I desire to say nothing against the Secretary of War. I take it for granted that he has done what he believes to be best, but I regard such a policy as ruinous.
Letcher wrote Jackson, urging that he withdraw his resignation, but he challenged Benjamin, too. The Secretary was inclined to back down and make no issue of the matter with the aroused Stonewall.
General Johnston in the meantime wrote Jackson urging coolheadedness in dealing with Richmond politicians:
My Dear Friend—I have just read, and with profound regret, your letter … asking to be relieved from your present command.… Let me beg you to reconsider …
The danger in which our very existence … lies, requires sacrifices from us all who have been educated as soldiers.
Let us dispassionately reason with the government on this subject of command, and if we fail … then ask to be relieved.…
I have taken the liberty to detain your letter to make this appeal to your patriotism, not merely from warm feelings of personal regard, but from the official opinion which makes me regard you as necessary to the service of the country in your present position.
Friends, thunderstruck at thought of his retirement, pressed Jackson in Winchester. One man emotionally declared that the name of Stonewall alone was a great force in the war, cheering the South, terrorizing the North. Jackson made a modest protest: “No, no. You greatly overestimate my capacity for usefulness. A better man will soon be sent to take my place. The government have no confidence in my capacity, or they wouldn’t countermand my orders like this, and throw away the fruits of victory. No, sir. I must resign, and give my place to someone in whom they have more confidence.”
Anna overheard men beseeching Jackson to change his mind. When one told Jackson he should be willing to make sacrifices, Stonewall shouted:
“Sacrifices! Have I not made them? What is my life here—a daily sacrifice! Never will I withhold sacrifices for my country, if they avail anything. I will serve anywhere—even if as a private soldier. But if this way of making war is to prevail, the country is ruined. My duty requires me to protest with all my power, and that way is to resign.”
Jackson at last surrendered, however. He wrote Letcher:
Governor,—If my retiring from the army would produce that effect which you have named in your letter, I, of course, would not desire to leave the service … you are authorized to withdraw my resignation.… My reasons for resigning were set forth in my letter, and my views remain unchanged; and if the Secretary persists in the ruinous policy … I feel that no officer can serve his country better than by making his strongest possible protest.…
Letcher sent Jackson an assurance that he would no longer feel interference from Richmond.
In this episode, as in many to come, the Confederacy had yeoman service from the unheralded Alec Boteler, the link between the Valley commander and official Richmond. Boteler delivered Letcher’s final letter to Jackson, and argued with the General for hours, until he convinced him that he must remain in the army.
Jackson rendered invaluable service, too, in protecting field commanders from interference. He also revealed a grim singleness of purpose. He had not hesitated to use every weapon at hand. Within a day or so after his challenge to Benjamin, almost every man of influence in Virginia had been made aware of the struggle and had taken sides, most of them with Jackson.
Stonewall thought Loring “should be cashiered” for his part in the affair, for starting trouble over danger which “does not exist.” Richmond, however, transferred Loring within a few days—and promoted him to major general.
None of these vexations seemed to touch Jackson’s life with Anna in Winchester. She described the winter as one of the happiest times of their lives, and recalled Jackson as engaging, even jolly. There are stories of his running up and down stairs with a small boy clinging to his back, and of his saying, when he found some officers and young women playing “artillery” with overturned parlor chairs: “Captain, when this engagement is over, make a full report to me.”
Old Jack had been eager enough to reach Anna after his expedition. He rode so fast that an officer joked, “Well, General, I’m not so anxious to see Mrs. Jackson as to break my neck keeping up with you, and with your permission I shall fall back and take it more leisurely.” Jackson pushed Sorrel forty miles that day. Anna wrote: “He bounded into the sitting room as joyous and as fresh as a schoolboy,” then sat by the fire, exclaiming, “Oh, this is the very essence of comfort.”
About this time, amid the controversy between Jackson and Benjamin and his officers, Anna conceived a child. In March, after two months that had passed like a honeymoon, Jackson turned to war once more.
