As he finished with his map, Jackson lay down on the porch, his old cap over his eyes, and slept for a few moments while the infantry went into position. And, at this example, Ewell found a shady spot and napped himself. It was as if, in the bustle of preparing for battle, Jackson felt a supreme confidence, an absolute disregard for his adversary; as if, having survived the massive battles of the eastern swamps, he would fight in his familiar open country without a thought for the outcome.
As Jackson slept, there was an unusual stir among the enemy in the neighborhood of Culpeper. The reporter, Alfred Town-send, admired the scene as the Union soldiers went out to meet Stonewall:
“Regiments were pouring by all the roads and lanes … thousands of bayonets, extending as far as the eye could reach … enhanced by the music of a score of bands, throbbing all at the same moment with wild music … volunteers roared their national ballads. ‘St. Patrick’s Day’… ‘Bonnie Dundee’… snatches of German sword-songs were drowned by the thrilling chorus of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’… a stave of ‘John Brown’s Body,’ and the wild, mournful music would be caught up by all—Germans, Celts, Saxons, till the little town rang with the thunder.… Suddenly, as if by rehearsal, all hats would go up, all bayonets toss and glisten, and huzzas would deafen the winds, while the horses reared … the masses passed eastward, while the prisoners in the court house cupola looked down, and the citizens peeped in fear through crevices of windows.”
The Federals who approached Slaughter’s Mountain in such martial fashion saw a chilling view: High on a cedar-studded mountainside ahead of them, with cannon smoke dappling the woodland, the Rebels were shelling skirmishers. Thick woods, a small stream, wheat and cornfields lay in front. The line of waiting Federal ambulances was no more depressing than this landscape. A wicked little engagement was under way, with losses mounting. The Confederate guns commanded the open ground in the front.
Jackson had prepared for the arrival of the enemy with his customary reticence. Only Ewell knew his entire battle plan; and some general officers, including Powell Hill, were told almost nothing. General Taliaferro, next in command to Winder, had the most limited orders. One result was that the left wing of the army went forward with Early, near the Culpeper road, and was insecurely placed by Winder, without protection, at the edge of a dense woodland. Perhaps because he was ill, Winder was slow in moving. It was four o’clock before his men were settled, and by then Early, commanding in the center, had his guns firing on the enemy.
One detail which had escaped Jackson because of his failure to study the ground was an extension of the enemy line, which made it impossible for Winder to carry out a contemplated attack from his flank. The officer on the far end of the line here, under Winder, was Lieutenant Colonel T. S. Garnett, of limited field experience. It was in his sector that the army was most vulnerable, though that had not yet become obvious.
An artillery duel rumbled in the hills, and though it seemed a minor skirmish to veterans of the Seven Days, men were killed and guns put out of action. General Winder, who had stripped off his coat in the heat, stood by one of his batteries and was shouting directions when a shell tore through his arm and chest. He fell stiffly to the ground; and as he lay quivering and unconscious, an officer arrived from General Early with the warning that a Federal infantry column was creeping in on the position. The enemy was concentrating in the woods to the left, beyond the wheat field.
Winder soon left the field on a stretcher. His aide, McHenry Howard, leaned over him. “General, do you know me?”
“Oh, yes.” Winder spoke a few wandering words about his wife and children, and a chaplain approached.
“General, lift up your head to God.”
“I do. I do lift it up to him.”
Howard was with Winder when he died at sunset in a roadside grove; Winder’s hand in Howard’s grew colder soon after he had seen the Stonewall Brigade going in to fight; and Winder asked how the battle was going, then died. Jackson and others were to write feelingly of his passing, but Private Casler, who saw Winder on his stretcher, wrote:
“His death was not much lamented by the brigade, for it probably saved some of them the trouble of carrying out their threats to kill him.”
Word of Winder’s fate went quickly to Taliaferro, who realized his own ignorance of a front suddenly entrusted to him. Taliaferro went far to the left, exploring, and found the last of his regiment in the deep woods, exposed to attack. He returned to direct artillery fire upon the gathering Federals as the only feasible means of defense.
