Of all this and of much that followed, Beauregard was informed. He listened; he pondered; he planned. French he was … French strategy he would employ, Napoleonic strategy.
2
MAGRUDER AND D.H. HILL EMERGE
Before the ranks of Beauregard began to swell or his strategy to take form, the actors between the James and York rivers commanded the stage. The Federals were concentrating at Fort Monroe, which apparently they intended to use as a base for operations up the Peninsula. If, simultaneously, the mouth of either the James or the York could be opened, vessels of the United States navy might pass the hastily built forts and might land troops close to Richmond. Thus the commanding officer at the mouth of the York River became from the hour of his assignment a conspicuous figure.18 Indeed, he long had been that in the old army, not because of rank but because of personality.
John Bankhead Magruder, No. 15 in the somewhat undistinguished class of 1830 at West Point, had procured transfer from the 7th Infantry to the 1st Artillery in 1831, had earned his brevet as lieutenant colonel during the Mexican War, and thereafter held some of the choicest posts in the artillery. At Fort Adams, Newport, Rhode Island, he had won a great name as a bon vivant and as an obliging host. Whenever celebrities were to be entertained, Colonel Magruder—“Prince John”—would tender a dress parade, with full trappings of gold-braided pomp, and this he would follow with a flawless dinner. From Fort Adams he had been transferred to far-off Fort Leavenworth, but there, too, he had held dress parades and reviews, though the spectators might be only Indians or frontiersmen. In the serious work of his profession he directed the new artillery school at Leavenworth and convinced interested juniors that he knew his ranges as thoroughly as his vintages.19
The winter of 1860-61 found Magruder and his battery in Washington. When he resigned, rumor had it that he galloped off to the defense of Virginia with his men and his guns. Nothing would have delighted Magruder more, for he loved the dramatic and when occasion offered he would majestically tread the creaking boards of a garrison theater. Nor did he make a casual entrance on the stage of Virginia’s tragedy. He gained an immediate audience with the governor’s Advisory Council. To that serious, burdened group of devoted men, Colonel Magruder said with frowning fervor: “I have just crossed the Long Bridge, which is guarded by my old Battery. The men recognized me by moonlight and would have cheered me but I repressed them. Give me 5,000 men and if I don’t take Washington, you may take not only my sword but my life!” On so bold a proposal the Council sought the judgment of General Lee. Lee shook his head. “We have not the men,” said he—that and no more.20
Prince John was too well-disciplined a soldier to be disappointed at this. He was commissioned colonel of Virginia volunteers, and on May 21 was sent to command operations on the lower Peninsula, with headquarters at Yorktown. There he found no cavalry, little infantry, and scant equipment. Naval officers scarcely had gear for mounting the guns that were to keep the enemy’s fleet at a distance. With furious energy Magruder went to work to improve his troops and his position, but like Johnston at Harper’s Ferry and Beauregard at Manassas he felt his first need was of a larger force. To guard a line that extended from the James to the York, he must have, he said, 8,000 to 10,000 men. Without them he would be compelled to fall back. In opening correspondence on this subject he was detailed and insistent. Like many another professional soldier who long had dealt with the War Department, he believed with all his heart that the importunate widow who wearied the unjust judge till he avenged her was the model to be followed by the commander in seeking what was required. His early dispatches doubtless were read with eagerness. Soon the sight of one of them was to evoke groans.21
Fortune smiled on diligence. Prince John had the opportunity of directing the South’s first land “battle” and of winning the intoxicating first victory. At the very time of Magruder’s arrival, one of the regiments needed to bring up his force to the required minimum had landed at Yorktown, 1,100 enthusiastic young men of the 1st North Carolina volunteers. Their colonel, Daniel Harvey Hill, and their lieutenant colonel, C.C. Lee, were West Pointers; their major, James H. Lane, was a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute.
So well trained was the 1st North Carolina that on June 6, Magruder sent it, with four guns and a few other troops, to an advanced position at Big Bethel Church, thirteen miles below Yorktown and eight from Hampton. The enemy was at Hampton and Newport News and seemed inclined to advance. Four days later Hill received notice that the enemy was approaching. The very prospect set every heart to beating fast. Hill moved out his troops, ascertained by what roads the Federals were moving, and then withdrew in the face of superior force to his prepared position. With Magruder directing a few changes in his dispositions, Hill met and repulsed at Big Bethel some feeble, poorly handled assaults by Federals who already had sustained casualties by firing wildly into one another.
