In these replies and exchanges, Jackson showed no confusion of mind and no fatigue. He had no symptoms of distress until, late in the day, he became slightly nauseated. For this malady and for sundry other ills Jackson previously had used the “water cure,” and with Dr. McGuire’s consent, wet towels were applied to his abdomen. The result, whether psychological or physiological, was entirely to Jackson’s satisfaction.
The long journey of twenty-four miles came to its end at 8:00 P.M. At Guiney’s he had accorded him a martial reception. The pleasant May skies became overcast. Clouds banked high. The rumble of thunder grew louder, and nearer. Lightning swept the forest. Salvo followed salvo as overwhelmingly sounded the artillery of the firmament. Was it the challenge of battles to be fought, or was it salute to the victor of Chancellorsville?30
At Fairfield it was found that the hospitable Chandlers already were entertaining a large company of refugees and sick and wounded soldiers. A less noisy place might be desirable. Dr. McGuire concurred with emphasis because he was told that a case or two of erysipelas had occurred in the main house. Instantly Mr. and Mrs. Chandler placed at the general’s exclusive disposal the office in the yard, a building quite similar to that which Jackson had occupied during the winter at Moss Neck. This was ideal! Jackson was conveyed in the ambulance to the door of the office and then carefully moved inside. He was placed on a bed in one of the two rear chambers. In this setting Jackson immediately was comfortable and relaxed. He ate some bread, drank a cup of tea, and ere long he quietly fell into normal sleep.
The cool morning of May 5, Jackson awoke in good condition. Dr. McGuire examined the wounds. The one in the right hand was giving little pain but McGuire thought the hand should be splinted to keep the fragments of bone at rest. No serious infection was discovered. The stump of the left arm was doing equally well. Some parts of it seemed to be healing by first intention. Granulation elsewhere was observable. Jackson ate with heartiness and began to speculate on the length of time he would be absent from duty. He was altogether cheerful. “Many,” he said to Smith, “would regard [these injuries] as a great misfortune; I regard them as one of the blessings of my life.”
“‘All things work together for good to them that love God,’” Smith quoted.
“Yes, that’s it, that’s it.”31
3
PROMOTION FOR RODES AND FOR JACKSON
After Anderson and McLaws rejoined the three divisions under Stuart, preparations were made for a renewal of the general offensive on the morning of the sixth. Wasted effort it was. During the night of May 5-6, Hooker recalled the last of his troops from the right bank of the river. Another “On to Richmond” had ended—as McDowell’s and McClellan’s and Pope’s and Burnside’s had—in retreat. The cost had been 17,304 Federal casualties. Lee’s had been 13,460, of which 6,039 had been in A. P. Hill’s and Rodes’s divisions.
Although Hooker proclaimed in general orders that “the events of the last week may swell with pride the heart of every officer and soldier of the army,” he personally had little of which to be proud. Strategically, his plan of containing a part of the Southern army at Fredericksburg, while turning Lee’s left up the Rappahannock, was as sound as it was simple. Tactically, the whole operation was discreditable to commanders who previously had done well. For the failure of his offensive, five major reasons may be cited.
First, Hooker did not have a staff organization capable of conducting simultaneously an attack in the Wilderness and another at Fredericksburg. The general attempted to clear all communications through his chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, at Falmouth. Butterfield failed to maintain liaison, but not because of any lack of effort or understanding; it was not the men but the equipment that failed. On so long a front, the wires and the instruments were not equal to the demands made on them. As Hooker’s own difficulties increased in the Wilderness, he made, in the second place, enlarged and perhaps excessive demands on Sedgwick, who during this campaign was much below the level of best performances. Next, the Federal command erred in its singular misapprehension of the strategic importance of Banks’ Ford, which if used to the fullest would have permitted Hooker to separate Early and Lee and kept them apart.
