When the stiffness of Hill’s terms was perceived, Mr. Davis was unwilling to put laudation into orders. As Cooper reminded Hill, “to express in orders ‘undiminished confidence’ in an officer would be unprecedented in military history.” Harvey Hill therefore remained at home, and with the exception of one brief period of service, had for a long time no other duty than that of reporting monthly that he was awaiting orders. His friends shared his belief that the President held him, more than anyone else, responsible for the agitation against Bragg after the Battle of Chickamauga.33
Early in December 1862, Major General Samuel Jones had somewhat reluctantly assumed command of the Department of Western Virginia. Strictly speaking, Jones did not then become an officer of the Army of Northern Virginia, but as his department was under the supervision of the commander of that army, Jones was one of Lee’s lieutenants. A West Pointer of the class of 1841, Jones had been Beauregard’s chief of artillery at Manassas and afterward served at Pensacola and commanded a division in Kentucky and Tennessee. He was by birth and manner a gentleman and had excellent training as a professional soldier. There was every reason to hope that he would be successful in the defense of a region which included the major iron, lead, and salt mines of the Confederacy.
Expectations were not realized. Jones had to direct a department which, as he wrote subsequently, “has had the reputation of being cursed with intrigue and political plotters ever since the war commenced.” He found politicians among the soldiers, but few soldiers among the politicians. The traditional shortcomings of the detached commander would have been forgiven Jones had he been successful in dealing with Federal raids into southwest Virginia. When he failed in this, even the patient Lee lost faith in his aggressiveness. A change in commanders seemed imperative. Largely at the instance of Lee, a decision was reached by February II, 1864, to relieve Jones. His manful reply—in contrast to the usual protests of the displaced—was that “I await the orders of the President, feeling confident that he will not assign me to any duty which I will not perform cheerfully and to the best of my ability.”34
When it was suggested that Jones’s successor might come from the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee appraised some of his own lieutenants in reviewing possible appointees. He expressed “great confidence” in Early, Rodes, Edward Johnson, Wilcox, and John B. Gordon. Simon Buckner and Robert Ransom were mentioned.35 The President’s final choice was John C. Breckinridge, former vice president of the United States. Samuel Jones was sent to Savannah and then to Charleston, where he remained in command till W.J. Hardee arrived and took charge in the autumn of 1864.
The difficulties of Samuel Jones, Harvey Hill, and Longstreet were more serious than any that arose in the winter of 1863-64 among the troops immediately under Lee; but even there jealousies and unhappy differences arose. The most serious of these troubles developed around Jube Early.
On Ewell’s recovery from his sickness, immediately after the Mine Run campaign, Early’s relief from active field duty proved brief. The troublesome Federal commander W. W. Averell undertook on December 8 a long raid through the Allegheny Mountains to the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Averell reached that supply line at Salem, Virginia, destroyed a large quantity of cereals, and tore up several bridges and some miles of track. It was certain that Averell would attempt to return by roads that passed west of Staunton. If Confederate forces moved swiftly and in superior force, Averell might be captured. Early was assigned this exciting task. He hurried to Staunton, but bad weather slowed the march of this troops. Lack of correct intelligence led him to dispatch his cavalry in the wrong direction. The enemy got off unscathed. Early wrote a sour, disappointed report, which was accepted by Lee as adequate explanation of the reason nothing was accomplished.36
Now that Old Jube was in the Shenandoah Valley, he was directed to stay there temporarily and undertake to collect supplies. His expedition toward Moorefield and Petersburg, hampered by bad weather and icy mountain roads, was limited to the capture of a considerable ordnance train and a drove of cattle. Early was disappointed, particularly with Imbodens brigade of irregular cavalry, and professed himself much inconvenienced by the lax discipline of these forces. Then, when a lieutenant of Imboden’s brigade murdered a sergeant in Staunton, Early exploded violently.
