Chapter 16: second Manassa's.
The battle of Cedar Run was but the prelude to a more bloody struggle, which was destined, by a strange coincidence; for the historic plains of Manassa's. General Jackson had scarcely returned to his encampment near Gordonsville, when the gathering of the hostile masses in larger volume began.General Lee, convinced that McClellan was incapable of farther aggression, and that the surest way to remove him finally from the peninsula would be to threaten Washington more violently, began to remove the remainder of his army from Richmond to the Rapid Ann, August 13th; proposing to leave only a small force for observation upon his lines there, until the success of his experiment was verified. On that day, General Longstreet commenced his march for Gordonsville, and the remainder of the troops were moved in the same direction, the division of General D. H. Hill bringing up the rear, near the end of the month. Halleck, the new Federal generalissimo, was also eagerly dictating the same movement toMcClellan. He found the “Grand army” divided into two widely separated fragments, and trembled before the activity of Jackson, and the danger of his Capital. McClellan accordingly broke up his camps at Berkeley on the 17th of August, and with sore reluctance shipped the decimated remains of his troops to Aquia Creek on the Potomac. Disease had: been carrying on the work which the sword had begun, And [510] the fever and dysentery of the country had fearfully thinned his ranks. But meantime,General Burnside had brought his corps from North Carolina, and landing it at the same spot on thePotomac, had marched it to the support of General Pope in Culpepper.
That commander now had his forces tolerably concentrated along the line of the Orange Railroad. But ignorant of the first principles of strategy and possessed with the vain conceit of crossing the Rapid Annnearer its source, and thus turning Jackson's left wing, he had extended his right toward Madison. He did not advert, seemingly, to the fact that this manoeuvre gave him a line of operations nearly parallel to his adversary's base, and thus exposed his own left and his communications, to a more mortal thrust from him. The course of the Rapid Ann, which had now manifestly become Jackson's temporary base, is north of east; while the curvature of the Orange Railroad is such that its course, eastward of Culpepper Court House, is parallel to that river, or even brings its stations near the Rappahannock, nearer to it than at the Court House. Thus the Confederates, without exposing their own communications, had it in their power to strike those of Pope at Brandy Station by a march shorter than that which would fetch the Federal advance back to that place. So obvious an advantage could not escape any one except the doughty Pope. Jackson of course seized it upon the instant. Upon an elevated hill which is called Clarke's Mountain, east of Orange Court House, he had established a signal station. From this lofty lookout, all the course of the Rapid Ann and the plains of Culpepper, white with the enemy's tents toward Madison, were visible. As soon, therefore, as the troops from Richmondbegan to arrive, General Jackson left Gordonsville, and on the 15th of August, marched to the eastern base of Clarke's Mountain, where he carefully masked his forces [511] near the fords of the Rapid Ann. His signal officer upon the peak above, reported to him that the enemy were quiet, or even extending their right still farther up the country, unconscious of their danger. The Commander-in-Chief, who was now upon the ground, appointed the morning of the 18th at dawn of day, for the critical movement; but the dilatoriness of a part of his subordinates disappointed the completeness of his combinations, and overruling the eagerness of Jackson, he postponed it until the 20th. He again issued orders for that day, that all the troops should be prepared to advance in light marching order, with three days rations, and throw themselves that afternoon upon the enemy's rear. Jackson was to cross the stream at Somerville's ford, so as to occupy the left, supported by the division of General Anderson; while Longstreet passed below, at Raccoon ford, and formed the right. General Stuart, now Major-General of cavalry, was to cross with his two brigades of Robertson and FitzHugh Lee, and his flying artillery, at Morton's ford, march direct for the Rappahannock bridge, destroy it, and then turning back along the enemy's line of communication, destroy his trains, and fill every place with panic, until he connected with the infantry ofLongstreet upon the extreme right. It was hoped that by these skilful dispositions, the enemy, cut off from his line of retreat, and fiercely attacked upon his left, would be routed, insulated and destroyed.
But the issue showed the importance of that element of strategic combinations, which Jackson so keenly estimated, time. The propitious moment was already forfeited by delay. On the night of the eighteenth of August, the day when the movement should have been made, a handful of fugitive negroes reached the army of Pope, and revealed to him enough of the movements of the Confederates, to open his eyes to his danger. On the nineteenth, as the Commander-in-Chief stood upon his lookout [512] on Clarke's Mountain, the encampments of the enemy farthest west were seen to disappear, and as. the day advanced, the rest vanished from view like a fleeting vision. Pope was in full retreat, eager to place theRappahannock between himself and his adversary. This was his first lesson upon the soundness of his maxim, that a conquering General should leave his communications to take care of themselves; and he was destined to receive others still ruder. General Lee hastened to pursue, and put his army in motion on an early hour of the 20th of August, according to the plan already arranged. General Jackson, crossing the Rapid Ann at Somerville's ford, marched rapidly toward Brandy Station, while GeneralLongstreet, crossing simultaneously below, pressed toward Kelley's Ford on the Rappahannock. No Federal infantry awaited their approach; before their arrival, all had crossed the latter stream. But their cavalry still occupied the Culpepper bank, and were driven across by the brigades of Stuart. One of these, the brigade of Robertson,, formerly the lamented Ashby's, under the eye of its Major-General, had a brilliant combat with the enemy's horse near Brandy Station, and drove them across the river with loss. Pope's whole army was now found massed upon the northern bank of the Rappahannock, with a powerful artillery prepared to dispute the passage of General Lee. He therefore formed the plan of striking his rear at a point still farther north, and thus dislodging him, and fighting a general battle. But the conditions under which the second movement must be made, were far less favorable than those of the one projected from the Rapid Ann; and the results could not be expected to be so great. TheRappahannock, which was then in Pope's rear, and would have been a fatal obstacle to the retreat of his defeated army, was now in his front, and was' his defence. His communications were no longer exposed to a direct blow, but could only be [513] reached by a dangerous, arduous, and circuitous march. And when the battle was fought and won, the beaten army would be within a day's march of its place of refuge, the lines of Arlington. Yet the vigor and courage of Jackson were trusted to effect this difficult enterprise. It was determined to march up the Rappahannock River, until a practicable crossing was found; and then to throw the corps of Jackson, which, being on the left, became the front in this movement, by forced marches to Manassa's Junction; and when his threatening presence there had called Pope away, to follow with the remainder of the army.
