The Class of 1846

by John Waugh

  “General Banks,” he exclaimed, “the question of what is to be done has at last settled itself. The enemy, now moving in force, has almost reached the town. I shall put my brigade instantly in line of battle upon the heights I now occupy. If you have any orders to give, you will find me there to receive them.”16

  In the early dawn Jackson stood without a cloak to keep him from the chill and peered at the figures of Gordon’s skirmishers silhouetted on the ridges against a lightening sky. The smoke of battle would soon cover the entire field and block out the bright May sun. Jackson and Ewell were everywhere, Jackson where he shouldn’t be, Taylor thought, riding on the flank of his Louisiana brigade between it and the enemy line. It wasn’t where the general of the army ought to be, and Taylor told him so. Jackson ignored him.17

  Jackson ignored all such advice—he always did. “Be jabers,” an Irish rebel cried out when he saw him, “have your eye on Auld Jack. I’ll wager you he thinks them blatherin’ bangs are singin’ birds.”18

  Taylor was no less heedless of danger than his commander. Indeed, he was annoyed with his men. Enemy fire was whistling wildly about them, and to his disgust they were as “nervous as a lady, ducking like a mandarin.”

  “What the h—— are you dodging for?” he demanded. “If there is any more of it, you will be halted under this fire for an hour.”

  As Taylor spoke he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder. Jackson was there. “I am afraid you are a wicked fellow,” he admonished softly.19

  By now the clouds of murderous smoke were making deceptively beautiful spirals in the sky and the battle was going slowly but implacably against Gordon. For three hours he held out against Jackson’s assaults, and finally he could do no more. His battery had but fifteen rounds left and there was no ammunition train from which to replenish either it or the spent cartridge boxes of his infantry. He was done.20

  The Union line broke. And as it broke, Taylor saw Ewell cheering himself hoarse as he surged forward with frantic new energy.21 Jackson leaned over to Douglas and said, “Order forward the whole line, the battle’s won.” As Taylor’s troops and his old Stonewall Brigade swept past, Jackson shouted, “Very good! Now let’s holler!” And he snatched the faded old cap off his nose and waved it over his head. His staff took up the cheer and the whole line followed with a triumphant howl.22 Jackson grasped Taylor’s hand warmly, a gesture, Taylor thought, “worth a thousand words from another.”23

  They swept through downtown Winchester, the Federals now in full rout and the Confederates not three hundred yards behind. David Strother, the Valley man turned federal staff officer, bolted from the hotel in a rain of pistol shots, just ahead of the pursuing rebels. He saw the pursuers pouring in at every street. They came, he thought, “like a flood of dirty water … grey, ragged, and unwashed,” screaming their “hideous yells and war whoops.”24

  The people of Winchester were Southern to the bone, and the horde of ragtag Confederates was beautiful in their sight and their yells were the music of redemption. They threw open their doors and windows and rushed into the streets—old men, women, and children dressed and undressed, in their Sunday clothes and in their nightshirts, hurrahing, crying, laughing, screaming, crazy with joy. Oblivious to the flying bullets, they ran in among the horses as if to embrace the knees of their deliverers. Many wildly waved their arms or their handkerchiefs, screaming their welcome in cheers and blessings, while a few of the less demonstrative simply stood on their doorsteps with their faces bathed in tears.25 Jackson was so moved that he said of Winchester: “A noble old town. It and its people are worth fighting for.”26

  Many of the townspeople were doing some fighting of their own, demonstrating their joy by standing at their windows firing at the fleeing enemy. Some in one breath were blessing the rebels for coming and in the next blaspheming them for letting so many Yankees escape.27 Those are the ones George Gordon noticed as he left town. Fired on not only by Jackson’s men, but by the people at their windows hurling bullets, hot water, and missiles of every description, he left with an oath on his lips against a “merciless foe” and “the hellish spirit of murder.”28

  At least he got out. His staff officer, Major Wilder Dwight, wasn’t so lucky. As he was racing through Winchester he stopped to help a wounded man and was himself instantly surrounded by Confederates. In captivity Dwight continued to work to comfort the Union wounded and to bury the dead. But because he required some help to do those things, he was at last compelled to appeal personally to Jackson. Dwight figured he might have a lever there—an old friendship. He would mention Gordon, whom he had often heard speak of Jackson as a classmate at West Point and a companion in the Mexican War. Jackson’s heart might be softened by this old friendship.

