Stonewall Goes West: A Novel of The Civil War and What Might Have Been (Stonewall Goes West Trilogy)

by Thomas, R. E.

  I expect you to hold.

  T.J. Jackson

  Early crumpled up the note, threw it away with malice, and muttered “Shee-it.”

  On the opposite side of the field and peering through his glasses, Warren saw the signal. He sent word to Hays, and within minutes the deep-throated shouting of several thousand men drowned out all the other noise on the battlefield. The bulk of II Corps rose from the creek bed, ripped off a thunderous volley, and charged forward.

  Early’s men tore hard at the attackers, gunning them down and sending parts of the blue line reeling backwards into the creek. Other Billies charged home, and sent the butternuts flying from their breastworks. On the end of the line, Caldwell brought three Union brigades, Irish immigrants, New Yorkers, Pennsylvanians and Delaware men, smashing into the Louisiana Tigers and dead Pegram’s Virginians. Early watched as Pegram’s leaderless boys streamed to the rear, but most of the Louisianans held, and resisted stubbornly.

  Early ordered the last of his reserves, that slender pair of Pegram’s remaining regiments, out to plug the Yankee penetrations in his center, and then galloped away to shore up his left. He rode among the broken Virginia throng, once his own brigade, waving his sword and even striking some with the flat of his blade, calling out “Cowards! Bastards! You shame Virginie! Get your yellow asses back in there and kill them fucking blue bellies!”

  Most stopped and turned around, shamefaced and angry. Early didn’t bother with putting them back into order, but instead led them at a dead run as a mob, back into the fray. Caldwell’s attack was swept back into the shelter of the creek.

  On the western side of the battlefield, Hill was feeding his men into the attack piecemeal, committing each individual regiment into the fight as it arrived. Leading the Federal left, Webb had steadily adjusted to the growing pressure, but now he had two full brigades facing his firing line.

  Early’s westernmost brigade, posted on the other side of the railroad embankment and all but forgotten by him, was heretofore engaged only slightly. It came forward on its own initiative, and joined in the assault on Webb. Vastly outnumbered and attacked on three sides, the Federal left caved in, sending men fleeing over the railroad embankment, who then turned and ran headlong for the rear.

  Hill’s soldiers advanced in the wake of the fleeing Billies to the top of the railroad embankment. Once there, they halted and poured fire down into the Union troops sheltering behind the banks of Kettle Run, causing great slaughter. Blue-coated troops instinctively began to move around, looking for protection from the crossfire, and finding none. Hays desperately tried to refuse his line and shield his left, but was shot down amid the fusillade, and his effort came to naught. Men abandoned the creek bed, first singly or in pairs, then in larger groups, and ran away from the carnage. The II Corps line visibly teetered on the brink of a collapse.

  Early rode up behind his line, shouting “Forward! All regiments forward! Charge!” His soldiers gave a piercing yell, jumped over their pile of rocks, fence rails and dirt, and charged forward. Men in blue were shot, stabbed and clubbed down, and standards seized. In a matter of minutes, the center of the II Corps dissolved into a rout. The exultant men of Hill’s and Early’s Divisions chased, killed and captured in the light of the setting sun.

  Jackson returned to the scene. Finding Early, he declared “You see, general. I told you. I knew you would hold.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Confederate newspapers were not quite accurate in crowing that the Yankee II Corps had been “annihilated” at the Second Battle of Kettle Run. Caldwell had led away the three brigades on the corps’ right wing in good order, escaping after nightfall. Baxter’s Brigade was off guarding the wagon train and was never even engaged, and while Gregg’s Division of cavalry had been mauled, it had escaped destruction.

  Yet the claim had enough truth to it to raise depressed spirits throughout the South. Second Kettle Run cost the Army of the Potomac roughly 7,000 dead, captured or missing. Warren was captured, Webb wounded and captured, and Hays killed. The losses in Lee’s army amounted to one-third that figure, and many of these were wounded who would eventually return to duty.