The first essay in pursuance of this plan was made on the 21st of August. General Jackson, leaving the hamlet of Stevensburg, where he had bivouacked, crossed the railroad, and approached the river above it, at Beverly's ford. A lodgement was effected here by a regiment of cavalry, upon the northern bank, which was held until the evening; but the enemy was approaching in such force, that it was deemed inexpedient to make the passage in their presence, and the advanced party was withdrawn. The artillery of General Longstreet had meantime engaged that of the enemy at the railroad crossing, a few miles below, with such success as to compel them to withdraw to their works on the north side, and then to burn the bridge and desert the position. The morning of August 22nd witnessed a renewal of the same proceedings : the two armies advanced slowly up the Rappahannock, upon its opposite banks, contesting with each other every available crossing, by fierce artillery duels; and attempting upon each other such assaults as occasion offered. The corps of Jackson having passed the Hazel River, a tributary of the Rappahannock near its mouth, left its baggage train parked there, under the protection ofBrigadier-General Trimbler of Ewell's division; while the main force pressed on to secure [514] the bridge leading from Culpepper to Warrenton. The cupidity of the enemy was excited by this tempting prize, and they crossed to seize it, capturing a few ambulances. These were almost immediately regained, and Trimble, upon receiving the support of General Hood, who formed the van ofLongstreet's corps, attacked the intruders, and drove them with loss to the north bank, filling the stream with their floating corpses. A similar enterprise attempted on the other hand, by the ConfederateGeneral Stuart, on this day, was as much more successful than the Federals, as it was more audacious. Crossing the Rappahannock, above the enemy's outposts, with a brigade of cavalry, he pressed on through the village of Warrenton, and struck the rear of their army at Catlett's Station after nightfall. Finding here a detachment of troops, with an extensive encampment, in the midst of a furious thunder-storm and Egyptian darkness, they dashed into it with a yell, scattering the astounded occupants to the winds, and capturing a great spoil, with a number of prisoners. This encampment was found to contain the headquarters of General Pope; and the baggage, clothing, horses, and money of his Staff, as well as his own, rewarded the boldness of the assailants. Great exertions were also made to destroy the important railroad bridge spanning a large creek near by; but the deluge of rain had saturated the timbers beyond the possibility of ignition, and the rising freshet underneath, with the intense darkness, forbade the men to ply their axes with success. Stuart therefore, gathering up his spoils and prisoners, returned the way he came, leaving the enemy confounded by his seeming ubiquity. Pope thus learned, in a second hard lesson, that the communications of an army are worthy of its commander's attention. The gravest loss which he experienced in this capture, was that of his letter book, which contained copies of his confidential despatches to Washington, and thus revealed [515] to General Lee the most intimate secrets of his. numbers, his plans, and his pitiable embarrassments.
General Jackson, reaching the Warrenton road the afternoon of the 22nd, found the bridge destroyed, and other evidence that the enemy were in close proximity. But they were not yet prepared to dispute his passage. Opposite to him, on a beautiful hill, rose the buildings of a watering place, known as tho Warrenton Springs, or Fauquier White-Sulphur; while to his right, a mile below, stretched a forest which clothed the ridge overlooking the river on that side. He sent the 13th Georgia from Lawton's brigade across, to occupy the Springs; while Early's brigade, supported by two batteries, was passed over on a ruinous mill-dam a mile below, and occupied the wooded ridge. But now the darkness of the approaching night and storm arrested the passage of other troops; the floods descended, and the current was speedily swollen so as to become impassable. This accident placed the command of Earlyin extreme peril. The advanced parties of the Federalists were hovering around him in'the darkness, and he had nothing to expect but to be crushed at the dawn of day by the whole weight of their army, within sight of his friends, but beyond their reach. But his own skill, with the wise and firm support of Jackson, rescued him without the loss of a man. When the morning came, the latter sent word to General Early to associate the 13th Georgia with his own brigade, and form the whole across the highlands near the watering place, with his left upon the river, and his right upon a creek, now equally swollen and impracticable, which here approached from the north to mingle its waters with the Rappahannock. He urged forward, meantime, the construction of a temporary bridge; and, in the afternoon, passed the remainder of Lawton's brigade to the support of Early. But the freshet which had protected his right was now receding. into its banks, [516] and the whole army of Pope was manifestly at hand. Yet Early so adroitly concealed his force in the woods, and held his foes at bay with his artillery, that they were able to make no decisive attack before nightfall. During the darkness he retired safely to the southern bank, with his batteries, leaving not a man nor a trophy behind. The deliverance of Early was scarcely completed before the dawn of the 24th. The troops of Longstreet had now arrived, and relieved those of Jackson in the afternoon of that day. A fierce cannonade was kept up across the river, chiefly by the guns of A. P. Hill, by which the enemy was occupied, while Jackson retired a few miles from the river-bank to the village of Jeffersonton, relinquishing to Longstreet the task of amusing Pope by the appearance of a crossing at the Springs.
