They Called Him Stonewall

by Davis, Burke;

  Jackson asked Smith to go with him to visit Gregg, who was in a farmhouse near by.

  Gregg had a spinal injury and was in much pain. He was conscious and alert, however, and had dictated a note to the governor back home in South Carolina: “I am severely wounded, but the troops under my command have acted as they always have done, and I hope we have gained a glorious victory. If I am to die now, I give my life cheerfully for the independence of South Carolina, and I trust you will live to see our cause triumph completely.”

  Smith could recall the exchange between Gregg and Sandie Pendleton on the battlefield yesterday, when Pendleton had sought to send the general to the rear, saying that the enemy was shooting at him. Gregg had answered, “Yes, sir, thank you. They have been doing that all day.”

  Gregg welcomed Jackson. Smith recorded part of it:

  “There was an affecting interview … Gregg … wished to express regret for … some paper he feared was offensive to General Jackson. Jackson did not know to what Gregg referred, and soon interrupted the sufferer to say that it had given him no offense whatsoever, and then [took] Gregg’s hand in his.”

  Jackson’s voice was husky with emotion. “The doctors tell me that you have not long to live. Let me ask you to dismiss this matter from your mind and turn your thoughts to God and to the world to which you go.”

  Gregg’s eyes were tear-filled, Smith saw. “I thank you,” the South Carolinian said. “I thank you very much.”

  Jackson rode to the front and on the way met Dr. McGuire. These two fell to discussing the overwhelming superiority of the enemy regiments. “What shall we do, General,” McGuire asked, “with such vast numbers against us?”

  Jackson’s mood changed radically from his gentle pity of the bedside he had left so recently. “Kill them,” he said. “Kill them all, sir! Kill every man!”

  Lee and Jackson watched the fog lift from the Rappahannock in the morning. From the bluff that was to be known as Jackson’s Hill, they saw once more the endless lines of the Union army, in battle formations. There was no sign that the enemy would attack. The armies faced each other across the acres of wounded and dead.

  General D. H. Hill stood near Lee and Jackson, talking with one of his officers, Colonel Bryan Grimes of North Carolina. Hill came with the message that the enemy had gone from his front.

  “Who says they’re gone?” Jackson asked.

  “Colonel Grimes.”

  Jackson turned to the colonel. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve been down as far as their picket lines of yesterday, and I saw nothing of them.”

  “Move your skirmish line as far as you can and see where they are,” Jackson said.

  Lee and Jackson sat silently in the rain, waiting, gazing at the enemy which would no longer attack. Grimes noted bitter disappointment on the faces of the commanders.

  The Federals had asked a truce in the midafternoon. Jackson received the courier and began to write a note; he tired of it and sent Smith into the open to confer with the enemy officers. Smith met men who were more or less familiar. One of them was John Junkin, a brother of Jackson’s first wife.

  Jackson had been firm in his orders to Smith: “If you are asked who is in command of your right, do not tell them I am, and be guarded in your remarks.”

  His caution went for naught, for Junkin asked to be remembered to Jackson and sent a message from Old Jack’s former father-in-law. Smith said, “I will do so with pleasure when I meet General Jackson.” Junkin grinned. “It’s not worth while for you to try to deceive us,” he said. “We know that Jackson is in front of us.”

  The truce went on for several hours, with men of the two armies joining on the field to remove the dead and wounded. The slaughter of the day before became clearer now. The Union had lost almost thirteen thousand troops; the Confederacy, just over five thousand. Of the losses of Lee, Jackson had suffered the vast majority—thirty-five hundred.

  Even when darkness came, the Confederates could not believe that the attacks were over. A violent storm broke in the night, however, and the armies almost forgot each other. By the next morning, Lee and Jackson learned that the enemy had retreated over the river under cover of the rainstorm. Burnside’s offensive was over.

  Captain Blackford of Stuart’s staff would not forget this morning, or his visit to ruined Fredericksburg in the foggy dawn. He and his brother, Eugene, were the first Confederates to re-enter the town:

  “Eugene and myself rode on into the dear old town—the town where both of us were born. In the suburbs we met our brother Charles, a captain in the 2nd Virginia Cavalry, who had been sent on the same errand.

  “Our old home had been used as a hospital. The room in which we were born was half inch deep in clotted blood still wet, and the walls were spattered with it, and all around were scattered arms and legs. The place smelt like a butcher’s shambles.”

  The news of Fredericksburg stunned the North but brought no wild rejoicing in the South, for it seemed to promise only a long, bloody conflict with little hope of final victory. The Union army, however, had reeled back and was licking its wounds on Stafford Heights.

  Lee sent Jackson downstream to block a possible crossing by Burnside; but when it became clear that the enemy would not soon move, the army went into winter quarters.