It was one of Early’s vices that when an incident of this sort occurred, he would not act and forget. He would act and continue to talk. In private conversation, Old Jube asserted, frequently and vehemently, that Imboden’s brigade was inefficient, disorganized, undisciplined, and unreliable. Jubal Early, in short, acquired a violent dislike of the troopers who garrisoned the Valley and probably, without being aware of it, became prejudiced against cavalry in general. Certain it is that he made no effort to acquaint himself with that arm or to study its place in tactical cooperation. For this neglect, whatever its origin, he was doomed to pay.
Imboden resented Early’s remarks and asked a court of inquiry. Lee saw that nothing could be gained and much might be lost by angry exchange at a court, and found it not “advantageous” at present. There the matter rested, but it was not without value and warning. Old Jube had snarled and sneered privately from the beginning of the war; now he was careless, if not loud, in his condemnation of those he did not approve. It was not a change of character that would improve leadership in the Second Corps.37
A controversy between Early and Tom Rosser was avoided by curious circumstances. The recently wed Rosser had made an unauthorized visit to his bride in Staunton, to which Early took exception. While the matter was still unpleasantly fresh in Jube’s mind, a new raid was undertaken against Moorefield and Petersburg in western Virginia. This time Rosser was senior officer of cavalry. He had the best of luck and captured ninety-three loaded wagons, fifty of which were removed safely. His conduct was in everyway so admirable on the raid that Early forgave him and urged the confirmation of Rosser’s appointment as brigadier—a wish that at length was realized. Rosser’s career went on in high promise with the encouragement and sometimes with the scolding of Jeb Stuart. The morale of the brigade was excellent. All the men re-enlisted in a manner that gave Stuart a text for the exhortation of other commands. In the Valley Rosser himself began to take on some of the romance of Turner Ashby.38
If Early was pleased over Rosser’s rise and unrepentant of his sneers at Imboden’s troops, his difficulties with these two were not comparable in evil potentialities to the change that now began to take place in Early’s relations with his oldest, most devoted friend in the army, Dick Ewell. Old Bald Head was not then in good physical condition. While his sickness prior to the Mine Run campaign had been brief, his general enfeeblement had given deep concern to army headquarters. During the Bristoe operations Lee was in daily fear that Ewell would wear himself out or collapse under his duties. In spite of Ewell’s surprising agility on horseback, his wooden leg was of poor design and made his movements uncertain.
When it was suggested in Richmond that Ewell, instead of Lee, might be sent to succeed Bragg, Lee had to answer: “General Ewell’s condition, I fear, is too feeble to undergo the fatigue and labor incident to the position.” A proposal that Ewell go to Tennessee and take Longstreet’s command, and that Longstreet return to direct the Second Corps, Lee disapproved on many grounds. In January Ewell had a bad fall when his horse slipped in the snow. He made light of the accident, but Lee did not. The whole undertone of Lee’s counsel was one of doubt whether the chief of the Second Corps could meet the strain of open campaigning.39
Ewell chose to continue where he was and to give the country his best. The same choice was that of Mrs. Ewell, who had joined her husband on the Rapidan in the late autumn of 1863. In her influence over him, some of those around Ewell thought they saw another evidence of what they began frankly to consider a decline of mental as well as of physical power. Doubtless they confused the psychological effect of the loss of a leg with that of the acquisition of a wife. Once she married him, she managed him, and not him
only. Said Colonel James Conner, who saw both the general and the lady at close range: “She manages everything from the General’s affairs down to the courier’s who carries his dispatches. All say they are under petticoat government.”
