Sorrowfully Ewell laid before Jackson his instructions from Johnston and the report that Shields had moved east of the Blue Ridge. Was it imperative that Ewell conform? Must the whole exciting plan of an offensive against Banks be abandoned? As he reviewed the correspondence with Lee and with Johnston, the little hope that remained to Jackson dwindled and died. Orders were orders! They must be obeyed—even though they cost the South such an opportunity as war rarely would offer. Earnestly, with his bulging eyes, Ewell stared at his commander and pondered: Although Jackson probably was insane, he was correct in thinking a unique opportunity was being thrown away. At length Ewell broke out with a bold proposal: He belonged to Johnston’s army and was subject to Johnston’s orders; but so long as he was in the Valley District Jackson was his immediate superior. If Jackson would say the word, he would disregard Johnston’s orders and remain in the Valley until Jackson received an answer to the letter he had written Johnston the previous day.
Jackson accepted this gallant offer with eagerness and with gratitude. Regardless of the relative authority of Johnston and Lee, Jackson’s May 16 letter from the military adviser to the President was of date three days subsequent to Johnston’s of May 13 to Ewell. On this fact Jackson based orders to Ewell which that officer could cite, if necessary, as justification for delay in crossing the Blue Ridge to pursue Shields. Back, then, and in soldierly cheer, Ewell rode to Conrad’s Store. This time he did not complain because he had once more to reverse all his preparations and to start troops, not for Stannardsville east of the mountains, but for the strategic position at New Market. Preparation now meant action.3
On the nineteenth the columns got in motion. On the twentieth Taylor’s brigade, from Ewell’s command, reached New Market. Taylor rode off to report to Jackson, whom he never had met. To quote Taylor’s delightful narrative: “The mounted officer … pointed out a figure perched on the topmost rail of a fence overlooking the road and field, and said it was Jackson. Approaching, I saluted and declared my name and rank, then waited for a response. Before this came I had time to see a pair of cavalry boots covering feet of a gigantic size, a mangy cap with visor drawn low, a heavy, dark beard, and weary eyes—eyes I afterward saw filled with intense but never brilliant light. A low, gentle voice inquired the road and distance marched that day.”
“Keezletown road, six and twenty miles,” answered Taylor.
“You seem to have no stragglers,” Jackson observed.
“Never allow straggling,” answered the confident young brigadier.
“You must teach my people,” said the senior, without a touch of satire; “they straggle badly.”
At that moment one of Taylor’s bands struck up a gay air. Jackson, who had no ear for music, listened attentively and took a suck at a lemon he held in his hand: “Thoughtless fellows for serious work,” he concluded.4
That night Ewell received, like a bolt, a dispatch in which Branch announced that on the road with his brigade to join Ewell he had been recalled by Johnston’s order and directed to proceed at once to Hanover Court House, on the Richmond front. Directly from Johnston there was, also, a letter to Ewell. Reflecting conditions existing in the Valley about May 12, the letter stated that Jackson must watch the enemy; Ewell must come east. Superior authority had intervened. All Ewell could do, pending execution of the orders, was to send the letter to Jackson.
Jackson received promptly this new veto on an offensive against Banks. He knew Johnston’s information was days old and he felt that the course Lee had urged was the proper one. Every hour was precious. The sole way of procuring permission was to appeal to Lee. Accordingly, Jackson telegraphed Lee: “I am of opinion that an attempt should be made to defeat Banks, but under instructions just received from General Johnston I do not feel at liberty to make an attack. Please answer by telegraph at once.” Then he wrote across the bottom of Johnston’s letter: “Major General Ewell: Suspend the execution of order for returning to the east until I receive an answer to my telegram.” The great opportunity was at its peak. It must not be lost. Shields was separated from Banks; Frémont and Banks had not formed a junction. With Lee’s approval—or Johnston’s, or the President’s—Jackson purposed to throw the whole Confederate force against the weakened Banks and to do even more than “drive him toward the Potomac.”5
The army that Jackson concentrated while he awaited an answer from Richmond was large enough for the task he was fashioning for it. He had added Johnson’s 2,500 to his force—part under the competent direction of Arnold Elzey, the others under Colonel W. C. Scott of the 44th Virginia. Both these brigades Jackson attached to Ewell’s division and thereby raised its effective strength to 10,000 muskets. Ewell’s cavalry, about 500 sabers, temporarily were under Colonel Thomas S. Flournoy; but they were entrusted, ere the fighting ended, to Brigadier General George H. Steuart, a Marylander and formerly a captain of the 1st United States Cavalry. To distinguish him from the more renowned Jeb Stuart, the army always styled him “Maryland Steuart.” With Ewell’s two cavalry regiments to support Ashby, and Ewell’s 10,000 infantry to cooperate with his own 6,000 men, Jackson was ready to set a swift pace in the offensive that hung on word from Richmond.
