The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  In Front Royal, Bradley Johnson, commanding the Confederate First Maryland, stopped a prisoner being double-quicked to the rear by a rebel cavalryman.

  “What regiment do you belong to?” he demanded.

  “I pelongs to de First Maryland,” the prisoner said.

  It figures, from the accent, thought Johnson. While he knew there were a lot of bona fide Baltimore boys in the Federal First Maryland, there were also a lot of Dutch Yankees in it too, who really didn’t belong. He had found his neighbors at last.

  “There’s the First Maryland!” he shouted to his men.

  Away his regiment sprang with an exuberant cry. Johnson noted with pride and satisfaction that every man was “doing his prettiest with his legs” to go to greet their Maryland neighbors.40 As one of Jackson’s foot soldiers put it, it was a case of Greek meeting Greek.41

  Jackson and Ewell galloped over the field, one of the foot soldiers noted, “like knights of the olden time, cheering on their men.”42 At one point before all of his guns were up, Jackson saw an opportunity that made his gunner’s heart pound with anticipation, and which, to his grief, was fast slipping away.

  “Oh, what an opportunity for artillery!” he moaned. “Oh, that my guns were here!”

  He turned on the only aide with him at the moment and said fiercely, “Order up every rifled gun, and every brigade in the army.”43

  But Jackson’s troops, with their overwhelming numbers and with the First Maryland and Wheat’s Louisianans in the lead, made short work of it. The Federals had no time to burn the bridge over the South Fork after crossing, and were soon in full retreat with Jackson and the Sixth Virginia Cavalry in pursuit. Earlier, Ashby had swung over from in front of Banks at Strasburg to destroy the railroad and telegraph between the two federal positions and to stop any attempted reinforcements from Strasburg or a retreat of the enemy from Front Royal.

  Darkness finally halted the pursuit, but the federal flank had been turned and the roads to Strasburg and Winchester were now wide open. It had all happened so swiftly. As one of Jackson’s foot soldiers said, “no man, woman or child, all the way from Luray, knew we were coming until we had passed, except Belle Boyd.”44

  The Confederate First Maryland, with the Federal First Maryland in custody, could not have been happier. In town they bivouacked and watched the rest of the column march into camp, and heard them shout as they passed, “The real First Maryland has whipped the bogus.” The regiment’s brigade commander, Arnold Elzey, rode up, took off his hat, and said, “Boys, I knew you’d do it.”45

  My Friend,

  My Enemy

  Friday afternoon in Strasburg had been hot and languid, and particularly stifling under the canvas of Colonel George Gordon’s tent. Gordon knew nothing of the trouble in Front Royal a dozen miles away until about 4:00 in the afternoon, when a mounted orderly reined up violently before his tent and asked for General Banks.1

  Gordon commanded one of the best regiments in Banks’s army, the Second Massachusetts. He had organized it, and marched it to war. In the luck of the draw he had been spending most of that war so far—since July 1861—in and out of the Shenandoah Valley. He had been a brigade commander under Banks in the cautious advance on Winchester in March and had jousted with Turner Ashby all way up the Valley in April.

  Gordon remembered now, as the excited orderly told of Jackson’s attack that afternoon at Front Royal, what he had told his troops earlier in the spring. They had complained about letting Jackson hightail it out of the Valley without a good fight. But Gordon knew Jackson—all too well. They were friends from a long way back. He remembered him as his awkward classmate at West Point. He remembered his heroic action before the walls at Chapultepec in the war with Mexico. He remembered a lot about Jackson. He had assured his unhappy troops that before the war was over they would probably get all the entertainment from him that they could reasonably stand. Now that prophecy was coming painfully true.2

  Night fell, starry and clear, and the lights gleamed brightly from windows of the houses in town and shed a murky glow through the canvas tents of the camp. And Gordon began to worry. Nothing was happening. Banks was doing nothing, just sitting in his quarters. There was no sign that the general grasped what was about to happen to him if he didn’t move. They still knew little of the strength of the Confederate force that had struck Front Royal that afternoon. Gordon had never thought it very smart to have concentrated their force in Strasburg in the first place. Washington had ordered Banks to fortify Strasburg and leave Front Royal an outpost. Gordon had believed the priorities were wrong, that it ought to have been the other way around. He had urged Banks to press for permission to move his main command to Front Royal, placing himself on his line of communications so he could not be surrounded by a larger force of the enemy. Banks had refused. There was nothing they could do about that now.

