Then the choice fell on McClellan, whose notorious campaign fills much of our next chapter. There we shall see how refractory circumstances, Stanton’s waywardness among them, forced Lincoln to go beyond the limits of civil control. Here we need only note McClellan’s personal relations with the President. Instead of summoning him to the White House Lincoln often called at McClellan’s for discussion. McClellan presently began to treat Lincoln’s questions as intrusions, and one day sent down word that he was too tired to see the President. Lincoln had told a friend that he would hold McClellan’s stirrups for the sake of victory. But he could not abdicate in favor of McClellan or any one else.
It was none of Lincoln’s business to be an actual Commander-in-Chief. Yet night after weary night he sat up studying the science and art of war, groping his untutored way toward those general principles and essential human facts which his native genius enabled him to reach, but never quite understanding–how could he?–their practical application to the field of strategy. His supremely good common sense saved him from going beyond his depth whenever he could help it. His Military Orders were forced upon him by the extreme pressure of impatient public opinion. He told Grant “he did not know but they were all wrong, and he did know that some of them were.”
McClellan was not the only failure in Virginia. Burnside and Hooker also failed against Lee and Jackson. All three suffered from civilian interference as well as from their own defects. At last, in the third year of the war, a victor appeared in Meade, a good, but by no means great, commander. In the fourth year Lincoln gave the chief command to Grant, whom he had carefully watched and wisely supported through all the ups and downs of the river campaigns.
Grant’s account of his first conference alone with Lincoln is eloquent of Lincoln’s wise war statesmanship
“He stated that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted, and never wanted to interfere in them . . . . All he wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering such assistance . . . . He pointed out on the map two streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that the army might be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of these streams. We would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies and the tributaries would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened respectfully, but did not suggest that the same streams would protect Lee’s flanks while he was shutting us up. I did not communicate my plans to the President; nor did I to the Secretary of War or to General Halleck.”
Trust begot trust; and some months later Grant showed war statesmanship of the same magnificent kind. McClellan had become the Democratic candidate for President, to the wellfounded alarm of all who put the Union first. In June, when Grant and Lee were at grips round Richmond, Lincoin was invited to a public meeting got up in honor of Grant with only a flimsy disguise of the ominous fact that Grant, and not Lincoln, might be the Union choice. Lincoln sagaciously wrote back: “It is impossible for me to attend. I approve nevertheless of whatever may tend to strengthen and sustain General Grant and the noble armies now under his command. He and his brave soldiers are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and guns, moving to his and their support.” The danger to the Union of taking Grant away from the front moved Lincoln deeply all through that anxious summer of ’64, though he never thought Grant would leave the front with his work half done. In August an officious editor told Lincoln that he ought to take a good long rest. Lincoln, however, was determined to stand by his own post of duty and find out from Grant, through their common friend, John Eaton, what Grant’s own views of such ideas were. This is Eaton’s account of how Grant took it:
“We had been talking very quietly. But Grant’s reply came in an instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared. He brought his clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair. ‘They can’t do it. They can’t compel me to do it.’ Emphatic gesture was not a strong point with Grant. ‘Have you said this to the President?’ ‘No,’ said Grant, ‘I have not thought it worth while to assure the President of my opinion. I consider it as important for the cause that he should be elected as that the army should be successful in the field.'”
When Eaton brought back his report Lincoln simply said, “I told you they could not get him to run till he had closed out the rebellion.”
On the twenty-third of this same gloomy August, lightened only by the taking of Mobile, Lincoln asked his Cabinet if they would endorse a memorandum without reading it. They all immediately signed. After his reelection in November he read it out: “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.” He added that he would have asked McClellan to throw his whole influence into getting enough recruits to finish the war before the fourth of March. “And McClellan,” was Seward’s comment, “would have said ‘Yes, yes,’ and then done nothing.”
Lincoln’s reelection was helped by Farragut’s victory in August, Sherman’s in September, and Sheridan’s raid through the Shenandoah Valley in October. But it was also helped by that strange, vivifying touch which passes, no one knows how, from the man who best embodies a supremely patriotic cause to the masses of his fellow patriots, and then, at some great crisis, when they scale heights which he has long since trod, comes back in flood and carries him to power.
Lincoln stories were abroad; the true were eclipsing the false; and all the true ones gained him increasing credit. Naval reformers, and many others too, enjoyed the homely wit with which he closed the first conference about such a startlingly novel craft as the plans for the Monitor promised: “Well, Gentlemen, all I have to say is what the girl said when she put her foot into the stocking: ‘It strikes me there’s something in it.'” The army enjoyed the joke against the three-month captain whom Sherman threatened to shoot if he went home without leave. The same day Lincoln, visiting the camp, was harangued by this prospective deserter in presence of many another man disheartened by Bull Run. “Mr. President: this morning I spoke to Colonel Sherman and he threatened to shoot me, Sir!” Lincoln looked the two men over, and then, in a stage whisper every listener could hear, said: “Well, if I were you, and he threatened to shoot me, I wouldn’t trust him; for I’m sure he’d do it.” Both Services were not only pleased with the “rise” Lincoln took out of a too inquisitive politician but were much reassured by its model discretion. This importunate politician so badgered Lincoln about the real destination of McClellan’s transports that Lincoln at last promised to tell everything he could if the politician would promise not to repeat it. Then, after swearing the utmost secrecy, the politician got the news: “They are going to sea.”
The whole home front as well as the Services were touched to the heart by tales of Lincoln’s kindness in his many interviews with the warbereaved; and letters like these spoke for themselves to every patriot in the land:
Executive Mansion, November 21, 1864.
Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Massachusetts.
Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln.
Nor did the Lincoln touch stop there. It even began to make its quietly persuasive way among the finer spirits of the South from the very day on which the Second Inaugural closed with words which were the noblest consummation of the prophecy made in the First. This was the prophecy: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” And this the consummation “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan–to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
CHAPTER VI. LEE AND JACKSON: 1862-3
Most Southerners remained spellbound by the glamour of Bull Run till the hard, sharp truths of ’62 began to rouse them from their flattering dream. They fondly hoped, and even half believed, that if another Northern army dared to invade Virginia it would certainly fail against their entrenchments at Bull Run. If, so ran the argument, the North failed in the open field it must fail still worse against a fortified position.
The Southern generals vainly urged their Government to put forth its utmost strength at once, before the more complex and less united North had time to recover and begin anew. They asked for sixty thousand men at Bull Run, to be used for a vigorous counterstroke at Washington. They pointed out the absurdity of misusing the Bull Run (or Manassas) position as a mere shield, fixed to one spot, instead of making it the hilt of a sword thrust straight at the heart of the North. Robert E. Lee, now a full general in the Confederate Army and adviser to the President, grasped the whole situation from the first and urged the right solution in the official way. Stonewall Jackson, still a junior general, was in full accord with Lee, as we know from the confidential interview (at the end of October, ’61) between him and his divisional commander, General G. W. Smith, who made it public many years later. The gist of Jackson’s argument was this: “McClellan won’t come out this year with his army of recruits. We ought to invade now, not wait to be invaded later on. If Davis would concentrate every man who can be spared from all other points and let us invade before winter sets in, then McClellan’s recruits couldn’t stand against us in the field.–Let us cross the upper Potomac, occupy Baltimore, and, holding Maryland, cut the communications of Washington, force the Federal Government out of it, beat McClellan if he attacks, destroy industrial plants liable to be turned to warlike ends, cut the big commercial lines of communication, close the coal mines, seize the neck of land between Pittsburg and Lake Erie, live on the country by requisition, and show the North what it would cost to conquer the South.” On asking Smith if he agreed, Smith answered: “I will tell you a secret; for I am sure it won’t be divulged. These views were rejected by the Government during the conference at Fairfax Court House at the beginning of the month.” Jackson thereupon shook Smith’s hand, saying, “I am sorry, very sorry,” and, mounting Little Sorrel without another word, rode sadly away.
Jefferson Davis probably, and some of his Cabinet possibly, understood what Lee, “Joe” Johnston, Beauregard, Smith, and Jackson so strongly urged. But they feared the outcry that would assuredly be raised by people in districts denuded of troops for the grand concentration elsewhere. So they remained passive when they should have been active, and, trying to strengthen each separate part, fatally weakened the whole.
