Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Lee had launched his move north from Orange without waiting for the president’s assent, and it worked. Now he tried it again. He could count on at least a three-day lead before any response from Davis might arrive, and that gave him freedom. A day after writing he had moved to Leesburg, putting the army close to one of the Potomac fords on a straight line to Frederick, Maryland. He weighed the benefits of crossing east of the Blue Ridge, which should pull most Yankees out of Virginia, or crossing west of the mountains above Harpers Ferry, hoping to pull Federals out of there and the Shenandoah. Either way he wanted to strike for Hagerstown twenty miles northwest of Frederick. Soon he revealed why.73

  From Leesburg he wrote again, adding that he would move immediately unless Davis disapproved, an irrelevant contingency since his forward elements were already at White’s Ford ready to cross. Then he mentioned one other thing: “I propose to enter Pennsylvania.” That was why Hagerstown was his first objective. Cutting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad along the way, he could cross the Mason-Dixon Line into the Cumberland Valley to fill his commissary and find good roads sixty miles northeast to Harrisburg on the Susquehanna, along the way breaking up the railroad that supplied Federals in the Shenandoah and Harpers Ferry. He could disrupt enemy communications all across the North, especially by wrecking the Pennsylvania Railroad’s bridge at Rockville, severing the Union’s most important east-west transportation link connecting New England and the mid-Atlantic states with Ohio and all parts west. If successful, it would be perhaps the most significant logistical blow the Confederates could attempt.

  Lee also thought geopolitically. Marylanders might be more forthcoming with supplies if urged to cooperate by someone they respected, like pro-Confederate former governor Enoch L. Lowe, then living in Richmond. Lee asked the president to hurry Lowe to him. More than that, the advance of a Confederate army into Pennsylvania could shatter Northern morale weeks before the October–November election of Representatives in Congress, the selection of senators by several legislatures, and gubernatorial elections in New York and New Jersey. Lee well realized that the only way for the Confederacy to win was by persuading the Union to lose. That gave every battle political significance, which he realized could be a two-sided coin. Spreading panic in Pennsylvania might help defeat Republicans at the polls and cost Lincoln support for the war. Yet the raid could backfire if it so aroused Northerners that they became even more committed, as happened after the humiliation at the battle of First Manassas. Hence Lee wrote that he would not enter Pennsylvania if “you should deem it unadvisable upon political or other grounds.”74 By the time any “no” from the president arrived, Lee could be marching into the Keystone State.

  Lee’s letters may suggest that he was developing his strategy as he marched, but he may have been revealing his intentions gradually so as not to overwhelm the president. An invasion of Pennsylvania was not a new idea. Jackson had been talking of it for months, and back in June proposed moving as far as Harrisburg if reinforced. Lee then told Davis “it would change the character of the war,” though nothing was done.75 He gave it more thought over the next three months, and now barely three days’ march from Pennsylvania, with a head start on the enemy, he would never likely be in a better position. When he wrote Davis again on September 5 there was no mention of halting if recalled. He wanted the president to hurry forward ammunition and supplies, directing that everything now go to him via the Shenandoah and Winchester. He also wanted bridges over the Rapidan and Rappahannock rebuilt in case he had to retire east of the Blue Ridge, so he would have rail communications with the capital. Like Grant, Lee did not start a campaign by planning his retreat, but prudence now could give his army strength in the event.76

  By early September 6 Lee had two divisions across and expected to get the rest of the army over that day. He had cut the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, and would soon break up the Baltimore & Ohio.77 Unable to ride with his hands splinted and bandaged, he conducted the campaign from an ambulance. By September 7 virtually all of the army was on its way to Frederick, where he took position on the west bank of the Monocacy River. Most of the people welcomed their coming, and the army ate well again. Lee wanted to pay for the army’s needs, and asked Davis to send hard currency at once, since some citizens were reluctant to accept Confederate paper. He did not really expect the people to rise up, whatever their expressions of sympathy.78 Nevertheless, Lee distributed a broadside addressed “To the People of Maryland” that demonstrated his grasp of molding public opinion. Condemning “the wrongs and outrages” inflicted on Marylanders, he declared the sympathy of the Confederacy, to whom social, political, and commercial interests allied them. He came to help them regain the independence and sovereignty of their state. Exhorting them to join his army, he promised that “it is for you to decide your destiny, freely and without constraint.” There would be no coercion. “This army will respect your choice.”79

