Crossing

by Gilbert, Morris

They marched and marched. On the ninth, General Lee ordered Jackson to his old command and the scene of such drama, Harpers Ferry. The strategic village was once again in the hands of the Federals, and it was vital for Lee to take it to protect the rear of the army, who were to march to Hagerstown, Maryland, and then farther north to engage the enemy.

  After arranging his artillery in a careful sweep surrounding the town, Stonewall stood with his staff on a crag of Bolivar’s Heights, looking down at the Federals ensconced in Harpers Ferry. The town was surrounded by hills, which made it easy to attack and impossible to defend.

  One of Jackson’s officers said, “It sure is down in a bowl, isn’t it?”

  Jackson said succinctly, “I’d rather take the place forty times than undertake to defend it once.”

  And so, almost before the first rolling artillery volley was finished, the Federals sent up the white flag, and 12,000 men surrendered. Jackson again had captured a rich unspoiled treasure—13,000 small arms, seventy-three cannons, and countless foodstuffs, supplies, and other stores.

  It was September 15, 8:00 a.m. Even before he went down into the town, Jackson called Yancy to him. “Dispatch to General Lee. Double-quick, Sergeant Tremayne.”

  “Yes, sir.” Yancy saluted and Midnight took off in a flurry of dust and smoke that lingered on the air. It was sixteen hard miles, on the old Shepherdstown Road and crossing the Potomac at Boteler’s Ford, to Lee’s headquarters just west of Sharpsburg, Maryland.

  At three o’clock, Yancy returned. He was covered in dust, his boots wet to the knee. Midnight was lathering, his legs covered with mud up to his hocks. Still he pranced and stamped.

  Yancy jumped off and hurried to Jackson, who was still in the village making arrangements to parole the prisoners. “Sir,” he said breathlessly, “I have a return from General Lee.”

  Eyeing him shrewdly, Jackson took the note. He looked up at Yancy and asked, “Did you see the ground?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And?”

  “General Lee is hard-pressed, sir. Vast numbers of the enemy have massed east of Sharpsburg.”

  Jackson nodded. Lee’s dispatch had said that if Jackson had not overcome Harpers Ferry that day, Lee was contemplating a retreat. He urged Jackson to come to Sharpsburg with all speed.

  They marched all night, quite a feat after the last two weeks of marching and maneuvering and skirmishing. But they were Jackson’s foot cavalry, and they were relentless. They reached Sharpsburg early on the morning of September 16. Two armies faced each other, intent on destruction, across a winding, cheerful little creek called Antietam.

  It was September 17, 1862. Johnny Rebs called it the Battle of Sharpsburg; Yankees called it the Battle of Antietam. Each of the places on that horrendous battlefield carried its own too-clear imprint.

  Dunker Church, where the bloodletting began at six o’clock that morning. And where Stonewall Jackson, calm and imperturbable in the midst of screaming bullets and murderous artillery, directed his men in his final counterattack, saving the Confederate left from complete destruction.

  The North Woods, where General Joe Hooker’s Union troops harassed the Confederate left all the day, visions of blue coats weaving in and out of the soft-wooded shadows, and sometimes storming out in waves, men in gray falling before them.

  The East and West Woods, where both blue and gray fought and died, the sweet glades scarred by rifle fire and artillery explosions and men lying on the ground, coloring it scarlet.

  The Cornfield, twenty acres of what had been well-ordered rows of sweet corn, with men of both the North and the South lying as they fell, just as the cornstalks lay from the onslaught. On that day the lines surged back and forth over the Cornfield no less than eight times. In the end neither army possessed it, only the dead.

  The Sunken Road, which came to be known as Bloody Lane, because it was filled in some places six deep with Confederate dead.

  Burnside’s Bridge, surrounded in some places six deep with Federal dead.

