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by Douglas Southall Freeman


  Whether the President was provoked because Johnston did not await reinforcement, whether he was incensed by the burning of stores, or whether he was angered by the general’s prolonged silence, the answer he made was stiffly discouraging: “… before the receipt of yours of the 13th,” said the President, “I was as much in the dark as to your purposes, condition, and necessities as at the time of our conversation on the subject about a month since.” True, he had heard alarming reports of great destruction, “but, having heard of no cause for such a sudden movement, I was at a loss to believe it.”25

  From Richmond came further inquiries not from Secretary Benjamin but from General R. E. Lee, whom, to placate a discontented and alarmed Congress, the President had brought back from command in South Carolina and placed in general charge of military operations under his own direction. This appointment, at a period of dangerous misunderstanding, gave Johnston the assurance, at the least, that military experience and admitted abilities were to be available in Richmond whenever the President chose to employ them in dealing with Johnston’s army. And Benjamin no longer was secretary of war. Mr. Davis, who was as constant in his loyalties as in the maintenance of his prerogatives, had yielded at last to the clamor against Benjamin by the somewhat unusual expedient of promoting him from the War Office to the first position in the Cabinet, that of secretary of state.

  No more was Johnston to receive irritating directions from a secretary who had sprinkled his letters with too many an “I” and often had ignored official forms, but who had been singularly successful in prevailing on a Congress which did not like him to accept his recommendations. In Benjamin’s stead the President named George W. Randolph, forty-three years of age, grandson of Thomas Jefferson, former midshipman in the United States navy, lawyer, and artillerist distinguished at Big Bethel. This choice, Johnston subsequently said, in terse eulogium that was the more eloquent because of its restraint, “enabled the military officers to re-establish the discipline of the army.” The effect of the change was immediate, and in nothing more remarkable than in the state of mind of Johnston. Secretary Randolph confined himself to administrative duties, utilized the machinery of the department, and employed General Lee substantially as chief of staff. Lee wrote Johnston on behalf of the President, as Benjamin had done, but in a tone so different and in a military knowledge so much wider that little friction was created.26

  Ample reason was at hand for a movement from the second line, on the Rapidan, that Johnston occupied after he withdrew from Manassas. Evidence had accumulated rapidly on March 24 that a new Federal plan of advance was taking form. Enemy troops in large numbers were being concentrated around Fortress Monroe at the tip of the Peninsula between the James and York rivers. Suspicion soon grew into certainty that General McClellan, instead of marching southward from Manassas to confront Johnston on the Rapidan, was to utilize Federal sea power in overwhelming Prince John Magruder at Yorktown, or Benjamin Huger at Norfolk. If McClellan could accomplish this, the assumption was that he would advance on Richmond from the east. To confront him and to protect Richmond, would it not be essential to dispatch Johnston’s army to the lower Peninsula or to the Norfolk area?

  In the decision of this cardinal question Johnston had no part. The strategy and the manner of its execution were Lee’s. With the approval of the President, he directed when and in what number troops should be sent from the Rapidan to Richmond and thence eastward. On April 12, while his strongest divisions were on the march, Johnston reached Richmond and conferred again with the President. Nothing that had happened in the strained correspondence between the two seems to have been revived at the meeting. As usual when they met face-to-face, the demands of common courtesy and of a common cause outbalanced personal differences.

  Immediately, by order of the President, promulgated through Lee, the departments of Norfolk and the Peninsula were “embraced for the present within the limits of operations” of Johnston’s army. Although he had not been recognized in his contention that he was the senior general of the Confederacy, he had now by far the most responsible command and the largest army.27

  CHAPTER 5

  Challenge on the Peninsula

  1

  JOHNSTON RETREATS AGAIN

  As Johnston hastened, that twelfth of April 1862, through the budding countryside and down the placid York to study the situation on the lower Peninsula, it might have seemed that the winter of his discontent was passing. It was not to be so. He was fated to pass from storm to storm, from one displeasing necessity to another unpopular decision.

