Dixie Victorious: An Alternate history of the Civil War

by Peter Tsouras

  This was the famous “Lost Dispatch.” It was a copy of McClellan’s report to Union General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck which Private James Thomas Faulkner of the 6th Virginia found lying on the road in a blood-spattered dispatch case.8 Drafted late on the 8th, captured during the night when a Confederate cavalry patrol surprised a courier behind Union lines, and delivered to Lee on the morning of the 9th, it told him two critical facts: McClellan was in command and the unified Union army was approaching on a wide front. It was a key to his decision to fight at Frederick.9

  At his commander’s conference on the afternoon of the 9th, Lee weighed his options. Stuart’s report of the speed and scope of the Union advance meant that even a smartly executed operation to oust the hold-out Union garrisons from Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry would make it difficult for him to re-concentrate his army in time to face the oncoming Union forces. If the western operation did not go perfectly, Lee realized he would lose the operational initiative and risk defeat in detail. However, the still-groggy Jackson was in no shape to lead a complex operation that had to commence immediately if it were to work at all.

  Longstreet’s cautious advice, Jackson’s shaky condition, favorable ground at Frederick, the unexpected speed of the Union advance, and Confederate possession of McClellan’s dispatch to Halleck outlining Union plans and dispositions, made offering battle at Frederick the preferable course of action. The Lost Dispatch revealed that McClellan was back in command. It also explained the unexpected speed of the Union advance, because Lee knew that McClellan was the favorite of the Army of the Potomac. His return would have had a galvanic effect on troop morale and his organizational skills had apparently already combined the shattered wreckage left after Second Manassas with the veteran units returning from the Peninsula and turned them into a vast field army moving toward Lee with speed and coordination.

  Lee realized that the Army of the Potomac was dispersed in a fan across the Maryland countryside, while his Army of Northern Virginia was concentrated at Frederick. If he chose to fight at Frederick, and he could obtain tactical surprise, he could fight just a part of the Army of the Potomac with his entire force. The combination of Confederate numerical superiority with the shock of surprise promised a decisive victory.

  Planning to achieve tactical surprise, Lee decided to use Frederick and the country just to its west and north to conceal his main forces, leaving only screening forces forward by the Monocacy River. He knew Union observation posts on Sugarloaf Mountain to the east would detect and report visible heavy troop concentrations, and he decided to lure the Union van across the Monocacy and make them fight uphill with the river at their back. Best of all, Jackson had shouted down his doctors, and was back in the saddle with his wits about him again.

  Thanks to Union Generals Reno and Burnside, the plan worked. Reno was impetuous and Burnside was just unlucky. About noon on September 13, Reno, commanding IX Corps, the lead element of the Army of the Potomac, crossed the Monocacy on the only bridge still standing, the stone Jug Bridge that carried the National Road over the Monocacy and into Frederick. He pushed through the Confederate screen with Crook’s 2d Brigade of Cox’s Kanawha Division.10

  Burnside almost got both corps in his Right Wing, IX Corps and Hooker’s I Corps, across before they got hit. It was like Second Manassas, except Longstreet got into position first. Part of his corps came through town and part maneuvered under cover around the south side of Frederick. Longstreet set up in a line blocking the National Road and running for a mile and a half from north-northeast to south-southwest along a ridge above Carroll Creek. He refused his right flank south of Mount Olivet Cemetery. Only John Bell Hood’s Texas division was pushed ahead so it was clearly visible to the Union forces coming uphill from the Jug Bridge.

  But this time, Longstreet was the anvil, and Jackson was the hammer.

  Reno was startled to see the mass of Confederate troops come quickly out and form line of battle across the National Road in front of Frederick. He apparently thought he was facing only a substantial rearguard and not half of the Army of Northern Virginia. He halted his column, shook IX Corps out into line of battle, and went the remaining mile up the hill into the attack. Burnside crossed the Jug Bridge, riding with Hooker at the head of I Corps, and ordered Hooker to move his corps northwest around Frederick, still in column, to turn what he thought was the left flank of the visible Confederate line.