  At the same time on September 8 he put his oar into political waters. The Confederates had held out for more than a year. He might soon be on Pennsylvania’s Union firmament. This was the moment to propose recognition of Southern independence, he told Davis. In Mississippi Price was moving against Grant, and Bragg was moving into Kentucky. Across an eight-hundred-mile front the South was advancing. Offering peace now would demonstrate that all they wanted was freedom. Rejection would stamp responsibility for the war on the Republicans, and Northern voters might retaliate.80 Four days later, probably with Lee’s letter in hand, Davis drafted proposed proclamations for Lee and Bragg to issue declaring that Confederates invaded only to defend their homeland, that they wanted only an end to the war and recognition of independence, and hoped the people of the Union would persuade their leaders toward those ends.81

  Lee proposed sending Jackson west through Sharpsburg to recross the Potomac at Shepherdstown, and then break the Baltimore & Ohio at Martinsburg, while two divisions captured the garrison at Harpers Ferry, which failed to evacuate as he hoped. Then the army was to reassemble at Boonsboro or Hagerstown to continue north.82 Sometime that day he heard from Davis that he and Lowe were at Orange on September 7, and wanted to meet with him, most likely to discuss the draft proclamation and specifics on the campaign. Davis may have hoped to accompany the army, but that was the last thing Lee needed.83 At once he wrote to dissuade Davis, saying it would be too dangerous for him to come, and Davis did not press.84

  Within hours Lee’s bandaged hands were contending with the breakdown of his plans. McClellan finally moved northward and reached Frederick on September 13. Then he found a lost copy of Lee’s orders for the march and moved to get between Lee and Jackson at Harpers Ferry. Meanwhile, Lee reached Hagerstown, where on the morning of September 14 he learned that McClellan had found his order. He reacted immediately. Twenty miles and the Potomac divided the two wings of his army. McClellan was closer to Jackson and Harpers Ferry than was Lee. If the Yankees pushed hard they could cross Crampton’s and Turner’s Gaps on South Mountain, close the Potomac crossings, and isolate Jackson while turning overwhelming force against Longstreet. That news ended the raid. Now it was a campaign to reunite the army, meet and defeat McClellan, or withdraw to the Shenandoah.

  Late that night the Federals took both gaps and began pushing through. Lee ordered a concentration at Sharpsburg to shield Jackson, planning to cross the Potomac to reunite with Stonewall and prepare to meet McClellan should he pursue.85 Jackson did not capture the Harpers Ferry garrison until the morning of September 15. Lee learned of it that afternoon, and the next day Jackson’s divisions started coming into Sharpsburg, where Lee established his line just west of Antietam Creek, even as McClellan finally caught up to him and extended his own line on the other side. With fewer than 30,000 at hand, though more on the way, Lee faced close to 50,000 Yankees, and had no option but to stand on the defensive. He chose Sharpsburg hastily. Several bridges crossed the creek, and along his center and left the creek could be waded. As Jackson’s divisions extended the army’s left
, he had to abandon crossings to the Yankees in order to anchor his left flank on the Potomac. Worse, higher ground on the Union side would allow McClellan’s artillery full play over much of Lee’s line. Worst of all, Lee’s back was to the Potomac, with the only available crossing, Boteler’s Ford, behind his right flank. If he lost that ford, the remainder of Jackson’s corps, A. P. Hill and his division, would be cut off, and Lee could be squeezed between McClellan and the Potomac. He could have concentrated on the Virginia side, but if the raid was to impact Northern morale, he needed a combat above the river. The decision to stand on Maryland soil was a political one.