  But there was a lot that could still be done, must be done. It wasn’t happening. The excessive stores that had been collected at Strasburg ought to be sent to Winchester immediately, out of harm’s way. They risked losing it all, if he read Jackson’s intentions correctly, and he thought he did.

  Gordon could stand it no longer. He knew Jackson was out there. And he had no doubt what he would do next. He would attack, and it could happen at any moment; Gordon would do the same in Jackson’s place. Indeed, he would have attacked before now. He went to Banks and insisted it was the commanding general’s duty to retreat immediately under darkness down the turnpike to Winchester. He urged him to carry his sick and all the supplies he could transport and to destroy the rest. But above all, get out. It would be better to fight from Winchester with the enemy in our front, Gordon argued, than at Strasburg with him in our rear.

  But Banks had been assured by David Strother, his staff officer from Virginia who knew this country so well, that there was no possibility of an enemy attack in their rear, and he refused to listen to Gordon. Instead he repeated over and over, “I must develop the force of the enemy.” Gordon left, more depressed than ever, with nothing accomplished.

  Later in the evening Banks’s chief of staff urged Gordon to try to persuade Banks one more time. This time Gordon put his case with warmth and indignation bordering on insubordination.

  “It is not a retreat,” he shouted at Banks, “but a true military movement to escape from being cut off; to prevent stores and sick from falling into the hands of the enemy.”

  Rising indignantly from his chair, Banks shouted back, “By God, sir, I will not retreat! We have more to fear, sir, from the opinions of our own friends than the bayonets of our enemies.”

  Ah, so that’s it, thought Gordon. He is afraid of being thought afraid. In despair Gordon rose to leave.

  “This, sir,” he said as he did so, “is not a military ground for occupying a false position.” He added stiffly: “General Banks, I shall now return to my brigade and prepare it for an instantaneous movement, for I am convinced that at last you will move suddenly. At a moment’s notice you will find me ready. I shall strike my tents, pack my wagons, hitch up my artillery horses, and hold myself in readiness to form line of battle. I have to request that you will send me word if anything new transpires.”

  It was 11:00 at night when Gordon left Banks’s quarters. As he walked back toward the tents of his command he saw no signs that anybody else was any more troubled about what tomorrow would surely bring than Banks himself. Well, Gordon knew. His relentless classmate was out there somewhere this side of Front Royal and Gordon was as certain as night was night and day was day that he was preparing a drama for them. What merriment, he thought ruefully, the morning would bring.3

  Gordon worked through the night, and when morning dawned cool and misty he had his brigade and regimental wagon trains ready to move on the Pike toward Winchester. He learned that Banks had also sent off some ambulances with sick and disabled, but nothing else.

  As Gordon knew he would be, Jackson was under way by midmorning. Jackson knew he must mov
e quickly to prevent Banks’s escaping toward the Potomac, past Front Royal, or through Winchester. He sent Ewell directly from Front Royal on the road to Winchester, and started off himself across country toward the junction on the turnpike at Middletown, five miles from Strasburg and thirteen from Winchester. He then had all the escape routes covered.

  At about 11:00 in the morning Banks became a believer. The peril of his position finally hit him, and he struck out for Winchester, sending the federal column straight down the Pike. It had suddenly become a matter of legs—whether or not he could outrun Jackson. Gordon rode at the head of his brigade, marveling as he went at the immensity of the train in front and behind, and hoping they were not too late. At about 1:00 in the afternoon, Gordon passed through Middletown, and there was still no sign of Jackson.