  After a rapid but critical inspection of the position held by Magruder, he hurried back to Richmond with a gloomy, grim report: The line was too long for the force that occupied it; engineering had been poor; superior Federal ordnance, outranging the antiquated smoothbore guns of the Confederates, could destroy the works at Yorktown and across the river at Gloucester Point. That done, the Federals could escort their transports up the York to easily land an army in rear of Yorktown or to press on toward Richmond.1

  Davis heard Johnston’s report calmly and remarked that a situation of so much importance should be discussed fully: Would Johnston return at a later hour, when Secretary Randolph and General Lee could be present? Johnston asked if he might bring Generals Gustavus W. Smith and James Longstreet with him. This was acceptable to the President. Shortly before 11:00 A.M., April 14, the six men sat down in the President’s office.

  Davis asked Johnston to report on his inspection, and the general repeated what he had said earlier—McClellan undoubtedly could force a passage of the James, of the York, or of both, and thereby turn the Yorktown line. That front had to be abandoned. Then he produced a memorandum which, he explained, Smith had handed him a few minutes before the conference opened. It endorsed Johnston’s contention that the Yorktown line was indefensible, and proposed the early abandonment both of that position and of Norfolk. Forces should be concentrated in front of Richmond and be reinforced from the Carolinas and Georgia. One of two courses then should be followed: Either the enlarged army should attack McClellan where he could not utilize his sea power; or else Richmond should be garrisoned to resist a siege while the greater part of the army marched on Washington and Baltimore, perhaps on Philadelphia and New York.

  Johnston introduced his own plan, which was to draw the enemy inland, collect all available forces at Richmond, and give battle there. Smith clung to his preference for an offensive across the Potomac. With scant attention to Smith’s proposal, the conference turned to a scrutiny of Johnston’s plan to evacuate the lower Peninsula and Norfolk and concentrate forces at Richmond for a decisive blow at McClellan. Secretary Randolph insisted that the Confederacy could not afford to abandon the Norfolk navy yard, with its dry docks, its shipways, its shops and materials for building war vessels. General Lee maintained quietly that the Peninsula offered numerous defensive positions which could and should be utilized. The army, in his opinion, could not count on early reinforcements from the states to the south. Johnston and Smith did not attempt so much to meet these objections as they did to prove the impossibility of standing on the Yorktown line.

  The argument continued all day, with the President sitting as if he were a judge. At 6 o’clock he ordered a recess for an hour, when the discussion was renewed. Both sides continued to canvass the issues, with diminishing vigor, until 1:00 A.M. Then Mr. Davis announced that Johnston’s entire army would be united with Magruder’s on the lower Peninsula and that both Yorktown and Norfolk would be held. Johnston’s later comment curiously and not creditably revealed the man: “The belief that events on the Peninsula would soon compel the Confederate Government to adopt my method of opposing the Federal army, reconciled me somewhat to the necessity of obeying the President’s order.”2

  In this mood Johnston returned to Yorktown and took command on that front. This involved the relinquishment by Magruder of his leading role in the drama of the Peninsula. This was hard fate for an officer who had remained
conspicuous in the news throughout the ten months since the action at Big Bethel. A public discussion of his alleged intemperance had produced formal evidence of a war-time sobriety that a Puritan might have envied. All the South had chuckled over a hot exchange of letters with General Ben Butler, whom Magruder had worsted verbally and, it was still currently believed, had challenged to mortal combat. Now, outwardly, all this had changed. Magruder, if disappointed, was game. As new commander of the extensive right wing, he retired to watch his lines—and to employ his pen. In calm disdain of the fact that he had drawn the lines now entrusted to him, Magruder became instantly critical of their location and their armament. It was almost as if he were quarrelling with himself.3