A fourth important factor in defeat was the feeble employment of Hooker’s artillery. Never had the strongest arm of the Federal service been so weak. This was due to the fact that Hooker limited Henry J. Hunt, his chief of artillery, to administrative duty. There was no unified control of the artillery. Misuse and nonuse of the guns was one indication only of the fifth principal failure of the Federal army, namely, a singular lack of coordination of the forces in the Wilderness. In the main, they fought separately as corps and more often as divisions. Hooker lacked the power to elicit that confident, whole-hearted cooperation of his lieutenants which is the cohesive of command.
All five of these failings were aggravated by two mistakes on Hooker’s part that were capitalized fully by his opponents. His initial blunder was in sending off virtually all his cavalry for operations against Lee’s lines of communication. The absence of the cavalry simplified the march of the Second Corps to the Federal right. Hooker could say in his defense that if the cavalry had done their full duty, they could have destroyed Lee’s lines of supply and compelled the Army of Northern Virginia to retreat or to attack Hooker on ground selected by him. Such an argument, of course, prepared the way for blaming the cavalry for the failure of the campaign.
Hooker’s second blunder is full of instruction. On May 1, the day Jackson arrived from Fredericksburg to reinforce Anderson, Hooker about 1:00 P.M. suspended his advance and soon afterward ordered a retirement into the tangled Wilderness. Why he did this he never explained fully, only that “as the passage-way through the forest was narrow, I was satisfied that I could not throw troops through it fast enough to resist the advance of General Lee, and was apprehensive of being whipped in detail.” All the vast preparations of the Federal army and all the advantages that had been won by a surprise crossing of the Rappahannock were thrown away in that single decision. From that hour, the initiative in the Wilderness was with Lee.32
Notable the victory was, if not overwhelming, but it was no surprise to the people of the Confederacy. “A Glorious Confederate Victory” the Richmond Dispatch blazoned its editorial. Some surprise was voiced that the North was not stampeded: The South must work to make the most of what the army had gained; a blow must be struck again before the enemy had time to recover. The most discerning appraisal of Chancellorsville was the Richmond Whig’s, pointing out that it was “a battle of maneuver in which we beat the enemy utterly in strategy.” In addition, the Whig summarized, “there was no straggling or disorganization” and “our artillery is at last perfected”—a most intelligent observation.33
Satisfaction was dampened from the first by the news of the wounding of Jackson, but of other casualties, though they were many, little was said. The most distinguished of those killed in action was Franklin Paxton, who fell on the morning of May 3. Five colonels had been slain and a larger number of other field officers. Besides Jackson, six general officers were wounded: The new Louisiana brigadier, Francis T. Nicholls, lost a leg; Samuel McGowan was injured seriously; Ramseur, Heth, Pender, and Hoke were hit but not dangerously. Most of the men in Jackson’s party when it came under fire were killed or wounded. Among the dead was the chief topographical engineer of the Second Corps, J. K. Boswell. Dead, also, was Channing Price, who never rallied from the loss of blood suffered in the reconnaissance of May 1. Stapleton Crutchfield survived the wound that cost him a leg, but from his post as Second Corps chief of artillery he would be absent for months.
Crippled was the mildest word to describe the condition of the command of the Second Corps. In D. H. Hill’s (Rodes’s) division, 30 officers were killed, 148 wounded, and 59 missing—a total of 237. Ere the battle ended A. P. Hill’s division had four successive commanders—Hill, Heth, Pender, and Archer. The brigade of McGowan, formerly Gregg’s, finished the a
ction of May 3 under its third colonel. Colston’s brigade entered the fight under its senior colonel and emerged under its fifth-ranking officer, a lieutenant colonel. Lane’s regimental leadership was almost destroyed. The 26th Alabama of Rodes’s old brigade was led, during the final hours, by a lieutenant.
Like losses in command had been met and endured by the Army of Northern Virginia: Was there a point beyond which competent successors to fallen officers could not be found? If that question occurred to any besides General Lee himself, an optimistic answer was taken for granted. Neither the civil authorities nor the press said anything to indicate that they considered attrition of command in terms of crippling cumulative loss of the bravest from Williamsburg to Chancellorsville, over a period of precisely one year.