  In his last look at the abandoned enemy positions about Fredericksburg, Old Jack said ruefully, “I did not think that a little red earth would have frightened them. I am sorry I fortified.”

  There was praise for Stonewall in Lee’s orders, though no more than for Longstreet, whose men, after all, had borne most of the combat burden (and yet had incurred but a fraction of Jackson’s casualties). In speaking of his corps commanders, Lee wrote:

  “To Generals Longstreet and Jackson great praise is due for the disposition and management of their respective corps. Their quick perception enabled them to discover the projected assaults upon their positions, and their ready skill to devise the best means to resist them. Besides their services in the field—which every battle of the campaign from Richmond to Fredericksburg has served to illustrate—I am also indebted to them for valuable counsel, both as regards the general operations of the army and the execution of the particular measures adopted.”

  It was something of a victory message, with a generous commander able to overlook certain minor shortcomings, such as the failure to seal the gap in Jackson’s front which had cost him so dearly in wounded. Nowhere in Lee’s reports was blame for this oversight fixed.

  General James Lane, from Jackson’s V.M.I. days, had made his first battlefield appearance as a general officer, and had lost five hundred of his North Carolinians, for it was on his right that the Yankees had poured through. But Lane got only praise for his front-line fighting.

  That was not the end of the story of the gap in the front. Jackson, when he at last made his report, was to accept no part of the blame but to put it squarely upon the commander of his front lines, A. P. Hill. Jackson wrote of the enemy attack: “They continued … still to press forward and before General A. P. Hill closed the interval which he had left between Archer and Lane, it was penetrated, and the enemy, pressing forward in overwhelming numbers through that interval, turned Lane’s right and Archer’s left.”

  It was more fuel for the Hill-Jackson controversy, whose bitterness was to end only with death.

  Jackson left the Fredericksburg battlefield on the cold, windy morning of December sixteenth, following Stuart and his cavalrymen as they hurried to dispute the crossing of the Federals, a crossing found to be based on false reports. At the moment of this discovery, the long lines of Jackson’s corps wound along a forest roadway having deep pine growth on either side. The country was unsuitable for a camp, and the regiments must march to a more open area. Jackson tried to avoid the troops by finding some parallel way of passing, for he knew they would raise their yells of greeting at sight of him. He was foiled. There was nothing to do but ride through the troops.

 
He went for some miles among the ragged men, so near to them that the privates brushed against Sorrel in the passage. A burst of cheering followed him for an hour down the long miles of his column, and his staff officers, attempting to follow, drew the derisive hoots of the men in ranks. When he came to an open grove, Jackson dismounted and told his staff to make camp at this spot. His young officers argued. There was a fine home near by, Moss Neck, the residence of Richard Corbin. Jackson refused. The woods were the proper camp. He settled down.

  He wrote to Anna before darkness.

  Yesterday, I regret to say, I did not send you a letter. I was on the front from before dawn until after sunset. The enemy, through God’s blessing, was repulsed at all points on Saturday, and I trust that our Heavenly Father will continue to bless us. We have renewed reason for gratitude to Him for my preservation during the last engagement.…

  I was made very happy at hearing through my baby daughter’s last letter that she had entirely recovered, and that she ‘no longer saw the doctor’s gray whiskers’. I was much gratified to learn that she was beginning to notice and smile when caressed. I tell you, I would love to caress her and see her smile. Kiss the little darling for her father.

  His officers called Old Jack’s attention to a leaping fire they had built in the bole of a hollow poplar. The staff ate under the tree and soon followed Jackson to sleep. Within a few minutes—at ten o’clock—a thunderous crash broke up the camp. The hollow tree had fallen. Jackson’s officers were awake, leaping to beat out the scattered sparks and embers from the burning tree. Once more they argued that Jackson should move them into the Corbin home. He refused, but sent a captain for food; the officer soon returned with a basket of cold biscuit and part of a ham. There was a late feast, and Old Jack turned to sleep again, to the disgust of the staff.

  Even loyal Captain Smith remembered his ire at Jackson’s request for food: “I regret now to say that it was with extreme pleasure that I told him I had none.”

  The staff had its way, however, for Jackson sat up, complaining of a severe earache, and officers were hurried to Moss Neck to prepare the Corbin family for the coming of the General. Captain Hugh McGuire yelled through a keyhole to a frightened woman in the house, explaining. The house was opened, lights moved through the big halls, and Jackson was soon comfortable in bed. Captain Smith slept on a rug before the fireplace in the General’s room. Old Jack had begun the hibernation of his last winter.

  Book Three:

  It’s all right. I always wanted to die on Sunday.

