The battle had not been without fine performance. All phases of the advance had been admirable. Many individual officers had outdone their previous valiant records. In the annals of the artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia nothing was finer than the manner in which Tom Carter’s men had covered the retreat of the infantry. In the larger view, Early had put out of action between July 1 and October 20 the equivalent of a Federal corps or, roughly, as many Federals as he had infantry in any single engagement of the campaign. All this was against odds, not realized at the time, that often reached two and three quarters to one.
“It may be asked why with so small a force I made the attack,” Early wrote of Cedar Creek. A letter from General Lee, he went on, “had expressed an earnest desire that a victory should be gained in the Valley if possible, and it could not be gained without fighting for it.” That was bravely said, and truly said, but in the darkening autumn of the Confederacy it could not be stated in public. Early had retreated from Washington when it seemed within his grasp; he had been routed at Winchester, routed at Fisher’s Hill, routed at Cedar Creek. That could only mean incompetence, mismanagement, and the loss of confidence of his officers and men. So ran the public indictment. Under it, a disappointed South tried and condemned Old Jube and clamored for his head. Few there were to say that Early was acting in accordance with orders and in unquestioning loyalty, personal as well as military, to the chief he so much admired and so little resembled.
CHAPTER 34
In a Ring of Iron
1
DISCIPLINE AND DESERTION
When the grievous news of Early’s rout and Ramseur’s death reached army headquarters, Lee had with him again his senior lieutenant to share the heavier burden the defeat in the Valley imposed. Longstreet returned the day Cedar Creek was fought. Although his right arm still was half-paralyzed, he had taught himself to write with his left hand and cherished some hope of ultimate recovery.1 Long absence from the army had not destroyed the strategical complex he had developed during the Suffolk campaign. He was fertile in suggestion and vigorous in discipline from the hour he assumed command on the Northside.
Some of his wounded brigadiers and some of Hill’s had come back to the line. McGowan, Kirkland, and Lane had resumed command in August. Archer had been exchanged. A few others came later, but there was no replacing such men as Stuart, Rodes, Ramseur, and some of the brigade commanders who had been killed after the Wilderness. “Alas,” wrote war clerk Jones, when he set down the casualties of Third Winchester, “the chivalry have fallen!”2
In the hearts of some, hope was dying. Longstreet himself was losing faith in victory. Lee’s lieutenants had followed the news of the appointment of their magnetic comrade John Hood to succeed Joe Johnston in command of the Army of Tennessee; and early in September they read that Hood had evacuated Atlanta. All men could see then that the Southern cause was losing in Georgia, and not in Georgia only. Lee had been compelled on October 4 to warn Secretary Seddon that Richmond might be captured. November brought the re-election of Lincoln and the assurance of a fight to the finish. Among the less determined a certain apathy was showing itself. From the trenches of Petersburg a young artillerist wrote, “Living cannot be called a fever here but rather a long catalepsy.”3
If this were true among general officers, it was in the nature of the case more widespread among regimental and company officers. Their ranks had been decimated; regiments often were commanded by captains and not infrequently by lieutenants. As conditions grew worse, the zeal, the ambition, the courage, even, of some company officers were dissipated. Decline in the alertness of command had its inevitable effect on discipline. June had marked the first clear evidence that the fighting edge of the army was being dulled by doubt. By mid-August the change of spirit in the ranks was discernible. Cadmus Wilcox probably stated the case precisely when his wrote his sister-in-law, “I sometimes of late think they are not quite so full of ardour as they were the first two years of the war.”4
Probably the main reason in the early autumn for the wane in morale was that the stimulus of victory, which had been the specific for all the ills of the army, no longer could be applied. After the vain attempt to recapture the lines north of Fort Harrison, the Confederates took the offensive only when opportunity seemed large or necessity compelled. There was no great battle any day but a small battle every day. During these exchanges the Confederates could not hope to kill more opponents than the Federals themselves slew. The side numerically weaker of course had the heavier percentage of casualties. When the enemy was challenged, the odds usually were so adverse and the hardships so biting that Confederate morale was lowered, not raised.