He had been training his men for the road. By circular he summarized regulations for the march. No soldier was to leave ranks without permission. Fifty minutes of the hour they were to march, no more, no less; after ten minutes’ rest they were to start again. At midday they were to have an hour for lunch. “Brigade commanders will see that the foregoing rules are strictly adhered to….”
These were to prove historic orders, not so much in any novelty of terms as in the unrelenting vigor of enforcement. When Jackson’s voice no more was to say, “Close up, men, close up; push on, push on,” a subordinate who had marched many days after him was to describe, half in admiration and half in awe, how Jackson had performed incredible marches: “He had no sympathy with human infirmity. He was a one-idea’d man. He looked upon broken-down men and stragglers as the same thing. He classed all who were weak and weary, who fainted by the wayside, as men wanting in patriotism. If a man’s face was white as cotton and his pulse so low that you could not feel it, he merely looked upon him impatiently as an inefficient soldier and rode off, out of patience. He was the true type of all great soldiers. The successful warrior of the world, he did not value human life where he had an object to accomplish. He could order men to their death as a matter of course.”6
There were two additions to the staff. As chief of his artillery Jackson named Colonel Stapleton Crutchfield, a young graduate of Virginia Military Institute. Crutchfield’s ability was known to be high. The fact that he was entirely unfamiliar with Ewell’s guns and gunners does not seem to have been regarded as of importance. The new assistant adjutant general, with rank as major, was Rev. Dr. Robert Lewis Dabney, forty-two years of age, a distinguished Presbyterian divine, a man of powerful intellect, and a professor in Union Theological Seminary, Hampden Sydney, Virginia.
Somewhat reluctantly, Dabney had joined Jackson’s staff in mid-April, but he had scant liking for martial appearances. For a time he had worn his long black Prince Albert coat and his beaver hat. In preference to a sword he carried an umbrella. Thus armed and apparelled, the reverend chief of staff followed Jackson. One day, as general and staff were on the march in the rain, the sight of the major under his umbrella had provoked jeers and cheers and sarcasms: “Come out from under that umbrella! … Come out! I know you’re under there, I see your feet a-shaking…. ’Fraid you’re going to get your beegum spoiled?” The banter had aroused Jackson from his meditation, and he had turned off the road and trotted with his cavalcade through a nearby wood. He doubtless did this to get Dr. Dabney away from the column of mocking men, but had he desired to mar that gentleman’s clerical garb he could not have found an easier way. The umbrella was a skeleton, the beaver hat a wreck. Major Dabney had to borrow a cap, and, later, buy a uniform.7
The day after Jackson telegraphed Lee,
authorization was received from Richmond for him to retain Ewell’s troops and to use them with his own against Banks.8 Not a word of this did Jackson confide to anyone. With Taylor’s brigade in front, the column would head north, he said. That was all.
The army began early on the morning of May 21 to move down the Valley Pike. Jackson rode with Taylor in the van. They had not proceeded far when he quietly turned the head of the column to the right at New Market and began to climb toward Massanutton Gap. As troops and teams toiled up the winding road to the crest and then began the descent to the South Fork of the Shenandoah, Jackson spoke scarcely at all. Toward evening the army crossed the river and headed north. When at length the troops halted, Ewell and his division were found near by. While Jackson’s command and Taylor’s brigade had been moving over Massanutton, Ewell had marched from Conrad’s Store down the Luray Valley. For the first time Jackson now had every regiment of his infantry and all his guns with him. His officers realized what he never would have told them: Either he was going east of the Blue Ridge, or else he was moving against Front Royal, where the railroad from Manassas comes through the gap there and the two forks of the Shenandoah form their junction.
