Civil War Ghost Trails

by Mark Nesbitt

  Lee met with his generals, including Stonewall Jackson, who rode 50 miles ahead of his own men. The council decided that the attack would begin on June 26 when Jackson’s men arrived. Jackson then returned some 40 miles to his columns.

  The Confederate attacks would shift from east of Richmond to north of the city near Mechanicsville. Union troops were dug in behind Beaver Dam Creek and, after waiting for Jackson to attack all the morning of June 26, A. P. Hill launched his division at the Federals. The results of Confederates assaulting entrenched positions were horrifying: 1,500 Southern casualties to only 360 Federal.

  Though McClellan reported a complete victory, he began a retreat to high ground near Gaines’ Mill, four miles to the south. He couched his moves from then on as a “change of base” from White House on the Pamunkey River to Harrison’s Landing on the James. On June 27, Lee attacked him at Gaines’ Mill.

  Jackson again was not his aggressive self. Again, A. P. Hill fought nearly alone. Throughout the hot afternoon Confederate assaults were uncoordinated. Late in the day, John Bell Hood and his Texans finally broke through the Union line, but Yankees arriving from across the Chickahominy plugged the gap and acted as a rear guard. The Federals continued their retreat toward the James, leaving some 6,800 casualties. Confederates, again on the offensive, suffered around 9,000 casualties.

  The armies fought again on June 29 at Savage’s Station, a depot to which the Federals had brought some 2,500 wounded for evacuation. The battle began at 9:00 A.M. in a peach orchard on Allen’s Farm about 2 miles west of Savage’s Station on the Richmond & York River Railroad. Confederates brought up a 32-pounder Brooke naval rifled cannon mounted on a railroad car with sloping sides for armor and lobbed shells at the Yankees. The infantry fighting approached a ferociousness that compared to any battle in any theater of the war. The Fifth Vermont Infantry, in only twenty minutes of fighting, lost over half its numbers. But again the Yankees escaped Lee’s grasp.

  On June 30, Jackson passed Savage’s Station and was ordered by Lee to continue the pursuit of McClellan’s retreating columns, although McClellan was no longer with his army. After placing seven divisions around the Glendale crossroads and issuing vague orders to protect the intersection while the rest of the army retreated, he took a skiff out to the gunboat Galena and spent the rest of the day and part of the next ostensibly trying to find a safe place for his army to occupy. He, in essence, left his army without a head for two days while vital rearguard battles took place.

  When Jackson found the bridge on his route through White Oak Swamp destroyed, the fight at White Oak Swamp became predominantly an artillery duel with Jackson unsuccessfully attempting to find an alternate route through the morass. Again in the campaign, Jackson demonstrated an uncharacteristic lack of initiative, which allowed the Federals to successfully protect their army on its retrograde movement and prevented Jackson from connecting with the rest of Lee’s army at Glendale.

  Glendale, about two miles west of White Oak Swamp, was fought to protect an intersection that proved vital for McClellan’s retreat. Confederates under James Longstreet seemed to realize that the place was tactically important and launched themselves recklessly at the enemy. The rebels were at first successful, but Union counterattacks stabilized their lines. The battle became a seesaw affair: Alabamians captured a six-gun battery from Federal forces; infantry and the angry Federal gunners recaptured it in hand-to-hand fighting; Virginians retook the guns in more savage fighting. The fighting cost the Confederates some 3,600 casualties. The Union forces lost 2,800, but successfully defended their retreating army.

  By the next day, July 1, Lee realized that McClellan’s army was nearly to the James, where the Navy’s gunboats could help protect it. By the time the Army of Northern Virginia was prepared to attack, McClellan’s army was in a nearly perfect defensive position on top of a broad plateau near the James called Malvern Hill. Three steep sides funneled any Confederate attack onto a plain swept by artillery lined up almost wheel hub-to-wheel hub. The gunners were supported by 18,000 infantry. Worse for the Confederate attackers, they were within range of the huge naval guns firing from the James River.