Jackson soon learned of the loss of Winder and rode to the spot where Colonel Garnett held the flank. Old Jack had but the briefest of warnings: “Look well to the left flank.” Garnett would be sent reinforcements, Jackson said. These came, and the afternoon wore on in cannon fire, a concentration of wagons and men on the road in the Confederate center, and a spreading confusion. It was late, nearing six o’clock, when the artillery duel ceased at last. A Federal infantry attack broke upon Jackson’s left.
The enemy had never attacked more savagely. It was but a few minutes until the remnants of the far-left Confederate brigades came tumbling in retreat across the lines to the rear, their guns gone. Cheers of the enemy drowned even the heavy musketry on the front, and now the bluecoats came hurtling about the rear of Taliaferro’s men. Three brigades broke, following the example of the frightened men of the left. Reinforcements from Hill’s division were coming up, but if they were not hurried the lines would fall to pieces before Jackson could halt the rout.
Everywhere, in the cornfield, at the edge of the wheat, and along the woodlands of the stream, Federals and Confederates fought hand to hand, with musket butts and bayonets. Jackson saw his big guns endangered by the reckless enemy charge, and had them taken to the rear, a sight which spurred the enemy to even fiercer charges. Whole companies on either side were captured and recaptured within moments. Every commander in Garnett’s brigade was down, dead or wounded. Not even on the Chickahominy had the Valley troops been so near to ruin.
Jackson appeared at the edge of the woods amid his struggling men. A staff officer’s memory was that he shouted these dramatic words: “Rally, brave men, and press forward! Your general will lead you! Jackson will lead you! Follow me!”
He was not to go forward, however, for as he yelled, General Taliaferro insisted that he go to the rear. Jackson stared for a moment at the turmoil of the fight, and then went back, muttering his curious, familiar “Good, good.”
A few men rallied around Jackson, and a semblance of a line gathered to face the enemy. More important, the rapid, almost intuitive, orders he had given at the moment of the Federal onslaught were being carried out with magical effect. The Stonewall Brigade came up from reserve, cutting through the mass. Its heavy fire began to drive off the enemy, and though the new line was short and exposed to counterattack, the Federals retreated toward their ridge. As a new moment of danger arrived, Jackson left the field, galloping back to find some of Hill’s men. He discovered the leading brigade near the front in a woodland, halted as their commander, General L. O’B. Branch, an oratorical North Carolinian, shouted to them a speech of encouragement. Jackson smiled, but there was no humor in his quick, “Push forward, General. Push forward.” This brigade charged and Jackson’s line was joined again. He now watched it advance at a swift trot, and was so pleased that he rode up and down behind the men of Branch, doffing his hat to the troops.
In a twinkling, Jackson had won his victory, and just at the moment of darkness. His day was assured when Ewell, escaping cross fire which had halted him on the left, came across and joined the center. The Federals were on the point of a rout when they crossed the stream. In a last effort to save his infantry, the Union commander threw a handful of cavalry into the open—174 men who dashed down the road against the Confederate mass. There was a flurry of firing, and only seventy-one of the brave bluecoats went back to their lines.
The little battle of Cedar Mountain w
as over (it was also to be known as Cedar Run and Slaughter’s Mountain). Jackson pushed Hill’s division forward in the road; but except for a moonlight artillery duel, there was little action. A prisoner said that a new Federal corps had been brought up; Jackson called a halt. His army filled the countryside, and there was no house for him, though the staff searched up and down the roads. Wounded occupied every shelter.
Jackson took a cloak from one of his staff and was soon asleep in grass at the roadside. He was offered food but turned away. “No. I want rest. Nothing but rest.”
He had lost about twelve hundred, and had been badly hurt, despite his great advantage in numbers. Only 229 of his casualties were dead, however; half of the losses were in the ranks of Garnett and Taliaferro. The Federal advantage had come from a combination of careless reconnaissance by Jackson, uninformed officers, and the accidents of the field, particularly the death of Winder. The Federals, paying heavily for their rash charge over the open into superior forces, had lost almost a third of their force, some twenty-four hundred casualties.