The alternatives soon were resolved by the march on the twenty-second. Front Royal was the manifest objective, and anyone who knew the country could see the three advantages Jackson’s strategy offered. First, when he entered the Luray Valley and commanded the passes to the east, Jackson was between Banks and eastern Virginia, whither Lee suspected that Banks might move. Second, east of the Massanuttons Jackson was in a great covered way, secure from observation by the enemy and in position to move secretly on Front Royal. Finally, if Jackson could sweep aside the small force his scouts and spies told him was in the village, he could cut Banks’s communications and probably compel his adversary to leave his fortifications at Strasburg. The rest, in Jackson’s eyes, depended on God, and on his own soldiers’ legs and bayonets.
In the sunshine of a fine, warm day, the army on the twenty-second continued its march down the Luray Valley. Taylor’s fast-moving Louisianians set the pace. The remainder of Ewell’s division followed. Then came Jackson’s own men. No remembered incident marred the steady advance. Often under the shadow of the enclosing mountains, the column moved on in strict compliance with Jackson’s new orders of march. Nightfall found the advance of the army within ten miles of Front Royal.9
The next day would bring battle. Carefully Jackson planned the details. Front Royal was as indefensible as Harper’s Ferry. High ground looked down upon it from every side. The problem was not to take it, but to do so with such speed that the garrison could not escape or even send a warning to Banks. Jackson’s solution to the problem was, first, to divert the attacking force from the main road to one that approached Front Royal from the shoulder of the mountain east of the South Fork and directly south of the town. There was such a road with the odd name of Gooney Manor. Second, to isolate the objective, Jackson reasoned that he need do no more than cut the telegraph line and seize the railway. The cavalry could accomplish that, closing the avenue of escape eastward. Then the enemy must surrender or retreat directly northward toward Winchester.
Six months later Jackson would have smiled in his half-apologetic way for taking so seriously the operation against Front Royal; but in the spring of 1862 he still was comparatively inexperienced in planning. He had fought two battles only. One of these, Kernstown, had not been a success. The other, McDowell, had been more Johnson’s fight than his. It was prudent always to be exact in military arrangements. Besides, in this instance, full success at Front Royal would open the way to greater things.
On the morning of May 23, when Ashby arrived with his cavalry to reinforce the two regiments under Flournoy, Jackson issued these simple orders: The cavalry was to cross the South Fork and make for the Manassas Gap Railroad to cut the telegraph line and prevent a retreat from Front Royal along the railroad or the dispatch of reinforcements from Strasburg. The infantry, with Ewel’s fresh division in front, was to turn to the right to the Gooney Manor Road and move on Front Royal from the south. The enemy was to be driven and pursued. That was all: Let the march begin.
The environs of Front Royal, to illustrate the action of May 23, 1862.
The 1st Maryland regiment of Steuart, followed by Taylor’s brigade, had the lead. After the troops turned toward the Gooney Manor Road progress was slow because of a climb of 500 feet. The road itself was a succession of grades, and mire from the recent rains was deep. Jackson was alert and eager but composed. His battle blood had not risen.
Riding up to the advance, he saw the Louisiana Brigade moving at the double-quick. What had happened? Quickly he was told that a woman spy—Belle Boyd—had come out of the woods and reported the position of the enemy with so much clarity that the ambitious Taylor had determined to rush forward at once.
Jackson immediately took direction of the advance. The 1st Maryland and Rob Wheat’s Tigers were diverted to the right, so that they could sweep down on the streets of Front Royal from the east. The remainder of the brigade would press forward when the attack from the east cleared the way. Everything went according to plan, to the indescribable surprise and joy of the natives of Front Royal. One girl wrote in her diary: “I could not believe our deliverers had really come, but seeing was believing and I could only sink on my knees with my face in my hands and sob for joy. Presently some one called out, ‘Only see! The Yankees run!’ Leaning out the back window we saw them, contrabands and Yankees together, tearing wildly by.”10
Quickly the Marylanders and the Tigers cleared the town, but they soon discovered that the Federals were making a stand on a good position north of Front Royal, on the east side of the Winchester Road. There the Union artillery opened gallantly. Stapleton Crutchfield, Jackson’s new chief of artillery, instantly ordered up Ewel’s guns—only to find that the nearest battery was armed with 6-pounder smoothbores and 12-pounder howitzers, which were quite outranged. In the whole of Ewel’s division, it developed, there were only three rifled guns. The infantry had, in consequence, to retain the initiative. The movement was developed steadily. After much effort Ewel’s rifles were brought into action. By this time, too, Confederate horsemen were galloping over the fields on the west side of the South Fork opposite the town.