Meanwhile the North was collecting the different elements of warlike force and changing its Secretary of War. Cameron was superseded by Stanton on the fifteenth of January. Twelve days later Lincoln issued the first of those military orders which, as we have just seen, he afterwards told Grant that the impatience of the loyal North compelled him to issue, though he knew some were certainly, and all were possibly, wrong. This first order was one of the certainly wrong. McClellan’s unready masses were to begin an unlimited mud march through the early spring. roads of Virginia on the twenty-second of February, in honor of Washington’s birthday. A reconnoitering staff officer reported the roads as being in their proper places; but he guessed the bottom had fallen out. So McClellan was granted some delay.
His grand total was now over two hundred thousand men. The Confederate grand total was estimated at a hundred and fifteen thousand by the civilian detectives whom the Federal Government employed to serve in place of an expert intelligence staff. The detective estimate was sixty-five thousand men out. The real Confederate strength at this time was only fifty thousand. There was little chance of getting true estimates in any other way, as the Federal Government had no adequate cavalry. Most of the few cavalry McClellan commanded were as yet a mere collection of men and horses, quite unfit for reconnoitering and testing an enemy’s force.
McClellan’s own plan, formed on the supposition that the Confederates held the Bull Run position with at least a hundred thousand men, involved the transfer of a hundred and fifty thousand Federals by sea from Washington to Fortress Monroe, on the historic peninsula between the York and James rivers. Then, using these rivers as lines of communication, his army would take Richmond in flank. Lincoln’s objection to this plan was based on the very significant argument that while the Federal army was being transported piecemeal to Fortress Monroe the Confederates might take Washington by a sudden dash from their base at Centreville, only thirty miles off. This was a valid objection; for Washington was not only the Federal Headquarters but the very emblem of the Union cause–a sort of living Stars and Stripes–and Washington lost might well be understood to mean almost the same as if the Ship of State had struck her colors.
On the ninth of March the immediate anxiety about Washington was relieved. That day came news that the Monitor had checkmated the Merrimac in Hampton Roads and that “Joe” Johnston had withdrawn his forces from the Bull Run position and had retired behind the Rappahannock to Culpeper. On the tenth McClellan began a reconnoitering pursuit of Johnston from Washington. Having found burnt bridges and other signs of decisive retirement, he at last persuaded the reluctant Lincoln to sanction the Peninsula Campaign. On the seventeenth his army began embarking for Fortress Monroe, ten thousand men at a time, that being all the transports could carry. For a week the movement of troops went on successfully; while the Confederates could not make out what was happening along the coast. Everything also seemed quite safe, from the Federal point of view, in the Shenandoah Valley, where General Banks commanded. And both there and along the Potomac the Federals were in apparently overwhelming strength; even though the detectives doing duty as staff officers still kept on doubling the numbers of all the Confederates under arms.
Suddenly, on the twenty-third, a fight at Kernstown in the Shenandoah Valley gave a serious shock to the victorious Federals, not only there but all over the semicircle of invasion, from West Virginia round by the Potomac and down to Fortress Monroe. The fighting on both sides was magnificent. Yet Kernstown itself was a very small affair. Little more than ten thousand men had been in action: seven thousand Federals under Shields against half as many Confederates under Stonewall Jackson. The point is that Jackson’s attack, though unsuccessful, was very disconcerting elsewhere. From Kernstown the area of disturbance spread like wildfire till the tactical victory of seven thousand Federals had spoilt the strategy of thirty times as many. Shields reported: “I set to work during the night to bring together all the troops within my reach. I sent an express after Williams’s division, requesting the rear brigade, about twenty miles distant, to march all night and join me in the morning. I swept the posts in rear of almost all their guards, hurrying them forward by forced marches, to be with me at daylight.” Banks, now on his way to Washington, halted in alarm at Harper’s Ferry. McClellan, perceiving that Jackson’s little force was more than a mere corps of observation, approved Banks and added: “As soon as you are strong enough push Jackson hard and drive him well beyond Strasburg,” that is, west of the Massanuttons, where Fremont could close in and finish him. Lincoln had already been thinking of transferring nine thousand men from McClellan to Fremont. Kernstown decided it; so off they went to West Virginia. Still fearing an attack on Washington, Lincoln halted McDowell’s army corps, thirty-seven thousand strong, on the march overland to join McClellan on the Peninsula, and kept them stuck fast round Centreville, near Bull Run. And so McClellan’s Peninsular force was suddenly reduced by forty-six thousand men.
April was a month of maneuvers and suspense. By the end of it McClellan, based on Fortress Monroe, had accumulated a hundred and ten thousand men. The Confederates on the Peninsula, holding Yorktown, numbered fifty thousand. McClellan sadly missed McDowell, whose corps was to have taken the fort at Gloucester Point that prevented the Federal gunboats from turning the enemy’s lines at Yorktown. McDowell moved south to Fredericksburg, leaving a small force near Manassas Junction to connect him with the garrison of Washington. The Confederates could spare only twelve thousand men to watch him. Meanwhile Banks occupied the Shenandoah Valley, having twenty thousand men at Harrisonburg and smaller forces at several points all round, from southwest to northeast, each designed to form part of the net that was soon to catch Jackson. Beyond Banks stood Fremont’s force in West Virginia, also ready to close in. Jackson’s complete grand total was less than that of Banks’s own main body. Yet, with one eye on Richmond, he lay in wait at Swift Run Gap, crouching for a tiger-spring at Banks. Virginia was semicircled by superior forces. But everywhere inside the semicircle the Confederate parts all formed one strategic whole; while the Federal parts outside did not. Moreover, the South had already decided to call up every available man; thus forestalling the North by more than ten months on the vital issue of conscription.
In May the preliminary clash of arms began on the Peninsula. The Confederates evacuated the Yorktown lines on the third. On the fifth McClellan’s advanced guard fought its way past Williamsburg. On the seventh he began changing his base from Fortress Monroe to White House on the Pamunkey. Here on the sixteenth he was within twenty miles of Richmond, while all the seaways behind him were safe in Union hands. The fate not only of Richmond but of the whole South seemed trembling in the scales. The Northern armies had cleared the Mississippi down to Memphis. The Northern navy had taken New Orleans, the greatest Southern port. And now the Northern hosts were striking at the Southern capital. McClellan with double numbers from the east, McDowell with treble numbers from the north, and the Union navy, with more than fourfold strength on all the navigable waters, were closing in. The Confederate Government had even decided to take the extreme step of evacuating Richmond, hoping to prolong the struggle elsewhere. The official records had been packed. Davis had made all arrangements for the flight of his family. And from Drewry’s Bluff, eight miles south of Richmond, the masts of the foremost Federal vessels could be seen coming up the James, where, on the eleventh, the Merrimac, having grounded, had been destroyed by her own commander.
But the General Assembly of Virginia, passionately seconded by the City Council, petitioned the Government to stand its ground “till not a stone was left upon another.” Every man in Richmond who could do a hand’s turn and who was not already in arms marched out to complete the defenses of the James at Drewry’s Bluff. Senators, bankers, bondmen and free, merchants, laborers, and ministers of all religions, dug earthworks, hauled cannon, piled ammunition, or worked, wet to the waist, at the big boom that was to stop the ships and hold them under fire. The Government had changed its mind. Richmond was to be held to the last extremity. And the Southern women were as willing as the men.
In the midst of all this turmoil Lee calmly reviewed the situation. He saw that the Federal gunboats coming up the James were acting alone, as the disconnected vanguard of what should have been a joint advance, and that no army was yet moving to support them. He knew McClellan and Banks and read them like a book. He also knew Jackson, and decided to use him again in the Shenandoah Valley as a menace to Washington. Writing to him on the sixteenth of May, the very day McClellan reached White House, only twenty miles from Richmond, he said: “Whatever movement you make against Banks, do it speedily, and, if successful, drive him back towards the Potomac, and create the impression, as far as possible, that you design threatening that line.” Moreover, out of his own scanty forces, he sent Jackson two excellent brigades. Thus, while the great Federal civilians who knew nothing practical of war were all agog about Richmond, a single point at one end of the semicircle, the great Confederate strategist was forging a thunderbolt to relieve the pressure on it by striking the Federal center so as to threaten Washington. The fundamental idea was a Fabian defensive at Richmond, a vigorous offensive in the Valley, to produce Federal dispersion between these points and Washington; then rapid concentration against McClellan on the Chickahominy.
The unsupported Federal gunboats were stopped and turned back at the boom near Drewry’s Bluff. McClellan, bent on besieging Richmond in due form, crawled cautiously about the intervening swamps of the oozy Chickahominy. McDowell, who could not advance alone, remained at Fredericksburg. Shields stood behind him, near Catlett’s Station, to keep another eye on nervous Washington.