While the enemy was thus deluded with the belief that the race up the Rappahannock was ended, and that he now had nothing more to do than to hold its northern bank at this place, General Jackson was preparing, under the instructions of the Commander-in-Chief, for the most adventurous and brilliant of his exploits. This was no less than to separate himself from the support of the remainder of the army, pass around Pope to the westward, and place his corps between him and Washington City, at Manassa's Junction. To effect this, the Rappahannock must be passed on the upper part of its course, and two forced marches made through the western quarters of the county of Fauquier, which lie between the Blue Ridge and the subsidiary range of the Bull Run Mountains. Having made a hasty and imperfect issue of rations, Jackson disembarrassed himself of all his trains, save the ambulances and the carriages for the ammunition, and left Jeffersonton early on the morning of August 25th. Marching first westward, he crossed the two branches of the Rappahannock, [517] passed the hamlet of Orlean, and paused at night, after a march of twenty-five miles, near Salem, a village upon the Manassa's Gap Railroad. His troops had been constantly marching and fighting since the 20th; many of them had no rations, and subsisted upon the green corn gathered along the route; yet their indomitable enthusiasm and devotion knew no flagging. As the weary column approached the end of the day's march, they found Jackson, who had ridden forward, dismounted, and standing upon a great stone by the road-side. His sun-burned cap was lifted from his brow, and he was gazing toward the west,. where the splendid August sun was about to kiss the distant crest of the Blue Ridge, which stretched far away, bathed in azure and gold; and his blue eye, beaming with martial pride, returned the rays of the evening with almost equal brightness. His men burst forth into their accustomed cheers, forgetting all their fatigue at his inspiring presence; but, deprecating the tribute by a gesture, he sent an officer to request that there should be no cheering, inasmuch as it might betray their presence to the enemy. They at once repressed their applause, and passed the word down the column to their comrades: “No cheering, boys; theGeneral requests it.” But as they passed him, their eyes and gestures, eloquent with suppressed affection, silently declared what their lips were forbidden to utter. Jackson turned to his Staff, his face beaming with delight, and said: “Who could not conquer, with such troops as these?” His modesty, ever attributing his glory to his brave men rather than to himself, caused him to forget that it was his genius which had made them such soldiers as they were.
On the morning of the 26th, he turned eastward, and passing through the Bull Run Mountains, at Thoroughfare Gap, proceeded to Bristoe Station, on the Orange Railroad, by another equally arduous march. At Gainsville, he was joined by Stuart [518] with his cavalry, who now assumed the duty of guarding his right flank, and watching the main army of Pope, about Warrenton, As the Confoderates approached Bristoe Station, about sunset, the roar of a railroad train proceeding eastward, was heard, and dispositions were made to arrest it, by placing the brigade of Hays, under Colonel Forno, across the track. The first train broke through the obstructions placed before it, and escaped. Two others which followed it were captured, but were found to contain nothing. The corps of Jackson, had now marched fifty miles in two days. The whole army of Pope was interposed between it and its friends. They had no supplies whatever, save those which they might capture from the enemy. But they were between that enemy and his capital, and were cheered by the hope of inflicting a vital blow upon him before he escaped. This movement would be pronounced wrong, if judged by a formal and common-place application of the maxims of the military art. But it is the very prerogative of true genius to know how to modify the application of those rules according to circumstances. It might have been objected, that such a division of the Confederate army into two parts, subjected it to the risk of being beaten in detail; that while the Federal commander detained and amused one by a detachment, he would turn upon the other with the chief weight of his forces, and crush it into fragments. Had Pope been a Jackson, this danger would have been real; but because Pope was but Pope, and General Lee had a Jackson to execute the bold conception, and a Stuart to mask his movement during its progress, the risk was too small to forbid the attempt. The promptitude of General Stuart in seizing the only signal station whence the line of march could possibly be perceived, and the secrecy and rapidity of General Jacksonin pursuing it, with the energy of his action when he had reached his goal, ensured the success of the movement. [519]
The first care of the General, after he reached Bristoe, was to secure the vast stores accumulated at theJunction, four miles North. He determined not to postpone this essential measure until the morning, lest the enemy should be able to destroy them; and he therefore accepted the offer of Brigadier-GeneralTrimble, with the 21st North Carolina and 21st. Georgia regiments, to volunteer for this service. Major-General Stuart was ordered to support the attack with a part of his cavalry, and as the superior officer in rank, to command the whole detachment. The two regiments of General Trimble had already marched twentyfive miles, and the additional distance to the Junction made them thirty; but they set out with an eagerness which emulated that of the cavalry. Stuart, having unmasked the enemy's pickets in front of the fortifications of Manassa's, and having sent the regiment of Wickham to the north, in order to arrest the retreat of the garrison, Trimble placed his regiments in line right and left of the railroad, and advanced steadily to the attack. The night was rayless, and the artillery of the place opened upon them at short. range. They knew not what force awaited them in the darkness, but dashing forward, they surmounted the works, and seized two batteries of field guns, with all their men and horses, almost without loss to themselves. The whole entrenchments now fell into their hands without farther resistance, with vast spoils. This gallant attack was a happy illustration of the success which may usually be expected from bold and rapid movements. The place was found crowded with stores for Pope's army, all of which, with three hundred prisoners, eight field-pieces, and two hundred and fifty horses, fell into the hands of the victors, besides two miles of burden cars, laden with army stores and luxuries. The store-houses were found filled with bacon, beef, flour. and ammunition. Everything was here which theConfederates needed. The confessions of Pope show that [520] the loss of these stores was a chief element of his subsequent disasters. It discouraged and intimidated his men, and compelled them to enter the arduous struggle of the three bloody days without adequate rations or ammunition.
