Clouds of Glory

by Michael Korda

  The notion that Lee considered his duty done when he had brought his troops to the right place at the right time, after the model of his old commander in Mexico, General Winfield Scott, may have been something that Lee himself believed, or wanted to believe—yet another example of his modesty—but each of his battles was in fact fought according to his own plan, for better or worse. Of course the battlefield of the mid-nineteenth century was a very different place from that of the eighteenth century; the armies had grown too big for a single man to command, or even see, every detail of an engagement. The portrait beloved of genre painters, showing the commanding general raised on a picturesque knoll surveying the entire battle from horseback, with wounded men and horses in the foreground, raising their worshipful gaze toward him, was over. In real life. Napoleon won the Battle of Austerlitz in 1802 with fewer than 75,000 men, but only eleven years later his army at the Battle of Leipzig comprised over 200,000 men—far more than one man could command without significantly delegating authority to his subordinates. Lee never had a force of that size, of course, but his battlefields were large and were spread out over hilly, forested landscapes that did not necessarily offer him a clear view; and in the absence of any means of communication faster than a man on horseback bearing a written or an oral order, he had no option but to rely on the initiative of his corps commanders and divisional commanders, most of whom understood what Lee wanted done—when they did not, it was not for want of exact orders.

  Once Pope escaped from the trap Lee had set for him, Lee’s reaction was swift, sure, and sufficiently well planned to satisfy even Major-General Fuller. Lee drew Pope farther and farther away from Fredericksburg, to postpone, or perhaps even prevent the union of McClellan’s army with Pope’s, then sent Stuart across the Rappahannock to see where Pope’s right was located—textbook moves, perfectly executed.

  The next move he made was as bold as any ever made in war. On August 24 he sent for Jackson to meet him at Jefferston, where Lee had moved his headquarters, and ordered him to take three divisions, cross the Rappahannock immediately, and circle around Pope’s right to cut him off from Washington. This was to ignore every important rule of war—instead of concentrating his forces, Lee split them in two in the face of an enemy with superior numbers, and despite the threat of the imminent arrival of even greater enemy numbers on his right. Retaining only Longstreet’s divisions, Lee had no more than 32,000 men to confront the 45,000 men of Pope’s army, with the possibility that at least another 75,000 men might soon be joining Pope.

  As Lee, Jackson, and Longstreet looked at the map spread out before them on a table, they could hear the constant firing of guns close by. For the last twenty-four hours Confederate artillery had been lined up along the Rappahannock, to engage with Federal artillery across the river. This was partly to discourage any attempt on the part of the Federals to recross the river, and partly to keep Pope’s attention fixed to his front, rather than his right. Jackson hoped to proceed upstream until he could cross to the Rappahannock unnoticed, then make a wide half circle, screened by the Bull Run Mountains, until he could cut the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, with the object of forcing Pope to retreat before McClellan joined him. The Bull Run Mountains are not a formidable natural obstacle in principle (the highest elevation is merely 1,329 feet), but any commander marching against time with three divisions of infantry, a full complement of artillery, and a division of cavalry would sensibly follow the road and cross them through a gap. Lee did not select a point on the railway—he left Jackson free to do that—however, anyone looking at the map could see that to reach the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Jackson would almost certainly have to turn east at Thoroughfare Gap, and that once he did so the roads would bring him naturally to Bristoe Station, within a short reach of Bull Run and the old battlefield at Manassas Junction, just over thirty miles from the center of the District of Columbia. Geography is the firm, unshakable bedrock of strategy—the question was not so much what route Jackson would follow as how long it would take him to reach the railway line. He had to get there before the bulk of McClellan’s army could reach Pope’s, and he had to cut off Pope’s line of communication before Pope realized that Lee had split his forces. By Lee’s own reckoning, he had no more than five days in which to defeat Pope and turn on McClellan.

  Jackson moved his men at first light on August 25, marching them behind the Bull Run Mountains toward the village of Salem. By the end of the day, Lee ordered Stuart to follow Jackson. Lee himself paused briefly to greet his son Rooney, and took a moment to write to Rooney’s wife, Charlotte, reassuring her about her husband’s health.