In the meantime Stonewall Jackson, still in the Shenandoah, had fought no battles since his tactical defeat at Kernstown on the twenty-third of March had proved such a pregnant strategic victory elsewhere. But late in April he had a letter from Lee, telling of the general situation and suggesting an attack on Banks. Banks, however, still had twenty thousand men at Harrisonburg, with twenty-five thousand more in or within call of the Valley. Jackson’s complete grand total was less than eighteen thousand. The odds against him therefore exceeded five against two; and direct attack was out of the question. But he now began his maneuvers anew and on a bolder scale than ever. He had upset the Federal strategy at Kernstown, when there were less than eight thousand Confederates in the Valley. What might he not do with ten thousand more? His wonderful Valley Campaign, famous forever in the history of war, gives us the answer.
He had five advantages over Banks. First, his own expert knowledge and genius for war, backed by a dauntless character. Banks was a very able man who had worked his way up from factory hand to Speaker of the House of Representatives and Governor of Massachusetts. But he had neither the knowledge, genius, nor character required for high command; and he owed his present position more to his ardor as a politician than to his ability as a general. Jackson’s second advantage was his own and his army’s knowledge of the country for which they naturally fought with a loving zeal which no invaders could equal. The third advantage was in having Turner Ashby’s cavalry. These were horsemen born and bred, who could make their way across country as easily as the “footy” Federals could along the road. In answer to a peremptory order a Federal cavalry commander could only explain: “I can’t catch them. They leap fences and walls like deer. Neither our men nor our horses are so trained.” The fourth advantage was in discipline. Jackson habitually spared his men more than his officers, and his officers more than himself, whenever indulgence was possible. But when discipline had to be sternly maintained he, maintained it sternly, throughout all ranks, knowing that the flower of discipline is selfsacrifice, from the senior general down, and that the root is due subordination, from the junior private up. After the Conscription Act had come into force a few companies, who were time-expired as volunteers, threw down their arms and told their colonel they wouldn’t serve another day. On hearing this officially Jackson asked: “Why does Colonel Grigsby refer to me to learn how to deal with mutineers? He should shoot them where they stand.” The rest of the regiment was then paraded with loaded arms, facing the mutineers, who were given the choice of complete submission or instant death. They chose submission. That was the last mutiny under Stonewall Jackson. Both sides suffered from straggling, the Confederates as much as the Federals. But Confederate stragglers rejoined the better of the two; and in downright desertion the Federals were the worse, simply because their own peace party was by far the stronger. The final advantage brings us back to strategy, on which the whole campaign was turning. Lee and Jackson worked the Confederates together. Lincoln and Stanton worked the Federals apart.
On the last of April Jackson slipped away from Swift Run Gap while Ewell quietly took his place and Ashby blinded Banks by driving the Federal cavalry back on Harrisonburg. Jackson’s men were thoroughly puzzled and disheartened when they had to leave the Valley in full possession of the enemy while they ploughed through seas of mud towards Richmond. What was the matter? Were they off to Richmond? No; for they presently wheeled round. “Old Jack’s crazy, sure, this time.” Even one of his staff officers thought so himself, and put it on paper, to his own confusion afterwards. The rain came down in driving sheets. The roads became mere drains for the oozing woods. Wheels stuck fast; and Jackson was seen heaving his hardest with an exhausted gun team. But still the march went on–slosh, slosh, squelch; they slogged it through. CLOSE UP, MEN!–CLOSE UP IN REAR!–CLOSE UP, THERE, CLOSE UP!
On the fourth of May Jackson got word from Edward Johnson, commanding his detached brigade near Staunton, that Milroy, commanding Fremont’s advanced guard, was coming on from West Virginia. Jackson at once seized the chance of smashing Milroy by railing in to Staunton before Banks or Fremont could interfere. This would have been suicidal against a great commander with a well-trained force. But Banks, grossly exaggerating Jackson’s numbers, was already marching north to the railhead at New Market, where he would be nearer his friends if Jackson swooped down. Detraining at Staunton the Confederates picketed the whole neighborhood to stop news getting out before they made their dash against Milroy. On the seventh they moved off. The cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson had been a professor for so many years, had just joined to gain some experience of the real thing, and as they stepped out in their smart uniforms, with all the exactness of parade-ground drill, they formed a marked contrast to the gaunt soldiers of the Valley, half fed, half clad, but wholly eager for the fray.
That night Milroy got together all the men he could collect at McDowell, a little village just beyond the Valley and on the road to Gauley Bridge in West Virginia. He sent posthaste for reinforcements. But Fremont’s men were divided too far west, fearing nothing from the Valley, while Banks’s were thinking of a concentration too far north.
In the afternoon of the eighth, Milroy attacked Jackson with great determination and much skill. But after a stern encounter, in which the outnumbered Federals fought very well indeed, the Confederates won a decisive victory. The numbers actually engaged–twenty-five hundred Federals against four thousand Confederates–were even smaller than at Kernstown. But this time the Confederates won the tactical victory on the spot as well as the strategic victory all over the Valley; and the news cheered Richmond at what, as we have seen already, was its very darkest hour. The night of the battle Jackson sent out strong working parties to destroy all bridges and culverts and to block all roads by which Fremont could reach the Valley. In some places bowlders were rolled down from the hills. In one the trees were felled athwart the path for a mile. A week later Jackson was back in the Valley at Lebanon Springs, while Fremont was blocked off from Banks, who was now distractedly groping for safety and news.
The following day, the famous sixteenth, we regain touch with Lee, who, as mentioned already, then wrote to Jackson about attacking Banks in order to threaten Washington. This dire day at Richmond, the day McClellan reached White House, was also the one appointed by the Southern Government as a day of intercession for God’s blessing on the Southern arms. None kept it more fervently, even in beleaguered Richmond, than pious Jackson in the Valley. Then, like a giant refreshed, he rose for swift and silent marches and also sudden hammer-strokes at Banks.
Confident that all would now go well, Washington thought nothing of the little skirmish at McDowell, because it apparently disturbed nothing beyond the Shenandoah Valley. The news from everywhere else was good; and Federals were jubilant. So were the civilian strategists, particularly Stanton, who, though tied to his desk as Secretary of War, was busy wire-pulling Banks’s men about the Valley. Stanton ordered Banks to take post at Strasburg and to hold the bridges at Front Royal with two detached battalions. This masterpiece of bungling put the Federals at Front Royal in the air, endangered their communications north to Winchester, and therefore menaced the Valley line toward Washington. But Banks said nothing; and Stanton would have snubbed him if he had.
On the twenty-third of May a thousand Federals under Colonel Kenly were sweltering in the first hot weather of the year at Stanton’s indefensible position of Front Royal when suddenly a long gray line of skirmishers emerged from the woods, the Confederate bugles rang out, and Jackson’s battle line appeared. Then came a crashing volley, which drove in the Federal pickets for their lives. Colonel Kenly did his best. But he was outflanked and forced back in confusion. A squadron of New York cavalry came to the rescue; but were themselves outflanked and helpless on the road against the Virginian horsemen, who could ride across country. Kenly had just made a second stand, when down came the Virginians, led by Colonel Flournoy at racing speed over fence and ditch, scattering the Federal cavalry like chaff before the wind and smashing into the Federal infantry. Two hundred and fifty really efficient cavalry took two guns (complete with limbers, men, and horses), killed and wounded a hundred and fifty-four of their opponents, and captured six hundred prisoners as well–and all with a loss to themselves of only eleven killed and fifteen wounded.
Ashby’s cavalry, several hundreds strong, pushed on and out to the flanks, cutting the wires, destroying bridges, and blocking the roads against reinforcements from beyond the Valley. Three hours after the attack a dispatchrider dashed up to Banks’s headquarters at Strasburg. But Banks refused to move, saying, when pressed by his staff to make a strategic retreat on Winchester, “By God, sir, I will not retreat! We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than from the bayonets of our enemies!” The Cabinet backed him up next day by actually proposing to reinforce him at Strasburg with troops from Washington and Baltimore. Nevertheless he was forced to fly for his life to Winchester. His stores at Strasburg had to be abandoned. His long train of wagons was checked on the way, with considerable loss. And some of his cavalry, caught on the road by horsemen who could ride across country, were smashed to pieces.
Jackson pressed on relentlessly to Winchester with every one who could march like “foot cavalry,” as his Valley men came to be called. On the twenty-fifth, the third day of unremitting action, he carried the Winchester heights and drove Banks through the town. Only the Second Massachusetts, which had already distinguished itself during the retreat, preserved its formation. Ten thousand Confederate bayonets glittered in the morning sun. The long gray lines swept forward. The piercing rebel yell rose high. And the people, wild with joy, rushed out of doors to urge the victors on.
