by Bruce Catton
That, then, was Pope's army; some poor soldiers and some good ones, led by two corps commanders who ought to have been back in civilian life and a third who had neither the luck to win victories nor the touch to make men respond to his leadership. In addition, Pope had received two army corps from the Army of the Potomac. One was under the command of General S. P. Heintzelman, a stout old regular with an engaging, knobby-cheeked face surmounted by a fuzz of whiskers. He had plenty of energy—had gone up in one of the newfangled observation balloons on the peninsula to see for himself what the enemy was up to; was blunt in speech, with a nasal twang to his voice, and somehow just missed being an effective corps commander. Heintzelman brought two of the best combat divisions in the army with him. One was Joe Hooker's: Hooker was an intemperate man, in several senses of the word, and he never got along with any of his superior officers, but he at least liked to fight and had driving energy. The other division was led by Phil Kearny, who was all flame and color and ardor, with a slim, twisted streak of genius in him.
Kearny had probably seen more fighting than any man on the field. He had served in Mexico as a cavalry captain; had remarked, in youthful enthusiasm, that he would give an arm to lead a cavalry charge against the foe. He got his wish, at the exact price offered, a few days later, leading a wild gallop with flashing sabers and losing his left arm. He once told his servant: "Never lose an arm; it makes it too hard to put on a glove." When General Oliver Otis Howard lost his right arm in the fighting at Seven Pines, Kearny visited him in hospital and said consolingly: "General, I am sorry for it, but you must not mind it: the ladies will not think the less of you." To which sobersides Howard returned his one recorded wisecrack: "There is one thing we can do, General; we can buy our gloves together." Kearny smiled gaily and cried, "Sure enough," and the two men had shaken on it with the hands they had left.
Kearny had served in the French Army in Algiers and northern Italy and had fought at Magenta and Solferino. A French officer wrote that Kearny "went under fire as on parade, with a smile on his lips." It was reported that in some battle on the peninsula a colonel whom he ordered forward into action asked him just where he should put his men and received the reply: "Oh, anywhere, Colonel—you'll find lovely fighting all along the line." Winfield Scott had called him "the bravest man I ever saw, and a perfect soldier," and nobody who had followed him would dispute the point. He hated McClellan and he hated Pope, and he had the knack of making his troops feel that they were the finest soldiers on the planet. He had invented the "Kearny patch," a red lozenge of flannel which every man in his command wore on his cap, so that the outfit became known as the "red diamond division" and wore its badge with vast pride. When a new regiment joined the division, the soldiers looked on it with reserve until it had proved its bravery in combat; then, a survivor wrote, they agreed that this new regiment "was worthy of the red diamond division." Later in the war Kearny's device was taken up at headquarters, and a special patch was made for each army corps. The shoulder patches worn by American soldiers in subsequent wars were direct descendants of Phil Kearny's morale builder.3
Kearny and Hooker might be hard to manage, and Heintzelman might offer negligible qualities of leadership, but those two divisions would fight furiously wherever they were put: Pope could be sure of that. The same thing was true of the army corps brought in by Fitz-John Porter: two divisions, one of regulars, one of volunteers, superb soldiers who had fully proved their fighting qualities, with a corps commander who might well have been the best officer then in the army. Porter was well-born—a New Hampshire man, nephew of the Commodore David Porter who was a hero of the War of 1812, and a cousin of the Captain David Dixon Porter who was Farragut's right-hand man on the Mississippi—and he was an intimate friend of McClellan, who let him fight both Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill in his own way. He was handsome, soldierly-looking, perhaps just a shade arrogant. He had nothing but contempt for Pope and he expressed his contempt freely, both verbally and in writing, a fact which later had tragic results. He was one of the few soldiers of that be-whiskered era who could wear a full beard and still look trim and dapper.
