Lee had performed a miracle in the month between his victory at Chancellorsville and the beginning of his move north. “It was now a far stronger army than the one Hooker had faced at Chancellorsville,” wrote Colonel Vincent J. Esposito, now consisting of three corps (commanded by Longstreet, Ewell, and A. P. Hill), plus Stuart’s “oversize” cavalry division (resembling a Federal cavalry corps), for a total of 76,000 men. Appropriately or not, this was by far the Confederacy’s largest army. Bragg had 45,000 men facing 84,000 Union troops in Tennessee; Johnston had 25,000 men in Mississippi; Pemberton had 30,000 men in Vicksburg, by now virtually besieged by Grant; Buckner had 16,000 men holding the vital railway between Richmond and Chattanooga; and Beauregard attempted to defend Savannah and the Atlantic seacoast with a further 16,000 men. Despite shortages of everything needful, an ever more vigilant Federal blockade of southern ports, and an abysmally inefficient supply situation, Lee had restored and increased his army in terms of men, and vastly improved its artillery. He had about 285 guns, still a hodgepodge of types and calibers, but a formidable number—though not the equal of the Army of the Potomac, which had 370 guns and 115,000 men.
Still, what Lee counted on was surprise, swift movement, and the fighting spirit of his men, not numbers or weight of shot. To this end, he developed his plan by small degrees, drawing as little attention to his requests for reinforcement as he could. He was cautious in revealing his plans to the authorities in Richmond: partly to avoid inevitable complaints from other generals as he drew on the severely limited amount of manpower available; and partly because, strange as it may seem, and despite his friendly relationship with President Davis and Secretary of War Seddon, Lee preferred to “disclose his plans little at a time,” perhaps out of reluctance to argue about them or simple dislike of the bureaucracy, such as it was, interfering with his broader intentions. He had hoped to take advantage of the “season of the fevers” in the Carolinas to bring Beauregard and his 16,000 men north and “increase the known anxiety of the Washington authorities,” tempting them to withdraw troops from the Southwest to defend the capital; but this was too bold a plan for the Confederacy’s War Department, which had apparently already heard as much about the value of “interior lines” from Longstreet (whose strategic bee in the bonnet this was) as it wanted to hear.
In the end what Lee intended to do was to keep Hooker’s attention fixed on Fredericksburg, while shifting his own army swiftly into the Shenandoah Valley, where Union outposts were few, weak, and scattered, and from there march directly north in the direction of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lee’s aide Colonel Walter Taylor, who served as the equivalent of a de facto chief of staff, remarks that Lee’s “design was to free the State of Virginia, for a time at least, from the presence of the enemy, to transfer the theater of war to Northern soil,” and to choose “a favorable time and place” for a pitched battle. Like Longstreet, Taylor assumed that “the Tycoon,”* as his staff sometimes referred to Lee, would place himself so that the enemy had to attack him on ground of Lee’s own choosing, as at Fredericksburg; but Lee had given no guarantees that he would do any such thing, whatever Longstreet may have supposed. His military secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall, who drafted most of Lee’s orders, correspondence, and reports, emphasizes the importance that Lee placed on defending Richmond and “preserving that part of Virginia north of the James and of keeping it free from the presence of the enemy.” Lee, in his own report on the Battle of Gettysburg, places foremost his hope that the movement of his army from a defending position south of the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg to an advance into Pennsylvania “might offer a fair opportunity to strike a blow at the army then commanded by General Hooker, and that in any event that army would be compelled to leave Virginia.” It is fair to conclude that Lee’s view of the war remained, as it had always been, a Virginian’s, and that in his order of priorities removing the enemy from Virginia was among the highest, if not the highest. Nowhere in describing the objectives of his campaign does he mention any understanding between himself and President Davis that he would so place himself that Hooker would be obliged to attack him on ground of Lee’s own choosing, desirable as that might be. Only later on in the report does Lee mention, en passant, “It had not been intended to fight a general battle at such a distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy”; he then goes on to list the reasons, largely having to do with difficulties of transport and supply, why the battle became “unavoidable.” The still hotly debated question of whether Lee should or should not have fought at Gettysburg does not seem to have concerned him deeply—“unavoidable” is a strong word—still less does he seem to have felt that putting his army in a favorable position where the enemy would have to attack him was in any sense an obligation.
