This portrait photograph of Brigadier General Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson was taken on 26 April 1863, a few days before he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
McDowell took the initiative when, on 16 July 1861, he marched his army away from Washington in the direction of Manassas. Forewarned by spies in Washington, Beauregard drew up a defensive line behind the Bull Run River, stronger on the right than on the left, because he expected McDowell to try to capture the rail junction. Union troops made slow progress, but information from his scouts about the strength of the Confederate line forced McDowell to change his original plan to turn the enemy’s right flank and to undertake instead a large sweeping movement against the exposed and weaker left flank. At mid-morning on 21 July, the leading Union units, after marching for hours in a scorching summer heat, were finally ordered to assault the smaller Confederate force in front of them. Both armies fought with great courage and a raw military skill that belied their improvised training, but at times they also displayed a tactical ineptitude that only experience would overcome. For most, this was a terrible baptism of fire. Men watched companions blown to pieces or bayoneted to death. Some soldiers had only a makeshift uniform, so that many on each side wore the same colour, resulting in a great deal of confusion on the battlefield as friend and foe merged into one. An unknown number of men on both sides fell to the shells and musket balls of their comrades. The most exposed of all were the northern zouave regiments, dressed in imitation of French soldiers with baggy red trousers, an easy target for Confederate marksmen.
A painting by the American artist Sidney E. King (1908–2002) depicts the ‘Capture of Ricketts’ Battery’ from the First Battle of Manassas during the American Civil War. He painted a series of pictures of Civil War scenes for the National Parks Service. The painting shows the capture of the Union artillery in the battle for Henry Hill.
McDowell’s strategy might well have worked had he been able to concentrate his forces and co-ordinate their movements, but his regiments were fed in piecemeal on a narrow front, made harder by the hills, woods and rivers across which the battle was fought. The smaller Confederate force on the left was pushed back in disarray from Matthew’s Hill, and a new line was formed on Henry Hill (named after the Henry House, whose senior occupant, the widow Judith Henry, refused to move and was killed by a shell). At this point the Union column of around 15,000 men could have swept forward against a demoralized Confederate force of little more than 3,000, but McDowell, riding among his men with shouts of ‘Victory is ours!’, delayed the pursuit. Beauregard moved more men to the left and Johnston’s forces, arriving pell-mell from the railhead, supplied fresh reinforcements. On Henry Hill both sides threw in regiments one after the other, charging and falling back in a confused mêlée, with no clear evidence of victory for either side.
It was at this point that Jackson set up his defensive line with his Virginia regiments. General Barnard Bee, riding behind the lines, shouted out, ‘Look at Jackson there standing like a damn stone wall.’ Bee was killed shortly afterwards, and the meaning of his words has been much debated. But whether he was censuring Jackson for not being more active or applauding the stoicism of his troops, Jackson inspired the Confederate army to stand and fight and prevented a Union victory. By late afternoon, the Union regiments, still being sent in one after the other, were nearing exhaustion. Jackson ordered his Virginians to fix bayonets and charge, shouting at the tops of their voices. The cry (later described as ‘Woh-who–ey!’) was a terrifying hurrah that stoked up Confederate morale and struck fear into Union units that were already starting to dissolve under the barrage of constant fire.
Henry Hill was retaken and slowly the Confederates pushed their enemy back. By 4 p.m., with Confederate reinforcements evening up the balance between the two sides, Beauregard sensed that the Union was a fading force. He ordered a general advance against the whole enemy front, which rapidly collapsed. Despite exhortations from the officers, the Union soldiers had had enough of the carnage, heat, hunger and thirst and fled in disarray towards Washington. The Confederate officers ordered a pursuit, but soon halted when they realized that their own men were in the same state. Victory was not complete, but it was enough to ensure that the Civil War would not be over in ninety days. It would be fought to the death over four grimy years in which the soldiers of both sides learned how to fight and die. Jackson died of pneumonia two years later after the Battle of Chancellorsville where he was shot in error by his own side. The courage shown by his Virginians at Manassas Junction made ‘Stonewall’ Jackson a symbol for the undeviating resistance of the south against the fading odds of war.
