It is worth noting that while Lee himself never regretted his decision to side with his native state in a cause about which he had many reservations, his choice was not without cost or sacrifice. His three sons were all in the army and exposed to danger; his two major properties had been seized, damaged, or destroyed; the comfortable fortune he had amassed with such care was diminished by the collapse in the value of the Confederate dollar; his army pension was almost certainly lost to him, since he had taken up arms against the United States; the Lees’ personal possessions had been looted or vandalized; and the precious relics of George Washington had been removed into Federal custody. He and Mrs. Lee had never contemplated selling the slaves she had received from her father, despite the fact that they represented a considerable part of the value of her inheritance. On the contrary the Lees went ahead as they had promised and freed their slaves legally in 1862, although since most of them were by then in territory occupied by the enemy, they were, for all practical purposes, already emancipated. Lee had gone from being a well-to-do man and property owner in 1861 to having no home of his own in 1862, uprooted like his whole family by the war that had swept over Virginia, and in no position to protect his own wife and children—a curious fate for a man who had always been so careful with his investments, and so protective of his family.
One thing that was clear about General Johnston’s retreat in the first weeks of May was that he was doing so without serious losses or a major battle. His burst of letter writing on the subject of his bruised ego had relapsed into sullen silence, while Lee anxiously waited to learn where the army would make its stand. Always a master of earthworks, Lee flung himself into the task of preparing a line behind which the army, if it reached there intact, might defend Richmond. He dug in whatever heavy artillery he could salvage from the loss of Norfolk on Drewry’s Bluff, overlooking the James River on its west bank about six miles from Richmond; and on Chaffin’s Bluff, facing the water on the east bank. If Johnston retreated across the Chickahominy River this would be the logical place for him to anchor his right, with the bulk of the army forming a half circle around the city, extending to Mechanicsville on the left.
Mechanicsville was where the all-important bridge of the Virginia Central Railroad crossed the Chickahominy, connecting Richmond with the Shenandoah Valley, and Johnston’s army with that of General Jackson in the Valley—a connection on which the fate of the Confederacy might depend. With this in mind Lee set every hand to digging, preparing for a literal last-ditch defense. He would have preferred to fight on the Chickahominy, a sluggish stream except when rains filled it to overflowing; but it was already clear from advance units of Johnston’s army arriving near Richmond that he was conceding the Chickahominy south of Mechanicsville to McClellan, perhaps following the maxim that it always best to give battle when your opponent’s lines of communication are stretched to the limit—although given a general as cautious and slow-moving as McClellan this was unlikely to happen.
On May 15, unable to sit at his desk in Richmond any longer, Lee rode out to inspect the works at Drewry’s Bluff, just in time to see four Federal gunships, including the famous U.S.S. Monitor and the ironclad U.S.S. Galena steam up the James River to within a few miles from Richmond. For over three hours they fought a gun battle with the Confederate artillery on Drewry’s Bluff. In the end, the Federal ships withdrew, the Galena badly damaged. Lee’s insistence on the importance of fortifying Drewry’s Bluff and Chaffin’s Bluff was thus proved correct, but at the same time the ability of the U.S. Navy to come within a few miles of the Confederate capital demonstrated its vulnerability. Lee also understood the danger that Union troops might outflank Johnston’s army by carrying out a landing from the James River.
6. Approximate situation in front of Richmond, about May 22, 1862, showing defensive disposition of Johnston’s army and the approach of McClellan.
{Robert E. Lee, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, by Douglas Southall Freeman, copyright © 1934, 1935, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, copyright renewed 1962, 1963, by Inez Godden Freeman. All rights reserved.}
About that date—the record is unclear—Lee was asked to attend a cabinet meeting to advise the government where Johnston’s army should fall back to, if it became necessary to abandon Richmond. Lee apparently answered without hesitation that the next defensible line would be the Staunton River, 108 miles to the southwest. This was the correct military answer, but the Staunton was not a formidable obstacle by any stretch of the imagination. It was a robust river and a line could be formed behind it, and supplied from North Carolina—but as Lee was surely aware, that would mean giving up not only Richmond but Petersburg, the junction of four different railway lines, and ceding all but a fragment of Virginia to the enemy. If that happened Jackson, unsupported on his left and right, would be obliged to withdraw from the Shenandoah Valley. The Confederacy would not survive for long, since wherever Johnston placed his line the Federals could always outflank him by landing an army behind him. Lee, to whom displays of emotion were anathema, carefully refrained from expressing any opinion of his own at cabinet meetings, unless in answer to direct questions about military affairs; but now he suddenly burst out, as “tears ran down his cheeks,” to the amazement of all present: “But Richmond must not be given up; it shall not be given up!”
7. Area between Chickahominy and Pamunkey rivers, showing watershed (unprotected, according to Stuart’s report) down which Jackson was to advance.
