2
“THE YANKEES GOT WHIPPED AND WE GOT SCARED”
While Early was employing in the Shenandoah Valley the Second Corps, Kershaw’s division, and Fitz Lee’s cavalry, the Confederate army on the Richmond-Petersburg front consisted of five divisions of the First and Third Corps, Beauregard’s command, and two divisions of cavalry. Most of these thin units had ceaseless trench duty and occasional hard fights in which they scarcely did more than hold off their adversary, who deliberately sought to exhaust them.
It was a grim story. On August 14 a strong demonstration was made against the eastern end of the Richmond defenses, where Charles Field of the First Corps commanded. In three days of small-scale fighting he was able to beat off the Federals; but during the fighting of the sixteenth, two brigades broke badly. “Not only the day but Richmond seemed to be gone,” wrote Field.27 While Lee was disentangling these units, his persistent opponent sought to seize the Weldon Railroad a few miles below Petersburg in the vicinity of Globe Tavern. In Lee’s absence, direction of the defense was in the hands of Beauregard.
Old Bory sent Powell Hill against the Federals with two brigades of Heth and three of Mahone. The result on August 19 was a fine local success, and 2,700 prisoners were taken; but the enemy could not be dislodged immediately from the railroad. Two days later, Hill again undertook to regain the Petersburg and Weldon, by employing Mahone. That officer attacked furiously but in vain. Through a mistake on the part of Hill and Mahone, Hagood’s brigade was caught inside an angle of the Union line and shattered. Hagood entered the action with 681 men; he brought out 274.28
This affair at Globe Tavern raised a question whether at the outset Beauregard had employed sufficient force. In the last stages of the fight there was room for disagreement concerning the reason for failure. Nobody could say that a particular commander had failed, or that any special move had been a mistake. Odds may of themselves have been an all-sufficient answer, but there had been a time when officers and men would have counted like odds as nothing more than a challenge. The operation, in a word, was disquieting.
Another test followed immediately. In a reconnaissance toward Reams’s Station, four and a half miles south of Globe Tavern, Hampton found the II Corps loosely disposed while tearing up a section of the railroad. Lee decided to attack at Reams’s Station in numbers adequate to the task. On August 24 the blow was struck. Heth and Wilcox attacked in front of the II Corps. Two of Wilcox’s brigades were repulsed roughly, but Hampton slipped to the left of the Federals, dismounted his men, and assailed the exposed flank. The II Corps was routed. More than 2,100 prisoners were taken at a price that probably did not much exceed 720.
This Battle of Reams’s Station could be accounted a Southern victory, but it did not recover the Petersburg and Weldon. Nothing would drive the Union troops away—and keep them away—except a bloody attack by more troops than Lee could afford to risk. Every aspect of the little battle and of every other engagement fought after the army left Spotsylvania underlined the solemn words Lee wrote Secretary Seddon the day before the fight at Reams’s: “Without some increase of strength, I cannot see how we can escape the natural military consequences of the enemy’s numerical superiority.”29
Apart from a brilliant “cattle raid” by Hampton and Rosser on September 16—a raid that gave hungry Confederates 2,468 beeves—there came no action of importance on the Richmond-Petersburg front till Winchester and Fisher’s Hill had been fought and lost. Then, on September 29, Grant delivered a surprise attack against Fort Harrison, below Chafin’s Bluff on the James. The fort itself was held by so small a force that its loss was no disgrace. Success in holding the next heavy work to the north, Fort Gilmer, was vastly to the credit of the few defending troops. It was manifest that the loss of Fort Harrison threatened the rear of the works at Chafin’s Bluff and thereby endangered the water gate to Richmond. Headquarters accordingly decided that the position must be retaken. Field’s and Hoke’s divisions and a brigade of Pickett’s were sent to the Northside to deliver the attack. A division of cavalry was placed in support, and Porter Alexander given twenty-four additional guns.
These preparations were made under the eyes of the commanding general. With employment of less force, victories had been won in ’62. Now, when the assault was delivered on September 29, nothing went well. Through some mistake, Tige Anderson advanced beyond his first objective and compelled Field to support him prematurely. Hoke’s attack was not coordinated with that of the other division. After both were driven back, Lee called on Hoke’s North Carolinians to make another charge. When this was repulsed, they tried a third time, only to fail so tragically that they did not halt until they were behind cover. Some of Hoke’s regiments were wrecked. The 8th North Carolina, which carried only about 175 officers and men into the first charge, had at the close of the action 25 men under the command of a lieutenant, the surviving senior officer. There was no denying that the operation had been no credit to any of the participating commanders.