On June 3, 1863, Lee began to withdraw his army piece by piece from Fredericksburg. This was exactly a month since his victory at Chancellorsville, and it remains amazing that so soon after a great and costly battle the army was able to embark on such an ambitious flanking march to the west and the north around the right of the Army of the Potomac—or, perhaps more significant, that a man of fifty-six, and possibly not in the best of health, was leading it.
We know that Lee had been very sick toward the end of the winter, and it is possible to suppose, from his symptoms, that he was suffering from arteriosclerosis and what would now be called angina. Neither Taylor nor Marshall, each of whom was close to Lee day and night, mentions his health, but then again Lee was of all men the least likely to complain about it, or allow even those closest to him to see anything beyond his perfect mask of dignity, composure, and self-control. All the same, over the next month he was to undergo enormous and relentless stress, and bear alone the full responsibility for the largest army of the Confederacy and its most daring strategic decision: an invasion of the North intended to provoke the decisive battle that would, at last, win the South independence. Longstreet would later write that Lee was impatient and excitable, and if so, that would be easily understandable, but then Longstreet had a case to make, and wrote long after Lee’s death. Nobody else at the time seems to have remarked on Lee’s behavior or manner: the “marble face” and dignified composure remained the same as they had always been, in victory and defeat, whatever they may have cost him.
The fact that Lee was “thinning” his forces did not pass unnoticed by General Hooker, who threw a pontoon bridge across the Rappahannock at Deep Run, just over a mile below Fredericksburg, on June 6 and moved a “large force” to the right bank of the river to observe what was happening. Lee ordered A. P. Hill to make “a similar demonstration against Hooker,” which persuaded Hooker to withdraw his forces, but he was still concerned that Lee might be there, and sent his cavalry under Major General Alfred Pleasanton across the river to find him.
The result was the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War, which took place on June 9 at Brandy Station, where Stuart had assembled his cavalry corps to be reviewed by Lee. It is difficult to guess which of the two generals was the more surprised: Pleasanton, to find that he had stumbled on 9,500 Confederate troopers; or Stuart, to learn that he was being attacked by 11,000 Federal cavalrymen. By 1863 cavalry was in any case more likely to fight on foot in the role of “mounted infantry” than on horseback, but Brandy Station was a full day of old-fashioned horse-to-horse charges and countercharges, fought mostly with the saber (though infantry and light “horse artillery” were also engaged). Alarmed at the possibility that the Federal cavalry might break through and reach Culpeper, where two-thirds of his army was bivouacked, Lee ordered an infantry brigade forward to support Stuart’s horsemen, and rode to the scene of the battle just in time to see his second son, Rooney,* being carried from the field with a severe leg wound. At the end of the day Stuart’s men inflicted almost twice as many casualties as they received, but it was something less than a clear-cut victory for Stuart, and this may have left him smarting, with unfortunate consequences. As for Pleasanton, his men managed to
cross back over the Rappahannock without reaching Culpeper, only six and a half miles away, where two entire corps of Lee’s infantry were encamped, leaving behind them over 900 dead, wounded, and missing, and three guns—not exactly a triumph of reconnaissance.
Hooker’s suspicions had in any case already been aroused. He guessed that Lee was moving his army somewhere—Lee was not, after all, a man who would waste a whole summer campaigning season guarding Fredericksburg; he was the apostle of the attack—and saw in Lee’s move an opportunity. If all of Hooker’s intelligence and his own instincts were correct, Lee would be moving west into the Shenandoah Valley, then north across the Potomac screened by the Blue Mountains, leaving Richmond uncovered. If Hooker moved his army quickly south across the Rappahannock, he could not only cut off Lee’s lines of communication to the capital but “move directly” against Richmond. This was a daring plan, and might even have worked—the farther away Lee moved his army, the better were Hooker’s chances of reaching Richmond—but as it turned out this plan was a good deal too daring for Lincoln and Halleck, both of whom wanted Hooker to cover Washington with his army. Hooker did not take their interference well, nor did he hide his resentment.
