Failures amid fine achievements were few. In Longstreet’s command there was criticism of Brigadier Generals Featherston and Pryor for drifting away from their designated line of advance and for failure, later in the day, to strike the rear of Federals who were attacking Jackson. No explanation of this was satisfactory to Cadmus Wilcox, under whom the two brigades fought. Still less explicable was the failure of Thomas F. Drayton. When he was ordered to advance on the thirtieth, he was delayed by a report the enemy was attempting to flank the right wing of the army. D. R. Jones sent repeatedly for Drayton as the other brigades became heavily engaged, but he did not arrive until twilight was putting an end to the action. Lee felt that Drayton, with the best of will and of effort, was not able to get his men into battle.
These were trivial failures when set against the general excellence of the army’s performance. Seven thousand prisoners, not to mention 2,000 wounded left by Pope on the field of battle, 30 guns, 20,000 small arms, and vast stores were impressive proof that the officers had learned how to lead and the troops how to fight together. Army unity, long lacking, was achieved. As always, the price had been high. Total casualties exceeded 9,100.37
In the high command, Ewell, losing a leg, would be absent for months. Neither Trimble nor Taliaferro appeared so badly injured, but they could not follow the army on its next move. Besides these three, Brigadier Generals William Mahone, Micah Jenkins, and Charles W. Field were wounded severely. The wounding of six of the thirty-five general officers then with the army was a serious matter. Scarcely less serious was the continued slaughter of some who were rated among the ablest of the colonels. By the time the last gun was fired at Chantilly, ten colonels had been killed or mortally wounded.
A. P. Hill in the aggregate lost three colonels and one lieutenant colonel killed, and five colonels and four lieutenant colonels wounded. Jackson’s division ended the operation with no general officer besides Starke. The regiments of the Stonewall Brigade at the close of action, September 1, were commanded by captains and lieutenants. Gregg’s brigade, on the twenty-ninth, had all save two of its field officers killed or wounded. For such tasks as lay ahead, the subordinate army command was suffering more from attrition than ever it had, but the high command had learned much that it was, by turn of circumstance, quickly to be called upon to apply.
CHAPTER 16
Across the Potomac
1
THE IMPONDERABLES OF INVASION
From the Charleston Mercury came the summons: “Our victorious troops in Virginia … must be led promptly into Maryland, before the enemy can rally the masses of recruits whom he is rapidly and steadily gathering together. When the Government of the North shall have fled into Pennsylvania, when the public buildings in Washington shall have been razed to the ground … then, at last, may we expect to see the hope of success vanish from the Northern mind, and reap the fruit of our bloody and long continued trials.”1 It was not the first demand of the year for an offensive, and it was in accord with General Lee’s appraisal of the military and diplomatic situation. Before the men had time fully to rest their limbs from the strain of Manassas, or even to dry the ragged garments soaked at Chantilly, the Army of Northern Virginia headed for the Potomac.
Small the invading force was to be, and in much of its equipment deficient; but Hampton’s brigade of cavalry, Pendleton’s reserve artillery, and three divisions of infantry were added to the army. One of these divisions was that of D. H. Hill, his return to which had been prompted by Lee’s misgivings of Hill’s capacity as an administrator. A second division to rejoin the army was that of McLaws. The third, in reality a half division of two brigades only, was led by a Missouri brigadier, John G. Walker. One of his brigades was Robert Ransom’s. The other, Walker’s own, was commanded by its senior colonel, Van H. Manning of the 3rd Arkansas, a valiant, hard-hitting regiment. In this brigade, also, was the 27th North Carolina. Its colonel was John Rogers Cooke, known in the old army as the son of General Philip St. George Cooke and as the brother-in-law of Jeb Stuart. Of Cooke’s capacities there had been little test, and of the quality of his regiment still less; it had been under fire two or three times, was well drilled, and was devoted to Cooke. This was all that could be said of Walker’s brigade. No officer, unless it was Cooke himself, could have predicted what a fortnight was to prove them capable of performing.
