Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Daylight on the twelfth of July found the army of Garnett in five retreating fragments. Colonel Scott had abandoned his futile watch on the eastern side of Rich Mountain and was on the road to Huttonsville. Jed Hotchkiss was two thirds of the way to the top of the mountain, on the western side, and was disgusted to find that only one company was following him. Major Nat Tyler of the 20th Virginia, having crossed the mountain, was at Beverly. Pegram’s wet and hungry men were on a high ridge whence, after sunrise, they could look down on Beverly. Garnett’s hurried march was under way without pursuit by the enemy.34

  The dénouement came quickly. Scott, Tyler, and Hotchkiss were able to get away in safety. Pegram lost his opportunity of reaching Beverly before the Federals, and, after wandering all day in search of food, sent at midnight an offer to surrender the troops with him. On the thirteenth his 555 officers and men laid down their arms. All except Pegram were paroled. He was held as a prisoner of undetermined status because of his previous service in the United States army.35

  Garnett’s march on the twelfth carried him to Kaler’s Ford on the Cheat River, where the men bivouacked in a heavy rain. The next morning he continued his retreat over a heavy road and through a difficult country. Ford after ford lay ahead. The cavalry brought the grim news that the enemy was near at hand. By successive halts and withdrawals, the infantry covered the wagon train until Carrier’s Ford was reached. At that swift, deep crossing some of the wagons stalled. The 23rd Virginia crossed and took up a defensive position, and after the 1st Georgia secured the train and passed through their line, the Virginians held off the Federals long enough for the wagons to get a good lead.

  When the 23rd reached the next ford, Garnett was waiting on the farther bank with a single junior aide. The general directed Colonel William B. Taliaferro to halt beyond a near turn in the road. Would Taliaferro send back ten good marksmen? In a few minutes the Federals came in sight and encountered the fire of the sharpshooters. As only Garnett and his aide Sam M. Gaines were visible, the Federals directed their fire at them. The missiles flew past. Young Gaines ducked. Garnett, erect and calm, reproved the youth. “When I told him I had felt on my face the wind from several bullets, and that I could not help but stoop,” Gaines wrote years later, “he changed his tone and talked to me in a fatherly way as to the proper bearing of a soldier under fire.”

  The enemy by this time was only fifty yards distant. Garnett turned his horse to see if the support he had ordered was coming up. At that instant a bullet hit him in the back. He fell from his horse. Gaines dismounted and tried to lift the general to his own saddle. The younger man struggled at the task until the Federals were close to the ford. Then he caught Garnett’s horse, jumped to the back of his own animal, and galloped off unscathed.36

  After long and wearing marches the tattered and exhausted force escaped to Monterey. The South was relieved that so many had escaped, but was grieved and humiliated that more than 700 had been killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.37 After some hesitation, the Federals decided to hold Pegram as a prisoner of war and not as an army officer in rebellion. He was much criticized in the South for what the barroom strategists pronounced a poor deployment. Garnett’s fate and the abandonment of the western approaches to the Shenandoah Valley were lamented equally. The general was dying when he fell, and as the Federals arrived he drew his last breath. His body, with all his belongings, was returned to his family by old friends in the Union army. From the list of those to whom the South looked hopefully, his high name had to be stricken—the first officer of his rank on either side to be killed in action.38

  Although his grim defeat humiliated the South, the troops opposed to him were numerically superior and far better equipped. Their leader was Major General George B. McClellan. The attack against Pegram at Rich Mountain was delivered by McClelland ablest subordinate, Brigadier General W. S. Rosecrans. Good Federal management, the weakness of the Confederate force, and McClellan’s telegraphic reports of his success made the campaign appear on one side an example of incompetence and, on the other, of military brilliance. Garnett was buried and forgotten by the public; McClellan was the hope of the North.