  The next day, Lee made an even more momentous decision than splitting his army in the face of the enemy. He would abandon his position on the Rappahannock altogether, and relying on Jackson’s speed, concentrate all his forces behind Pope’s, leaving Richmond virtually undefended. He was gambling on McClellan’s lack of speed, but while Lee felt confident that he knew his man, it was a risk that few other generals would ever have taken.

  Lee gave Longstreet a choice: he could force the fords and advance directly north across the river to meet Jackson, or he could follow Jackson’s route via Orlean and Salem. Longstreet wisely chose the latter, since Pope was still defending the lower fords. By that evening Lee had broken off contact with the enemy and moved his whole army north of the Rappahannock, effectively abandoning his own line of communications. He left behind only a smattering of artillery to preserve the illusion that the army was still in place. On the evening of August 26 Lee and his staff were dining at the home of the Marshall family in Orlean, on the north side of the river—one of the few occasions when the usually abstemious Lee seems to have been willing forgo his tent and his meager rations for a night indoors, and a dinner served in gracious style. Their hostess, Mrs. Marshall, even served Lee “a sumptuous breakfast” before dawn.

  Generally, Lee did not accept such invitations, but Mrs. Marshall seems to have had willpower exceeding his own. Lee’s indifference to food and drink was the despair of his staff. Walter Taylor, who was closer than anyone else to him, remarked on his “simplicity of taste.” Other generals might have elaborate kits of china and silverware, but in Lee’s mess there was only tin, and he “never availed himself of the advantages of his position to obtain dainties for his table or any personal comfort for himself.” He avoided “spirituous liquors,” and did not encourage others to partake of them, though he kept a supply on hand for important visitors, and was not above an occasional taste of wine when a bottle was sent to him. Taylor remarked that Lee “would have been better off had he taken a little stimulant,” but he knew his man better than to suppose that this was likely. On the other hand, Lee was notably vivacious during dinner at Mrs. Marshall’s—he was accompanied by General Longstreet, a man who enjoyed a good meal—and “passed an agreeable evening with the ladies,” so it is possible he allowed himself a little wine that evening. Colonel A. L. Long, Lee’s military secretary, makes it clear that both Lee and Longstreet were in good spirits and at their most entertaining at dinner and afterward, and took formal leave of their hostess after breakfast the next morning.

  Lee enjoyed the brief domestic interlude—he was always happiest when surrounded by attentive young women—and his good humor was not spoiled a couple of hours later when he and his staff were almost captured by Federal cavalrymen only a few miles from Orlean. Lee was riding well ahead of Longstreet’s column, to enjoy the brief moment of cool air at first light and escape from the clouds of dust raised by thousands of marching men. The men were so hard pressed by heat and thirst that “they drank dry the stagnant mud holes,” and Lee asked if there were no alternative routes. There was none, however, and Lee’s preoccupation with the comfort of his troops may have slowed his reaction when his staff spotted a squadron of enemy cavalry “moving briskly” toward him. Lee’s staff, not more than ten or a dozen men, urged him to retire at once, but he would not do so, wisely deciding that the sight
of a single horseman turning and galloping away might alert the Federals that he was somebody of importance. Instead he and his staff quickly formed a line across the road, stirrup to stirrup, and “presuming that it was the head of a considerable troop,” the Federal squadron was taken in, halted, wheeled around, and galloped away. Lee’s choice of a plain gray uniform no doubt helped to protect him; he wore no gold braid on his sleeves, and from a distance of 100 yards he and his staff would have looked like the vanguard of a Confederate cavalry patrol. No other senior general in either army, except perhaps Grant, would have been riding without a glittering cavalry escort and somebody bearing the flag of his rank.