The same grim process of attrition was wearing to feebleness some of the most reliable units of the army. The Stonewall Brigade never was itself in full might after Chancellorsville. The 22nd Virginia battalion lost 45 of its 102 men and, as the next engagement was to prove, lost its fighting edge also. In Lanes brigade, nearly one third of the entire command was put out of action during the first assault on the morning of May 3. These casualties, men might say, could be made good by bringing into the army the thousands who were evading military duty. The veterans would shame the conscripts into fighting. Perhaps it would be so. Was there not also a possibility that the best men were in the ranks already and, as they fell, would be irreplaceable from the small white population of the South?
Nor could the balance sheet of command be drawn immediately after Chancellorsville entirely in terms of killed and wounded. The battle had created certain doubts at the same time it had confirmed judgments. Competence as well as attrition had to be taken into account.
First might be written down the principal credit entries. At the head of the list, next to the commanding general himself, stood Jackson, of course. His performance had not been flawless. The start on May 2 had been late; the march had not been brilliant; Jackson had not maintained regular communication between van and rear; into the attack he had been able to throw no more than six of his twelve brigades. All of this was defective technically; but the wisdom of the plan, the vigor of the conception, and the fury of the attack were superlative. At the time, the secrecy of the march, the surprise of the enemy, and the climax of the wounding of Jackson had an imaginative appeal that made men ignore minor shortcomings which today are plain and instructive. Anyone who criticized Jackson’s leadership at Chancellorsville would have raised in Southern minds a question concerning his own sanity and patriotism.
For the manner in which Jeb Stuart assumed and exercised command of the Second Corps he was most elaborately complimented by Lee and Powell Hill. Within limits, this was deserved. Stuart had taken courageously at midnight the direction of a situation so confused that staff officers could not have explained it to a newcomer even had those officers been at hand. From daylight on the third Stuart pressed the attack. To be sure, his forces soon were piled up, immobile, on his right; but was that his fault? The advance from the south facilitated the last successful stage of his attack, an advance directed by Lee and executed by Dick Anderson. Neither of those modest men was of a nature to dispute any assertion by Stuart, who never failed, in his reports, to make the most of his achievements. The main consideration in just appraisal of Stuart’s service is the difficult one of ascertaining his responsibility for the decisive concentration of artillery at Hazel Grove. At least as much credit belonged to Porter Alexander as to Stuart, but the entry at the time was made on the account of the cavalryman. Even then, as will develop, Stuart was not satisfied with the praise given him.
Next after Stuart, reports seconded Jackson in applauding the soldierly performance of Robert Rodes. The handling by him of D. H. Hill’s fine division was in keeping with the quality of the troops. On the field, astride his black, froth-covered horse, Rodes was a superb figure. His “eyes were everywhere, and every now and then he would stop to attend to some detail of the arrangement of his line or his troops, and then ride on again, humming to himself and catching the ends of his long, tawny mustache between his lips.” All in all, Rodes’s leadership had about it something Jacksonian. As Lee wished both to reward Rodes and to please Jackson, he asked immediately for Rodes’s promotion, with assignment to the division he had led against the flank of Hooker. The President appointed Rodes a major general on May 7 to rank from May 2—the nearest approach the army had known to promotion on the field for valor.34
It would have been easy, even at the time, to have raised many questions concerning Jubal Early’s handling of the situation at Fredericksburg. Did he make proper dispositions, or did he concentrate too heavily on the right and leave too great a defensive task to Barksdale? How much of the credit due Early for operations on the afternoon of May 3 belonged to Cadmus Wilcox? Was Early’s plan of operations for May 4 too elaborate? In describing events of May 4, did Early assert too much for Gordon and did he thereby depreciate Barksdale? The last only of these matters came under review. Barksdale heard a report that Early said Gordon’s troops “had recaptured Marye’s Hill on the 4th that Barksdale lost on the 3rd.” This aroused the Mississippian. He adduced proof that one of his scouts had gone to the heights before Gordon arrived, and found there only a group of ladies from the town looking after the wounded; and, further, that two of his lieutenants had already secured the heights when Gordon “stormed” them.35
This brief controversy served to show that Early’s achievements lost nothing in his recountal of them, but the achievements themselves were solid enough. He was subjected at a post of danger and difficulty to the impact of misstated orders and the uncertainties of attack by an overpowering foe. In the face of this, and of a doubtfully efficient handling of part of his artillery, Old Jube had kept his head. Without excessive loss of men or ground, he, with Wilcox, had frustrated an essential part of the Federal plan, that of an attack by Sedgwick on the rear of Lee’s army.