While the infantry was storming Fort Harrison, Hampton’s cavalry struggled to hold a Federal advance on the right against the Southside Railroad, at Poplar Spring Church. Hampton drove the bluecoats wherever he met them, except for one contretemps. Colonel Joel R. Griffin of the 8th Georgia, replacing the ill James Dearing, commander of Beauregard’s cavalry, lost his entire position. Hampton appraised the affair generally as “one of the handsomest I have seen,” but—there was always a “but” now—the position wrested from Griffin was made by the Federals the basis for an extension of the front that Lee had sought to avoid. It was an extension that could not be met otherwise than at the direst risk.30
On October 7, under the direction of the commanding general, an effort was made to recover part of the line lost at Fort Harrison. Preparations were made with care. Everything went according to plan until it came Hoke’s turn to charge. For reasons never explained, he failed to assault. The result was heavy loss for the other units and abandonment of the effort to recover the lost line. Nothing was said publicly concerning Hoke’s responsibility for the failure; but not for the first time in this campaign had he failed to give his full cooperation in attack. The record was not inspiring. Hoke, as a division commander, manifestly was of the type that excels in individual performance, not in teamwork.31
To summarize the seven more important clashes during the period between the Battle of the Crater, July 30, and the abandonment of the effort to recover the works adjacent to Fort Harrison, this had been the performance of Lee’s lieutenants:
Federal attack of August 14-16: Successfully repulsed by Charles Field, but marred by the break of two brigades.
Affair at Globe Tavern: A Confederate failure in the sense that the enemy seized and held the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad, though he lost more than 3,100 prisoners. The action raised a question whether Beauregard at the outset used sufficient force.
Battle of Reams’s Station, August 24-25: A Confederate success, chiefly through Hampton’s effort, without permanent gain.
Cattle raid of September 16: Distinctly to the credit of Hampton and Rosser.
Attempt to recover Fort Harrison, September 29: A failure both in coordination of attack and in outcome.
Engagement at Poplar Spring Church, September 29-October 1: Tactically a fine success for Hampton, Butler, and Rooney Lee, in spite of the break of Griffin’s troopers; strategically a Union victory.
Assault on a section of the Richmond outer line, October 7: A repetition of the failure of September 29.
This was not a record of disgrace but it was a record far below the average achievement of the Confederate command at any comparable period in the Virginia campaigns fought under Lee—and it had been at heavy price in command. On August 16, the same day that Victor Girardy fell, Brigadier General John R. Chambliss was killed in fighting north of the James River. Thomas L. Clingman was wounded so severely in the leg, August 19, that his return to the army was doubtful. J. C. C. Sanders was mortally
wounded on the twenty-first, two weeks after his appointment to lead Perrin’s brigade. In September Brigadier General Goode Bryan resigned because of ill health. On the first of October fell John Dunovant, who had led Calbraith Butler’s brigade of Hampton’s cavalry division for slightly more than a month. Brigadier General John Gregg, he who had led the brilliant charge of May 6 in the Wilderness, was killed October 7. Add Godwin and Rodes killed in the Valley, and the number stricken off the list of active general officers during the two months past stood at nine.
There was another loss. With the command arrangements Beauregard had not been content. A deep grievance was the feeling that he, not Early, should have been given command in the Shenandoah Valley. Knowledge of Beauregard’s dissatisfaction probably led Davis to arrange a transfer—a supervisory command, the Military Division of the West. He was glad to go, if not to assume his new duties. There probably was little regret at his departure. A change had come over the man who at Manassas had been anxious to get Joe Johnston off the field so he might have a free hand. Old Bory seemed to be developing a dislike for the responsibility of action. It may have had its origin in a feeling, scarcely conscious perhaps, that he had a reputation to maintain. If he was concerned over his fame, he manifestly was nearing the end of his usefulness. Every soldier is on the wane from the moment he begins to think more of reputation than of opportunity.