  Shortly after he passed, however, Jackson arrived and stared at the long wagon train hurrying down the turnpike toward Winchester, and at the Union cavalry moving directly in his front. He had no idea how much of Banks’s army had already passed, but he would strike what was there. The turnpike, which had been teeming with life moments before suddenly presented “a most appalling spectacle of carnage and destruction.”4 The road became clogged with struggling and dying horses and riders. R. L. Dabney, still reluctantly installed as Jackson’s chief of staff, was horrified. “At every fierce volley,” he wrote, “the troopers seemed to melt by scores from their saddles; while the frantic, riderless horses, rushed up and down, trampling the wounded wretches into the dust.”5

  As its shattered cavalry scattered, the federal artillery began shelling Jackson from the direction of Strasburg, in an effort to cut through. But it soon became apparent to Jackson that the main body of Banks’s army had already passed on the way to Winchester. That was far larger game, and Jackson spun about and started after it.

  Up ahead Gordon turned back and quickly formed a new rear guard with artillery from his own brigade. He would try to hold the rebels back and protect what train was left.

  When Jackson struck, Banks’s heart—and Strother’s—sank. What Strother had told his general couldn’t happen, just had.

  “It seems we were mistaken in our calculation,” Banks said simply.

  The mortified Strother could manage only a bow. “It seems so,” he replied.6

  Banks galloped back toward Gordon with reinforcements, and the rear guard was quickly reconstituted. This done, he turned away and rode back toward the head of the column, leaving Gordon with no orders of any kind. He had simply ordered the Twenty-Eighth New York, which he had brought with him, to report to the cavalry commander, Brigadier General John Hatch. But Hatch was somewhere back in that chaos on the turnpike. So Gordon, with no authority to do so, shrugged and assumed command. It was to be war between him and his old classmate.

  Gordon made his stand at Newtown five and a half miles from Winchester. At about twilight, in the middle of the fight, General Hatch appeared. Having escaped the carnage on the Pike, he had come by a circuitous road to his left. Gordon immediately tendered him command of the rear, but Hatch said he could do no better than Gordon was doing and rode on toward Winchester with his staff, leaving behind six companies of cavalry to help out. So Gordon picked up the fight again. For four hours he held Jackson at bay at Newtown, but it was all he could do. Threatened with being surrounded, he began to back away. He had at least bought Banks some precious time.7

  Nothing, however, could buy back the wagons full of commissary stores abandoned by Banks along the turnpike to Newtown—the high cost of a hurried retreat. The wagons lined the road in such numbers that the Confederates found it reasonable to believe that if Banks reached Winchester it would be without a train, perhaps without an army. This gratified Jackson, who enjoyed confiscating enemy wagons only slightly less than he enjoyed destroying their owners.

  He was not gratified, however, when Ashby’s cavalry and infantry abandoned themselves to wholesale pillaging and the pursuit stalled because of it. He was pained and outraged. It was inconceivable to him that they could be so forgetful of their duty as the advance element of a pursuing army. But there was nothing to be done; troop discipline was not one of Turner Ashby’s strong points.8

  Jackson was nonetheless moving up the turnpike as night came, as rapidly as Gordon’s stubborn defense would permit, and occasionally letting his mind dwell on more pleasant thoughts. Henry Kyd Douglas rode beside him, absently meditating on some social movements he intended to execute in Winchester when they got there.

  Jackson’s mind was on the ladies as well. Perhaps it was the recollection of Belle Boyd that triggered it. He had sent her a note the night before from Front Royal. “I thank you, for myself and for the army,” he had written her, “for the immense service that you have rendered your country to-day.” Belle was probably clutching it ecstatically to her bosom at that moment.9

  “Mr. Douglas,” came Jackson’s voice from across the road, shattering Douglas’s private meditations. “What do you think of the ladies of Winchester?”

