Crucible of Command

by William C. Davis

  Leaving little to chance, he notified Sherman that a demonstration at Haynes’ Bluff might be a useful distraction to cover his landing, though he left the decision to his trusted subordinate.136 Meanwhile, another diversion had been under way for some days. On April 16, as Porter’s fleet readied for its run, Colonel Benjamin Grierson led a body of cavalry on a raid south from LaGrange, Tennessee. It was a raid through the Mississippi interior that Grant designed to disrupt enemy communications, cut Vicksburg and Jackson’s rail connections, and lure enemy cavalry away from Grant’s route of advance once over the river. Grant had no idea of its progress as yet.

  Bad weather delayed the bombardment and landing on April 28, and Grant fretted. Weather, roads, and water were, he complained, “all against me.” Now he expected to get started on the morning of April 29. “I feel every confidance of sucsess,” he wrote Julia, “but may be disappointed.” He would be aboard a small tug in the river to watch the bombardment. If he took Grand Gulf, he told her, it would mean “virtual possession of Vicksburg and Port Hudson and the entire Mississippi river.”137

  Porter’s guns opened at eight o’clock the following morning, and fired until one in the afternoon, but the Grand Gulf batteries could not be silenced completely. Grant made a quick field decision. He could not keep what was by now 10,000 men on boats in the river much longer. Sending them back to the Louisiana side, he put McClernand in motion marching down the west bank about nine miles, then asked Porter to escort all the transports downriver past the Grand Gulf batteries under cover of an evening bombardment. They made the run successfully and Grant sent word off to Halleck that “I feel that the battle is now more than half won.”138 On April 30 the infantry boarded the transports once more and crossed the river entirely unopposed to land at Bruinsburg. Grant himself crossed with Porter on his flagship Benton, and once on the east bank oversaw the transfer of more soldiers while McClernand formed his divisions and moved inland. His corps marched on after nightfall under a full moon, and finally at about two o’clock that morning on May 1 encountered Confederates hurried from Grand Gulf a few miles west of Port Gibson. After a spirited hour’s engagement, the combatants skirmished through the night, and then at dawn McClernand moved forward. Having brought nothing with him but the uniform he wore, Grant borrowed an extra horse from one of his generals and reached the field by ten in the morning to find one flank doing well but the other held back, and called up enough reinforcements to drive the Confederates in retreat.139

  Grant and McClernand rode over the field to the cheers of their soldiers, and Grant felt relieved enough to indulge McClernand’s desire to make a brief speech to the cheering soldiers before suggesting that he ought to press the pursuit.140 Five months of planning and struggle had all been to reach this moment. Grant was on the east bank with a secure foothold on high ground. Roads from Port Gibson led both to Vicksburg and Jackson. He had only about 20,000 men with him at the moment, with what he mistakenly thought might be three times that many of the enemy at Vicksburg, Jackson, and other locations ahead. But the rest of McPherson’s corps and some of Sherman’s were coming. On his ride from Bruinsburg he saw enough to conclude that he could subsist his men and animals on beef and forage from the countryside. The rest of what was needed he would draw from Milliken’s Bend via the admittedly precarious route through New Carthage. Even if he had to break free from his supply line for a time, “I have every confidance in succeeding in doing it,” he soon wrote Halleck.

  The first fight was scarcely over when a local came to Grant and told him that “Grierson has knocked the heart out of the State.” The diversionary cavalry raid from LaGrange was a spectacular success. The horsemen had raced south through central Mississippi, cut the railroad east out of Jackson, then moved on to cut its rail link with Confederates in southern Mississippi and Louisiana, threatened Natchez, and were last heard of riding toward Union lines in Baton Rouge. Behind them the raiders left a desolation of broken rail track, burned bridges, destroyed locomotives and rolling stock, and tons of stores. Grant told Halleck that it was “the most successful thing of the kind since the breaking out of the rebellion.”141

  There was a long road ahead, but from that battlefield a buoyed Grant sent word back to Porter of success thus far, and that “our forces are on the move.”142