  But Hooker never got the chance fully to execute that order. Neither Reno nor Burnside understood that they were facing almost the entire Army of Northern Virginia. In fact, Jackson’s corps was under cover along the Woodsboro Road leading north from Frederick. Once Reno was fully engaged, Jackson wheeled his corps to his right, dressed his lines, and came down upon Reno’s right flank, collapsing his line. Reno’s fleeing troops threw Hooker’s lead division into chaos. And the Rebel artillery, concentrated on Longstreet’s right, had the whole confused mass enfiladed, killed Hooker, and knocked apart several attempted rallies by parts of IX Corps.

  Jug Bridge was re-christened for all time as Burnside Bridge with Union blood, most of it spilled by Hood’s divisional artillery, under Major Frobel, particularly the South Carolina German Artillery, which was positioned to fire straight down the National Road along the long axis of Burnside Bridge. They did fearful execution, killing Burnside himself at the west end of the Bridge, and preventing the rest of I Corps from entering the battle.

  McClellan arrived late on the field. He was furious that Burnside had gotten most of his Right Wing chewed up to no gain, and had gotten killed himself in the bargain. McClellan had lost a wing commander and a corps commander. He was confronted with the fact that the other bridges leading onto the battlefield were destroyed, both the covered bridge and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad bridge, and he concluded that he was not going to try to push fresh forces back over Burnside Bridge.

  There the fighting ended on September 13, but there was one more act to be played out.

  McClellan sent orders on the evening of the 13th to Couch’s Division to threaten Lee’s line of communications by crossing the Monocacy at its mouth over the C&O Canal aqueduct and heading for Point of Rocks. But the next day, Couch found Walker’s Division of Longstreet’s Corps, supported by part of the Washington (Louisiana) Artillery, dug in on the north shore. Union Brigadier General Charles Devens won his posthumous Medal of Honor leading his First Brigade’s Massachusetts regiments to a toehold on the north end of the aqueduct. But they couldn’t drive through Walker’s North Carolinians, and the survivors had to pull back across the bloody aqueduct.

  With one of his corps ruined, another in disarray, and no advantageous way to resume the fight at Frederick, McClellan took counsel of his fears, continuing to believe that Lee had superior forces in the field, and drew back to positions extending from south of the Monocacy aqueduct up through Sugarloaf Mountain, Urbana, and New Market, to Liberty. He placed I Corps and the remnants of IX Corps, formerly Burnside’s Right Wing, on the high ground east and south of Frederick and re-designated them his center, and shifted Sumner’s II Corps and Mansfield’s XII Corps to the north, to become his new right wing. Franklin’s VI Corps, along with Couch’s roughed-up force, formed his left wing. With his center and left posted on readily defensible ground, and more forces coming up, his main concern was that Lee would now turn north to Harrisburg.

  While less than a quarter of the Army of the Potomac was ever engaged during the Battle of Frederick, the newspapers gave the impression that the whole army had been defeated once again. The loss of senior officers was particularly shocking. Even though Lee, worried about his supply lines after the Monocacy aqueduct fight, merely stood fast at Frederick, while caring for his wounded, burying the dead, gathering up stragglers, and stocking up on provisions, the North was thrown into a panic.

  Lincoln was in a fix. He was determined to continue the war. He felt he must replace McClellan, but could not do so while the army was in the field facing Lee. He ordered McCle
llan to send forces to Harrisburg to defend the capital of Pennsylvania, and worried that Lee could march through the gap between Liberty and Harrisburg and head for York and Philadelphia.

  McClellan had been given command over the Harpers Ferry garrison the day before the battle at Frederick, but communications had by then been cut by the Confederate advance. After the battle, he sent couriers with orders for both Brigadier General Julius White at Martinsburg and Colonel David Miles at Harpers Ferry to withdraw north by way of Hagerstown to Cumberland, Pennsylvania.11 This withdrawal was accomplished over September 16 and 17, with Lee learning of it just as the Army of Northern Virginia was again fit for action.