By the twenty-sixth, the first day on which Stanton’s reinforcements from Baltimore and Washington could possibly have fought at Strasburg, the Confederates had reached Martinsburg, fifty miles beyond it. Banks had already crossed the Potomac, farther on still. The newsboys of the North were crying, DEFEAT OF GENERAL BANKS! WASHINGTON IN DANGER! Thirteen Governors were calling for special State militia, for which a million men were volunteering, spare troops were hurrying to Harper’s Ferry, a reserve corps was being formed at Washington, the Federal Government was assuming control of all the railroad lines, and McClellan was being warned that he must either take Richmond at once or come back to save the capital. Nor did the strategic disturbance stop even there; for the Washington authorities ordered McDowell’s force at Fredericksburg to the Valley just as it was coming into touch with McClellan.
On the twenty-eighth Jackson might have taken Harper’s Ferry. But the storm was gathering round him. A great strategist directing the Federal forces could have concentrated fifty thousand men, by sunset on the first of June, against Jackson’s Army of the Valley, which could not possibly have mustered one-third of such a number. McDowell arrived that night at Front Royal. He had vainly protested against the false strategy imposed by the Government from Washington, and he was not a free agent now. Yet, even so, his force was at least a menace to Jackson, who had only two chances of getting away to aid in the. defeat of McClellan and the saving of Richmond. One was to outmarch the converging Federals, gain interior lines along the Valley, and defeat them there in detail. The other was to march into friendly Maryland, trusting to her Southern sentiments for help and reinforcements. He decided on the Valley route and marched straight in between his enemies.
His fortnight’s work, from the nineteenth of May to the first of June, inclusive, is worth summing up. In these fourteen days he had marched 170 miles, routed 12,500 men, threatened an invasion of the North, drawn McDowell off from Fredericksburg, taken or destroyed all Federal stores at Front Royal, Winchester, and Martinsburg, and brought off safely a convoy seven miles long. Moreover, he had done all this with the loss of only six hundred, though sixty thousand enemies lay on three sides of his own sixteen thousand men.
His remaining problem was harder still. It was how to mystify, tire out, check short, and then immobilize the converging Federals long enough to let him slip secretly away in time to help Johnston and Lee against McClellan. Jackson, like his enemies, moved through what has been well called the Fog of War–that inevitable uncertainty through which all commanders must find their way. But none of his enemies equaled him in knowledge, genius, or character for war.
The first week in June saw desperate marches in the Valley, with the outnumbering Federals hotfoot on the trail of Jackson, who turned to bay one moment and at the next was off again. On the sixth the Federals got home against his rear guard. It began to waver, and Ashby ordered the infantry to charge. As he gave the order his horse fell dead. In a flash he was up, waving his sword and shouting: “Charge, for God’s sake, charge!” The Confederate line swept forward gallantly. But, just as it left the wood, Ashby was shot through the heart. His men avenged him. Yet none could fill his place as a born leader of irregular light horse.
Next morning the hounds were hot upon the scent again: Shields and Fremont converging on Jackson, whom they would run to earth somewhere north of Staunton. But on the eighth and ninth Jackson turned sharply and bit back, first at Fremont close to Cross Keys, then at Shields near Port Republic. Each was caught alone, just before their point of junction, and each was defeated in detail as well.
Fully to appreciate Jackson’s strategy we must compare the strategical and tactical numbers concerned throughout this short but momentous Valley Campaign. The strategic numbers are those at the disposal of the commander within the theater of operations. The tactical numbers are those actually present on the field of battle, whether engaged or not. At McDowell the Federals had 30,000 in strategic strength against 17,000 Confederates; yet the Confederates got 6000 on to the field of battle against no more than 2500. At Winchester the Federal strategic strength was 60,000 against 16,000; yet the Confederate tactical strength was every man of the 16,000 against 7500–only one-eighth of Banks’s grand total. At Cross Keys the strategic strengths were 23,000 Federals against 13,000 Confederates; yet 12,750 Federals were beaten by 8000 Confederates. Finally, at Port Republic, the Federals, with a strategic strength of 22,000 against the Confederate 12,700, could only bring a tactical strength of 4500 to bear on 6000 Confederates. The grand aggregate of these four remarkable actions is well worth adding up. It comes to this in strategic strength: 135,000 Federals against 58,700 Confederates. Yet in tactical strength the odds are reversed; for they come to this: 36,000 Confederates against only 27,250 Federals. Therefore Stonewall Jackson, with strategic odds of nearly seven to three against him, managed to fight with tactical odds of four to three in his favor.
While Jackson was fighting in the Valley the Confederates at Richmond were watching the nightly glow of Federal camp fires. McClellan had 30,000 men north of the Chickahominy, waiting for McDowell to come back from his enterprise against Jackson, and 75,000 south of it. What could the 65,000 Confederates do, except hold fast to their lines? TO RICHMOND 4 1/2 MILES: so read the sign-post at the Mechanicsville bridge, and there stood the nearest Federal picket. Johnston and Lee knew, however, that McClellan’s alarmist detectives swore to a Confederate army three times its actual strength at this time; and there was reason to hope that the consequent moral ascendancy would help the shock of an attack suddenly made on one of McClellan’s two wings while the flooded Chickahominy flowed between them and its oozy swamps bewildered his staff.
Hearing that McDowell need not be feared, Johnston attacked at daylight on the thirty-first of May. The battle of Seven Pines (known also as Fair Oaks) was not unlike Shiloh. The Federals were taken by surprise on the first day and only succeeded in holding their own by hard fighting and with a good deal of loss. A mistake was made by the Confederate division told off for the attack on the key to the Federal front (an attack which, if completely successful, would have split the Federals in two) and the main bodies were engaged before this fatal error could be rectified. So the surprised Federals gradually recovered from the first shock and began to feel and use their hitherto unrealized strength. On the second day (the first of June) Johnston, who had been severely wounded, was plainly defeated and compelled to fall back on Richmond again.
On the morrow of this defeat Lee was appointed to “the immediate command of the armies in eastern Virginia and North Carolina.” Davis was not war statesman enough to make him Commander-in-Chief till ’65–four years too late. Johnston did not reappear till he tried to relieve Vicksburg from the determined attacks of Grant in ’63.
The twelfth of June will be remembered forever in the annals of cavalry for Stuart’s first great ride round McClellan’s host. With twelve hundred troopers and two horse artillery guns he stole out beyond the western flank of the Federals and reached Taylorsville that evening, twenty-two miles north of Richmond. Next day he rode right in among the Federal posts in rear, discovering that McClellan’s right stretched little north of the Chickahominy, that it was not fortified, and that it did not rest on any strong natural feature, such as a swampy stream. This was exactly the information Lee required. So far, so good. The Federals met with up to this time had simply been ridden down. But now the whole country was alarmed and McClellan had forces out to cut Stuart off on his return, while General Cooke (Stuart’s father-inlaw) began to pursue him from Hanover Court House.
Then Stuart took the boldest step of all, deciding to go clear round the rest of the Federal army. At Tunstall’s Station on the York River Railroad he routed the guard, tore up the track, destroyed the stores and wagons, cut the wires, burnt the bridge, and replenished his supplies. Thence southeast, by the Williamsburg road, his column marched under a full summer moon, the people running out of doors, wild with joy at his daring. At sunrise he reached the Chickahominy, only to find it flooded, full of timber, and spanned by nothing better than a broken bridge. But, using the materials of a warehouse to make a footway, the troopers crossed in single file, leading their chargers, which swam. Waving his hand to the Federals, who had just arrived too late, Stuart pushed on the remaining thirty-five miles to Richmond, rounding the Federal flank within range of Federal gunboats on the James.
This magnificent raid not only procured in three days information that McClellan’s civilian detectives could not have procured in three years but raised Confederate morale and depressed the Federals correspondingly. Moreover, it drove the first nail into McClellan’s coffin. For in October, just after another Stuart raid, the following curious incident occurred on board the Martha Washington when Lincoln was returning from an Alexandria review which had cheered him up considerably, coming, as it did, after Lee had failed in Maryland. By way of answering the very pertinent question–“Mr. President, how about McClellan?”- -Lincoln simply drew a ring on the deck, quietly adding: “When I was a boy we used to play a game called ‘Three times round and out.’ Stuart has been round McClellan twice. The third time McClellan will be out.”
