by S. C. Gwynne
On April 1, nine days after the battle, he relieved Garnett of his command, placed him under arrest, and charged him with neglect of duty. The charge was spelled out in a series of “specifications,” the substance of which was that Garnett had been absent at several critical moments, had failed to “push his regiments into battle,” and, most seriously, had given “the order to fall back, when he should have encouraged his command to hold its position.”6 This last carried more than a hint of an accusation of cowardice. Even more remarkable than the act itself of arresting a general—Lee, by contrast, never arrested any of his generals or subordinates—was that there was scarcely any substance to the charges, as Jackson’s regimental colonels would all later testify. Garnett had performed well and even gallantly at Kernstown under extremely adverse conditions. To remain on the field would have meant the destruction or surrender of the valley army. Jackson’s reserves simply did not get there in time to save it; his reserve ammunition was sitting on wagons miles back on the valley pike. Garnett’s order to withdraw was what saved the army.
News of Garnett’s arrest was received in the Stonewall Brigade with shock, anger, and sadness. According to Jackson’s staffer Henry Kyd Douglas—an admiring and sympathetic chronicler of his commander—not a single officer at any level thought Jackson was right. Douglas wrote later that the brigade’s “regret at the loss of General Garnett was so great and their anger at his removal so intense and universal that their conduct amounted to insubordination. [Garnett’s successor] General [Charles S.] Winder was received in sulky and resentful silence, and for nearly three weeks General Jackson was permitted to ride past his old command without hearing a shout.”7
Garnett himself was appalled, not just at the unfairness of the charges but at the threat they posed to his career and reputation. “The charge and specifications preferred against me by General Jackson . . . contain matters of the gravest import to me,” he wrote a friend, “as they would, if established, blast my character both as a soldier and a man. You can readily appreciate my anxiety to have as speedy a trial as possible, for by no other means could I be fully vindicated.”8 As it happened, he never would be vindicated. Though both Jackson and Garnett spent weeks preparing for it, Garnett’s military trial in the fall of 1862 was brief and inconclusive, interrupted forever by the war. No one who was familiar with the circumstances thought Jackson would have won.
How then to interpret what would seem, to almost any neutral observer, an unfair, unforgiving, and vindictive attack on an honorable man? There are no easy answers. Richard Ewell later offered the least charitable interpretation possible. “If Kernstown had been a victory,” he wrote, “there would have been no charges against Garnett.”9 His meaning was unmistakable: Jackson was using Garnett as a scapegoat for their defeat. Whether that was true or not—his behavior during the war suggests that it was not—Jackson’s quarrelsome streak certainly was more pronounced now that he had real power inside the army’s command structure. He had a tendency to find fault with others, especially with people he did not like, and this found expression in a series of public feuds with other officers, always over what Jackson perceived as a failure to perform duty—moral, military, or otherwise. He, of course, never cared what people thought of him, which made all of this somewhat worse.
The prototype was his public fight with William H. French in Florida, where Jackson had shown a similar disregard for what his inflammatory, thinly supported charges could do to another man’s life and reputation. There, too, it was difficult to imagine that somehow Jackson was doing this for his own advancement. In both cases he seemed honestly committed to punishing what he considered to be the other man’s transgression. That most men would have let such things pass was irrelevant to him. At VMI he had feuded with Superintendent Francis H. Smith on several occasions. One disagreement was so serious that it led Jackson to resign as a director of the Rockbridge Bible Society. Smith, it must be noted, was an ally, and an active one, who had tolerated Jackson’s idiosyncrasies and defended him against charges of incompetence as a teacher. In the Romney campaign, Jackson had charged William Gilham, his friend, former business partner, and VMI colleague, with neglect of duty. Gilham, mercifully, had left the army before Jackson could file the charges and specifications. Jackson had preferred charges against General William W. Loring for “neglect of duty” and “conduct subversive of good order and military discipline.” Fortunately for all concerned, the War Department had shelved them.
