Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  D. H. Hill was not willing to admit that nothing more could be done. As Crutchfield’s guns dueled with the well-protected Federal batteries, Hill tried to get a fatigue party to the site of the broken bridge, but they could not work under the enemy’s shellfire. Nothing stirred Jackson to action. When he awakened, he sat on a tree trunk, gazing at the ground, and said little. “Rans” Wright, of Huger’s command, came up to report that he had traversed the length of the New Road and found no Federals north of the swamp. Jackson had no orders for him. Cavalryman Munford announced that he had found an unguarded crossing. Jackson sent him no instructions.

  General Wade Hampton had also discovered a good crossing, and Jackson seemed to show somewhat more interest. Could Hampton make a bridge at the point he had described? It would be easy, Hampton answered. Build the bridge, Jackson ordered. Soon Hampton returned from his mission to report the bridge done and his brigade ready to cross; the Federals on the other side, he said, were quiet and unsuspecting. Jackson sat on the log, silent and motionless, his cap pulled down over his eyes, listening until Hampton was finished. Then, without a word of thanks or of instruction to the brigadier, he got up and walked away.

  Progressively louder roared the sound of a battle from the south. Efforts to rebuild White Oak Swamp Bridge were abandoned. Eighteen thousand infantry, as good troops as wore the Confederate gray, loitered in the thickets and listened to the cannonade till the shadows fell. Night found Jackson so weary, so confused, after almost twenty hours of profitless marching and waiting, that he was stupefied. When he sat down to eat with his staff, he nodded with food in his mouth. “Now, gentlemen,” he said, arousing himself, “let us at once to bed, and rise with the dawn, and see if tomorrow we cannot do something.”10

  3

  HOLMES ADVANCES AND MAGRUDER GALLOPS IN VAIN

  Jackson’s words, at the end of a futile and fateful day, might well have been echoed on the extreme Confederate right, that June thirtieth, by Major General Theophilus H. Holmes, a stiff and deaf representative of the old army. After service on Aquia Creek in the winter of 1861-62, General Holmes, fifty-seven years of age and a close friend of the President, had been sent to North Carolina. Federal pressure in Virginia compelled Lee early in June to call for troops from Holmes’s department, and on the twenty-sixth Lee ordered Holmes to join him.

  Directly east of New Market the road forked, the River Road continuing to parallel the James; the diverging Long Bridge Road turned to the left and put Holmes within easy supporting distance of Longstreet and A. P. Hill on the Darbytown Road. Holmes could muster not more than 6,000 infantry, most of whom had never been under fire, but he did have 6 batteries. This column manifestly was not strong enough to engage in heavy infantry action, but if it could bring its guns into play it might confuse the Federal retreat.11

  For the coming of this or of any other opportunity, Holmes waited at New Market through the forenoon of June 30 and until about 4 o’clock. Then Major R. K. Meade of the engineers galloped up to report exciting news: The enemy was retreating in some confusion over Malvern Hill, a strong ridge two and a half miles east of Holmes’s position. If Holmes would advance some of his batteries, he could sweep the line of the retreating enemy. Holmes approved, and his chief of artillery, Colonel James Deshler, selected three sections of two rifled guns each. Infantry was ordered to support the artillery. As Holmes moved forward he met the commanding general. Informed that a Union column was moving south, Lee had asked himself whether this might not indicate that McClellan was seeking to get off while Longstreet and A. P. Hill waited on Huger and Jackson. He affirmed Holmes’s advance and urged him to open fire with the rifled guns the moment his infantry support was at hand.