  The withdrawal of these Union garrisons opened Lee’s line of communications up the Shenandoah Valley, without him having to take offensive action to achieve it. Once this line of communications was opened, Lee did not have to remain near Frederick to forestall any Union attempt to cut his communications east of the Blue Ridge Mountains and south of the Potomac. He was again free to maneuver.

  With the combined Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg garrisons, totaling more than 13,000 men, back at Cumberland blocking the Cumberland Valley route to Harrisburg, McClellan responded to Lincoln’s directive to protect Harrisburg by putting Fitz John Porter’s V Corps on trains and rushing them to the Pennsylvania capital. But this left a huge gap between Harrisburg and the right flank of the Army of the Potomac at Liberty. Lee knew the gap was there and that there was no natural line of defense for Union forces short of the Susquehanna River. He also knew the Army of the Potomac had to remain between his forces and the Baltimore-Washington axis.

  That put McClellan in a vise. Once Lee got his supply lines running through the Valley, he moved quickly up to Gettysburg, leaving Frederick on the 19th. Supplied through Hagerstown and Blue Ridge Summit, he paused only briefly in Gettysburg before heading up the York Pike for York, Pennsylvania, on Monday 22d, a location from which he could attempt a crossing of the Susquehanna with Philadephia and Wilmington in his sights, and threaten Baltimore to his south and Harrisburg to his north. McClellan paralleled Lee’s line of march to the south and east, continuing to cover Washington and Baltimore. Though tempted to attack at Gettysburg, being down effectively two corps in strength, he thought better of it, and decided to leave I Corps to cover Baltimore while taking the rest of the Army of the Potomac across the Susquehanna at Conowingo Station and up to Lancaster, where he dug in on the 25th. He deployed along the northeast bank of the Susquehanna at Columbia, opposite the pickets of the Army of Northern Virginia in Wrightsville. There operations halted, with Lee content to live off the rich Pennsylvania countryside and McClellan’s Union forces divided to defend against the many threats posed by Lee’s centrally located Confederate army.

  This marked the end of major military operations in the east. But for the intervention of chance in the form of Confederate commanders’ horses, events could have unfolded much differently. Unlike Shakespeare’s Richard III, perhaps in this case horses—and chance—saved the Confederacy.12

  The Crisis

  After the secession of the future Confederate states, the Republicans had held a dominant majority in the House of Representatives, with War Democrats voting with their more than 115 Republican colleagues in favor of the measures necessary to prosecute the war. They were opposed by a small number of Peace Democrats, who became known as “Copperheads,” because their opposition to the war was characterized as opposition to the Union and impugned as treasonous. Thus, they were likened to venomous reptiles.13

  The Union loss of the Battle of Frederick and the movement of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia into southeastern Pennsylvania at York had immediate political consequences. Voting for the 38th Congress had already commenced, with Oregon casting its votes on June 2. Maine voted on September 8, and Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Iowa on October 14. Delaware was to vote on November 1, and Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, and Wisconsin were to vote on November 4. (The remaining states would not vote for the 38th Congress until various dates in 1863, and the consequences of the situation would work their way through the political system before those states voted.)14

  The results through October 14 were not good for the Republicans and pro-Union forces. In the 37th Congress, Maine had a solid Republican delegation. They lost a seat to reapportionment for the 38th Congress, and one of the five remaining seats had gone Democrat.15 Ohio was a hotbed of Peace Democrat activity, and the Union defeat at Frederick and the advance of the Army of Northern Virginia into southeast Pennsylvania had emboldened them at the polls. The Peace Democrat (Copperhead) firebrand, Clement L. Vallandigham, had been re-elected. The Republican candidates carried only three of 19 Ohio districts, down from 13 of 21 districts in the 1860 election.16 Indiana was even worse. Union/Republican candidates carried only one of 11 districts, compared to seven of 11 in the previous election.17