  Johnston probably did not see the humor in Magruder’s correspondence. He certainly found no humor in the military situation. On April 22 he protested to Lee: “Labor enough has been expended here to make a very strong position, but it has been wretchedly misapplied by the young engineer officers. No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack.” By the twenty-fourth he was asking that supplies be sent to meet him on the road from Richmond “in the event of our being compelled to fall back from this point.” After the twenty-seventh he interpreted the enemy’s movements as an indication that he soon would be compelled to retreat, and he warned General Huger to prepare to evacuate Norfolk. More explicitly, on the twenty-ninth, he announced to Lee: “The fight for York-town, as I said in Richmond, must be one of artillery, in which we cannot win. The result is certain; the time only doubtful…. I shall therefore move as soon as can be done conveniently, looking to the condition of the roads and the time necessary for the corresponding movement from Norfolk.”4

  His one alternative proposal was an adaptation of Smith’s and was made on April 30. Said Johnston then: “We are engaged in a species of warfare at which we can never win. It is plain that General McClellan will … depend for success upon artillery and engineering. We can compete with him in neither. We must therefore change our course, take the offensive, collect all the troops we have in the East and cross the Potomac with them, while Beauregard, with all we have in the West, invades Ohio.” His proposal did not elicit support in Richmond. Lee so advised Johnston.5

  Without regard to the development or rejection of this broad plan, Johnston gave the order for the retreat. On the night of May 3, after forty-eight hours of confusion and counter orders, the army left its position. The general effected the removal of the field pieces that had been in the works, but he left all fifty-six of his heavy guns. In this respect the withdrawal from Manassas was duplicated. So was the criticism of the commander. Johnston was again blamed for a premature retreat, but he had not miscalculated substantially the time of the impending Federal attack. McClellan reported that he would have been ready to open with all his heavy artillery on the morning of May 6 at latest. The fire of these guns “would have compelled the enemy to surrender or abandon his works in less than twelve hours.”6

  2

  THE ARMY THAT LEFT YORKTOWN

  The army of 56,500 men that filed out of the Yorktown lines on the night of May 3, 1862, had sustained few battle casualties since Manassas, but already its command had suffered at the hands of the foe that was to pursue it to the end, the resistless foe of attrition. Besides Beauregard, who had won no new laurels at Shiloh, the army had lost three of the early brigade commanders. Kirby Smith had taken command in East Tennessee. On December 26, 1861, nervously shattered by eight months’ anxious service, the chivalrous Philip St. George Cocke had ended his life. Milledge Bonham had resigned January 29, 1862, because he felt himself overslaughed, probably by the promotion of Dick Ewell to major general. Shanks Evans also was gone from the army; at the instance of the governor of South Carolina, he had been sent to that state.

  Not one of the brigades that had fought at Manassas remained in its entirety under the man who had led it there. Whiting, saved from Coventry, had Bee’s old command; J. B. Kershaw, promoted brigadier, had Bonham’s; D. R. Jones had Bartow’s. The three Manassas brigades that retained their regimental organization under new commanders were headed now by two former captains and a former first lieutenant of the United States army. Oldest and most experienced of this trio was Richard H. Anderson, aged forty, who had been graduated from West Point in the class of 1842. “Dick” Anderson had served as a lieutenant in the war with Mexico, and had spent most of his subsequent career with the Second Dragoons in the West. As he had been a captain for six years before his resignation, he could be regarded as a seasoned soldier by the standard that had to prevail in the Confederate army. Tall, strong, and of fine background, Anderson never was disposed to quibble over authority or to indulge in any sort of boastfulness. Already he was beloved in the army for his kindness, amiability, and unselfishness. Whispers that he was overfond of a social glass seem to have had no foundation.7

  One of Anderson’s associates in Longstreet’s division, entrusted with the direction of Cocke’s old brigade, was ex-Captain George E. Pickett of the 9th Infantry. Although this young Virginian had been graduated at the absolute bottom of the class of 1846 at West Point, he had been a gallant figure in Scott’s Mexican expedition, and after Chapultepec he had been awarded his brevet as captain. Later orders had carried him to Texas and thence to Washington Territory. He was commissioned brigadier general in February 1862 and assignment to Longstreet’s division followed soon—an association destined to be long and renowned. Pickett and Longstreet had served together at Fort Bliss in 1854-55, and between them the ties were close and binding. At the moment Pickett’s men knew little of him except that he was dapper and alert, that he looked all of his thirty-seven years, and that he wore his dark hair in long perfumed ringlets that fell to his shoulders. Even his curling beard was anointed.8