Not all of this censure was undeserved. Gilham, brilliant and popular as a professor, was a minor disaster as a field officer. Loring had set out almost from the beginning to subvert Jackson’s authority, and had encouraged his officers in what amounted to an orchestrated campaign of insubordination in Richmond. In any case, this pattern would continue throughout the war. But none of Jackson’s officers would suffer as much, or as unfairly, as Garnett. There was, however, a highly pragmatic lesson in all of this for anyone who served as a brigade commander under Stonewall Jackson. If you retreated without specific orders to do so, you would be arrested and brought up on charges, with the attendant destructive effects on your career and reputation. It is impossible to measure the effect of Jackson’s action on the battlefields where his army fought. On the other hand, it is impossible to imagine that such a thought would not cross the mind of a brigadier who was thinking about ordering retreat.
Garnett was not Jackson’s only personnel problem. He had trouble, too, in his valley campaign with the man who, besides Garnett, constituted his chief headache: Turner Ashby. In his case, though, the command structure offered the subordinate officer protection that the unfortunate Garnett did not have. Ashby and his cavalry were technically an independent command, receiving orders directly from the Confederate War Department, an arrangement that went back to the earliest days of the war and the formation of cavalry regiments. He was not untouchable, but he was harder to get at. He was also something that Garnett was not: a legend in the making—one of the Confederacy’s very first—a dashing, charismatic, and astoundingly brave man who had the unswerving allegiance of his men in a way that Jackson’s other officers did not. Jackson was well aware of all that. He was also aware of how demonically effective Ashby could be in the lethal margins between armies, screening Jackson’s men, causing minor havoc for the enemy, blinding him, slowing him down. Ashby’s legend was such that some Federal prisoners said they believed he had magical powers. The evidence was that they had taken deadly aim at both horse and rider and their bullets simply would not hit them.10
While no one could deny Ashby’s bravery and reckless élan, however, he had glaring weaknesses as a field commander. He was, to begin, a poor disciplinarian who often had little or no control over his men. For the buttoned-down, by-the-book Jackson, who insisted on unquestioning obedience to orders, Ashby was an administrative nightmare. On several occasions in April he failed spectacularly to follow orders. Once, after neglecting to post guards, sixty of his men were caught asleep in church and taken prisoner. Later, as his men retreated from Mount Jackson, they failed to destroy supplies and equipment, including a large supply of military stores as well as two locomotives—a cardinal sin in Jackson’s eyes. Still later, ordered to destroy bridges, they were instead found drunk on applejack in an old foundry. When the Federal cavalry charged, they fled into the mountains.11
Sometimes Ashby’s valor and incompetence merged. At Mount Jackson he had intended to burn a bridge over the Shenandoah River to slow the enemy’s advance. But his mounted unit got there only a few steps ahead of the Federals. As Jackson’s staffer Henry Kyd Douglas described it, “In a few minutes a heavy dust announced their approach; a regiment of cavalry in blue, with sabres glistening in the sun, came galloping in column of fours into view, led, apparently, by an officer on a milk-white horse. It was beautiful. Distance lent enchantment to it.”12 But soon the observers realized that the magnificent man on the white charger was really Ashby, who was actually being fired on
by his pursuers. Ashby beat them to the bridge, where he tried to ignite a pile of “combustibles” that had been put there for that purpose. But he was too late. Federal cavalrymen were on him with drawn sabers. “One shot from a horseman at his side cut into his boot,” Douglas wrote, “grazed his leg and buried itself in the side of his charger. The next moment, the avenging sword of the master came down upon the enemy and rolled him in the dust. To us, watching afar off, it was a moment of terrible anxiety. Not a word was spoken, not an exclamation. The bridge was not burned, but where was Ashby? Instantly he was seen to emerge from the bridge and follow his troops. Centaur-like, he and his horse came sweeping over the plain. They were soon with us.” Moments later Ashby’s horse sank to the ground, mortally wounded, as Ashby stroked his mane and gazed into his eyes. “Thus the most splendid horseman I ever knew lost the most beautiful war horse I ever saw,” wrote Douglas.13 In spite of his picturesque bravery, Ashby had failed to burn a strategically critical bridge.
