Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  While these negotiations proceeded, Jackson was writing to Lee about the next vital step in the campaign, the reconcentration of the forces. “Through God’s blessing, Harper’s Ferry and its garrison are to be surrendered,” he announced. A. P. Hill would be left in charge of the prisoners. “The other forces can move off this evening so soon as they get their rations. To what point shall they move?”6

  When the prisoners were counted, they numbered about 11,000. The booty included some 13,000 small arms, 73 cannon, and approximately 200 wagons, together with the provisions and quartermasters’ stores usually kept at a busy post. It was a noble haul, one that much gratified the “wagon hunter.” “Ah,” said Jackson to von Borcke, as he viewed the prisoners and the booty, “this is all very well, Major, but we have yet much hard work before us.” There was to be no holiday. All the energies of all the officers must be devoted to getting the men on the road as soon as they were fed.7

  While the essential arrangements were being made, most of the troops were given liberty to explore the sutlers’ establishments at Harper’s Ferry. Some of the brigades of Hill’s Light Division had been denied their proper part of the loot at Manassas, and now Pender’s men and Branch’s and others could enjoy canned lobster or fill stomach and haversack with cake or stuff pockets with candy. When Walker’s column came over the Shenandoah and McLaws’s streamed across the Potomac bridge, there was much grumbling because the booty had all been devoured or appropriated. “Jackson’s troops fairly swam in the delicacies, provisions, and ‘drinkables,’” wrote comrade Dickert, resentful after more than thirty years, “… while Kershaw’s and all of McLaws’s and Walker’s troops, who had done the hardest of the fighting, got none.”8

  Neither feasting nor complaining was for long. First Lawton’s division, then Jones’s, started for Sharpsburg, Maryland, which Lee had named as the point of concentration. The march by Jackson’s own admission was “severe.” Twenty-four hours from the time he had received the flag of truce at Harper’s Ferry, he was approaching the rendezvous, distant sixteen miles by road. As the regiments one after another, during the morning of September 16, reached the little town of Sharpsburg and halted, the men dropped silently down. Jackson, dust covered and gray, rode on to report to Lee, who was waiting, with more anxiety than he exhibited, the arrival of the detached divisions to reinforce the thin line he had drawn behind Antietam Creek.9

  Already, on the opposite ridges, east of the stream, the Federals in vast numbers seemed to be deploying for an offensive battle. Had McClellan attacked with his full strength before the arrival of Jackson, fourteen brigades of infantry would have been compelled to face six corps in a hopeless battle. Now that Jackson was up, he raised the number of Confederate brigades to twenty-two. These were not enough for successful prolonged resistance, but they might suffice to hold their ground until A. P. Hill, McLaws, Anderson, and Walker arrived with their eighteen brigades. Jackson had relieved a desperate situation by a prompt march.

  That day Jackson was completing his third month in the school of the Army of Northern Virginia. He had not shone, during the Seven Days, in cooperation with others or in the swift movement of his divisions; on his first test under his new teacher he could not have been graded above “Fair.” His next test, Cedar Mountain, might by lenient marking have been rated “Good,” but no more than that. Then he made the superb advance of August 26 from Salem to Bristoe. By that time Jackson had mastered the essentials of the art of the executive officer. His operation against Harper’s Ferry had not been perfect logistically or as an example of communication among cooperating columns, but the task had been performed. All that was marked in the improvement of Jackson, the advance from Harper’s Ferry to Sharpsburg confirmed. The grade that had risen from “Fair” on July 1 to a doubtful “Good” on August 9, now had mounted from “Good” to “Excellent.” An examiner might have asked himself whether that high adjective connoted quite the full measure of praise that Student Jackson, T. J., had earned.

  2

  THE WORST OF CRISES

  Lee’s withdrawal of Longstreet and D. H. Hill from South Mountain, after the news of the impending capture of Harper’s Ferry, had been directed to Sharpsburg for three reasons. First, at that point Lee would be on the flank or rear of McClellan if he sought to cut off McLaws. Second, Sharpsburg was close to the Potomac across which the forces under Jackson were to move to reunite with Lee. Third, the terrain around Sharpsburg was moderately favorable for defensive action.10

  The march of Longstreet and D. H. Hill on the fifteenth had been uneventful. Once arrived at Sharpsburg, the two divisions were disposed along the high ground to cover the Boonsborough road, by which they had marched, and the road from Hagerstown. For the protection of these roads and for the defense of the ridges, the Confederate army was alarmingly weak in comparison with an adversary who followed fast and deployed boldly. Even after Jackson arrived on the sixteenth, the army was weaker than ever it had been under Lee. A strong attack by the whole of McClellan’s command manifestly would threaten not merely defeat but ruin. The worst of all the succession of crises had come. An army of liberation was an army in desperation.

  Could the new McClellan be beaten? Not unless all the missing brigades could be brought up quickly and massed. Walker came up with his small force during the afternoon of the sixteenth. In Anderson’s division and his own, McLaws had ten brigades, or more than half the army’s reserve. His orders were to move over to Harper’s Ferry and to hurry on to Sharpsburg. What delayed him? A. P. Hill was detained at Harper’s Ferry to parole the prisoners and secure all the captured property. How long would that require? If emergency demanded, could he be available on the seventeenth? None of these questions found an assured answer. Battle was in the air. Sharp clashes had occurred before darkness fell. All night long restless pickets plied an intermittent fire.

  With the dawn the Federal artillery opened furiously. The battle was to rise with the sun. Joe Hooker’s I Corps, as the Confederates soon ascertained, was moving against their left. Jackson instantly sensed danger. Stuart and his cavalry supported well-placed artillery near the Potomac. Jackson moved Jube Early’s men to serve as the flank infantry element. Next to Early, to the right, was Jackson’s division under John R. Jones, and beyond, Ewell’s division under Lawton. To the right of Lawton the line turned southward to cover the Hagerstown road. Here the depleted regiments facing the advancing Unionists were those of D. H. Hill.

  Neither Hill nor Jackson had any reserves of his own command, but the previous night Jackson had relieved Hood, at his request, so the Texas Brigade and Law’s might cook rations. Jackson prudently had exacted a promise that if he called, Hood would move immediately to his relief. Hood’s division, then, might be counted as Jackson’s reserve. It was all Jackson had, all the left wing had.11 The line had no fortifications and little cover. On either side of the Hagerstown road were scattered woods which, on the west, extended southward to the rear of a whitewashed Dunker church that overlooked much of the ground of the Federal advance. East of the Hagerstown road and about 500 yards north of the church was a fine field of corn, thick and head high. To this field Jackson was moving Lawton’s Georgians under Colonel Marcellus Douglass, and the Louisiana brigade to which Harry Hays had just returned.

  On these troops and Jackson’s division to the left of the Hagerstown road, Hooker’s sunrise attack was furious, overwhelming. The fire of the blue regiments mowed down the men of Lawton and Hays, shattered Jackson’s depleted division, and, almost at the first clash, carried one of Lawton’s staff to Hood with a panting message: “General Lawton sends his compliments with the request that you come at once to his support.” Hood did not hesitate. As “To arms” sounded, hungry privates put up their frying pans, sighed over the food they had to throw away, and fell in for what they knew from the sound of the firing would be a desperate fight.

  With the élan they had shown at Gaines’ Mill the two brigades of Hood’s division pushed swift
ly into the southern edge of the cornfield. Hardened though they were, they were appalled. Shambles, ghastly and streaming red, the Federals had created. Almost half of Lawton’s and Hays’s troops had been slaughtered, and Lawton himself was wounded. Colonel Douglass had been killed in front of the Georgians. A shell had exploded a little above the head of John R. Jones, and he said it stunned him so badly that he could not exercise command. W. E. Starke had taken Jackson’s withdrawing division, only to fall in a few minutes with three fatal wounds. A. J. Grigsby assumed command—a colonel in charge of a division. Never in all the army’s battles had so many high officers been put out of action so quickly. In the three brigades of Lawton’s division all save two regimental commanders either were down or soon were to fall.12

  In the midst of this carnage Hood deployed his men boldly. To aid him Stonewall directed Early to return from the support of Stuart on the extreme left. Early must take command of Lawton’s division and give the utmost help to Hood. It was “hold or perish.” In a time amazingly brief, the enemy had cut a gap on either side of the Hagerstown road. Every brigade that had occupied the ground from Early’s right to D. H. Hill’s left had been swept aside. No organized force of more than a few score men remained to confront the enemy.

  The Federals now were close to the Dunker church. To stop them, Hood’s hungry, mad Texans and their like-tempered comrades under Law could not level 2,000 muskets. If Hood knew the odds he faced he gave no sign. He must drive the enemy; he would. Gallantly his men entered the gap and pushed forward. For the moment they had the reward of daring. D. H. Hill’s line contributed a steady if not a heavy fire against the Federal left. On the opposite flank Old Jube was coming up. With his own troops and some 300 of Jackson’s division whom Colonel Grigsby and Colonel Stafford had rallied, Early formed on the Federals’ right. If Hood seemed to have thrown himself into a gap, it now appeared that Hooker’s corps had advanced into a pocket, the three sides of which were held by D. H. Hill, by Hood, and by Early.

  It was not Jackson’s nature to silently stand idle while his comrades fought. He had done that once—at White Oak Swamp—but he had come far since that last day of June. He must know how Hood fared. Would Sandie Pendleton ride forward and ascertain? Sandie was off at the word. Said he afterward: “Such a storm of balls I never conceived it possible for me to live through. Shot and shell shrieking and crashing, canister and bullets whistling and hissing their most fiend-like through the air until you could almost see them. In that mile’s ride I never expected to come back alive.” At last, unscathed, he found Hood and delivered his message.

  The battlefield of Sharpsburg, September 17, 1862: (1) The cornfield which first Lawton and Hays defended, and into which then Hood and subsequent reinforcements advanced; (2) McLaws’s line of advance; (3) first position of S. D. Lee’s artillery battalion; (4) the scene of Rodes’s disaster; (5) position from which John R. Cooke charged; (6) general zone of D. H. Hill’s defense; (7) main body of Longstreet’s troops on the right; (8) Toombs’s advanced regiments; (9) the line of A. P. Hill’s advance.

  A great moment that was for John Bell Hood, but he was too intent to be eloquent. In his reply was nothing sensational, nothing of exhibition or declamation. “Tell General Jackson,” he said simply, “unless I get reinforcements I must be forced back, but I am going on while I can!”13

  On he went, not so fast as at Gaines’ Mill or at Second Manassas, but as intrepidly and in the face of a heavier fire. Ere long that fire grew fiercer, fresher, faster. Heavier resistance was being encountered. Although it was not plain at the moment, the I Corps had been repulsed but Mansfield’s XII—Banks’s old corps—was advancing in Hooker’s stead. Hood had to halt. The best he could hope to do, with the help of D. H. Hill and a sharpening attack by Early, was to hold on till reinforcements reached him.

  Jackson, ere this, had received Hood’s brave message. Stonewall had not a soldier of his own to send into the cornfield. Every brigade, every regiment save one that Early had left to support Stuart’s guns, was engaged or shattered or wrecked altogether. The only recourse was the army reserve: Sandie Pendleton must find General Lee, repeat to him Hood’s message, and ask for help. Once more Pendleton dashed away. When he returned, it was to report that Lee had already dispatched Walker’s division from the right and said, also, “I’ll send McLaws.”

  Hood waited and, as he waited, fought. His battle raged uncertainly but not long. By supreme exertion, Mansfield’s attack was repulsed. The action fell away to an artillery exchange. What was left of Hood’s division slowly drew back to the Dunker church. In some regiments ammunition had been spent to the last cartridge. “For God’s sake, more troops!” cried Hood. When a brother officer rode over and asked, “Where is your division?” Hood answered grimly, “Dead on the field.”14