  One Confederate general realized the danger. A. P. Hill, whose men had done the lion’s share of the fighting on the Peninsula so far, cautioned against an assault. But Lee, whom the army once thought defensive-minded, and Longstreet, who would later gain the reputation of being reticent to attack, personally scouted the terrain and felt they had found some good artillery positions for their gunners to neutralize the Federal advantage and allow for frontal assaults.

  The attacks were to be preceded by the artillery bombardment, but the guns were spread out along the road back to Glendale as the army marched to Malvern Hill. Not enough artillery arrived on the battlefield and the preliminary bombardment never happened. Instead, the few guns that arrived were quickly put out of action by the more numerous Union cannons.

  Confederate infantry advanced against massed Federal artillery firing canister—antipersonnel rounds of small iron and lead balls encased in tin, which disintegrated upon firing and turned the cannons into giant shotguns—and case shot, which exploded into fragments above the attackers like large, long-range hand grenades.

  Worse, the Confederates never launched a coordinated, massed attack. The small, piecemeal attacks were easily driven back by the Northern gunners, leaving the torn, bloodied bodies of the rebels strewn across the plain. Yet more Confederate assaults continued, the attackers leaping over the bodies of the fallen, soon to become casualties themselves. The infantry of Confederate general D. H. Hill, who had warned of attacking Malvern Hill earlier, suffered some of the most horrendous casualties: the Third Alabama, one of John B. Gordon’s regiments, in just fifteen or twenty minutes, had lost more than half its men along the attack route. Attack after attack continued, but only one Confederate assault ever threatened the Union line. Darkness brought an end to the horrific slaughter.

  The results of the Seven Days’ Battles for the Confederacy were bittersweet: Richmond was saved, but at a cost of nearly 20,000 casualties, highly visible lying in the churches, public buildings, and private homes of the capital. While McClellan lost some 15,000 men, his Army of the Potomac was far from destroyed or demoralized and he began plans to resume another offensive—as soon as Washington sent him more men. It was a refrain they had heard all too often in the Federal capital.

  McClellan’s army was ordered to evacuate the Peninsula, and by mid-August, ships had brought him and his army back to Washington to fight on the battlefields of northern Virginia.

  Peninsula Ghosts of Fort Monroe

  Fort Monroe on Old Point Comfort, at the eastern end of the Virginia Peninsula, was built on the site of the 1609 Fort Algernourne and has been occupied and garrisoned longer than any other post in U. S. Army history. Some of America’s most prestigious military men have served there—or were imprisoned there.

  The fort was designed by an aide to Napoleon I and construction was partially supervised by Robert E. Lee and mostly completed by 1834.

  In March 1862, soldiers at Fort Monroe watched with great interest the ending of an era in naval warfare when the Confederate ironclad Virginia destroyed or damaged a number of all-wood vessels, then herself was stopped the next day by an odd-looking, turreted iron ship named Monitor. Standing on the parapets today, one can watch yet another era in naval warfare pass as nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers steam out to sea.

  With all that history, it would seem a natural—or supernatural— thing that ghosts would choose to remain and haunt the historic fort. And indeed they do.

  Quarters Number One

  Jane Keane Polonsky and Joan McFarland Drum collected some of the stories in The Ghosts of Fort Monroe and have documented several sightings. Old Quarters Number One seems to be where some of the more famous ghosts appear. Originally built for the commandant, it has been the quarters for visiting presidents, including Andrew Jackson, Franklin Pierce, and
Abraham Lincoln. Future Confederate president Jefferson Davis stayed in the quarters when he was U. S. Secretary of War, and future president Ulysses S. Grant resided here as a general while he planned the climactic campaign of the Civil War.