  Holmes promptly moved his division down the River Road, but the hurrying feet of the men raised so much dust that it gave the Federals warning of their approach. Soon, over the heads of the men in line, there burst a heavy shell. “We could form no idea whence it came,” wrote a member of the 50th North Carolina, “but were not long kept in doubt, for in a few minutes there was a perfect shower of shells of tremendous proportion and hideous sound….” The raw troops were startled and confused by this fire rushing in from Union gunboats in the river and from heavy batteries posted on Malvern Hill. The cavalry stampeded, ran into a plank fence, and crushed some infantrymen who had taken shelter behind it. The 45th North Carolina broke. A reserve battery was caught in a tangle of timber. The excited artillerists cut the traces, and left two guns and three caissons and galloped off. Everywhere, for a moment, there was chaos. General Holmes alone was calm, and he by reason of his deafness. Emerging from a little house by the roadside amid the din, he stopped abruptly and cupped his ear suspiciously. “I thought,” said he, “I heard firing.”12

  As Holmes worked furiously to restore order in the ranks, Major Brent arrived and stated that his chief, General Magruder, was under orders to move over in support of Holmes; did that officer have any suggestion to make concerning their position? Holmes answered “very brusquely”—to quote Brent—that he had no suggestion. Could the General inform him where the enemy was and in what strength? “No,” said Holmes. Did the General have any message for Magruder? “No”—that was all. Brent wrote, years later, that “Genl. Holmes found in some way a cause of resentment at receiving a message from Genl. Magruder. His bearing was the most singular I have ever seen, and was marked by the absence of even a simulation of ordinary courtesy.”

  Holmes had ordered Colonel Deshler to open on the Federals who still were crossing Malvern Hill, but Deshler’s challenge was answered with a salvo. Case shot and shell crashed into the woods, and horses and men went down. The hostile bombardment became a tornado. After an hour, as night fell, Deshler’s batteries, badly mauled, were withdrawn. An infantry attack, in Holmes’s words, would have been “perfect madness.”13

  Prince John Magruder had suffered irritating mishaps all day. After a morning march confused by want of guides, Magruder halted at 2 o’clock when he found the Darbytown Road blocked by the rear of A. P. Hill’s division. At 4:30, Longstreet, who was ranking officer during Lee’s reconnaissance on the right, directed Magruder to go to the support of Holmes—apparently a design to cover Longstreet’s own flank in the event that the enemy should drive Holmes. Magruder, ever galloping, started immediately in that direction, then dashed off to answer a summons from Colonel Chilton, Lee’s chief of staff. After that he spurred away to locate Holmes. Finally there came orders to abandon the movement on the right to Holmes and to return to the support of Longstreet. By now exhaustion, lack of sleep, and indigestion had brought Magruder to a state of mental confusion. Not until 3:00 A.M. did he sleep an hour—his second hour of repose in seventy-two. His men were exhausted. Most of them had marched twenty miles that day and had kept the road for eighteen hours; not one of them had drawn trigger.14

  This, then, was the result of the attempted convergence of all the infantry opposite the line of McClellan’s retreat: Holmes had been stopped by superior artillery; the reserve divisions of Magruder had been worn out to no purpose; Huger had spent the day cutting a road; Jackson had not crossed White Oak Swamp. Almost 50,000 Confederate troops, for one reason or another, had done virtually nothing on the day when Lee had hoped to overwhelm his adversary.

  To complete the tragedy of the army’s failure, Lee had felt compelled to attack in the late afternoon, at Riddell’s Shop and Glendale, with the divisions of Longstreet and A. P. Hill. A vigorous onslaught with the troops at hand seemed the one alternative to permitting McClellan to march unhindered past the Confederate front. The two divisions fought magnificently. Slowly the fluctuating lines pressed through the woods and charged with ghastly losses across clearings where the Federals had planted artillery. The Federals were forced back until, when blackness covered the field and stopped the battle, they held one small part only of their previous line.

  Tactically this battle was of encouragement solely because Longstreet and Hill showed themselves
capable of maintaining touch with all their troops through a maze of woodland. To Longstreet went first honors, but Hill, who commanded the field for an hour while “Old Pete” was posting a brigade, showed admirable judgment. The gain was small. All the army had to show for its effort was a causeway of dead bodies, some hard-won Federal ordnance, and a bit of shell-torn woods.15

