The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

by Shelby Foote

  Halleck replied by wire and by mail. “I must take things as I find them,” he said in the letter. “I find the forces divided, and I wish to unite them. Only one feasible plan has been presented for doing this. If you or anyone else had presented a better plan I certainly should have adopted it. But all of your plans require reinforcements, which it is impossible to give you. It is very easy to ask for reinforcements, but it is not so easy to give them when you have no disposable troops at your command.” The telegram, being briefer, was more to the point. After saying, “You cannot regret the order of withdrawal more than I did the necessity of giving it,” Halleck put an end to the discussion: “It will not be rescinded and you will be expected to execute it with all possible promptness.” Next day, August 7—the date of Lee’s letter urging Jackson to consider a strike at Pope—the need for haste was emphasized in a second wire received by the harassed commander at Harrison’s Landing. “I must beg of you, General, to hurry along this movement,” Halleck told him. “Your reputation as well as mine may be involved in its rapid execution.”

  Left with neither voice nor choice in the matter, McClellan worked hard to speed the evacuation. But he wrote his wife: “They are committing a fatal error in withdrawing me from here, and the future will show it. I think the result of their machination will be that Pope will be badly thrashed within ten days, and that they will be very glad to turn over the redemption of their affairs to me.”

  The danger, the crying need for haste as Halleck saw it, was that Lee might take advantage of his interior lines and attack one or the other of the two main Federal forces before the northward shift began, or, worse still, while the movement was in progress. Of the two—Pope on the Rappahannock and McClellan on the James—Old Brains was most concerned about the former. As he put it to McClellan, who was struggling to extract his troops from the malarial Peninsula bottoms, “This delay might not only be fatal to the health of your army, but in the meantime General Pope’s forces would be exposed to the heavy blows of the enemy without the slightest hope of assistance from you.”

  Pope was worried too, although he did not let it show in his manner. Privately he was complaining to Halleck about “the supineness of the Army of the Potomac,” which he said “renders it easy for the enemy to reinforce Jackson heavily,” and he urged: “Please make McClellan do something.” Publicly, however, he showed no symptoms of doubt or trepidation. On August 8, when he transferred his headquarters southward to Culpeper, Halleck wired him uneasily: “Do not advance, so as to expose yourself to any disaster, unless you can better your line of defense, until we can get more troops upon the Rappahannock.… You must be very cautious.” Pope seemed unalarmed; he appeared, in fact, not to have a single cautious bone in his whole body. He intended to hold where he was, despite the risk involved in the knowledge that Stonewall Jackson was before him with a force he estimated at 30,000 men.

  Numerically, as of early August, his confidence was well founded. Exclusive of Burnside, whose 12,000 had debarked at Aquia and were now at Falmouth, he had 77,779 soldiers in the Army of Virginia. Even after deducting the troops in the Washington fortifications, along with those in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond, he was left with just over 56,000 in the eight divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry comprising the three corps under McDowell, Banks, and Sigel. This was the field force proper, and it seemed ample for the execution of the project he had conceived at the outset. His intention had been to operate southward down the Orange & Alexandria to Gordonsville and beyond, thereby menacing the Virginia Central so that Lee would weaken the Richmond defenses to the point where McClellan could make a successful assault. McClellan’s pending withdrawal would alter at least a part of this, of course, but Pope still thought the plan a good one: not the least of its advantages being that it had the approval and support of the Administration, since it simultaneously covered Washington. What was more, his assignment—formerly minor, or anyhow secondary—now became major. Instead of setting Richmond up for capture by McClellan, he would take the place himself and be known thereafter as the man who broke the back of the rebellion. That was a thought to warm the heart. He would consolidate his gains, then proceed with his advance, reinforced by such numbers as reached him from the Army of the Potomac.