Jackson had painfully mixed feelings about his brilliant, mercurial, unruly cavalry chief, a man he could not bend to his will. “Ashby never had his equal in a charge,” Jackson later told his brother-in-law D. H. Hill in a moment of candor. “But he never had his men in hand, and some of his most brilliant exploits were performed by himself and a handful of followers. He was too kind-hearted to be a good disciplinarian.”14 While he acknowledged Ashby’s abilities to inspire men, and his periodic effectiveness in repulsing disproportionate numbers of Union troops, he could not abide Ashby’s lapses, some of which threatened the welfare of the larger army. The episode involving drunken troopers finally prompted him to act. On April 24 Jackson divided Ashby’s force into two groups of ten and eleven companies and reassigned them to two infantry brigades, effectively stripping him of his command. Ashby would still be able to control the advance and rear guards, but would have to apply to the infantry brigades for men to do it. Some of Ashby’s loyal officers were even sympathetic to Jackson’s attempt to impose order on this large and unmanageable group. “There was still no regimental formation, and his large brigade with only two officers was an unwieldy body,” said one of them. “It was more like a tribal band held together by the authority of a single chief. . . . Jackson saw the evil and tried to correct it.”15
But Jackson had miscalculated. Ashby, furious, resigned, an act that shocked and depressed Jackson’s entire command. “A great calamity has befallen us,” wrote John Harman to his brother. To him it was further proof that “as sure as you and I live Jackson is a cracked man and the sequel will show it.”16 The drama that played out next was unique in Jackson’s career. Jackson asked Ashby to withdraw his resignation, as Jackson himself had done two and a half months earlier. Ashby refused, and the two men exchanged angry words. Ashby came just short of threatening Jackson, asserting that “but for the fact that he had the highest respect for Jackson’s ability as a soldier, and believed him essential to the cause of the South, he would hold him to personal account for the indignity he had put upon him.” Instead of digging in, however, Jackson decided that, as imperfect as his cavalry commander was, Ashby’s resignation would cause far more harm than his remaining in command. Jackson thus—remarkably—backed down. He revoked his order. “If I persisted in my attempt to improve the efficiency of the cavalry,” Jackson wrote candidly to Robert E. Lee on May 5, “it would produce the contrary effect, as Colonel Ashby’s influence, who is very popular with his men, would be thrown against me.” Ashby, reinstated, made a few meaningless promises to tighten discipline, and that was that. Jackson, a man who did not give up so easily, continued to quietly urge that the War Department take some sort of decisive action.
Jackson’s inflexible notions of duty also took a toll on his relationship with his talented, profane quartermaster, John Harman. While the army was at Rude’s Hill, Jackson had granted Harman a forty-eight-hour furlough to return to his home in Staunton, where all five of his children were seriously ill with scarlet fever. When he arrived, two of them were already dead, and a third was in mortal danger. But when he asked Jackson to extend his leave, Jackson refused, and wrote him a letter explaining that duty trumped Harman’s family’s troubles.17
A few days later, the third child died, too, and Jackson refused Harman’s request to attend the funeral. Harman was devastated, overcome with grief. (Harman would resign in mid-May, only to be talked out of it by Jackson, with promises of better treatment.18) Duty, in Jackson’s army, was a hard master.
