Terrible Swift Sword

by Bruce Catton

  Then Jackson struck, and the blow disrupted the entire Federal strategic plan in Virginia.

  On May 23 he drove suddenly down on Colonel Kenly, sweeping through Front Royal, capturing Kenly and most of his men, pausing long enough to pick up prisoners and captured goods, and then moving straight on for Winchester. As Banks had supposed, Jackson was going to move along the Valley Pike; the trouble was that he was going to reach it eighteen miles in Banks’s rear.

  Fugitives from Kenly’s shattered command brought the news to Strasburg that night, and there was nothing Banks could do but order an immediate retreat. Evacuating his lines, he set off for Winchester, pushing a bulky wagon train along with him, and Jackson swung his leading elements toward the west to strike the ungainly column on the march, hoping to break it and destroy Banks’s army outright. He came close to success, but not quite close enough, one difficulty being that his infantry was almost exhausted. These Confederates had been marched hard, the last few days—not for nothing did Jackson’s infantry bear the unofficial title of “foot cavalry”—and the weather was hot and their feet were sore, and they knew nothing about the high strategy involved; as they struggled along, constantly goaded to move more rapidly, they complained bitterly that Jackson was “marching them to death to no good end.” Banks just managed to escape destruction, reaching Winchester and drawing a defensive line to check the pursuit.10

  He escaped destruction but he could do no more than that. On May 25, Jackson attacked the Federal line at Winchester and broke it, and Banks’s shattered army continued its desperate flight to the Potomac. Temporarily, at least, a good part of the army was disorganized, and although a measure of order was restored once the battlefield was left behind, the retreat was little better than a rout. Jackson pressed hard, trying to force one more battle and turn retreat into destruction, but his men were exhausted, and the cavalry which had screened him so well tarried in Winchester to loot the rich stores the Federals had abandoned. Banks got away, reached the Potomac at Williamsport, and got his frazzled army across the river to safety. Jackson accepted the situation, moved his own army up to the outskirts of Harper’s Ferry, and let his men pause for breath. A perfectionist, he regretted that any of the Federals had escaped, and he wrote grimly: “Never have I seen a situation when it was in the power of the cavalry to reap a richer harvest of the fruits of victory.”11 But if the harvest seemed incomplete it was nevertheless extremely rewarding.

  Jackson’s soldiers suddenly realized that the general whom they had accused of marching them to death had been leading them to a dazzling triumph, and their confidence in him rose high, along with their pride in themselves. The people of Winchester looked on them as saviors and gave them a hysterical greeting, seeming to be “demented with joy and exhibiting all the ecstasy of delirium.” From the captured Federal supply dumps the needy Confederates could acquire unimaginable riches, which one man tabulated breathlessly: “Brand new officers’ uniforms, sashes, swords, boots, coats of mail, india rubber blankets, coats and boots, oranges, lemons, figs, dates, oysters, brandies, wines and liquors, the choicest hams and dried meats and sausages, all the contents of a large city clothing establishment and miscellaneous grocery and confectionery.”12 All in all, it was a great day in the morning.

  But the real effect was felt in Washington, where the gathering fog became absolute. Nothing was clear except that the Federal force which had been holding the Shenandoah Valley had been knocked off the board, and that a Confederate Army of unknown size but aggressive intent had reached the Potomac. The counterstroke aimed at Washington had been anticipated for months: this, possibly, was it, taking form in the wake of Banks’s desperate flight. McDowell was ordered to suspend his movement on Richmond and to get at least 20,000 men over to the valley as rapidly as possible. Lincoln notified McClellan that “the enemy are making a desperate push against Harper’s Ferry and we are trying to throw Frémont’s force and part of McDowell’s in their rear.” Frémont was ordered to move east to Harrisonburg and get into Jackson’s rear. McDowell ordered Shields to head back to the valley, notifying Mr. Lincoln that he was doing what he had been told to do but that the move was a bad one and that “I shall gain nothing for you there and I shall lose much for you here.” Mr. Lincoln sent a slightly amplified report to General McClellan, saying that he believed the enemy thrust at the Potomac “is a general and concerted one, such as could not be made if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defence of Richmond.” He added: “I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defence of Washington.”13

  Shields’s men began their countermarch, beset by rumors that Jackson with twenty, thirty, or even forty thousand men was about to attack Washington. They had made a hard march to reach McDowell, and now they were retracing their steps with even greater speed, they understood perfectly well that somebody was panicky, and as before they swore vigorously. One of their number wrote: “I trust that the Recording Angel was too much occupied to make a note of the language used in Shields’s division when we learned, with mingled feelings of rage and mortification, that we were to return to the valley by forced marches.”14

  3: The Last Struggle

  The panic which Stonewall Jackson inflicted on Washington was really rather brief, and not all of its effects were bad.

