg was nearest; nearest to Richmond, nearest to Washington, nearest to the main Southern force; and not only nearest but strongest, in every way strongest and most to be feared. "Fighting Joe Hooker" was there, with a hundred and thirty thousand men, already stirring for the spring campaign that was to wipe out memories of Fredericksburg, make short work of Lee, and end the war at Richmond.

Yet Longstreet cheerfully marched off, pleased with his new command, to see what he could do to soothe the Government by winning laurels for himself at Suffolk. On the seventeenth, just two weeks before the supreme test came on Lee's weakened army at Chancellorsville, Longstreet reported to Seddon that Suffolk would cost three thousand men, if taken by assault, or three days' heavy firing if subdued by bombardment. Shrinking from such expenditure of life or ammunition, Davis, Seddon, and Longstreet fell back on a siege, which, preventing all junction with Lee, might well have cost the ruin of their cause.

Lee and Jackson then prepared to make the best of a bad business along the Rappahannock, and to snatch victory once more, if possible, from the very jaws of death. The prospect was grimmer than before. Hooker was a better fighter than McClellan and wiser than Burnside or Pope. Moreover, after two years of war, the Union Government had at last found out that civilian detectives knew less about armies than expert staff officers know, and that cavalry which was something more than mere men on horses could collect a little information too. Hooker knew Lee's strength as well as his own. So he decided to hold Lee fast with one part of the big Federal army, turn his flank with another, and cut his line of supply and retreat with Stoneman's ten thousand sabers as well. The respective grand totals were 130,000 Federals against 62,000 Confederates.

So far, so good; so very good indeed that Hooker and his staff were as nearly free from care on May Day as headquarter men can ever be in the midst of vital operations. Hooker had just reason to be proud of the Army of the Potomac and of his own work in reviving it. He had, indeed, issued one bombastic order of the day in which he called it "the finest on the planet." But even this might be excused in view of the popular call for encouraging words. What was more to the point was the reëstablishment of Federal morale, which had been terribly shaken after the great Mud March. Hooker's sworn evidence (as given in the official _Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War_) speaks for itself: "The moment I was placed in command I caused a return to be made of the absentees of the army, and found the number to be 2922 commissioned officers and 81,964 non-commissioned officers and privates. They were scattered all over the country, and the majority were absent from causes unknown."

On the twenty-eighth of April Stuart saw the redisciplined Federals in motion far up the Rappahannock, while next day Jackson saw others laying pontoons thirty miles lower down, just on the seaward side of Fredericksburg. Lee took this news with genial calm, remarking to the aide: "Well, I heard firing and was beginning to think it was time some of your lazy young fellows were coming to tell me what it was about. Tell your good general he knows what to do with the enemy just as well as I do." On the thirtieth it became quite clear that Hooker was bent on turning Lee's left and that he had divided his army to do so. Jackson wished to attack Sedgwick's 35,000 Federals still on the plains of Fredericksburg. But Lee convinced him that the better way would be to hold these men with 10,000 Confederates in the fortified position on the confronting heights while the remaining 52,000 should try to catch Hooker himself between the jaws of a trap in the forest round Chancellorsville, where the Federal masses would be far more likely to get out of hand. It was an extremely daring maneuver to be setting this trap when Sedgwick had enough men to storm the heights of Fredericksburg, when Stoneman was on the line of communication with the south, and when Hooker himself, with superior numbers, was gaining Lee's rear. But Lee had Jackson as his lieutenant, not Longstreet, as he was to have at Gettysburg.

Hooker's movements were rapid, well arranged, and admirably executed up to the evening of the first of May, when, finding those of the enemy very puzzling among the dense woods, he chose the worst of three alternatives. The first and best, an immediate counter-attack, would have kept up his army's morale and, if well executed, revealed his own greater strength. The second, a continued advance till he reached clearer ground, might have succeeded or not. The third and worst was to stand on his defense, a plan which, however sound in other places, was fatal here, because it not only depressed the spirits of his army but gave two men of genius the initiative against him in a country where they were at home and he was not. The absence of ten thousand cavalry baffled his efforts to get trustworthy information on the ground, while the dense woods baffled his balloons from above. On the second of May he still thought the initiative was his, that the Confederates were retreating, and that his own jaws were closing on them instead of theirs on him.

Meanwhile, owing to miscalculations of the space that had to be held in force, his right was not only thrown forward too far but presented a flank in the air. This was the flank round which Stonewall Jackson maneuvered with such consummate skill that it was taken on three sides and rolled up in fatal confusion. Its commander, the very capable General O. O. Howard, who perceived the mistake he could not correct, tried hard to stay the rout. But, as his whole reserve had been withdrawn by Hooker to join an attack elsewhere, his lines simply melted away.

The three days' battle that followed (ending on the fifth of May) was bravely fought by the bewildered Federals. Yet all in vain. Hooker was caught like a bull in a net; and the more he struggled the worse it became. At 6 P.M. on the second the cunning trap was sprung when a single Confederate bugle rang out. Instantly other bugles repeated the call at regular intervals through miles of forest. Then, high and clear on the silent air of that calm May evening, the rebel yell rose like the baying of innumerable hounds, hot on the scent of their quarry, with Jackson leading on. Nothing could stop the eager gray lines, wave after wave of them pressing through the woods; not even the gallant fifty guns that fought with desperation in defense of Hazel Grove, where Hooker was rallying his men.

For two days more the tide of battle ebbed and flowed; but always against the Federals in the end, till, broken, bewildered, and disheartened, they retired as best they could. Lee was unable to pursue. Longstreet's men were still missing; and so were many supplies that should have been forwarded from Richmond. There the Government clung to the fond belief that this mere victory had won the war, and that pursuit was useless. Thus Lee's last chance of crushing the invaders was taken from him by his friends.

At the same time the Southern cause suffered another irreparable loss; but in this case at the purely accidental hands of Southern men. Jackson's staff, suddenly emerging from a thicket as the first night closed in, was mistaken for Federal cavalry and shot down. Jackson himself was badly wounded in three places and carried from the field. He never heard the rebel yell again. Next Sunday, when the staff-surgeon told him that he could not possibly live through the night, he simply answered: "Very good, very good; it is all right." Presently he asked Major Pendleton what chaplain was preaching at headquarters. "Mr. Lacy, sir; and the whole army is praying for you." "Thank God," said Jackson, "they are very kind to me." A little later, rousing himself as if from sleep, he called out: "Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front! Tell Major Hawks--" There his strength failed him. But after a pause he said quietly, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." And with these words he died.