That could not be said of Jubal Early. He was unwilling to accept the defeats at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill as the termination of the contest for the Shenandoah. In his camps near Staunton, after Sheridan had withdrawn northward, Early was meditating a new thrust at his adversary. In this he was encouraged by General Lee. Besides, reinforcements raised hopes. Kershaw and his division received a joyful welcome on their return to the Valley. Tom Rosser and his 600 men were regarded as a great accession; with Fitz Lee absent, wounded, Rosser assumed command of Lee’s division. By Early’s orders, he and Lomax soon challenged the enemy. On October 9, at Tom’s Brook, near Fisher’s Hill, they met the strong mounted divisions of George A. Custer and Wesley Merritt. The result was the rout of both Rosser and Lomax, with the loss of eleven guns and, Sheridan boasted, “everything else … carried on wheels.”32
Early was not deterred by this minor disaster from pursuing his offensive. He found Sheridan on the north bank of Cedar Creek, where he waited in the hope that his opponent would retire or attack. Sheridan did neither. “I was now compelled,” Early explained later, “to move back for want of provisions and forage, or attack the enemy in his position …, and I determined to attack.”
Early shaped a flank operation in consequence of a reconnaissance by Gordon and Jed Hotchkiss. Gordon was to take the three divisions of the Second Corps and in the darkness march wide to the right, his objective Belle Grove farm, thought to be Sheridan’s headquarters. Kershaw’s division was to follow a shallower arc to strike the left of the force Gordon was to attack in front. Wharton’s division, Breckinridge’s old command, was to move down the Valley Pike and join in the attack. Rosser was to engage the enemy’s cavalry opposite the Confederate left. Lomax’s troopers were detached to loop far to the east to reach the enemy’s rear. Rosser, Gordon, and Kershaw were to attack in that order at 5 o’clock, just before daylight, October 19.
It was an elaborate plan but it did not seem too ambitious for veteran troops. Everyone knew that some regiments did not have 50 per cent of their quota of officers, but this was accepted as a condition which could not be corrected and therefore should be disregarded. Most of the generals were confident; some were enthusiastic. Dodson Ramseur was full of excitement, and not solely because of the prospect of battle. An officer of the signal corps had delivered to him a somewhat mysterious message, “The crisis is over and all is well.”This meant that his baby had been born, but whether it was a boy or girl, and how the mother fared, he did not know. He wrote a hurried note asking for details, closing it boyishly, “Oh Me! I want to see you so bad!”33
Before dawn Gordon with the entire Second Corps was in position, waiting in the moon-lit shadows. Early, who marched with Kershaw, came within sight of the campfires of the sleeping enemy. It was a great hour for Jube, an hour of vengeance for Winchester and Fisher’s Hill. He ordered Kershaw to cross Cedar Creek. From the left came the sound of Rosser’s guns, from the right the rattle of Gordon’s picket fire. Everything was proceeding according to plan and time-schedule! Early’s black eyes must have kindled as he saw the Carolinians start forward. Their rush cleared the camp of the VIII Corps and carried them toward Belle Grove, where the XIX Corps was in confusion. Second Corps batteries galloped into place. There swelled from the rear of the Federals the furious fire of Gordon’s men. Early rode triumphantly forward and met Gordon. The Georgian reported many prisoners and guns. Next he met Ramseur and Pegram, who told him they were facing the VI Corps and needed support. Early sent them Wharton. Ramseur was in the highest spirits. “I want to win this battle,” he cried to Kyd Douglas, “for I must see my wife and baby!”34
Battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864.
The VI Corps now was rallying on what became known as the “second position” of the day. Units of the VIII and XIX fled beyond Middletown. General Wright’s VI Corps men had lost most of their guns in the first Confederate onrush, and by 10 o’clock, as bright sun drove away the morning fog, had to fall back to the “third position” where Crook’s troops and the XIX Corps were waiting the next turn of the battle. “His face,” a staff officer wrote of Early, “became radiant with joy, and in his gladness he exclaimed, ‘the sun of Middletown! The sun of Middletown!’” It was his Austerlitz.
