Third, he might sweep down the Luray Valley, pass through Thornton’s Gap to Sperryville, and so threaten the Federals’ long line of communications that Banks would retire.
This last possibility had something to commend it. No great difficulty would be encountered in reaching Thornton’s Gap once the small, reduced Federal force around Luray were swept aside. From Sperryville the Confederates could threaten Winchester, by way of Front Royal, or move against the enemy force holding Warrenton. The defects of this course were three: It would not protect Staunton against attack from the west; it would not involve the destruction of a single army of the Federals; and it would not prevent the junction of the Union forces scattered north of the Rappahannock. No aspect of the plan conformed to Jackson’s strategy of “concentrating our forces on the enemy in his exposed positions.”26
The difficulties of the second alternative, attacking the Federals spread out from Luray to New Market, were those of terrain. Jackson would have to cross the South Fork of the Shenandoah and then pass over the Massanuttons, where “the enemy would have decidedly the advantage of position.”27 The risks of such a move might be too great.
By elimination, then, the first alternative, the relief of Johnson, seemed preferable. If the force that threatened Johnson could be overwhelmed, Staunton might be saved. Jackson would have only Banks with whom to deal. Once Johnson was free of pressure he might join the Army of the Valley. Reinforcements by that time might come from General Lee. Banks might be assailed and routed. That done, all the Confederate troops in the Valley could cross the Blue Ridge to Warrenton, to Fredericksburg, or to any other threatened point.
The possibility was exciting; the execution obviously would depend first on the force needed by Johnson to drive the enemy from his front, and second, on the time that would be required for the operation. Banks, of course, would need watching lest he march on Staunton, but could not that be accomplished by bringing Ewell across the Blue Ridge and placing him in the strategic flank position at Conrad’s Store? “I have written to General Edward Johnson,” Jackson told Lee on April 29. “… If I receive an answer justifying a move in that direction I may leave here tomorrow via Port Republic.”28
That afternoon of the twenty-ninth, in misty weather, Jed Hotchkiss reached headquarters and reported the results of a conference with Allegheny Johnson. The engineer described also the condition of the roads over which he had passed and furnished much topographical information of the sort his sharp eyes always observed. Jackson listened and questioned, but gave no intimation of what he intended to do. From the opening of operations he had kept his own counsel. “I think General Jackson is entirely too close about everything,” his quartermaster, John A. Harman, grumbled. Even Ewell had been admonished to keep from people in the neighborhood of Madison Court House any hint of an advance to that point.
On April 30, Jackson gave terse orders and started his columns on the road to Port Republic. Only one man beside himself had any inkling of the plan. That man was Major General Ewell. Briskly that morning Ewell had come through Swift Run Gap and placed his 8,000 men in the camps Jackson evacuated. Ewell himself had scant information. All he knew was that Jackson was setting out for Staunton to aid Johnson, and that he, Ewell, was to hold Banks in check until Jackson returned.29
3
DICK EWELL STICKS BY A “CRAZY MAN”
Richard Stoddert Ewell had been forty-four years of age in 1861. After he had resigned his captain’s commission in the 1st Dragoons and tendered his service to Virginia, he modestly asserted that in two decades of service in the cavalry he had learned all about commanding fifty dragoons and had forgotten everything else. Actually, he had been a good soldier all his life—had been graduated well at West Point, had been awarded his captains brevet in Mexico, and in the West had been daring and diligent. Ewell was an excellent cook though a chronic dyspeptic, and, despite a lisp, was voluble. Completely bald and with bulging, bright eyes, he was likened by some to an eagle, by some to a woodcock. When he spoke he put his head to one side, and as likely as not he swore.