An exception was the engagement of October 27. The Federals attempted to advance on both flanks. Longstreet repulsed them easily on the Northside by deciding correctly where the attack was to fall. Hampton’s men on the Southside, with help from Heth and Mahone, drove off in confusion two Federal corps. It was a brilliant addition to Hampton’s record, but bought at a price of personal anguish. In the action one of Hampton’s sons, Preston, was mortally wounded. The other boy, Wade, galloped to his brothers side. When the general himself arrived, Preston was dying and Wade was gasping from a bullet that struck him while he was ministering to Preston. Afterward Hampton said that no son of his must ever be in his corps again. The younger Wade, on recovery, must join some other command. “The agony of that day—and the anxiety and the duties of the battlefield—it is all more than a mere man can bear.”5
This notable action of October 27 was, to repeat, the exception. The infantry did not and could not leave the fortifications to taste the wine of stimulating success; rarely was there relief from the ghastly tedium of the trenches. In December the army received the last accession of strength it could hope to have. Kershaw’s division, or what remained of it, left Early to rejoin its old corps north of the James. Gordon’s and Pegram’s troops were started from Waynesboro for Richmond by train. Both divisions had increased somewhat through the recall of detailed men, the return of convalescents, and the assignment of conscripts, but numbers of the drafted men already were deserting. When a deep snow in the Valley made it reasonably certain that Sheridan could not move, Rodes’s division, under Bryan Grimes, was ordered back to the main army. By this movement, Early was left with no troops except Wharton’s fragment of a division, a few batteries, and a little force of cavalry.6
On December 18 the telegraph clicked off the ominous intelligence that a powerful Federal fleet had left Hampton Roads, presumably for Wilmington.7 It was imperative that Wilmington be defended. It was the only port into which blockade runners had a chance of bringing the supplies on which the life of the Confederacy depended. Hoke’s division, in consequence, was detached from the Army of Northern Virginia. Its commander would return no more. Hoke had been a superlative colonel and an excellent, hard-hitting brigadier. As a division commander he had one defect only, but it might have been fatal—he could not or would not cooperate.
In terms of fighting strength, the loss of Hoke cost the army in the trenches the equivalent of 70 per cent of the infantry Lee had gained by the return of the survivors of Early’s battles. Of men of all arms, presumably ready to fight, Lee had with him 51,776. Ewell’s Richmond command added 5,358, some of whom were local defense troops and reservists. Meade commanded 83,826 and Butler 40,452. The Confederates were outnumbered more than two to one. In equipment, in subsistence, in regularity of supply, in everything that made for the health, comfort, and contentment of the troops, the advantage of the Federals was even greater.8
This was a gloomy calculation with which to end a fatal year. There had been nothing to renew the faith of the army in itself, nothing to give it hope for 1865, nothing to relieve the wretched exposure of the trenches. “Lee’s Miserables,” as they sometimes called themselves, knew in their hearts that they had won no shining victory since Chancellorsville. Faith was gone that the Confederates elsewhere could withstand the enemy.
Hood had lost at Franklin and then at Nashville; Sherman had occupied Savannah; Fort Fisher at Wilmington had resisted successfully an attack, but a Confederate did not have to be a defeatist to admit that the enemy might come again and seal that last open port. In the face of this black prospect, the most determined soldiers refused to admit that the Southern cause would be destroyed. Others confessed privately that they did not see how the Confederacy could achieve its independence. Still others began to whisper that the end was near. Letters to the soldiers that expressed the confusion, misery, and despair on the home front fed these concerns.