  To be sure, it killed the prospect that McDowell’s troops would reinforce McClellan, and it led Secretary Stanton to send a tense message to the governors of the Northern states, urging them to send forward all available volunteers and militia as rapidly as possible. But it also led the War Department to correct an earlier error. The recruiting stations which had been closed so fatuously at the beginning of April were reopened, and steps were taken to round up the vast number of absentee soldiers and get them back to their regiments.1 In addition, Mr. Lincoln and Secretary Stanton soon recognized Jackson’s thrust for what it was—a daring maneuver rather than the beginning of a massive invasion of the North—and they realized that when he marched to the outskirts of Harper’s Ferry, Jackson actually took a very long chance. If the available Federal troops were handled properly he could be cut off and destroyed; and so these two civilians—who at the moment were in their own persons the Army’s high command, board of strategy, and general staff, all combined—undertook to bring this about.

  In a way this was the beginning of wisdom, and Mr. Lincoln here came to see something which he never forgot. The Southern Confederacy lived by its armies. While they lasted it would last and if they died it would die, and so whatever it did with them it could not afford to lose any of them outright. But any Confederate Army which moved out of its own territory must always face superior numbers. If it invaded the North, or even moved out into the border area to threaten an invasion, it gave the Federal power the chance to make the best possible use of its greater resources—to fight the kind of war in which the Federals held all of the advantages. When it sent its armies north the Confederacy risked more than it could bear to lose and presented its enemies with a rich opportunity.

  This much Mr. Lincoln was beginning to see. But to see an opportunity is one thing and to take advantage of it is something quite different, as the President and the Secretary of War presently discovered.

  They worked out a good series of moves, and if wars were fought on chessboards with pieces that would infallibly go to the precise squares chosen for them, Stonewall Jackson would have come to grief quickly. As soon as they heard about what had happened to Banks, they ordered Frémont with something under 15,000 men to march at once to Harrisonburg, to cut off Jackson’s retreat, while McDowell brought three divisions to Strasburg, the town from which Jackson had just flushed Banks. Since the Potomac itself was held by 15,000 or more, all of the exits would be blocked and Jackson could be rounded up and defeated.

  This chessboard, however, was full of mountains and atrocious roads and it was swept by heavy rains, and some of the pieces had minds of their own. Fré
mont, at the town of Franklin, faced muddy going, he was short of supplies, the mountain roads between Franklin and Harrisonburg had been blocked by Jackson’s engineers, and Frémont felt that he ought to use his discretion; instead of marching east to Harrisonburg he chose to go roundabout to Strasburg, which was much farther away but which somehow seemed easier to reach. McDowell’s troops also encountered rain and muddy roads, and although McDowell did move toward the place he had been told to move toward the going was slow, and there was further delay when Shields, who led the advance, paused at Front Royal because of a wild story that Confederate James Longstreet was coming down the valley of the South Fork of the Shenandoah from Luray with a large force. Still, the combination nearly worked. On May 30, for instance, both Frémont and Shields were much closer to Strasburg, which Jackson would have to pass through on his retreat, than Jackson was himself. But Shields took a wrong road when he left Front Royal next morning, and time was lost while the column was pulled back and redirected, and Frémont’s advance was most hesitant about driving on into Strasburg; and in the end Jackson just made it. Pushing 2300 unhappy Federal prisoners ahead of him, plus a wagon train loaded with booty captured at Winchester, Jackson got his rear guard out of Strasburg just as the first Yankee patrols entered the place, and thereafter the Federals could do nothing but chase him. Frémont followed along the Valley Pike, and McDowell sent Shields up the Luray Valley on the chance that he might head Jackson off or strike his flank somewhere beyond the Massanutten Mountain … but the big opportunity was gone.2