Lastly, Pope had just been joined by General Jesse Reno, a stocky, capable soldier who brought one slim division and two brigades of another from Burnside's corps; men who technically belonged to McClellan but who had been on an expedition along the Carolina coast and had not fought in front of Richmond. They had done well in the Carolinas, and Burnside was not at the moment with them—a considerable advantage, though no one realized it at the time.
All of these troops Pope was frantically summoning to overwhelm Jackson. If battles were fought on a simple basis of counting numbers, he had more than enough to do the job, but battles aren't settled that way. Pope's handicaps outweighed any conceivable advantage numbers might give him. Pope's own men were discouraged because they had never had good top leadership and saw no reason to believe they were getting it now. The men from the Army of the Potomac were battle-tried and considered themselves fighters every bit as good as any Confederates they were apt to meet, but they were deeply dejected by their transfer to Pope, and they had no higher opinion of him than McClellan had. This was largely Pope's own fault. He had celebrated his assumption of command by issuing an incredibly bombastic address to the troops, announcing that out West where he came from he was used to looking upon the backs of his enemies, and asserting that the army would henceforth stop worrying about bases of supply, lines of retreat, and so on, and simply go ahead and win battles. This was just asking for trouble and everybody knew it, and the Federal soldiers jeered at the message quite as much as did the Confederates. After the war Pope told a friend that Secretary Stanton had written the address and induced him to issue it. Even if that explanation is true (and Pope makes a poor witness) it doesn't exculpate him: the difference between the stupidity of a man who would write such a screed in the first place and the stupidity of a man who would issue it in his own name after someone else wrote it is a difference only in degree.
So the men Pope brought up to the Warrenton turnpike on the twenty-ninth of August were men who expected the worst and knew they were entitled to expect it. Whatever bravery and endurance could do to redeem the mistakes of the general in command would be done, but unless the soldiers' luck was in, for a change, it would not be enough. And their luck was not in. From first to last the Army of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing, proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always out; it did its level best and lost; when it won the victory was always clouded by a might-have-been, and when at last the triumph came at Appomattox there were so very, very many of its men who weren't there to see it.
Pope fought his battle about as one might expect: with great energy, but defective judgment. Jackson, whose position he had finally discovered, was lined up behind an unfinished railroad embankment north of the turnpike, a position as good as a fort; and Jackson was quite happy to let Pope wear the Federal army out while he waited for Lee to join him. As soon as it was light enough to fight Pope began to oblige him. Sigel's Germans attacked first and were repulsed. Then Hooker drove for the center of the line and got a brigade up on the embankment, where Northern and Southern boys fought desperately with bayonets and clubbed muskets before the Northerners were driven down. Now Phil Kearny came in through the woods to smash at A. P. Hill, at the left end of Jackson's line—bent him back and forced him to call for reinforcements, but, like Hooker, found the task too much for him and had to pull out. Kearny sat his horse in the woods and watched his beaten boys returning; saw the 3rd Michigan, which had had ruinous losses, and wept as the regiment went by, crying, "Oh, what has become of my gallant old Third?"4 Reynolds sent his Pennsylvanians in, but Jackson had too much artillery for them and they, too, were rebuffed; and after twilight Hatch's division collided with Hood's Texans along the highway and had to retreat in the darkness after a savage and confused encounter. A major in Hatch's 76th New Yor
k, unhorsed and wounded, came limping back and met disorganized troops in the dark and tried to rally them, only to find himself a prisoner of war: the men belonged to the 2nd Mississippi and wore the Rebel gray.