On the morning of August 27th, the two regiments of General Trimble, who had been under arms all night were relieved by General Jackson's arrival from Bristoe. He brought with him the divisions of A. P.Hill and Taliaferro, leaving that of Ewell at Bristoe to watch for the approach of Pope, with orders to make head against him as long as practicable; but when pressed by his main force, to retire and join him at Manassa's. Scarcely had General Jackson come upon the ground, when a shot from a distant battery upon the left, announced the purpose of the Federalists to contest it with him, and a brigade made its appearance advancing along the railroad from Alexandria. This was the detachment of Brigadier-General Taylor, of New Jersey, sent out by Halleck to re-open Pope's communications, and to brush away what they supposed was a mere inroad of cavalry. They advanced with all the confidence of ignorance, until they found themselves almost enveloped in the toils. The captured guns were turned against them by Stuart and Trimble; the batteries of Poague and Carpenter poured destructive volleys upon them in front, and the infantry of A. P. Hill threatened them on both sides. General Jackson now pitying their desperate situation, rode toward them alone, waving a white handkerchief as a signal of truce, inviting them to accept quarter. Their answer was a volley of rifle balls. Seeing his compassion thus requited with treachery, he hastened back to his troops and commanded them to let loose their full fury against their foes. In a moment the detachment was routed, their commander slain, and the fugitives, pursued. by Hill and Stuart, were cut to pieces and scattered. [521]
The General now gave the wearied troops a respite, to recompense themselves with the spoils, for their labors. Knowing that means of transportation would be utterly wanting to remove the larger part, he allowed the men to use and carry away whatever they were able to appropriate. And now began a scene in ludicrous contrast with the toils of the previous forced march. Dusty Confederates were seen loading themselves with new clothing, boots, hats, and unwonted luxuries. The men who had for days fed on nothing but green apples and the roasted ears of Indian corn, now regaled themselves with sardines, potted game, and sweetmeats. For several hours the troops held carnival.
General Ewell was not allowed to remain unmolested at Bristoe all the day. In the afternoon, heavy columns of Federalists were seen approaching on the west of the railroad, from the direction ofWarrenton. The 6th and 8th Louisiana regiments of Hays' brigade, with the 60th Georgia, were posted to receive them, masked in the edge of the pine thickets, and supported by several batteries. Two heavy columns of the enemy advanced against them, each consisting of not less than a brigade; but almost at the first volley, they broke and fled in confusion, many of them throwing away their arms. Fresh columns, however, speedily supplied their places, and it was evident that Pope's main force was at hand. General Ewell therefore gave the word to retire, in order to join his friends at Manassa's. This retreat, which must be conducted in the face of a superior force actually engaged with them, was a most delicate and difficult work; but was effected in perfect order, and without loss. As the three regiments which had received the enemy's first attack were withdrawn, the brigade of Early took their places, and held — the enemy in check, with so much steadiness and adroitness, that the stream which separatedBristoe from Manassa's was crossed [522] safely without the capture of a single man. The Federalists then halted at the former point, and left Ewell to pursue his way unmolested, his rear covered by the cavalry regiments of Munford and Rosser. The Railroad bridge across Broad Run was now burned, and after all the troops had supplied their wants from the captured stores, the remainder was destroyed. This task was committed to the division of Taliaferro, which devoted to it the early part of the night, and then retired toward Sudley Church, across the battle-field of July 21st, 1861. There they were joined, on the morning of the 28th of August, by the division of A. P. Hill, which had marched northward toCentreville, and then returned across the Stone Bridge, and by the division of Ewell, which had crossedBull Run and marched up its north bank until it fell into the same route. The cavalry, which had scoured the country as faY as Fairfax Court Horse, also assembled on the flanks of the infantry, and the concentration of the corps was completed.
General Jackson had now successfully executed the first part of the task entrusted to him. He had pierced the enemy's rear, destroyed his supplies, and secured a position between him and his Capital. But in doing this, he had drawn upon himself the whole of the Federal army, and until the remainder ofGeneral Lee's forces should arrive, he must either bear the brunt of their attacks with his single corps, reduced by straggling and casualties to eighteen thousand men; or he must retire again toward his friends, leaving Pope's operations unobstructed, and thus surrender the larger part of the advantages of his brilliant movements. Jackson was not the man to do the latter; he therefore selected a position where he could hope to stand successfully at bay, and prevent Pope's retreat, until sufficient forces arrived to deal with him successfully. One alternative was to remain at Manassa's Junction within the old Confederate entrenchments, [523] but to this there were many conclusive objections. The direct turnpike road from Warrenton, where Pope's army was massed, to Alexandria ran five miles northwest of the Junction, and would be still left open: an avenue more valuable to that General than the railroad, since its bridges and trains were destroyed. The Junction, moreover, was a post of limited extent, ill furnished with water, situated in a champaign every way favorable to the operations of the force having the numerical superiority, and denuded of all cover, by the presence of provious armies. The other alternative was to retire to the north side of the Wavsenton and Alexandria turnpike, nearer to Thoroughfare Gap through which Longstreet was expected to advance, and there occupy the stronger ground, with the advantage of retreat upon the Confederate reserves in case of disaster. From this position, although the road was not directly obstructed, yet the passage of Pope was forbidden; for his army could not expose itself by marching past such a leader as Jackson, who sat, with eighteen thousand men, ready to pounce upon its exposed flanks.
If the reader will recall the description of the battle-field of the first Manassa's he will have before him the position assumed by Jackson. The Warrenton turnpike, running due cast toward Alexandria, is crossed at right angles, a mile and half before it passes the Bull Run at the stone bridge, by the country road which proceeds northward from the Junction to Sudlcy ford, at which the Federal right first crossed the stream on the morning of July 21st, 1861. At this ford, Jackson now rested his left wing, protected by the cavalry brigade of Robertson, while his right stretched eastward across the hills, in a line oblique to the course of Bull Run, toward the road by which Longstreet was expected from Thoroughfare Gap. His front was nearly parallel to the Warrenton turnpike, and distant from it, between one [524] [525] and two miles. The division of A. P. Hill formed his left, that of Ewell his centre, and that of Taliaferro, strengthened by the remainder of the cavalry and the horse artillery of Pelham, his right.