His oddities endeared him to officers and men. Once, when his subordinates complained of a shortage of beef, he had affirmed that he could find cattle, had gone off in person, and had returned triumphantly with a solitary, bewildered, and time-battered bull. A moment later Ewell had been crestfallen at the reminder that this venerable animal would not feed 8,000 soldiers. “Ah,” he said humbly, “I was thinking of my fifty dragoons!” Ewell’s peculiarities had not stood in the way of his rapid promotion. A lieutenant colonel of the Virginia service in April 1861, he was a major general before the end of January 1862. Now he occupied at Conrad’s Store, on the flank of Banks’s army at Harrisonburg, a position of instant strategic importance.30
With Ewell were three brigades of infantry. At the head of one of these was Arnold Elzey, who gallantly had handled Kirby Smith’s troops at Manassas after that officer was wounded. Another of Ewell’s brigades was under Isaac R. Trimble, a Virginian whose family had moved to Kentucky, from which state he had gone to West Point. Graduated there in 1822, he had served ten years in the artillery and then had resigned to embark on a distinguished career as a railroad construction engineer and superintendent. Fifty-nine when the war began, there were complaints at first that he did not know how to manage or maneuver troops, but he had persisted. During the withdrawal from Manassas he had charge of train movement, which was an assignment that would have overtaxed the ingenuity of any railroad man. He had survived that strain and rejoined his brigade. In the eyes of his fellow officers, Trimble seemed old and perhaps fussy.31
Ewell’s third brigadier was Richard Taylor, brilliant only son of President Zachary Taylor. Schooled at Harvard and at Yale, widely traveled and even more widely read, Dick Taylor had operated a sugar plantation in Louisiana and had played a gentleman’s part in politics. Although he had received no formal military training, he had studied enthusiastically the campaigns of great captains. Elected colonel of the 9th Louisiana, he had been promoted brigadier general in October and assigned five regiments from his state. At thirty-two he was absolutely self-reliant. With a “total irreverence for any man’s opinion,” as a comrade put it, he had deep affection for those he admired and antipathy no less marked toward those whose conduct he thought unworthy. He believed Ewell as queer as his division commander considered him odd, but the two were the staunchest of friends. When the Confederacy was no more than a memory, Taylor in his published reminiscences—among the most fascinating of military memoirs—was to present pictures of Ewell that Thackeray would not have disowned.32
With Taylor, and much chastened by his stern discipline, which was based on a discerning knowledge of them, were the Louisiana Tigers. They had taken all the praise lavished on them for Manassas, and along with it they had taken virtually everything else on which they could lay hands. Again they were under the eye of their daring major. Rob Wheat had survived his wound of July 21, as if to spite the surgeons. For adventures as amazing as any he had known in Mexico or in Italy, he waited in the rain of the dripping camp that Jackson had vacated and Ewell had occupied.
Ewell’s instructions from Jackson were of the meagerest: He was to watch Banks and, presumably, was authorized to assail an exposed force if he could do so without great risks; but how was Ewell to determine the risks? He was a stranger to Ashby and had no intelligence system. The first plan that occurred to Ewell was to attack Banks’s communications byway of the road from Luray to New Market. Accordingly Ewell wrote Jackson to ask his judgment of such an advance and to inquire how Jackson had ascertained what the enemy was doing. The answer was neither encouraging nor illuminating. Jackson barred the attack as too hazardous. For the rest, he wrote: “I have been relying on spies for my information from the enemy.”33
This did not have a good effect on Ewell’s temper. When rumor reached him, about the same time, that Banks was moving on him, he fairly seethed. Colonel James A. Walker of the 13th Virginia wa
s calling at headquarters when Ewell saw him. “Colonel Walker,” he began abruptly, “did it ever occur to you that General Jackson is crazy?” Walker, who had been one of Jackson’s cadets, answered, “I don’t know, General. We used to call him ‘Tom Fool Jackson’ at the Virginia Military Institute, but I do not suppose that he is really crazy.”
“I tell you, sir,” Ewell stormed, “he is as crazy as a March hare. He has gone away, I don’t know where, and left me here with instructions to stay until he returns. But Banks’s whole army is advancing on me, and I have not the most remote idea where to communicate with General Jackson. I tell you, sir, he is crazy, and I will just march my division away from here. I do not mean to have it cut to pieces at the behest of a crazy man.” With that Ewell began furiously to pace the yard.
Glad enough to get away, Colonel Walker rode down to see his own brigade commander, General Arnold Elzey. He too was in a rage, over some order he had received from Ewell. “I tell you, sir,” he roared to Walker, “General Ewell is crazy, and I have a serious notion of marching my brigade back to Gordonsville.”