  CHAPTER 2

  Beauregard’s Battlefield

  1

  BEAUREGARD ESSAYS GRAND STRATEGY

  The tragedy of Rich Mountain and Carrick’s Ford was effaced quickly by events around Manassas. Beauregard’s little army increased steadily during the early summer. Most of the troops sent to him were of the very first type of volunteers, men of intelligence, courage, and good physique. Their company officers varied much, but their field officers, though in some cases without previous military experience, had station and capacity that won the respect of the men in the ranks. Training proceeded without break. “My troops,” said Beauregard, “are in fine spirits and anxious for a fight.” He added: “They seem to have the most unbounded confidence in me.”1

  Spurred by that confidence and by the prospect of an early advance, Beauregard prepared, on June 12, a plan of action which he sent to the President. He assumed Johnston, at Harper’s Ferry, was about to be attacked. If that commander “were ordered to abandon forthwith his present position and concentrate suddenly his forces with mine … we could by a bold and rapid movement, retake Arlington Heights and Alexandria….” Otherwise Johnston should retreat to Richmond, and he would do the same thing. Then, “acting on interior lines from Richmond as a center … we would crush successively and in detail the several columns of the enemy, which I have supposed will move on three or four different lines of operations. With 35,000 men properly handled on our part, I have not the least doubt that we could annihilate 50,000 of the enemy.”

  The President replied to this promptly and moderately. He did not dwell on the uncertainty of the assumption that the Federals first would attack Johnston, nor did he raise any question concerning the ability of an army that had little ordnance and feeble transportation to storm the approaches to Washington. In the matter of a general withdrawal on Richmond, the President withheld the obvious criticism that the enemy might not be obliging enough to advance, as Beauregard assumed, “on three or four different lines.” Mr. Davis stressed only the fact that the Confederacy did not have sufficient transportation for a simultaneous withdrawal. There was not a hint in his letter that he regarded Beauregard’s plan as grandiose. Nor did rejection of this proposal discourage Beauregard from formulating another.2

  The day Prince John Magruder got his promotion, June 17, Mr. Davis appointed ten other brigadier generals. Among them were two officers already at Manassas—Richard S. Ewell of Virginia and David R. Jones, a South Carolinian. Included also were three officers with Joe Johnston in the Valley. These were Bernard E. Bee of South Carolina, E. Kirby Smith of Florida, and Thomas J. Jackson of Virginia. All five were graduates of the Military Academy and all except Jackson had been in the regular army until approximately the time their states had seceded.

  Beauregard by this time had nineteen infantry regiments which, on June 20, he organized into six brigades. Milledge Bonham, whom he had found at Manassas, formally received the First Brigade, of South Carolina troops. To “Dick” Ewell were assigned two Alabama regiments and one from Louisiana. David Jones had one South Carolina and two Mississippi regiments. As these brigades exhausted Beauregard’s general officers, he had to place one brigade of three Virginia regiments under Colonel G. H. Terrett. A brigade of like composition was entrusted to the great planter, Colonel R St. George Cocke. The Sixth Brigade, of two Virginia and one South Carolina regiments, was placed under Colonel Jubal A. Early, who, like Cocke, was a retired West Pointer. Thus four of Old Bory’s brigades had one-time professional soldiers at their head. Terrett was an old officer of marines, and Bonham had held a commission in the Mexican War. The regimental colonels swept a wide range of abilities—politicians, old militiamen, lawyers, teachers—but in most instances they were men who had been among the first to raise regiments and to enter the service of their states.3


  With these troops Beauregard took an advanced position to cover Manassas and, if opportunity offered, to begin an offensive. Before he completed a new design he had discouragement. The North was as war-mad as the South and was arming furiously. Sumter was a spur, not a curb. Troops to drive Johnston up the Shenandoah Valley were being collected under General Robert Patterson, a veteran of the war with Mexico. General Irwin McDowell, who was commanding opposite Beauregard, was believed to be ready to sound the advance. Beauregard, not unnaturally, lost some of his appetite for an offensive. “If I could only get the enemy to attack me, as I am trying to have him do,” he wrote, “I would stake my reputation on the handsomest victory that could be hoped for.”4