  At some point Lee stopped long enough to console a woman whose pair of matched bay horses had been taken from her carriage by the same Federal cavalrymen who almost captured him. He spent the night encamped near Salem. It is interesting to note that Union cavalry patrols were so active on the west side of the Bull Run Mountains that they had the time to follow to the letter General Pope’s much reviled order to seize or destroy the property of Confederate civilians, but at the same time they failed to notice the presence within a mile of them of just over 49,000 Confederate soldiers,* with artillery and a supply train, spread out loosely over thirty miles between the Rappahannock River and Bull Run. It is a measure of the extreme risk that Lee was taking—not only had he split his army; he was moving it widely spread out and vulnerable in open country, in danger of its being attacked in detail, exactly the mistake that all military textbooks warn against. If the Federal cavalry patrol that almost captured Lee had been doing its job instead of stealing horses, and if Pope had not put his headquarters where his hindquarters ought to have been, as southerners joked, he might have wiped out the Army of Northern Virginia; and if McClellan had been moving faster, the vanguard of his troops could have cut off the retreat of the survivors as they attempted to cross the Rappahannock. The war might have been ended in August 1862 with a decisive victory for the North, but Lee showed no sign of concern, if Long and Taylor are to be believed. It was not just a question of Lee’s contempt for Pope; it was that he had complete confidence in Jackson’s ability to move fast and to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.

  And he was right. Early the next morning, as Lee was eating his usual Spartan breakfast outside Salem, a courier arrived to inform him that Jackson had covered an astonishing fifty-four miles in two days and reached Bristoe Station, where he derailed two trains and tore up the tracks. This began a day of triumph for Jackson. He sent Stuart ahead with the bulk of the cavalry and two infantry regiments seven miles north to seize Pope’s supply base at Manassas Junction. Stuart captured 300 Federal troops, 8 cannons, 175 horses, and “some 200 runaway slaves.” Late the same morning Jackson reached Manassas Junction himself, after a sharp engagement with Union troops, to find more than 100 “bulging freight cars” and a vast supply dump containing everything from ammunition and shoes to mustard. Jackson moved his troops out as soon as he could—he disliked the sight of his men plundering and pillaging, and worried about the amount of liquor that was available for the taking. By midnight he had blown up the ammunition and powder he could not carry and set a fire whose glow could be seen from Washington, destroying “50,000 pounds of bacon, 1000 barrels of corned beef, 200 barrels of salt pork, and 2000 barrels of flour,” plus innumerable other stores. Rather than moving west toward Thoroughfare Gap to join Longstreet, he moved north, knowing that this would alarm Lincoln when he learned of it. He also hoped to draw Pope out of his lines on the Rappahannock. And in fact Pope, though startled by the loss of the railroad and his supply depot, still believed he was facing only a daring raid by Jackson and Stuart, which he was determined to “crush” at Manassas. “If you are prompt and expeditious,” he told one of his generals, “we shall bag the whole crowd.”

  By the morning of August 27 the pieces of Lee’s bold and risky strategy were falling into place. More important even than the destruction of Pope’s stores at Manassas Junction, half of Lee’s army, under Jackson, was now between Pope’s army and Washington, while the other half, under Longstreet, was less than twenty-two miles to the west, its presence apparently still undetected by Pope. If Pope could move north quickly—and perhaps make a junction with the vanguard of McClellan’s army—he could certainly “crush” Jackson, but if Lee could reunite the two halves of his army fast enough, and find suitable ground, he could defeat Pope, then turn on McClellan.

  Lee’s audacity was never on better display. His position was still precarious; he was without any significant cavalry since he had sent Stuart off to protect Jackson’s right, and therefore had no way of knowing what his enemy was doing; and his only line of communication back to Richmond was fragile, and dependent on fords over the Rappahannock that a single rainstorm could render impassable.