  The startled Douglas blushed.

  “I mean the ladies generally,” Jackson continued with a quiet smile. “Don’t you think they are a noble set, worth fighting for?”

  Douglas couldn’t very well argue with that.

  “I do,” Jackson went on. “They are the truest people in the South.”

  He drew his cap down farther over his eyes, moved Little Sorrel into a better pace, and lapsed into his usual silence. Douglas assumed he expected no reply, and there was no disputing the point.10

  It was past dark when they finally dislodged the stubborn Gordon and could push beyond Newtown. Jackson wanted to be on the heights above Winchester by morning; there was to be no rest for his little army already exhausted by lack of sleep.

  “This is uncivilized,” muttered Lieutenant Colonel Stapleton Crutchfield, Jackson’s chief of artillery. Several staff officers fell asleep, as if in agreement, and were left by the roadside. Others dozed unsteadily in their saddles.11

  But Gordon contrived to keep them all awake. Although he was withdrawing, he was not through resisting. There were still as many abandoned wagons lining the turnpike, but the Federals had put the torch to them and they lit the road all the way to Winchester. Gordon lit it ever more brightly with ambushes. A stitching of fire erupted immediately ahead of Jackson and danced along a wall. Bullets hissed up the road past him and his cavalry escort and staff.

  It was more than his escort could stand. They drew rein and wavered.

  “Charge them! Charge them!” Jackson cried.

  The escort advanced tentatively and when a second volley hissed about them, they broke and streamed back past Jackson at a gallop.

  Left alone on the road with his staff, Jackson was beside himself.

  “Shameful!” he cried in a rage of passion.

  He turned on the staff officer beside him. “Did you see anybody struck, sir?”

  He sat among the humming bullets, continuing to grieve for his inconstant cavalry escort. “Surely they need not have run,” he said, “at least until they were hurt!”12

  May was one of Cornelia Peake McDonald’s favorite months of the year in Winchester. When May came the trees began to show their young leaves, the lush lawns deepened to a bright, vivid green, and spring flowers filled the gardens.13 That’s the way it was in Cornelia’s Winchester on Sunday morning, May 25, 1862. A bright sun was just rising as Jackson and his army stood in the outskirts and looked down on the town. The sun had never shone on a prettier country nor a lovelier May morning, one of his cannoneers thought as he gazed on the sleeping scene. The only blot on the beautiful day seemed to be the Yankee battle line stretching before them.14

  But Jackson had the advantage and he knew it. He outnumbered this broken Union army nearly three to one. As he had ravaged the Pike in the day and slowly pushed Gordon back through the night, Ewell had marched up the back road from Front Royal to Winchester. His division had slept on their arms where they stopped that nigh
t, three miles from the city. He was on the high ground overlooking Abrams Creek the next morning as Jackson arrived, armed and ready. Regrettably it was another Sabbath. But there could be no help for that; Jackson had to strike.15

  Gordon arrived at Winchester in the middle of the night, forty-eight hours without sleep, and had gone immediately to find Banks. Again he pressed the general to do something the general didn’t want to do—get out of there, retire in proper order before Jackson ran him out with his overwhelming force. The odds were just too great. Gordon met the same stolid front he had in Strasburg. It seemed to the colonel that dark night that there were stonewalls everywhere—one in Winchester refusing to do the right thing and another just outside of town preparing a death blow. He walked from Banks’s headquarters, found a bed, and threw himself across it fully clothed for as much sleep as Jackson would allow him.

  It wouldn’t be much. At 4:00 in the morning one of his staff officers, Major Wilder Dwight, galloped up.

  “Colonel!” he shouted, “the pickets are falling back! the enemy is advancing.”

  Gordon leaped from the bed.

  “Yes,” he told Dwight. “I will be there instantly.”

  As Dwight galloped away, Gordon raced toward Banks’s headquarters, and rushed into his bedroom.