But even if Lee had wanted to intervene, he simply did not have the staff needed to review and regulate every infraction of his anti-plundering orders. “Our staff organizations were never sufficiently extensive and perfect to enable the Commanding General to be practically present every where,” complained Porter Alexander years after the war. On the Peninsula, Lee complained angrily that McClellan “will get away because I cannot have my orders carried out.” And once again, the proof was in the numbers. Partly because of the statutory restraints invented by the Confederate Congress and partly as a matter of his own personal taste, Robert E. Lee functioned on a daily basis with only six personal staffers—his chief of staff, Robert Chilton (who wrote out the fatal “lost orders” before Antietam); his adjutant and principal aide, Walter H. Taylor; his two military secretaries, Armistead Lindsay Long and Charles Marshall; the army’s inspector general, Charles Venable; and Thomas Talcott, Lee’s aide and later engineer.19
There was also a somewhat larger general staff—Lee’s personal spiritual friend, the elderly William Nelson Pendleton, who served as chief of artillery; James Lawrence Corley, the army’s quartermaster general; Col. Robert G. Cole, the army’s commissary general; the chief medical officer, Lafayette Guild; Col. Briscoe Baldwin, Lee’s chief ordnance officer; and his engineers, Col. William Proctor Smith and Capt. Samuel R. Johnston. But that, together with two companies of escort cavalry and the clerks who assisted the staff, was all that Lee relied upon to administer the Army of Northern Virginia. Their average age was only thirty, and their burdens were not light. “I am harassed by an accumulation of miserable paper calling for my attention,” wailed Walter Taylor. No one in those circumstances had time to chase after hat stealers and watch stealers, leaving Lafayette McLaws to reflect years later that “The great defect in our army was in staff organization & its practices.”20
Lee and his shorthanded staff had larger matters to occupy them in Pennsylvania. Thus far, Lee’s invasion had moved almost effortlessly across two major rivers, through two small battles, and through three states, and he was pleased enough with this remarkable degree of success to authorize the next stage of the invasion and to renew his pleas to Jefferson Davis to release the two brigades around Richmond, under Micah Jenkins and Montgomery Corse. Just as he had predicted in May, Federal “apprehension for the safety of Washington and their own territory” had caused the Army of the Potomac to fall back from the Rappahannock riverline, while other Federal invaders were being evacuated from coastal North Carolina and from Kentucky. This was the moment, Lee politely suggested, for Joe Johnston to take the Confederate armies in the West on the offensive, and magnify the pressure on the Lincoln government by invading Kentucky, perhaps even Ohio. In fact, it might not be a bad idea if Davis called up the Confederate forces Pierre Beauregard was sitting upon down in the Carolinas and bring them up to Culpeper, “even in effigy,” to distract the Army of the Potomac still further. (Both Beauregard and the skeptical Secretary Seddon at once began stuffing Davis’ incoming mail with notices of renewed Federal activity in the Carolinas and on the James River peninsula.)21
Lee’s most immediate concern was the next phase of the Pennsylvania invasion, and on June 22nd he was satisfied enough with the Army of Northern Virginia’s progress to instruct Dick Ewell to begin moving his corps north in a great right-turning arc, up through the Cumberland Valley and along the line of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, until by June 28th he would be poised on the western bank of the Susquehanna, opposite Harrisburg. Longstreet and Hill would continue to move up behind him, but it would be up to Ewell to determine the exact “progress and direction” of his forces, just as it had been at Winchester. And like Winchester, “If Harrisburg comes within your means, capture it.”22
Using Albert Jenkins’ cavalry brigade as his forward screen, Ewell decided to duplicate the Winchester strategy—as well as lighten the traffic burden of his corps on just one road—by splitting his corps. Rodes’ and Allegheny Johnson’s divisions, together with the corps wagon trains, would move north and east through Shippensburg and Carlisle toward Harrisburg. Jubal Early’s division, however, would split sharply to the east, passing through the cover of South Mountain at the Cashtown Gap and following on a straight line from there to York and the Susquehanna, where he could then cross the Susquehanna, turn north, “levy a contribution on the rich town of Lancaster, cut the [Northern] Central Railroad, and threaten Harrisburg from behind and below while General Ewell was advancing against that city from the other side.”23
