They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  Jackson first heard Ewell throw his men forward just as the sun was driving the mist from the field. There the First Maryland and the Twenty-first North Carolina were out front; the General then advanced his own brigade, and asked Douglas to take him to General Taylor. When he reached the Louisianan, the hot artillery duel was at its peak, and the Federal gunners, ever alert, had taken position by a stone wall running perpendicular to Jackson’s position.

  As Jackson rode through, the men began to cheer, but the order was passed quieting them, so that the enemy would not be signaled of the coming assault. The men then took off their hats, and Jackson removed his as well. The officers interpreted this as a touching tribute, but Douglas noted that the General drew the keen, searching glances of the privates, who sought in his face the signs of coming trouble.

  Jackson greeted Taylor.

  “General, can your brigade charge a battery?”

  “It can try,” Taylor said.

  “Good. It must. Get the men forward.” He pointed out the guns which were tearing holes in his infantry columns and beating down his own artillery. Taylor said no more. He took the men over the creek, and as they came onto the slope they walked into a shallow depression, where they were fully exposed to the enemy cannon above them. Men dropped in their files.

  Taylor saw Jackson riding beside him and shouted that this was no place for the commander. Jackson went on as if he had not heard him. He was apparently unaware that he was under fire.

  Taylor saw men ducking and darting in his column and shouted, “What the hell are you dodging for? If there’s any more of it, you’ll be halted under this fire for an hour.” The men straightened up a bit and stormed forward.

  Jackson halted to put a hand on Taylor’s shoulder. “I’m afraid you’re a wicked fellow.”

  Taylor’s brigade swarmed into the open and the sun fell upon it; watching officers would recall the scene, a stirring picture of men walking in cadence under fire, halting to drive a party of cavalry from their flank, and then going on behind bright bayonets.

  Taylor, many years later, said that his most vivid memory was of a bluebird swooping across the field, bearing a worm in its beak. The sight of the charging Rebels shook the men on the crest, and Jackson’s tactics now promised success. Ewell had struck and held on the right, and the blow at the flank, after serious early losses by the Confederates, was beginning to panic the enemy. The artillery Jackson had placed in the open was for the most part in ruins—one battery had been abandoned, surrounded with bodies, its survivors crouching in safety to the rear, while Federal shells blasted at the forlorn guns. But not for long.

  Taylor’s charge was a novel spectacle to the Army of the Valley; the troops went in perfect order, with Taylor riding in their front like a toy horseman with a charmed life. The men went upward into musket fire with casualties along the length of the lines, but the brigade did not falter. About halfway up the slope, when the watching army expected to hear orders to fire, Taylor coolly called for a charge, and the men jumped forward over the rocky ground and reached the crest. Now the Federals fled in earnest and the ridge was in Confederate hands.

  In the final moments of that charge, coming from everywhere—back on the pike, where massed reserves waited, and in the low ground where Ewell’s North Carolinians and Marylanders had been driven back, and in the charging Louisiana ranks—there rose a tremulous, quavering, ear-splitting cry. It was the first Rebel Yell from the Army of the Valley.

  It seemed to startle the commander—almost as much as did the final victorious drive of the Louisiana troops—who were now joined by the Stonewall Brigade, and the men of General Arnold Elzey, who had been lying down out of the fire, in reserve. At last, all of Jackson’s ten thousand infantry charged in mass.

  The General seemed astonished by the rapidity with which the victory had swung to him. He sent Douglas across the fields: “Order forward the whole line. The battle’s won.”

  The men of Taylor and Winder went past at a trot, and Jackson forgot himself. He waved his old cap over his head, shouting like a child. “Very good! Now let’s holler!” The roar of the army swept down into Winchester, where the Federals were in headlong flight.

  An officer pressed close to the General, evidently with the idea of restraining him, but Jackson only yelled joyously, “Go back and tell the whole army to press forward to the Potomac!”