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No. 79 BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
1–3 July 1863
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The battle that raged for three July days in 1863 around the junction town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, provoked extraordinary stories of courage and endurance on both sides in America’s Civil War. On the third day a young Union cavalryman, George Armstrong Custer, at twenty-three the youngest brigadier in the Army of the Potomac, led his 7th Michigan troopers in a charge against the approaching Confederate cavalry. ‘Come on you Wolverines!’ he called, and was at once caught up in the mêlée, thrusting with his sabre at the whirling Confederate horses. He lost two horses under him but found a third, riderless mount, and carried on battling from the front. His brigade accounted for 86 per cent of the Union losses in the brief engagement that drove away the Confederate troopers. His men followed him willingly into the teeth of a ferocious battle, as did thousands of others at Gettysburg.
The battle at Gettysburg, famous though it has become, was an unexpected confrontation. After the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, Virginia, in May 1863, General Robert E. Lee, the commander-in-chief, decided to risk an advance north into Union territory in Pennsylvania. His aim was to capture the state capital, cut Union communications and even, it was hoped, force the Union to seek peace. His army of Northern Virginia was reorganized into three infantry corps and six cavalry brigades of 75,000 men. Living off the land, the army moved northwest, sending south into slavery any free blacks it captured. Lee was uncertain where Joseph Hooker’s Union Army of the Potomac was; after Chancellorsville, the Union still had 90,000 men in the field. Hooker trailed behind Lee, pressed by an anxious President Lincoln to act. His hesitation brought his dismissal and the Union army that crossed the Potomac into Pennsylvania was led from 28 June by General George Meade. Only now did Lee’s army learn that the enemy was moving north towards it.
A painting entitled Hancock at Gettysburg, by the Swedish-American artist Thure de Thulstrup (1848–1930), depicts the charge of Major General George Pickett’s Confederate troops on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Major General Winfield Hancock (1824–86) was a corps commander on Cemetery Hill when the Confederate troops charged. They were decimated by Union artillery and rifle fire.
The two armies nevertheless met by chance. On 1 July Lee sent Lieutenant General Ambrose Hill to secure a large supply of shoes said to be found in the small town of Gettysburg. When the Confederate force arrived it found two Union cavalry brigades already in occupation of high ground to the northwest of Gettysburg. The outnumbered Union troopers bravely held off the enemy for two hours; the tough ‘Iron Brigade’ of Midwestern recruits in their distinctive black hats lost two-thirds of their number. As reinforcements arrived for both sides, the 24,000 Confederate forces drove back the 19,000 Union soldiers through Gettysburg to a defensive line of high ground south of the town, running from Little Round Top, across Cemetery Ridge to Culp’s Hill further north. Lee could see that this was an ideal position for the Union to occupy and urged Lieutenant General Richard Ewell’s 2nd Corps to seize it before dusk fell and so secure yet another Confederate victory. Ewell hesitated, and by the evening the Union had a firm line running across the high ground, reinforced during the night by three more corps hurriedly led there by Meade himself.
Lee w
as confident that his men, fresh from a string of victories, were capable of a frontal assault, and he ignored the advice of General James Longstreet that he should make a strong flanking attack instead, bringing the southern army between Meade and Washington and rolling up the Union line. Longstreet was instead given the task of attacking the Union left wing at Little Round Top while Ewell would pin down the Union right until it was weakened enough to assault. Longstreet delayed until 4 p.m. on 2 July, giving the Union plenty of time to prepare the line of defence. When he attacked he found that the Union left, commanded by Major General Dan Sickles, had moved to high ground away from the main line, creating an exposed salient and leaving Little Round Top undefended. Here both sides engaged in fierce firefights, with neither willing to give way. The 15,000 Confederate soldiers, with their fearsome war cry, drove back Sickles’ two divisions step-by-step through ground that was littered with the dead and dying. Meade hastily sent reinforcements to try to plug the opening gaps. When it seemed that the Confederates were about to capture Little Round Top, a regiment was sent to stop them. The 20th Maine, commanded by a former professor of rhetoric, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, held off the uphill attacks for two hot, smoke-filled, gruelling hours. Finally, out of ammunition, Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge. The approaching Alabama soldiers were taken by surprise and hundreds surrendered. More Alabamians were held up in the centre of the Union line by another brave charge, this time by the remaining 262 men of the 1st Minnesota regiment. Only forty-seven came back, but the front was saved. As dusk fell the exhausted Confederate forces once again fell back; the line from Little Round Top to Culp’s Hill was still intact.
