Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War

by Peter Tsouras

  All the Plans of the Rebels

  The alleged action against Harpers Ferry reinforced McClellan’s growing belief that he had struck gold. In his hands, he thought, he had a commander’s greatest dream: the marching plans of an overextended foe who could be defeated in detail by a concentrated army. Little Mac saw daylight. He would destroy Lee’s overconfident veteran army piece by vulnerable piece.

  Plodding soldier McClellan might have been, but he was no fool. The thought crossed his mind more than once that Lee’s order was a deliberate plant designed to deceive him. If authentic, and not some elaborate Rebel trick to humiliate him, the order would be the greatest imaginable piece of military intelligence. In terms of its effect, it could well determine the outcome of the pending engagement, secure victory for the Union, and triumph for George McClellan. Rose Greenhow, the infamous “Rebel Rose” who ran a spy net in the nation’s capital, had provided General P.G.T. Beauregard with the anticipated movements of the Federal troops before the battle of First Manassas that had been most helpful to him, yet never had there been a discovery of the most intimate secrets of a campaign just prior to the actual clash of arms. Special Order No. 191 had been passed up the Federal chain of command, and no one had questioned its authenticity, including those with personal knowledge of the workings of Lee’s entourage. The envelope was marked “Confidential,” and the order, doubtless written by Chilton, properly ended with the words “By Command of Gen. Robert E. Lee.” Williams’s forwarding note expressing his view that Special Order No. 191 was genuine, provided some additional assurance. Moreover, D.H. Hill was known to enjoy a good smoke, which explained the inclusion of the stogies.17 Union scouts confirmed that Confederate forces had been moving along the Hagerstown Road about the time the order would have been lost. Everything fit, to be sure, and McClellan thought he now comprehended the reasons for the swift redeployment of Lee’s army west of South Mountain.

  In the end, McClellan was duped because he allowed himself to be. The opportunity appeared unique; the temptation for a swift and stunning victory alluring. The order enabled McClellan to determine Lee’s objective, to ascertain the force disposition for achieving that objective, and to establish the campaign itinerary. Above all, it demonstrated how vulnerable the Army of Northern Virginia was to being cut up in detail. Waving Special Order No. 191 blissfully about, McClellan quipped to a subordinate that, “Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, 1 will be willing to go home… Castiglione [a famous victory of Napoleon’s] will be nothing to it.”18 Flinging off his perennial cautiousness, McClellan resolved to pitch his freshly reorganized legions into Lee’s army. He would burst unawares upon the enemy flank, rolling up the Army of Northern Virginia, division upon defeated division, in a tumult of irretrievable ruin. “Now I know what to do!” he is reported to have exclaimed to no one in particular. Didn’t he heretofore?

  It is somewhat paradoxical that McClellan’s famous prudence did not apply to the safeguarding of sensitive information. Shortly after pulling off what was assumed in his camp to be an intelligence coup of the first order, McClellan, apparently caught in the whirlwind of excitement there, vaingloriously telegraphed Lincoln:

  “I think General Lee has made a gross mistake and that he will be severely punished for it… I hope for great success if the plans of the Rebels remain unchanged, for I have these plans… Indeed, I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency. I feel I can count on them as of old.”19

  In an even greater breach of security, several Union officers who knew of the captured plans left Frederick on September 14 and chatted at length about the incident to a Washington correspondent of the New York Herald, which ran the story the next day. The perpetrators of the ruse, in an effort to corroborate the functioning of their scheme, dispatched a scouting party to tap the telegraph lines to Washington and consult with a Confederate sympathizer in the Washington telegraph office. Supporters of the “Cause” in Washington and Baltimore, neither city wanting for Copperhead communities, kept the Confederate army in western Maryland privy to the war coverage in the Northern press.20 Stuart’s and Jackson’s operatives soon had ample confirmation that the Union commander had swallowed the bait. The snare, unnoticed by McClellan, looked about to close.