  At sight of Taylor, Jackson was again seized by emotion but did not speak. He leaned from his saddle and grasped the hand of the young Louisianan, wringing it with savage strength, grinning that glint-eyed grimace that the army was to see often in battle.

  It was seven thirty in the morning, and Jackson went into a frenzy organizing the last chase of Banks. He had little assistance. The enemy, going back in order at first, had broken as the ranks passed through the town, and now there was a landscape of fleeing bluecoats, stretching to the horizon. The few Confederate infantrymen who were near enough to the enemy dropped to shaking knees and fired, but if they inflicted damage, Jackson could not see it.

  He sought the cavalry, but there was none. He had seen no considerable body of horsemen since the early morning; he supposed most of Ashby’s men were still missing, just when the great opportunity of the war called for them. General Steuart had two regiments of the Virginia riders, just a few hundred yards away on Ewell’s front, but where were they?

  Jackson shouted in exasperation, and perhaps stronger language than Preacher Dabney was to recall: “Never was there such a chance for cavalry! Oh, that my cavalry were in place!” This bitterness was to be reflected in his official report, when he lamented the switch in command, from Flournoy to Steuart. He was swept into the town by the army.

  Someone suggested artillery be brought against the Federals, and the General shouted the order for all possible guns to be brought up, and on they came, a few rickety, battle-worn guns, dragged by exhausted horses which panted on the incline. Beside them came more of the infantry, scarcely able to walk, living on the strength of delirious excitement. The army clustered about the town, where buildings sent up towers of smoke, as Federal stores burned. Jackson pressed on, though women, children and old men literally besieged him as he appeared in the streets. He went toward the river, thirty-five miles away, which was, in his mind, the border of his country, and into which he thought he must drive the enemy.

  He got five miles north of Winchester, with his few cannoneers more weary at each step and horses falling in their harnesses, until at last his guns were alone, without support. In fear of ambush, he was forced to halt pursuit, but he made one last effort and called for mounted volunteers to chase the enemy. When he saw the pitiful spectacle of the handful of men astride the worn-out horses, even Jackson gave up. It was only in this moment, after three days of the most punishing grind, that Jackson seemed to take into account the condition of his army, which he had worn to the limit of its endurance.

  Just two hours after Jackson turned from the pursuit with a scowl, the fresh regiments of General Steuart came pounding by, raising a magnificent dust, on the trail of the enemy who could not now be overtaken; had Steuart been on time, Jackson would have wiped out, rather than defeated, the army of Banks, and perhaps have sent the Massachusetts commander to Richmond as a trophy.

  Sandie Pendleton, whom Jackson had sent with peremptory orders to bring Steuart forward, came to headquarters with a maddening report: He had found the cavalrymen at ease, their horses munching clover, just a little over two miles away. Steuart stood on army regulations. He would take orders only from his immediate superior. Jackson could have no cavalry until General Ewell ordered him forward. He forced Pendleton to gallop two more miles to find an astonished Ewell and return with an order to advance. Steuart then had assembly calls played, and the cavalry belatedly, uselessly, went toward the Potomac.

  The cavalry drove as far north as Martinsburg, twenty-two miles away, but had no chance to hit at the Federals; they brought back loot from abandoned magazines,
and shiny new U.S. saddles and bridles appeared in the Jackson camp. There was also much-needed material—ammunition, medical supplies, food. The enemy crossed the Potomac after dark, at Williamsport, by use of the ford, ferry and pontoons.

  Jackson enjoyed the remainder of the Sabbath by calling at the manse where he and his wife had stayed most of the previous winter with the Reverend James Graham and his family. He went to services in one of the brigades, too, and still found time to have his staff set up headquarters in the Taylor Hotel. He forced himself to his usual observation of Sunday, though he had regrettably been obliged to do battle that day. He waited until Monday to write his formal order to his troops, in which he recounted the events of a month past, praised his men, and then wrote of his own feelings:

  But his chief duty, and that of the army, is to recognize devoutly the hand of a protecting Providence in the brilliant successes of the last three days—which have given us the results of a great victory without great losses—and to make the oblation of our thanks to God for His mercies to us and our country in heartfelt acts of religious worship.