  Pennsylvania’s election was disrupted by the presence of the Army of Northern Virginia at York. Voters in the 15 th District, where York was located, did not get to cast their votes, depriving the Lincoln Administration of the support of Representative Joseph Bailey, a War Democrat who could be counted on to back Administration policies in the House. Terrified by the presence of the war on their soil, Pennsylvania voters had elected 17 Democrat candidates to the House in the 23 of 24 districts contested.18

  In Iowa, five of the six seats were in Union/Republican hands. Iowa had gained four seats in reapportionment, and the two seats up for election in 1860 had both gone Republican. That was how things stood, with a net decrease in those states in Union/Republican seats of eighteen.19

  Before the rest of the election could be contested, Union fortunes were dealt another tremendous blow.

  Since opening fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the Confederacy had two primary foreign policy goals: foreign intervention to break the Union blockade of Confederate ports and international recognition as a sovereign state.20 Great Britain, France, and industrializing Europe were the major export market for the South’s principal agricultural product, cotton, and this dependence was expected to favor intervention and recognition.

  As one of the key components of former Union General-in-Chief Winfield Scott’s “Anaconda Plan,” the Union blockade of the South’s ports was intended to cut the substantially agricultural Confederacy off from foreign-manufactured war materials and from revenues earned from agricultural exports. The blockade, at the outset, was thinly manned and leaky.

  Rather than attempting to send the largest possible shipments of cotton and other exports through the blockade, the Confederacy adopted a quiet policy of withholding cotton from export while its agents and friends in Europe blamed the cotton shortage on the Union blockade. This artificially induced shortage was expected seriously to hurt the growing European textile industries and their substantial work forces. Southern agents urged recognition of the Confederate States of America as a sovereign nation and intervention to re-open the maritime supply lines over which the bales of Southern cotton reached European mills.

  This plan did not work as expected, because the bumper Southern cotton crops of 1859 and 1860 had created warehoused surpluses held in Europe of raw cotton and finished cloth not yet sold for manufacture into garments and other consumer goods.21 Thus, the shortage of cotton the Confederate policy was expected to induce did not occur until 1862.

  Great Britain was not disposed to recognize the Confederacy until it had in fact established its independence, but Confederate leaders wanted recognition to help secure that independence. Confederate agents and U.S. diplomats battled in the drawing rooms and chanceries of Europe to gain or prevent, respectively, such recognition. Confederate hopes and Union fears of British recognition rose and fell with each belligerent’s military fortunes.

  In the spring of 1862, Confederate prospects seemed dim, with the Union capture of New Orleans in May casting a particularly dark pall of gloom o
ver their agents’ efforts. But Confederate fortunes began to turn with General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s Valley Campaign, which culminated in the victorious battle of Winchester on May 25.22 Public opinion in the North was temporarily thrown into panic by the presence of Confederate forces on the offensive just south of the Potomac.23

  The foundation for further Confederate success was laid on June 1, 1862, with the appointment of General Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia, to succeed the wounded General Joseph E. Johnston.24 After reorganizing his army, Lee moved to expel McClellan’s Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula. Starting on June 26, a series of battles that have come to be known as the Seven Days combined turning movements and direct assaults to detach Union forces from their Yorktown base and push them back into a perimeter at Harrison’s Landing on the James River.25

  Fort York, Toronto, captured by the Americans in both 1812 and 1862. In the background is the Canadian National (CN) Tower.

  The Town Hall Geneva, Switzerland, where peace was signed in August 1863. Despite their victories, the British were keen to end the costly war with the North.

  C.S.S. Virginia exchanges fire with U.S.S. Monitor at First Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862. Little more than a month later, C.S.S. Hart of the Confederacy would use a spar torpedo in ramming and crippling the Union ironclad at Second Hampton Roads. Courtesy of the Naval Historical Center.

  Confederate Secretary of the Navy, Stephen Mallory, created the ironclads that won independence and international recognition for his nation, earning him the sobriquet of the “Southern Themistocles.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress.