Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided

by W Hunter Lesser

  A lull came over the battlefield. Grown tired of watching the artillery, Federal colonels urged General Reynolds to take the works by storm, which he refused to do. Orders were given instead to test the Confederate right flank. The Seventh, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Indiana and the Twenty-fourth Ohio Infantry regiments crossed the face of a wooded hill and closed upon the enemy.533

  Watching from the heights of Camp Bartow, Captain Shumaker's grimy cannoneers swabbed and packed their guns. As Colonel Dumont's Seventh Indiana Infantry drew within range, Shumaker's guns punished them with lethal loads of canister. The Federals staggered. “Distinctly could their officers be heard, with words of mingled command, remonstrance, and entreaty, attempting to rally their battalions into line,” wrote General Jackson. Shumaker's artillery poured on a “perfect rain” of canister, shot, and shell as the Federals retreated in confusion.534

  General Reynolds surveyed the battlefield from an eminence. “[W]e distinctly saw heavy re-enforcements of infantry and artillery while we were in front of the works,” he claimed. That infantry amounted to elements of a single Confederate regiment (the Fifty-second Virginia Infantry), and the artillery probably one or more guns earlier taken to the rear for repairs. Fearing that he was greatly outnumbered, with his batteries dangerously low on ammunition, Reynolds broke off the engagement. By 1 P.M., the Federals loaded their ambulances with the dead and wounded and marched back to Cheat Mountain. Jackson's Confederates did not pursue them.535

  The October 3, 1861, “engagement at Greenbrier River” was a severe test for both armies. In an eighteen-hour period, Federal troops had marched at least twenty-four miles and endured a four-and-one-half-hour cannonade. “I marched 30 miles,” wrote one exhausted volunteer, “went double quick four miles, fought six hours, was knocked down with a cannon ball, & all this without breakfast or dinner—enough to kill a mule.”536

  Camp Bartow was riddled by the bombardment. “Hundreds of our tents are shot through and through with cannon balls,” wrote the Thirty-first Virginia's James Hall. Bursting shells set a number of tents ablaze, consuming the contents. Dead horses lay about. More than eleven hundred rounds of Federal artillery were thrown into Camp Bartow during the fight. Southern cannons also ran hot. “The gun just above me fired 85 times,” reckoned John Cammack, “and the reports were deafening.…My hearing was badly injured by the noise.”537

  Both commanders imagined their shelling had generated large losses; Generals Reynolds and Jackson each pegged enemy casualties at three hundred or more. Yet the Federals reported a “surprisingly small” loss of eight killed and thirty-five wounded. Reynolds believed that “the proximity of our batteries to the intrenchments caus[ed] many shots to pass over us.” Thanks in large part to those earthworks, the Confederate casualties were also light—six killed, thirty-three wounded, and thirteen missing.538

  The thirteen missing Confederates turned up as prisoners, one of them in amusing style. A member of the Fourteenth Indiana, Brown by name, encountered a man he assumed was from one of the Ohio regiments. The stranger, in turn, presumed that Brown was a Confederate. Each wore the same color uniform; each felt so sure of the other's identity that neither thought of inquiring. As they walked together along the mountain slope, Federal soldiers appeared in the meadow below.

  “Here,” said Brown's companion. “We can get a good shot.”

  “Why, those are our own men,” replied Brown.

  “No they ain't,” insisted the other. “If they were, their faces would be turned the other way.”

  Brown then became suspicious. He slowly brought his gun to bear.

  “What company do you belong to?” he asked.

  ” To Captain Taylor's.”

  “What regiment?” queried Brown.

  “Third Arkansas.”

  Before the words were fairly uttered, Brown leveled his musket.

  “Now,” said Brown, “lay down that gun or you are a dead rebel.”

  “Well, you haven't a great deal the advantage of me any way,” huffed the Confederate as he surrendered, “for you were as much mistaken as myself.”539

  “The ground is plowed up in every direction by our balls,” wrote a Georgian upon touring the battlefield. “The ground around where their cannon were placed is stained with blood; and in every fence corner and behind every bush were left caps, canteens, haversacks filled with provisions &c., showing the haste with which they took their departure.” The First Georgia Infantry had a grand time picking up souvenirs—ample revenge for their disastrous flight from Laurel Hill. Members of the regiment honored General Jackson with a large United States flag. That beautiful silk banner was not captured in battle. It had been found resting against a tree—much to the chagrin of members of the Seventh Indiana Infantry, who had forgotten it! The Seventh would redeem themselves on other fields, but this embarrassing incident gave them a nickname—the “Banner Regiment.”540

  A number of dead Federal soldiers were found “mutilated in the most awful kind of way. [G]rape & even the cannon balls had passed through cutting them clean in t[w]o.” Among the dead was James Abbott of the Ninth Indiana Infantry. “[T]here was something unusual in the manner of Abbott's taking off,” wrote Ambrose Bierce in later years. “He was lying flat upon his stomach and was killed by being struck in the side by a nearly spent cannon-shot that came rolling in among us.…It was a solid round-shot, evidently cast in some private foundry, whose proprietor, setting the laws of thrift above those of ballistics, had put his ‘imprint’ upon it: it bore, in slightly sunken letters, the name ‘Abbott.'”541

  The Battle of Greenbrier River was a rare victory for Confederates in Western Virginia. But Union General Reynolds, declaring the effort an “armed reconnaissance,” also claimed success. Many of his troops called it a “farce.” A correspondent for the Cincinnati Times styled the affair “a touch of loyal thunder and lightning.…The idea occurs to me that if Gen. Reynolds deals such heavy blows in a mere reconnaissance, what will he do when he marches out for a full fight?”

  “So now both armies occupy the same ground they did before,” mused another Union wag, “and with the exception of a good artillery practice, I can see no advantage gained by our forces. They say we would have won the fight but the ammunition gave out. I think the ammunition story about played out, and would respectfully urge the adoption of something new.”542

  General Henry Jackson pointed to “four days’ cooked rations” in the haversacks of Yankee dead as evidence that Reynolds had hoped “to prosecute a rapid march either on Staunton or Huntersville.” Jackson issued a laudatory address to his troops and penned a lengthy official report. The Confederate War Department joined General Loring in congratulating Jackson and his men for their “brilliant conduct.” In fact, the outpouring of praise for this little Confederate victory moved a skeptic at the Richmond Examiner to claim that there were “more casualties from overwork and exhaustion in setting up type” for the reports than from the shot and shell of battle.

  General Jackson was unapologetic: “What would have been the results of our defeat who can fully estimate? And yet, because it was comparatively bloodless, for the achievement of the victory who will ever give us full credit?” Fate had “decreed a terrible antithesis” for troops in the Alleghenies, he bemoaned, “the misery and obscurity here, the sympathy and the glory elsewhere.”543

  Pity the poor Yeagers of Travellers Repose! Shells had riddled their stately home. Soldiers had ransacked and wrecked their once-bucolic farmstead. All would soon be put to the torch, and the family driven from their ancestral land. Innkeeper Andrew Yeager's chilling prophecy of invading armies, doom, and destruction had been fulfilled.544

  PART IV

  THE RENDING

  OF VIRGINIA

  CHAPTER 21

  THE GREAT QUESTION

  “Nature has defeated both sides; these mountain barriers are far more potent than the sand batteries erected by military science.”

  —Anonymous Confedera
te volunteer

  A statehood referendum was put before the citizens of Western Virginia on October 24, 1861. Archibald W. Campbell, talented editor of the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, played a unique role in the new-state movement. The twenty-eight-year-old Campbell was a pioneer Republican leader in Virginia. Schooled as an attorney, he was a disciple of Secretary of State William Seward, a confidant of President Lincoln, an unflinching Unionist, and an outspoken anti-slavery man.

  Campbell's Intelligencer was the leading newspaper in Western Virginia. He had gained editorial control of the paper in 1856, and by 1861, his politics made it a relentless “organ of division.” Always faithful and authoritative, the Intelligencer became an anchor for new-state advocates. Governor Pierpont of the Restored Government called it “the right arm of our movement.”545

  Editor Campbell had predicted that an “overwhelming” majority of Western Virginians would approve statehood. The October 24 referendum mirrored his optimism. By a vote of 18,408 to 781, Western Virginians desired a new state, but the landslide masked bitter division. No more than a third of the eligible voters in forty-one Virginia counties had spoken. Secessionists avoided the polls. Balloting was by voice at polling places and a vote against the ordinance in areas controlled by Federal soldiers might bring charges of disloyalty and subject dissenters to imprisonment.546

  Virginia Confederates also held elections. In early November, delegates to the state convention were picked to replace expelled Unionists. Virginia Congressional seats were filled. “The election fever has broken out,” wrote a Confederate diarist at Camp Bartow. “Candidates are getting plentiful & very sociable.” On November 6, ballots were cast for president and vice president of the Confederate States. “At the close of the day,” wrote Virginian John Worsham, “when it was announced the entire regiment had voted for Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens, there were loud and repeated cheers for them and the Confederacy.” It mattered not that Davis and Stephens ran unopposed.547

  Autumn brought change to the armies. Union General Rosecrans now commanded the Department of Western Virginia, a military district that included all territory west of the Blue Ridge. Troops began to leave for other theaters of war. Few were more grateful than Colonel Kimball's Fourteenth Indiana Infantry. Recalled one of them, “No poor sinner, who having worked out his probation in purgatory, and…turns his back upon the scene of his late sufferings could feel more pleasure than did the boys of the Fourteenth Regiment…in turning their backs on the horrors of Cheat Mountain.”548

  Those remaining settled into a routine. The boredom of camp life was periodically broken by clashes among the outposts and other minor affairs. Scouting parties combed the mountains for troublesome nests of bushwhackers. Western Virginia became a backwater of war.

  On the eastern Virginia front, October 21 brought a stunning Federal defeat on the Potomac River at Ball's Bluff. That miscalculation sparked anguish in Washington. The intrepid Frederick Lander—now a brigadier general in command of the Department of Harpers Ferry and Cumberland (Maryland)—had been wounded in a mop-up of the affair, and his command devolved upon General Ben Kelley of “Philippi Races” fame. Kelley promptly went on the offensive. Leading three thousand Federals south from the B&O Railroad at New Creek, Virginia, on October 26, he drove Confederate forces out of the strategic upper Potomac town of Romney.

  By seizing Romney, Kelley controlled a sixty-mile arc of the vital railroad. The move placed him only forty miles west of Confederate forces under Stonewall Jackson at Winchester, a Shenandoah Valley railroad town about seventy-five miles west of Washington. If reinforced, Kelley might also threaten Rebels on the Monterey line, seventy miles south.549

  Major General George McClellan was relieved to learn of Kelley's success, following so closely the fiasco at Ball's Bluff. From headquarters in Washington, McClellan had built a second Union fighting force—the gargantuan Army of the Potomac. His energy and stellar organizational skills were again on display. With that army he staged reviews, each one grander than the last. Up to seven divisions—nearly sixty-five thousand men—stood in gilded lines that stretched to the horizon. Bands played, artillery boomed, and cavalry rumbled in gaudy display. Thousands of spectators came out to watch, including diplomats, cabinet secretaries, and President Lincoln himself. McClellan would appear on a splendid mount, galloping across the reviewing grounds as the entire army waved their hats and hurrahed, a spectacle that Harper's Weekly called “brilliant beyond description.”550

  McClellan's army looked ready to crush the rebellion, but the general showed no inclination to fight. “I will advance & force the rebels to a battle on a field of my own selection,” he wrote Nelly in early October. “A long time must yet elapse before I can do this.”