  He set aside the day for prayer and rest. He then wrote to his wife:

  My Precious Darling, an ever-kind Providence blest us with success at Front Royal on Friday, between Strasburg and Winchester on Saturday, and here with a successful engagement on yesterday. I do not remember having seen such rejoicing as was manifested by the people of Winchester.… Our entrance was one of the most stirring scenes of my life.… Time forbids a longer letter, but it does not forbid my loving my esposita.

  Jackson had literally wrecked a Federal corps. Banks belittled his own losses, but reports showed they were severe—about 40 per cent of his force. Jackson had burned or seized hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of supplies, including 9,300 small arms, 2 cannon, and countless wagons. He had taken three thousand prisoners.

  The Confederate losses were insignificant: 68 killed, 329 wounded, 3 missing.

  Jackson could not know the reactions he had set off in the North, which were unchecked for several panic-stricken days even by the soaring rhetoric of Banks, who began to issue victory bulletins as he crossed the Potomac:

  It is seldom that a river-crossing of such magnitude is achieved with greater success.… There were never more grateful hearts than when we stood on the opposite shore … we had not suffered an attack or a rout, but had accomplished a premeditated march of near 60 miles in the face of the enemy, defeating his plans, and giving him battle wherever he was found.

  Banks did not deceive Washington. President Lincoln wired General McDowell, canceling plans to send his troops to Richmond and ordering, instead, a detachment of twenty thousand hurried to the Shenandoah, to trap Jackson.

  Newspaper headlines screamed of the defeat of Banks and warned that Jackson was about to fall upon Washington. The Government took over railroad lines; a new reserve corps of fifty thousand was created to defend the capital city; in a single day almost five hundred thousand volunteers pledged themselves to enter the army. The panic waned in a day or two, and calm returned to housewives who had burned and thrown away kitchen supplies and utensils, and jumpy military commanders who had destroyed arms. It was, after all, only some faraway maneuvering in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Still, McDowell was prevented from joining the Richmond expedition, and many of his finest troops were hustled to the west.

  Jackson sent a quiet report to Richmond. Its familiar theme: “God has blessed our arms.”

  After dinner the staff gathered, happy but weary, and for an hour or more Jackson listened, seldom speaking, to the talk of the young officers. Fresh newspapers were brought in from Richmond, where contraband dealers had got them through the lines, and though the General no longer read any newspapers, out of disgust with the liberties they took with him and the truth, he asked Sandie Pendleton to read him the worth-while news.

  Pendleton browsed through the flimsy sheets, reading dispatches from the fighting fronts; and the staff found the war all but unrecognizable in those paragraphs.

  “Here’s an amusing thing in the New York Mercury,” Pendleton said. “It will help you digest your dinner, General.”

  Jackson grinned. “Go on, Captain, let’s hear it, if it will make us laugh at all.”

  “The life and character of the rebel General, Stonewall Jackson,” Pendleton began.

  Jackson got to his feet. “I don’t want to hear that. Not at all.”

  “It is only a parody, General. Hold on a minute. There is nothing objectionable—you will enjoy it.” And as the General sat, uncertainty on his face, Pendleton read: “He traces his ancestry to Jack, the giant-killer … no mortal man, his abstemiousness enables him to live for a fortnight on two crackers and a barrel of whisky.”

  There was more about the curious traits of his character, moral, mental and religious, and a humorous account of his wild boyhood. The General grinned more broadly, and was finally roaring with the others. Douglas remembered it as the loudest laugh of Jackson’s career, but it was the last time, the staff recalled, that the General ever gave an ear to press comments on him.

  4

  THE VICTOR RETREATS

  For a couple of nights, Jackson’s staff reveled in the luxury of hotel rooms in Winchester, with Sandie Pendleton the complaining watchdog for headquarters. On the night of Tuesday, May twenty-seventh, this twenty-two-year-old officer lay in one of the outer rooms, where he was infrequently aroused by incoming dispatches. Jackson admired this boy, who was the son of an old friend, the erstwhile rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Lexington, General W. N. Pendleton. The father was commander of the Rockbridge Artillery, and soon to become Lee’s chief of heavy ordnance.