  Whereas the summer of 1863 brought the South defeats at Vicksburg, Gettysburg and Middle Tennessee, the autumn saw the Yankees under siege at Chattanooga and whipped in Virginia. Stonewall Jackson had returned, and perhaps the war was not lost after all.

  In the North, the witch hunt began from the day after the battle. Republican radicals in the Congress howled for the scalp of General Meade, but the facts of the case swiftly shifted attention to General Sykes. The V Corps commander was charged with disobedience and dereliction of duty, court martialed, and dismissed from the service in such quick succession that the entire business was over before Christmas. Disgraced, Sykes committed suicide in February.

  Following the battle, Meade’s army entrenched and remained in Centerville, its morale at low ebb. Lee retired back to his starting point on the Rapidan unmolested, destroying the Orange and Alexandria as he went. Prodded by the War Department, Meade eventually followed, slowly and laboriously, rebuilding the railroad as he went.

  Yet the tide of the war turned again, and it became the turn of newspapers in the North to trumpet victory, and those of the South to offer thin explanations and bitter recrimination. Less than two months after Second Kettle Run, the siege of Chattanooga was lifted, and the Confederate Army of Tennessee sent packing. It was the war’s now three year old formula: while the Confederacy won victories and held the Union at bay in the East, it steadily lost the war in the West.

  General Braxton Bragg, with his spirit broken by defeat and poor health, and long harried by his own senior officers, resigned command of the Army of Tennessee on November 29.

  December 2, 1864

  Evening

  Richmond, Virginia

  Jefferson Davis rode home, stiffly erect in the saddle. He always preferred a formal, military posture, as it suited both his character and his painfully severe features. Yet in trying times, he retreated even further into such poses, taking his natural bearing to extremes, and so he rode home looking very much like a bronze equestrian statue.

  His private meeting with James Seddon, his Secretary of War, had not gone well. Seddon had not attended the Cabinet meeting held earlier that day to discuss a replacement for Braxton Bragg, the ex-commander of the country’s second major field army, choosing instead to remain at home and tend to his ailing children.

  That discussion had focused mostly on the Confederacy’s two available full generals: Joseph E. Johnston and P.G.T. Beauregard. Davis was disgusted with both choices, and his Cabinet indecisive about picking one or the other of them. Worse, the Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin, refused to offer any opinion at all. Davis had gone to consult with Seddon, who had nothing to offer beyond the unpalatable pair of Johnston and Beauregard. It wouldn’t do.

  Davis was bound and determined that Beauregard would never again hold an important command. The frenchified peacock had thrown away the victory Davis’s dearest and most admired friend, Albert Sidney Johnston, had died earning at Shiloh, and then had to gall to reward himself afterward with sick leave at a spa. The Louisianan was arrogant, vain, always proposing ludicrous schemes, and then sitting back smugly and criticizing what others did when his flights of fantasy were not adopted. He was utterly unfit for the western command, so Davis was content to let him stay in the Carolinas and rot.

  The alternative, Joe Johnston, was secretive, quarrelsome, obstinate, and just as vain as the frenchified peacock. Instead of proposing outlandish schemes, the Virginian was fond of either doing nothing or retreating, and then blaming the disasters that resulted on the failure of Davis and the War Department to supply him with reinforcements that simply didn’t exist. He was at least as overrated as Beauregard, and just as unsuited for command of the country’s second largest army.

  Of the Confederacy’s other generals of suitable rank, Samuel Cooper was too old and infir
m, and Robert E. Lee was not interested in a transfer to Georgia. Even if he had been, sending Lee west would only shift the problem of finding a new commander from the Army of Tennessee to the Army of Northern Virginia.

  If only Hardee had accepted the job, Davis thought, things would be greatly simplified. William J. Hardee was a respected professional and the senior corps commander within that army, so in lieu of sending a more senior general, promoting Hardee was the most logical course. Yet Hardee had begged out of commanding the Army of Tennessee.

  Davis’s thoughts were interrupted by his arrival at the Executive Mansion, a white, stuccoed building in the neoclassical style. He handed his horse over to the groom, and was met at the door by his private secretary, Burton Harrison.

