Although lionized by Southern sympathizers, the army could not regard itself as welcome. Where hostility was not disclosed, public indifference was displayed. Supplies of flour in the country around Frederick soon ran low. Recruits from Maryland did not offer in numbers worth counting. Nowhere was there any movement to accept the help of the Confederates “in regaining the rights” of which Maryland had been “dispoiled.” Removal from Frederick seemed desirable on all these accounts.14
A final consideration for such a move was presented at Harper’s Ferry. The expectation had been that when the Confederates entered Maryland, the Federals along the south side of the Potomac would be withdrawn as a reinforcement of the main army, which newspapers reported as again under the command of General McClellan. No such evacuation of Harper’s Ferry and near-by posts had occurred. As soon as he learned this, Lee asked himself whether he should divert part of his forces to capture the towns the enemy still held in Virginia, but deferred action. Now that he had to move to the vicinity of Hagerstown, he decided that a single wide-sweeping advance might compass everything. While one column marched westward, another might envelop Harper’s Ferry, take it, and then rejoin at Hagerstown, whence communications with the Shenandoah Valley might be opened or, if circumstances justified, Pennsylvania could be invaded.
On September 8, Lee had summoned Jackson to his headquarters tent and outlined his plan for taking Harper’s Ferry quickly. Jackson was to march with his three divisions and invest the town from the rear. Two divisions were to cooperate from Maryland Heights, which overlooked the Ferry from north of the Potomac. A sixth division was to climb Loudoun Heights, across the Shenandoah from the Ferry. Surrounded, subject to a triple fire, the arsenal town and its garrison could be captured readily.
In the midst of this conversation, Longstreet came to Lee’s tent on other business, was invited to enter, and was told of the plan. The difference between his comment and Jackson’s was revealing. Stonewall frankly was pleased at the prospect of aggressive, semi-independent action; he even essayed a mild joke that he had been neglectful of his “friends” in the Valley. Longstreet was not inclined to violate the established maxims of war. Dispersal of force was dangerous. If Harper’s Ferry was to be taken, said Longstreet, let the whole army share in the operation. That is to say, orthodox warfare was to be preferred to daring.15
The next day orders for starting the operation on September 10 were prepared and sent to all the division commanders. On the march north Jackson had assumed direction of D. H. Hill, and when he read in the orders that Hill was to move with Longstreet, he thought he should advise Hill that he was cognizant of the transfer. Jackson’s regard for secrecy forbade entrusting the paper to anyone for transcription, so he personally made a copy and dispatched it under seal to Hill. That officer studied it and then put it away where he was sure he would not lose it.16
Under these orders, Jackson on September 10 was to begin the advance. By Friday, the twelfth, he was to close in on Harper’s Ferry from the rear. John G. Walker and his division were to be on Loudoun Heights the same day. The actual capture of the Ferry was to be the task of Lafayette McLaws, who was to seize Maryland Heights. Jackson would direct the final operations when the columns were within cooperating distance of one another.
By daylight on the tenth Jackson’s division, under Starke, was moving. So were Ewell’s men, for whom Lawton was responsible. The Light Division had Branch at its head; A. P. Hill, still under arrest, followed his six brigades. Into Frederick rode Jackson and his staff, to find the streets well filled with Marylanders who wished to see him and his terrible troops at close range. As a ruse, he had officers inquire for a map of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Through the town and along the road to Middletown Old Jack continued in advance of the infantry. Reaching Middletown, he was greeted by “two very pretty girls with ribbons of red, white and blue in their hair and small Union flags in their hands.” They ran to the curb stone, reported Kyd Douglas, “and laughingly waved their colors defiantly in the face of the General. He bowed and lifted his cap and with a quiet smile said to his staff, ‘We evidently have no friends in this town.’”17
From Middletown the column climbed Turner’s Gap in South Mountain, and a mile east of Boonsborough Jackson called a halt in the evening. Powell Hill, all the while, had ridden at the rear of his division but had not received copies of orders. Still, he could draw his own soldierly conclusion: A battle was brewing; he must have his hand in the fighting; but how? Soon he thought of Kyd Douglas, who seemed at the moment to be closest to Jackson. Douglas agreed to present Hill’s case. Jackson listened and, without argument or explanation, assented. He knew how admirably Hill led his troops in battle and, no doubt, felt a measure of relief that the most experienced on his commanders was again to be available.18
Jackson proceeded then to make a wide sweep in the hope of catching the Federal garrison at Martinsburg, but the bluecoats slipped through his closing net and reached the larger force that was holding Harper’s Ferry. The Confederates on the twelfth entered Martinsburg. In that friendly town the soldiers consumed an incredible quantity of food and enjoyed themselves vastly, and Jackson was all but overwhelmed by the welcome of the residents.