It had been a near thing for Jackson, despite the foolhardiness of the enemy. Perhaps he had been too casual, even insolent, in launching his own movement before Hill’s men were at hand; perhaps he had not taken precautions on his flanks which were to be expected of a veteran field commander.
Yet in the thick of the fighting, when the enemy had been on the verge of victory, Jackson’s decisions had come like lightning, fashioning a series of orders: Bring up fresh troops. Extend the lines. Launch Ewell’s wing.
Jackson was to say that this battle was the most successful he fought, but in his report to Lee he offered the usual, modest “God blessed our arms with another victory.”
His troops spent August tenth gathering and burying the dead and picking up spoils of the field. Stuart arrived on a tour of inspection of his cavalry. For a few days, at least, Jackson would be assured of keen eyes on the surrounding countryside, and Robertson’s fumbling would not vex him.
There was a truce the next day, to continue burial of the dead, and that night Jackson took his troops back southward over the Rapidan, where the enemy did not follow.
He wrote to Anna August twelfth:
On last Saturday our God again crowned our arms with victory.… I can hardly think of the fall of Brigadier-General C. S. Winder without tearful eyes. Let us all unite more earnestly in imploring God’s aid in fighting our battles for us.… If God be for us, who can be against us? That He will still be with us and give us victory until our independence shall be established … is my earnest and oft-repeated prayer. While we attach so much importance to being free from temporal bondage, we must attach far more to being free from the bondage of sin.
He added to his official report to Richmond:
In order to render thanks to Almighty God for the victory at Cedar Run, and other victories, and to implore His continued favor in the future, divine service was held in the army on the 14th of August.
The battle had shown Old Jack a stern taskmaster toward young Joe Morrison, Anna’s brother, who had recently joined the staff. Morrison had ridden into the most dangerous part of the field and when his horse was shot in the head, the lieutenant was covered with blood. When staff officers warned Jackson that the boy should be sent toward the rear, the General remarked, “His behavior will be an example to the troops—and he will learn discretion after one or two battles.”
16
THE FOOT CAVALRY AT A GALLOP
From Richmond, as Jackson pulled back from his little battle, Lee saw the opening of an irresistible opportunity to upset the Federal grand strategy.
McClellan was leaving his base on the James and moving up the Potomac to reinforce Pope. The combined forces would then attempt to slash toward Richmond from the north. Union strategists feared that Pope might now be overwhelmed before McClellan could reach him; and though Lee could not know it, McClellan was telegraphing Washington of an uneasiness felt throughout the North: “I don’t like Jackson’s movements. He will appear suddenly when least expected.” This was soon to be recognized as prophecy.
Lee acted with characteristic daring. He sent to Jackson the ten tough brigades of Longstreet, so that it would indeed be possible to defeat Pope. And then, as the Union strategy became more clear, Lee himself left Richmond, bound for Gordonsville to assume command of the combined forces. Richmond was left with a dwindled force of defense, but Lee convinced the anxious Jefferson Davis of the security of the city and the soundness of his developing strategy.
When Longstreet reached Gordonsville, he had an immediate call from Jackson, who sought to transfer command to Old Pete, as senior general officer. Longstreet declined, since Lee would arrive so shortly.
The coming of Lee brought anguish to the secretive Jackson. Stonewall met the commander as he stepped from the train in Gordonsville, which was crawling with troops; but he went tight-lipped to his own headquarters and said nothing of the arrival of Lee. One of his younger aides had accompanied him, and at the evening meal with the staff, the young man casually mentioned Lee’s presence in the town. Jackson gave him a public scolding:
“It is not necessary for servants, couriers and soldiers to know this. Staff officers must make it a point to keep such things to themselves.”
Scouts now found Pope’s army awkwardly placed between the arms of the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers, and Lee sent Stuart forward to strike the enemy in this position where he would be all but helpless. Stuart rode swiftly, but his troopers went astray. Under the command of Colonel Fitz Lee, they did not report as ordered, and Stuart himself was almost captured, far outside the lines. He escaped Yankee horsemen by seconds, and in the doing lost one of his gaily plumed hats, laying the basis for an army joke at his expense.
