Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  Davis had directed General Johnston to brigade together troops from the same state, in the belief that this would create wholesome rivalry. For transfer of the regiments he gave time and discretion to Johnston, who, while not averse to the reorganization, considered it dangerous to undertake in the presence of the enemy. He accordingly took no step to break up old brigades, which had been formed casually as regiments from different states reported for duty at Manassas. Mr. Davis grew particularly impatient to see the troops of his native Mississippi brigaded together; that state’s earlier volunteers the President himself had led in the Mexican War. One such brigade was to go to a Mississippi native, W. H. C. Whiting, but Whiting imprudently declared against it. He said he considered regimentation by states “a policy as suicidal as foolish,” and in any case he did not wish any of his regiments taken from him. “They are used to me and I to them, and accustomed to act together.”8

  This was not the first time Whiting had made himself conspicuous. Son of an army officer, he had been graduated No. 1 in the class of 1845 at West Point, with marks which were said to have been the highest ever made at the Academy to that date. A handsome man of intellectual countenance, he was not unmindful of his social position and professional standing, and was somewhat brusque in his dealings with the War Office.

  At the instance of the offended Davis, the secretary of war administered Whiting a stern rebuke. It was coupled with a reminder to his commanding general: “The President,” Benjamin concluded his letter, “requests me to say that he trusts you will hereafter decline to forward to him communications of your subordinates having so obvious a tendency to excite a mutinous and disorganizing spirit in the Army.” This language brought to light one of the most peculiar contradictions of Johnston’s nature—a sudden cooling of his temper, sometimes, when a controversy grew hot. Johnston apologized, interceded, and saved Whiting’s pride and service to the army by having that officer withdraw his offending letter for a “modification” that never was made.9

  Other tests of the temper of the commanding general were at hand, tests that must have seemed to him to threaten the life of the army. In September, Johnston had received as major generals, to direct divisions then in the making, Gustavus W. Smith, former street commissioner of New York City, whose career was to form a singular chapter in the history of the Confederacy, and Earl Van Dorn, who had been junior major of the 2nd United States Cavalry. The diminutive Van Dorn was a man of some reputation, whose arrival in Virginia had been chronicled with much applause. Now, on January 10, 1862, Van Dorn was relieved and ordered to the Trans-Mississippi. As Beauregard was then about to leave the army, Johnston felt that he would not have left with him a sufficient number of subordinates capable of handling large bodies of men.10

  While he was attempting to adjust himself to the loss of Van Dorn and pleading for trained men, there came on February 3 a most disquieting paper from Stonewall Jackson. Jackson, a major general as of October 7, had been assigned to the Shenandoah Valley when Johnston’s department was divided into three districts, and had established headquarters at Winchester To the general satisfaction of the population of the Valley, he had gone to work with great energy to improve his troops, who were few and poor. Soon he developed a well-considered plan for an advance on Romney. In acceptance of the maxims of Napoleon, he believed that “an active winter’s campaign is less liable to produce disease than a sedentary life by camp-fires in winter-quarters.”11

  On January 1, 1862, his march on Romney had begun. Jackson’s old brigade was under Brigadier General Richard B. Garnett, one-time captain of the 6th Infantry and a veteran Indian fighter. Three brigades were commanded by Brigadier General W. W. Loring, former colonel of the Mounted Rifles. When Jackson had cleared the Federals from a large area, he left Loring at Romney, to go into winter quarters, and returned Garnett to Winchester. In none of this had Jackson impressed Loring or his soldiers. Some of the men protested that Jackson was crazy, and they jeeringly insisted that his old brigade was as mad as he because it had cheered him whenever it had seen him. In the wintry isolation at Romney discontent had deepened demoralization. An eminent politician in Richmond received complaint; a round robin by eleven officers asking for the withdrawal of the command to Winchester was seconded by Loring. The administration became alarmed. On January 30, at the President’s instance, Secretary Benjamin telegraphed Jackson: “Our news indicates that a movement is being made to cut off General Loring’s command. Order him back to Winchester immediately.”12