  The Sting

  Lee proved to be one of the century’s greatest generals because of his ability to get into the enemy commander’s head as well as his willingness to hazard bold moves others could scarcely anticipate. Instead of dividing his army in the face of a superior force as he had before, this time Lee would conduct himself in accordance with a salient and time-honored military tenet. He kept the Army of Northern Virginia concentrated, awaiting McClellan’s efforts to force the passes on South Mountain.

  These were not long in coming. With Burnside already in Frederick, Sumner was ordered to follow. Major General Fitz-John Porter was to push forward with his reorganized Fifth Corps. Burnside then moved his entire command from Frederick into the Catoctin Valley, clearing a path for Brigadier General Alfred Pleasonton’s cavalry who were to provide a situation report about supposedly besieged Harpers Ferry and to conduct reconnaissance as far north as Pennsylvania. Burnside would then march his force, followed by Sumner and Banks, upon Boonsboro, beyond Turner’s Gap through South Mountain. Franklin was to push forward, reinforced by the light corps commanded by Major General Darius Couch, into Pleasant Valley through Crampton’s Gap.

  The National Road from Frederick crossed South Mountain at Turner’s Gap, with Boonsboro just beyond, while six miles south lay Crampton’s Gap, with a road running through it leading down to Harpers Ferry from Buckeystown. McClellan’s intent was clear as day: he would force Turner’s Gap and fall upon Boonsboro, crushing what he thought were Longstreet’s and Hill’s detached contingents. Franklin was to push through Crampton’s Gap and down to Maryland Heights, where he would strike McLaws and Anderson’s divisions in the rear and force open a pathway of escape for the besieged garrison at Harpers Ferry. The thrust through Crampton’s Gap would afford the additional advantage of safeguarding the flank of the main force from an attack from the south, should the main assault into the upper gap encounter substantial resistance.

  So far, so good. The problem was that Hill’s division was not separated from Longstreet’s corps; neither were the divisions of Anderson, McLaws and Walker separated from Jackson’s corps. The latter had not deployed to Harpers Ferry, but waited in Pleasant Valley for the lunge of Franklin’s corps, some 18,000 strong, through the Crampton Gap. Longstreet never deployed his corps to Hagerstown, but waited, reinforced, in an ambuscade, just south of Boonsboro to meet the onslaught of Sumner and Burnside leading nearly 70,000 men through Turner’s Gap. An observer’s remark that the three heavy columns marching up the National Road, “resembled a monstrous, crawling, blue-black snake, miles long, quilled with a silver slant of muskets at the shoulder, its sluggish tail writhing slowly up over the distant ridge, its bruised head weltering in the roar and smoke upon the crest above” alluded to the prospect of the Union army being caught unawares.21 Outnumbered Longstreet was, yet he enjoyed the crucial element of surprise since the last thing McClellan expected was a large Confederate force waiting at the outset to block the gap and then to swarm through it. Jackson, expected to make quick work of Franklin’s corps in the south gap, could eventually render assistance if the sheer weight of Union numbers in Turner’s Gap could be brought effectively to bear. Lee correctly did not think they could.

  Late in the afternoon of September 16, McClellan provided Franklin his instructions. “You will move at daybreak, and having gained Crampton’s Gap, you will first cut off, destroy or capture McLaws’s command and relieve Harpers Ferry.” “My intention is to cut the enemy in two and beat him in detail,” McClellan said to his corps commanders, “I ask of you at this important moment, all your intellect and the utmost activity that a general can exercise.”22 Ridges dominated both
gaps from each side, and ancillary passes north and south required a greater extension of forces, but at the same time allowed for possible flank attacks against unprepared oncoming troops.23