Stuart rode ahead of his troopers, straight to Lee, who immediately wrote to Jackson suggesting that the Army of the Valley, while keeping the Federals alarmed to the last about an attack on the line of the Potomac, might secretly slip away and join a combined attack on McClellan. Jackson, who had of course foreseen this, was ready with every blind known to the art of war. Even his staff and generals knew nothing of their destination. The first move was so secret that the enemy never suspected anything till it was too late, while friends thought there was to be another surprise in the Valley. The second move led various people to suspect a march on Washington–no bad news to leak out; and nothing but misleading items did leak out. The Army of the Valley moved within a charmed circle of cavalry which prevented any one from going forward, ahead of the advance, and swept before it all stragglers through whom the news might leak out by the rear. On the twenty-third of June, only eight days after Stuart had reported his raid to Lee, Jackson attended Lee’s conference at the same place, Richmond. The Valley Army was then on its thirty-mile march from Frederick’s Hall to Ashland, where it arrived on the twenty-fifth, fifteen miles north.
McClellan had over a hundred thousand men. Lee had less than ninety thousand, even after Jackson had joined him. To attack McClellan’s strongly fortified front, with its almost impregnable flanks, would have been suicide. But McClellan’s farther right, commanded by that excellent officer, FitzJohn Porter, lay north of the Chickahominy, with its own right open for junction with McDowell. So Lee, knowing McClellan and the state of this Federal right, decided on the twenty-fourth to attack Porter and threaten McClellan’s communications not only with McDowell to the north but with White House, the Federal base twenty miles northeast. This was an exceedingly bold move, first, because McClellan had plenty of men to take Richmond during Lee’s march north, secondly, because it meant the convergence of separate forces on the field of battle (Jackson being at Ashland, fifteen miles from Richmond) and, thirdly, because the Confederates were inferior in armament and in supplies of all kinds as well as in actual numbers. Magruder, who had held the Yorktown lines so cleverly with such inferior forces, was to hold Richmond (on both sides of the James) with thirty-five thousand men against McClellan’s seventy-five thousand, while Lee and Jackson converged on Porter’s twenty-five thousand with over fifty thousand.
Then followed the famous Seven Days, beginning on the twenty-sixth of June near the signpost at the Mechanicsville bridge–TO RICHMOND 4 1/2 MILES–and ending at Harrison’s Landing on the second of July. On the twenty-sixth the attack was made with consummate strategic skill. But it was marred by bad staff work, by the great obstructions in Jackson’s path, and by A.P. Hill’s premature attack with ten thousand men against Porter’s admirable front at Beaver Dam Creek. Hill’s men moved down their own side of the little valley in dense masses till every gun and rifle on Porter’s side was suddenly unmasked. No scythe could have mowed the leading Confederates better. Two thousand went down in the first few minutes, and the rest at once retreated.
Porter fell back on Gaines’s Mill, where, after being reinforced, he took up a strong position on the twentyseventh. Again there was failure in combining the attack. Jackson found obstructions that even he could not overcome quickly enough. Hill attacked again with the utmost gallantry, wave after wave of Confederates rushing forward only to melt away before the concentrated fire of Porter’s reinforced command.
But at last the Confederates–though checked and roughly handled–converged under Lee’s own eye; and an inferno of shot and shell loosened and shook the steadfast Federal defense. Lee and Jackson, though far apart, gave the word for the final charge at almost the same moment. As Jackson’s army suddenly burst into view and swept forward to the assault the joyful news was shouted down the ranks: “The Valley men are here!” Thereupon Lee’s men took up the double-quick with “Stonewall Jackson! Jackson! Jackson!” as their battle cry. The Federals fought right valiantly till their key-point suddenly gave way, smashed in by weight of numbers; for Lee had brought into action half as many again as Porter had, even with his reinforcements. On the gallantly defended hill the long blue lines rocked, reeled, and broke to right and left all but the steadfast regulars, whose infantry fell back in perfect order, whose cavalry made a desperate though futile attempt to stay the rout by charging one against twenty, and whose four magnificent batteries, splendidly served to the very last round, retired unbroken with the loss of only two guns. Then the Confederate colors waved in triumph on the hard-won crest against the crimson of the setting sun.
The victorious Confederates spent the twentyeighth and twenty-ninth in finding the way to McClellan’s new base. His absolute control of all the waterways had enabled him to change his base from White House on the Pamunkey to Harrison’s Landing on the James. When the Confederates discovered his line of retreat by the Quaker Road they pressed in to cut it. On the thirtieth there was severe fighting in White Oak Swamp and on Frayser’s Farm. But the Federals passed through, and made a fine stand on Malvern Hill next day. Finally, when they turned at bay on the Evelington Heights, which covered Harrison’s Landing, they convinced their pursuers that it would be fatal to attack again; for now Northern sea-power was visibly present in flotillas of gunboats, which made the flanks as hopelessly strong as the front.
McClellan therefore remained safely behind his entrenchments, with the navy in support. He had to his own credit the strategic success of having foiled Lee by a clever change of base; and to the credit of his army stood some first-rate fighting besides some tactical success, especially at Malvern Hill. Nevertheless the second invasion of Virginia was plainly a failure; though by no means a glaring disaster, like the first invasion at Bull Run.
McClellan, again reinforced, still professed his readiness to take Richmond under conditions that suited himself. But the most promising Northern force now seemed to be Pope’s Army of Virginia, coming down from the line of the Potomac, forty-seven thousand strong, composed of excellent material, and heralded by proclamations which even McClellan could never excel. John Pope, Halleck’s hero of Island Number Ten, came from the West to show the East how to fight. “I presume that I have been called here to lead you against the enemy, and that speedily. I hear constantly of taking strong positions and holding them–of lines of retreat and bases of supplies. Let us discard such ideas. Let us study the probable line of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves.” His Army of Virginia contained Fremont’s (now Sigel’s) corps, as well as those of Banks and McDowell–all experts in the art of “chasing Jackson.”
Jackson was soon ready to be chased again. The Confederate strength had been reduced by the Seven Days and not made good by reinforcement; so Lee could spare Jackson only twenty-four thousand men with whom to meet the almost double numbers under Pope. But Jackson’s men had the better morale, not only on account of their previous service but because of their rage to beat Pope, who, unlike other Northerners, was enforcing the harshest rules of war. His lieutenant, General von Steinwehr, went further, not only seizing prominent civilians as hostages (to be shot whenever he chose to draw his own distinctions between Confederate soldiers and guerillas) but giving his German subordinates a liberty that some of them knew well how to turn into license. This, of course, was most exceptional; for nearly all Northerners made war like gentlemen. Unhappily, those who did not were bad enough and numerous enough to infuriate the South.
Halleck, who had now become chief military adviser to the Union Government, was as cautious as McClellan and had so little discernment that he thought Pope a better general than Grant. Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck put their heads together; and an order soon followed which had the effect of relieving the pressure on Richmond and giving the initiative to Lee. Halleck ordered McClellan to withdraw from Harrison’s Landing, take his Army of the Potomac round by sea to Aquia Creek, and join Pope on the Rappahannock–an operation requiring the whole month of August to complete.
Lee lost no time. His first move was to get Pope’s advanced troops defeated by Jackson, who brought more than double numbers against Banks at Cedar Run on the ninth of August. The Federals fought magnificently, nine against twenty thousand men. After the battle Jackson marched across the Rapidan, and Halleck wisely forbade Pope from following him, even though the first of Burnside’s men (now the advanced guard of McClellan’s army) had arrived at Aquia and were marching overland to Pope. Then followed some anxious days at Federal Headquarters. Jackson vanished; and Pope’s cavalry, numerous as it was, wore itself out trying to find the clue. MeClellan was still busy moving his men from Harrison’s Landing to Fortress Monroe, whence detachments kept sailing to Aquia. What would Lee do now?