  “Mr. President, Secretary Benjamin is here to see you. He has been waiting more than half an hour. I know he doesn’t have an appointment, but he said it was urgent and that he would wait for your return.”

  Davis nodded. “I’ll see him in my office. Wait 10 minutes and then bring him up.” Even though he longed to see Varina and the children after such a long, tiresome day, Davis went straight to his office, where a plush chair for Benjamin was already set up before his desk. He inspected and straightened his clothes, sat down behind his desk, assumed a severe pose, and waited for his Secretary of State.

  Benjamin, a plump, round-faced man with the happy, ruddy features common to men of that build, was shown in. He was the most loyal member of Davis’s government, which was part of why Benjamin had survived so many tribulations as Attorney General, Secretary of War and now Secretary of State. The other part was his imperturbability and thick, leathery skin, two virtues essential to the fortunes of anyone born as a Jew in the British Caribbean and making his way in the politics of the South.

  Davis greeted him by leaping from behind his desk to shake his hand, but still addressed him as “Secretary Benjamin” before inviting him to sit down.

  Benjamin sat, laying his slender, gold-handled cane across his lap. He was accustomed to Davis’s peculiar mixture of the generous and amiable on the one hand, and the stiffly formal on the other.

  Davis started. “I had assumed I would be seeing you, Mr. Secretary, although perhaps not so soon. It is most unusual for you to remain so silent in Cabinet.”

  Judah smiled. “Mr. President, I wanted to consider this business more carefully before I offered my opinion to you. Also, I believe what I am about to propose might strike some as a sensational, perhaps even controversial act, and wished to take precautions and ensure it did not appear prematurely in the papers.”

  “I take it you have a proposal to make for replacing General Bragg, then?”

  “Yes, and I think it is the only option, both viable and palatable to us: Thomas J. Jackson.”

  Davis remained composed and reticent, although he was surprised to hear this coming from Benjamin. “I had considered Jackson already, and discounted him for two reasons. First, he is clearly ranked by both Generals Longstreet and Kirby Smith, and some others probably think they outrank him, including some very senior men out West. Vaulting Jackson over all those heads will surely cause some resentment and dissension, and I think we have already had enough of that in the West. Furthermore, Jackson has the reputation for being at least as secretive as Johnston, and at least as difficult to work with as Bragg. You remember Romney, do you not?”

  How could I forget? Benjamin thought. Jackson planned and led a minor-but-successful expedition into the mountains of western Virginia in November 1861. Afterward, he left his senior subordinate, one W. W. Loring, to garrison the town of Romney in winter quarters. Loring didn’t care for being left in Romney or for serving under Jackson, and promptly circumvented Jackson by writing to Benjamin, complaining that his men were suffering badly in the icy weather and should be withdrawn.

  Benjamin brought the matter to Davis, who agreed, and Benjamin ordered Jackson to withdraw Loring, a stupid blunder as Benjamin now freely admitted. That was because while Stonewall obeyed, he also tendered his resignation, sparking a major political flap.

  “I remember it all too well, Mr. President, because I stumbled quite badly and brought on the whole thing.” Of course, he had done no such thing. Davis had made that decision, just as he made so many of even the most picayune decisions of the War Department, but Benjamin had fallen on his sword in that instance, and was not about to pull himself back off that sword now. “In retrospect, I think that if proper channels had been strictly followed, that unpleasant incident would never have happened.”

  He suspected Davis gave the order because the President knew Loring better than he did Jackson, having made Loring a colonel in the old United States Army during his tenure as the U.S. Secretary of War. Davis often made such decisions on the basis of personal relationships, which explained why an incompetent schemer like Leonidas Polk was in command of Mississippi and Alabama, among others.

  All of this was before the spring of 1862 and Jackson’s prodigious feats in the Shenandoah Valley. They had no idea Jackson would prove a genius and become a national hero, while Loring would turn out to be a very ordinary division commander.

  Benjamin continued “I can hardly blame a man for standing on principle. Can you, Mr. President?”

