They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  Other officers recalled a different scene: of Lee and Jackson meeting for a few quiet moments in the village of Jeffersonton for the passing of important orders. Whatever the means, Jackson was soon off with his wing of the army.

  Lee had discovered that Pope was being reinforced by the troops of General Burnside, out of Fredericksburg, implying a concentration of Union strength in the northern area of Virginia. Pope must be attacked immediately, before he became too strong. The first move was to swing far behind him with a force of fearless, hard-fighting troops which could move swiftly, live off the country, and fight off the Federals once they were discovered. Lee chose Jackson’s men without hesitation.

  Since Jackson could not cross the Rappahannock here, a new means of assault must be conceived. The solution was the most daring yet devised between Lee and Jackson.

  Jackson was to swing far up the river, unknown to the enemy, choose his crossing and hit Pope’s line of supply far in the enemy rear, along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. There was real danger of discovery. If the Federals were at all alert, they could well cut off Jackson’s force in the ridge of hills near Manassas Junction; for Jackson must almost inevitably pass Thoroughfare Gap in his assault.

  Lee would remain in his present position long enough to divert the enemy’s attention, keeping the remainder of the force. This would place Jackson between Pope and Washington. Lee hoped this would force a Federal retreat, which would lengthen the route of reinforcement for Pope from Fredericksburg. Lee also planned to go to Jackson’s side with Longstreet’s men long before the enemy could fall upon Jackson.

  It was an assignment more promising than any of the Valley operations, and just to Jackson’s taste. There was no hesitation over the dangers of division, or of Jackson’s vulnerability if attacked in force. One evening the troops of Old Jack cooked rations, put aside knapsacks, gathered cattle herds, and were soon on the road. There was some grumbling and confusion, and thousands of men left with no more than a bit of half-cooked beef. But they were off on what was to become Jackson’s most celebrated march.

  Dr. McGuire afterward thought that Jackson had conceived this blow, for he saw Lee and Jackson conferring just before the march. “Jackson—for him—was very much excited, drawing with the toe of his boot a map in the sand, and gesticulating in a much more earnest way than he was in the habit of doing. General Lee was simply listening, and after Jackson got through, he nodded his head.”

  The columns were never leaner, nor the men hungrier, and the cornfields along the route suffered, and the beef herd diminished. Jackson moved seven miles upriver, waded one of the headwaters of the Rappahannock, and behind Virginia cavalry pushed on toward Manassas Junction. Captain Boswell rode in front as a guide. There was one moment of unscheduled inspiration as the men reached the village of Salem, where they arrived near sunset, at the end of one day’s relentless drive. Jackson had paused at the roadside and mopped his brow, staring at the sunset in the mountains. A passing regiment began to cheer, but he signaled them to remain quiet, and these troops went by with silently raised hats. When the Stonewall Brigade, passed, some officers recalled, the men would not be silenced, and Jackson turned to a staff officer, evidently deeply moved. “Who could not win with such troops as these?” he asked.

  He passed unusual praise that night for the brisk march. The adventure was well started. If the mountain pass were not held in great strength by the Federals, there was hope of success. The next day was as long as the first, and the going harder.

  At midmorning, the good news came racing down the column, and the pace thereafter seemed faster: The Bull Run Mountains were undefended. Thoroughfare Gap hadn’t even a picket in it. Jackson’s men could pass behind the hills and fall upon the vast piles of stores at the railroad junction, if the Federals did not suddenly spring to life.

  Captain Blackford, trying to get through to Jackson with a message from Stuart, spent many hours in an effort to pass the infantry—for the men were allowed great freedom and were not required to close ranks, so that rapid marchers were not hindered. Blackford saw hundreds limping, carrying shoes in hand, and saw many who fainted; but the rear guard was lenient and told laggards to follow when they could. The walking mob would not let him through, and when he barked orders from the saddle, the privates would pretend deafness, and allow their muskets to cross, barring his way. Blackford took to the fields and raced the regiments to Bristoe Station, on the railroad near Pope’s supply center.