  Franklin’s corps invariably got the worst of it. His two divisions consisted of 27 regiments of infantry and seven batteries of artillery, the latter being of only limited use given the rough terrain and circumstances of engagement. Even with Couch’s reinforcement of 15 regiments, Franklin could deploy a force scarcely larger than that of Anderson and McLaws. Jackson’s entire corps, outnumbering Franklin by nearly two-to-one, lay in ambush on both sides of the notch and in the smaller mountain passes. Hit at the moment of greatest vulnerability, stretched out on the road and sandwiched between the ridges, the Union corps quickly found itself in desperate straits. Withering rifle fire from multiple directions cut the Union troops down in windrows. Enfilading shot and shell unnerved the inexperienced within the ranks. The first brigade of the Second Division broke completely when its commander, Brigadier General Winfield Scott Hancock, was cut down. Other brigades were forced into disorganized, small-unit actions as command-and-control disintegrated. When a second brigade broke, the fearsome, keening wail of the Rebel yell signaled the multiple-pronged assault by Jackson’s veterans. The fighting became general and hand-to-hand at many points. Bullets whined about as a swarm of enraged hornets might make things hum. Brave Union troops fought desperate rearguard actions, protecting as best they could the back of the column on the east side of the gap, hoping to stabilize the situation until the fighting tapered off with the darkness, tempering the maelstrom engulfing them.

  To no avail. By early afternoon, the disorderly remains of Franklin’s corps were streaming out of the south gap eastward toward the Catoctin Mountains. Couch’s corps, still spread out on the road behind them, could be of little use, given the headlong retreat of the larger force in front. Forming any sort of cohesive defense line against the Confederate troops pouring through the gap proved impossible, and Franklin was mortally wounded trying to rally his forces, hoping against hope to recover what was beyond recall.

  D.H. Hill’s division set the initial ambuscade in Turner’s Gap. Although it maintained the element of surprise and poured rifle and cannon fire into the oncoming columns, fighting became desperate and the outcome hung in the balance. The Union First and Second Corps found themselves bottled up in a mountain pass and stretched out along the road piercing it in much the same way Franklin’s corps did in the south notch. The Federal troops faced fire from the front and the steep sides of both ridges. Longstreet was prepared to render all possible support, but could push the bulk of his forces into the gap only as the Union forces began to fall back eastward on the National Road. Each side had perhaps 30,000 men engaged by the afternoon of the 17th and much of the fighting degenerated into small-unit engagements as it had in the mêlée at Crampton’s Gap. Repeated Federal counterattacks from the left delayed the forward advance of Longstreet’s corps deep into the gap. Intense fighting with heavy losses on both sides continued through the day until nightfall precluded further combat.

  Although Longstreet’s corps had smashed its way through most of the gap, the Union First and Second Corps might have blunted the Confederate attack eastward along the National Road the following day and thus seriously interrupted Lee’s timetable, had not Jackson’s corps, having moved swiftly north along several trails leading to the National Road, hit the Union columns early on the morning of the 18th in flank and rear. The Union cavalry, most of it situated on the far western side of South Mountain, failed to provide the crucial screen for the infantry components when it was most needed, allowing Jackson to assess and exploit the vulnerability of the foe’s main force. The head-to-head slugfest through Turner’s Gap abruptly turned into an encirclement operation as the main body of McClellan’s army was caught between the anvil from the west and the pulverizing hammer from the south. By midday, more than half of the 70,000 troops who had marched in the great columns westward from Frederick short days prior had been engulfed by the converging forces. Storms of lead swept mercilessly through the Union ranks.

  McClellan had lost control of his army, and each Federal general had to make do as best he could in a muddle of ghastly sauve qui peut.24 Hooker’s First Corps ceased being an organized fighting force within two hours of Jackson’s fearful attack. “Fighting Joe” departed the fields of fury trailing clouds of glory. The Second Corps was badly mauled, as the component brigades, devastated and exhausted, began to fall apart. The Army of the Potomac faced catastrophe. No army, no matter how valiant, could maintain discipline in such murderous cross-fire.