Scarcely had these dispositions been completed, when the enemy was found to be advancing along theWarrenton turnpike in heavy masses, as though to force his way back to Alexandria. Mid-day had now arrived. The second brigade of Taliaferro's division, under the temporary command of Colonel Bradley T. Johnson, which had been detached to watch the turnpike, was directed to skirmish with the front of the Federal column, and obstruct their advance. The remainder of the division of Taliaferro, supported by that of Ewell, was marched by its right flank and toward the turnpike, to attack the enemy in flank. He, perceiving this movement, and the obstruction in his front, at first attempted to file his masses across the open country toward Manassa's Junction, as though to seek some passage over Bull: Run below the stone bridge. But Jackson now threw forward his line with so much energy as to compel him to relinquish this movement, and make a stand. The batteries of Wooding, Carpenter, and Poague were advanced to an elevated hill upon the left and rear of Taliaferro's line of skirmishers, whence they delivered so effective a fire of shell and solid shot upon the dense lines of the Federalists, that their numerous batteries were halted, and placed in position to reply. The Confederate artillery was then promptly removed to another position upon Taliaferro's right, whence they were enabled to enfilade theFederal guns; and the infantry line was again pressed forward, with its front parallel to the Warrenton turnpike, and within a hundred yards of it. Sunset was now near at hand, when, struggle commenced unprecedented in its fury. On Taliaferro's right, the partial screen of an orchard and a cluster of farm-buildings separated [526] him from the highway, which was occupied by the Federal infantry. But, on his left, his line occupied the open field, .and received and returned their volleys at the distance of a hundred yards. Until nine o'clock at night, the first, third, and fourth brigades maintained a stubborn contest upon this ground with successive lines of the enemy, when the latter sullenly retired, and gave up the field. On the left of Taliaferro, Ewell, with a part of his forces, waged a contest of almost equal fury, and with the same results, when the darkness closed the battle, and the Confederates remained masters of the field. In this bloody affair, both the Commander's of the divisions engaged, with many field-officers, were wounded, Taliaferro painfully, and Ewell severely. The latter was struck upon the knee by a rifle-ball, and the joint was so shattered that amputation was necessary to save his, life. During the remainder of Jackson's career he was unable to return to the field, and the General was deprived of his valued co-operation. The first of the three bloody days was now closed, and Jackson stoutly held his own. With one more struggle his safety would be assured; for the Commander-in-Chief, with the corpsof Longstreet, leaving the neighborhood of Jeffersonton on the afternoon of the 26th, and following the route of Jackson through upper Fauquier, was now at the western outlet of Thoroughfare Gap, preparing to force his way through, the next morning, and come to the relief of the laboring advance. On the morning of the 29th this pass was forced; and the coTps of Longstreet, stimulated by the sound of the distant cannon, which told them that Jackson was struggling with the enemy, hurried along the road to Gainesville, where they entered the Warrenton turnpike. Before they reached that village, the indefatigable Stuart, with his cavalry, met them, opened their communication with Jackson's right wing, and informed the Commander-in-Chief of the posture of affairs. [527]
But the narrative must return to the lines of General Jackson. Anxiously did that General watch the distant road which led from Thoroughfare Gap down to the Warrenton turnpike, on the morning of the 29th. His little army was now manifestly confronted by the whole Federal host, which, concentrating itself more toward his left, was preparing to force him back from Bull Run, and to crush him before his supports could arrive. His lines, exhausted by their almost superhuman exertions, thinned by battle, and pallid with hunger, stood grimly at bay; but the stoutest hearts were anxious, in view of the more terrible struggle before them. In the early morning, clouds of dust arising along the Thoroughfare road had mocked their hopes; but they were raised by the Federalists, who, having occupied that pass the day before to obstruct the march of Longstreet, were now retiring upon their masses toward Bristoe Station. As the day verged toward the meridian, other and denser clouds again arose, along the same highway; and soon the couriers of Stuart came, with the welcome news, that it was the corps of Longstreet, advancing to connect with the right of Jackson. Already the Federalists, warned of the shortness of their time, had begun the attack by a heavy cannonade upon that part of his position, at ten o'clock. The batteries of Taliaferro's division now commanded by the brave General Starke, replied. But the head ofGeneral Longstreet's column was now at hand, and threatened to insinuate itself behind the Federal left. They therefore shifted their demonstration to Jackson's left, opening upon that part of his position with a furious cannonade, and preparing vast masses of infantry to force it. While Longstreet deployed his line across the Warrenton turnpike, and fronting toward the east, Jackson's corps was now disposed at right angles to it, along the excavations and embankments of an unfinished railroad, which, crossing Bull Run a half mile below Sudley, ran westward, parallel to the [528] Warrenton turnpike. This work had been begun to connect the city of Alexandria directly with the Manassa's Gap road near Thoroughfare. Running across the hills and vales of an undulating country, and presenting now an elevated embankment and anon a cut, it offered to the Confederates almost the advantages of a regular field-work. HereGeneral Jackson had arranged his infantry in two lines of battle, with the artillery chiefly posted upon eminences in the rear. A. P. Hill formed his left, Ewell his centre, and Starke his right. An interval between his right and the left of Longstreet was occupied by a large collection of the artillery of the latter, posted upon a large hill, whence they assisted, by their fire, in the repulse of the enemy on either hand. Pope, now contenting himself with showing a front against Longstreet, began, at two o'clock, P. M., to hurl his infantry with fury and determination against the lines of Jackson. Especially did the storm of battle rage in front of the left, occupied by the division of A. P. Hill. In defiance of his deadly fire, delivered from the shelter of the railroad embankments, line after line was advanced to close quarters, only to be mowed down, and to recoil in confusion. Soon the second line of Hill was advanced to the support of the first. Six times the Federalists rushed forward in separate and obstinate assaults, and as many times were repulsed. At an interval between the brigade of Gregg, on the extreme left, and that ofThomas, the enemy broke across in great numbers, and threatened to separate the former from his friends, and surround him. But two regiments of the reserve, advancing within ten paces of the triumphant foe, poured such volleys into their dense masses that they were hurled back before this murderous fire, and the lines re-established. The brigade of Hays from the division of Ewell, now commanded by General Lawton, was first brought to the support of Gregg. The struggle raged until the [529] cartridges of the infantry were in many places exhausted. When Hill sent to the gallant Gregg to ask if he could hold his own, he answered, “Tell him I have no ammunition, but I will hold my position with the bayonet.” In several places, the Confederate lines, without a single round of cartridges, lay in the railroad cuts, within a few yards of their enemies, sternly defying their nearer approach with the cold steel, while the staff-officers from the rear sent in a scanty supply of ammunition, by the hand of some daring volunteer, who ventured to run the gantlet of a deadly fire to reach them. In other parts the men, laying aside their empty muskets, seized the stones which lay near, and with them beat back the foe. When the bloody field was reviewed, not a few were found whose skulls were broken with these primitive weapons. But the strength of the extreme left was now exhausted by seven hours of strife; nature could do no more; and General Jackson ordered Early, with his brigade and the 8th Louisiana and 13th Georgia, to relieve Gregg and Hays. The enemy had by this time occupied a considerable tract of the railroad, and the woods in front of it. Early advanced upon them, drove them out of the thickets and across the excavation with fearful slaughter, and pursued them for a distance beyond it, when he was recalled to the original line. With this magnificent charge, the struggle of the day closed. It had raged in similar manner along the centre, where that sturdy veteran, Brigadier-General Trimble, was severely wounded. But the carnage upon the left was most ghastly. Here might be seen upon the fields, the black lines of corpses, clearly defining the positions where the Federal lines of battle had stood and received the deadly volleys of the Confederates; while the woods and railroad cuts were thickly strewn for a mile with killed and wounded. In the division of Hill the loss was also serious; and among the severely wounded were two [530] brigade commanders, Field and Forno. During the heat of the battle, a detachment of Federal troops had penetrated to Jackson's rear, near Sudley Church, and captured a few wounded men and ambulances. The horse artillery of Pelham, with a battalion of cavalry, underMajor Patrick, speedily brushed the annoyance away, and recovered the captures. But this incident cost the army the loss of one of its most enlightened and efficient officers, the chivalrous Patrick, who was mortally wounded while pursuing the fugitives.
While this struggle was raging along Jackson's lines, the corps of Longstreet continued to confront the observing force of Federalists before them, and the batteries of his left engaged those of the enemy in a severe cannonade. As the afternoon advanced, Stuart reported to him the approach of a heavy column of the enemy upon his right and rear, from the direction of Bristoe. This was indeed a corps of the army of McClellan from the peninsula, which, landing on the Potomac, had been pushed forward to supportPope. Against this new enemy Longstreet showed a front, while Stuart, raising a mighty dust along the road near Gainsville, by causing a number of his troopers to drag bundles of brushwood along the highway, persuaded him that some heavy mass of fresh Confederate troops was advancing from Thoroughfare to meet his assault upon Longstreet's right. The Federal commander therefore recoiled, after a feeble demonstration; and, passing by a circuit to the eastward, sought to unite himself with the forces in front of Jackson. Longstreet now advanced several brigades to the attack, with those of Hoodin the van, and until nine o'clock at night, drove back the enemy before him with great vigor, capturing a number of prisoners, a cannon, and three colors. Darkness then closed the bloody day, and theConfederates on every side withdrew to lie upon their arms upon their selected lines of combat. From this respite, [531] the boastful Pope took the pretext to despatch to his masters a pompous bulletin of victory, claiming that the Confederates were repulsed on all hands With a stupidity equal to his impudence, he concealed from himself the fact that this lull in the tempest was but the prelude to its final and resistless burst. The mighty huntsman now had the brutal game secure in his toils, and only awaited the moment of his exhaustion to despatch him.
As Jackson gathered his officers around him in the darkness, at the close of this second act of the tragedy, and prepared to lie down for a short repose under the open sky, their triumph wore a solemn hue. A week of marching and fighting, without any regular supply for their wants, had worn down their energies to a grade where nothing but a determined will could sustain them. Many of the bravest and best had fallen, and the sufferers and the dead were all around them. The Medical Director, DoctorMcGuire, recounting the many casualties which he had witnessed, said, “General, this day has been won by nothing but stark and stern fighting.” “No,” said Jackson, “It has been won by nothing but the blessing and protection of Providence.” It was strong evidence of the devout spirit of the patriot troops, that amidst all these fatigues and horrors, they yet found time for acts of devotion. The Chaplains, after spending the day in attentions to the wounded, at nightfall returned to their regiments, and. gathered such groups in the woods as could be spared from the watches, where they spent a season in prayer and praise. Many were the brave men who joined in these strange and solemn prayer-meetings, whose next worship was offered in the upper sanctuary.