  Dwight identified himself to Jackson as a major in the Second Massachusetts, commanded by Colonel Gordon, “who is, I believe, an old friend of yours.”

  “Friend of mine, sir?” said Jackson curtly. “He was, sir, once a friend.”

  Dwight retired. So much for connections. So much for friendships. Released later and reunited with his commander, Dwight told him the story.

  When Gordon heard it he sighed for what used to be—that “boy companion,” that “honest, dear ‘old Jack,’ ” who as Stonewall Jackson remembered him no longer as a friend.29

  Perhaps Jackson remembered him better now as an enemy. For if Jackson had demonstrated how to conduct a relentless attack, Gordon had shown how to conduct a creditable retreat. In the long bitter hours between the night of May 23 and the morning of May 25, Gordon had argued with one general, Banks, and fought another, Jackson. He had covered the eighteen miles from Strasburg to Winchester fighting a stubborn rear guard action most of the way. He had held Jackson at bay for four hours at Newtown, annoyed him on the road afterward, and then finished with a three-hour stand in Winchester, broken finally by overwhelming numbers.

  He had proved a worthy foe for Jackson. And why not? The two enemy-friends had learned their craft in the same classroom.

  In Winchester, Jackson saw he still had lessons to teach. He was in a passion to pursue and destroy the crushed enemy. Full of impatience, he exhorted his army as it paused to bask in the worshipping acclaim of a grateful Winchester. “Push on!” he cried. “Push on to the Potomac!”30

  Jackson agreed with those impatient townspeople who believed they were letting too many Yankees get away alive. Among his battle axioms—right up there at the top with celerity and mystification—was pursuit. When you strike an enemy and overcome him, Jackson had lectured Captain John Imboden, “never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number.”31

  That was the preaching Jackson burned now to practice. All of the elements were there—the enemy had been struck and overcome and was now routed and panic-stricken. He must be pursued. What wasn’t there, however, was Jackson’s cavalry. In the battle it had become as scattered and disorganized as the Union army itself.

  “Never was there such a chance for cavalry,” he grieved as he saw the enemy footing it down the turnpike in such beaten disarray and so vulnerable to final destruction. “Oh that my cavalry were in place!”

  Would artillery do? an aide asked.

  “Yes,” cried Jackson. “Go back and order up the nearest batteries you find.”

  To another he shouted, “Order every battery and every brigade forward to the Potomac.”32

  But artillery and infantry, particularly an infantry dead on its feet from what seemed hundreds of endless miles of sleepless marching and fighting, could not do it alone. When the pursuit continued for some time and cavalry still hadn’t appeared, Jackson called for Sandie Pendleton. Pendleton must go find the cavalry.

  Alexander Swift Pendleton had no idea where the cavalry was at that moment. But he was another of those wide awake, smart young men Jackson seemed to attract. He was the son of a soldier. His father, William N
elson Pendleton, was a West Point-trained artilleryman whom his son affectionately called “the stern warrior,”33 and who not only dispensed fire, but brimstone, being an episcopal preacher by vocation. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the fifty-one-year-old father had taken command of the Rockbridge Artillery and had named his four cannon, small brass six-pounders from VMI, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.34

  At about the time the father was baptizing his cannon, the twenty-one-year-old son was joining Jackson’s staff at Harpers Ferry as brigade ordnance officer. They were a good match, this young University of Virginia graduate student and his commander. They had known one another in Lexington, where Pendleton had attended Washington College. They had belonged to the same literary society. Young Sandie also shared Jackson’s religious fanaticism. He seemed destined, by birth and the luck of the draw, to be associated with stern warriors.35

  Now, by the luck of another draw, he found himself in Winchester looking for Jackson’s cavalry. Failing to find any there, he rode eastward toward Ewell’s division, where he knew there was cavalry under the command of Brigadier General George Hume Steuart. He found Steuart’s men, but not Steuart, on the Berryville Road about two and a half miles from Winchester, taking their ease with their horses grazing in a field of clover, as if there was no war. They told Pendleton they were not going anywhere without orders from Steuart. So Pendleton galloped on and found Steuart about half a mile down the road. But Steuart was not going anywhere without orders from Ewell.