  The paper that lay before Johnston on February 3 was a letter from Jackson, to be forwarded through channels to the secretary of war. Jackson acknowledged Benjamin’s orders, and then wrote: “With such interference in my command I cannot expect to be of much service in the field, and accordingly respectfully request to be ordered to report for duty to the superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute…. Should this application not be granted, I respectfully request that the President will accept my resignation from the Army.”13

  Johnston read this with dismay. Beauregard and Van Dorn were gone; there was no assurance that Whiting would be retained in command; two brigadier generals were in Congress; one was absent sick. Now Johnston was to lose Jackson as a result of mandatory orders from Benjamin that had not been communicated through army headquarters. Johnston held his temper in the face of this disregard of his authority and, in a letter that showed his best qualities, urged Jackson to withdraw his resignation. “Let me beg you to reconsider this matter…. Is not that as great an official wrong to me as the order itself to you? Let us dispassionately reason with the Government on this subject of command….” Then he sent to the President, through his friend Adjutant General Cooper, a request to be relieved of responsibility for the Valley District: “A collision of the authority of the honorable Secretary of War with mine might occur at a critical moment.” He threw back on Secretary Benjamin all responsibility for the situation in the Valley. “Let me suggest,” he said coldly, “that, having broken up the dispositions of the military commander, you give whatever other orders may be necessary.” For good measure, forwarding Jackon’s letter to Richmond, he endorsed it: “I don’t know how the loss of this officer can be supplied.”14

  Fortunately, an impasse was avoided. On the day Jackson sent in his resignation he wrote to his friend Governor John Letcher a full account of what had happened. The governor went immediately to the War Department and found Benjamin entirely disposed to listen to reason. Agreement was reached that the resignation would be disregarded until Letcher had time to write Jackson. He entrusted the letter to the hands of his friend, and Jackson’s, Congressman A. R. Boteler. At first Jackson showed no inclination to yield. Boteler hung on and, searching about for all arguments, insisted that Virginia’s defense called for the service of all her sons. Jackson, he said, had no right to withhold his. This argument made a manifest impression. Boteler pressed with a contention from Letcher that Jackson’s abandonment of his post would have a discouraging effect on the country. Shaken by this argument, Jackson yielded. He sent Letcher a candid note in which he said: “If my retiring from the Army would produce the effect upon our country that you have named … I of course would not desire to leave the service….”

  Jackson’s letter of resignation was returned to him, and Loring, against whom Jackson had preferred charges for neglect of duty, was transferred to another theater of operations. But neither Jackson nor Johnston escaped without rebuke. Jackson’s charges against Loring were not entertained. Johnston’s punishment was a stiff reprimand from the President for his conduct in the whole affair. At the same time, Johnston received word from the War Department that Major General E. Kirby Smith, one of Johnston’s best officers, must be relieved from command in order that he might be assigned to duty elsewhere.15

  All this came at a time when his army, soon to meet the test of battle, was being disorganized by the “Furlough and Bounty Act.” This extraordinary law had been passed in December as a me
ans of assuring the re-enlistment of the twelve months’ volunteers whose terms expired in the late winter or early spring. A bounty of fifty dollars and a furlough of sixty days were promised all who agreed to serve for the duration of the war to a maximum of three years. Soldiers desirous of changing company, or even their arm of service, were to be allowed to do so. After the reorganization the men could elect their own company and field officers, regardless of previous law. Johnston became convinced that the law was unenforceable and ineffective. If furloughs were not given in large numbers, the twelve-months’ volunteers would not re-enlist; should furloughs be granted with prompt liberality, the army would be weakened dangerously in the face of the enemy.