It was a small battle, to be sure. Not more than 300 of the 1,400 Confederates had been engaged simultaneously and then for no longer than twenty minutes. Three years later such a clash would have been accounted a skirmish and perhaps been the subject of a two-line dispatch. It was different on June 10, 1861. Green troops had stood, had fought, had sustained eleven casualties, had driven the enemy back to his starting point! At Yorktown headquarters there was excitement, felicitation, and exultation. The Federal casualties Hill put at 300, though actually the figure was 76.22
When news of this victory reached Richmond and spread across the South, there was immense satisfaction over what was proclaimed to be the demonstrated, indisputable superiority of the Confederate soldier in combat. No detail of the engagement was too trivial for mention, none was incredible.23 Swift promotion to the rank of brigadier general was demanded for Magruder and was granted. He took his place among the foremost of Southern celebrities, a hero second only to Beauregard. Magruder accepted his new honors gratefully. In mien and dignity he lived up to his role. At fifty years of age he was tall, erect, and handsome, and was impressive despite a curious lisp. Usually he dressed in full uniform—looking “every inch a King,” one newspaper insisted—and with his staff in attendance he daily made the rounds of his slowly mounting fortifications. He was a fighter, the South joyfully asserted, a personal fighter, too. Was it not rumored that he had challenged the Federal commander, General Ben Butler, to mortal combat?24
Harvey Hill, who had been in direct command at Big Bethel, did not appeal to the eye or to the imagination in the measure his chief did, but he had his full share of honor. He came of fighting stock. His paternal grandfather had made cannon for the Continental army and had been one of Thomas Sumter’s colonels. On the maternal side Harvey Hill had as grandparent that wily scout Thomas Cabeen, who Sumter often said was the bravest man he ever commanded. Not unnaturally, with that inheritance, Harvey Hill had gone to West Point, where, despite poor health, he had been graduated No. 28 in the excellent class of 1842. Five years later, by the unhesitating display of the most reckless valor, he had won promotion from first lieutenant to brevet major during the Mexican War; but as he found army life unstimulating in time of peace he had resigned in February 1849, had taught mathematics for five years at Washington College, and then had become professor of mathematics and civil engineering at Davidson College, North Carolina.
While there Hill developed a marked interest in theology and, at the same time, a most vehement hatred of Northerners. His Consideration of the Sermon on the Mount (1856) had been followed by a “Southern Series” of mathematical works in which he based many of his problems on “Yankee cunning.” For example, “A Yankee mixes a certain quantity of wooden nutmegs, which cost him one-fourth cent apiece, with a quantity of real nutmegs, worth four cents apiece”; again, “the year in which the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut sent treasonable messages to their respective legislatures, is expressed in four digits….” In 1859, Hill decided that war with the fictitious masters of this alleged cunning was probable, and he
accepted the superintendency of the North Carolina Military Institute. In 1861 he was called to command the camp of instruction for the North Carolina volunteers, and as a reward for diligent service was elected colonel of the Ist Regiment. He was then nearing his fortieth birthday.25
In person he was inconspicuous—five feet ten, thin, critical of eye, slightly bent from a spinal affliction and cursed with an odd humor; he was stiff and sharp when on duty and was wholly unpretending when not in command. Hill observed the Sabbath as diligently as did his brother-in-law, Colonel Thomas J. Jackson, then at Harper’s Ferry, and he always gave God the credit for victory. Upon the expansion of the Confederate force on the Peninsula after the fight at Big Bethel, Magruder gave him the post at Yorktown. On July 10, in recognition of his achievements, Hill was commissioned brigadier general.26
How fast and how far would he rise? What service would he render? Intense he was in his admiration, bitter in his antagonism. He could hate as hard as he could pray: Would that make him a better soldier or a worse? An applauding country did not know enough about him to make the inquiry, nor would it have looked otherwise than with suspicion on anyone who raised that or any other question about any Confederate leader. Old Bory, Prince John Magruder, pious Harvey Hill—these three at the beginning of the summer of 1861 were men to be trusted, to be followed. They were great soldiers. Of that the South was satisfied. No less were all Southerners convinced that new military genius would blaze on every battlefield.