  For God’s sake, Pendleton argued, this was a peremptory order direct from Jackson! That made no difference to Steuart. So Pendleton galloped on to find Ewell, perhaps mindful for the first time why Jackson preferred young, energetic staff men who were not easily discouraged. Two miles farther down the road he found Ewell, who seemed surprised that Steuart hadn’t agreed to go at once. Pounding back up the road with this endorsement, Pendleton ran into Steuart again, who rather than rushing to get his cavalry in motion, had slowly followed Pendleton toward Ewell, wasting yet more precious time. But now he seemed satisfied. He galloped back to his command, ordered them mounted and formed, and thundered off at last to carry out Jackson’s order. Pendleton hurried along after, probably thinking there were better ways to spend a Sunday morning.36

  When Steuart arrived to take up the pursuit, Jackson called off his infantry to give them some rest—their first in days. They were utterly exhausted. “Nature,” R. L. Dabney observed, “could do no more.”37

  None of these internal Confederate snarl-ups made any difference to Banks, who now needed no urging from Gordon to get out of there. On he ran, hounded past Martinsburg and through Charles Town, where, as one pursing Confederate noted with satisfaction, that damned insurrectionist, John Brown, had “obtained a permit to paddle his canoe across the Styx.”38

  At last, after racing sixty miles in thirty-six hours, Banks crossed his own Styx, the Potomac, never happier to see the other side of a river in his life. “There were never more grateful hearts in the same number of men,” he wrote Washington, “than when at midday of the 26th we stood on the opposite shore.”39

  That same day Jackson sent Richmond another of his laconic announcements: “During the last three days God has blessed our arms with brilliant success.” Then he ordered up another divine service to thank Providence and ask His continued favor.40

  They were a convincing pair, this general and his God.

  Delightful

  Excitement

  If General Banks saw salvation across the river and Stonewall Jackson saw the hand of Providence in victory, Abraham Lincoln saw opportunity still alive in the Valley.

  The uppermost thought in the president’s mind as Jackson chased Banks north across the Potomac, was to bag him before he could get back out. So he put John C. Frémont’s Mountain Division in motion from the west and Irvin McDowell’s division on the road from the east with orders to slam the gate shut on the troublesome rebel before he could escape.

  The first thing Lincoln did was wire George McClellan, who was clamoring for reinforcements on the Peninsula and was expecting McDowell to arrive momentarily. Sorry, the president said, but “in consequence of Gen. Banks’ critical position I have been compelled to suspend Gen. McDowell’s movement to join you. The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper’s Ferry, and we are trying to throw Frémont’s force & part of McDowell’s in their rear.”1

  Lincoln then began barking orders over the telegraph to those two generals, exhorting them to hurry. If they could converge in Jackson’s rear and prevent him from leaving the lower Valley, they would have him.

  He ordered Frémont in the Alleghenies to move toward Harrisonburg. “Much—perhaps all—depends upon the celerity with which you can execute it,” he told the Pathfinder. “Put the utmost speed into it. Do not lose a minute.”2

  This was not the way Frémont had hoped to spend the summer—chasing that fanatic Jackson up the Shenandoah. When he assumed command of the new Mountain Department late in March, he had something else in mind. Banks’s defeat, and now this, were deranging his plans. But orders were orders. So he began the requested movement by heading in the wrong direction.