  Tunnels in the lower floor of the house were rumored to be used by escaping slaves during the antebellum years. The sounds of shuffling feet are attributed to these slaves, still trying to find their freedom decades after it was won for them and decades after they’ve died. Other sounds of boots and the rustle of crinolines are commonly heard in Quarters Number One. One resident, after trying to sleep through a night of the sounds of a distant party, complete with boot steps and swishing silk, came down to find fresh flower petals on the hall floor below the stairs. The guest was confounded by the fresh flowers since the season was midwinter.

  Some poltergeist activity has also been reported: Lights will go on and off of their own accord, cupboard doors will open and slam shut, and the water will be turned on, all accomplished by unseen hands.

  The Ghosts of Lincoln and Grant

  And there are reports of the rarest kind of ghostly encounter: the visual apparition. Who is it that has been seen? Abraham Lincoln, whose specter has most often been observed and documented in the White House, apparently will appear upon his whim in Quarters Number One. He reveals himself in the former guest room, now named the Lincoln Room, wrapped in a casual dressing gown near the fireplace, engrossed in the weighty problems of a country at war with itself. Perhaps he is reenacting, in spirit form, his visits to Fort Monroe during the ironclad crisis of 1862 and during the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865. Both were fraught with tension and Lincoln, no doubt, expended a great deal of emotional energy, perhaps still trapped within the building, during both periods.

  General Grant, though characterized as one who was incredibly cool in battle and under fire, must have somehow left his imprint in Quarters Number One, because his phantom has also been seen within the confines of the historic structure.

  Varina Davis

  After his capture in 1865, Confederate president Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in a casemate within the walls of Fort Monroe. To add insult to injury, the former chief executive was shackled, a fate more common to assassins and blackguards than the head of state of a country. Following him to Fort Monroe was the former first lady of the Confederacy, Davis’s wife Varina. While at the fort she may have dwelt for a while in the quarters directly across from the casemate where her beloved husband was imprisoned. It is no wonder then that late at night, some who have passed the quarters have seen, at a second-floor window, the figure of a woman peering out at the casemate across the street.

  Others, who have stayed in the quarters where Mrs. Davis was housed, have reported some strange, unexplainable occurrences as well. A woman who was staying in the bedroom of the building awoke one morning to see the figure of a woman and a little girl gazing out the window toward the casemate. She arose, crossed the room to the woman, and attempted to touch her antiquated hoop skirt. As she did, the two vanished.

  Is the specter at the window Varina Davis? After lobbying the powers-that-be incessantly, Varina got her husband moved from the primitive cell in the casemate to another quarters, Carroll Hall, where she and their daughter Winnie and her sister Margaret Howell stayed for the remainder of his imprisonment at Fort Monroe. Authors Polonsky and Drum speculate that while Varina Davis never lived in the building where the female ghost at the window is seen, she may have visited there.

  The White Lady of Ghost Alley

  There is no speculation as to the existence of an area in the fort called “Ghost Alley,” so-named since the Civil War, or the specter that has been seen there for more than a century. She has been called by eyewitnesses the “White Lady,” or sometimes the “Light Lady,” because some people say she glows. The descriptions remain remarkably the same after so many have seen her. The story of how she became a ghost is an old one.

  She was far younger than her officer-husband. A much younger officer recently transferred to the fort caught her eye, and they began an affair, meeting most often in the dark alley behind the quarters. Her husband was called out of town on an assignment, but returned unexpectedly to find the two lovers together in the act. He shot and killed his wife but the young officer made his escape, never to be seen again. So today, when they walk along Ghost Alley, passersby keep a keen eye out for a hazy, floating mist that seems to glow from within, searching, apparently, for the lover she lost along with her life.

  Antietam

  Like many battles in the American Civil War, the one fought on September 17, 1862, has two names: In the North it was called Antietam, after the landmark creek that winds its way through the scene of the conflict; in the South, it was named Sharpsburg, after a nearby Maryland town. Unlike other battles of the war, however, it is most famous for one thing: the rapidity of its horrific violence.