Hunger deepened doubt. The notorious incapacity of the commissary was rendered daily worse by the wider Federal occupation of Southern territory and the inability of the railroads to deliver what food was available. In December there had been an acute shortage of meat. January witnessed still another crisis. The army’s reserve of food was reduced to two days’ short rations. February was to bring another time of hunger. “Taking these facts in connection with our paucity of numbers,” Lee wrote the secretary of war, “you must not be surprised if calamity befalls us.” This failure forced the retirement of chief commissary Northrop and the appointment of the able Brigadier General I. M. St. John. He improved the distribution of supplies; there remained the question whether enough could be brought to Virginia from the Carolinas to keep the army—both men and animals—from starvation.9
The result of weakened command, lack of victory, loss of hope, hunger, and alarm on the home front was desertion. After winter settled on the trenches in January, desertion literally multiplied. So many conscripts and even volunteers were leaving the ranks that rumors spread of impending desertion en masse. The nightly passage of men from the Southern to the Federal lines prompted a final, almost futile amnesty for the return of all deserters and a vain attempt by army commanders to stop the President’s reprieves and pardons. “Hundreds of men are deserting nightly,” Lee telegraphed the adjutant general on February 25, “and I cannot keep the army together unless examples are made.” Over a period of ten days in February, for the entire army, 1,094 men disappeared. The greater part of these went home, rather than to the enemy, but they took arms with them and could defy the provost marshal’s guard. By the beginning of March the Bureau of Conscription estimated that 100,000 deserters from the Southern armies were at large.10
The senior officers standing almost helpless in the face of desertion were themselves increasingly depleted in number. Governor Joe Brown of Georgia prevailed on Davis to detach Wofford and Rans Wright for service in their state. Many generals of brigade still were absent on account of wounds. Some were seriously sick. As of January 31,1865, Longstreet, with thirteen brigades, had one major general and seven brigadiers absent. In the Second Corps, Rodes’s division was without a regular leader; Early’s old division was under a brigadier; one brigade was without a commander; two other brigadiers were on leave. The Third Corps was in better condition, with three only of its thirteen brigadiers absent. By the end of February the showing was worse. Of the ten major generals of infantry, only four were present. Five divisions were commanded by brigadiers. Of the thirty-nine brigade commanders, twenty-one were on duty. Seventeen brigades were under regimental officers.
Qualified men to fill some vacancies could not be found. Several of the weakest brigades were not supplied with new general officers because, in all probability, the unexpressed purpose of Lee was to unite them with other units. Longstreet urged a specific plan: Regimental vacancies should not be filled but made good by the consolidation of regiments; companies should be reduced to six per regiment, which would involve the least disruption of organization.11 This plan was in itself an admission that most of the resources of command had been exhausted.
The personality of nearly all officers below corps command seemed to be submerged after the somber months of semi-siege. They had lost in the mud of the tangled trenches the glamour that had been theirs at Second Manassas or at Chancellorsville. Of those who retained their personality against this ugly background as the winter dragged wretchedly to its close, Longstreet stood out. He had gained the sturdy good health that always contributed to strengthen faith in him as a leader and as a fighting man. Although his loss of faith in victory became more pronounced, he neither voiced it nor permitted it to interfere with his duty. Of his division chiefs, Kershaw kept his fine, courageous spirit. Field was holding his division together with notable success. The other division of the First Corps, that of Pickett, had been employed as the mobile reserve of the army under the direct command of Lee. When Longstreet resumed command, Pickett guarded part of the outer defenses of Richmond. His case was somewhat mystifying. Although he was the senior major general of the army, Pickett was given no important detached command after his service at Petersburg in May 1864.
In the Second Corps, tragic change was ceaseless. Early had been left on the Waynesboro-Staunton front when the divisions of the corps were ordered back to Petersburg. Old Jube had little more than the equivalent of a brigade of infantry and a thin force of cavalry, under Lomax, to guard a wide area. Although defeated and discredited, Early held his head high and kept his tongue sharp. Public interest already had passed from him to John B. Gordon, who was acting commander of the Second Corps on the Richmond-Petersburg front and was gaining steadily in reputation. Gordon’s temperament and his propinquity to Lee gave him a special place during the winter. He became Lee’s principal confidant—as far as any man ever enjoyed that status.