“It is very well so far, General,” said Gordon, “but we have one more blow to strike.” Early did not appear to be impressed. “No use in that,” he said; “they will all go directly!” Gordon answered, “This is the Sixth Corps, General. It will not go unless we drive it from the field.” Early said only, “Yes, it will go too, directly.”
Writing of this years afterward, Gordon said, “My heart went into my boots.” Visions rose before him of the fatal halt on the first day of Gettysburg, of the hesitation to assault Grant’s exposed flank on May 6 in the Wilderness. Gordon said no more. What was deep in the mind of Old Jube at the moment, history will never know. It must have seemed incredible to him that a Federal army that had lost 1,300 prisoners and eighteen guns would attempt a stand. It had been beaten; it should be in retreat; it soon would be.35
As the forenoon passed, Early’s state of mind changed subtly and progressively from one of confidence to one of concern. His soldierly vigor was sapped by reports of his men turning back to plunder the enemy camps. The appearance of an increasing force of cavalry began to alarm him. At last, after hesitant delay and with manifest misgiving, he ordered Gordon to advance and drive the enemy from the third position. An initial repulse led Early to conclude that Gordon had abandoned the effort—in reality, Gordon saw this as a check only and was preparing to renew the assault—and he determined to suspend the offensive. “No orders came,” said General Wharton, “and there we stood….” By successive stages, then, the triumphant Early who had acclaimed the “sun of Middletown” was reduced to confusion and perplexity of mind.
Sheridan had been absent from the battle and, at the first news of it, threw himself on his horse and started for Cedar Creek. At 4:30 P.M., while the Confederates stood idle, he launched a swift, oblique attack exactly where it could do most harm—on the left. So thinly held was this flank that the Federals quickly found a gap in Gordon’s division. The left offered such resistance as it could, but collapsed quickly. Knowing their position hopeless, veteran troops started for Cedar Creek. When Kershaw’s and Ramseur’s divisions found that Gordon’s men had given way, they, too, started for the rear. Panic began to show itself. Presently, through the efforts of every officer who could wield a sword or shout a command, a halt was made. It was not for long. Leaders began to fall. Dodson Ramseur, never more magnificent in battle, received
a wound, which he ignored. When his horse went down under him, he changed to another. The second horse was shot. A moment later a bullet entered his right side and tore through both lungs. He was carried to the rear, but in his absence the temporary line sagged and broke.
This time there was no stopping the men. Tom Carter’s artillery maintained its discipline and continued to cover the mad retreat. Early rode furiously about in an effort to stop the infantry, and swore that if he could get even 500 men to make a stand the day could be saved. Instead of a rally, there came a new alarm. Blue cavalry reached the Valley Pike in the rear. All the vehicles captured during the morning, some that belonged to the Confederates, and forty-three pieces of artillery, Union and Confederate, were taken. Failing in another rally, Early had to retreat to New Market.36
In his report Early convinced himself that the pillaging of the Federal camps was the reason he had not pursued his advantage during the forenoon of the nineteenth. Yet he was too intelligent a man and too experienced a soldier not to know that he had blundered ruinously in failing to press the attack against the Federals’ third line. He showed this with curious naiveté. When he sent his report to Richmond by Jed Hotchkiss, the engineer entered in his journal that “General Early told me not to tell General Lee that we ought to have advanced in the morning at Middle-town, for, said he, we ought to have done so.” More bluntly, Jube told some of his officers, “The Yankees got whipped and we got scared.”37
Neither then nor thereafter—such was his peculiar ineptitude for dealing with cavalry—did Early realize how he had invited disaster by his optimistic detachment of almost half his mounted troops to operate against the rear of an adversary he hoped to rout. He never once admitted that he might have given his army protection by keeping Lomax immediately on his flank. Through the detachment of Lomax, the fatal delay at Middle-town, and a certain relaxation of grip after the action was joined, Early lost more than the 23 guns and 1,600 prisoners Sheridan captured. Irreplaceable veterans were lost by death and wounds. James Conner and Cullen Battle, brigadiers of much promise, were seriously wounded. Losses of regimental and company officers were so extensive that some commands were almost without leaders. Worst of all was the case of Dodson Ramseur. He had to be left in the hands of the enemy. At Sheridan’s headquarters Union doctors labored with a Confederate surgeon in a futile effort to save him. A defeat was doubled in cost when it took that superb young combat officer.
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