Meanwhile, off to the left, Porter was coming up with his men. Pope thought Porter had a clear road ahead that would put him on Jackson's flank and roll up his lines for keeps, and ordered him to attack and win the day. But Porter discovered that his clear road was most effectively blocked by thirty thousand sinewy Confederates under James Longstreet, who had silently filed into line of battle around noon, all unseen, and who were now lying in wait, fairly aching to be attacked. Longstreet was a counterpuncher, and a deadly one, and he wanted nothing on earth that day quite so much as to receive an attack by Porter, whom he outnumbered three to one. Porter, sensibly enough, notified Pope of this obstruction and sat tight. But Pope simply refused to believe him. His calculations (made God knows how) had convinced him that Longstreet couldn't possibly reach the field for another twenty-four hours, and he sent back word that Porter was wrong—there was nothing whatever in front of him, the way to Jackson's unguarded flank was wide open, Porter must attack at once. In the end, the attack was not made—to the salvation of the army and the personal ruin of Fitz-John Porter—and long after dark Pope sullenly recalled Porter and his men and brought them up to the main line along the highway.
When morning came Pope gave way to his final, most disastrous delusion. The Texans whom Hatch had bumped into the night before had withdrawn along toward midnight, and Jackson had pulled back his own men in one or two places to make his alignment more compact and had his troops snugly concealed in the woods back of the railroad embankment. Pope was persuaded by all of this that Jackson was in full retreat, and he triumphantly notified Washington that he had won a great victory, and ordered an immediate pursuit, horse, foot, and guns. He had his headquarters on an open knoll and he stood there this morning with his generals, puffing a cigar, overflowing with good humor, exchanging jokes and congratulations, while a small regiment of orderlies stood in the background holding the generals' horses and the breeze whipped the flags and pennants. McDowell was to be in general charge of the pursuit, and Porter, whose troops were fresh, was to lead; Hatch and Reynolds would follow him, while Hooker and Kearny would go along on a parallel road a couple of miles to the north. Orders were to press the enemy vigorously all day. In vain Porter tried to convince Pope that there was an ominous congregation of Rebels off to the south of the highway, with nothing to indicate that they had departed. When Pope made up his mind it stayed made up, and there was no room in it this morning for anything but the conviction that the enemy was in flight. So the troops were wheeled around and got into formation, the artillery came rumbling up, and the pursuit began.
It was probably the briefest pursuit in history. The skirmish lines that went combing through the meadows and groves very quickly discovered that something was still waiting behind that railway embankment. Under Pope's concept of things, that could be nothing more than a rear guard, left there to fight a delaying action while the main body got safely away. So Porter, with deep misgivings, pulled his men out into a battle line on the north side of the road and sent them forward, through a tangle of little hillocks and gullies, across a quiet country road, and on up a gradual rise toward the embankment and the silent woods behind it. Reynolds was under orders to follow him, fanning his troops out on the south side of the turnpike just in case there should be a few Rebels in that area, but now it looked as if Porter might need help, so Reynolds was called in to lend a hand on the right, and Porter's left was quite exposed. To give it a little protection, Porter pulled the 5th and 10th New York out of Sykes's division and sent them, with a battery of regular artillery, to a little hill south of the highway. His men went on, while Hatch formed line farther to the right, and the generals on the hill waited in quiet confidence.
A few Confederate batteries were in sight (part of the rear guard, judged Pope; harbingers of coming trouble, thought Porter) and they opened on Porter's lines, Union batteries replying immediately. The staccato bursts of fire from the skirmishers came more frequently as the advance continued, and the artillery fire on both sides became heavier and heavier. Then suddenly the whole railway embankment sparkled and glistened as the sunlight was reflected off polished rifle barrels, and Stonewall Jackson's massed troops came out of the woods to take their places on the firing line. A gigantic tumult of musketry filled the air, and Federals and Confederates exchanged long, crashing volleys at close range, and instead of a rear-guard action there was a full-dress battle. Jackson's men burned the slope with rifle fire, and on a hill to the southwest new batteries unlimbered, to rake Porter's battle lines with heavy salvos—a deadly enfilade fire that cut the support lines to pieces and left the advance isolated and helpless. The troops in front crumbled and fell back, rallied on the fragments in the rear, and went forward again, drifted back anew, and then drove ahead a third time.