{Robert E. Lee, Volumes 1, 2, and 3, by Douglas Southall Freeman, copyright © 1934, 1935, by Charles Scribner’s Sons, copyright renewed 1962, 1963, by Inez Godden Freeman. All rights reserved.}
Although “the fate of the Confederacy hung in the balance,” Johnston remained as silent as the Sphinx about his plans, and more difficult to approach. He did not respond to letters, nor even to a personal attempt on the part of President Davis and General Lee to find him. Even when he at last consented to ride in from the field to meet with Davis, he did not divulge his plans to the president. Davis may have said to Johnston that “if he was not going to give battle, he would appoint some one to the command who would,” but if so it made no impression on the general, who remained as uncommunicative as ever. At last Lee, for once out of patience, rode out alone to confront Johnston, and returned to Richmond with the welcome news that Johnston planned to attack on May 29.
McClellan was advancing “cautiously,” as usual—the sheer size of his army was enough to slow down his advance along the narrow, boggy roads. By May 24 he had 105,000 men along the Chickahominy, facing Johnston’s army of 60,000. He still believed that Johnston had at least 200,000 men, and although he predicted to his wife, Ellen, that he was anticipating “one of the great historical battles of the world,” and worried whether his men could be restrained from pillaging when they took Richmond, he was in no hurry to begin the battle. It never occurred to him that Johnston might beat him to the punch. Just as he had at Yorktown, McClellan toyed with the idea of a siege, the kind of warfare he understood best, and set his engineers to the formidable (and time-consuming) task of transporting his siege train to the Chickahominy and building new bridges across the river. McClellan had in mind that McDowell, with 40,000 men, would march from Fredericksburg southeast to Mechanicsville, a distance of just fifty-five miles, to support him. With that in mind, he began to move a portion of his army across the Chickahominy, while keeping the bulk of it to the north of that river in order to protect his line of communications with White House and the vital railway line to his base at West Point. His idea was to shift the bulk of his army across the Chickahominy as McDowell’s men took their place to the north of the river, but in doing so he made the cardinal error of splitting his forces in two. His left was on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy, stretching from White Oak Swamp Creek to Fair Oaks; his right was on the opposite side of the Chickahominy, stretched out nearly ten miles along the river. The two halves of his army formed a kind of a V lying on its side (like this >) with the lower
end pointing at Richmond and the upper toward Mechanicsville. There was no way one half could support the other if it came to a battle, and McClellan would probably have seen this clearly had he come forward to examine the situation himself. Unfortunately, he was in bed with a fever, and far from expecting an enemy attack, he left his corps commanders to handle things.
Johnston understood the situation clearly, although he was reluctant to share his views with President Davis and Lee, and had decided to attack that portion of McClellan’s army that was north of the Chickahominy before McDowell could get there from Fredericksburg. This was sound enough reasoning, but at the very last moment fate in the shape of torrential rain intervened, along with the news that McDowell, alarmed that Jackson had taken Winchester and that Banks was in full retreat, was now marching toward Harpers Ferry rather than Richmond.
Not only did the downpour wash away the work of McClellan’s engineers; it isolated the smaller portion of his army on his left in a salient extending from the river to within six miles of Richmond, the point of the salient reaching Fair Oaks and Seven Pines (the ensuing battle is known as Fair Oaks in the North and as Seven Pines in the South). Like a good boxer, Johnston switched from his left to his right, reversing his preparations. Still without having informed Lee or Davis of his intentions, he attacked McClellan’s left south of the Chickahominy in full force with most of his army in the early afternoon of May 31, two days later than he had told Lee. The sound of his cannons was heard clearly in Richmond (and in McClellan’s tent, four miles away at New Bridge, where he was still bedridden).
There was now no question of McClellan’s receiving McDowell’s support, even though McDowell’s troops had been less than twenty-five miles away from joining with those of McClellan when he turned back, as a daring reconnaissance by J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry scouts had revealed. Johnston was offered the opportunity to attack just over a third of McClellan’s army with his full strength, thanks to Lee’s patient and careful support of Jackson’s Valley campaign. Lee’s letter of April 29 to Jackson had borne fruit exactly as he had anticipated, though even Lee must have held his breath as McDowell approached within two or three days’ march of a junction with McClellan. The bond of trust between Lee and Jackson, forged at a distance, was to become one of the most important weapons in the arsenal of the Confederacy. “If Lee was the Jove of the war, Stonewall Jackson was his thunderbolt. For the execution of the hazardous plans of Lee, just such a lieutenant was indispensable.”
On May 30, impatient with being kept out of the coming fray, and still believing the attack would be to the north of the Chickahominy, Lee sent an aide to find Johnston. The aide was to tell him that Lee could not be absent from the coming battle and would be happy to command a brigade or even a regiment, or to serve in any capacity regardless of his rank. As usual, Johnston had made himself unfindable, and Lee, seized with impatience, finally rode in the direction of Mechanicsville, where he still supposed Johnston’s attack would take place. Finding nothing happening there, he rode back to Richmond to receive a polite but uninformative message from Johnston that he would welcome Lee’s presence in the field in any capacity. That night rain turned the roads to mud and the Chickahominy flooded its banks, but there was still no news from Johnston.