  At present, it was true, his striking force was rather scattered. More than a third of McDowell’s corps—11,000 infantry, with 30 guns and about 500 cavalry—was still at Fredericksburg, under Brigadier General Rufus King, blocking the direct approach to Washington. Now that Burnside had arrived, Pope might have summoned King to join him, but just now he preferred to keep him where he was, menacing Jackson’s supply line and playing on Lee’s fears for the safety of his capital. Besides, he felt strong enough without him. Banks and Sigel had come eastward through the passes of the Blue Ridge, and though their five divisions had not been consolidated, either with each other or with McDowell’s two, Pope still had better than 44,000 troops with which to oppose the estimated 30,000 rebels in his immediate front. The situation was not without its dangers: Halleck kept saying so, at any rate, and old General Wool, transferred from Fort Monroe to Maryland, had warned him at the outset: “Jackson is an enterprising officer. Delays are dangerous.” But Pope was not alarmed. If the highly touted Stonewall wanted a fight, at those odds, he would gladly accommodate him.

  Banks felt the same way about it, only more so; for while Pope intended to earn a reputation here in the East, Banks was determined to retrieve one. On August 8, therefore, he was pleased to receive at Culpeper an order directing him to march his two divisions south: Jackson had crossed the Rapidan, moving north, and Pope wanted Banks to delay him while the rest of the army was being assembled to give him the battle he seemed to be seeking. Banks did not hesitate. McDowell and Sigel were behind him; King was on the way from Fredericksburg. Next morning, eight hot and dusty miles out of Culpeper, he came under long-range artillery fire from the slopes of a lone peak called Cedar Mountain, and pressing on found rebel infantry disposed in strength about its northern base and in the woods and fields off to the right. After more than two months of brooding over the shocks of May, he was face to face with the old Valley adversary whose soldiers had added insult to injury by giving him the nickname “Commissary” Banks.

  He was itching to attack, then and there, but in the face of the known odds—he was down to about 8000 men as a result of multiple detachments, while Jackson was reported to have at least three times that many—he did not feel free to do so on his own responsibility. Then a courier arrived from Culpeper, a staff colonel sent by Pope with a verbal message which seemed to authorize an immediate all-out attack. (The officer’s name was Louis Marshall, a Union-loyal Virginian and a nephew of R. E. Lee, who had said of him: “I could forgive [his] fighting against us, but not his joining Pope.”) Welcome as the message was, Banks could scarcely believe his ears. In fact, he had it written down and then read back for verification:

  General Banks will move to the front immediately, assume command of all the forces in the front, deploy his skirmishers if the enemy approaches, and attack him immediately as soon as he approaches, and be reinforced from here.

  This ambiguous farrago, dictated by Lee’s nephew in the name of Pope, was open to conflicting interpretations. It might mean that the attack was to be made with skirmishers only, holding the main body on the defensive until McDowell arrived to even the odds and Sigel came up to stretch them in favor of the Union. On the other hand, it might mean what it said in the words that were quickest to catch the eye: “Attack him immediately as soon as he approaches.” That sounded like the army commander who three weeks ago had admonished his generals “to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found.” At any rate, whatever the odds, Banks took him at his word. He put his men in attack formation and sent them forward, on the left and on the right.

  Lee’s letter of August 7, recommending a swipe at Pope, had not been needed; for while he was writing it Jackson was already pu
tting his 25,000 soldiers in motion to carry out the strategy it suggested. His cavalry having reported the superior enemy forces badly scattered beyond the Rapidan, he hoped to make a rapid march across that stream, pounce on one of the isolated segments, and withdraw Valley-style before Pope could concentrate against him. So far, it had not worked at all that way, however—primarily because another letter of Lee’s, while needed, had not been heeded. A. P. Hill was kept as much in the dark as to his chief’s intentions as Winder and Ewell had ever been. “I pledge you my word, Doctor,” the latter told an inquiring chaplain before the movement got under way, “I do not know whether we march north, south, east or west, or whether we will march at all. General Jackson has simply ordered me to have the division ready to move at dawn. I have been ready ever since, and have no further indication of his plans. That is almost all I ever know of his designs.”