The accession of strength represented by Walker, McLaws, and D. H. Hill was canceled in part by the 9,000 casualties of Second Manassas and, more particularly, by the loss of commanders who could not be replaced immediately. In this appeared the first of two imponderables which, despite the care with which Lee weighed his plans for the campaign, either were overlooked or else were considered less important than they proved to be.
Through seniority, Lawton and not Early was in charge of Ewell’s division. John R. Jones’s return gave him, instead of Starke, the care of Jackson’s old division. A. P. Hill only, of Jackson’s division commanders, had the rank appropriate to his responsibilities. Of Jackson’s fourteen brigades, eight were under colonels. Worst of all in this respect were the brigades that Taliaferro had directed till he fell wounded at Groveton—not one general officer, save Starke, was there in the division. The Stonewall Brigade, a stubborn fragment, was led by Colonel A. J. Grigsby. He learned that Jackson would not recommend him for promotion to brigade command, and felt himself aggrieved, though he displayed consistent courage.2 For assignment to a leaderless brigade the one trained man available at the moment was Dick Garnett, whose court-martial had been interrupted by the preliminaries of Cedar Mountain. He was released from arrest and, as he could not be employed with the unrelenting Jackson, was assigned to Pickett’s brigade, Longstreet’s command.
This gave Pickett’s men an experienced leader; but if one fine division of Longstreet’s wing thereby was strengthened, two others equally good were weakened by arrests. On the Manassas battlefield John B. Hood had coveted and captured several new Federal ambulances. A few days later Shanks Evans, who had titular authority over Hood’s troops, directed that the ambulances be given to his Carolina brigade. Hood refused, insisting Evans’s brigade “was in no manner entitled to them.” For this Hood was placed under arrest and ordered by Longstreet to remain at Culpeper until the case was tried. Lee overruled Longstreet to the extent that Hood was authorized to stay with his troops, though not to exercise command. Doubtless this leniency was displayed by Lee both because of the trivial nature of the alleged insubordination and because of the probable need of Hood’s services. Hood’s feelings were eased somewhat by Lee’s action, but his men became half mutinous in their resentment.3
The other arrest that might weaken the army came through a renewal of Jackson’s disciplining of A. P. Hill. On the night of September 3, Jackson gave instructions for the start of each division the next morning, and as usual rode out at dawn to see if his orders were being followed. They were not. Gregg’s brigade was not even ready to start. In Hill’s absence, Jackson asked why Gregg was not on the march, whereupon, perhaps with some resentment, the South Carolinian replied that his men were filling their canteens. Something in Jackson’s manner, or some words that passed between the two, created a bitterness that did not pass with the day or the campaign. For the moment, Gregg merely obeyed orders.
Jackson kept his eye on the column, ahead of which Hill rode steadily onward. Some units were straggling badly, which Hill seemed to be making no effort to prevent. The corps commander observed this dereliction. When the hour arrived to rest the men as Jackson had directed, Hill paid no attention to the time and did not call a halt. Jackson’s wrath was aroused. He accosted the commander of the leading brigade, E. L. Thomas, and ordered him to stop the column in accordance with regulations. Thomas did. In a few minutes Hill came storming back demanding to know by whose order the troops had been halted. “By General Jackson’s,” said Thomas. Hill turned on Stonewall, sitting silent on his horse. With some statement that if Jackson was to give orders, the ge
neral had no need of him, Hill offered his sword to Jackson. “Consider yourself under arrest for neglect of duty,” Jackson answered, and summoned Branch to take command of the Light Division.4
So, as the army passed over the grassy hills of Loudoun, en route to the Potomac, Jackson sacrificed his only experienced divisional commander to his ideal of discipline. He could not have overlooked the fact that the troops of the Left Wing were facing new battles on hostile soil with all three divisions under brigadier generals not one of whom had received professional training. Longstreet was better circumstanced, though he would miss Hood. All this constituted the first imponderable.