This time, there was no Federal cavalry and no Brandy Station to threaten the Confederate line of march. Apart from the out-of-reach wig-wagging of Union signalers on the peaks of South Mountain and small parties of mounted observers, “there were no indications of any enemy near us and the march was entirely without molestation.” There had been a brief skirmish with a detachment of New York cavalry just north of Greencastle on June 22nd (which resulted in the death of one New Yorker, the first fatality of the invasion in Pennsylvania, Corporal William H. Rihl), and some minor bushwhacking by cleaned-out farmers determined to revenge themselves on Confederate stragglers. Otherwise, Ewell’s path to Carlisle was largely unobstructed, and having covered nearly fifty miles in two days, Rodes’ division marched in late on the afternoon of June 27th, with the band at the head of the division column thundering “Dixie.”24
Carlisle happened to be a minor homecoming for Dick Ewell: the town had been a military settlement even before the American Revolution, and the U.S. Army had maintained a barracks, a depot, and a cavalry training school, where Ewell, as a newly coined second lieutenant, had his first posting. (James Longstreet had also been assigned there in 1848; so had Robert E. Lee’s nephew Fitzhugh Lee, whom the Carlisle newspapers would shortly be denouncing as an “incarnate fiend.”) The citizens of Carlisle, represented by two members of the town council, William N. Penrose and Robert Allison, went out of their way to assure Ewell that there would be no resistance.25
The Carlisle Barracks consisted of thirteen buildings, including five two-story, wide-verandaed barracks, an enormous U-shaped stable, and a post hospital. But since its main purpose had for years been to provide training for recruits, it was protected only by an eight-foot-high wooden fence, and the Barracks’ commandant, Capt. Daniel H. Hastings, had already evacuated the entire establishment of 268 men across the Susquehanna to Harrisburg two days before. Ewell, with three of Rodes’ brigades, camped in the Barracks, while George P. Doles’ Georgia brigade took possession of Carlisle’s other major institution, Dickinson College, and Rodes’ last brigade camped two miles outside the town.26
Carlisle was, by all accounts, the most comfortable billet the Confederates would enjoy in the entire campaign. “This city is certainly a beautiful place,” marveled one North Carolinian, “we were treated very good by the ladies.” The next day, a Sunday, the Reverend Beverly Tucker Lacy, the fierce-faced Presbyterian clergyman who served as Stonewall Jackson’s unofficial chaplain-at-large, conducted services at the Barracks and preached “an excellent sermon” for the troops, while the Methodist chaplain of the 30th North Carolina, Alexander Davis Betts, preached in the afternoon and “baptize[d] five by pouring.” The invaders “were bountifully supplied with provisions and forage by the citizens,” who surprised the men of Rodes’ division by looting the abandoned barracks themselves of “a sofa … chairs, tables &c” and “plunder of all sorts.” One Virginia artilleryman strolled into Carlisle, “had ice cream,” and stopped to visit “a residence near the barracks,” where he had seen “some nice girls.” But there were also holdouts. An Alabamian took himself into town and found dinner at the National Hotel, where “an unfriendly and scowling crowd of rough-looking men” looked on silently. “The dinner was quite a poor one,” Robert Emory Park wrote, “and was rather ungraciously served by a plump, Dutchy looking young waitress.” He paid her “in Confederate money.”27
So much of this invasion had gone so well that even Ro
bert E. Lee was becoming more relaxed and talkative about his plans. To Jefferson Davis, he hinted that if “I can throw General Hooker’s army across the Potomac and draw [Federal] troops from the south,” it might prove the saving of the western Confederacy. Once he had forced the Yankees to relax their grip on Vicksburg and Tennessee he could then “return” to Virginia at his leisure. “Our true policy is, as far as we can, so to employ our own forces as to give occupation to his at points of our selection.” That much, Lee knew, would satisfy Davis and Seddon. But if Harrisburg should turn out to be as ill-defended as Winchester had been (and Ewell’s scouting reports on June 29th all confirmed that it was), then Ewell was to ford the Susquehanna; Longstreet would move up behind Ewell; and A. P. Hill would follow Jubal Early’s division through York and cross the Susquehanna to cut “the communications of Harrisburg with Philadelphia, and to co-operate with General Ewell, acting as circumstances might require.” The weeping and anxiety this would induce across the North would have vast political consequences in the fall elections in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and if those states moved into the Democratic column, their governors would have the leverage to demand that Lincoln open negotiations.