On the thirteenth he began entraining Longstreet’s troops for Gordonsville. On the fifteenth he conferred with his generals. And on the seventeenth, from the lookout on Clark’s Mountain, he saw Pope’s unsuspecting army camped round Slaughter Mountain within fifteen miles of the united Confederates. Halleck had just given Pope the fatal order to “fight like the devil” till McClellan came up. Pope was full of confidence. And there he lay, in a bad strategic and worse tactical position, and with slightly inferior numbers, just within reach of Jackson and Lee. Pope was, however, saved from immediate disaster by an oversight on the part of Stuart. In ordering Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry brigade to rendezvous at Verdierville that night Stuart forgot to make the order urgent and the missing brigade came in late. Stuart, anxious to see the enemy’s position for himself, rode out and was nearly taken prisoner. His dispatch-box fell into Pope’s hands, with a memorandum of Jackson’s reinforcements. Jackson was for attacking next day in any case and groaned aloud when Lee decided not to, owing to the failure of cavalry combination in front and the belated supplies in the rear. Pope retired safely on the eighteenth, and on the nineteenth a thick haze hid his rear from Lee’s lookout,
Lee was now in a very difficult position, apparently face to face with what would soon be the joint forces of Pope, McClellan, and probably another corps from Washington: the whole well fed, well armed, and certainly more than twice as strong as the united Confederates. But Jackson and Stuart multiplied their forces by skillful maneuvers and mystifying raids, and presently Stuart had his revenge for the affront he had suffered on the seventeenth. On the tempestuous night of the twentysecond he captured Pope’s dispatches. On the twentyfourth, at Jefferson, Lee and Jackson discussed the situation with these dispatches before them. Dr. Hunter McGuire, the Confederate staff-surgeon, noticed that Jackson was unusually animated, drawing curves in the sand with the toe of his boot while Lee nodded assent. Perhaps it was Jackson who suggested the strategic idea of that wonderful last week in August. However that may have been, Lee alone was responsible for its adoption and superior direction.
With a marvelous insight into the characters of his opponents, a consummate knowledge of the science and art of war, and–quite as important–an exact appreciation of the risks worth running, Lee actually divided his 55,000 men in face of Pope’s 80,000, of 20,000 more at Washington and Aquia, and of 50,000 available reinforcements. Then, by the well-deserved results obtained, he became one of the extremely few really great commanders of all time.
The “bookish theorick” who, with all the facts before him, revels in the fond delights of retrospective prophecy, will never understand how Lee succeeded in this enterprise, except by sheer good luck. Only those who themselves have groped their perilous way through the dense, distorting fog of war can understand the application of that knowledge, genius, and character for war which so rarely unite in one man.
Lee sent Jackson north, to march at utmost speed under cover of the Bull Run Mountains, to cross them at Thoroughfare Gap, and to cut Pope’s line at Manassas, where the enormous Federal field base had been established. Unknown to Pope, Longstreet then slipped into Jackson’s place, so as to keep Pope in play till the raid on Manassas and threat against Washington would draw him northeast, away from McClellan at Aquia. The final move of this profound, though very daring, plan was to take advantage of the Federal distractions and consequent dispersions so as to effect a junction on the field of battle against a conquerable force.
Jackson moved off by the first gray streak of dawn on the twenty-fifth, and that day made good the six-and-twenty miles to Salem Church. Screened by Stuart’s cavalry, and marching through a country of devoted friends on such an errand as a commonplace general would never suspect, Jackson stole this march on Pope in perfect safety. The next day’s march was far more dangerous. Roused while the stars were shining the men moved off in even greater wonder as to their destination. But when the first flush of dawn revealed the Bull Run Mountains, with the wellknown Thoroughfare Gap straight to their front, they at once divined their part of Lee’s stupendous plan: a giant raid on Manassas, the Federal base of superabundant supplies. The news ran down the miles of men, and with it the thrill that presaged victory. Mile after mile was gained, almost in dead silence, except for the clank of harness, the rumble of wheels, the running beat of hoofs, and that long, low, ceaselessly rippling sound of multitudinous men’s feet. Hungry, ill-clad, and worn to their last spare ounce, the gaunt gray ranks strained forward, slipped from their leash at last and almost in sight of their prey. So far they were undiscovered. But the Gap was only ten miles by airline from Pope’s extreme right, and the tell-tale cloud of dust, floating down the mountain side above them, must soon be sighted, signaled, noted, and attended to. Only speed, the speed of “foot-cavalry,” could now prevail, and not a man must be an inch behind. CLOSE UP, MEN, CLOSE UP!–CLOSE UP THERE IN REAR!–CLOSE UP! CLOSE UP!
By noon the head of the column had already crossed those same communications which Pope had told his army to disregard in favor of the much more interesting enemy line of retreat. Little did he think that the man he had come to chase was about to burn the bridge at Bristoe Station and thus cut the line between the Federal front at Warrenton and the Federal base at Manassas. All went well with Jackson, except that some news escaped to Washington and Warrenton sooner than he expected. A Federal train dashed on to Washington before the rails could be torn up. The next two trains were both derailed and wrecked. But the fourth put all brakes down and speeded back to Warrenton. Jackson quickly took up a very strong position on the north side of Broad Run, behind the burnt railway bridge, and sent Stuart’s troopers with two battalions of “foot-cavalry” to raid the base at Manassas, replenish the exhausted Confederate supplies, and do the northward scouting.
The situation of the rival armies on the night of the twentyseventh forms one of the curiosities of war. Jackson was concentrating round Manassas Junction. Lee was following Jackson’s line of march, but was still beyond Thoroughfare Gap. Between them stood part of Pope’s army, the whole of which occupied an irregular quadrilateral formed by lines joining the following points: Warrenton Junction, Bristoe Station, Gainesville, and Thoroughfare Gap. Thirty miles northeast were the twenty thousand Federals who joined Pope too late. Thirty miles southeast the rear of McClellan’s forces were still massing at Aquia. In Pope’s opinion Jackson was clearly trapped and Lee cut off.
But when Pope began to close his cumbrous net the following day Jackson had disappeared again. Orders and counter-orders thereupon succeeded each other in bewildering confusion. McClellan could be left out: and a very good thing too, thought Pope, who wanted the victory all to himself, and whose own army greatly outnumbered Lee’s and Jackson’s put together. But Washington was nervous again; it contained the reinforcements; and it had suddenly become indispensable to Pope as an immediate base of supplies now that the base at Manassas had been so completely destroyed. Pope’s troops therefore mostly drew east during the twentyeighth, forming by nightfall a long irregular line, facing west, with its right beyond Centreville and its extreme left held by Banks’s mauled divisions south of Catlett’s Station. Meanwhile Jackson had slipped into place in the curve of Bull Run, facing southeast, with his left near Stone Bridge, his back to Sudley Springs, and his right open to junction with Lee, who was waiting for daylight to force the Gap against the single division left there on guard.
During the afternoon, while Jackson’s tired men were lying sound asleep in their ranks, Jackson himself was roused to see captured orders which showed that some Federals were crossing his front. Reading these orders to his divisional commanders he immediately ordered one to attack and another to support. If the Federals concerned were exposing an unguarded flank they should be attacked at a disadvantage. If they were screening larger forces trying to join the reinforcements from Washington or Aquia, then they should be attacked so as to distract Pope’s attention and draw him on before the Federal union became complete, though not before Lee had reached the new Bull Run position the following day. The attack was consequently made from the woods around Groveton not too long before dark. It resulted in a desperate frontal fight, neither side knowing what the other had in its rear or on its flanks. Again the Federals were outnumbered: twenty-eight against forty-five hundred men in action. But again they fought with the utmost resolution and drew off in good order. The strategic advantage, however, was wholly Confederate; for Pope, who thought Jackson must now be falling back to the Gap, at once began confusedly trying to concentrate for pursuit on the twenty-ninth–the very thing that suited Lee and Jackson best.
Early that morning the two-days’ Battle of Second Manassas (or Second Bull Run) began with Pope’s absurd attempt to pursue an army drawn up in line of battle. Moreover, Jackson’s position was not only strong in itself but well adapted for giving attackers a shattering surprise. The left rested on Bull Run at Sudley Ford. The center occupied the edge of the flat-topped Stony Ridge. A quarter-mile in front of it, and some way lower down, were the embankments and cuttings of an unfinished railroad. On the right was Stuart’s Hill, where Lee was to join by sending Longstreet in. The approaches in rear were hidden from the eyes of an enemy in front. The cuttings and embankments made excellent field works for the defense. And the forward edge of the Ridge was wooded enough to let counter-attackers mass under cover and then run down to surprise the attackers by manning the cuttings and embankments.
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, selfdeluded 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 seapower. 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 Praetorian 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 reestablishment 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.
CHAPTER VII. GRANT WINS THE RIVER WAR: 1863
We have seen already how the River War of ’89 ended in a double failure of the Federal advance on Vicksburg: how Grant and Sherman, aided by the flanking force from Helena in Arkansas, failed to catch Pemberton along the Tallahatchie; and then how Sherman alone, moving down the Mississippi, was defeated by Pemberton at Chickasaw Bayou, just outside of Vicksburg.