The second was straggling. Some warnings had come before Second Manassas that men were leaving the ranks without proper excuse. A few executions for desertion had occurred. Officers and provost marshal guards had been sent to Lynchburg, where martial law was declared when that city was found to be something of a rendezvous for deserters. None of this prepared the army for what came en route to Maryland—straggling of a magnitude so appalling that it made Johnston’s evacuation of the Peninsula appear orderly. Thousands of men fell behind or disappeared. Jackson characteristically met with sternness this ominous breakdown of discipline: His order was that men who left the ranks were to be shot without argument or ado. Lee designated Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead as provost marshal with authority to call for guards, and sorrowfully had to admit that discipline was “defective.” Exhortation, orders, threats, penalties alike failed. As the campaign progressed, the weak soldier fell away with the indifferent, until, as the indomitable Alexander Haskell wrote, “none but heroes are left.”5
The first reason for this straggling was the obvious one of worn-out shoes. Most of the troops were being called upon to make long marches immediately after a succession of battles that had themselves been preceded by hard, steady pounding of the roads all the way from Gordonsville to Bull Run. Apparently the quartermasters had not realized that the shoes of so large a part of the army would go to pieces at the same time. After another six months of hardening, most of the troops were to find themselves possessed of feet so tough that shoes in summer were a nuisance. It was far from being so in September 1862.
Another reason for much of the straggling was the diet on which the men had to subsist. Lee realized that the commissary could not supply the army from Virginia, and he doubted whether rations could be had in Maryland. His decision, regretfully made, was that the army must live for the time being on green corn and fruit. The army did. For an average of probably ten days, during the first three weeks of September, the men had little other food. Many who ate too freely of the corn developed serious diarrhea which weakened them and inevitably caused much absence without leave. “We call this even now,” adjutant W. M. Owen wrote after some twenty years, “the green corn campaign.”6
Besides bruised feet and diarrhea, the inexperience of some acting brigade and regimental commanders was a factor in straggling. Numerous officers never previously charged with the care of a column were unable either to keep it closed or to distinguish between the skulker and the sick. This represented a weakness that was shown hourly and disastrously.
A fourth reason there was for straggling, a reason not anticipated to any degree. It was exemplified by the 25th North Carolina of Ransom’s brigade. The greater number of its men came from the extreme western counties of North Carolina, and until President Lincoln called for troops in April 1861 they had been Unionist in sentiment. They enlisted for the defense of their homes against invasion, and when they learned they were to cross the Potomac they responded in varying confusion of mind. Some, in the language of their historian, “said they had volunteered to resist invasion and not to invade; some did not believe it right to invade Northern territory….” This was a feeling not to be repressed by orders or by punishment. Those of extreme conscience found opportunity of leaving the ranks for the duration of the Maryland expedition.7
Together these conditions were responsible for so much straggling even before the Potomac was reached that the commanding general thought it dangerous alike to the stragglers and to the Confederate cause in Maryland for thousands of hungry, scattered men to follow the army across the river. He stationed his bodyguard at the principal ford and told its commanding officer to direct all stragglers to Winchester, where they might be organized and forwarded in numbers large enough to avoid risk of capture.8
2
GENERALS ON DISPLAY
The passage of the Potomac on September 4-7 was to the spectators a drama of incredible contrasts, to the boys in the ranks a diverting lark, and to the commanding generals the beginning of a venture diplomatic, political, and social no less than military. Said Heros von Borcke of the cavalry’s crossing: “It was … a magnificent sight as the long columns of many thousand horsemen stretched across this beautiful Potomac. The evening sun slanted upon its clear placid waters, and burnished them with gold, while the arms of the soldiers glittered and blazed in its radiance. There were few moments, perhaps, from the beginning to the close of the war, of excitement more intense, of exhilaration more delightful, than when we ascended the opposite bank to the … strangely thrilling music of ‘Maryland, My Maryland’”9
All the generals were determined to be agreeable to the Marylanders, to the hoped-for benefit of the South, but as ill fortune shaped it, Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet were in varying degrees incapacitated. On August 31, Lee had injured his hands in a fall and had to ride in an ambulance for a few days. Jackson’s mishap was the cause of some alarm. No sooner was Stonewall on Maryland soil than he was presented with a “strongsinewed, powerful, gray mare.” He accepted thankfully because he had lost Little Sorrel temporarily. When he mounted his new gift, however, she reared instantly, lost her balance, and went over backwards. Jackson was stunned and for half an hour was compelled to lie where he fell. His pain was acute; there was momentary fear of a spinal injury. He ingloriously spent the remainder of the day in an ambulance. Longstreet’s injury, the lesser of the three, was a badly rubbed heel, requiring of him the indignity of wearing a carpet slipper.
The crippled Lee and the bruised Jackson, together with the limping Longstreet, pitched their tents quite close to one another, that sixth of September, in Best’s Grove, near Frederick, and soon had visitors from town and farm. Lee was busy and perhaps uncomfortable from his hurt, and excused himself from callers. Jackson kept to his tent most of the day. Longstreet had to do the honors. “Stuart,” said Henry Kyd Douglas, not without a touch of envy, “was ready to see and talk with every good-looking woman.”10
Jackson did not venture forth the next morning, though it was the Lord’s Day. After as quiet a time as he could make for himself, he decided he would go to evening service. He rode in his ambulance to the Reformed Church after it was ascertained that the Presbyterians were not meeting. The occasion was not altogether a success. Courageously enough, in the presence of one of the most “notorious rebels,” the minister, Dr. Daniel Zacharias, prayed for the President of the United States. Jackson, unfortunately, did not hear that petition. He fell most trustfully asleep as soon as the sermon was begun. Dr. Zacharias’s most earnest periods, the flight of the peroration, the prayer of minister and the response of congregation—none of this awakened Jackson. He enjoyed a soldier’s rest until the organ and the closing hymn brought him back to a world of clashing armies and divided churches.11
September 8 witnessed the issuance of General Lee’s tactful address to the people of Maryland. Of this much was hoped, but, in an immediate social way, a dance given by the cavalry had a more practical appeal. Stuart himself had proposed the dance while inspecting a disused academy at Urbana, a village southeast of Frederick. He promised to find the music. Major von Borcke supervised the lighting and decorating and the invitations. Guests, at the stated hour, arrived in gratifying number; the band of the 18th Mississippi supplied gay music. The gray and yellow of cavalry uniforms whirled in the candlelight with the lovely girls;
“the strange accompaniments of war added zest to the occasion”; from the dames on the bench, as well as from the girls in the quadrille, came exclamations that everything was “perfectly charming.”
Suddenly, above the Mississippians’ horns, there echoed the challenging bark of a field gun and a distant rattle which, to experienced ears, bespoke the clash of outposts. A dusty courier stamped in and announced loudly to the general that the enemy had surprised and driven in the pickets. The band crashed into discord; girls turned pale; officers bade hasty bows and ran for their sabers. In five minutes the academy was stripped of fighting men, though reassuring promises were shouted over tall shoulders that after the Federals were driven away the dance must be resumed.
About 1:00 A.M., under a full, high-riding moon, the troopers jingled back to the academy lawn and reported that the alarm had amounted to little. The band and many of the girls had remained, and soon lilting feet were answering every rhythmic beat of the drum. Two o’clock, three, four, a sinking moon and a graying east—still the dance went on. It only ended when the gory, smoke-marked, dazed boys wounded in the skirmish were brought in on stretchers. The belles became nurses in evening dress. “One handsome young fellow,” wrote Captain Blackford, “as he looked up into their faces with a grateful smile, declared that he would get hit any day to have such surgeons to dress his wounds.”12
The infantry private did not attend any dance in Maryland. “Johnny Reb,” if the truth be told, was less interested in making a good impression on the people and more anxious to get something to eat. By observing accurately when the sentry made his rounds, a light-footed soldier might slip into Frederick and contrive to get a good meal. Said adjutant Worsham: “A friend and I succeeded in passing the guard…. We were invited into several houses and entertained handsomely at supper. We ate enough for half a dozen men.” Liquor was to be procured in town and was not disdained by some, even, of Jackson’s Model Army. Others had at least an opportunity of washing their persons and their clothing, and perhaps buying a few toilet articles or garments.13
Lee's Lieutenants Page 43