At that moment a raw conscript rushed into the room with a paper which he thrust before Elzey: “I want you, sir, to sign that paper at once, and give me my discharge. You have no right to keep me here, and I mean to go home!”
Elzey gasped. He stared at the man, then looked hastily around until his eyes lit on his pistols. With a bound he seized them, though not before the conscript sensed his purpose and sought safety in flight. Elzey tore open the holster as the man ran, and fired two shots while he pursued heavily. Missing his mark, he returned and glared at Walker: “I should like to know, Colonel Walker, what sort of men you keep over at that Thirteenth regiment? The idea of the rascal’s demanding of me, a Brigadier-General, to sign a paper. Oh! if I could have only gotten hold of my pistols sooner.”
Walker was equal to the occasion: “Well, I don’t know what to do myself. I was up to see General Ewell just now, and he said that General Jackson was crazy; I come down to see you, and you say that General Ewell is crazy; and I have not the slightest doubt that my conscript, who ran from you just now, will report it all over camp that General Elzey is crazy; so it seems I have fallen into evil hands, and I reckon the best thing for me to do is to turn the conscripts loose, and march the rest of my regiment back to Richmond.”34
Elzey’s loud laugh ended the incident, but if the tale were told to Ewell he could soon have rejoined with new evidence to support his contention that “General Jackson is crazy.” Indeed Ewell might have asserted that the whole military establishment of the Confederacy had gone mad. Conflicting orders rolled in. From Jackson came instructions to prevent Banks from “giving assistance to the forces in front of Johnson”; then to “do anything to call him back” should Banks himself join the Federals moving against Johnson; then to pursue Banks if, as report had it, he withdrew from Harrisonburg to Strasburg. Again, on May 6: “If you will follow Banks down the valley you will soon ascertain whether he designs going to cross the Blue Ridge.”35
Jackson’s orders were confused by proposals that General Lee made from Richmond by telegraph that the enemy’s object “may be concentration at Fredericksburg. Try and ascertain. Can you cut off party at Culpeper Court-House?” Ewell pondered once more—to be interrupted by another courier from Jackson: “If the enemy go down the valley beyond the neighborhood of Mount Jackson or New Market you should follow him….” To the exasperated general there came on the ninth and tenth a reiteration of orders from Jackson to watch Banks, and new suggestions from Lee that Banks might be preparing to move to Fredericksburg. Wrathful over these endless changes of plan, Ewell called for Ashby, who on his arrival was greeted with this cheerful assurance: “I’ve been in hell for three days, been in hell for three days, Colonel Ashby! What’s the news from Jackson?”36
In a family letter Ewell voiced his complete disgust with the situation: “I have been keeping one eye on Banks, one on Jackson, all the time jogged up from Richmond, until I am sick and worn down. Jackson wants me to watch Banks. At Richmond, they want me everywhere and call me off, when, at the same time, I am compelled to remain until that enthusiastic fanatic comes to some conclusion…. The fact is there seems no head here
at all, though there is room for one or two. I have a bad headache, what with the bother and folly of things. I never suffered as much with dyspepsia in my life. As an Irishman would say, ‘I’m kilt entirely.’”37
Either from Ashby, then, or from the absent commander, in a few hours, Ewell learned that Jackson had joined Johnson and, on May 8, had given battle to General Milroy at McDowell, twenty-five miles west of Staunton. The advance had been more spectacular than the engagement. Jackson had turned off at Port Republic and after one of the muddiest, most difficult marches of the entire war, had crossed the Blue Ridge at Browns Gap. He reached Mechum River Station on the Virginia Central and moved his little army by train to Staunton. Thence he marched out the Parkersburg Turnpike, joined Johnson, and repulsed a Federal attack. Milroy had retreated after the action, though he sustained only 256 casualties for the 498 he inflicted on the Confederates. Jackson had started in pursuit but had been able to accomplish little. The roads were incredibly bad; his transport was feeble.