  In writing the President on July II, Beauregard put the strength of McDowell’s army at 35,000 and credited the Federal commander with a reserve of 15,000. “In view of the odds against me,” he said, “… I shall act with extreme caution.” Then, almost overnight, he changed his mind again and dispatched Colonel James Chesnut to Mr. Davis with a new design: Johnston would join Beauregard and together they would advance and place themselves between the two lines of McDowell’s army. They were to attack the Federals “separately with larger masses, and thus exterminate them or drive them into the Potomac.” Johnston thereupon was to return to the Valley with his own army and 10,000 of Beauregard’s troops and destroy the invading Union force under Patterson. Johnston, having wiped out Patterson, was to send part of his army to Robert Garnett, who was then facing McClellan in western Virginia. Having disposed of McClellan, Garnett would join Johnston and with him would move into Maryland and attack Washington from the rear. Beauregard himself simultaneously would attack the capital in front.

  In Richmond this extraordinary plan presented by Colonel Chesnut was heard by President Davis, General Lee, and Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, but, being verbal, it was considered merely a broad suggestion. As such, it was held to be hopelessly impractical for a multitude of reasons. The details of Beauregard’s proposal, in fact, made so slight an impression that the members of Colonel Chesnut’s little audience were to have difficulty, a few months later, in recalling what actually had been proposed.5

  Action now was immediately in prospect. The battle which each side expected to end the conflict between North and South was about to be joined. By July 17 it became certain that McDowell was advancing toward Manassas. Beauregard urged that Johnston move to his support, but even then he could not refrain from suggesting a touch of grand strategy: Johnston, said Beauregard, should advance in two columns. One should travel by way of the Manassas Gap Railroad. The other should cross the mountains north of the railroad and strike the enemy in flank and rear near Centreville at the moment Beauregard attacked in front.

  Johnston had evacuated Harper’s Ferry on June 15 and withdrawn to Winchester. If he had to reinforce Beauregard, the troops at Winchester could march twenty miles southeast and there strike a direct railroad to Manassas, thirty-five miles eastward. The one thing Johnston could not do at the time was to adopt Beauregard’s suggestion and move on Manassas in two widely separated columns. “I preferred,” Johnston later explained, “the junction of the two armies at the earliest time possible….”6

  This was not the end of Beauregard’s strategy. Other proposals, as dazzling in detail and holding out ever richer prizes, were to be fashioned. The beginning was not promising. All Beauregard’s plans from June 12 to July 17 had been rejected—all of them! He might not have even the command of the field. If the two Confederate forces were united at Manassas before McDowell attacked, Johnston would direct operations. He was the senior and might get the glory.

  2

  BEAUREGARD PLANS A BATTLE

  Against the superior force marching to attack him, Beauregard fell back to Bull Run, took position on the south bank, and advised the President that, if the Federals were overwhelming, he would retire to the Rappahannock, “saving my command for defence there and future operations.” Davis was requested to notify Johnston and Theophilus H. Holmes, who had a small force on the Potomac about twenty-five miles south of Manassas. “Send forward any reinforcements,” Beauregard concluded, “at the earliest possible instant, and by every possible means.”7

  A brush had occurred at the outposts before Beauregard forwarded this telegram. On the eighteenth the Federals felt out the Confederate position at Blackburn’s Ford on Bull Run. There they were smartly repulsed with some loss by Virginia troops. The commander of the defending forces was a Georgian, James Longstreet, who had been a paymaster in the old army and, in the promotions of June 17, had been made a brigadier general. Although only assuming command of his Virginia volunteers on July 2, replacing Colonel Terrett, he had advanced their training remarkably in a fortnight. Longstreet’s calm and soldierly bearing in this skirmish made him a reality to many officers who previously had known him as a name only.8

  On July 20, Johnston and part of his troops arrived at Manassas under authority received from Richmond. Johnston’s supposition was that the Federal army under Patterson would not attempt to march up the Valley but would parallel his movement and proceed to Manassas. Johnston marched to Piedmont Station, whence trains were to carry his entire force to a junction with Beauregard. The first troops to reach Manassas in this manner were T J. Jackson’s brigade.9