  Davis said unthinkingly “Of course not,” conveniently ignoring that he routinely questioned the motives of everyone and anyone who disagreed with his own principles.

  “As for the personal frictions besetting our western army, perhaps the best way to rise above them is to appoint an outside man, a man with a clean slate. Even were that not the case, Mr. President, it is my firm and considered opinion that Thomas Jackson is, after Robert E. Lee, our best general. That is the only consideration that matters. Do you doubt that Jackson will give us victories where Johnston or Beauregard would not?”

  “No, I do not doubt it,” Davis admitted.

  “Then he should be given the job. With the support of this government and the Southern people, Jackson will give us our best chance for sustaining the independence that is ours by right.” Judah paused, and then added “And he cannot help but enjoy the support of our people, Mr. President. Is he not the most venerated officer in the army, the equal of General Lee in the popular imagination? You remember how the entire nation held its breath after his wounding?”

  Davis replied “Yes, of course I do.” Benjamin had a point, there was no denying it. Jackson was, after Lee, the only other proven field commander the country had. Yet promoting him meant setting aside all notions of seniority, and officers in general were very touchy about matters of rank and seniority. But it wasn’t as if promotion on the basis of merit was illegal, unprecedented or unwarranted.

  Davis turned his chair away from Benjamin, clasped his hands under his chin, and thought it over. His enemies in the Congress would begin agitating for the appointment of either Johnston or Beauregard as soon as Congress reconvened on Monday, December 7. Newspapers critical of his government were already printing such tripe, seasoned richly with invective directed against him personally. The promotion and appointment of Jackson was sure to be so popular with the people, no one in the Congress would dare to oppose it. Especially if he submitted Jackson’s name on Monday, by surprise, before his chorus of critics could choreograph their carping.

  In fact, he reasoned, there might be an opportunity to accomplish something more here. “What if I go beyond merely making Jackson head of the Army of Tennessee? What if I reorganize Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and the bulk of Georgia into a ‘Department of the Center,’ so to speak, and name Jackson to its head? Something like what Washington did for their General Grant, putting all the middle of the country under one man?”

  Benjamin saw at once what Davis meant. “You intend to reorganize General Johnston out of his job?”

  Davis smiled. A twinkle appeared in Davis’s eyes, even the blind, filmy one. The malice of it almost made Benjamin shift in his chair, despite himself. “I have no intention of removing Ge
neral Johnston, but he has often complained that his command in the West is impractical for one man. In my opinion, his poor performance vindicates that view, and I therefore propose, Secretary Benjamin, to lighten his burdens.”

  “And what if Congress balks at leaving Johnston shorn so?” Benjamin chuckled. “He has many supporters.”

  Indeed he does, Davis thought. My critics and Johnston’s supporters seemed to always be the same people. “I’ll make this a question of standing either for or against Jackson. Can you imagine anyone in the Congress daring to vote against the elevation of Stonewall Jackson? And I won’t give them the time to introduce an alternative bill. This is war, and the Army of the Tennessee needs a permanent commander as soon as possible. I’ll horsewhip any opposition with the urgency of the matter.”

  Benjamin nodded. He had suspected that Davis had already considered Jackson, but needed a little persuading to work his way through the bureaucratic legalisms the President so often entangled himself in. He had not, however, thought about using Jackson to settle scores with the administration’s enemies, but that worked just as well. Johnston would give up the whole country in retreat were he given a free hand to do so. The sooner he was shelved, the better.

  “Then, Mr. President, I suggest we dispatch a confidential messenger to the Army of Northern Virginia at once.”

  Davis replied “Yes. Assuming he accepts the promotion, I will reconvene the Cabinet on Sunday, put the matter to them as a formality, and submit Jackson’s name to the Congress on Monday morning.”

  December 3

  Evening

  Lee’s Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, CSA

  Winter Quarters, Orange County Virginia

  Jackson ducked under the tent flap and entered Lee’s headquarters. He was surprised to find there not only Lee, but also Lee’s eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. A brigadier general at 31, George Lee served as a top military aide to President Davis. So, whatever this was about, Jackson knew it came from Richmond, not army headquarters.