This was the message which trickled down to staffers and junior officers who were now convinced that “Harrisburg was Lee’s objective point.” Line officers in John Bell Hood’s division were assured “that General Lee was going to [Pennsylvania] to subsist his army [and] that he would probably remain there two months.” Or maybe longer: one North Carolinian assured a Maryland family that “we have no idea of taking a back track across the Potomac; we have come to stay.” Nor would the Confederates necessarily stay put in Harrisburg, since it appeared to one Texas captain that “the way will be clear to Baltimore Philadelphia Washington and so on.” Another North Carolinian even “felt like going on to New York.”28
But always at the back of Lee’s mind had been the possibility of the so-far-elusive Napoleonic battle, the winner-take-all, annihilating victory which would shut the entire war down at once. Everything had gone so providentially well thus far. They had given Hooker the slip, overrun Winchester, gotten across the Potomac without opposition, and were now within reaching distance of Harrisburg. Assuming that this would “draw Hooker” in pursuit, Hooker would then be so late in starting and in such a hurry to catch up that the Army of the Potomac would soon find itself strung out and panting on the roads into Maryland. That might give Lee the chance to turn on the disjointed and jaded Federals somewhere “on the Monocacy” River and deliver the war’s knockout blow. “We have again out-maneoeuvred the enemy, who even now don’t know where we are or what are our designs,” Lee confided to old Isaac Trimble, in an expansive moment on June 24th. The Union Army would be “obliged to follow us by forced marches” and wear themselves into exhaustion and disorganization, and that might allow the Confederates to “crush them, beat them in detail, and in a few hours throw the whole army into disorder.”29
Three days later, he was still more confident, and more specific. Distracted by “hunger and hard marching,” the Army of the Potomac’s seven infantry corps would allow themselves to become “strung out on a long line and much demoralized.” And when they did, Lee would turn and pounce with every man he had on the isolated lead corps, “crush it, follow up the success, drive one corps back on another, and by successive repulses and surprises … create a panic and virtually destroy the army.” And where would this likely occur? Trimble testified that Lee traced his map of south-central Pennsylvania to a crossroads town which at that moment was the center point of the vast arc which the Army of Northern Virginia was occupying in the Cumberland Valley. “He laid his hand on the map, over Gettysburg, and said hereabout we shall probably meet the enemy and fight a great battle, and if God gives us the victory, the war will be over and we shall achieve the recognition of our independence.”
He offered a glimpse of the same plan to Dorsey Pender: “Hooker has a small army and that very much demoralized,” Pender wrote on June 23rd. “The General says he wants to meet him as soon as possible and crush him and then … our prospects for peace are very fine.” The mapmaker Jedediah Hotchkiss had it directly from Dick Ewell that “the battle would come off near Frederick City or Gettysburg,” which suited Hotchkiss nicely, since “the land is full of everything, and we have an abundance.”30 There were, however, two problems, and not just about foraging. The first was, Where is Joe Hooker? The second was more plaintive: Where is Jeb Stuart?