  The fight came the next day, September 17. An unusually combative McClellan assaulted Lee’s left in the morning, then the Yankees hit and broke his center. By noon his army’s position was desperate, as only McClellan’s caution prevented an assault that should have cut the line in two and isolated Jackson north of Sharpsburg. A few days later a battery commander who helped Lee prevent a rout told his wife that “I never saw Genl. Lee so anxious as he was at Sharpsburg.”86 That afternoon a fresh Union corps tried to push across the creek in front of Longstreet and by three o’clock was over the stream and pressing into the streets of Sharpsburg. Lee spent most of the day at his headquarters shifting units to support Jackson on the left, then rode himself to the scene, an aide leading Traveller since Lee’s bandaged hands could not manage a bridle. He was at or near the front in several places during the day, especially when his center was threatened. That afternoon as the Yankees began pushing his right flank back into town and away from the vital ford, Lee dismounted and recklessly exposed himself to enemy fire as he tried unsuccessfully to rally that flank short of a disaster, and was elated at that crucial moment to see A. P. Hill’s column approaching from Harpers Ferry just after it crossed the ford. By happy chance it rushed straight into the exposed flank of the advancing foe and brought them to a standstill. By late afternoon the exhausted armies stopped firing.87

  Never again would Lee get himself into such a dangerous position. A competent general ought to have defeated him. A good one ought to have pushed him into the Potomac. Again Lee was a lucky commander, his luck in the man facing him. McClellan squandered everything, moving slowly after discovering Lee’s plans, exerting little control over the battle, and at pivotal moments forfeiting the opportunity to strike decisively. Emphasizing that he little feared Little Mac, Lee stood his ground the next day daring McClellan to come get him. The Federal declined, and on the night of September 18 Lee crossed at Boteler’s Ford unopposed and began a gradual withdrawal toward Winchester. It would be weeks before McClellan followed.

  The Union undeservedly proclaimed victory. Tactically Lee repulsed almost every Federal assault. Given his situation, his mere survival makes the battle his victory. He held the same ground at the end of the day as at its outset, and it is evident that he defeated McClellan psychologically. Lee always knew he would withdraw into Virginia. It was a raid with specific goals, some of which he achieved. He drew the enemy army out of hard-pressed northern Virginia and replenished and subsisted his own in Maryland. He frightened Washington and Baltimore and perhaps strengthened Lincoln’s opposition in the fall elections. He gave the pro-Confederate populace of Maryland an opportunity to rally and claim their independence. That they did not was due to them, not him. Granted, he did not draw the Harpers Ferry garrison out of its defenses. Instead he captured it there, with tons of munitions. The only failure in his stated goals was that he did not reach Pennsylvania.88 Personally he made better use of his staff than before, using them to maintain communication among elements of his army during the campaign, though then and during the battle he still did not vest them with authority to give orders in his name.89 Moreover, surely the whole campaign was too ambitious and fraught with danger, its gains arguably not worth the heavy cost. Lee lost more than 1,500 killed in action, and 8,700 wounded and missing, almost a third of the 33,000 engaged. Another such battle could reduce his army to a mere corps.

  But there was one intangible gain of incalculable worth. He gave the Army of Northern Virginia the luster of invincibility. In a season that soon saw Bragg defeated and Confederates in Mississippi repulsed, Lee fought McClellan to a standstill on Union soil and reoriented the war’s focus from the suburbs of Richmond north to the Potomac. After the summer’s victories, Antietam made this army and its commander the would-be nation’s most important source of morale, national symbols of Confederate determination.90

  Two days after Antietam Grant and Ord advanced only about two miles and halted to await news from Rosecrans, but as the day wore on began to doubt that he would arrive in time. Finally, Grant decided no attack could be made that day and instructed Ord to press closer to Iuka, but avoid engagement unless he heard from Rosecrans. Grant learned nothing more until a message from Rosecrans arrived that night telling him that as of noon he was still eight miles from Iuka.91 In fact, by the time Grant read the dispatch, the battle of Iuka was already over.

  After sending Grant that midday message, Rosecrans had kept advancing. He met Confederate outposts two miles below town, and after some skirmishing the Confederates came at him around four-thirty. That was not part of the plan. Rosey was supposed to wait until he heard firing from Ord, but he heard nothing. Then the skirmishing escalated and several hours of fighting ensued in which the Yankees held their ground, Rosecrans all the while listening for the sound of Ord’s guns. Amazingly, Grant heard nothing, for an atmospheric anomaly called acoustic shadow caused by humid air and a strong north wind muffled all sound of the fighting.