  Near midnight an orderly intruded upon Sandie’s sleep.

  “There’s some old man here, come a long ways. Says he’s got important word for the General. It won’t keep, and he won’t go away.”

  Pendleton muttered. “I’ve got no idea of getting up, short of fire or the Yankees. Bring him in.” His weary voice did not conceal his disgust at the prospect of hearing another of the hundreds of excited civilians tell tales he thought might win the war.

  This civilian was different. An aging man, already gray, who entered with dignity, and told a calm, intelligible story. Douglas and other officers came in to hear him.

  “You’ve raised havoc in Washington,” he said. “The talk is that your army is big enough to storm the city.” He paused to explain his own movements.

  “I have come almost 50 miles today, because I thought the news might be important to General Jackson. I passed Federals on the mountain road.

  “They have sent some of General McDowell’s men after you, fresh troops out of Fredericksburg. I did not at first believe it myself—until I went by them on the road, miles of them.

  “I was told that they were troops of General Shields, with 10,000 already marching, and those just the vanguard.

  “Young men, they are already less than a day’s march from Front Royal, behind you in the Valley. Now, it’s up to you. If you think it’s worth telling the General …”

  The old man said he had pushed his horse since passing the Federal troops and had run almost all the way into Winchester. He looked it, and Pendleton did not question him; it was clear from the old man’s manner that he told the truth. Pendleton had a bed made for him in an adjoining room, after debating briefly the wisdom of waking the General. There was some talk of the dangerous position of the army.

  “Shields is already nearer Strasburg than we are,” one of them said. “If he moves in there, we can’t get back down the Valley. Where the devil could we go?”

  “We could fall back into Maryland and live off Yankee country,” another said.

  “Don’t talk like that. Didn’t you hear old man Ewell squealing around here the other day—I never saw such a hilarious thing. He’d dance around, bobbing that egg head, yelling, ‘Damn this Valley to hell. Every time I look up there’s another of his dratted couriers. An
d every time I expect another order from old Jackson to do some fool thing. I tell you, every day I keep looking for an order to storm the North Pole!’”

  Pendleton turned back to his bed, saying that he would tell the General in the morning and leave the matter to him. Morning brought fresh consternation to the staff, for after the General had questioned the old man, he astonished the officers with a calm order—to put the troops in marching array. He intended to strike toward the Potomac, at Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry. The staff puzzled over it during the day, and there were new complaints that Old Jack had gone mad. The Yankees were gathering behind them, everyone knew by now: Shields from the eastern flank and Frémont from the west. Within a few days they could be cut off along the Valley pike by as many as fifty thousand Federals. And yet, heedless of this gathering storm, their maniac commander plunged north on a raid.

  The troops themselves were not nearly so mystified. They had long since concluded that Old Jack would somehow find the most galling duties for them and give them the worst of everything, but in the end would pull them through, most of them. Already, today, the Lemon Squeezer had given the men a sign that he was still alive.

  The army got but two days to sate its hunger from the captured stores and recover from the bone-jarring marches against Banks. And Jackson had blighted even this holiday by robbing them of their booty. He sent out a stern order, calling attention to the regulations against stealing Confederate property, which included spoils of war. All those fine U.S. boots, belts, pants, coats, hats must come off, the order said. Men who wore blue uniforms or parts thereof would be forced to prove they were not Union soldiers. There was a mournful shedding of garments gleaned from the battlefield, but many a piece was secreted in the blanket rolls, to appear later, down the days of marching and bleeding.

  That was not the only complaint. Without warning came another of the General’s fool orders. The men were to resume drill, four hours a day of the prancing and halting and wheeling. It was beyond belief, fresh as they were from his killing drive out of the Valley. But they were forced to work once more, growling and unwilling.