CHAPTER SIX
A goggle-eyed old snapping turtle
IT WAS NOT UNTIL Milroy’s garrison at Winchester was on the point of erasure that Joseph Hooker finally awoke to the dimensions of the march Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had stolen on him. “I now feel that invasion is his settled purpose,” Hooker concluded—although almost at once he guessed wrongly about Lee’s probable direction. “He will be more likely to go north, and to incline to the west.” Hooker was, even at that moment, concerned less about Lee than about his quarrel with Halleck. “I do not know that my opinion … is wanted,” he sniffed, but he was still hoping that it might turn out to be a “cavalry raid” intended only to divert attention from the West. In that event, Hooker still dreamed that he might be able to seize the chance to launch a strike at Richmond. He could, for instance, slip behind the rear of Lee’s invasion in order to “threaten and cut their communications,” while the Federal garrison based at Fortress Monroe could take advantage of the chaos to make yet another move, up the James River peninsula, to Richmond.1
What Hooker also wanted was restoration to complete control over Federal troops everywhere in Virginia and Maryland, and that was not what Halleck or Lincoln were going to give him. “You have long been aware, Mr. President, that I have not enjoyed the confidence of the major-general commanding the army,” Hooker pleaded with Lincoln on June 16th, “and I can assure you so long as this continues we may look in vain for success.” In particular, Hooker wanted control over the military department of Washington (which covered all the artillerymen manning the fortifications of the capital, plus two divisions of infantry and one of cavalry commanded by Samuel Heintzelman) and the four infantry divisions of Robert Schenck’s Middle Department (which was responsible for defending Baltimore, Annapolis, Harpers Ferry, and the Potomac riverline). This was not an unreasonable request, and in fact Halleck grudgingly granted Hooker some limited call on Heintzelman’s and Schenck’s troops, if needed. And on June 20th, Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase, the patron saint of the army’s abolitionists, wrote privately to Hooker to assure him that “you will want nothing which can contribute to your success.” But Hooker quickly learned how little slack there was on this leash. Halleck only intended to place “the troops outside of Washington and Baltimore under your orders”—in other words, any stray units not already assigned to some duty within Heintzelman’s or Schenck’s departments—and when Hooker reached for the control he thought he had, he was frankly told that he would not be obeyed.2
As far as Halleck and Lincoln were concerned, Hooker’s one responsibility was to ensure that, wherever Lee was going (and the speculation in the War Department included Pittsburgh and Wheeling), the Army of the Potomac shielded Washington. Daniel Butterfield, Hooker’s loyal chief of staff, groused that “since we were not allowed to cross [the Rappahannock] and whip A. P. Hill,” and then march on Richmond “while Longstreet and Ewell were moving off through Culpeper,” the army had “lost the opportunity of doing a thing which we knew we could accomplish with a certainty.” But as Lee had foreseen, Lincoln was more anxious about protecting Washington than capturing Richmond, and so on June 16th, a day after the fall of Winchester, Hooker issued orders to pull his seven infantry corps away from the Rappahannock and northward to Dumfries and Manassas Junction for resupply by rail. Signal stations were to be established along the crests of South Mountain to report on Lee’s movements, Pleasonton’s cavalry were to begin poking at the gaps in the mountains to see whether any vie
w of the Confederates could be snatched, and Maj. George Sharpe’s intelligence service was to activate its network of agents and scouts, borrowing “ten good scouts” from Schenck to watch central Maryland.3
The army itself would move in three groups to ease the flow of traffic on the roads of northern Virginia—the 1st, 3rd, and 11th Corps (in other words, John Reynolds, Dan Sickles, and Otis Howard) would aim directly for Manassas and then proceed to Leesburg on the Potomac and the crossing at Edwards’ Ferry. The 5th Corps (under George Meade) would be routed through Manassas Junction and follow the others to Leesburg via the old battlefields around Centreville and Bull Run; and the rear would be brought up by the 2nd, 6th, and 12th Corps (under Winfield Hancock, John Sedgwick, and Henry Slocum), coming through Dumfries and Fairfax Court House in order to cover the evacuation of the army’s supply base at Aquia Creek. Halleck did at last release to Hooker some spare units from Baltimore and Washington—a brigade of Vermonters under George Stannard, who had actually only signed up for nine months’ duty and were now approaching the expiration of their enlistment, a brigade of Maryland home guards under Henry H. Lockwood, and the so-called Pennsylvania Reserve Division under Samuel Wylie Crawford. But this barely replaced the veteran two-year units whose time had expired in May and early June, and who had by now headed home and forced Hooker to do some last-minute rejuggling of officers and regiments whose brigades had been reduced to single regiments. And it did nothing to help Hooker’s equanimity that in at least two regiments—the 2nd Maine and the 36th New York—two-year men whose enlistments had expired mutinied when they discovered that they would be held in service “till the expiration of the full two years of the last company of their regiment mustered into the United States service.” In the 2nd Corps, “an immense crowd” rioted over “three wagon loads of stuff” brought into camp by a sutler from Washington, and officers only managed to restore order “with drawn revolver.”4
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