Old Jack had some four thousand men, and the greatly superior armies of General Banks and General Shields lay north of him, near the Potomac. Richmond took its eye from Jackson now, to watch in horror the coils of Union strength gathering near its own walls. For a vast Federal army under General McClellan was pushing up the Peninsula between the York and the James, intending to strike Richmond by the shortest route from the sea and choke the Confederacy.
In these times, robbed of reserves and facing what promised to become disaster, General Johnston could tell Jackson only: Remain in the Valley if possible; hold the enemy, but expose yourself little, and take no chance of defeat; stay near enough to the enemy to prevent reinforcement of McClellan by those Federal troops in the Valley. In short, threaten, but do not fight.
Jackson was to give these orders the most liberal interpretation. They were the foundation of the Valley campaign, which now loomed before him.
In early March he deserted Winchester. He loaded his sick and wounded on a train, and put Anna aboard as well. She recalled: “He told me that when his ‘sunshine’ was gone out of the room which had been to us the holy of holies on earth that winter, he never wanted to enter it again … to the last moment he lingered at the door of the coach … with bright smiles.”
When they met again, thirteen months later, he was to be a changed man: architect of a dozen victories, a lieutenant general with a peerless reputation on either side of the Potomac—and a doting father, as well.
Jackson began a series of moves against the enemy whose brilliant consequences could not have been foretold. General Banks was stumbling down the Valley toward Winchester, in such force that he could not long be halted. His regiments were scattered, however, and according to Jackson’s spies, a quick blow was possible. Jackson had no lack of informants. He wrote: “I have taken especial pains to obtain information respecting General Banks.… I will see what can be effected through the Catholic priests at Martinsburg.”
In leaving Winchester, he had ordered his wagons left just outside the town so that in the morning he could feed and supply his troops, and then strike the Union advance. His orders given, he went to the home of the Reverend Graham, which was filled with gloom at the prospect of Federal occupation of the town. Jackson seemed inexplicably cheerful to the Grahams.
His mood changed rapidly. After supper he went to a meeting of his officers and found that the wagons, contrary to his plan, had been dragged many miles away, and that his cleverly planned attack was impossible. He gave his officers no sign of wrath, but an hour or so later, watching the evacuation of Winchester from a hilltop, he growled to Dr. Hunter McGuire, “That’s the last council of war I will ever hold.”
Jackson’s men fell southward, to camp about forty miles below Winchester. On March twenty-first, Jackson had word that the enemy was moving in his direction. Old Jack abruptly sought an opportunity for attack. He sent out Ashby, who was prone to see such chances everywhere. The cavalryman was told by natives that the enemy was straggling. Ashby called for Jackson and the infantry. The commander replied with a long, hard march by the little corps which was to acquire legendary legs; some regiments made twenty-seven miles the first day and sixteen the next.
Early on Sunday afternoon, March twenty-third, Jackson came to the village of Kernstown,
just four miles south of the Winchester he had so recently occupied. He had little choice as to whether he should give battle, for his column was within sight of the enemy, who might call up reinforcements. And Ashby’s guns were already engaged. Stonewall’s strict observance of the Sabbath was broken. He flung out a skirmish line.
It was a vital moment for him, the opening of the first battle of his career as an independent commander. He was poorly prepared. The roads behind were filled with his stragglers, men who could not keep the pace he had set; he had no more than three thousand men for the battle.
He had able lieutenants. Brigadier General Richard Garnett led Jackson’s old brigade; and vigorous colonels, Sam Fulkerson and Jesse Burks, were with the other brigades. Jackson ordered Burks to help Ashby hold the turnpike, sent a few cavalrymen to the left flank, and pushed Garnett and Fulkerson’s brigades to the right. The men were quickly in position and went forward toward a wooded ridge. No one knew how many Federals awaited them, though Ashby’s report led Jackson to believe that he had flushed an isolated segment of the Union army, and would soon cut it to pieces.