  Beauregard welcomed these troops and described to Johnston what had happened. The enemy was at Centreville, two and a half miles north of Bull Run. Beauregard proposed using Johnston’s troops in an elaborate concentration. He had a plan ready: The new senior commander would keep his forces “united within the lines of Bull Run, and thence advance to the attack of the enemy.” Johnston interpreted this proposal in terms of Patterson’s response when he discovered that the Confederates had left Winchester; surely he would move his columns to the support of McDowell. They would arrive, Johnston computed, on the twenty-second. If McDowell was to be attacked before he was reinforced decisively, he must be struck on the twenty-first. Perforce, and without hesitation, he approved Beauregard’s plan and directed him to undertake its execution. This was wholly in accordance with Beauregard’s wishes, and perhaps was what he had been angling to effect. He ordered Johnston’s and Holmes’s troops into position as they arrived, and before nightfall he had in prospect the dispositions shown on the appended sketch.10

  Beauregard’s defended front, as the course of Bull Run twisted its way eastward, was approximately eight miles in length. For an advance by his right on Centreville, he placed his troops as advantageously as the roads permitted. On three miles of the right center he concentrated one half of the entire army.11 Offensively, he was ready; defensively, he was exposed to any movement other than a direct drive on his base at Manassas. On two and a half miles of his left, where Beauregard later said he anticipated attack, he placed less than 5,000 men. Their closest support was the general reserve, almost four miles from the expected point of attack, namely, the vicinity of the Stone Bridge on the Warrenton Turnpike. Beauregard, in brief, was most heavily concentrated where his position was strongest, and was weakest numerically behind those Bull Run fords where crossing was easiest. The disproportion of force was startling. Of all this Beauregard must have been aware. He had studied the ground and had shaped the plan; obviously he based all his dispositions on offensive strategy.12

  First Battle of Manassas. Position of Confederate forces along Bull Run, July 21, 1861, sunrise.

  As Johnston entrusted the drafting of the combat order to the man who had fashioned the design, Beauregard set about that task late in the night of July 20-21. At 4:30 A.M. on the twenty-first he submitted the paper to General Johnston. It was a confused document, and in retrospect it is a gloomy instance of the manner in which, during the first stage of hostilities, the ignorance of the commanding officer maybe as gross as that of the men and infinitely more expensive in blood and misery. Throughout the order its language was vague. At its end the various cooperating brigades were divided into two groups. One was as
signed to General T H. Holmes, though he was not so notified, and the other to an undesignated “second in command.” Whether these officers were to direct their forces throughout the operation or only during the pursuit of the enemy could be subject to different interpretations. Such obscurities were paralyzing. Regardless of them, execution of the plan called for much staff work, prompt and complicated, which Beauregard’s inexperienced staff by no possibility could perform.13

  Before anything could be done to execute the plan, the unanticipated realities of developing action began to upset Beauregard’s grand strategy. Shortly after 5 o’clock on the morning of July 21 a messenger arrived from Bonham at Mitchells Ford, the center of the line, with a disconcerting report that the Federals had appeared in force on his left front. Did this mean that the enemy had seized the initiative and was attacking, instead of waiting obligingly to be assailed? There was no mistaking the direction of the sound of firing that now was audible. It was coming from the Confederate left, in the vicinity of the Stone Bridge, the crossing of Bull Run on the Warrenton Turnpike.14

  Beauregard heard this bad news without evidence of chagrin. Unpleasant as was the prospect, he had to conclude that an attack was about to be made on Bonham, and probably also at Stone Bridge. In that event, of course, an immediate general offensive by the Confederates would be impossible. Even so, Beauregard’s devotion to the Napoleonic strategy would not permit abandonment of all hope of an offensive. Beauregard told himself it was possible to undertake on his extreme right a diversion to confuse the enemy’s attack on his center and left. At 5:30 A.M. he accordingly dispatched instructions to Dick Ewell, who commanded at Union Mills Ford, the crossing farthest downstream, to “hold yourself in readiness to take the offensive on Centreville at a moment’s notice….”15