The Confederate army was fearfully torn, yet the enemy had paid even more dearly. Six hours of fighting had cost the combatants some thirteen thousand men, sixteen of them general officers.
It was Lee, in his decision to remain north of the Potomac and his further choice of the unfortunate terrain, who had set the day’s price for survival. For his part, Jackson had fought with about nineteen thousand troops and with them had flung off thirty thousand. The enemy had outnumbered him in cannon, by one hundred to forty.
Officers found Jackson calm, almost serene, in the morning’s action. Dr. McGuire, who sought removal of field hospitals to the safety of the south bank of the Potomac, found Stonewall apparently little concerned over the outcome of the battle. He accepted some peaches brought by McGuire, and was eating them as the medical director, expressing fear for the afternoon, reported on the casualties. Jackson pointed to the enemy. “Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst.”
So far as Jackson’s wing was concerned, the Federals bore out his prediction. At 2 P.M., having failed at both left and center, McClellan struck at Lee’s right, where the withdrawal of men had left only the command of General D. R. Jones, with a front of a mile and a half defended by a mere two thousand men.
The Antietam wandered through this front; and there was a stone bridge just below the position of the tiny band of General Toombs. Federals had half-heartedly rushed the bridge in the morning but had been badly defeated as they came up over an exposed route. Now, abruptly, as Jones and Toombs arrayed their survivors on the hillside, two Federal regiments ran to the crossing and were pouring over before cannon could be brought to bear on them. The enemy line fanned upward.
Lee had been given a few moments to save himself, not long enough to bring up support from other segments of the line, but enough to crowd more guns on this front. The artillerymen brought in loads of canister, and when the Federals broke into a run on the slope, a barrage fell upon them. The guns made the fighting equal for a time, but it could not last, even with the cheering news that A. P. Hill was coming up, finally. The right began to sag; Union troops stole in on the flank. One brigade after another was forced from the heights and pushed back, with heavy casualties, into the village of Sharpsburg, and fighting rolled into the dusty streets. Officers went down, among them General L. O’B. Branch. The Union troops were within a mile and a half of cutting the only Confederate line of retreat. Resistance was becoming scattered on this flank, and Lee seemed near the end of his resources.
Two hopes remained. A. P. Hill was not far away with his troops. And Jackson was attempting a flank movement against the enemy’s right, seeking to circle to McClellan’s rear.
General Walker described how, when enemy attacks ceased on Jackson’s front, he had found Stonewall:
“Under an apple tree, sitting on his horse, with one leg thrown carelessly over the pommel of his saddle, plucking and eating the fruit. Without making any reply to my report, he asked me abruptly, ‘Can you spare me a regiment and a battery?’”
Walker offered him the strong Forty-ninth North Carolina.
“Jackson said that he wished to make up, from the different commands on our left, a force of four or five thousand men, and give them to Stuart, with orders to turn the enemy’s right and attack him in the rear; that I must give orders to my division to … attack the enemy as soon as I should hear Stuart’s guns—and that our whole left wing would move to the attack at the same time. Then, replacing his foot in the stirrup, he said with great emphasis: ‘We’ll drive McClellan into the Potomac.’”
Years later Walker marveled at Jackson’s audacity in plotting this assault, in the face of disaster, as imperturbably as if putting his cadets through maneuvers on the Lexington parade ground.
The army waited hours for Jackson. When, at three thirty, the guns had not been heard, Longstreet ordered a charge. Walker explained Jackson’s plan, and Longstreet withdrew his order. Walker recalled:
“While we were discussing this subject, Jackson himself joined us with the information of Stuart’s failure to turn the Federal right, for the reason that he had found it securely posted on the Potomac. Upon my expressing surprise at this statement, Jackson replied that he had also been surprised, as he supposed the Potomac much farther away.… He added: ‘It is a great pity—we should have driven McClellan into the Potomac.’”