  General John B. McClellan was timid. He imagined General

  Robert E. Lee as all-powerful, and in his head he always was certain that the Army of Northern Virginia was half again, or sometimes twice as numerous as it was. “Little Mac,” as he was affectionately known in the army, hated to risk his men. He could map out grand strategies, but when it came to completely committing his army to an aggressive offense, as General Lee always did, Little Mac would procrastinate, always asserting that the job could not be done unless he had more reinforcements, more cannons, more rifles, more ammunition, more aides, more couriers, more food, more tents, more blankets, more shoes, and more intelligence. Even his defensive moves were halfhearted and ineffective because of his reluctance to fight.

  At Sharpsburg he outnumbered General Lee’s army almost two to one, with a force of 75,000 facing Lee’s army of 40,000. All that day McClellan attacked and defended in a piecemeal fashion. The Confederates cut up those Yankee pieces even more, and in pieces they retreated.

  The Army of Northern Virginia lost over 10,000 men, killed, wounded, and missing. Federal casualties were close to 12,500. When the final awful numbers were tabulated, 22,546 men had fallen on that Bloodiest Day.

  One thing happened to Yancy that day that should have made him glad. But because it happened at such a grim and critical moment during the Battle of Sharpsburg, he recalled it with wonder, mixed with the pall of dread that overlaid his every image of that battle.

  When Jackson had withdrawn from Harpers Ferry, he had left General A. P. Hill’s division behind to deal with the parole of their 12,000 prisoners and to inventory and transport the captured guns and material to Sharpsburg. Consequently, he was late arriving on the field; in fact, he arrived just at the moment that the Confederate right was about to crumble, and thus the Federals could easily have flanked them and then utterly destroyed them.

  When General Jackson sighted the first of Hill’s troops as they appeared on the Shepherdstown Road, Jackson sharply called out for Yancy. He rode up and the general grabbed Midnight’s bridle.

  “General Hill is just arriving on the road, there, to the south. No time to write a dispatch; ride to him as fast as you can and ascertain if he is still at his strength and numbers or if he has lost stragglers along the road. And hurry back to me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Yancy said and hurried off toward the south.

  General A. P. Hill was already at the line of battle and was directing the first brigades marching into their positions.

  Yancy rode at a blinding gallop to the front, through confusion of soldiers hurrying to get placed along the line. He drew up to the head of the brigade. Then he reined in Midnight so abruptly that he reared and screamed. General Hill turned, and in a single blinding instant, Yancy’s mind was filled with images imprinted as surely as if he were seeing them with his eyes instead of his brain:

  General A. P. Hill, in his blazing red flannel shirt, shouting orders and cursing at the top of his lungs on the bloody center of the Battle of Gaines’ Mill.

  Grinning at Yancy. “Orders from Stonewall, huh? What? Attack the North Pole?”

  Looking down at his right arm, watching the dark stain spread.

  Stunning blow to his head … gray … then black.

  Yancy remembered it all—the noise, the screams, the guns, the smell, the fear, the pain. It filled his mind for a moment, and he had to shake his head to clear it. Then he rode up to General Hill and shouted, “General Hill! Message from General Jackson!”

  And so he thought no more about it. He knew he would not have time until much later that night.

  As night fell, the few guns firing here and there spluttered out. Lee’s officers were expecting an order to retreat. In spite of the fact that the Confederates had undoubtedly driven the Federals from the field in a shamefaced retreat, the Army of Northern Virginia had been mauled badly, and withdrawal would have been understandable and perfectly honorable.

  But Robert E. Lee stood
his ground.

  The Army of Northern Virginia camped that night. Fatalistically they ate confiscated supplies more plentiful than they had since

  Second Manassas, anticipating another cruel fight the next day. Faithfully they believed in Robert E. Lee and with certainty believed, in spite of their cruelly reduced numbers, that they would drive the hordes of men in blue from the field once again.

  Yancy and Peyton Stevens found a grassy swath under a bullet-scarred oak tree in the West Woods, where General Jackson had set up his overnight headquarters. Both of them were deadly tired, though they only felt a peculiar numbness, and they were ravenously hungry. They built a fire, neither of them speaking, only gathering up wood and hollowing out a shallow hole and going through the business of lighting the wood in a light breeze.