  —JACKSON

  Prologue:

  TAKE HEART, MR. LINCOLN

  In the bleak winter, with the country sickened at the butchery of Fredericksburg and the Union passing through its darkest hours, President Lincoln groped for a new commander. He liked the looks of two sturdy veterans who had fought through the war—D. N. Couch and J. F. Reynolds, both major generals. There was agreement from Edwin Stanton, his Secretary of War, but Chase of the Treasury shook his head; another of those cold, secret men whose ambitions were entwined with the schemes of the Radical Republicans. Joe Hooker, said Chase. Hooker’s the man. The President accepted as if bowing to fate, for he knew well enough it was none too easy to find a good general who would not also have a strong resemblance to a Presidential candidate.

  But Mr. Lincoln was not docile in this moment. He spoke his mind to his new general, and in a remarkable letter gave him to understand that the nation was not yet lost, and that an army commander bore a certain burden and had a certain place in life:

  Executive Mansion

  Washington, D.C.

  Jan. 26, 1863

  Major General Hooker:

  General:

  I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you.

  I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable, quality.

  You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside’s command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious brother officer.

  I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators.

  What I ask of you now is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done or will do for all commanders.

  I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive today, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

  Yours very truly,

  A. Lincoln

  General Hooker colored, glowing with a charming hue of complexion that was the envy of many women and, laughing, tossed the letter to officer friends.

  “He talks to me like a father,” the handsomest man in the army said expansively. “I shall not answer this letter until I have won him a great victory.”

  And Hooker, huge, bronze-haired, master of the majestic gesture, turned upon his army. It drilled, and sweated, and suffered the mud of its camps—and it grew. Desertions slowed and halted, and none too soon, for the Army of the Potomac had a staggering figure on its rolls: eighty-five thousand men gone, vanished, most of them deserters. Hooker forbade the visits of women (though his headquarters were still notorious, a place virtuous women were warned to shun); he had his guards ferret out civilian clothing and burn it, and he brought order to the system of leaves for his men. Soon there was better food and more plentiful uniforms, and men were ordered to the tub—weekly, or there were punishments. Discipline began to return and, with it, hope and confidence.

  Hooker could not contain himself, as his rolls grew to more than 130,000:

  “This is the greatest army ever assembled on the planet.”

  “May God have mercy on General Lee—for I will have none!”

  His staff took their cues from him. Staggering orders were drawn up—half a million rations, to be ready for shipment to Richmond by boat. Secret Service was to prepare detailed maps of the Richmond defenses.

  Washington was advised to be ready for the day when he would overwhelm the Army of Northern Virginia and fall upon the Confederate capital.

  He would need, as a starter: 10,000 shovels, 5,000 picks, 5,000 axes, 30,000 sandbags. These could be sent care of Major General Hooker, Richmond, Virginia.

  As he worked, and the tons of supplies piled up, and his railroad groaned under its burdens, and his herd of mules all but outnumbered the Confederate armies, Hooker had electrifying word from Washington: The President was coming. A visit of inspection, complete with an official party—the President and Mrs. Lincoln, their son Tad, Attorney General Bates; Dr. A. G. Henry, the President’s old friend from Washington Territory; and Noah Brooks, the California newspaper reporter.

  Headquarters company began to clean house in a fury, dispossessing many a charming visitor—and the army made ready.

  It was April fourth, a strange, dark, cold day, when the party left Washington. The President had been late, but even that did not ruffle the determined good humor of Mrs. Lincoln, who had proposed the trip as a device to give her husband a respite from the grinding an
xieties of his office.

  As she waited she laughed with Brooks, who was the President’s favorite newspaperman.

  “He’s lounging around that War Office, is what he’s doing. Poking about trying to find out some news before he ought.”

  She was correct. Lincoln liked to walk to the telegraph office at all hours and alone, though he now carried a cane to defend himself, since his wife had discovered there had been an attempt on his life. It was in the cipher room, where he looked over the shoulders of the clerks to get news from his armies, that he had written the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, at any rate, the President was late at the War Office, and his wife waited for half an hour, chatting as Brooks studied her.

  This, he thought, as she rustled about the room, might be one of those four-thousand-dollar French gowns that had caused such a scandal lately. He thought of the vicious talk swirling about her head: how she was bankrupting her husband, and perhaps the country, too, to decorate the White House and her own plump figure; about her Confederate cousins and her alleged Southern sympathies. Brooks could not believe she sided with the enemy, seeing the fierce integrity of spirit on the fleshy face in which the features were pinched together a bit too closely for beauty. A Kentucky belle, aging.

  It was only lately that Brooks had rescued her from one of her soothsayers, this time the seer Colchester, who had told fortunes in a darkened room, astonishing her with the sounds of twanging banjos, throbbing drums, clashing bells. But Mary Lincoln, though Brooks had exposed this fraud by yanking away a table cover, could not be shaken in her love of the occult, and yet gave her time to spiritualists. Perhaps the thought of this voyage had come from one of her mystics. In any event, it would benefit the President.