  Death Lays His Icy hand

  Lee now held all the trumps. With his shattered army turned, McClellan had little choice but to attempt to stem the flow of the gray tide along the National Road. Retreat was out of the question since the loss of Baltimore or Washington, and perhaps both, would have ensued, with the attendant irreparable political consequences. Unable to gauge the situation in western Maryland accurately, Halleck in Washington continued to urge McClellan on. Self-possessed as usual, Little Mac accepted the coup de grâce of the once beloved army he had forged in the crucible of fire. Decimated units lacked officers, and ruinous casualties left captains in charge of the offscourings of brigades, and sergeants commanding companies. Played out men with no stomach left for the fight ignored McClellan’s orders to close ranks or simply “skedaddled” to nearby woods and towns. The despondent, the morally stunned, and the walking wounded streamed back into Frederick by the thousands.

  Union officers rallied what forces they had as best they could, launching a few half-hearted and fruitless counterattacks against the imposing gray echelons. Hastily assembled Union columns assaulted Jackson’s corps, now reinforced by Hill and McLaws, just west of the Catoctin Mountains along the National Road. With the Confederates occupying the high ground and regiments positioned on either side of the thoroughfare, the final outcome could hardly have been in doubt. The action was to be the final gasp of the Army of the Potomac, a forlorn hope that would mark its elimination as a fighting force.

  In a final mocking gesture, Stuart positioned his redoubtable cavalry corps behind the Union army due west of Frederick, ready to chop up the fleeing blue masses that would inevitably be flooding back. The horsemen did not have to wait long. Pockets of resistance broke quickly as Union troops were caught between the Scylla of murderous artillery and rifle fire from the front and the Charybdis of grisly saber charges from the rear. The partly intact Twelfth Corps swiftly disintegrated in the killing fields. Shattered remnants of the army trudged back into the defenses of Washington as they had in the wake of the defeat at Second Manassas, only this time their numbers were greatly reduced and their spirits broken completely. They had had a belly-full of war.

  McClellan, the incurable romantic with an inflated ego, had also had enough. Defeat would bring out the worst in him, which was indeed pretty bad. It was well said of Little Mac that he was not a real general but merely a bumped-up captain, a vain and unstable man with some military knowledge who sat a horse well and pined for the presidency.25 While the Army of the Potomac was still in its death throes, McClellan abandoned the field as cravenly as John Pope had done in the wake of defeat at Second Manassas and for which the former had unflinchingly chided the latter. McClellan’s political ambitions and concern about history’s judgment, rather than the grim fate of his once-worshipful men, were foremost in his mind. Fleeing back to Washington, McClellan began without hesitation to ascribe blame for the disaster to others, above all to President Lincoln, whom he declared unfit to assume any direction over military men. McClellan would soon become Lincoln’s chief nemesis and a leading detractor of the administration’s policies. Unabashedly accusing Lincoln of throwing away the war in his gambles against “impossible odds,” McClellan eagerly joined in the political scheming that fall against an increasingly isolated president.

  “My God!” exclaimed a distrau
ght President Lincoln, as patchy reports and horrifying rumors about the military disasters in western Maryland poured into the capital in a torrent of incessant panic. “What will the country say?”

  What indeed? Lincoln was far too astute a politician not to grasp the heartbreaking consequences, particularly his inability, given the state of affairs, to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The prior July, Lincoln notified his Cabinet that he planned to use the executive war powers to seize enemy property and to issue the proclamation of emancipation for the manumission of slaves in states in rebellion against the Federal Government. Contending that emancipation had at last become a military necessity, essential to the preservation of the Union, he insisted that “decisive and extensive measures” be adopted.26 The slaves were a source of considerable strength to those they served, Lincoln asserted, and a manifesto of manumission would undermine the Confederate war effort. More significantly, though, this great leap forward would furnish the moral clarity many considered lacking in the administration’s policies. Although the Cabinet concurred in principle, Secretary of State William H. Seward counseled deferment of the proclamation until the watershed political realignment could be bolstered by significant military success. Otherwise, argued Seward, foreign powers were bound to view the proclamation, “as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help… our last shriek, on the retreat.”27 Lincoln, displaying his customary way with words, granted Seward the point, quipping that, “not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, than when a government breathes its last.”28 Clever words, these, that would return to haunt.