  As Grant’s command moved from the battlefield, Hooker’s renewed advance met Jackson in The Wilderness. After desultory fighting he pulled back around Chancellorsville and put his men to building defenses, surrendering all initiative to Lee. Hooker’s fortified position was too strong to attack frontally, especially in The Wilderness, which seriously restricted all maneuver. The brigades left at Fredericksburg were hardly a match for the two Federal corps in their front, and in fact stood little chance of holding their ground if the Yankees attacked. Yet again Lee was lucky. A report came to him that Hooker’s right flank was exposed and vulnerable. That evening he met with Jackson to discuss their options. For some time the two generals had what a nearby member of Jackson’s staff called “earnest conversation.” Once he had confirmation that Hooker was indeed vulnerable, Lee favored sending a heavy column secretly around the enemy right to strike it in flank and rear, even though that meant dividing his army. He had done that before and succeeded, but not against such heavy odds. Jackson liked the idea and said his corps could do it. Still, Lee felt natural hesitance at the enormous risk. He remained silent in thought for what seemed like a quarter of an hour. He was making one of the decisions that made him a great commander. There was clearly an opportunity at hand that might not long remain. He believed his army could do anything. He had faith in Jackson. He had known all along that only great hazard held promise of great results, given the enemy’s preponderant strength and resources. He would trust to audacity and Providence, though clearly the risk made him uneasy. “Well General,” he said, “you may try it.”143

  The plan was a house of cards. One failure anywhere risked collapse. An even greater risk was Lee’s decision to make the flank attack as powerful as possible by assigning almost three-fifths of the command at hand. He would himself hold perhaps 15,000 to keep the attention of the Federal center, and have Jackson lead 28,000 via back roads to a point just over a mile west of Hooker’s flank, where they were to turn onto a turnpike leading directly to the exposed Yankees. They would have almost fifteen miles to march on poor roads. The route in places would take them within earshot of Federals. Jackson had failed him more than once on the James-York Peninsula. And yet, given what Lee knew at that moment, it represented a sensible, almost prudent, judgment. His alternatives appeared to be to stand his ground and wait for the Yankees to attack him, or seize the initiative. A direct assault on the lines in front of him was doomed. Since Hooker had stalled, a bold move could prolong that stall, and nothing was bolder than Jackson’s march. If Lee hoped to knock Hooker off balance, the best way was the unexpected, and with enough power to force the enemy to rethink his position. It had worked against McClellan and Pope. It could work against Hooker. It was an objective approach to a serious problem that, in the circumstances, might have no other solution.

  From the moment Jackson’s march commenced the next morning, various Federals discovered it, yet no one took the threat seriously. After an exhausting march lasting most of the daylight hours, Jackson was in position and ordered the attack forward shortly before dusk. The impact crumpled the Union right back on itself as Jackson pressed onward for the next two hours, his own advance stalling thanks to exhaustion and the gathering darkness. In the confusion Jackson himself was wounded by his own men, then A. P. Hill went down, and by nightfall the attack sputtered out. A messenger that evening found Lee resting on a bed of straw, and brought news of Jackson’s wound, reporting it as serious but not fatal. “Thank God, it is no worse; God be praised that he is still alive,” Lee said. “Any victory is a dear one that deprives us of the services of Jackson, even for a short time.” Rising to eat a bit of ham and hardtack, Lee immediate
ly left on his own to make dispositions to renew the fight on the morrow.144

  The next morning once again Lee was lucky, for all Hooker could think of was getting his army to a secure new defensive line. Confederate attacks from two sides hammered him through the morning before he pulled back, and then Lee maintained the pressure. He was actually preparing a fresh attack when a dispatch alerted him that the Federals opposite Fredericksburg had finally advanced, taken the town and Marye’s Heights, and were pushing the defenders back. Though Lee had Hooker at bay, Federal divisions from Fredericksburg would have an open road to his rear and soon he could be caught in a vise.