The advance of Longstreet at nightfall, upon the Confederate right had disclosed the fact that the Federalists were posted, in heavy masses, upon a position of great natural strength. The [532] choice offered to General Lee now was, to leave the favorable ground which he had chosen, and taking the aggressive, to dislodge them at a great cost: or else to await their attack, with the prospect of turning their retreat into a disaster if they attempted to cross Bull Run in his immediate front and retire without fighting. He well knew that Pope would scarcely be so rash as to attempt the latter expedient; for the two armies were now at such close quarters, that there was no room for either to turn away without a deadly side blow from the other; and the Federal commander had been so obliging, as to manoeuvre himself into a position which had the stream immediately in its rear, with two practicable crossings for artillery, of which one was a stone arch which a few well directed round shot might have dismantled.General Lee, therefore, calmly awaited the final strugple, standing on the defensive in his previous lines. These formed a vast, obtuse fourchette, presenting its concavity toward the enemy. The left ofLongstreet did not touch the right of Jackson at the angle; but a space of half a mile between the two was occupied by an elevated ridge, which commanded the fonts of both wings. This hill was now crowned with the artillery battalions of Shumaker of Jackson's corps, and S. D. Lee of Longstreet's, making an aggregate of thirty-six pieces. From this arrangement it resulted, first, that the troops of Pope, operating within the jaws of the Confederate army, would naturally become more densely massed than their opponents, and would thus afford a more certain mark for their accurate fire; which no force on earth could ever face in close order, without murderous loss. The second result was, that the superiormomentum of the Federal masses must yet result only in a bloody failure, when hurled against either wing of the Confederates, because they could be enfiladed from the other wing. By these dispositions, the battle was decided before it was fought. The only gleam of [533] good sense which the ill starred Federal leader showed, was in delaying the decisive hour until the late afternoon; so that the friendly darkness might speedily supervene upon the disaster which was destined to follow, and save him from utter destruction. The forenoon of Saturday, August 30th, was therefore spent in a desultory cannonade, addressed first to one, and then to another part of the Confederate lines, with irregular skirmishes interspersed. He was employed in disposing his infantry, under cover of the woods and valleys, chiefly in Jackson's front; for against him he again destined his main attack. The infantry of the latter was still posted along the unfinished railroad, in two lines, the first sheltered, where the ground was favorable, by the excavations and embankments, and the second massed upon the wooded hills above. At half past 3 o'clock, the enemy made a show of attack along the lines of Longstreet. But scarcely had this begun, when they advanced, without preliminary skirmishing, in enormous masses, against Jackson. Three lines of battle surged forward like mighty waves, and rolled up to the Confederate position. As one recoiled before their fire, another took its place, with a dogged resolution, as though determined to break through by sheer weight of numbers. The Federal flags were planted sometimes within twenty paces of the excavations which contained the opposing line; and again the Confederates, after exhausting their ammunition, resorted to the stones of the field to beat back their assailants. When this furious struggle had raged for half an hour, and the wearied lines of Jackson was yielding at some points, he sent word to Longstreet to move for his relief. But his desire was already anticipated; the artillery in the centre was advanced, and wherever the attacking lines of Federalists exposed themselves before Jackson's front, it showered a crushing and enfilading fire upon them. The third and second lines were first broken, and the woods in which they [534] attempted to rally searched with shells. Meantime, the artillery of Ewell's andHill's divisions, from Jackson's rear and left, joined in the melee as position offered. Before this fire in front and flank, the Federal lines wavered, broke, and resolved themselves into huge hordes of men, without order or guidance. General Jackson now ordered the advance of his whole line of infantry; and the Commander-in-Chief, seeing that the moment for the final blow had come, sent a similar order to his right wing. But its energetic leader had divined his wishes, and had already begun the movement. Over several miles of hill and dale, of field and forest, the two lines now swept forward, with a terrible grandeur, closing upon the disordered masses of the enemy like the jaws of a leviathan; while Jacksonupon the left, and Stuart upon the right, urged forward battery after battery at a gallop, to sieze every commanding hill whence they could fire between the gaps, or over the heads of the infantry, and plough up the huddled crowds of fugitives. But at many points, these did, not yield without stubborn resistance. The brigades of Jackson dashed at them with fierce enthusiasm, and such scenes of close encounter and murderous strife were witnessed, as are not often seen on fields of battle. The supreme hour of vengeance had now come; in the expressive phrase of Cromwell, the victors “had their will upon their enemies.” As they drove them for two miles toward Bull Run, they strewed the ground with slaughter, until fury itself was sated and fatigued with the carnival of blood. And now, night again closed upon the third act of the tragedy, black with a double gloom of the battle smoke and a gathering storm; but still the pursuers plied their work with cannon shot and fierce volleys, fired into the populous darkness before them. At ten o'clock they ceased their pursuit, for they found that amidst the confusion of the field, and the obscurity, friend could no longer be [535] distinguished from foe. The army then lay down to rest upon the ground they had won; while all night long, the broken fragments of the Federalists were stealing across the stream, and retreating to the heights of Centreville.
In this three days battle, the Confederate loss was heavy, but that of their enemies was frightful. Compared to it, the carnage of the Chickahominy was child's play. The bloody field told the story of the disproportion for itself, and when the Federal surgeons came upon it under a flag of truce, such was the multitude of the wounded lying helpless upon it, that days were exhausted in collecting them, while many wretches perished miserably of neglect during the delay. This disproportionate carnage was due to the masterly handling of the Confederate troops, to their advantageous position, to the density of the enemy's masses, and especially to the terrible moment of the rout, when the work of destruction was pursued, for a time, without resistance. The Sabbath morning dawned upon a scene in most fearful contrast with its peace and sanctity. The storm which had gathered during the night was descending in a comfortless rain, drenching the ghastly dead, the miserable wounded, and the weary victors. The soldiers of Jackson arose from the ground stiffened with the cold, and after devoting a few hours to refreshment, resumed the march, while those of Longstreet remained to bury the dead and collect the spoils. Stuart had reported that he found the enemy rallied upon the heights of Centreville, commanding the Warrenton turnpike, where General Joseph E. Johnston had constructed a powerful line of works, the first winter of the war, which were capable of defence either in front or rear. Here the fragments ofPope, supported by large reinforcements from the army of McClellan, again showed a front against the pursuers. Jackson was therefore directed to turn this position, and compel the retreat of the enemy from it [536] without a battle. To effect this, he crossed the Bull Run at Sudley, and marching northward by a country road, came the next day into the Little River turnpike, which leads eastward, and intersects theWarrenton road at Fairfax Court House, far in the rear of Centreville. No sooner was this movement perceived by the enemy, than they resumed a hasty retreat. But as their crowded column approached Fairfax Court House, they found Jackson at hand, prepared to strike their line of march from the side. They therefore detached a strong force to make head against him, and posted it upon a ridge near the little hamlet of Germantown. As soon as Jackson ascertained the position of this force, he threw his infantry into line of battle, Hill on the right, Ewell in the centre, and his old division on the left, and advanced to the assault. The enemy, knowing that the salvation of their army depended upon them, made a desperate resistance, and the combat assumed a sudden fury in the front of Hill, equal to that of any previous struggle. The enemy were encouraged by a momentary success in breaking Hayes' brigade, but his lines were immediately reinstated by the reserves, and after a short but bloody strife, the battle died away as suddenly as it had begun, and the enemy retired in the darkness. This affair, which was known as the battle of Ox Hill, closed the evening of September 1st. Its thunders were aggravated by those of a tempest, which burst upon the combatants just before the battle was joined, and theConfederates fought under the disadvantage of the rain, which was swept by a violent wind directly into their faces. Two Federal Generals fell here, in front of Hill's division, Kearney and Stephens, and their death doubtless completed the discouragement of their troops. The next morning, the Federalists were within reach of their powerful works before Washington, and the pursuit was arrested. The Commander-in. Chief now purposed to transfer the strife to a new arena. [537]
The total loss of the Confederate army in this series of battles was about seven thousand five hundred, of whom eleven hundred were killed upon the field. Of this loss, nearly five thousand fell upon the corpsof Jackson; out of which number eight hundred and five officers and men were killed. The captures from him, in the whole of the long struggle, amounted to only thirtyfive. The excessive loss in his command is explained by the fact that it was always the advance, and that the enemy continually directed the chief fury of his attacks upon him. The results of the battle of Manassa's were the capture of seven thousand prisoners, in addition to two thousand wounded left in the hands of the Confederates; with twenty thousand small arms, thirty pieces of artillery, numerous colors, and a large amount of stores; and the deliverance of Northern Virginia from the footsteps of the invader, save where he still clung to a few miles along the Potomac included within his works. General Jackson closed his Report of the Campaign with these words:--
“For these great and signal victories our sincere and humble thanks are due unto Almighty God. We should in all things acknowledge the hand of Him who reigns in Heaven, and rules among the armies of men. In view of the arduous labors and great privations the troops were called to endure, and the isolated and perilous position which the command occupied, while engaged with greatly superior numbers of the enemy, we can but express the grateful conviction of our mind, that God was with us, and gave us the victory; and unto His holy name be the praise.”