3
FIRST LOSS OF A LEADER
Exultant praise of Magruder, D. H. Hill, and the other victors at Big Bethel was interrupted by news of another sort, from western Virginia. There, from the very hour of secession, the Federals realized that the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Washington and Parkersburg was at once the most important and the most exposed link in the iron chain that bound together the East and the Midwest. They determined to organize at Grafton an army that would protect the line in the surest manner—by clearing all Confederate troops from northwestern Virginia.
Soon Richmond was aware of these formidable preparations. On May 20 the advance of a strong Union column compelled a small Confederate force to evacuate Grafton. Four days later the Federals surprised at Philippi the units withdrawn from Grafton, and the undisciplined, bewildered troops had to hasten thirty miles farther south to Beverly, and thence twelve miles in the same direction to Huttonsville. As Beverly was the junction of the Staunton-Parkersburg road with the turnpike to Grafton, the Confederates could not permit the enemy to penetrate farther.27 Such troops as were available must, then, be hurried to Staunton and over the mountains to reoccupy Beverly. Because every other qualified officer already was assigned to field duty, Colonel Robert Selden Garnett, adjutant general at Lee’s headquarters, though he was irreplaceable, was detached and ordered to proceed to western Virginia.
Garnett was forty-two years of age, the eldest son of R. S. Garnett, for twelve years a member of Congress from Virginia, and a representative of one of the most intellectual families of the Old Dominion. After Robert Garnett was graduated midway in the class of 1841 at West Point, he was given virtually every post a young officer could desire—assistant instructor of tactics at West Point, aide to Generals Wool and Taylor during the Mexican War. Garnett measured up to his opportunities and won his brevet as major for gallantry at Buena Vista. In 1857, while on duty at Fort Simcoe, Washington Territory, he returned from an expedition to find that both his wife and child had died in his absence. From the time he lost his family his entire interest had been fixed on his profession. It was his escape, his passion, his life. With his native austerity deepened by grief, he seemed “frozen and stern and isolated.” With secession he resigned promptly and was appointed Lee’s adjutant general. Now, promoted brigadier general, he had challenge, opportunity, and—more than either—the difficulties of a strange country and a raw command.28
Garnett left Huttonsville on June 15 and pushed straight for Rich Mountain. Over this mountain, by Buckhannon Pass, crossed the Staunton-Parkersburg road. Around the north end of Rich Mountain, under Laurel Hill, was the Grafton-Beverly road. Not content with halfway measures, Garnett occupied both Laurel Hill and Buckhannon Pass and felt, as he put it, that he held “the gates to the northwestern country.”29
Most of his officers were as inexperienced as his troops, but some of them were unusual men. Most conspicuous among them was Lieutenant Colonel John Pegram of the 20th Virginia, twenty-nine, a West Pointer of the class of 1854 and a former lieutenant of the 2nd Dragoons. Pegram had spent two years in Europe and had many fine social qualities, but he was a recent comer to western Virginia and had scant acquaintance with the tangled country. On July 7 he went with his regiment to a post called Camp Garnett, eight miles west of Beverly
A second interesting officer among Garnett’s subordinates was Captain Julius A. de Lagnel, a native of New Jersey but long a resident of Virginia and for fourteen years a lieutenant in the old army. De Lagnel was chief of artillery for Garnett’s little command and was stationed with Pegram on the western flank of Rich Mountain.30
At that camp also reported for duty a man destined to have a place in Confederate service almost unique. Jedediah Hotchkiss, descendant of an old and distinguished Connecticut family, had been born in Windsor, New York, in 1828 and been educated in academies there. When nineteen he had come to Virginia on a walking tour. Soon he acquired so deep an attachment to the state that he decided to settle in Augusta County. He established Mossy Creek Academy, which soon was successful. Busy though he was as a teacher, and active in religion, he found time to learn, unhelped, the principles of engineering, and as his avocation he made maps. “Professor Hotchkiss,” as he first was called in the army—he had no rank at the time—could sketch an area with substantial accuracy after riding over it once, and as he was a swift and indefatigable worker, he was to supply an incredible number of much-needed maps.31
Garnett soon learned something of the men entrusted to him. City-dwellers he had who had never seen mountains, and with them he had mountaineers who had never seen cities. Two things only did these soldiers possess in common—vast zeal and military inexperience. To them Garnett gave such slight instruction as time permitted. He also improved rapidly his position on Laurel Hill and at Buckhannon Pass. He occupied his fortifications, unassailed by the enemy, until July 6. Then skirmishing began. By July 8, the day Pegram took command at Buckhannon Pass, the enemy was active in that quarter.