  Peyton Stevens was pale and drawn and looked twice his age. Yancy was pasty-faced, the hollows of his jaw deep, his cheekbones sharp, his eyes red. They had fat peaches from one of the orchards they had passed on their march from Harpers Ferry. As always, Peyton had plenty of stores of tinned beef, peas, salmon, and even lobster. Yancy had brought a loaf of fresh bread from the prison bakery at Harpers Ferry that had, miraculously, survived in his haversack, along with some confiscated beef jerky.

  As they ate, they slowly began talking, just a little, about the day, telling each other of the dispatches they had taken to which commander, and of the situation at the time. Both of them had been to General Lee’s headquarters twice that day, and they compared notes on the beloved “Marse Robert” as his army called him.

  “It’s too bad that Chuckins can’t do courier duty sometimes, as he loves General Lee so much.” Yancy stopped, sat up, and looked around blankly. “Where is Chuckins, anyway?”

  Peyton answered, “General Jackson called all his clerks together. He’s taking them to tour the field hospital to get the information about the dead and wounded.”

  “Oh,” Yancy said unhappily. “I’d rather ride through a hail of bullets than do that.”

  Peyton didn’t answer.

  Knowing that General Jackson could call them to duty at any time, after they ate they spread their blankets and went to sleep.

  Long after midnight, Yancy was roused from feverish, hateful dreams of blood and gore by a small, pitiful sound. He sat up.

  Charles Satterfield sat against the trunk of the oak tree, his knees drawn up, his arms hugging them, and his head resting on them. His shoulders shook. The little noises that Yancy heard was Chuckins sobbing quietly.

  Yancy went to him, sat down by him, and put his arms around him. Chuckins buried his face in Yancy’s shoulder. Chuckins cried for a long time, but finally the sobs subsided and he drifted off to sleep, leaning against Yancy’s side, Yancy’s arm still around him. They slept until dawn.

  CHAPTER TWENTY–THREE

  In October 1862, General Lee reorganized and streamlined his army. Major General James Longstreet was promoted to Lieutenant General and named commander of the newly-created First Corps. Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was also promoted to Lieutenant General and named commander of Second Corps. The Army of Northern Virginia was now not only in spirit, but also in letter, a cohesive unified whole.

  Jackson called Yancy and Peyton into his headquarters tent. “I’ve just received a promotion, by the grace of God,” he said humbly. “And for your outstanding service, your courage, your valor, and your dedication to the army, General Lee and I have agreed to give you field promotions to Second Lieutenant.”

  He rose, raised his right hand, and, stunned, Yancy and Peyton did the same. Jackson swore them in with the Confederate Officers Notice of Commission, and then they took the Loyalty Oath. It was some time before Peyton and Yancy could actually believe that they were now lieutenants.

  A few days after his own illustrious promotion, Jackson received a letter from Anna suggesting that she take steps to publicize his career. His reply was ever that of the devout Christian that he was:

  Don’t trouble yourself about representations that are made of your husband. These things are earthly and transitory. There are real and glorious blessings, I trust, in reserve for us beyond this life. It is best for us to keep our eyes fixed upon the throne of God and the realities of a more glorious existence…. It is gratifying to be beloved and to have our conduct approved by our fellow men, but this is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is in reservation for us in the presence of our glorified Redeemer…. I appreciate the loving interest that prompted such a desire in my precious darling.

  The Battle of Antietam almost claimed another casualty—President Abraham Lincoln. News of the horrendous bloodshed so anguished him that he came very near to physical prostration, and his grief was so great that his advisors, for a day or two, feared that he might suffer a mental breakdown. However, being the keen and stalwart leader that he was, he quickly overcame his desolation and turned again to leading his country in war.

  In the aftermath of the shambles at Sharpsburg, Lincoln knew very well that it was the perfect opportunity to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia and shorten the war. He could clearly see that the Army of the Potomac, again fortified to 110,000 men, should pursue Lee’s weakened and exhausted army into Virginia and crush them. But Lincoln could also clearly see that General George B. McClellan had no such plans in mind. After Antietam he had trumpeted his great triumph and settled down there to winter, safely and comfortably back across the Potomac and near to the 73,000 troops guarding Washington.