  Yet if the attempt to destroy Jackson had been a humiliating fizzle, the President and the Secretary of War might well have felt hopeful about the general military situation at the end of May. Jackson, after all, had at least gone away, and the invasion scare had gone away with him; and on the two principal fighting fronts, in the east and in the west, the news was good and the prospects were even better. McClellan was edging forward beyond the Chickahominy, apparently in excellent spirits, full of confidence: notified that McDowell would not be joining him and that he would have to take Richmond with what he had, he replied stoutly: “The time is very near when I shall attack Richmond.” To protect his right flank in preparation for this great event he sent Fitz John Porter to drive Rebel infantry away from Hanover Court House, north of Richmond. Porter did the job handsomely on May 27, and McClellan sent a jubilant telegram to Stanton saying that this was “a glorious victory” and that “the rout of the Rebels was complete.” He reported that he had two army corps across the Chickahominy and that the other three were ready to cross as soon as the necessary bridges were finished. The roads would soon be dry enough for artillery, and he spoke confidently of “closing in on the enemy preparatory to the last struggle.”3

  It was good to find the commander of the Army of the Potomac talking so hopefully, considering all of the things that had gone wrong; it was even better to learn what had been happening in the west. General Halleck’s powerful army had at last taken the Mississippi town of Corinth, on May 30. Beauregard and his Confederate Army had fled to the south, and it was briefly possible to believe, in Washington, that final conquest of everything the Confederacy had west of the Alleghenies was imminent.

  Corinth by itself was nothing in particular; a railroad junction town, the base from which Albert Sidney Johnston had led his troops up to fight at Shiloh and to which the beaten army had returned after he and his high hopes had died. It had almost been swamped with wounded men after the battle, and there was a great deal of sickness; one dejected Confederate described the town as “the worst place I have ever been in,” said that the drinking water was foul, and asserted that 17,000 sick men had been sent away from the place in the weeks following the big battle on the Tennessee.4 Corinth was important partly because it was the place where the one railroad line directly connecting the Mississippi with Virginia crossed the north-south line of the Mobile & Ohio, and even more because as long as it was held by a Confederate Army the Confederacy had protection for Fort Pillow, Memphis, Vicksburg, and that segment of the Mississippi River which the Federals had not yet taken. Grant’s move up the Tennessee early in the spring had been aimed at Corinth, and after Shiloh had been won Halleck assembled a huge army at Pittsburg Landing and resumed the offensive.

  He resumed it with great deliberation. He began by bringing together the separate armies of Grant, Buell, and Pope for a total of better than 100,000 effectives—an army more than twice as large as anything Beauregard could bring against him—and he took the supreme command himself, making Grant his second-in-command and turning Grant’s troops over to George H. Thomas. This actually put Grant on the shelf, giving him an impressive title but nothing at all to do, it almost drove Grant out of the Army, and it doubtless reflected Halleck’s feeling that Grant had been careless at Shiloh.5 Buell, Thomas, and Pope became in effect corps commanders; Halleck insisted that the army remain concentrated when it moved, and ordered these officers to maintain constant touch with him. Every segment of the army was kept under his direct control.

  Halleck reached Pittsburg Landing on April 11, spent a little more than three weeks perfecting his army’s organization, and during the first week in May he set out for Corinth, twenty-four miles away. The army took two days to move the first fifteen miles and twenty-four days to move the last six. When it marched, front and flanks were protected by clouds of pickets and scouts; when it halted, it entrenched to the eyes. This advance was the most defensive-minded offensive imaginable, and it took that form not merely because Halleck was ultracautious by nature—a born office worker, he felt ill at ease as a field commander—but also because his whole operation was aimed primarily at Corinth rather than at the Confederate soldiers who held the town. He did not try to make Beauregard fight and he did not try to surround and capture him; he simply wanted Corinth, and if Beauregard would get his army out of there and go away Halleck would be happy.