  In just twelve hours of fighting, more American blood was spilled than on any other day in the country’s military history. Eighteen general officers were killed or wounded during the battle. Nearly 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or listed as missing after the fighting.

  The spring and summer of 1862 saw the Confederate military cause in the Eastern Theater on the rise. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson had run roughshod over Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. Confederate troops had driven the Federal forces from the very gates of the Southern capital Richmond during the Seven Days Battles on the Virginia Peninsula. Under their new commander, Robert E. Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia struck their enemy near the 1861 battlefield of Manassas. Second Manassas, in August 1862, saw Confederates so determined to win, some soldiers threw rocks when they ran out of ammunition. On a roll, they followed Lee across the Potomac River and into Maryland on their first invasion of the North.

  Hoping to garner support from the citizens of the border state, Lee kept a tight rein on his men. Maryland’s reception of the Confederate army was nevertheless cool. In order to open a supply route into the Shenandoah Valley, Lee needed to seize Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

  One maxim of war is that a commander should never divide his forces in the face of the enemy. More than once Lee violated that edict during his tenure as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. On his way northward in early September 1862, splitting his army and relying on his opponent’s caution, he sent Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry. On September 13, his audacity almost cost him his army. Union commander Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan was handed three cigars wrapped in a copy of Lee’s orders, discovered at an abandoned Confederate campsite, specifying the routes for the divided sections of Lee’s army. McClellan could now pounce on each with his full force before they could unite and destroy the main army of the rebellion.

  But instead of acting immediately, McClellan dithered. A southern sympathizer delivered the news of McClellan’s finding Lee’s order to Confederate cavalry commander J. E. B. Stuart, who passed the information to Lee. In response, Lee plugged the “gaps” in the South Mountains with Confederate soldiers. Savage and heroic fighting bought Lee a whole day. He was considering retreating to the Shenandoah Valley when word came from Jackson that Harpers Ferry was about to fall. (Its capture would net nearly 12,000 Union prisoners, one of the largest wholesale surrenders in U.S. Army history.) Lee sent orders to his units to concentrate at Sharpsburg, Maryland.

  As it was, McClellan still managed to corner a part of Lee’s army near the town behind Antietam Creek, with the Potomac River at its back. McClellan’s attacks began at dawn, September 17; however, what was to be coordinated assaults struck the rebel line in piecemeal fashion.

  Union attacks swept from the north and fighting rolled southward. For the next eight hours, Union soldiers fought through areas whose names would be seared into the American military psyche: the Cornfield, the West Woods, the East Woods, and the Sunken Road, soon to be christened “Bloody Lane.” Lee continued to shift his t
roops from one endangered segment of his line to the next, barely staving off catastrophe. On the southern end of the battlefield, a handful of Georgia sharpshooters held Union general Ambrose Burnside’s Ninth Corps from crossing Antietam Creek and encircling Lee’s army.

  When Union assaults drove the Confederates from the Sunken Road, all McClellan needed to do was send in his reserves. Confederate artillerist E. P. Alexander saw the imminent disaster: “Lee’s army was ruined, and the end of the Confederacy was in sight.” But true to Lee’s estimation of his opponent, McClellan, believing Lee’s army to be larger than it really was, exercised caution and held back.

  Burnside’s men finally forced a crossing of the bridge that would bear his name forever. Once again Lee’s army was threatened with destruction: Burnside was about to cut off Lee’s army’s only retreat route across the Potomac, but he halted to reorganize his advance. All McClellan needed to do was to send in supports to Burnside. Fatally, his caution once again prevailed.

  Lee had his own troubles. Looking to the south, he saw a dust cloud rising from marching troops. If they were Union troops, his army was destroyed. For what seemed like an eternity, an aide peered through a telescope and finally announced the column was marching under Confederate flags; A. P. Hill had arrived after a strenuous march from Harpers Ferry and burst upon Burnside’s flank, stopping his attack in its tracks.