Enemy troops moved into the open and fired at the Confederate flank, but were beaten off. Jackson watched with mounting excitement. He had his thirty guns in action, and a flank attack, delivered in force, seemed likely to drive the Federals from the town. But the roar of battle seemed to grow; he threw in reserves, but the enemy line did not waver. Some of his men began to stumble backward from one sheltered position to another. Jackson could not understand. Officers shouted at the men, momentarily halting the rearward flow. Someone returned to Jackson: “Ammunition giving out.”
Jackson stared at the officer as if he had gone mad, and anger came into his face.
Dr. Hunter McGuire passed, and Jackson ordered him to send the wounded to the rear.
“But that requires time, General,” McGuire said. “Can you stay here to protect us?”
“Make yourself easy about that. This army stays here until the last wounded man is removed.”
McGuire looked over the field where the Yankees were coming out of the woodlands in overpowering force.
“Before I will leave them to the enemy I will lose many more men,” Jackson said.
He went to the front and, from a ridge near old Opequon Church, looked down on the massing enemy troops. They were stout regiments from Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
A private trotted past Jackson, bound for the rear. Old Jack reined Sorrel. “Where are you going, man?”
“All my ca’tridges are gone, General. I don’t know where to get ’em.”
“Then go back and give ’em the bayonet, man!” Old Jack shouted. But the man ran rearward, and others joined him. Jackson could not stop the retreat.
One end of the wedge-shaped Confederate line had curled its flank on the crest of the ridge; it was now being broken by Union troops. Jackson’s guns tried valiantly, but could not stem the enemy rush. And far below, through a toll gate on the main road, the bluecoat infantry was still pouring. They seemed numberless. General Garnett watched his men falling as long as he could bear it, then ordered them back out of the deadly fire. They deserted a stone fence on the ridge and moved out of the battle.
Jackson saw the retreating men and galloped to Garnett. He ordered a halt to the withdrawal and, yanking a drummer boy to a knoll, commanded him to beat a rally. Soldiers swarmed past them as if they did not exist. Jackson shouted at Garnett, saying that the reserves could have saved the day if he had held his position. But the rear regiments were already spread out in a thin line ready to cover the retreat. Jackson could do no more. He had to watch as about two hundred men of his rearguard and a couple of guns were captured by the enemy. The line of retreat fell back slowly, morosely, as officers remembered it, until after dark. The army went to the provision trains at Newtown, some five or six miles in the rear. The Federals did not follow, for their losses had been more severe than Jackson’s, and they did not welcome the prospect of a running battle at night. Jackson had 80 dead and 342 wounded. But though he had been driven from the field, none of his regiments had suffered the fate of the Federal 110th Pennsylvania, which had been scattered and did not return until after the battle.
Ashby had led Jackson into the repulse, for he had been seriously misinformed as to Federal strength; the cavalryman was misled by a stratagem of Shields, who had hidden his main body of troops. Reprimand for Ashby was pointless; he had fought like a demon all day, and his troopers had saved Jackson in the final moments. It was Garnett who, in the grim view of the commander, had behaved in an unsoldierly fashion. Jackson’s anger fixed on this officer; it seemed to grow in the gloomy night.
Colonel William Allan, who had just a year ago left his study of mathematics at the University of Virginia, and was now Jackson’s ordnance officer, recorded a few moments of this night:
“Weary and dispirited … the little army which had marched fourteen miles in the morning … attacked a force more than double its own, and for three hours had wrestled for victory … sank to rest. In the fence corners, under trees, and around the wagons they threw themselves down, many too weary to eat.…
“Jackson shared the open-air bivouac with his men … his staff, overcome by weariness, dropped away one by one, until only Maj. W. J. Hawks, the chief commissary officer, remained with the General.…
“Knowing the General had fasted all day, the Major soon obtained some bread and meat from the nearest squad of soldiers, and after they had satisfied their hunger, they slept soundly on the rail-bed in a fence-corner.”