  Stonewall was still Stonewall, especially when secrecy was involved, and no one—not even Robert E. Lee, of whom he said: “I am willing to follow him blindfolded”—was going to change him. The result, as Lee had feared, was mutual resentment and mistrust. Not only did Jackson not “consult” with his red-haired lieutenant, whose so-called Light Division was as large as the other two combined; he rode him unmercifully for every slight infraction of the rules long since established for the Army of the Valley. Consequently, glad as he had been to get away from Longstreet, Hill began to suspect that he had leaped from the frying pan into the fire. Resentment bred confusion, and confusion mounted quickly toward a climax in the course of the march northward against Pope. Having reached Orange in good order the first day, August 7, Jackson issued instructions for the advance across the Rapidan tomorrow, which would place his army in position for a strike at Culpeper the following day. The order of march would be Ewell, Hill, Winder; so he said; but during the night he changed his mind and told Ewell to take an alternate road. Uninformed of the change, Hill had his men lined up next morning on the outskirts of town, waiting for Ewell to take the lead. That was where Jackson found him. Angry at the delay, he rebuked him and passed Winder to the front. The result was further delay and a miserable showing, complicated by Federal cavalry probing at his wagon train. Ewell made barely eight miles before sundown, Winder about half that, and Hill was less than two miles out of Orange when the army halted for the night. Jackson was furious. So was Hill. Ewell fretted. Winder was down with fever, riding in an ambulance despite his doctor’s orders that he leave the field entirely. Several men had died of sunstroke, and the rest took their cue from their commanders, grumbling at the way they had been shuffled about in the dust and heat.

  Overnight, Jackson’s wrath turned to gloom. The fast-stepping Army of the Valley, formerly such a close-stitched organization, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Rising next morning to resume the march, he informed Lee: “I am not making much progress.… Today I do not expect much more than to close up [the column] and clear the country around the train of the enemy’s cavalry. I fear that the expedition will, in consequence of my tardy movements, be productive of but little good.”

  Ewell had the lead; Winder was in close support; Hill was marching hard to close the gap. The morning wore on, hot as yesterday. Noon came and went. Presently, up ahead, there was the boom of guns, and word came back to Jackson that the Federals were making a stand, apparently with horse artillery. He rode forward and made a brief reconnaissance. This was piedmont country, rolling, heavily wooded except for scattered fields of grain. The bluecoats did not appear to be present in strength, but there was no real telling: Jackson decided to wait for Hill before advancing. Off to the right was Cedar Mountain, obviously the key to the position. Ewell was told to put his batteries there and his infantry below them, along the northern base; Winder would take position on the left in order to overlap the Yankee line when the signal was given to go forward. There was no hurry. It was now past 2 o’clock and Culpeper was eight miles away: too far, in any event, for an attack to be made on it today. Jackson went onto the porch of a nearby farmhouse and lay down to take a nap.

  Meanwhile the artillery duel continued, the Union guns firing accurately and fast. This was clearly something more than a mere delaying action staged by cavalry; there was infantry out there beyond the woods, though in what strength could not be told. Manifestly weak, pale as his shirt—he was in fact in his shirt sleeves—Winder had left his ambulance, ignoring the doctor’s protests, put his troops in line, extending the left as instructed, and then had joined his batteries, observing their fire with binoculars and calling out corrections for the gunners. It was now about 4 o’clock. An officer went down alongside him, clipped on the head by a fragment of shell; another was eviscerated by a jagged splinter; a third was struck in the rump by an unexploded ricochet and hurled ten feet, though he suffered only bruises as a result. Then came Winder’s turn. Tall and wavy-haired, he kept his post, and as he continued to direct the counterbattery fire, calm and cool-looking in his shirt sleeves, with the binoculars held to his eyes, a shell came screaming at him, crashing through his left arm and tearing off most of the ribs on that side of his chest. He fell straight back and lay full length on the ground, quivering spasmodically.