  Lincoln was aghast. “I see that you are at Moorefield.” he wired Frémont. “You were expressly ordered to march to Harrisonburg. What does this mean?”3

  When Frémont looked toward Harrisonburg, he saw only futility. Jackson had obstructed all but one of the roads leading that way out of the mountains when he was at McDowell. The only route left open would take him on a long looping detour. Frémont believed that any movement now toward Harrisonburg would be fatal to his lines of supply, leaving them exposed to the very prey he was supposed to be hunting. There was no telling what Jackson might do with such an opportunity. Besides, it had been raining without letup for a week. The roads were ribbons of mud. So Frémont had marched toward Moorefield instead, obeying the spirit of the order rather than the letter, with the idea of cutting off Jackson’s retreat at Strasburg. He assured Lincoln he could be in Strasburg by noon on Friday, May 30. So be it. Lincoln could adjust. McDowell was even then converging on Front Royal from the other direction. If they could get there in time, and at the same time, Jackson’s way would be blocked.4

  On the morning of the thirtieth, Frémont was thirty-eight miles from Strasburg, but his advance was ten miles closer. Shields’s division of McDowell’s command was twenty miles away, but his advance was already in Front Royal. McDowell was following with two other divisions.

  Tom Jackson was asleep under a tree in front of Harpers Ferry fifty miles away. His mind was at peace. He was keeping thousands of federal troops tied up in the Valley and McDowell’s entire army from reinforcing McClellan on the Peninsula. Washington was reacting exactly as they had all hoped it would, following the Confederate script. Jackson had done his duty. And now he was getting a few winks.

  A. R. Boteler watched Jackson for a few moments, then took out paper and pencil and began sketching him. Boteler was a Confederate congressman with a bent for art. And he was attached for a time, between sessions in Richmond, as a colonel on Jackson’s staff. He sketched busily for a while, absorbed in his work. Glancing up, he saw Jackson’s eyes wide open now and fixed on him.

  The general smiled and extended his hand for the drawing. “Let me see what you have been doing there,” he said.

  Jackson studied the sketch. “My hardest tasks at West Point were the drawing lessons,” he said, “and I never could do anything in that line to satisfy myself.” He laughed. “Or indeed, anybody else.”

  The two men sat a moment in silence. Then Jackson said, “But, colonel, I have some harder work than this for you to do, and if you’ll sit down here, now, I’ll tell you what it is.”

  Jackson wanted the congressman to go to Richmond. “I must have reinforcements,” he said. “You can explain to them down there what the situation is here. Get as many men as can be spared, and I’d like you, if you please, to go as soon as you can.”


  Boteler told Jackson that he would go willingly. “But you must first tell me, general, what is the situation here?”

  Jackson explained how the federal armies even at that moment were closing in behind him up the Valley. He told Boteler to tell Richmond that he intended to send his prisoners and the captured stores through and to do what he could with his present force to frustrate Union plans. But if he could get his command up to forty thousand men, he would push beyond the Potomac into Maryland toward Washington, “raise the siege of Richmond, and transfer this campaign from the banks of the James to those of the Susquehanna.”

  Here was Jackson, with two armies closing in on his rear in overwhelming numbers with orders to crush or capture him. Yet he wanted to push on deeper still into enemy territory, farther still from safety.

  That afternoon Jackson and Boteler caught the train together back to Winchester. As soon as they were aboard, Jackson put his arm on the back of the seat ahead and dozed. Near Summit Point a Confederate cavalryman approached at a gallop. Jackson stopped the train and the rider thrust a dispatch in through the window. The dispatch told Jackson that the Twelfth Georgia had been driven in at Front Royal and that the federal advance was within twelve miles of Strasburg. The door was closing.

  Jackson glanced at the dispatch, tore it up, and dropped the fragments on the floor of the car. “Go on, sir, if you please,” he told the conductor, and went back to sleep.

  They reached Winchester at dusk in a heavy rainstorm. Boteler prepared to go on to Richmond as ordered. Jackson stepped down from the train to call in his army from Harpers Ferry. He had pushed his luck about as far as it could be pushed, farther than anybody else felt prudent. The race to slip through the closing gate at Strasburg was about to begin. It was to be a matter of legs again.5

  Jackson summoned Jed Hotchkiss.

  “I want you to go to Charles Town and bring up the First Brigade,” he told his mapmaker. He would wait for them as long as he could, but if the gate swung shut on them at Strasburg, Hotchkiss must bring them around through the mountains.6