Gordon’s divisions were in the hands of men of measurable competence. Early’s old division had been given to Ramseur and, after Ramseur moved over to command Rodes’s division after that officers death at Winchester, had passed to the command of its senior brigadier, John Pegram. This able young Virginian remained at that rank but exercised all the duties of a major general. Pegram had long been affianced to Hetty Cary of Baltimore, but his service in Tennessee and then his active duty with Lee and his wound had delayed the marriage. The day of their nuptials, January 19, 1865, was an event about which the Confederate capital talked excitedly. Eighteen days later John Pegram was killed in the trenches. His division passed temporarily to the recuperating James A. Walker.
Rodes’s division, after the death of Ramseur at Cedar Creek, was under the direction of its senior brigadier, Bryan Grimes of North Carolina, who had succeeded previously to the command of Junius Daniel’s brigade. On February 23, Grimes was made major general—the last officer of the Army of Northern Virginia to receive promotion to that rank. He was thirty-six and of quick and fiery temper, but in action showed judgment as well as skill and courage.
Gordon’s division did not receive a new major general because Gordon presumably would return to his old command if Early again led the corps; meanwhile it was under Brigadier General Clement A. Evans. The division still contained unhappy and uncooperative remnants of famous old brigades that could not endure amicably the loss of their separate existence. William Terry’s brigade included the fragments of thirteen Virginia regiments, among which were those of the Stonewall Brigade and other units of Jackson’s Army of the Valley. In York’s brigade were the survivors of no less than ten Louisiana regiments, including those of Dick Taylor’s old brigade.
In spite of the progressive impairment of his health, Powell Hill kept the command of the Third Corps stable to the extent that all three of his division commanders were with their troops. Harry Heth had his wife with him in Petersburg and once came under the half-amused suspicion of the commanding general that he did not visit his lines as frequently as he should. Neither Lee nor Hill had to prod Mahone. Since Mahone’s ambitions had been aroused by command of a division, his zeal had been complete and his service brilliant. Cadmus Wilcox was not happy. He thought often of transfer to the Trans-Mississippi Department so he could care for the widow and children of his recently deceased brother, Congressman John A. Wilcox of Texas. In this effort he failed, but dutifully he kept his troops in good condition; few di
visions had a smaller number of absentees and deserters.12
There was, in addition, a fourth corps under Dick Anderson, though after Christmas 1864 it contained only four brigades—Elliott’s, Grade’s, Matt Ransom’s, and Wise’s—and was in effect Beauregard’s old command from the defenses of Charleston. Until Hoke was sent to Wilmington, his division also had been under Anderson. These forces had been assigned Anderson after the departure of Beauregard and the return of Longstreet in order to preserve the separate status of the troops, assure their proper employment, and give Anderson a command in keeping with his rank. Dick Anderson himself was not in his old, easy mood. Ahead he could see the ruin of the Southern cause. He knew that his men had no faith in the future of the Confederacy and little spirit for the conflict that was certain to be renewed in a few weeks.13
The corps chiefs of artillery—Alexander on the Northside with Longstreet, Lindsay Walker on the Southside with Hill, Armistead Long in the Valley—discharged the active duties wisely and with little friction. After the excessive losses of guns in the Valley, there seemed no reason for retaining there, weaponless, so fine a combat officer as Tom Carter. With Braxton’s and Cutshaw’s battalions, he accordingly was brought back to the Richmond defenses and put in charge of the batteries of the Second Corps on that front. Stapleton Crutchfield, who had lost a leg at Chancellorsville, was able now to hobble about and was assigned to command the garrison at Chafin’s Bluff and the heavy artillery battalion of the Richmond defenses. William J. Pegram, now a full colonel, continued with the Third Corps on the Petersburg line. In the same corps and with like rank were David McIntosh and William T Poague. Because the cavalry needed more horses almost as badly as did the artillery, the officers of that service were gloomy and widely scattered. Lomax was to remain in the Valley, or near it, as long as he could. Tom Rosser was to return to the Richmond front in March.
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