  4

  MALVERN HILL: A TRAGEDY OF STAFF

  The army that bestirred itself in the clear dawn of July I was weaker by 10,000 men than it had been at the beginning of the campaign. Nine of its thirty-eight brigades had changed command. After the wounding of Pickett at Gaines’ Mill, Colonel John B. Strange led the brigade. To the command of Arnold Elzey was assigned Jubal Early, back from his Williamsburg wounding though unable to mount a horse without assistance. The Mississippians of the fallen Richard Griffith were under their senior colonel, William Barksdale, a veteran of the Mexican War and a former congressman. Wade Hampton had been assigned to temporary command of Taliaferro’s brigade. Named at the instance of Stonewall himself, Brigadier General John R. Jones now led Campbell’s brigade. Taylor’s Louisianians passed to Colonel L. A. Stafford. As Featherston had been wounded severely on the thirtieth, his brigade was in the care of a colonel, as was that of Joseph R. Anderson, injured at Glendale. Finally, because Robert E. Rodes found himself too weak to keep the field, Colonel John B. Gordon led a brigade that already had twice distinguished itself.

  Thus under new or unfamiliar brigade commanders, more than a fifth of the army faced the next uncertain stage of the campaign. All the divisions remained in the charge of the generals who had commenced the operations, and those who came up to Lee’s field headquarters showed in varying degree the strain of five days of march and combat. Lee was tired and somewhat unwell. His disappointment over the failure of his plan was manifest; his curb on his temper was not perfect, but he was calm and clear of mind. Longstreet showed no weariness, nor did A. P. Hill. The night’s rest which Jackson had commended to his staff seemed to have benefited him: He was alert and ready. Huger was absent from the early conferences. Delay awaited him because, he said, “I had no one to show us what road to take.”16 Physically, Huger had no complaint. Magruder’s nervous condition must have been worse than ever, although apparently he was unaware of any impairment. Holmes, down on the River Road, did not report in person at headquarters.

  D. H. Hill was fit for the tests of the day, but when he met General Lee he had a warning: A chaplain who had been reared in the country through which the army was passing had described to Hill a strong position known as Malvern Hill, ahead of the line of advance. Hill repeated his description of the ground, and added: “If General McClellan is there in force, we had better let him alone.” Longstreet broke in, half-banteringly: “Don’t get scared, now that we have got him licked!” Hill did not like this, and said no more.17

  Ignorant of the ground and having no alternative, Lee ordered an advance toward the James River on the road that led over the eminence Hill mentioned. Jackson and Magruder were to press after the enemy. Huger was to receive orders on arrival. Longstreet and A. P. Hill, who had borne the brunt of the fighting on June 30, were to be in reserve. Jackson took the lead. Lee’s instructions to Magruder were to proceed by the Quaker Road and form on the right of Jackson. Lee intended to have Huger follow substantially the same line of march.18

  These orders seemed simple enough, but from the time they were put in execution coordinated effort virtually ended. Although the divisional leaders were not far apart at any hour, most of them lost touch. This was due, in the first place, to the nature of the ground and to the lack of information concerning it.

  Most of the divisions had to move down the narrow Quaker or Willis Church Road, and after a mile and a quarter they came to a little creek known as Western Run. This constituted near Malvern Hill a swamp almost as difficult as White Oak itself. To the right of the road, thick and nearly impassable woodland led directly into this swamp. The task of organizing a line there called for a soldier of large experience. Left of the road, beyond a shallow woodland, was the open ground of the Poindexter farm, a decent position of some strength; but for Jackson to get his three divisions deployed there consumed all the morning hours until 11 o’clock.19

  Coordination was lost, in the second place, through a singular mistake on the part of General Magruder. The Quaker Road was to be his line of advance, but apparently the galloping Magruder did not ask to examine Lee’s map—the only one available—and instead determined to find the route himself. He had three guides from the neighborhood. When these men started Magruder’s division to the west, almost at a right angle to Jackson’s march southward, Longstreet questioned the direction. Magruder recalled his guides and catechized them. They insisted they were correct, nor did any of them know that the road from Glendale to Malvern Hill also was styled the Quaker Road, though often called the Willis Church Road.