On May 31, Lee rode forward again in search of Johnston, and at last learned that he was now on Nine Mile Road, somewhere near Old Tavern, south of the Chickahominy. This was Lee’s first indication that Johnston had decided to attack the left of the Union line, rather than the right. At the junction of Nine Mile Road and the road leading directly to New Bridge, Lee saw troops forming up in line of battle. There, in a modest house where the two roads joined, he finally found General Magruder and General Johnston himself, who, incredibly, was still reluctant to reveal his plans. Shortly after noon, Lee heard cannon and musket fire to the south. The troops in front of the house marched toward it, and General Johnston followed them with Magruder and their staffs. The postmaster general of the Confederacy, John H. Reagan—a Texan, who had ridden out from Richmond as a kind of cheerleader for Brigadier General John Bell Hood’s Texas Brigade—was there, and “witnessed the advance” of the troops “on the Federal earthworks, bristling with cannon.” He noted that they “marched into the jaws of death . . . with the steadiness of regulars.”
Still in the dark as to Johnston’s intentions, Lee was surprised to see an equally mystified President Davis ride up and dismount. Together, they walked to the rear of the house and listened to the sound of a growing battle. Without hesitation the two men mounted and rode down the road toward the gunfire. Within minutes they came under heavy fire from a Union artillery battery on their left, and found themselves in the middle of fierce fighting in the dense bush and woods on both sides of the road. Smoke and thick foliage obscured their view of the battle. To Lee’s dismay President Davis rode right into the fighting, determined to warn Magruder that he must silence the Union battery, acting as if he were one of Magruder’s aides-de-camp rather than the head of state. Whatever the extent of Davis’s political wisdom there was never any doubt of his courage. He succeeded in passing the message along, but as the afternoon wore on and the light began to fail, he and Lee found themselves under constant fire in a battle over which they had no control. Indeed they could not even be sure how big the battle was, still less how it was progressing.
At this point, Postmaster General Reagan appeared out of the clouds of gun smoke in the gathering gloom and attempted to draw Davis out of danger. “I protested,” he wrote, “against the President’s unnecessary exposure and said to them that I had just left General Johnston where he was in great danger, exposed as he was to the enemy’s fire.” Johnston had replied to Reagan that “this was no time to look for safe places,” and President Davis apparently felt the same, so they all sat their horses under brisk small-arms fire, and watched as the last Confederate attack against the Union battery failed. As night fell they learned from a courier that both Brigadier General Wade Hampton and—a more serious problem—General Johnston himself, had been severely wounded.
Shortly after this news, Johnston appeared “apparently in a lifeless condition,” carried on a stretcher, in such terrible pain that he had been unable to bear the jolting of an ambulance. He was in no position to give a report on the battle. Major General G. W. Smith, now the ranking officer on the field, appeared to explain that the attack had miscarried. Major General Longstreet, not yet Lee’s trusty “Old War Horse,” had taken the wrong road with his division. In the ensuing confusion many of the Confederate units did not arrive on the battlefield, and General Johnston had forfeited his superiority in numbers. The only question remaining was whether he should move the army back toward Richmond or attempt to hold its present position. Davis, with Lee’s blessing, ordered Smith to hold his present line. All three men thought that the battle would be renewed in the morning. For the moment, “Darkness [had] ended the battle, which had been fought in violent weather and seas of mud.” Indeed the fighting on both sides over the next few weeks would be in large part shaped by the weather, with constant references to flooding creeks, constant rain, and mud. There was “as much mud . . . as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth.” With it the temperature rose, and there was a growing danger of malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever, particularly for those troops who were not used to the climate.
McClellan would claim that Fair Oaks had been “a glorious victory,” but in fact it was a draw, and a fairly bloody one at that: approximately 5,000 Union casualties to 6,000 Confederate. The fighting had been desperate, and on both sides the tactical handling of troops had been poor. Lee realized that the opportunity of delivering a crushing blow to the Union left wing had been lost.
Davis and Lee rode back to Richmond in silence. It must have been apparent to both of them that General Smith, sensible though he was, was not senior enough to be left in command. At long last Davis ordered Lee to assume command of the army immediately. H
e may have done so reluctantly, or for want of a better option. Joe Johnston was widely admired throughout the South as the victor of First Manassas, while Lee was seen as an able administrator, a “desk man,” rather than a battlefield commander. In the judgment of J. F. C. Fuller, Davis had made the right choice: “From June 1, 1862, until his surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Lee was the central military figure in the South, and never did this great soldier show his worth more than at this moment.”
His appointment did not create any immediate enthusiasm. Stonewall Jackson was the hero of the hour; Johnston and Beauregard were regarded as the South’s most competent “fighting generals.” Lee was considered the trusted, white-haired military bureaucrat, a “preeminent staff officer.” He was fifty-five years old, three years older than Napoleon at his death; he had never commanded an army in the field; and he had not seen combat since 1847.
That night Lee closed down his office in Richmond, assembled his small staff, and wrote out his first orders, addressing his army for the first time under the name with which it would become as immortally famous as its commander: the Army of Northern Virginia.
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