  Not unnaturally in these circumstances, Johnston sought to place on the War Department the responsibility of applying the act. To this the suave Benjamin was ready with a prompt reply. He urged that Johnston go to the “extreme verge of prudence in tempting” the twelve-months’ men to re-enlist, but insisted that the department “could not undertake to determine when and in what numbers the furloughs could be safely granted…. The rest I must leave to your own judgment.” The perplexed and angry Johnston, by limiting the furloughs issued in each command, hoped to maintain the army at defensive strength. All the while he had to do battle with the war secretary to prevent additional furloughs, details, and transfers from one arm of the service to another.16

  Thus did controversy shift, continue, and accumulate. Another month, or six weeks at most, might bring sunshine that would dry the roads and start the march of the great army which General McClellan, successor to General McDowell, was known to be organizing for an offensive. Against that amply equipped and numerically superior army Johnston believed it impossible to hold his lines in northern Virginia. There was no likelihood that all the regiments organized in April and May 1861 could be induced to enlist anew before the expiration of their term of service. Daily, as the men agreed to continue in service, they would elect new officers. Any officer who had discharged his sworn duty to instill discipline might be succeeded by some popular incompetent; all that had been done in ten months to develop a competent corps of officers might be set at naught. The Southern cause might collapse.

  This situation was at its blackest when, on February 19, Johnston was summoned to Richmond. The city and the government he found in gloom. Disasters had swept the Confederacy. Fort Henry on the Tennessee River had been taken. Near-by Fort Donelson, with 14,000 Southern soldiers, had been surrendered. Nashville was expected at any hour to fall. All western Tennessee was overrun, and Albert Sidney Johnston was in retreat to Murfreesboro. On the east coast of North Carolina, Roanoke Island had been captured, with more than 2,500 men. Secretary Benjamin was being assailed for incompetency. The tone of the press was nervous, critical, or bitter. Rumors of impending changes in the Cabinet were afloat. The shortage of arms and of powder was worse than the government dared to admit.17

  In this atmosphere of concern close to despair Johnston at 10:00 A.M. called on the President and found him with the Cabinet. Greetings, apparently without restraint, were exchanged. Mr. Davis stated that Johnston had been summoned to confer on the withdrawal of his army from its exposed position: Should it be done, and if so, when and how?

  Johnston stated his view. McClellan, he reasoned, could advance in such force on Richmond and by so many routes that the Confederate forces should not attempt to maintain themselves on Bull Run and Occoquan. The army must take up a line farther south, but was hampered by deep mud on the roads and embarrassed by much baggage. Withdrawals should not be undertaken until the end of winter. The council shifted to a long, long discussion of the cannon, intended for the defense of Richmond, that had been sent to advanced positions and could not be replaced; the President was most solicitous that they be saved. Johnston received no specific orders, other than that he should lead the army southward to a more secure position as soon as practicable.18

  No sooner was Johnston out of Mr. Davis’s offices than he had one experience after another that startled and alarmed him. At his hotel he met Colonel W. Dorsey Pender, 6th North Carolina, who with a soldier’s zest for news asked if Johnston had heard the report, then circulating in the lobby, that the Cabinet had been discussing whether the army should be withdrawn from Manassas. An accurate report of what had been considered in the utmost secrecy, behind guarded doors, had reached the hotel almost as soon as Johnston had! Soon afterward, on the train en route to Manassas, a friend confided to General Johnston that ominous news had been heard in Richmond the previous evening: The Cabinet was considering the removal of the Confederate forces from Manassas. It was enough to make a commander despair! What hope could there be of concealing from the enemy a movement vital to the very existence of the army—if everyone from Richmond knew all about it?19

  2

  JOHNSTON’S WITHDRAWAL FROM MANASSAS

  On this unhappy return from Richmond, Johnston found the roads of northern Virginia even worse than when he left. So deep was the mud around Dumfries that men on good horses took six hours and a half to cover twelve miles. Removal of the heavy ordnance from fixed positions seemed impossible.