For a moment it looked as if the cavalry might reach the Pike Bridge across the North Fork and cut off the enemy’s line of retreat. The Federals sensed their danger. Quickly the Union guns were limbered up and dashed through dust and smoke across the bridge over the South Fork. The Confederates started in pursuit. Jackson dashed up, his eyes ablaze now. He galloped over the South Fork bridge and toward the Pike Bridge, but on commanding ground he drew up and gazed ahead: It was too late! In plain view, the blue column was across and climbing up the road that led toward Winchester. “Oh,” cried Jackson, “what an opportunity for artillery. Oh, that my guns were here! … Order up every rifled gun and every brigade in the army.”11
Meantime, smoke was rising from the bridge. Jackson, dim but commanding amid the smoke, fought this new enemy. At length the flames were extinguished, but not until part of the bridge had been so damaged that passage of horsemen was hazardous. Jackson would not be balked. Colonel Flournoy was at hand with his cavalry. He must cross; he must throw himself against the Federals ere they could rally. By keeping in single file, four companies of cavalry contrived to get across the North Fork on the half-burned planks. Flournoy shouted the command, the bugle rang out, the troopers pressed up the ridge and out of sight. Jackson, too, disappeared.
Later in the afternoon cavalryman George Baxter, hurrying to catch up with Flournoy’s van, shouted in annoyance at two horsemen riding ahead to get out of the way of his men. The younger of the two riders turned and motioned toward his companion. “This is General Jackson,” he said. In confusion, Baxter could think of nothing better to do than to order three cheers for the general; but Jackson wheeled about for more important business. The litt
le column was nearing Cedarville, two and a half miles north of the Pike Bridge, and the enemy had made a stand.
In a few brisk words Jackson gave his orders. Again the bugle sounded—this time the thrilling notes of the charge. The Federals gave their assailants a volley, then broke and escaped to an orchard where some of them rallied. Again Jackson ordered the charge; again Flournoy’s men dashed straight at the infantry and the guns. This time the rout was complete. When the 1st Maryland Confederate infantry arrived in support of the cavalry, it had the pleasure of rounding up the Union 1st Maryland.12
Jackson, overjoyed, climbed to the rare state of mind in which he employed a superlative. Never, he told his staff officers, had he seen such a charge of cavalry. Jackson was satisfied. It developed that the Federals at Front Royal had numbered 1,063, of which 904 were killed, wounded, or missing. Opulent supplies had been captured; two guns, the Union wagon train, and two locomotives were in Jackson’s hands. The price he paid for all this was less than 50 casualties. Gain was great, loss was small, but the reckoning was not final. That night, by Taylor’s campfire, Jackson sat long and silently. His eyes were on the flames. “I took up the idea,” said Taylor, “that he was inwardly praying.” Perhaps Jackson was. He certainly was planning.13
2
CEDARVILLE TO WINCHESTER—A DREADFUL NIGHT
Until he knew the realities, Jackson had to weigh the probabilities. What was the Federal commander most apt to do? With rail communications severed at Front Royal, Banks could not remain at Strasburg longer than his supplies sufficed. Jackson’s problem, then, as he shaped it in the flames of Taylor’s campfire, was this: How could he dispose his troops in such a manner that he could (1) attack Strasburg if Banks stayed there; (2) thwart an attempt by Banks to slip past the rear and pass over the Blue Ridge; (3) strike in force any Federal column moving on Winchester; and (4) advance his own troops to that town swiftly? The immediate essential was to watch both lines of possible retreat and, whether Banks retreated or not, to be in position to attack him at once.
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