In Lee’s report Dick Anderson received commendation he honestly had earned. He fought admirably at Chancellorsville and did much to hold the Confederate right while Jackson struck on the left. The South Carolinian, said Lee, was “distinguished for the promptness, courage, and skill with which he and his division executed every order.”36 Always it was Anderson’s nature to take the largest blame and the least praise. At Chancellorsville, as previously, he merited far more than ever he would have thought of claiming. He never seemed to realize that his side-slipping to the left and his subsequent attack to the northward at the climax of the fighting on May 3 exhibited tactics of the first order.
Cadmus Wilcox, said Lee, was “entitled to especial praise for the judgment and bravery displayed” in impeding Sedgwick “and for the gallant and successful stand at Salem Church.”37 A memorable example Wilcox afforded of the manner in which emergency and responsibility on occasion lift men of certain types far above their average performance. On May 3 he reasoned intelligently and promptly when he should leave Banks’ Ford. Then, instead of joining Early, he took his chance of being destroyed in order that he might delay the advance of the enemy on the Plank Road. Never before had such an opportunity come to Cadmus Wilcox; never again was he to have another such; but it could be said that of the one supreme day he had made the most.
Others there were who had done well. Heth had not failed the expectations of Lee, his sponsor. Dodson Ramseur had given a fine example of what a fighting brigadier should be. Said Dorsey Pender in full knowledge of what the words meant, “Ramseur covered himself and Brigade with glory.” George Doles had proved himself the peer of Ramseur. Gordon’s quick movement on the morning of May 4 was commended, though Early had to say that if Gordon had not been successful, he would have been forced to court-martial the Georgian for starting before the other brigades were prepared to move.38
As always, the impersonal army itself deserved more praise than any person. Company officers and men in the ranks of the infantry had distinguished
themselves so greatly that few officers were disposed to dwell on the unhappy morning hours of May 3 when hundreds of veteran soldiers had huddled under the breastworks south of the Plank Road. Instead, there were valiant deeds beyond counting to report. Like commendation now could be given the artillery as a whole. This was Lee’s language: “To the skillful and efficient management of the artillery the successful issue of the contest is in great measure due.” Jackson, from his bed, credited the new power of the artillery arm, as did Stuart, to the recently established battalion system. Porter Alexander’s account of the ease with which guns were concentrated at Hazel Grove confirmed all that his superiors said.39
Fine as much of this conduct was at Chancellorsville, a few men had failed or, at best appraisal, had not fulfilled their opportunities and had made doubtful or dangerous their retention in command. Raleigh Colston, in particular, was not commended in Lee’s report. In the commanding generals official narrative, where there had been so much to approve in the conduct of so many, failure to include a word of praise for the commander of one of the three divisions that delivered the attack on Hooker’s right could not be regarded otherwise than as censure.
What was the nature of Colston’s failure? The records are vague, but when silences are probed and obscure references are traced down, it would appear, in the first instance, that Colston lost his grip on his troops during the early morning hours of May 3 and did not recover it that day. This was not surprising, if it be recalled that Colston had led men in battle only twice before—once briefly at Williamsburg, and again at Seven Pines. In neither instance had his responsibility gone beyond his brigade. At Chancellorsville he had a division with which he had little acquaintance, a division in which only one brigade went into the action of May 3 under a brigadier general; the three others were led by colonels. During the battle the different brigades of his division fought under twelve and lost eight commanders. Three of these were killed, five wounded. In these circumstances, surely, it was not surprising that the division became, in Powell Hill’s phrase, “somewhat broken and disordered.”
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