Leaving Memphis for good, Grant took command in the field again on the thirtieth of January. His army was strung out along seventy miles of the Mississippi just north of Vicksburg, so hard was it to find enough firm ground. The first important move was made when, in Grant’s own words, “the entire Army of the Tennessee was transferred to the neighborhood of Vicksburg and landed on the opposite or western bank of the river at Milliken’s Bend.”
Grant, everywhere in touch with Admiral D. D. Porter’s fleet and plentifully supplied with water transport of all kinds, thus commanded the peninsula or tongue of low land-round which the mighty river took its course in the form of an elongated U right opposite Vicksburg. His farthest north base was still at Cairo; and the whole line of the Mississippi above him was effectively held by Union forces afloat and ashore. Four hundred miles south lay Farragut and Banks, preparing for an attack on Port Hudson and intent on making junction with the Union forces above.
Two bad generals stood very much in Grant’s way, one on either side of him in rank–McClernand, his own second-in-command, and Banks, his only senior in the Mississippi area. McClernand presently found rope enough to hang himself. Our old friend Banks, who had not yet learnt the elements of war, though schooled by Stonewall Jackson, never got beyond Port Hudson, and so could not spoil Grant’s command in addition to his own. Fortunately, besides Sherman and other professional soldiers of quite exceptional ability, Grant had three of the best generals who ever came from civil life: Logan, Blair, and Crocker. Logan shed all the vices, while keeping all the virtues, of the lawyer when he took up arms. Blair knew how to be one man as an ambitious politician and another as a general in the field. Crocker was in consumption, but determined to die in his boots and do his military best for the Union service first. The personnel of the army was mostly excellent all through. The men were both hardy and handy as a rule, being to a large extent farmers, teamsters, railroad and steamboat men, well fitted to meet the emergencies of the severe and intricate Vicksburg campaign.
Throughout this campaign the army and navy of the Union worked together as a single amphibious force. Grant’s own words are no mere compliment, but the sober statement of a fact. “The navy, under Porter, was all it could be during the entire campaign. Without its assistance the campaign could not have been successfully made with twice the number of men engaged. It could not have been made at all, in the way it was, with any number of men, without such assistance. The most perfect harmony reigned between the two arms of the Service. There never was a request made, that I am aware of, either of the Flag-Officer or any of his subordinates, that was not promptly complied with.” And what is true of Porter is at least as true of Farragut, who was the greater man and the senior of every one afloat.
Grant could take Vicksburg only by reaching good ground, and the only good ground was below and in rear of the fortress. There was no foothold for his army on the east bank of the Mississippi anywhere between Memphis and Vicksburg. This meant that he must either start afresh from Memphis and try again to push overland by rail or cross the swampy peninsula in front of him and circle round his enemy. A retirement on Memphis, no matter how wise, would look like another great Union defeat and consequently lower a public morale which, depressed enough by Fredericksburg, was being kept down by the constant naval reverses that opened ’63. Circling the front was therefore very much to be preferred from the political point of view. On the other hand, it was beset by many alarming difficulties; for it meant starting from the flooded Mississippi and working through the waterlogged lowlands, across the peninsula, till a foothold could be seized on the eastern bank below Vicksburg. Moreover, this circling attack, though feasible, might depress the morale of the troops by the way. Burnside’s disastrous “Mud March” through the January sloughs of Virginia, made in the vain hope of outflanking Lee, had lowered the morale of the army almost as much as Fredericksburg itself had lowered the morale of the people.
Through the depth of winter the army toiled “in ineffectual efforts,” says Grant, “to reach high land above Vicksburg from which we could operate against that stronghold, and in making artificial waterways through which a fleet might pass, avoiding the batteries to the south of the town, in case the other efforts should fail.” A wetter winter had never been known. The whole complicated network of bends and bayous, of creeks, streams, runs, and tributary rivers, was overflowing the few slimy trails through the spongy forest and threatening the neglected levees which still held back the encroaching waters. There was nothing to do, however, but to keep the men busy and the enemy confused by trying first one line and then another for two weary months. By April, writes Grant, “the waters of the Mississippi having receded sufficiently to make it possible to march an army across the peninsula opposite Vicksburg, I determined to adopt this course, and moved my advance to a point below the town.”
Meanwhile, far below, Farragut and Banks were at work round Port Hudson: Farragut to good effect; Banks as usual. On the fourteenth of March Farragut started up the river with seven men-of-war and wanted the troops to make a demonstration against Port Hudson from the rear while the fleet worked its way past the front. But, just as Farragut was weighing anchor, Banks, who had had ample time for preparation, sent word to say he was still five miles from Port Hudson. “He’d as well beat New Orleans,” muttered Farragut, “for all the good he’s doing us.”
Six of the vessels were lashed together in pairs, the heavier ones next the enemy, the lighter ones secured well aft so as to mask the fewest guns. This arrangement also gave each pair the advantage of having twin screws. Farragut’s flagship, the Hartford, leading the line-ahead, suffered least from the dense smoke on that damp, calm, moonless night. But the others were soon groping blindly up the tortuous channel. The Hartford herself took the ground for a critical moment. But, with her own screw going ahead and that of the Albatross going astern, she drew clear and won through. Not so, however, the other five ships. Only the Hartford and Albatross reached the Red River. Yet even this was of great importance, as it completely cut off Port Hudson from all chance of relief. Farragut went on up the Mississippi to see Grant, destroying all riverside stores on the way. Grant was delighted, and, in the absence of Porter, who was up the Yazoo, sent Farragut an Ellet ram and some sorely needed coal.
Grant’s seventh (and frst successful) effort to get a foothold (from which to carry out one of the boldest and most brilliant operations recorded in the history of war) began with a naval operation on the sixteenth of April, when Porter ran past the Vicksburg batteries by night. Though Porter had the four-knot current in his favor he needed all his skill and moral courage to take a regular flotilla round the elongated U made by the Mississippi at Vicksburg, with such a bend as to keep vessels under more or less distant fire for five miles, aid under much closer fire for nearly nine. At the bend the vessels could be caught end-on. For nearly five miles after that they were subject to a plunging fire. Porter led the way on board the flagship Benton. He had seven ironclads, of which three were larger vessels and four were gunboats built by Eads, a naval constructor with orignal ideas and great executive ability. One ram and three transports followed. Coal barges were lashed alongside or taken in tow. Some of these were lost and one transport was sunk. But the rest got through, though not unscathed. It seemed like a miracle to the tense spectators that any flotilla should survive this dash down a river of death flowing through a furnace. But the ironclads, magnificently handled, stood up to their work unflinchingly, fired back with regulated vigor, and took their terrific pounding without one vital wound.
Porter presently relieved Farragut, who went back to New Orleans. From this time, till after the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Porter commanded three flotillas, each with a base of its own: first, a flotilla remaining north of Vicksburg for work on the Yazoo; secondly, the main body between Vicksburg and Grand Gulf; thirdly, the Red River flotilla. This combined naval force commanded all lines of communication north, south, and west of Vicksburg, thus enabling Grant to concentrate entirely against the eastern side.
On the thirtieth of April Grant landed with twenty thousand men at Bruinsburg, on the east side of the Mississippi, about sixty miles below Vicksburg. A week later Sherman reinforced him to thirty-three thousand. Before the fall of Vicksburg his total strength reached seventy-five thousand. The Confederate total also fluctuated; but not so much. There were about sixty thousand Confederates in the whole strategic area between Vicksburg and Jackson (fifty miles east) when Grant made his first daring move, and about the same when Vicksburg surrendered. The scene of action was almost triangular; for it lay between the three lines joining Jackson, Haynes’s Bluff, Rodney, and Jackson again. The respective lengths of these straight lines are forty, fifty, and seventy miles. But roundabout ways by land and water multiplied these distances, and much fighting and many obstacles vastly increased Grant’s difficulties.
An army, however, that had managed to reach Bruinsburg from the north and west was assuredly fit for more hard work of any kind; while a commander who had, left a safe base above Vicksburg and landed below, to live on (as well as in) an enemy country till victory should give him a new land line to the north, must, in view of the resultant triumph, be counted among the master-minds of war. Grant’s marvelous skill in massing, dividing, forwarding, and concentrating his forces over a hundred miles of intricate passages between Milliken’s Bend and Bruinsburg was only excelled by his consummate genius in carrying out this daring operation, forcing his way through his enemies, into full possession of interior lines, between their great garrison of Vicksburg and their field army from Jackson. He had to create two fronts in spite of his doubled enemy and live on that enemy’s country without any land base of his own.