In spite of his evident toughness, there were still soldiers in Jackson’s army who believed they could challenge his authority. As the army returned from Franklin to McDowell, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Grigsby reported to Jackson that seventeen members of the 27th Virginia—part of the Stonewall Brigade—who had volunteered to serve for twelve months decided that, since a year had passed, they were no longer bound to stay in the army even though the recent Confederate conscription law had frozen them in place. They had stacked their muskets and demanded to be discharged. Jackson’s response to the news, eyes flashing, was, “What is this but mutiny? Why does Colonel Grigsby refer them to me, to know what to do with a mutiny? He should shoot them where they stand.” Jackson then issued orders to remedy the situation. The entire 27th Virginia Regiment, carrying loaded muskets, was assembled in a field. The seventeen insubordinate soldiers were then marched in front of them and given a choice: they could either return to duty or be shot to death on the spot. They all chose, meekly, to return. This was the last attempt at organized disobedience in Jackson’s army.19
Not all of Jackson’s relationships with subordinates during the valley campaign went badly. He had added the whip-smart, cocky Henry Kyd Douglas to his staff, after Douglas proved his mettle on a perilous all-night ride across the Blue Ridge Mountains to deliver a message to General Ewell.20 In addition, he hired a new assistant adjutant general—another term for chief of staff—named Robert Lewis Dabney, a Presbyterian pastor who was also one of the leading Presbyterian scholars in the nation. Dabney also happened to be married to one of Anna’s cousins. As a chief of staff, he was dismissed by the rest of the staff as only marginally competent, an impression he did not improve by shading himself with an umbrella while on horseback, which elicited jeers from the troops.21 But Jackson liked and respected him, and especially liked his sermons, and, anyway, his young aide Sandie Pendleton ended up doing most of the routine adjutant work. After Kernstown, Jackson had also added to his staff the remarkable Jedediah Hotchkiss, a man who would play a large role in Jackson’s success. Hotchkiss, thirty-three, was from Staunton. He was one of Virginia’s leading geologists and an accomplished amateur cartographer. He was devoutly religious, and neither drank alcohol nor smoked. Jackson summoned him, asked him about the topographical work he had done in Virginia, and then gave him his first order: “I want you to make me a map of the Valley, from Harper’s Ferry to Lexington, showing all points of offence and defence in those places. Mr. Pendleton will give you orders for whatever outfit you want. Good morning, sir.”22 At a time when many commanders were forced to use store-bought maps of atrocious quality, Hotchkiss was an extraordinary asset. Jackson had already used his talents in crossing the Blue Ridge and in the mountainous country around McDowell. His ability to understand and employ terrain would have everything to do with Jackson’s next enterprise: the destruction of Nathaniel Prentiss Banks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
HUNTER AS PREY
Major General Richard S. Ewell, the man they called Old Bald Head, was in a blazing rage. He was so angry, stalking back and forth in his quarters with his spurs on and his cap drawn low on his hairless pate, that his staff, at whom he had blown up several times that day, was studiously avoiding him. The date was May 13, 1862, five days after the Battle of McDowell. The object of his fury was none other than his fellow general Thomas J. Jackson, who had abandoned him precipitously at this muddy camp in the Elk Run Valley near Swift Run Gap ten days before. Jackson had told him almos
t nothing of his plans, and had left him to languish in what Ewell considered a godforsaken hole ever since. Ewell had learned of the victory at McDowell, only to be informed that Jackson was embarking on what Ewell considered the deeply misguided pursuit of Schenck and Milroy up the mountain-walled South Branch of the Potomac River. Ewell, meanwhile, had been left to stew in his own sour air, to fend off constant, annoying wires from Richmond asking him questions he could not answer, and to rage at Jackson.
“Did it ever occur to you that General Jackson is crazy?” he asked the unfortunate Colonel James A. Walker, who had tried to avoid such an interrogation. This was the same James A. Walker who, as a cadet at VMI, had challenged Jackson in his classroom, threatened him, and later been expelled.
“I don’t know, General,” Walker replied. “We used to call him Tom Fool Jackson at the Institute, but I don’t suppose he is really crazy.”
“I tell you, sir, he is as crazy as a March hare!” stormed Ewell. “He has left me here with some instructions to stay until he returns, but Banks’s whole army is advancing on me and I haven’t the remotest idea where to communicate with General Jackson. I tell you, sir, he is crazy.”1
The source of Ewell’s anger was news that Union general James Shields had detached his force from Banks and was marching with a full division through New Market Gap, across the Massanutten Mountain, northward up the Luray Valley, and over the Blue Ridge on his way to join McDowell at Fredericksburg. Shields, in other words, was passing directly under Ewell’s nose, and there was nothing Ewell could do about it, and he simply couldn’t stand it. Powerless to attack, he did the only thing he could: he dispatched part of the 6th Virginia Cavalry and several pieces of horse artillery under VMI graduate Tom Munford “to impede Shields’s movement in every possible way.”2