  Hence Grant was stunned just after eight-thirty the next morning when a message from Rosecrans announced the previous afternoon’s fight and begged Ord to attack at once. Finally, Grant heard artillery in the distance and sent Ord forward at once. Then another message from Rosecrans asked “why did you not attack this morning?”92 Of course, so far as Rosey knew, Ord was to have attacked the previous morning. There was confusion all around, and then they found that Price evacuated Iuka during the night using a road that Rosecrans neglected to hold as he advanced. The two generals met in Iuka about noon, with neither blame nor recrimination from either. Within hours Grant wired Halleck that “I cannot speak too highly of the energy & skill displayed by Genl Rosecrans.”93 It had been a messy operation, hampered by bad roads and weather, and communications compromised by messages being hours out of date by the time they arrived. Grant tried to do too much. Iuka was almost a mirror image of Lee’s abortive efforts to coordinate his initial attack on McClellan in the Seven Days in July. Both generals were still learning the limitations of large movements, and the hazards of coordinating detachments without rapid communications.

  There were gains from the fight, chiefly driving Price south and away from the 9,000 reinforcements approaching under Major General Earl Van Dorn. Grant wanted to move quickly fifty miles south to Tupelo, and then another hundred miles southwest to Greenwood on the Yazoo River to destroy Confederate gunboats sheltering there.94 However, Van Dorn moved into west Tennessee, threatening Grant’s communications between Corinth and Memphis, and he had to shelve the Yazoo operation and begin shifting forces to Corinth to meet this new threat. Van Dorn withdrew into Mississippi instead and joined Price twenty-five miles southwest of Corinth. By the end of the month more than 22,000 Confederates were moving north. Grant’s line was anchored on the east by Rosecrans at Corinth with 23,000, Ord and Hurlbut with 12,000 forty miles northwest at Bolivar, Tennessee, and Sherman and 7,000 some fifty miles west of them at Memphis. Grant kept another 6,000 in reserve at Jackson, thirty miles north of Bolivar. By October 1 he concluded that Price and Van Dorn, the latter in command, intended to attack Corinth. “My position is precarious,” he wired Halleck that evening, “but hope to get out of it all right.”95 The next day Grant rode to Jackson, where he could communicate quickly with all of his outposts. That evening Rosecrans proposed that he move out of his works and attack the approaching Confederates, and Grant
gave him discretion to “move on them as you propose.”96

  In the morning on October 3 telegrams came into Jackson reporting cannon fire near Corinth, but then the line went dead for some time, and when a courier from Rosecrans rode in later, he had lost his dispatches on the way, so Grant knew nothing more than that Van Dorn had appeared before Rosecrans’s advanced positions that morning and firing had been heard. Grant probably assumed that Rosey had attacked.97 Thus Grant wired Hurlbut at Bolivar to send several brigades south to be in place to cut off Van Dorn’s retreat, as usual expecting victory. He also put McPherson in charge of two brigades at Jackson and set him in motion to join Hurlbut, then changed his mind and directed them to Corinth instead.98

  Grant spent the rest of the day trying to visualize events at Corinth, but the sketchy reports coming in gave him a poor picture. Confederate cavalry had reached and cut the Memphis & Charleston Railroad linking Corinth with Memphis, then retired. They also cut the Mobile & Ohio south from Jackson several miles above Corinth, so McPherson would have to march the last six to seven miles to reach Rosecrans. A man just in from near Corinth reported that “they are fighting.”99 At first Grant thought it might only be heavy skirmishing, and that the Confederates intended to launch their real attack on the morrow, but later in the day couriers from Corinth reported heavy fighting and the enemy attacking Rosecrans. That night Grant heard that in heavy fighting Price had pushed through Rosecrans’s works and penetrated into Corinth itself before being driven back, with heavy loss on both sides.100 He also learned that Hurlbut could not get on the road until at least three in the morning on October 4, meaning he could not possibly cover the forty-six miles to Corinth before October 5 at the earliest. Grant repeatedly hurried Hurlbut, regretting he had not sent him to Corinth a day earlier. “Rosecrans position is precarious,” he urged. Believing the enemy numbered no more than 30,000, Grant said “he must be whipped.”101