At that moment, on the right of the line, McClellan was very near to driving Lee against the river himself. The Confederates fell back through Sharpsburg. And then, at an instant which seemed miraculous, Hill’s men came trotting through the village, going straight at the enemy. Hill rode past in his fiery red battle shirt. These men turned back the enemy on this flank. Help had come at a moment when all seemed lost.
David Thompson, in the ranks of General Burnside as the Federals stormed the bridge and mounted the hill, saw things with a remarkable clarity as his comrades began to break:
“I remember … seeing an officer riding diagonally across the field, a most inviting target, instinctively bending his head down over his horse’s neck, as though he were riding through a driving rain. While my eye was on him I saw, between me and him, a rolled overcoat with its straps on bound into the air and fall among the furrows. One of the enemy’s grapeshot had plowed a groove in the skull of a young fellow and had cut his overcoat from his shoulders. He never stirred from his position, but lay there face downward—a dreadful spectacle. A moment after, I heard a man cursing a comrade for lying on him heavily. He was cursing a dying man.…
“Human nature was on the rack, and there burst forth from it the most vehement, terrible swearing I have ever heard.… Whether the regiment was thrown into disorder or not, I never knew. I only remember that as we rose and started all the fire that had been held back so long was loosed. In a second the air was full of the hiss of bullets.… The mental strain was so great that I saw at that moment the singular effect mentioned, I think, in the life of Goethe in a similar occasion—the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red.”
As night came down, the victorious Rebel Yell announced the retreat of Burnside; and among the ten thousand of the Confederate dead and wounded, Lee settled down to wait. His general officers evidently expected him to withdraw in the night, but he stayed on the ground. With daylight it was clear that the enemy had not moved, and that McClellan had posted his big guns as if anticipating attack. Almost incredibly, the Yankees did not come forward. The grateful Confederates cooked and ate almost all day, for rations were more plentiful than they had been since before Second Manassas.
The battle of Sharpsburg was over, the bloodiest single day of the war. The horrors were not over for women of the neighborhood who looked after the wounded. One of the nurses, aghast at the sight of so much suffering, finally cried, “Oh, I hope if I faint some one will kick me into a corner and let me lie there!”
Another nurse, Mary Bedinger Mitchell, wrote:
“We would catch our breath and listen, and try not to sob, and turn back to the forlorn hospitals.… On our side of the river there were noise, confusion, dust; throngs of stragglers, horsemen galloping about; wagons blocking each other, and teamsters wrangling; and a continued din of shouting, swearing and rumbling, in the midst of which men were dying, fresh wounded arriving, surgeons amputating limbs and dressing wounds … The wounded filled every building and overflowed into the country around, into farm houses, barns, corn-cribs, cabins … There were six churches, and they were all full; the Odd Fellows’ Hall, the Freemasons’… every inch of space, and yet the cry was for more room …”
There was a lull through the day on the battlefield, as both armies cared for the wounded and buried the dead. In one ravine, men remembered in horror, bodies were piled fifteen feet deep. McClellan could now count the grim toll of twenty-seven thousand casualties for the Maryland campaign, including the captives of Harpers Ferry. Lee found more than a third of his army on the bloody rolls today.
Lee had won his daring gamble
that McClellan would not attack on the second day at Sharpsburg; but it was clear that he could not himself attack, with all those blue masses within sight and his own line dangerously near the river banks.
The lone gay spirit of the day was an unidentified North Carolinian who had been captured by the Federals. He ambled along toward a Union prison, a ragged, drawling man who afforded his captors much amusement.
“To what command do you belong?”
“To old Stonewall, more’n anybody else.”
The marching prisoners passed a park of artillery, and the Tarheel stopped to admire it. He read aloud the mark on each big barrel: “U.S.”
“Well, what now, Johnny Reb?” one of the Federals asked.
“I swear, Mister, you all has got most as many of these-here U.S. guns as we’uns has.”