Pope’s army took alarm and moved north of the Rappahannock, and there were investigations as to Fitz Lee’s tardiness. He had not got his orders in time, for one thing; for another, Union cavalry had dashed into a road whose ford was allegedly guarded by Longstreet. The latter omission was traced to General Toombs, who withdrew the road guard on his own initiative, despite orders to the contrary. Toombs was put under arrest, but the next day went about wearing his saber in violation of orders, and in addition made an indignant, rebellious speech to his cheering troops. Lee ordered him to Gordonsville and kept him there.
More quarrels threatened Jackson. He avoided a clash with Ewell, who challenged the accuracy of Old Jack’s report on Cedar Mountain, saying that Jackson unduly praised Winder without mention of the fine work of Early. Jackson replied that he had not intended to discuss the roles of “our surviving officers,” and with a calm, reasoned letter quieted both Ewell and Early.
Ewell, whose fighting spirit was outwardly as fiery as ever, was hardly the optimist in writing to his sister Lizzie this week:
“I fully condole with you over the gloomy prospect in regard to the war. Some 100,000 human beings have been massacred in every conceivable form of horror, with three times as many wounded, all because a set of fanatical abolitionists and unprincipled politicians backed by women in petticoats and pants and children.…”
A. P. Hill drew Jackson’s wrathful attention once more. Lee held a council with his generals on August fifteenth, and three days later Jackson turned his corps up the Rappahannock. As he prepared to cross the Rapidan on August twentieth, en route to the Rappahannock, Jackson had given Hill insistent orders, in memory of the slow start of his men for Cedar Mountain. Hill must be moving at “moonrise,” with three days’ rations cooked; but much later Jackson found the regiments in camp, still with no orders to move, and he ordered them on peremptorily, convinced anew that Powell Hill might require stern discipline before he became a true soldier.
This expedition ended fruitlessly for Jackson, resulting in no more than confused skirmishing and crossing and recrossing of the Rappahannock, once leaving an isolated segment of the army in some danger. There followed a time of jockeying for position with the enem
y along the line of the river, during which Stuart took Pope’s eye from Lee’s main force with a bold raid against the Federal commander’s headquarters at Catlett’s Station, some fifteen miles northeast, and though they missed the Union general, the cavalrymen brought home one of his fine coats, in exchange for Stuart’s lost hat. Stuart thought this so rollicking a joke that he could hardly wait to show the coat to Jackson.
He found Old Jack in a grim mood, for the Valley commander’s sweep upriver had ended as he stood hip-deep in water for some hours, helping rebuild a burned bridge; this in a rainstorm, leaving Jackson wringing wet and muddy. The work had led to nothing more stirring than an artillery duel.
Jackson reclined on a rail fence as Stuart approached. The cavalryman displayed the fine blue broadcloth coat, glittering with brass buttons, bearing its label: “John Pope, Major General.” Stuart gave a humorous account of the earlier loss of his hat and said he had a proposition for Pope. Jackson gave vent to the rare laughter Stuart alone seemed able to inspire, while the cavalry chief wrote a dispatch for Pope:
“General, You have my hat and plume. I have your blue coat. I have the honor to propose a cartel for a fair exchange of the prisoners.”
Stuart left a chuckling Jackson—and went off to send the coat to Richmond for safekeeping. It ended in a museum.
Jackson soon went to supervise a grim task. Three deserters from his ranks had been caught, and now he was ready to hang them. He marched his entire division to watch the execution, and then, to spare none from the moral lesson, marched the files close by the bodies, where the death wounds could be seen by every man in every company. He then joined another council of war.
Douglas recalled the conference:
“It was a curious scene. A table was placed almost in the middle of a field, with not even a tree within hearing. General Lee sat at the table on which was spread a map. General Longstreet sat on his right, General Stuart on his left, and General Jackson stood opposite him; these four and no more. A group of staff officers were lounging on the grass of an adjacent knoll. The consultation was a very brief one. As it closed I was called by General Jackson and I heard the only sentence of that consultation I ever heard reported. It was uttered by the secretive Jackson and it was—‘I will be moving within an hour.’”
They Called Him Stonewall Page 30