It came to hand-to-hand fighting in places, and at one spot the Confederates ran out of ammunition and threw heavy stones down the bank on the heads of the Federals who were scrambling up. Everywhere there was a smother of battle smoke, the yells of the soldiers, and a tremendous uproar of gunfire. One Northern column came up led by an officer on horseback who rode two dozen paces in front, in defiance of regulations (mounted officers were supposed to ride in rear of the troops in all columns of assault). He rode straight for the embankment, looking neither to the right nor the left, sword held high, the storm of bullets somehow missing him, and put his horse up the steep slope and got clear to the top. For one agonizing, dramatic moment he was poised there, still facing to the front, all alone on the deadly sky line that his men could not reach, central figure in an unbelievable tableau. From the hard Southern fighters to the right and left there went up one spontaneous cry— "Don't kill him!" Then the smoke-fog covered the bank, and the crash of the rifles swept along the line, and when the smoke drifted away the horse and rider were dead at the top of the bank.
Off to Porter's right Hatch sent in his brigades in a deep column. The first line got to the embankment, broke, and came flying back. Gibbon was dashing about on foot, his revolver out, shouting: "Stop those stragglers—make them fall in—shoot them if they don't!" while a Wisconsin regiment crouched with fixed bayonets, ready to impale the fugitives if they went any farther. The rout was stopped, the attack went ahead again, and a skirmish line, strengthened almost to the weight of a line of battle, got on the embankment but could not stay there. From the left, Rebel artillery sent solid shot straight along the front. "A solid shot will plow into the ground, spitefully scattering the dirt," a survivor recalled afterward, "and bound a hundred feet into the air, looking as it flies swiftly like an India-rubber playing ball."5
Abner Doubleday brought his brigade into action. He had heard the first shot of the entire war—indeed, it had been fired at him personally, in a manner of speaking, since he had been a captain of artillery in Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861—and it was reported that Doubleday himself had sighted the gun which fired the first Union shot in reply. He had got his star when the Sumter garrison came north after the surrender, and now he was leading his troops in a desperate fight. One has to chuckle, just a little, thinking about Doubleday. The generals of that army, the good ones and the bad ones alike, were intensely jealous of fame and distinction. Here was Doubleday, strictly an average general, never making any great mistakes but never winning any great laurels either—when Reynolds was killed at Gettysburg the following year Meade took good care not to turn his corps over to Doubleday, the ranking division commander. It is fascinating to wonder what the other generals would have said if they could have known that in the end Doubleday was going to be one of the most famous of them all—not for his war record, but for his alleged connection with the origin of the game of baseball, which the soldiers were just then beginning to play in their off hours.
"Our lines were in the ope
n fields in front of a strip of woods," a Wisconsin soldier wrote. "The Rebel musketry fire was pouring from the woods upon our men who were closing together and rallying under the attack. Regiments would sweep splendidly forward into the front line, fire a crashing volley into the woods, and then work with great energy. But they quickly withered away until there would appear to be a mere company crowding around the colors."6
Joe Hooker, who seemed to be ranking officer on that part of the field, trotted up at last on his white horse, looked the hopeless situation over, and ordered a retirement. The blue line drew back, step by step, still facing to the front; and as it did so the Confederates came out from behind the embankment and followed them, step by cautious step, neither side firing. When the Federal line halted, the Confederates would halt and lie down, holding their muskets ready; when the Federals stepped back again, the Confederates would get up and step after them—a strange, silent, queerly ominous advance and retreat, with the crash of battle sounding loudly beyond the woods to right and to left.
Porter's men were beaten and fell back, and Hatch's troops were beaten and fell back. Longstreet brought his men out of their concealment—it was time to disillusion John Pope at last—and drove them forward in a long charge along the turnpike and over the hills and fields to the south. And Reynolds's Pennsylvanians had been taken off to the right, so that there was nobody in front of Long-street's thirty thousand but one battery of regular artillery and Porter's two volunteer regiments of infantry, isolated on a knoll behind a farmhouse, and they were not nearly enough.