Mrs. Ewell’s son by her first marriage was the able Campbell Brown, one of Ewell’s assistant adjutants general, and her interest in the welfare and advancement of husband and son was equal. That she was overzealous and too active at least one observer at headquarters was convinced. According to Colonel Conner, “Mrs. Ewell [has] the best intentions in the world no doubt, and the very cleverness which would at other times render her agreeable has only tended to make her more and more unpopular.” Thomas T. Turner, one of Ewell’s aides, spoke up on the matter: “Old Ewell told me he had never exposed Campbell but once and then was so miserable until he came back he did not know what to do: ‘If anything had happened to him, I could never have looked at his mother again, sir’” Turner added, “Hang him, he never thinks of my mother, I suppose, for he pops me around, no matter how hot the fire is.” The case of Mrs. Ewell, while amusing, was not without an ominous aspect. It boded no good for the Second Corps or for the campaign of 1864 when so able and fair-minded a man as James Conner could speak of Dick Ewell as a “fond, foolish old man … worse in love than any eighteen-year-old you ever saw.”40
As senior major general of the Second Corps, Early of course realized that if Ewell were disabled he would assume command temporarily, perhaps permanently. In her turn, the clever Mrs. Ewell reasoned that if her husband was thought to be incapacitated for duty, Early would supplant him, and she soon became suspicious of Jube. It is impossible to say whether she had any direct part in a curious and obscure incident that occurred some weeks after Early’s return from the Valley. For reasons not now determinable, Ewell found Early so much at fault in some incident that he had to arrest him, April 26, for conduct “subversive of good order and military discipline.” The controversy reached General Lee, who dismissed it with a statement that Early was at fault, and that harmony among officers was imperative. Restraint must have been shown by those involved, because no echo of it appears in the records. Inwardly, the affair did nothing to lower Early’s self-opinion. He never had been more ambitious and more confident of himself, or more intolerant of others, than he was as the spring of 1864 approached.41
The army itself, the always-impersonal but always-observant army, was as confident as Early. What thousands believed, Dodson Ramseur wrote on April 15: “I feel so hopeful about the coming campaign. I have never felt so encouraged before.”42 He was influenced, no doubt, by the events which, in the opinion of the troops, indicated that the Army of the Potomac lacked initiative.
Mine Run had been followed in February by a curious affair at Morton’s Ford on the Rapidan. On the sixth the Federals pushed a brigade across the river toward high ground in rear of the ford. A second and then a third brigade crossed in support. Ewell, arriving promptly, directed an easy defense with his old-time skill. The next dawn showed the Federals back on the left bank of the river; by the eighth they had disappeared from the ford. Lee regarded it merely as a foray “intended to see where we were,” but Ewell’s men were pleased, and the army felt its old sense of superiority to the enemy.43
At the end of February, Federal cavalry made on Richmond an attack which the Confederates styled “Dahlgren’s Raid.” The aim of the enterprise was to release the Federal prisoners in the Confederate capital. Boldness and a measure of skill were shown in the advance, but it was repulsed with some loss. The raid served the Confederates usefully in this respect: Those who examined the body of the slain Colonel Dahlgren reported that they found on it papers in which the raiders were instructed to burn Richmond and to kill President Davis and his Cabinet. Evidence of this purpose inflamed to new fury the fighting spirit of the South.44
Efforts, also, to recover some of the towns on the tidal estuaries of eastern North Carolina served to strengthen further the confidence of the army. Most noteworthy was the expedition against Plymouth, on the Roanoke River close to the point where it empties into Albemarle Sound. Braxton Bragg developed a plan for the surprise of Plymouth using troops under Brigadier General R. F. Hoke and the Confederate ram Albemarle. On April 20, by the shrewd use of his artillery and with the valiant employment of the new ram, Hoke forced the surrender of Plymouth and its garrison. The country was thrilled. Davis telegraphed his congratulations and promoted Hoke major general from the date of the battle. Hoke was more than ever a marked young soldier. Little or no credit was given to Bragg, who did the basic planning and collected the troops when it seemed impossible to find men enough for the expedition.45