  There was nothing else for Beauregard to do. The heavy Confederate losses at Shiloh had been more than made good when Van Dorn and Price finally crossed the Mississippi and came to Corinth with some 12,000 men who had fought at Pea Ridge, but the camp at Corinth was unhealthful and there had been a steady wastage; when the Federals reached the Confederate lines Beauregard had approximately 50,000 effectives of all arms. On May 25 he called his subordinates into council: Bragg, the pessimistic martinet, the studious Hardee, Bishop Polk, former Vice-President Breckinridge, and the two westerners, Van Dorn and Price—and explained the situation. To give up Corinth would be to lose an important strategic position—it was especially important to hold on as long as possible because the task of fortifying Vicksburg was just getting under way—but to stay too long would be to risk loss of the entire army, and so it was time to leave. The generals could do nothing but agree, and Beauregard ordered the army withdrawn to Tupelo, a town on the Mobile & Ohio fifty miles to the south. Sick men and wagon trains were sent on ahead, various devices to make the Federals anticipate a Confederate offensive were worked out, and on the night of May 29 the army left Corinth and moved south. The Federals were completely fooled; just when the last Confederates were getting out of Corinth, General Pope advised Halleck that he would probably be attacked as soon as morning came, and when the first Northern troops entered Corinth no one knew where Beauregard had gone. Halleck sent Pope down the railroad to examine the situation and pick up stragglers, and dispatched a triumphant telegram to Stanton. Beauregard, he said, had given up a fortified position of surpassing strength, had abandoned great quantities of stores and baggage and was in headlong flight: Pope was “pushing the enemy hard” and had taken 10,000 prisoners, and “the result is all I could possibly desire.”6

  This report was greatly exaggerated. Beauregard had executed a most orderly withdrawal, he had lost little property, and few prisoners had been taken. (To do Pope justice, he never said he had taken many prisoners; he had simply estimated that 10,000 stragglers were trailing Beauregard’s army and had predicted,
erroneously, that most of them would soon surrender. The exaggeration was largely Halleck’s own, although the blame went to Pope and Halleck did nothing to set the record straight.)7 But one sentence in Halleck’s report was entirely correct. The result of this methodical, glacial campaign was indeed all that Halleck could desire, even though the opposing army had got away unharmed.

  For Halleck was no more pugnacious than McClellan. He was campaigning by the map and by the textbooks. He had set out to take a strategic point and he had taken it, and, as long as Beauregard remained in Tupelo, Halleck had no intention of following him. He had Corinth, and Corinth was the most he had wanted to get. As a chess player, he now had a definite positional advantage; a winning advantage, if properly exploited.

  With a compact, well-equipped army of 100,000 men, Halleck held a key railroad center and could move in any direction he chose, and there was little the Confederates could do to stop him. They had Beauregard and his 50,000 at Tupelo, scattered details along the Mississippi from Fort Pillow to Vicksburg, 12,000 at Knoxville under Major General Edmund Kirby Smith, 2000 at Chattanooga, detachments in Louisiana watching Ben Butler at New Orleans—and nothing much else. The Federals could open the Mississippi all the way to the mouth if they chose; they could march straight south and take Mobile; they could swing east, take Chattanooga, and possess all of eastern Tennessee—something Mr. Lincoln wanted just about as much as he wanted the capture of Richmond itself. All they had to do was get at it.

  Certain fruits fell into their hands at once. With a Federal Army in Corinth both Fort Pillow and Memphis were doomed. Beauregard ordered the former place evacuated at once, and its garrison moved down to Grenada, Mississippi; and on June 6 Federal rams and gunboats under Flag Officer Davis came downstream to Memphis, destroyed a Confederate fleet there in a brisk battle watched by most of the townspeople, who lined the bluffs to see the spectacle, and forced the defenseless city to surrender. The Mississippi was open now all the way down to Vicksburg; and as a matter of fact it was open from the south all the way up to Vicksburg as well, Farragut having sent seven of his ocean-going bruisers upstream in May to tap the defenses and see if the Navy could crack them without help. The Vicksburg fortifications at this time were not nearly as strong as they became a bit later, but they were more than the Navy could manage; still, there were Federal gunboats above the city, the salt-water ships were just below it, Farragut himself was coming up in Hartford, followed by Porter and the mortars, and if 20,000 men from Halleck’s army could be sent there in June or July the place would unquestionably be taken and the river would be open from Minnesota to the Gulf.