  Thus reassured by his guides, Magruder marched westward roundabout to an obscure, little-used byway which his guides told him was the veritable Quaker Road. Longstreet, meantime, became convinced Magruder was following a divergent line of advance, probably so reported to Lee, and then overtook Prince John to argue that the virtually abandoned lane could not possibly be the Quaker Road. Further argument was ended by the arrival of one of Lee’s staff with orders for Magruder to retrace his steps.20

  While Magruder was marching and countermarching, an incomplete order of battle was drawn up with much fumbling and difficulty in the tangle along Western Run. Whiting’s division formed the left of a front that faced south, with the rest of Jackson’s division and most of Ewell’s in reserve. Trimble’s brigade was put in position next to Whiting. Astride the Quaker or Willis Church Road was D. H. Hill’s division. Next was to have been Magruder, but in his absence the ground was occupied by Armistead with his and Wright’s brigades of Huger’s division.21

  Malvern Hill in times of peace would have been a pleasant site. Its locust trees were breeze-swept, its grass abundant. Now, where the enemy was visible, his position was one of discouraging strength, if not of impregnability. Opposite Whiting and D. H. Hill the cleared farmland leading up to the West house did not appear too steep to be mounted, but its length concealed the full grade. It offered the Federals a perfect field of fire for 300 to 400 yards. A level crest afforded space for many batteries. On the Confederate right the Federals’ advantage appeared even more disheartening. The open fields of the Crew farm occupied part of the same broad hillside that confronted the left and center. The western face of the hill was almost a bluff, affording an excellent position from which artillery could rake the approaches. Every part of this position was crowned with guns. Powerful lines of infantry were in support. The Federal position behind Boatswain’s Swamp on June 27 had been strong; this front on Malvern Hill seemed a field fortress!22

  No high-ranking officer was at hand to assume responsibility for a careful examination of the terrain on the right. Brigadier General Armistead apparently did not know that he was senior officer on that flank and consequently he made no effort to extend his observations or to inform Lee of what he had seen. After posting his own and Wright’s men, he decided that no advance could be made until artillery coped with the Union batteries on the hill. The same conclusion had been reached on Jackson’s part of the line.23

  At length two tenable artillery positions were found on the Confederate front. One was to the left, in a large wheat field on the Poindexter farm. The other was on the wooded rim of a hill in rear of Armistead. From them a converging fire might be opened on the Federal array. If the Union guns were silenced, or even were thrown into confusion, a general infantry assault might rout the enemy troops who were believed to be demoralized by their previous defeats. Armistead had the most favorable position; the plan was that he should start his advance when the saw the Federal line broken by the artillery, and when he went forward with a cheer, the whole line should sweep up the hill. Orders to this effect w
ere given to all the division commanders who could be reached.24

  To bring up the guns was the first task. Unfortunately, Stapleton Crutchfield, Jackson’s wholly competent chief of artillery, was absent sick that day. Jackson himself had to order the batteries up. Available field-pieces were not abundant. On order, D. H. Hill had sent all his artillery back for refitting and had no guns to add to the fire. He should have been supplied from the reserve, but General Pendleton, with more than twenty batteries at his disposal, was not to be found. For his station Armistead could find but two batteries, one of which had only two guns of sufficient range to reach the enemy. No divisional officer was at hand to supply more artillery.

  Terrain and artillery and troop positions at Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862.

  As the Southern batteries came up, one after another, they received a concentrated, powerful, well-directed fire. Gun after gun was put out of action. Jackson, first and last, got eighteen only in action. The Federals soon commanded the entire front. Harvey Hill complained to Jackson that the bombardment from the Poindexter farm was of the “most farcical character.” Lee himself concluded that the Confederate batteries would fail to break the Federal front, and he rode out with Longstreet beyond Jackson’s extreme left to see if he could turn the Union right from that quarter.25

  By 3:30 a few guns still were in action, though almost overwhelmed by the blasting fire from the hill. The infantry watched, listened, and wondered whether, as at Gaines’ Mill, they would be commanded to charge the artillery position. Beyond D. H. Hill’s right the situation remained one of confusion. Behind Armistead and Wright, Mahone and Ransom, both of Huger’s command, were floundering through the woods toward the front. Armistead had no information regarding Huger’s movements and now, uncounselled, had to act. Federal skirmishers were creeping forward and threatening the front. He advanced three Virginia regiments that drove them back to the hillside below the Crew house. There, in an advanced position but covered by the roll of the land, Armistead had to leave this part of his brigade.