  “General, do you know me?” a staff lieutenant asked, bending over the sufferer in order to be heard above the thunder of the guns.

  “Oh yes,” Winder said vaguely, and his mind began to wander. The guns were bucking and banging all around him, but he was back at home again in Maryland. In shock, he spoke disconnectedly of his wife and children until a chaplain came and knelt beside him, seeking to turn his thoughts from worldly things.

  “General, lift up your head to God.”

  “I do,” Winder said calmly. “I do lift it up to him.”

  Carried to the rear, he died just at sundown, asking after the welfare of his men, and those who were with him were hard put for a comforting answer. By then the fury of the Union assault had crashed against his lines, which had broken in several places. Jackson’s plan for outflanking the enemy on the left had miscarried; it was he who was outflanked in that direction. The sudden crash of musketry, following close on the news that Winder had been mangled by a shell, brought him off the farmhouse porch and into the saddle. He rode hard toward the left, entering a moil of fugitives who had given way in panic when the bluecoats emerged roaring from the cover of the woods. Drawing his sword—a thing no one had ever seen him do before in battle—he brandished it above his head and called out hoarsely: “Rally, brave men, and press forward! Your general will lead you; Jackson will lead you! Follow me!”

  This had an immediate effect, for the sight was as startling in its way as the unexpected appearance of the Federals had been. The men halted in their tracks, staring open-mouthed, and then began to rally in response to the cries of their officers, echoing Stonewall, who was finally persuaded to retire out of range of the bullets twittering round him. “Good, good,” he said as he turned back, Winder’s successor having assured him that the Yankees would be stopped. Whether this promise could have been kept in the face of another assault was another matter, but fortunately by now the battle was moving in the opposite direction: A. P. Hill had arrived with the Light Division. Opening ranks to let the fugitives through, Little Powell’s veterans swamped the blue attackers, flung them back on their reserves, and pursued them northward through the gathering twilight. So quickly, after the manner of light fiction, had victory been snatched from the flames of defeat, if not disaster.

  Thankful as Jackson was for this deliverance, he was by no means satisfied. Banks had escaped him once before; he did not intend to let him get away again. A full moon was rising, and he ordered the chase continued by its light. Whenever resistance was encountered he passed his guns to the front, shelled the woods, and then resumed the pursuit, gathering shell-dazed prisoners as he went. Four hundred bluecoats were captured in all, bringing the total Federal losses to 2381; Jackson himself had lost 1276. At last, however, receiving word from his caval
ry that the enemy had been heavily reinforced, he called a halt within half a dozen miles of Culpeper and passed the word for his men to sleep on their arms in line of battle. He himself rode back toward Cedar Mountain, seeking shelter at roadside houses along the way. At each he was told that he was welcome but that the wounded filled the rooms. Finally he drew rein beside a grassy plot, dismounted stiffly, and lay face down on the turf, wrapped in a borrowed cloak. When a staff officer asked if he wanted something to eat: “No,” he groaned, “I want rest: nothing but rest,” and was soon asleep.

  Sunday, August 10, dawned hot and humid, the quiet broken only by the moans and shrieks of the injured, blue and gray, presently augmented by their piteous cries for water as the sun rose burning, stiffening their wounds. Surgeons and aid men passed among them, and burial details came along behind. The scavengers were active, too, gleaning the field of arms and equipment; as usual, Old Blue Light wanted all he could lay hands on. Thus the morning wore away, and not a shot was fired. Aware that Sigel and McDowell had arrived to give Pope two whole corps and half of a third—King was still on the way from Fredericksburg, where Burnside was on call—Jackson would not deliver a Sabbath attack; but he was prepared to receive one, whatever the odds, so long as there were wounded men to be cared for and spoils to be loaded into his wagons. That afternoon, as always seemed to be the case on the morrow of a battle, the weather broke. There were long peals of thunder, followed by rain. Jackson held his ground, and the various details continued their work into the night.