Jackson may have had strangely mixed dreams in his sleep of exhaustion. After supper one of his unabashed cavalry privates had sought to beard the General.
“The Yanks don’t seem willing to leave Winchester, sir,” the soldier said.
“Winchester is a very pleasant place to stay.”
“I heard they were retreating,” the boy said. “I guess they were retreating after us, General.”
Jackson stood. “I think I may say I’m satisfied, sir.” And he strode off, leaving the grinning boy at a campfire.
Or the General might have turned in his head an astounding letter from Boteler, in which his agent had jokingly suggested that, since people in Richmond were prominently mentioning Stonewall for President, to succeed Jefferson Davis, he had best conduct himself accordingly. The General had been disturbed; his discomfort at the suggestion was obvious, though some of his shrewder officers noted that the report had circulated rather freely through the official family for so intimate a secret. The General must have allowed the picture to flicker through his disciplined mind: President T. J. Jackson, commander in chief—clearly it would be his duty to command the troops of the Confederacy in the field. But the vision had been fleeting.
The next morning found the army hurrying toward the village of Mount Jackson and its old camp. The enemy did not follow.
Jackson wrote Anna:
Yesterday important considerations, in my opinion, rendered it necessary to attack the enemy near Winchester.… Our men fought bravely but the superior numbers of the enemy repulsed me. Many valuable lives were lost. Our God has been my shield.…”
Jackson began to understand, if he had not on the field of Kernstown, that his defeat had nonetheless been a blow to the Federals, who were now obliged to regard Jackson’s force as a potential offensive army and not a mere observation party in the distant mountains. Washington could not consider removing Federal troops from the Valley to aid in the siege of Richmond. Instead, reinforcements were now sent to General Shields. The Rebel Jackson appeared to be dangerous.
Old Jack’s thoughts would not leave Garnett. At the end of the month he accused this officer of a long list of failures at Kernstown, removed him from command, and put him under arrest. The army was stunned, and officers were almost openly in rebellion. Garnett was known as a brave and aggressive officer who could not have deserved Jackson’s charges, which were almost brutal in tone. Garn
ett, he said, had failed to move his brigade promptly into place, to provide proper support, to keep his regiments intact, to remain with his command—and to hold his ground.
Jackson placed General Charles Winder in Garnett’s post. His men did not conceal their resentment. General Taylor wrote: “I have never met officer or soldier, present at Kernstown, who failed to condemn the harsh treatment of Garnett after that action.”
It was almost as if Jackson, unable to bear the thought of defeat, sought a victim on whom to fasten the blame.
Richmond evidently agreed with the troops, for Jackson was ordered to release Garnett from arrest and assign him to duty. Jackson’s reply was uncompromising: “I have only to say that I have no desire to see the case pressed any further; but that I regard General Garnett as so incompetent … that, instead of building up a brigade, a good one, if turned over to him, would actually deteriorate under his command.”
Jackson also wrestled further with his conscience over whether he had properly attacked the enemy on Sunday. He wrote to Anna:
You appear much concerned at my attacking on Sunday. I was greatly concerned, too; but I felt it my duty to do it, in consideration of the ruinous effects that might result from postponing the battle until the morning. So far as I can see, my course was a wise one; the best that I could do under the circumstances, though very distaseful to my feelings; and I hope and pray to our Heavenly Father that I may never again be circumstanced as on that day.
That might have seemed sufficient, but he could not dismiss the subject:
I believed that so far as our troops were concerned, necessity and mercy both called for the battle. I do hope the war will soon be over, and that I will never again have to take the field.
Arms is a profession that … requires an officer to do what he fears may be wrong, and yet … must be done, if success is to be attained. And this fact of its being necessary to success, and being accompanied with success, and that a departure from it is accompanied with disaster, suggests that it must be right.
They Called Him Stonewall Page 18