  In the meantime, he sparred with General-in-Chief Winfield Scott. McClellan believed he was outnumbered. By his latest estimate, some one hundred and fifty thousand Confederates threatened Washington—a number more than three times their actual strength. When General Scott questioned the amazing figure, McClellan swore he could not tell if the old warrior was a “dotard or a traitor!” Their dispute—now a raw struggle for power—finally boiled over in a stormy high-level meeting. The cantankerous Scott angrily confronted his young protégé. “I kept cool, looked him square in the face, & rather I think got the advantage of him,” McClellan boasted of the exchange.551

  In a letter to Secretary of War Cameron, Scott charged that the brash young general had repeatedly broken the chain of command, going directly to Lincoln and certain Cabinet members without Scott's knowledge. McClellan reportedly withheld sensitive information from Scott, yet shared it with the politicians.

  McClellan had allied himself with powerful forces, and Scott was enfeebled by poor health. “I am unable to ride in the saddle or to walk by reason of dropsy in my feet and legs and paralysis in the small of my back,” the aged Scott admitted. “I shall definitely retire from the Army.” He did so on October 31. One day later, President Lincoln appointed George McClellan as the new general-in-chief. At the tender age of thirty-four, McClellan now commanded all United States armies.552

  That evening, President Lincoln called on McClellan. “I should be perfectly satisfied if I thought that this vast increase of responsibility would not embarrass you,” the president said, reflecting some misgivings.

  “It is a great relief, Sir,” McClellan assured him. “I feel as if several tons were taken from my shoulders today. I am now in contact with you, and the Secretary. I am not embarrassed by intervention.”

  “Well, draw on me for all the sense I have, and all the information,” Lincoln said. “In addition to your present command, the supreme command of the army will entail a vast labor upon you.”

  McClellan responded quietly, “I can do it all.”553

  He chose to do it alone, uninspired by the president or his staff. “It is perfectly sickening to have to work with such people & to see the fate of the nation in such hands,” McClellan informed Nelly on the eve of his appointment. He looked upon the cabinet secretaries as “a set of scamps,” vile, cowardly rascals and fools. McClellan viewed Lincoln as honest but “unworthy” to be president, a fancier of quaint anecdotes that were beneath the dignity of his office—traits that moved him to call Lincoln “the original gorilla” and “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”554

  McClellan was more gracious to the departing Winfield Scott. And even while Congressional Republicans carped over the army's inertia, the troops were endeared to their new general-in-chief. “If McClellan wields the sword as well as he does the pen,” editor Archibald Campbell wrote presciently, “the nation may well have confidence in the new commander of our forces.” In the meantime, there were grand reviews and bulletins assuring Lincoln that the capital was safe. “All quiet on the Potomac,” became McClellan's watchphrase. “I am doing all I can to get ready to move before winter sets in,” he informed Nelly, “but it now begins to look as if we are condemned to a winter of ina
ctivity.”555

  As campaigning drew to a close, troops in the mountains of Western Virginia sought escape from the drudgery of army life. In the absence of ladies, the boys held stag dances. “Chestnutting and exploring expeditions; trout fishing and bathing; chuck-a-luck, seven-up, and what not modes of gambling besides,” recalled an Ohio Federal, “checker-playing, with chess—kingliest of games; these, and the like, commanded general attention, and were practiced daily. But pipe-making was the supreme passion.” Soldiers dug up the abundant laurel or rhododendron bushes and from the roots carved handsome smoking pipes, rings, and other objects with their jackknifes. Countless such mementoes of soldier life were mailed to the loved ones at home.556

  The troops avidly penned and read letters. James Hall, working in the post office at Camp Bartow, claimed that nearly eight hundred letters passed through each day. Although notoriously unreliable, the mails were important for morale. “Your letters are my only comfort,” wrote Georgian Shepherd Pryor to his wife, a common theme among the troops.557

  Hunting became a popular pastime. Soldiers gained passes to chase the abundant game in those mountains, but usually returned to camp empty-handed. “We were the original game-preservers of the Cheat Mountain region,” Ambrose Bierce confessed years later, “for although we hunted…over as wide an area as we dared to cover we took less game, probably, than would have been taken by a certain hunter of disloyal views whom we scared away.”558