  Determined to prod him, Lincoln made a surprise visit to him and the army on October 1. He stayed for three days, much of it spent pressing “Little Mac” to move the army forward. Yet he could sense it was to no avail.

  Early one morning the president invited his close friend, Ozias Hatch, to go for a walk. On a hillside, Lincoln gestured with exasperation to the expanse of white tents spread out below. He asked, “Hatch, Hatch, what is all this?”

  “Why, Mr. Lincoln,” Hatch replied, “this is the Army of the Potomac.”

  “No, Hatch, no,” Lincoln retorted. “This is McClellan’s bodyguard.”

  After this fruitless visit, Lincoln tried peremptorily ordering McClellan to cross the Potomac and engage Lee.

  McClellan flatly refused and engaged in a long series of shrill telegraphic demands for more reinforcements and more supplies.

  Lincoln reached the end of his considerable patience. On November 5, 1862, he relieved McClellan of duty, directing him to return immediately to his home in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was to await “further orders,” which he had no intentions of ever sending.

  When he learned of his dismissal, McClellan wrote his wife that night:

  They have made a great mistake. Alas for my poor country!

  I know in my inmost heart she never had a truer servant.

  But that November, McClellan saw war for the last time.

  For the third time, President Lincoln asked General Ambrose Burnside to take command of the Army of the Potomac. For the third time he refused, again insisting that he was not competent to handle so large a force. But when he learned that if he did not accept, the command would go to an officer that Burnside had long detested—General Joseph Hooker—he reversed his decision.

  General Robert E. Lee was uncertain of what this change of command would take. He lamented McClellan’s departure. “We always understood each other so well,” he remarked to Longstreet with his characteristic modesty. What he really meant was that McClellan was transparent to him. General Lee, from the beginning of his adversary’s command, had understood that McClellan dawdled, he was reluctant to seize the offensive, he was an incredibly poor strategist, and that most of his reputation as a military genius was due to adroit political posturing. Lee rarely spoke so harshly aloud of anyone, however, so he merely continued, “I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find someone whom I don’t understand.”

  It was, indeed, a while before General Lee came to understand Am
brose Burnside. It was not because Burnside was clever, however. It was because he was so incredibly incompetent that Lee viewed him with disbelief … until he proved it.

  However, when Burnside took command, Lee had good reason to be wary, because his army was split in two. This was because at the beginning of November, in the last days of McClellan’s command, “Little Mac” had perhaps deep down begun to sense his own downfall. He had begun to slowly deploy the Army of the Potomac into Virginia, creeping down to Warrenton, Virginia, on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His strategy, as Lincoln had been pressing for months, was to stay astride Lee’s lines of supply from the Shenandoah Valley and then to press south toward Richmond, engaging Lee from the north.

  The problem, as always, was that McClellan dawdled along so slowly that Lee had been given time to position his army in what would most likely mean another Confederate victory and another Federal rout. Lee sent Jackson and Second Corps to the valley, threatening McClellan’s western flank. He sent Longstreet and First Corps to Culpeper, twenty miles to the southwest, directly in McClellan’s path.

  Still, Lee was no fool, and he understood the peril that his army was in. It was divided in half, which in military terms equaled a weakening of the whole. As always, Lee was terrifically outnumbered—at this time the Army of the Potomac numbered about 116,000 men; the Army of Northern Virginia, 72,000. Again, as always, the Federal army was much better equipped than Lee’s men. Lee knew very well that if the Federal army could be led by a daring and courageous commander instead of Little Mac, the odds of a victory for the Confederates would be diminished indeed.

  And so, when Lee finally did see the new strategy of Burnside’s Army of the Potomac, he was puzzled. On November 19, he learned that Burnside was moving the entire army south, along the east sideof the Rappahanock River. Burnside was abandoning a promising opportunity to strike the two separated wings of the Army of Northern Virginia. Also, he was skirting around the Confederates again, a move very reminiscent of McClellan. Lee couldn’t understand how Burnside could hope to gain a better position, but that was because Robert E. Lee was a military genius, and it was difficult, if not impossible, for him to comprehend utter military ignorance.