  He found Jackson in a house near the station, fast asleep in a rocking chair. Sandie Pendleton was asleep at the doorway of Jackson’s room. He was shaken awake and given a message. Pendleton aroused Jackson, shouting to him that a general had disobeyed an order. “General, he failed to put a picket at the crossroads, and the following brigade took the wrong road.”

  Jackson rolled his eyes at Pendleton and said, “Put him under arrest and prefer charges.” He was sleeping in an instant.

  To this moment the enemy had no idea of Jackson’s arrival in their rear, nor even of his march; cavalrymen had gobbled up the only Yankees seen on the march, and now, though Ewell’s men were but a few hundred yards from the Federal sentries at Bristoe Station, the thrust was still a secret. Jackson had kept it so with orders unusual even for him. Taliaferro recalled: “The orders to his division chiefs were like this: ‘March to a crossroad; a staff officer there will inform you which fork to take; and so to the next fork, where you will find a courier with a sealed direction pointing out the road.’”

  The Confederates knew almost as little as Pope of this thrust in his rear.

  The word now spread, for eager troops rushed the station; and after one train escaped in a hail of futile bullets, two others were derailed; and an engineer who followed, seeing the disaster, backed off and gave the alarm. Jackson had the bridge burned at this point, and rails torn up. The army also had a laugh at Old Jack’s expense.

  In the wreck of a train was a middle-aged Washington politician who injured a leg in the crash. Captain William Oates of an Alabama regiment was near by to write: “He was laid upon the ground near a fire. He inquired who we were, and when informed he expressed a desire to see Stonewall Jackson. I pointed out Jackson to him, who just then stood on the opposite side of the fire.… He requested to be raised, which was done. He surveyed the great Confederate general in his dingy gray uniform, with his cap pulled down on his nose, for half a minute, and then in a tone of disappointment and disgust exclaimed, ‘O my God! Lay me down!’” It was a cry which echoed through the army for the next few days.

  The tired troops slept in the road, worn from the march which had taken some of them fifty-four miles. When Jackson learned that vast Yankee stores were piled temptingly at Manassas Junction, only seven miles up the tracks, he sent General Ike Trimble’s brigade to seize them. Trimble was happy enough, as the file went slowly ahead in the darkness, but the men were footsore, stiff and resentful. At about midnight, with the aid of Stuart’s cavalrymen, Trimble’s men seized the station. There was little resistance. A holiday began.

  Private Casler and others in the ranks found a means to circumvent the order that the fancy sutler’s stores were only for officers: “We would form in a solid mass around the tents and commence pushing one another toward the center until the guard, who was not very particular about it, would give way, and then we would make the good things fly for a short time, until some officer would ride up with more guards and disperse us.” The men in ranks managed to break into buildings and get coffee, sugar, whisky, molasses and other luxuries, and literally tore up one railroad car of medicines because it also happened to contain brandy; the men tossed about the precious morphine and chloroform, over protests of surgeons, to get at the precious potables.

  Jackson tried to stop the wild plunder, and his officers poured out the plentiful supplies of whisky; all over the area soldiers fell to earth, scooping and lapping the liquid before it drained away. They were still at it when there appeared a bol
d and badly informed New Jersey brigade of Federal troops, which ran straight into Jackson’s arms.

  Old Jack waited for the enemy at the head of a full division in battle order, expecting the newcomers to turn back at sight of his lines. For the only time in his career, he seemed anxious to save the enemy from annihilation. His cannon battered the Federal line, but the Jerseymen would not halt, and came on rapidly toward their certain destruction.

  Jackson rode into the open, exposed himself and waved a white handkerchief. The artillery quieted. He shouted a demand that the Federals surrender, but got only a defiant answer from a bluecoat in a front rank who knelt and aimed carefully at the General, the bullet coming so near its mark that artillerymen with Jackson heard its whine.