Grant knew the country was quite able to support his army if he could only control enough of it. Bread, beef, and mutton would be almost unobtainable. But chickens, turkeys, and ducks were abundant, while hard-tack would do instead of bread. Bird-and-biscuit of course became unpopular; and after weeks of it Grant was not surprised to hear a soldier mutter “hard-tack” loudly enough for others to take up the cry. By this time, however, he luckily knew that the bread ration was about to be resumed; and when he told the men they cheered as only men on service can men to whom battles are rare events but rations the very stuff of daily existence. Coffee, bacon, beef, and mutton came next in popular favor when full rations were renewed. So when the Northern land line was reopened towards the end of the siege, and friends came into camp with presents from home, they found, to their amazement, that even the tenderest spring chicken was loathsome to their boys in blue.
Grant set to work immediately on landing. His first objective was Grand Gulf, which he wanted as a field base for further advance. But in order to get it he had to drive away the enemy from Port Gibson, which was by no means easy, even with superior numbers, because the whole country thereabouts was so densely wooded and so intricately watered that concerted movements could only be made along the few and conspicuous roads. On the first of May, however, the Confederates were driven off before their reinforcements could arrive. McClernand bungled brigades and divisions out of mutual support. But Grant personally put things right again.
By the third of May the bridge burnt by the enemy had been repaired and Grant’s men were crossing to press them back on Vicksburg, so as to clear Grand Gulf. Grant’s supply train (raised by impressing every horse, mule, ox, and wheeled thing in the neighborhood) looked more like comic opera than war. Fine private carriages, piled high with ammunition, and sometimes drawn by mules with straw collars and rope lines, went side by side with the longest plantation wagons drawn by many oxen, or with a two-wheeled cart drawn by a thoroughbred horse.
Before any more actions could be fought news came through that the Federals in Virginia had been terribly beaten by Lee, who was now expected to invade the North. The South was triumphant; so much so, indeed, that its Government thought the war itself had now been won. But Lincoln, Grant, and Lee knew better.
Swiftly, silently, and with a sure strategic touch, Grant marched northeast on Jackson, to make his rear secure before he turned on Vicksburg. On the twelfth he won at Raymond and on the fourteenth at Jackson itself. Here he turned back west again. On the sixteenth he won the stubborn fight of Champion’s Hill, on the seventeenth he won again at Big Black River, and on the eighteenth he appeared before the lines of Vicksburg. With the prestige of five victories in twenty days, and with the momentum acquired in the process, he then tried to carry the lines by assault on the spot. But the attack of the nineteenth failed, as did its renewal on the twenty-second. Next day both sides settled down to a six weeks’ siege.
The failure of the two assaults was recognized by friend and foe as being a mere check; and Grant’s men all believed they had now found the lookedfor leader. So they had. Like Lee and Stonewall Jackson in Virginia, Grant, with as yet inferior numbers (but with the immense advantage of sea-power), had seized, held, and acted on interior lines so ably that his forty-three thousand men had out-maneuvered and out-fought the sixty thousand of the enemy, beating them in detail on ground of their own besides inflicting a threefold loss. Grant lost little over four thousand. The Confederates lost nearly twelve thousand, half of whom were captured.
The only real trouble, besides the failure to carry the lines by assault, was with the two bad generals, McClernand and Banks. McClernand had promulgated an order praising his own. corps to the skies and conveying the idea that he and it had won the battles. Moreover, he hinted that he had succeeded in the assault while the others had failed. This was especially offensive because Grant, at McClernand’s urgent request, had sent reinforcements from other corps to confirm a success that he found nonexistent on the spot, except in McClernand’s own words. To crown this, McClernand had sent his official order, with all its misleading statements, to be published in the Northern press; and the whole army was now supplied with the papers containing it. So gross a breach of discipline could not go unpunished; and McClernand was sent back to Springfield in disgrace.
Banks, unfortunately, was senior to Grant and of course independent of Farragut; so he could safely vex them both–Grant, by spoiling the plan of concerting the attacks on Port Hudson and Vicksburg in May; Farragut, by continual failure in cooperation and by leaving big guns exposed to capture on the west bank. But things turned out well, after all. The guns were saved by the naval vessels that beat off a Confederate attack on Donaldsonville; and Grant’s army was saved from coming under Banks’s command by Banks’s own egregious failure in cooperation. This failure thus became a blessing in disguise: a disguise too good for Halleck, whose reprimand from Washington on the twenty-third of May shows what dangers lurked beneath the mighthave-been. “The Government is exceedingly disappointed that you and General Grant are not acting in conjunction. It thought to secure that object by authorizing you to assume the entire command as soon as you and General Grant could unite.”
In the end the Confederates suffered much more than the Federals from civilian interference; for the orders of their Government came through in time to confuse a situation that was already bad and growing worse. Between Porter afloat and Grant ashore Vicksburg was doomed unless “Joe” Johnston came west with sufficient force to relieve it in time. Johnston did come early enough, but not in sufficient force; so the next best thing was to destroy all stores, abandon Vicksburg, and save the garrison. The Government, however, sent positive orders to hold Vicksburg to the very last gasp. Johnston had meanwhile sent Pemberton (the Vicksburg commander) orders to combine with him in free maneuvering for an attack in the field. But Pemberton’s own idea was to await Grant on the Big Black River, where, with Johnston’s help, he thought he could beat him. Then followed hesitation, a futile attempt to harmonize the three incompatible schemes; and presently the, division of the Confederates into separated armies, driven apart by Grant, whose own army soon dug itself in between them and quickly grew stronger than both.
Grant’s lines, facing both opponents, from Haynes’s Bluff to Warrenton, were fifteen miles long, which gave him one man per foot when his full strength was reached Pemberton’s were only seven; and his position was strong. both towards the river, where the bluffs rose two hundred feet, and on the landward side, where the slopes were sharp and well fortified. Grant closed in, however, and pressed the bombardment home. Except for six 32- pounders and a battery of big naval guns he had nothing but field artillery. Yet the abundance of ammunition, the closeness of the range, and the support of his many excellent snipers, soon gave him the upper hand. Six hundred yards was the farthest the lines were apart. In some places they nearly touched.
All ranks worked hard, especially at engineering, in which there was such a dearth of officers that Grant ordered every West Pointer to do his turn with the sappers and miners as well as his other duty. This brought forth a respectful protest from the enormously fat Chief Commissary, who said he could only be used as a saproller (the big roller sappers shove protectingly before them when snipers get their range). The real sap-rollers came to grief when an ingenious Confederate stuffed port-fires with turpentined cotton and shot them into rollers only a few yards off. But after this the Federals kept their rollers wet; and sapped and burrowed till the big mine was fully charged and safe from the Confederate countermine, which had missed its mark.
While trying to blow each other up the men on both sides exchanged amenities and chaff like the best of friends. Each side sold its papers to the other; and the wall-paper newsprint of Vicksburg made a good war souvenir for both. There was a steady demand for Federal bread and Confederate tobacco. When market time was over the Confederates would heave down hand-grenades, which agile Federals, good at baseball, would heave uphill again before they exploded. And woe to the man whose head appeared out of hours; for snipers were always on the watch, especially that prince of snipers, Lieutenant H.C. Foster, renowned as “Coonskin” from the cap he wore. A wonderful stalker and dead shot he was a terror to exposed Confederates at all times; but more particularly towards the end, when (their front artillery having been silenced by Grant’s guns) Coonskin built a log tower, armored with railway iron, from which he picked off men who were safe from ordinary fire.
On the twenty-first of June Pemberton planned an escape across the Mississippi and built some rough boats. But Grant heard of this; the flotilla grew more watchful still; and before any attempt at escape could be made the great mine was fired on the twenty-fifth. The whole top of the hill was blown off, and with it some men who came down alive on the Federal side. Among these was an unwounded but terrified colored man, who, on being asked how high he had gone, said, “Dunno, Massa, but t’ink ’bout t’ree mile.” An immense crater was formed. But there was no practicable breach; so the assault was deferred. A second mine was exploded on the first of July. But again there was no assault; for Grant had decided to wait till several huge mines could be exploded simultaneously. In the meantime an intercepted dispatch warned him that Johnston would try to help Pemberton to cut his way out. But by the time the second mine was exploded Pemberton was sounding his generals about the chances of getting their own thirty thousand to join Johnston’s thirty thousand against Grant’s seventyfive thousand. The generals said No. Negotiations then began.
On the third of July Grant met Pemberton under the “Vicksburg Oak,” which, though quite a small tree, furnished souvenir-hunters with many cords of sacred wood in after years. Grant very wisely allowed surrender on parole, which somewhat depleted Confederate ranks in the future by the number of men who, returning to their homes, afterwards refused to come back