  Again, Lee’s reaction to crisis marked his judgment. He could have withdrawn southward to Spotsylvania, consolidating with the brigades from Fredericksburg, and then taken a new defensive position some miles south behind the North Anna River. But that would give up territory to a foe whom he now considered spiritually beaten and demoralized. If he could damage Hooker this much while outnumbered more than double, then he could hold Hooker in place long enough to detach units to protect his rear. He subdivided one half of his already divided army to send four brigades hurrying eastward. By midafternoon they stopped around Salem Church, joining another brigade from town that had fought a sturdy defense there, ending the immediate threat.

  Every day brought its difficult decision. During that night the main Union army dug in and bolstered its defensive line. That told Lee that Hooker did not intend to renew the offensive, making him no longer an immediate threat. Every hour that Hooker remained passive told Lee he had less to fear from that quarter. Again, he chose the most productive alternative. He would leave half his command under Stuart to hold Hooker, while he took the rest to deal with the Federals near Salem Church. It took most of the day to accomplish the movement, and anxiety made Lee short-tempered at delays to get the attack going. Finding the division commanders at Salem Church uncertain of who should do what, Lee assumed direct command and began putting units in place for an assault. By five-thirty in the afternoon all was ready. At the signal, Lee himself, his hat in his hand, stood with the 2d Georgia Battalion near the center of his line and led it forward for a few yards, a fair sign of his emotional intensity that evening.145

  Ordinarily he was not reckless, prudently remaining behind the lines at a field headquarters, but this was a special circumstance. There was no corps commander present. He was impatient and aroused, and may have felt the men needed his presence in the front rank to boost spirits. Having spoken of the need for greater effort, even if it meant greater risks, he may have extended that to his own person. The assault soon broke down from confusion and the strength of the enemy works, yet as darkness fell Lee spoke of a night attack, a desperate act almost doomed to failure, and a sign that frustration, anxiety, and excitement momentarily clouded his judgment. Still, the Confederates had the Yankees backed into a bend of the Rappahannock where they held their ground until they escaped across a ford during the night.

  Lee turned his column and hurried back on May 5 to rejoin the rest and try to push Hooker into the river. Stuart, temporarily replacing Jackson in command of the II Corps, wanted to risk a frontal attack that morning even before the army was concentrated. Lee advised him to be careful, but gave him permission to make the assault if he believed it could succeed. Of all his risks, this was the only one showing questionable judgment. After five days of action or marching, his men were exhausted, and nearly one-fourth of them were casualties. The Union line anchored at both ends on the Rappahannock. That meant frontal assaults against well-entrenched positions, which risked a repeat of the heavy casualties Lee suffered at Malvern Hill. Yet each risk taken had been rewarded thus far, and each emboldened Lee the more for the next. When faced with no alternative, he would resort to the frontal assault more than once.

  In the next couple of hours, however, Lee’s concerns grew, and he changed his mind. An assault now, in their condition, “might be beyond us,” he warned Stuart. Expecting Hooker to retreat, Lee concluded that they could damage him severely as he fell back, with less chance of disaster to themselves.146 Hooker did indeed retreat that night, but at dawn on May 6 Lee ultimately concluded that his army was too battered and exhausted to pursue. Before long both armies moved back to their old positions looking at each other across the river at Fredericksburg.

  There was something near miraculous in the campaign. Certainly Lee saw a heavenly hand in it all, even the wounding and, on May 10, death of Jackson. “I do not know how to replace him,” Lee lamented the next day, “but God’s will be done.”147 If, as he believed, Providence disposed all and man had no agency in what happened on earth, then his victories were preordained, which could only mean that God favored the Army of Northern Virginia at least, if not the South itself, and the daring, even foolhardy, risks that Lee took time and again really were no risks at all, but the will of the Almighty carried out through his hands.

  In that month of May Lee achieved and Grant commenced the most brilliant successes of their careers, and both through careful planning, quick reaction to setbacks and the unexpected, and unflagging audacity. Surely the season could not be far off when Lincoln or Davis would decide it was time to set one the task of stopping the other?