“About 11 o’clock on the following morning (13th),” as Jackson later reported, “the head of our column came in view of the enemy drawn up in force upon Bolivar Heights.” Of the success of the impending attack there could be no doubt. “Harper’s Ferry,” a Federal officer subsequently said in disgust, “is represented as an immense stronghold—’a Gibraltar.’” Instead, he maintained, it “was a complete slaughter-pen.”19 The sole question was the familiar one of time. That same question was about to assume for D. H. Hill, on other ground, a mien more threatening than it bore at the junction of the Potomac and the Shenandoah.
3
HARVEY HILL’S BATTLE
The day of Jackson’s march through Middletown, September 10, witnessed the removal of virtually all the other Confederate infantry to the west of the Blue Ridge, which in Maryland is styled South Mountain. Lee’s plan had been to hold Longstreet and D. H. Hill temporarily at Boonsborough in order to block Federal retreat in that direction from Harper’s Ferry; but these dispositions had to be changed before they could be executed. Rumors came of an impending Federal advance from Pennsylvania to Hagerstown, which Lee had selected as his advance base for operations toward the Susquehanna. Precautions had to be taken. Longstreet was directed to leave D. H. Hill at Boonsborough and press on to Hagerstown with the remainder of his force. The prospect did not please Longstreet. “General,” he complained to Lee, “I wish we could stand still and let the damned Yankees come to us!” It was to no purpose; the march had to be made. Then, at Hagerstown, all was quiet. Reconnaissance northward did not uncover even a vidette.20
At Boonsborough, where D. H. Hill had been left with the rear guard, trouble began to brew. Hill’s mission was, in his own words, “to dispose of my troops so as to prevent the escape of the Yankees from Harper’s Ferry … and also to guard the pass in the Blue Ridge near Boonsborough.” The first part of these orders entailed guarding the roads that led northward from Maryland Heights on the Potomac, to which McLaws’s march was directed. Dick Anderson’s division was in the same column. These two were to force the surrender of Harper’s Ferry, which Jackson and Walker were to assail from the south and east.
As for the second part of Hill’s orders, the general plan did not contemplate any long defense of South Mountain. McClellan was east of the range, watched by the cavalry, but advancing so slowly that the capture of Harper’s Ferry before the Federal army reached the mountain seemed almost certain. If Harper’s Ferry were taken ere McClellan could relieve the post, did not good strategy dictate an effort to draw McClellan west of the undefended mountain? The longer his communications, the greater the advantage in dealing with him. On the basis of this reasoning Harvey Hill had been instructed. From Boonsborough, three miles west of Turner’s Gap, th
e principal pass in South Mountain, Hill spread his outposts toward the south, whither the roads from Harper’s Ferry led. To the possibility of attack from the east, to defending Turner’s Gap, he gave little thought.21
This was not merely another familiar instance of a soldier’s concentration of thought on the sector of assumed danger, to the neglect of precautions elsewhere. Harvey Hill relied on Jeb Stuart. East of South Mountain and Catoctin, a lower range between Frederick and Washington, the Confederate cavalry faced on all the roads the slowly advancing Federals. Stuart was in general command of an ample, vigilant force. Besides Fitz Lee’s men and the Laurel Brigade, he now could employ Hampton, recently come up from Richmond with his troopers. On September 5, Beverly Robertson had been ordered to report to the Department of North Carolina where, the orders read, “his services are indispensably necessary for the organization and instruction of cavalry troops….”22 The Laurel Brigade passed to its senior colonel, Tom Munford.
These three cavalry brigades, by the early afternoon of September 13, were subjected to so much pressure from a heavy force of Federal infantry that they had to yield the Catoctin range and retreat to South Mountain. This gave Stuart no special concern. Through D. H. Hill he notified headquarters of his withdrawal, and he counseled Hill to watch Turner’s Gap. Guard of the pass was regarded by Stuart as a precaution—and no more—because he thought that Harper’s Ferry already had surrendered. He reasoned that Jackson, Walker, McLaws, and Anderson soon would be on their way to rejoin Lee, and that no bullets need be wasted defending South Mountain. On receipt of this news from Stuart, Hill ordered Colonel A. H. Colquitt to carry his brigade to Turner’s Gap to support Stuart. As reinforcement if needed Garland’s brigade was ordered to make ready. Hill himself did not ride up that evening to the gap to make reconnaissance. His eyes still were on the roads by which the Federals might retreat from Harper’s Ferry.
Terrain of the Confederate operations in Maryland, September 1862.
After night had settled, Hill received a curious message from Colquitt, who was on the eastern crest of Turner’s Gap. Since darkness, said Colquitt, many more fires had become visible than would have been required for the two brigades of cavalry that were, in Stuart’s opinion, the only Union troops approaching the mountain. This news alarmed Hill. He forwarded to Lee all the information he had received, and about midnight had a response. Lee knew that Harper’s Ferry had not yet been captured, and he could not disregard the possibility that a vigorous advance by the Federal army might sweep past McLaws and relieve the town. Then, while the Confederates were divided, McClellan might turn and attack the divisions north of the river. The one sure way of preventing this was to hold the passes of South Mountain. A defensive barrier Lee had planned to disregard, in order to lure McClellan westward, suddenly became indispensable to the plan of operations. Lee ordered Hill to cooperate with Stuart in holding the passes and, showing how seriously he regarded the situation, said that Longstreet’s troops were returning from Hagerstown to join in the defense.23
Already, with a start, Hill had become conscious of his ignorance of the ground he was to defend, and hurriedly dispatched Ripley to Stuart for information about the passes. Stuart told Ripley that he had left Colonel Tom Rosser with a detachment of cavalry and the Stuart Horse Artillery to occupy Fox’s Gap, a mile to the south of Turner’s Gap. Stuart explained, also, his intention of going southward to Crampton’s Gap. That pass was on the shortest route from McClellan’s position to Harper’s Ferry and, for that reason, was “as much threatened as any other” crossing of the mountain.24
During the night, Stuart received strange news from an unexpected visitor. A Southern sympathizer, residing in Frederick, reached him after a hard, hurried ride and informed him that during a visit to McClellan’s headquarters that morning he had witnessed the general react exuberantly to some dispatch handed him and, subsequently, sudden activity by the Federals. McClellan, who usually proceeded most deliberately, seemed to be pushing westward fast. Stuart was not alarmed by this disclosure. Still in the belief that Harper’s Ferry had been captured, he reasoned that the army would be reunited before the Federals could do great mischief; but he promptly forwarded to Lee the intelligence reported by the friendly Marylander.25
The truth behind this intelligence was far worse than Stuart imagined. On the morning of September 13, Corporal B. W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana infantry had picked up along a roadside near Frederick a crude package of three cigars. Around these was wrapped a paper. When Mitchell took it off, he observed handwriting on it and, upon closer examination, saw that he had a copy of S.O. 191, Army of Northern Virginia. It was addressed to Major General D. H. Hill and was marked, “By command of Gen. R. E. Lee, R. H. Chilton, AA General.” Mitchell realized his find might be important, and in company with his sergeant went immediately to his colonel, who carried the paper to corps headquarters. There, unluckily for the Confederates, the staff officer on duty recognized Chilton’s name as one he knew from before the war. By noon McClellan had the authenticated paper in his hands and could act in documented assurance of what the Confederate plans had been on September 9, though he did not realize that only D. H. Hill, instead of the entire force of Longstreet, had been left at Boonsborough.
After this unhappy night, Hill rode to Turner’s Gap at dawn of the fourteenth of September. It was to be his day of opportunity, his first day to direct command of an entire field where large forces were engaged. On the mountain, at the moment, he had no other troops than Colquitt’s brigade, though Garland’s North Carolinians were toiling up and were close to the crest. Three other brigades Hill had, G. B. Anderson’s, Ripley’s, and Robert Rodes’s. These troops, about 3,000 in number, were disposable, but Hill was still weighing both parts of his orders: Deploy to prevent escape from Harper’s Ferry and guard the pass near Boonsborough. Even the fact that Lee was hastening back to South Mountain with Longstreet’s troops did not convince Hill that a heavy thrust might be impending.
Soon enough, in a quick succession of surprises, the seriousness of his plight was disclosed. Hill had expected to find Stuart on South Mountain; instead, he learned that the cavalryman had gone farther south to Crampon’s. That was not the worst of it. When Hill and Colquitt rode along the crest to reconnoiter, they scarcely had gone three quarters of a mile before they heard the rumbling of wheels and the voices of Federal officers. The enemy was on the mountain, almost on the crest! If the Federals got much farther, they could flank Turner’s Gap. South of it a road crossed at Fox’s Gap, whence several trails ran along the ridge toward the main highway through Turner’s Gap. North of the pass were several higher knobs, approached by several roads. “An examination of the pass,” Hill later reported, “… satisfied me that it could only be held by a large force, and was wholly indefensible by a small one.”
What was Hill to do? He decided to bring up a third brigade, G. B. Anderson’s, but more than that, even when he knew that the Federals were almost atop the mountain and beyond his flank, Hill could not bring himself to do. “I felt reluctant,” he wrote in his official account of the battle, “to order up Ripley and Rodes from the important positions they were holding until something definite were known of the strength and design of the Yankees.” He did not state what he desired more “definite” than the evidence brought him by his own ears.26
Until G. B. Anderson arrived, Hill planned that Colquitt hold the ground dominating Turner’s Gap, and that Garland should defend the right. Since his last battle, at Malvern Hill, new happiness had come to Samuel Garland. Social Richmond was expecting news of the engagement to him of one of the loveliest and most brilliant daughters of the city. On this day of danger he led out along one of the narrow roads on the western flank of the mountain his North Carolina regiments. His task was to hold at any cost the road that crossed at Fox’s Gap and uncovered Turner’s Gap. He sought, as he deployed his infantry, to place his veteran regiments where they would meet the shock and to station on ground
less contested those of his men who never had been in action.
Reconnaissance established contact about 9 o’clock. In a few minutes a jumbled battle was joined. The Federals attacked vigorously and in strength; almost from the initial clash, Garland was hard put to hold his own. Ere long the drift of the righting indicated that the enemy was trying to turn the left flank, where Garland was standing. “General, why do you stay here?” said one of his officers. “You are in great danger.” He answered casually, “I may as well be here as yourself.” Moments later Garland dropped to the ground. One glance at him by the men who knelt to lift him showed that his wound was mortal. Already he was in his death spasm.27
When word of the fate of Garland was brought to Hill, he was contemplating the scene before him. After twenty years he wrote of it: “The marching columns extended back as far as eye could see in the distance…. It was a grand and glorious spectacle, and it was impossible to look at it without admiration. I had never seen so tremendous an army before, and I did not see one like it afterward.” He realized that his division could be overpowered in time, but he reasoned that if he could hold the gap until Longstreet arrived, their joint resistance might allow time for the army’s trains to get across the Potomac, or for Jackson to complete the capture of Harper’s Ferry, or even for both these things to happen.
A few minutes later, Hill learned that Garland’s brigade had been broken and pushed steadily back. He could not afford to move Colquitt to assist the remnant of Garland’s command. No other troops yet had arrived at the top of the mountain. The best that Hill could do was to run out two guns and, with the flank regiment of Colquitt and a scratch contingent of “staff-officers, couriers, teamsters, and cooks,” to give some semblance of support to the artillery. He recorded later his sensations of the moment: “I do not remember ever to have experienced a feeling of greater loneliness. It seemed as though we were deserted by ‘all the world and the rest of mankind.’”28
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