Insistent appeals by Lee for the return of Hoke’s brigade and of the other troops loaned for operations in southern Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee were based on the certainty that the Federals would advance from the Rapidan as soon as the roads were dry. Davis and Bragg had become convinced at the beginning of April that Johnston would not assume the offensive in Tennessee, and they accordingly saw no reason for retaining Longstreet in East Tennessee. On April 7 he was ordered to Charlottesville, whence he could be advanced either to Lee on the Rapidan or to the defense of the Richmond-Petersburg area. Lee was notified the next day that Longstreet was returning. The First Corps reached Charlottesville and then camping grounds at Gordonsville. There, to all observers, the decline in the size of the corps and the depreciation of its equipment were manifest and serious. Longstreet received all the help army headquarters could give him in making good his losses.46
Laws brigade had been kept in Tennessee, with its commanding officer under arrest, but Lee prevailed on the War Department to order these excellent troops to unite with their division. The charges against Law, said Cooper, would not be considered further. When Longstreet learned of this, he delivered to the commanding general an ultimatum of a sort he knew his chief would support: “If my efforts to maintain discipline, spirit, and zeal in the discharge of official duty are to be set aside by the return of General Law and his restoration to duty without trial, it cannot be well for me to remain in command….It is necessary, therefore, that General Law should be brought to trial upon the charges that have been preferred against him, or that I be relieved from duty with the Confederate States service.” Army headquarters, of course, was not prepared to have Longstreet resign at a time when Ewell was in precarious health and the enemy was expected to launch an offensive any day. Accordingly Longstreet learned that Lee had forwarded his ultimatum to Richmond and advised that a court-martial be ordered. “I would recommend that General Law be relieved of duty until an investigation can be had.”47
In Longstreet’s case, in Early’s and in Ewell’s—to say nothing of Sam Jones’s and Harvey Hill’s—the winter had wrought curious reversals. Edward Johnson, Hoke, and Rosser had gained in reputation. In addition to these three, no less a person than the army’s chief of artillery received new prestige. General Pendleton made a long tour of the South to prepare a plan for the more effective use of Johnston’s artillery. Remarkably, his plan pleased both the administration and General Johnston. So favorably did he impress Davis that later in the year, after the death of Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, the President was to ask Lee whether Pendleton would be a qualified successor. “As much as I esteem & admire Genl Pendleton,” Lee replied, “I could not select him to command a corps…. I do not mean to say by that he is not competent, but from what I have seen of him, I do not know that he is.”48 Pendleton was destined to stay and mildly to share the adventures of his juniors, who left him little to do. With the battalion and battery chiefs, the great question mark of the campaign was not whether Pendleton went or remained, but whether the horses could survive hard work, poor shoeing, and half-feed.
The cavalry raised that same question, but, for the rest, they were the one arm of the service that approached the spring battles with least reason to be concerned over command. Stuart was in flawless health and, surely, mor
e qualified by experience than ever he had been to direct the two divisions. They were well led and had, in the main, those brigadiers who best had earned leadership.
These, then, to summarize, had been the changes during the winter of 1863-64 in the army command:
Longstreet had failed in a semi-independent command and had failed equally to maintain peace in his corps; his interest in strategy continued despite discouragements; a bitterness toward the administration had developed in his heart. He was less the imperturbable “Old War Horse” and more the aggrieved, restive lieutenant who thought all the authorities, except Lee, arrayed against him.
Of Longstreet’s three division commanders, McLaws was fighting to be restored to his post. His fate was then uncertain. Hood was promoted and transferred to another army and was succeeded not by Micah Jenkins, as Longstreet wished, but by Charles W. Field, who had never led a division in action and had not served in the field since Second Manassas. Pickett was in charge of the Department of North Carolina and was out of touch with the corps.
Ewell of the Second Corps was not in good condition physically. There was some question whether he was mentally the man he had been before his wound or, in spirit, the fighter he had been before his marriage. His senior lieutenant, Early, was in a strange, confident, perhaps overbearing state of mind. Rodes had not developed, though he had not lost the good opinion of the commanding general. Edward Johnson had done well at Mine Run and had earned the good opinion, in particular, of Lee. Suggestion had come from Richmond that Johnson was needed elsewhere, in circumstances that might have led to his promotion to lieutenant general. Regretful as Lee was to deny Old Allegheny such a post, he had to tell the President that he could not spare Johnson.
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