Lee announced a retreat, and at dark on September eighteenth, Longstreet’s men led the army from the battlefield southward, over the Potomac into Virginia. The army passed the river all night, and near dawn General Walker approached the ford. He wrote:
“I was among the last to cross the Potomac. As I rode into the river I passed General Lee, sitting on his horse in the stream, watching the crossing of the wagons and artillery. Returning my greeting, he inquired as to what was still behind. There was nothing but the wagons containing my wounded, and a battery of artillery, all of which were near at hand, and I told him so. ‘Thank God,’ I heard him say as I rode on.”
The invasion was over.
Lee would complain to President Davis that “desertion and straggling … were the main causes of … retiring from Maryland.”
And from Washington a stricken Lincoln would soon visit McClellan, and then write him in reply to a claim that weary horses prevented his chasing Lee:
“Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”
But nothing was to restore Lee’s lost opportunity which circumstance had destroyed, and nothing was to force McClellan into serious pursuit. With the creaking of the last wagon wheel out of the Potomac ford, early on September nineteenth, the war returned to its familiar scenes in Virginia.
19
A TIME OF LEISURE
The army was not yet safe, even on the south side of the Potomac. Lee had left Jackson to watch the ford until all the men were across. Old Jack then rode to a camp near Martinsburg. At the crossing was a rear guard commanded by General W. N. Pendleton, whose thirty big guns frowned over the river.
Pendleton kept a poor watch, and at night a small Federal party, chiefly comprised of the 118th Pennsylvania, stormed the ford. Before the artillery chief knew what had happened, the bluecoats were among his guns. Firing broke out, and Pendleton fled with his men, seeking Longstreet or any one else who could give help. The frightened officer at last came to Lee.
“All of the reserve artillery is captured,” he said.
“All?”
“Yes, General. I fear all.”
Lee did not lose his temper. He sent Jackson an order to rectify the situation. At daybreak, some of the troops of A. P. Hill swept the bluffs, flinging the Federals into the river, slaughtering them as they struggled over the three hundred yards of water toward the north bank. The guns were reclaimed; the Federals had taken only four in the first place. Hill’s men behaved as if stung by the stalemate in Maryland, the dismal end of the campaign, and the crowning insult of pursuit by a handful of the enemy. The artillery barrage which launched their attack seemed to Hill the “most tremendous” of the war.
It was but a minor brush with the enemy, but it did not improve relations in Lee’s command. A Richmond newspaper declared: “Pendleton is Lee’s weakness. He is like the elephant, we have him and we don’t know what on earth to do with him, and it costs a devil of a sight to feed him.”
The army was glad to camp out of the sound of guns and forget the crossing. Old Jack settled with his command on Opequon Creek, between Shepherdstown and Williamsport, where he could watch near-by fords. He provided an astonishment on the first night in this camp.
A neighboring farmer had gathered Jackson and his staff in his home for dinner on a raw evening and had appeared smiling, carrying a big bottle of whisky and glasses. Jackson delighted—and confounded—his young officers by breaking in on the host.
“Do you have some white sugar?”
When that was brought, and a vigorous mixing of drinks had begun, Jackson shouted to his staff, “Come, gentlemen, let’s take a drink.”
With D. H. Hill, Kyd Douglas, Dr. McGuire and Colonel E. F. Paxton watching, Jackson poured an oversized drink and downed it at a gulp. He sighted Douglas, who had declined, complaining of a headache.
“Mr. Douglas, you will find it very nice,” Jackson said.
Douglas explained his headache and said he had never liked the taste of whisky. Jackson was not content to take the only drink of liquor his staff had seen him consume by design. He offered Douglas a bit of a lecture.
“In that I differ with you and most men,” he said. “I like the taste of all spirituous liquors. I can sip whisky or brandy with a spoon with the same pleasure the most delicious coffee or cordial would give you. I am the fondest man of liquor in this army, and if I had indulged my appetite I would have been a drunkard. But liquors are not good for me. I question whether they are much good to anyone. At any rate I rarely touch them.”