  With all the adverse conditions that would attend his withdrawal Johnston was determined that the government should be acquainted. His dispatches to Richmond became a chronicle of calamities, impending and instant. “The army is crippled and its discipline greatly impaired by the want of general officers,” he wrote. “… The accumulation of subsistence stores at Manassas is now a great evil…. A very extensive meat-packing establishment at Thoroughfare is also a great encumbrance. The great quantity of personal property in our camps is a still greater one.”20

  In the eyes of the depressed general, every movement of the enemy now was designed to maneuver him out of his position before he was ready to retreat. No sooner had he learned of the appearance of a Federal force at Harper’s Ferry on February 24 than he reasoned that the advance of these troops would so threaten his left as to compel without further delay the withdrawal which, he took pains to remind the President, “you have ordered.” Johnston’s chief concern was for his right, which extended down the Bull Run—Occoquan to the Potomac and covered the terminus of the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad on Aquia Creek. Federals in considerable number were known to be on the Maryland shore of the Potomac and might be ferried to the Virginia shore. This route, he told himself, assuredly would be McClellan’s principal advance.21

  In the expectation that he might at any hour receive news of a Federal onmarch which would force his columns back to the Rappahannock and Rapidan, Johnston expedited the removal of supplies and fumed because the overloaded Orange and Alexandria Railroad did not haul them off more quickly. Serious as this task was, busy as Johnston should have been, he took time to pursue the controversy with Benjamin and to protest against that officials grant of furloughs, of details, and of authorization to raise new companies from old regiments.

  With relations at this unhappy pass, Johnston on March 5 was informed by General Whiting of “unusual activity” among the Federals across the Potomac in Maryland, opposite Dumfries. This news was decisive with Johnston. He issued directions for all the forces east of the Blue Ridge to fall back to the line of the Rappahannock River.22

  The orders, which were issued piecemeal, were wretchedly drawn. In some instances clarity was lacking. Neither Davis nor Benjamin was advised when the movement would begin or what the lines of retreat would be. The flank columns got away promptly and plodded slowly southward through the mud. On the Manassas line Johnston held the central divisions until the evening of March 9 to cover the last-minute removal of supplies. The following morning the cavalry fired the depots and all the property left along the railroad track. The loss was heavy. At Thoroughfare Gap, where the commissary general rashly had established the meat-packing plant, more than one million pounds were destroyed or given to local farmers. As for personal baggage, “the pile of trunks along the railroad was appalling t
o behold.” Virtually all the heavy ordnance in fixed position, except that close to Manassas, was left behind.23

  The destruction was rendered the more depressing to the South and the more provoking to Davis because the slowness of the Federals in moving forward led Johnston’s critics to aver later that he would have had ample time to remove the last pound of provisions and the newest trunk of the most recent volunteer. A Union detachment sent across the Potomac to destroy the abandoned Confederate ordnance was recalled as soon as its work was done. The main Federal army made a practice march to Centreville, but it did not start from Alexandria until sure the Confederates had withdrawn, and it did not reach Bull Run until March II.

  Among officials acquainted with the facts of his retreat, Johnston was put in the unhappy attitude of fleeing when no man pursued; publicly, in the press, his action was defended as strategically sound. Fortunately, too, the mind of the Southern people, depressed by a succession of disasters, was diverted and stimulated by the exploits of the ironclad Virginia-Merrimack. On March 8 this clumsy craft had steamed out from Norfolk and disposed of two wooden men-of-war, Congress and Cumberland. Despite the challenge offered next day by the Monitor, the Confederate people believed that their ironclad would clear Virginia waters of the enemy.24

  Johnston did not inform the administration where he was or what he planned. From the time he left Manassas, without notifying the authorities in Richmond of his departure, he did not send a single report to the War Department until he was safely on the line of the Rappahannock. On March 13, from Rappahannock Bridge, he forwarded to the President a brief report of his position. Then he reviewed the loss of property, which he blamed on the “wretched” management of the Orange and Alexandria, on the accumulation of supplies at Manassas, and on the vast quantity of private property there. “This army,” he concluded with disgust, “had accumulated a supply of baggage like that of Xerxes’ myriads.”