It was not until June 12 that Hooker was at last sure Lee was moving the Army of Northern Virginia into the Shenandoah Valley, and began to march his own toward Manassas Junction, with the intention of moving it into Maryland, crossing the Potomac at Conrad’s Ferry and Edward’s Ferry. It may well have appeared to him that Lee was repeating his advance toward Sharpsburg, this time from the south instead of from the east: one by one, Lee took Federal outposts as he advanced up the Valley: first Berryville, then Winchester, then Martinsburg, until the remaining Federal troops abandoned the valley, withdrew from Harpers Ferry, and concentrated at Maryland Heights, on the northern side of the Potomac, leaving behind them in Confederate hands 4,000 prisoners, “together with 29 pieces of artillery, 300 horses, 270 wagons, and a quantity of supplies of all kinds.” For an army short of every kind of supply, these were significant gains, of course, but it is worth noting that Lee could not halt or rest his army—once it was moving, it voraciously devoured food and forage to either side of it. Lee prided himself on preventing plundering by his troops, and frequently issued orders forbidding it and promising prompt and rigorous punishment for those who disobeyed, though this could not always prevent half-starved soldiers from seizing what food they could along their line of march. Moreover, Lee’s orders directed the chiefs of his “commissary, quartermaster’s, ordnance and medical departments” to “requisition supplies for their respective departments” from “the local authorities or inhabitants,” and pay “fair market price” for what they took in Confederate dollars, or vouchers payable by the Confederate government. These would have been accepted most unwillingly by people south of the Potomac, and were worthless to people north of it. Though he did not like to admit it, Lee was “living off the country,” in the manner of armies since the beginning of time, but the need to keep his army constantly moving in order to feed it would have serious consequences in the weeks to come.
Of all the many controversies about the Civil War, those that surround the Battle of Gettysburg remain the most long lasting and the most difficult to unravel. There is, of course, nothing much to be learned from speculating on the great what-ifs of history, and this applies particularly to Gettysburg. We do not know and cannot guess what would have happened had Lee followed Longstreet’s advice to fight only a defensive battle, or had he paid more attention to Longstreet’s opinions during the battle, or had Stuart’s orders been clearer before the battle. What we can deduce is that Lee thought he had a good chance to get to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, without fighting a major battle, and was surprised when this assumption turned out to be wrong. One can see, right from the beginning of the campaign, the various strands that would produce a historic defeat rather than a victory, but Lee could not of course see them. With the hindsight of 150 years and hundreds of books, monographs, theses, television documentaries, and even a successful motion picture, everything is clear—indeed we may know too much, rather than not enough. But none of this was available to Lee on June 21 as he rode into tiny Paris, Virginia, accompanied by his small staff.
The success of Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels in 1974 (and of the 1993 film Gettysburg that was based on it) reignited the long quarrel between Lee’s loyalists and General Longstreet that sputtered on after Lee’s death, and came to a boil with the publication of Longstreet’s memoirs in 1896. Longstreet himself added fuel to the fire by actively supporting the presidential bid of his old friend Ulysses S. Grant, joining the Republican Party, and accepting a number of Federal appointments, ranging from postmaster of Gainesville, Florida, to U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. The result was that Longstreet came to play the role of Judas in histories of the Lost Cause, as the one who by dragging his heels and disobeying his orders brought about Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg.
The problem with this view is first of all that Lee did not share it, and second that Lee was mortal, a fallible human being, not a god—even the best of generals makes mistakes, and Lee was no exception. Lee failed to annihilate McClellan’s army at Malvern Hill and again at Second Manassas; he allowed himself to be trapped into a battle he should never have fought at Sharpsburg; he underrated the speed at which Hooker would move the Army of the Potomac north after discovering that the Army of Northern Virginia was marching toward Pennsylvania. This is no criticism of Lee: “War is an option of difficulties,” as Major General James Wolfe, the conqueror of Montreal, put it, and not every option leads to the desired result.