The following day proved decisive. Lee was determined to have his crushing victory and felt that the gains of the first two days justified him. He planned for Ewell to pressure the Union right at Culp’s Hill and perhaps turn a position that had been subjected to fierce attack in the evening and night of 2 July; the Confederate cavalry under Major General James ‘Jeb’ Stuart to outflank the Union left; and Longstreet to attack the Union centre, commanded by Major General Winfield Hancock, with three fresh divisions. The final battle plan went wrong from the opening hours of 3 July. Ewell’s offensive, led by Major General Jubal Early, became bogged down at Culp’s Hill where a Union counter-attack regained ground lost the previous evening. Nevertheless Lee ordered Longstreet to bombard the centre and then launch a charge across 1,100 metres (3,600 feet) of open ground. At 1.07 p.m. 150 guns opened up the heaviest Confederate bombardment of the war, made more confusing and deafening by the Union reply from more than 100 artillery pieces on Cemetery Ridge. Dug into position, the Union troops suffered much less than expected from the cannonade. When the 14,000 men led by the division of Major General George Pickett finally charged, the Union defenders were able to smash the advance with artillery and musket fire from front and flanks. A few hundred of the doomed Confederate soldiers reached the Union line but the rest were mown down as they advanced across the open with a display of remarkable courage. They broke and turned, leaving half the men behind on the ground. Pickett’s charge cost him two-thirds of his division, including all his senior officers.
A painting by the American artist Jean Gerome Ferris (1863–1930) shows President Abraham Lincoln’s historic address at the Gettysburg cemetery on 19 November 1863, in which he talked of ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’ made possible by Union victory. This was one of a famous series of paintings titled The Pageant of a Nation.
Meade still had 20,000 men to throw into the conflict but he hesitated, aware of how skilful his enemy had been on earlier occasions. A decisive victory might have been gained, but Meade did not counter-attack, and the Confederate army, moving south in disarray, was allowed to cross the Potomac at Williamsport back to comparative safety without engaging in another major battle. The turning point promised by Gettysburg failed to materialize and the war dragged on for two more years. The exceptional courage displayed in the three-day battle was evident from the total of more than 45,000 casualties suffered by the two sides in three days of bitter fighting. The Army of the Potomac had 22,813 casualties, including 3,149 dead; the Army of Northern Virginia suffered 22,625 casualties of whom 4,536 were killed. This was close to a quarter of the forces involved. On 19 November President Lincoln arrived at Gettysburg to inaugurate a national cemetery on the aptly named Cemetery Hill, where he announced that the dead had not died in vain but had ushered in a ‘new birth of freedom’ with their sacrifice.
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No. 80 BATTLE OF TACNA
26 May 1880
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After liberation from colonial rule, South America experienced few prolonged wars. The longest and bloodiest was the War of the Pacific, fought between Chile on one side and Peru and Bolivia on the other. The conflict began over claims to the rich nitrate sources in the province of Antofagasta in southern Bolivia but it soon developed into a power struggle between the three states over control of the Pacific littoral. The decisive battle near the small city of Tacna in southern Peru was a crude clash of arms between three armies that relied on the courage and discipline of men who had little experience of combat as they charged and countercharged under a hail of fire.