  The third of the West Point brigadiers in Longstreet’s division was a few months younger than Pickett and, like him, a Virginian. His name was Ambrose Powell Hill, of stock long honored and influential in the state. Young Hill had been admitted to the Military Academy in 1842, but because of bad health had not been graduated until 1847, just in time to have a small part in the closing operations in Mexico. He had resigned before secession, received his commission as colonel, and soon trained one of the best of Johnston’s regiments in the Valley. In February 1862 he had been advanced to brigadier general. His men esteemed him as diligent and mindful of their wants. Beyond that, he was, as yet, merely a figure.

  This was true also of another West Point brigadier, Cadmus M. Wilcox, who had entered the Academy with A. P. Hill and Pickett. He was a North Carolinian by birth, had received his appointment from Tennessee, and had served as aide to General Quitman in Mexico. After Manassas he had joined Johnston with an excellent Alabama regiment. Perhaps the better-read officers were familiar with his published Rifles and Rifle Practice and his translation of Austrian Infantry Evolutions of the Line. This was the extent of the army’s acquaintance with his capabilities, though his commission as brigadier antedated that of Pickett and A. P. Hill. (Two other graduates of West Point, Lafayette McLaws and G. J. Rains, rode with the long columns away from Yorktown and will appear in the hour of combat.)

  The remaining commanders of the twenty-three retreating brigades were, in the main, politicians whom the President, now mindful and now disdainful of professional training, had commissioned as general officers. Georgia had sent her two most eminent public men. One was Howell Cobb, forty-six years of age, former governor of Georgia, secretary of the treasury under Buchanan, ex-speaker of the House of Representatives, and present speaker of the House of the Provisional Congress—altogether one of the most distinguished of Southerners. By mid-February Cobb was a brigadier general, and by the end of April he had one of the largest of brigades—nearly 3,800 men. The other noted Georgian was Robert Toombs, fifty-one, former United States senator and first secretary of state in the new Confederacy, whose odd experiences will be related in a subsequent connection.

  While none of the other “po
litical generals” could compare in public reputation with these Georgians, several had distinction. From Tennessee came former congressman Robert Hatton, not yet a brigadier. The treasurer of Mississippi, Richard Griffith, commanded a brigade predominantly from that state; W. S. Featherston, for two terms a representative of Mississippi, had similar rank. Roger A. Pryor of Virginia, editor, fire-eating secessionist and congressman, wore the fresh stars and wreath of a brigadier general. As in the case of the others, he had no military training, though he was perhaps the most notorious duellist of his day.

  To recapitulate, eleven of the twenty-three brigades were under men who had been officers in the United States army, three were in charge of graduates of the Virginia Military Institute, six were entrusted to politicians, one had as its head the great patrician Wade Hampton, and two were led by lawyers.

  None of these men, from the nature of army organization, theoretically meant so much in wise leadership as did Johnston’s four division commanders. The most conspicuous of these was Magruder. He was publicly the best known as he was in panoply the most dazzling of the major generals.

  To the soldiers from northern Virginia the most familiar of the divisional commanders was the senior Gustavus W. Smith. This Kentuckian, forty years of age, had unique position among Confederate officers in Virginia. He had been graduated No. 8 in the class of 1842 at West Point. With aptitude for construction engineering, he had erected batteries, built roads, and discharged such a variety of other useful duties in Mexico that he had received brevet as captain. It had been in 1858 that he became street commissioner of New York City. Only when he was satisfied, in September 1861, that a majority of the people of his native state were on the side of the South, had he gone to Richmond, where he had been nominated almost immediately as a major general. No other man, with the exception of Albert Sidney Johnston and Leonidas Polk, previously had received so high a first commission. Smith’s prestige at that time had been extraordinary and, in a sense, puzzling, because his career had included nothing that justified great reputation as a field commander.

 

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