  Jackson reopened the fire; but even when the enemy broke and fled in disorder over a railroad bridge, the General did not throw his men into the chase. He brought in three hundred prisoners. And when he returned, having discovered Federals creeping in on his position, he countermanded his orders concerning the spoils of the depot. The men were told to take what they wished, without restraint.

  Men long near starvation, plagued with dysentery from a green corn diet, now gobbled delicacies of which most of them had never heard: canned lobster salad, pickled oysters, wines from Europe, fine brandies. There was coffee by the barrel. Douglas saw one man “bending beneath the weight of a score of boxes of cigars.” Another had coffee to last through the winter, and many wore shoes tied in great bunches around their necks.

  It was a moment of paradise to the tattered troops, and though Jackson was likely unaware of the stimulus to morale in this glimpse of life as led by the enemy, it was to help in future engagements. When the ragged butternut files charged over battlefields with such verve, it was not always Native Southern Courage which drove them. They were often simply scampering to be first among the fallen foe, to seize shoes, clothing and food, and to loot the knapsacks filled as their own had never been. The enemy brought today’s revelry to an abrupt end.

  General Pope, now thoroughly alarmed, sent troops toward his rear to protect the road to Alexandria, at first uncertain where Jackson lay, or in what strength he had come. Hooker’s regiments fell on those of Ewell, and outnumbered them, but Ewell and Early withdrew from their position with such skill that they suffered almost no loss. They got back to Manassas Junction, Early so careful as to leave not one scrap of debris behind to suggest haste; he had the very harnesses taken from fallen horses.

  A. P. Hill captured dispatches which showed Pope to be concentrating around Manassas Junction in order to attack Jackson. Stonewall had moved his troops into an open, exposed position, a little over a mile from the scene of last year’s triumph at Bull Run, within sight of the Henry House Hill. He had determined to block Pope here and to wait for the arrival of General Lee with Longstreet’s troops, when the army would be able to give battle to the growing Union invasion force.

  Jackson waited for the Federals while his troops settled into place along a ridge in the vicinity called Groveton, in the heat of the blazing sun of August twenty-eighth. Men poured into a dusty woodland on the hillside. Captain Blackford rode to the spot:

  “The men were packed like herring in a barrel in the woods behind the old railroad; there was scarce room enough to ride between the long rows of stacked arms, with the men stretched out on the ground between them, laughing and playing cards.… No music or shouting was allowed, but the men had no restrictions as to laughing and talking … and the woods sounded like the hum of a beehive in the warm sunshine.”

  The approach of enemy columns had made Jackson anxious for the arrival of Lee, whose march over the route Old Jack had used was tense and dramatic. Jackson’s couriers had been passing freely through Thoroughfare Gap to send news to Lee; but now, as the commander came to the Bull Run Mountains, the pass was found to be blocked and held by Federals. Longstreet’s troops fought a brief evening battle before clearing the pass, and Lee had an anxious moment. While he had his supper, the big Federal guns boomed in the mountain pass; and beyond, far to the east, he could hear the roll of musketry, as Jackson was engaged. Perhaps his army was being torn apart while its strength was divided.

  Lee, as he approached Thoroughfare Gap, had sent a courier to Jackson, and the man got through, pounding the last nineteen miles at top speed. In the late afternoon, he galloped up the hillside to Jackson. Old Jack grinned at the dispatch, which told him only that Lee and Longstreet were at the Gap, and that reinforcements would arrive by morning. Stonewall betrayed his relief.

  “Where is the man who brought this dispatch?” Jackson asked. “I must shake hands with him.”

  He solemnly took the hand of the young dispatch rider. He took from Captain Blackford “a long deep draught” of buttermilk from a near-by farm. General Ewell, who came up belatedly, cried, “For God’s sake, give me some.” But the supply was gone.