The Bolivian government’s threat to confiscate the Chilean Nitrate Company in Antofagasta prompted a swift response. Nitrate production was essential to Chile’s economic survival because it could be traded against European goods. Chile’s small army, no more than 2,500 strong, occupied the port of Antofagasta. The invasion activated a secret alliance made in 1873 between Bolivia and Peru. This prompted Chile to declare war on both states on 5 April 1879. A prolonged naval battle opened the conflict as Peru and Chile used their tiny navies in a bid to win control of coastal sea lanes. Chilean naval success opened the way to a land invasion, and in November 1879 the Chilean commander, Erasmo Escala, landed in the Tarapacá province of southern Peru. The efforts of the Peruvian and Bolivian armies under General Juan Buendía to co-ordinate their operations broke down when the Bolivian commander Hilarión Daza deserted. Following victory over the Peruvians at Dolores, Chile occupied Tarapacá. The presidents of Peru and Bolivia were replaced, and the new Bolivian president, General Narcisco Campero, assumed command of the army in the field.
By this stage the tiny armies had grown through conscription, with many of the recruits drawn from the local Indian population. In February 1880, 13,000 Chilean soldiers were disembarked at the port of Ilo, further up the coast of Peru, in an attempt to seize the nitrate-rich province of Tacna. Escala had by now been replaced by General Manuel Baquedano Gonzalez, a more aggressive and effective commander. He moved inland, over difficult terrain that took a steady toll of his force, intent on reaching and capturing the main port of Arica. After a difficult month’s march his army arrived at the Campo de la Alianza, an arid plain in front of the town of Tacna, with a gentle slope on one side, and sandy dunes along its edge. It was here that Campero, now the overall commander of the Bolivian and Peruvian troops, decided to establish a defensive line to await the arrival of Baquedano.
Campero commanded somewhere between 9,000 and 12,000 men, supported by 16 cannon and 7 Gatling machine guns. The Chileans numbered around 14,000, according to the official history (11,000 according to other accounts), supported by 37 field guns and 4 machine guns. Baquedano was advised by the Chilean war minister, José Vergara, to try an outflanking attack in order to preserve manpower, but his artillery commander recommended a frontal assault along the whole line to prevent the enemy from moving men from one part of the defence to another. Baquedano agreed and divided his force into five divisions, to attack the enemy defences head-on in a human wave.
The battle began with an artillery duel that had little effect as shells buried themselves in the soft sand. At 10 a.m. the first line of Chilean infantry attacked up the slope but was driven back under heavy fire. Thinking they were retreating, the commander of the left wing of the Peruvian–Bolivian army, Col
onel Eliodoro Camacho, sent his men forward, only to be destroyed by accurate fire from Chilean artillery and machine guns. After a brave hour’s fighting, Camacho had lost around four-fifths of his force. Along the rest of the line the Chileans were pushed back by intense fire as they tried to storm across the open ground. The effort to reinforce Camacho with reserves weakened the right wing and it was here that the line cracked as waves of Chilean soldiers attacked with bayonet charges in the face of continuous fire. When Baquedano sent in the Chilean reserve division to force a path round the right flank of the enemy, resistance crumbled. The remnants of the Peruvian and Bolivian divisions staggered back to Tacna where they surrendered after a brief Chilean bombardment at 6.30 p.m.
The harsh nature of the contest between soldiers who were ordered back and forth against determined fire was evident in the exceptional level of casualties. The Chilean Army suffered 500 dead and 1,600 wounded – around 20 per cent of the force engaged on the battlefield. The Atacama and Santiago regiments lost one-half of their men. The defenders suffered even more, losing between 3,500 and 5,000 men. Only 400 Peruvians escaped from the battle and the surrender of Tacna. The high cost of Baquedano’s tactics prompted one Chilean journalist to suggest that the triumph should be celebrated by a ‘dance of death’ rather than a victory ball. But Baquedano was unrepentant and in two further battles in 1881 to capture the Peruvian capital, Lima, 1,300 Chilean soldiers died in tough frontal assaults.
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 35