On the morning of the eleventh, from a captured Union sergeant, Pegram learned that the Federals were endeavoring to turn one of his flanks. He concluded that the attack was to be against his right, and he sent word to Colonel William C. Scott to hold his 44th Virginia one and a half miles west of Beverly. Although Pegram believed the approach to his left-rear almost impracticable for the enemy, he sent back Captain de Lagnel with one gun and five thin companies of infantry to Hart’s house at the highest point in the gap. As of July 11, the situation, in summary, was this: Garnett at Laurel Hill, northeast of Pegram’s position, had no intimation of attack, though Union troops were known to be close at hand. In front of Camp Garnett the Federals were visible but gave no evidence of any purpose to come directly up the mountain. At the camp, Pegram was on the alert and was expecting an attempt to turn his right. About one and a half miles in his rear, at the Hart house, were de Lagnel, his gun, and 310 men. Across the mountain to the eastward, Colonel Scott was posting his 44th Virginia.32
Sketch of the region of Gen. R. S. Garnett’s operations in western Virginia. Positions are: (1) Garnett’s line on Laurel Hill; (2) Pegram’s line on Rich Mountain; (3) Carrick’s Ford on fork of Cheat River.
At 11:00 A.M. there came an unhappy surprise: With a shout and a dash, the Federals drove in the Confederate pickets at the pass and swarmed from the laurel thickets for an assault on de Lagnel’s little command. The enemy came from the left and not, as anticipated, from the right. Captain de Lagnel made the utmost of his
scant numbers and his single gun. When most of his artillerists were shot down, he served the piece himself. Presently he fell with a serious wound. Colonel Pegram arrived from Camp Garnett, and by example and plea tried to get his soldiers to drive off the enemy and hold the road. His shouts and commands were in vain. The troops broke; the enemy seized the road and the gap. Pegram rode back down the hill to camp. A grim plight was his. The Unionists were squarely across his only line of retreat.
What was to be done? Pegram decided to try the one expedient open to him: He would leave half his force to hold Camp Garnett and, with the other half, he would go back up the mountain and try to clear the enemy from the road. At last his volunteers reached an elevation that appeared to be on a line with the flank of the enemy, but the pull up the mountain had exhausted them. Pegram realized that if they were thrown forward they would be slaughtered. The sole hope of escape was to go on over the crest and try to reach Beverly. Pegram entrusted this difficult mission to Major Nat Tyler of the 20th Virginia, and started back to Camp Garnett—his second descent of the day. It was 11:30 P.M. when he and his mount staggered into the camp.
The 600 men who remained there were awake and miserable. Pegram decided that an effort must be made to cross the mountain and join Garnett at Laurel Hill. He was so exhausted that he did not believe he could attempt another ascent. A column was formed, the head of which was assigned to Professor Hotchkiss. With his singular sense of direction, Hotchkiss started confidently upward. Pegram, by that time, had decided that he would make the effort, come what might, and he passed word for the troops to halt until he could reach the front. This order never reached the lead company, which continued to follow Hotchkiss.33
These hours had been an anxious time for General Garnett at Laurel Hill. On his own front, as the Federals shelled his position, he prepared to repel attack. All day he had watched, and waited for word from Pegram. After nightfall a panting messenger brought news that Pegram was cut off and that the enemy commanded the road through the gap. This meant that Garnett’s own line of retreat was endangered. One of the “gates to the northwestern country” had been stormed. The other would not hold. As he did not know in what direction Pegram would retire, he did what a man of his temper and training most regretted to do: He abandoned his detached force, left his tents in place to deceive the enemy, and marched eastward with his regiments.
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