One of Jackson’s visitors at this time was Jim Lane, who had been a student at V.M.I. in Old Jack’s time but who had not spoken to his old professor during the war, though he had joined Jackson’s command in the Seven Days battles. Lane recalled:
“I wondered if he would recognize me. I certainly expected to receive his orders in a few terse sentences.… He knew me as soon as I entered his tent, though we had not met for years. He rose quickly, with a smile on his face, took my hand in both of his in the warmest manner … familiarly calling me Lane, whereas it had always been Mr. Lane at the Institute.… Then, for the first time, I began to love that reserved man.”
Jackson ordered Lane to take troops to the west and tear up the tracks of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Stonewall told Lane that he had recommended him for promotion, and that he would soon command Branch’s old brigade of North Carolinians. “He took both of my hands in his, looked me steadily in the face, and in the words and tones of friendly warmth, which can never be forgotten, again expressed his confidence in my promotion, and bade me good-bye, with a ‘God bless you, Lane!’”
The irony of this budding friendship was to become clear only on a gloomy night in the spring, when, in the wilderness near Chancellorsville, Lane and Jackson were to play roles in one of the army’s great tragedies.
As Jackson rested and trained his troops, more men joined the ranks. They were to swell from twenty-four thousand to thirty-five thousand this spring. People of the area showered the General with gifts, including horses, food, furniture.
He found time for church, and once wrote Anna of hearing the Reverend Joseph Stiles preach, “a great revivalist … laboring in a work of grace in Ewell’s division.” A revival was, in fact, sweeping the army, with hundreds of conversions each week and a temporary discarding of sin. But though spectacular, it did not snuff out “Devil’s Half-Acre,” a nest of gambling dens within a stone’s throw of Jackson’s headquarters, where keno, faro and chuckaluck games were constant attractions. Jackson wrote Anna after hearing Stiles: “It is a glorious thing to be a minister of the Gospel of the Prince of Peace. There is no equal position in this world.”
To an officer he once said, with deep feeling, “If our officers and men were only earnest Christians, I would not be afraid to meet the world in arms.”
There was another outbreak in the army—smallpox, which took thousands out of the ranks and left Lee’s rolls short for the fighting to come. Jackson escaped. He was also promoted—to lieutenant general.
The army had been operating as two corps, though this was technic
ally outside the law. Lee was determined to fight no longer with the awkward system of divisions which had caused such confusion during the Seven Days. On October thirteenth, Jackson and Longstreet were advanced to high rank and were henceforth to command their corps as the two units of the Army of Northern Virginia.
The step upward found Jackson still engaged in his trying controversy with A. P. Hill, who had begun to press the matter after Sharpsburg. Hill was determined to clear his name. His papers passed through Jackson’s hands on their way to Lee, and Old Jack added a statement to them which ended: “I found that under his successor, General Branch, my orders were much better carried out.”
Lee tried to pacify Hill and end the matter, but even his tactful words were to fail. He wrote:
“Respectfully returned to Gen. A. P. Hill who will see from the remarks of General Jackson the cause of his arrest. His attention being called to what appeared to be neglect of duty by his commander, but which from an officer of his character could not be intentional and I feel will never be repeated, I see no advantage to the service in further investigating this matter nor could it without detriment be done at this time.”
Hill prolonged the affair with yet another appeal to Lee: “I deny the truth of every allegation made by Major General Jackson.… If General Jackson had accorded me the courtesy of asking an explanation of each instance of neglect of duty as it occurred, I think that even he would have been satisfied, and the necessity avoided of keeping a black-list against me.”
Hill also drew up a list of charges against Jackson and forwarded them to Lee. Jackson replied, calmly but firmly: “He had ample opportunity of knowing his neglect of duty.… No black-list has been kept.” Jackson said that Hill’s continued stirring of the matter constituted further “neglect of duty.”
They Called Him Stonewall Page 36