During the march and the pursuit, two of Jackson’s subordinates were conspicuous. In the opening action Allegheny Johnson was wounded and rendered hors de combat for many months. Before the army turned back toward the Valley, Sidney Winder displayed so much enterprise and so clearly established himself as a leader that when he rode onto the field where a service of thanksgiving was to be held, men in all the regiments of the Stonewall Brigade cheered him. From that time there was lessened coldness on the part of officers and men toward Winder.38
Conflicting orders continued to arrive, and by May 15, Dick Ewell no longer was willing to swear over the divided counsel and wait for his superior officers to reach agreement. War was insistent. It would not wait on argument. Whatever the consequences to himself personally, Ewell had to disregard the instructions of Lee or of Jackson. The decision had to be made on the realities, not on the personalities. Ewell’s latest information was that no enemy remained on the Valley Pike west of the Massanuttons and south of the New Market-Luray road. Sound strategy dictated an advance by Ewell on Luray and the movement to that town of L. O’B. Branch’s force from Gordonsville. That was Ewell’s decision. Jackson’s instructions, not Lee’s, must be followed. “On your course,” Ewell wrote Jackson, “may depend the fate of Richmond.” Such hope as Ewell cherished that day was for the offensive.39
Even this hope was dashed for Ewell on May 17 by new dispatches. Lee wrote that Joe Johnston had sent orders to Jackson, and if the two forces in the Valley could attack Banks, “it would make a happy diversion in our favor….” Jackson in his turn ordered Ewell to move on New Market if Banks was not leaving the Valley; if the Federals were crossing the Blue Ridge, Ewell was to threaten them and, if he could, detain them. There followed a hint from Jackson of a plan of attack which Ewell was admonished not to “breathe … to any one.”40
What were the differences the harassed Ewell had now to contrast? Lee favored an offensive subject to such orders as Johnston had sent Jackson; Jackson wanted to hold Banks and to attack him according to a plan that was taking definite form; Johnston was agreeable to this but was insistent that if Banks left the Valley, Ewell must follow him. That “if” was no sooner stated than it seemed to be resolved for Ewell in the manner most distasteful to him: News came that 6,000 of Banks’s troops, under Shields, already were east of the Blue Ridge.41 That gave precedence to Johnston’s orders; Ewell had no discretion. No course seemed open to him other than to abandon all hope of a joint attack with Jackson on Banks, and to climb over the mountains in pursuit of Shields.
Ewell began preparations to cross Swift Run Gap, but he could not convince himself that the move was wise. What if Shields had left the Valley? That would leave Banks less able to beat off an
attack. Jackson planned such an attack. Doubtless he was crazy, but the plan was one that might rout Banks. Must that plan of offensive action be abandoned and the forces in the Valley divided?
These questions Ewell debated. He answered them with a sharp order: Bring him his horse. He was going to ride to Jackson’s headquarters.
CHAPTER 9
Jackson Launches His Offensive
1
FRONT ROYAL
When Ewell reached Jackson’s field headquarters at Mount Solon, ten miles southwest of Harrisonburg, on May 18, he saw Stonewall for the first time in Confederate gray. Jackson had laid aside at Staunton on May 5 his rusty V.M.I. blue and put on the uniform required by army regulations. Not so easily had he met matters of army administration. The efficiency of Allegheny Johnson’s command was crippled by the bullet that struck down its leader. Worse by far was a near mutiny in the 27th Virginia of Jackson’s old brigade. Several companies asserted that to conscript them after the expiration of their term of enlistment was a breach of faith. With flashing eye Jackson had demanded: “What is this but mutiny?” He gave the men the alternative of accepting service or being shot in their tracks. The mutinous companies had yielded at once. Soon they could not be distinguished “from the rest of the regiment in their soldierly behavior.”1
Despite such vexations, Jackson had kept his force together, closed all the roads by which Banks might communicate with Frémont, and had marched hard to get within striking distance of Banks. The plan of Jackson’s attack was formulated and his ardor fired anew by a letter just received from Lee. “Whatever movement you make against Banks,” Lee wrote on May 16, “do it speedily, and if successful drive him back toward the Potomac, and create the impression, as far as practicable, that you design threatening that line.” This was more than an elaboration of the plan for an offensive that Jackson had long wished; just the day before he had written Johnston of his design “to try and defeat Banks.” This was a suggestion of new strategic possibilities by advancing all the way to the Potomac.2
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