The attempt to put all the blame for Gettysburg on Longstreet ignores the facts that Lee, who could have replaced him, set great store by his ability; that they had an affectionate relationship, respectful on Longstreet’s part; and that many of the elements leading to defeat at Gettysburg were a fatal consequence of some of Lee’s own failings, coupled with the absence of Jackson, whose boldness and inspired skill at flank attacks was in perfect balance with Longstreet’s solid competence and caution. Lee had said, when told of Jackson’s wounds, that while Jackson had lost his left arm, he had lost his right arm, and there was a good deal of truth in this. With the exception of Chancellorsville, Lee had performed best when half his army was commanded by Jackson, and the other half by Longstreet. He knew how to get the best out of both men; they balanced each other and brought out the best in each other even when they disagreed. Now, only six weeks after Chancellorsville, Lee’s army was newly divided into three corps (plus Stuart’s cavalry); and while two of his three corps commanders—Ewell and A. P. Hill—had served under Jackson, neither of them had a particularly close relationship with Lee. In addition, Ewell was still recovering from the amputation of his left leg after Second Manassas in August 1862.
Compared with most commanders, Lee had always given his generals a good deal more leeway in carrying out his orders, and this had usually worked for him, since both Jackson and Longstreet were used to guessing what he had in mind. He also relied—perhaps too much—on oral orders transmitted by his staff, and in the heat of battle these were sometimes misinterpreted or misunderstood—that had been a serious problem during the peninsula campaign. Then too, Lee’s whole style of command, in which he often appeared to offer polite suggestions rather than issue crisp orders, was less well adapted to an army divided into three corps, with two leaders who had never commanded a corps before.
Finally, the victory at Chancellorsville had reconfirmed in Lee a tendency to rely on the fighting spirit of Confederate soldiers. Again and again, they had overcome extraordinary hardships, lack of supplies, and overwhelmingly unfavorable odds to win victories for Lee over Union troops. They performed miracles, and Lee had come to expect them to perform miracles, but this is always a dangerous assumption—even the bravest of troops cannot do the impossible, or overcome faulty strategy.
Lee had every reason to feel confident as
he rode into Paris—he had adroitly positioned A. P. Hill to distract Hooker’s attention (and prevent Hooker from risking a lunge across the Rappahannock toward Richmond), while moving first Ewell’s corps and then Longstreet’s from Culpeper west through the gaps in the Blue Mountains—he had stolen a march on Hooker, who so far as Lee knew was still in place on the northern bank of the Rappahannock. Stuart’s cavalry covered the gaps in the Blue Ridge in case Hooker threatened them, and by June 17 almost two-thirds of Lee’s army was “strung out over a distance of a hundred miles,” in and beyond the Shenandoah Valley, with Ewell in the lead already approaching Hagerstown, less than ten miles from Pennsylvania. To put the matter of distance in perspective, Ewell’s advance brigades had marched almost 120 miles in ten days, partly thanks to the good quality of the roads in the Shenandoah Valley, but still a remarkable achievement for men some of whom had no shoes and each of whom was carrying a musket, a bayonet, and sixty rounds of ammunition. Stonewall Jackson might have pressed them harder, but not by much.
By now Hooker was becoming alert to the danger—and also to the possibility of catching Lee’s army strung out and on the move—as was Lincoln, who on June 13 ordered him “to fall back and defend the approaches to Washington,” always the president’s “default position” whenever Lee moved northward. When Hooker finally did begin to move, on June 15, he withdrew his forces rapidly to the northwest, via Manassas, Aldie, and Leesburg, clearly with the intention of crossing the Potomac and covering Washington, as ordered. His intention was to move the Army of the Potomac toward Frederick, Maryland, where he could be supplied via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and confront Lee if Lee moved through the gaps in the South Mountains to attack Washington from the west. In the meantime, Hooker’s move enabled Lee to abandon his defense of Fredericksburg, and order A. P. Hill to move his corps into the Shenandoah Valley and follow Longstreet’s north. By June 25 the entire Army of Northern Virginia had crossed the Potomac via Shepherdstown and Williamsport, and was marching through the rich agricultural country of the Cumberland Valley on good roads in the direction of Harrisburg.
Clouds of Glory Page 64