  The forces of Tige Anderson and Walker were called into confused action, and then McLaws reached the scene. The Georgian quickly met the impact of a fresh corps, Sumner’s II, but he repeated Hood’s gallant feat in driving the enemy back to approximately the point where the battle had opened at sunrise. In doing this McLaws’s division was scattered badly and in time forced to give ground, but it was not pursued. Jubal Early, who had done magnificently on the left, proudly held his flank position. For the first time since sunrise, Jackson’s front now was free of pressure. He now could mend his worn line, carry off his wounded, and prepare to meet another attack—if it came. Three corps he had beaten off in successive assaults—the I, the XII, and the II. At Groveton only had he ever been so long or so violently assaulted.15

  The reason for the lessened force of the hammer-strokes on Jackson was the shift of the fiercest action to the Confederate center. Of D. H. Hill’s brigades, Ripley’s, Colquitt’s, and Garland’s had been battered in the onslaughts of the morning, but Rodes’s and George B. Anderson’s had been damaged little. They had been placed in a sunken road that branched from the right of the Hagerstown highway about 500 yards south of the Dunker church. There they had been well protected from hostile fire. To their left, to fill the gap between Jackson and Hill, were the 27th North Carolina and the 3rd Arkansas of Walker’s brigade. Of these forces—indeed, of everything to the right of Jackson—the command was vested in Longstreet, but Hill handled Longstreet’s left, which was the center of the entire Confederate position. The North Carolinian was as contemptuous as ever of danger. Perhaps he was more confident, more certainly full of fight, because the responsibility of the field did not rest on him.

  General Lee inspected the sunken road position, and Hill heard him exhort the men: They must hold their ground, because a break on their front would endanger the whole army. The 6th Alabama’s John B. Gordon—the ramrod Georgian who had fought with glorious valor at Seven Pines, at Gaines’ Mill, at Malvern Hill—cried out: “These men are going to stay here, General, till the sun goes down or victory is won!” This, Gordon wrote afterward, he said “to comfort General Lee and General Hill, and especially to make, if possible, my men still more resolute of purpose.”16

  With soldierly calm, Harvey Hill faced the coming storm. He watched the approach of the left of Sumner’s corps, which continued to press vigorously after the right had been repulsed by McLaws. Toward the sunken road two blue divisions, well supported, advanced steadily if slowly. Hill beat off the first attacks without great difficulty. Learning that R. H. Anderson had arrived in support, he frugally kept Anderson behind him as a second line. Soon came word that Anderson had fallen, severely wounded, and that the command had devolved on Roger A. Prior, senior brigadier. From that moment Anderson’s division ceased to act as a unit; it lacked leadership, direction, striking power. Hill realized that his division, unsupported, would have to bear the brunt of the next attack.

  That attack came speedily. The Federal left, driving gallantly forward, reached a position from which the bluecoats could enfilade part of the 6th Alabama in the sunken road. Colonel Gordon was down and unconscious with his fifth wound of the day. For orders
his lieutenant colonel, J. N. Lightfoot, hurried to Rodes, who was at his gallant best. Rodes was determined to hold fast to the sunken road by refusing his right. An order to that effect he gave Lightfoot, who turned at once to execute it.

  Soon afterward, returning from helping a wounded aide to the rear, Rodes stared in amazement at almost the whole of his famous brigade running back in confusion. Nothing had happened, so far as he could observe, to force a retreat. The enemy was not pressing the Alabamians; artillery fire was no more destructive than it had been. Yet his veterans were breaking for shelter as if they were raw recruits. He must rally them. He shouted, he commanded, he pleaded. It was to small purpose. Aided by Major E. L. Hobson of the 5th Alabama, he managed to rally only some 150 undaunted men under the shelter of a ridge about 150 yards from his position. The other survivors scattered.

  They had left the sunken road, Rodes learned, through a misunderstanding. Lightfoot had ordered the 6th to “about face and forward march.” Major Hobson naturally asked if the order was meant for the entire brigade. When Lightfoot mistakenly replied that it was, Hobson had started his regiment. The other troops assumed that the position was being evacuated and had broken for cover. George Anderson on the left of Rodes fought to hold his ground, but soon the rushing enemy turned him. Anderson himself was wounded. His brigade was driven and broken.