  Lee’s vanguard reached Thoroughfare Gap shortly before noon on August 28, after an arduous march in the extreme heat, only to find that it was already in Union hands. Lee does not seem to have been as dismayed by this as one might have expected, perhaps because couriers had been passing back and forth until quite recently between himself and Jackson during the day, indicating that the Federal force holding the gap was relatively small, and had only just been placed there to contest a retreat by Jackson rather than because Pope had guessed Lee’s approach. The “gaps” in the Bull Run Mountains were not romantic Alpine defiles as they are frequently shown in paintings of the time, but they were narrow and rocky enough to discourage a contested frontal attack. Longstreet, displaying a lyrical gift unexpected in such a down-to-earth man, described them as “picturesque,” their faces of “basaltic rock . . . relived hither and thither by wild ivy.” Because Lee had sent Stuart off with Jackson, he had no idea what lay ahead of him on the far side of the gap. The Federals holding it might have been the advance guard of a division, or even a corps, as in fact they proved to be.

  With the serenity of genius, Lee dismounted, examined the gap through his binoculars, and decided that there had to be ways over the rocky, pine-forested heights on either side of it. Breaking his own habit once again, he accepted a dinner invitation for him and his staff from a Mr. Robinson, who lived nearby. Colonel Long, who accompanied Lee, wrote that “this meal was partaken of with as good an appetite and with as much geniality of manner as if the occasion was an ordinary one, not a moment in which victory or ruin hung in the balance.” If Lee was nervous, he hid it well. In addition he had already decided that the Federal position could be turned—in fact before joining his host he gave orders to seek for alternative routes above and below the gap.

  Colonel Long makes it clear that by dinner Lee’s host meant what we would call lunch—this was still for most people the major meal of the day, the evening meal being lighter, and called supper—and by the end of the meal the sound of fierce fighting could be heard from the gap as the Confederate infantry made its way from rock to rock, firing on the Federals. Toward evening, however, a friendly “woodchopper” showed one of Lee’s “reconnaissance parties” an old logging trail that the infantry could use to bypass the Federal position altogether, and by nightfall the Federal troops withdrew, abandoning Thoroughfare Gap to Longstreet’s divisions. Throughout the day and night Lee heard the low rumble of gunfire to the east—Jackson was obviously engaged in battle. Although Lee could not have known it, General Pope, anxious to trap Jackson, had ordered Major General Irvin McDowell to move his corps toward Manassas as fast as possible. McDowell had therefore abandoned Thoroughfare Gap, leaving it wide open to Longstreet’s divisions, “a tactical error of such magnitude that it could not well be retrieved.” When Lee rode through the gap in the early morning it was not to find a large Union force massed there to stop him, but instead to find a clear road ahead.

  It was odd that neither the Federal cavalry, which had almost taken Lee prisoner the day before, nor McDowell’s troops, which held the gap on August 28, had passed on to Pope the news that they had encountered more than three divis
ions of Confederate troops. But then again Pope had what we would now call tunnel vision, and was so intent on destroying Jackson that he seems to have “either ignored or forgotten” the possibility that the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia might be on the move; and McDowell had already demonstrated at the First Battle of Manassas (or Bull Run) a fatal combination of high self-regard and inexperience at handling troops in battle. Worse still, he neglected to pass on to Pope the reports of his own subordinates, or to indicate their urgency.

  Jackson’s march from Manassas Junction was not unopposed. The fierce artillery duel, which Lee heard in the distance, was the sound of Jackson engaging with the Federal forces that were pursuing him. Jackson had found himself in a difficult position for two days. With fewer than 20,000 men, he was being pursued by an enemy more than twice that number. Almost any other general would have hastened to retreat west toward Thoroughfare Gap and join forces with Longstreet. It was less than fifteen miles from Bristoe Station, where he had torn up the tracks, or Manassas Junction, which he had sacked, to the eastern side of the gap, no more than a day’s march for Jackson’s “foot cavalry.” But instead Jackson turned northwest, crossed the Warrenton Turnpike, and halted to concentrate his own forces on higher ground overlooking the hamlet of Groveton, on the wooded eastern slope of “Sudley Mountain,” hardly more than a low ridge running parallel to the turnpike and known more accurately as Stony Ridge. Here an unfinished railway cutting provided the equivalent of a ready-made entrenchment, and heavy woods provided an opportunity for concealment.