  12

  JULY 1863

  THE WAR CONTINUED to harden Lee’s heart against the North. When the Federals sent a message asking for the customary opportunity to come to the battlefield to remove their dead, he gave his permission, with an edge of bitterness after Jackson’s death from pneumonia on May 10, remarking that he “did not want a single Yankee to remain on our soil dead or alive.”1

  “I require efficient persons about me,” Lee told Mary in February 1862.2 No commander of an army could function without a headquarters staff, or without managing it effectively. The Confederate army recognized two distinct kinds of staff: personal and general. A commander appointed a small personal staff while the War Department assigned officers from its several bureaus to compose a general staff. The common expectation was that a commander used his personal staff in battle as couriers, but not the general staff, though Lee used both.

  Two questions confronted him. Was his staff adequate for the job; and did he use them adequately? Lee saw some officers accruing virtual retinues of aides through nepotism, political ambition, and self-aggrandizement. Beauregard always had a bloated staff, and Magruder in fifteen months in Virginia went through nearly half a hundred, a virtual battalion.3 Even Jeb Stuart put nine relatives on his staff, and A. P. Hill had five. By contrast, Lee appointed none, though in 1861 he asked Custis to recommend a useful relative, and repeatedly in the war opened the door for Custis himself.4 In western Virginia he appointed his close friend Washington an aide, and in April 1862 named as an aide the son of his old army comrade Andrew Talcott.

  Lee rather consistently limited himself to the number of aides prescribed by statute, always aware of himself as an example. While his soldiers slept on the ground he slept in a tent rather than a bed in a warm house. He ate almost the same fare as his men. He still wore a colonel’s blouse, now well faded, and old blue flannel trousers that showed their wear.5 When he wore through his trousers, he got replacements from the same bureau in Richmond that clothed his soldiers, and was indifferent about regulation officer’s stripes on their outer seams. Where most generals wore gold braided kepis, he used a simple gray round-brimmed hat. He resisted posing for his photograph, but when he did he kept none himself.6 A large staff did not fit this template, and the government only paid for a few aides. Any more must be paid from Lee’s pocket.7 Inspired by concern for economy, he said he needed no more than two or three, since “on the field all the members of the staff departments can perform the duties of aides.”8

  Lee began the war with staff handed him from state forces, and when he took over his army retained twenty-two-year-old Walter H. Taylor as his adjutant, an able headquarters factotum nearly the equal of Grant’s Rawlins. Otherwise, in 1862 Lee selected staff wh
o remained most of the war. Charles S. Venable had taught mathematics at three universities, and Lee used him as an inspector and sometime secretary. Of them all he was the most likely to dare approach when Lee was in a bad mood.9 Charles Marshall had a master’s degree from the University of Virginia, and acted most of the time as Lee’s military secretary, composing orders and writing Lee’s reports of campaigns compiled from the often conflicting reports of subordinates. Marshall had to confront the authors directly for resolution, saving Lee the embarrassment of questioning his officers.10 Thomas M. R. Talcott served as aide and then engineer officer until he left in 1864, and Armistead L. Long was an aide until he became a brigadier in the fall of 1863. Thus from 1864 on Lee would have only Taylor, Marshall, and Venable on his personal staff.

  Lee gave each man his assignment for the day, then left him to it. Thereafter as a task came to hand, he simply used the one most handy. From 1862 onward, however, he more strictly defined their duties. Taylor oversaw virtually all paperwork. Long and Marshall served as secretaries, while Venable and Talcott acted as aides, but in a pinch Lee still used any man for any task, and on the battlefield all became eyes, ears, and couriers. Outsiders complained he should have more seasoned men, but Lee preferred not to take such men away from field assignments. They rode with him on the march and camped closest to his tent. His speech could be quick and brusque in the tone of a man accustomed to giving orders, and some who saw him thought him “the stern soldier,” and that included his staff.11 If he lost his temper, they were most often the objects, Venable especially. By the summer of 1863 he thought of asking for assignment elsewhere. “I am too high-tempered to stand a high-tempered man and consequently I become stubborn, sullen, useless and disagreeable” he confessed, but then calmed as he usually did, remembering that “the old man has much to annoy and worry him and is very kind and considerate after all.”12 In equal candor, Taylor said that though he served Lee faithfully, he could never love him.