  Jackson turned his attention to the Federal troops, thousands of whom swarmed within sight. The enemy marched as if they knew little of the Confederate strength or position. Regiments of bluecoats passed quite near to Jackson, who rode alone in the open, watching. Blackford wrote:

  “General Jackson rode all day in a restless way, mostly alone. When he was uneasy he was cross as a bear, and neither his generals nor his staff liked to come near him.… The expression of his face … reminded you of an explosive missile, an unlucky spark applied to which would blow you sky high.…

  “We could almost tell his thoughts by his movements. Sometimes he would halt, then trot on rapidly, halt again, wheel his horse … About a quarter of a mile off, troops were now opposite us. All felt sure Jackson could never resist the temptation, and that the order to attack would come soon, even if Longstreet was behind the mountain.”

  Jackson whirled his horse and galloped back to his officers. “Here he comes, by God,” someone shouted. The General’s manner struck the officers as unusually calm, even for him, as he gave a little salute.

  “Bring out your men, gentlemen,” he said to the brigade commanders.

  Blackford recalled that the troops roared like “cages of wild beasts at the scent of blood” when the orders went into the ranks. And, he wrote: “In an incredibly short time long columns of glittering brigades, like huge serpents, glided out upon the open field, to be as quickly deployed into lines of battle.”

  Like soldiers on parade Jackson’s men went out, with guns dashing up into position on the flanks, and the battle flags catching the last of the sunlight. The Union troops wheeled to face them, and the fury of fire broke, covering the plain with smoke. The brief, fierce engagement of Groveton was on.

  The Federals opened with an effort to storm cannon which were punishing them, but as the blue wave fanned over the slight rise, it was broken by a waiting Confederate line, which lay on the ground to deliver its fire. There were infantry charges, and sharp fighting through an orchard and farmyard. The long opposing lines came within a hundred yards of each other in the open, and appalling musketry left the field strewn with bodies. Two brigades from Wisconsin and another from Indiana, men of General John Gibbon, fought the Valley veterans to a standstill.

  Long after dark, until about 9 P.M., the furious struggle went on. It was only then that Jackson began to discover the serious cost of fighting alone. Ewell was badly wounded. Dr. McGuire and his helpers worked over the profane veteran who was Jackson’s most effective lieutenant, and came reluctantly to the conclusion that a leg must be amputated. Thus passed from the service Dick Ewell, to return no more until after Jackson’s death.

  There was much more to be reported. General Taliaferro was wounded, though not seriously. Two fine Virginia colonels were dead: John F. Neff and Lawson Botts. Many a fighting unit was no longer recognizable. The Stonewall Brigade had lost about 200 men this short evening, and now had but 435 in its ranks. The twenty-first Georgia regiment was all but gone. It came out of the fight with but 69 of its 242 men unhurt.

  Though it was p
ainful, the affair had been fought by mere fractions of the armies and had served Jackson’s purpose of halting Pope’s vanguard—by drawing forward the entire Federal army so that it might be assailed when Longstreet arrived. There seemed some doubt, tonight, that he might come in time. Jackson saw no immediate danger, but he was anxious.

  The Federals withdrew from the Groveton field after midnight. Back at his headquarters, in ignorance of the approach of Lee with reinforcements, Pope wrote that his men had “intercepted the retreat of the enemy … and I see no possibility of his escape.”

  As August twenty-ninth dawned, Jackson’s line waited, running from Bull Run on the north, along a commanding ridge, through the cut of the unfinished railroad, with its steep banks. It was a strong position from which to greet the enemy, but there were about fifty thousand Federals within striking distance. If Longstreet did not come soon, Jackson might be trapped at last.

  17

  SECOND MANASSAS

  At daylight on August twenty-ninth, when Old Jack looked across to the familiar terrain of the old battlefield of Bull Run, big Federal regiments were shifting their serpentine blue lines. Jackson puzzled over the intentions of General Pope; for some hours it was not clear what the Union command had in mind for the day.

  Jackson pulled back his troops from the ground of last night’s fighting, where the bodies lay in such straight rows that they seemed to be regiments at rest, waiting for the command to rise and charge. The Confederates now squeezed into a narrow front, some three thousand yards across; the guns were hauled into place and grinned down from a slight elevation behind the line, which lay along the old railroad cut. Men waited for the Yankees in this strong position.