Few words are needed to point out the share which Jackson and his corps merited, in the glory of the second victory of Manassa's. To the rapidity of his march, the promptitude and skill of his action in seizing and destroying the Junction, the wisdom which guided his selection of a position, and the heroic tenacity [538] with which he held it against fearful odds until the arrival of General Lee, was the splendid result chiefly due. It was so ordered, as if to illustrate the superior prowess of the Confederate soldiery, that in this battle the positions of the combatants in July, 1861, were almost precisely reversed. The ground held by Jackson in the second battle, was that held by McDowell in the first; and the ground from which the Confederates drove Pope, at nightfall, the 30th of August, was that from whichMcDowell could not drive them, on the 21st of July; while the preponderance of numbers was still upon the Federal side.
The blunders of Pope in this short campaign,--which were almost as numerous as it was possible to make them,--are an instructive study to the commanders of armies. First, it was little short of lunacy to adopt, in Culpepper, a line of operations along the Orange Railroad, and even west of it, which was parallel to the Rapid Ann — the temporary base of the Confederates -in the presence of such masters of the art of war as Lee and Jackson. Instead of extending his right so far toward Madison, with the preposterous design of turning Gordonsville, upon the west, he should have directed the head of his column toward the lower course of the Rapid Ann, and perpendicular to it. He would thus have covered his own line of advance; and, if he succeeded in crossing that river, would have uncovered the communications of his adversary, which would then have been by the Central Railroad. Nothing but the delay of Lee's reserves in reaching Raccoon Ford, saved Pope here from a disaster far worse than that of Manassa's. Second: after retiring across the Rappahannock,--which was a measure dictated by so stringent a necessity that a fool could not err therein,--he repeated the old, but seductive folly, of attempting to hold a river as a defensive line, by extending his whole force along its immediate bank, to watch and resist the passage of his opponent. Although a [539] river is, to some extent, a barrier to the assailant attempting to cross it in the face of a force defending it; yet, if the latter consigns itself to the stationary defensive along its banks, the other is always enabled thereby to baffle his vigilance at some one point; or to mass at a single spot a preponderance of force, which will more than compensate him for the resistance of the natural obstruction, and break its way over it. Then the barrier, broken at one point, becomes useless, and must be forsaken at all. Such was the result here; the stream was passed above Pope's right, before he was in condition to prevent it. His next mistake was in the singular inefficiency of his cavalry, which seems to have been more busy in harrying the hen-roosts of the citizens, than in ascertaining whither the swift-footed Jackson was bent, when he disappeared to the northwest from his position before Warrenton Springs. Thus Pope was left in a shameful ignorance, even after his communications were cut at Bristoe Station, whether it was done by a serious force, or by an audacious incursion of horse. But on the evening of the 27th, at least, he was taught, in a bloody lesson by Ewell, that he had a formidable foe in his rear. The plainest deduction might have convinced him, that such a General as Lee would not have placed such a body of infantry and artillery, as he saw grimly confronting him across Broad Run at the close of that combat, so far from its base, without powerful supports.
From that moment the goal of safety for Pope should have been Centreville; and he should have lost no time in concentrating his whole army by forced marches, to strike the formidable obstruction from his rear, and secure his retreat thither. There he would have been front to front with his adversary once more, and within reach of the support of McClellan, by whose aid he might have advanced again, and quickly resumed his lost ground. But although it is but one march from Warrentcn, where his [540] headquarters were, to Manassa's, two and a half precious days were wasted, between the 26th, whenJackson struck Bristoe, and the 29th, when Longstreet reached his right; and neither was Jacksoncrushed, nor Thoroughfare Gap effectually held, nor the army safely transferred to Centreville. At mid-day, on the 29th, the arrival of Longstreet rendered his fortunes difficult enough; but, as though he were intent to make them desperate, when his left was incommoded by the appearance of Longstreet's column behind it, instead of retiring squarely from his antagonists, keeping his right upon Bull Run, until his. left met the support of the approaching column of Fitz-John Porter, from Aquia, he weakly sought to disengage his left, by manceuvring to his right, and again confining his onset to the lines of Jackson. These were skilfully retracted, to lead him into the trap; and the result was, that on the third and decisive day, he was com-r pelled to fight with the stream in his immediate rear, and with his whole army inclosed within the limits of the fatal fourchette. The Confederates might well pray that such leaders should ever command the armies of their enemies.
This chapter will be closed with a characteristic letter from General Jackson to his wife.
September 1st, 1862.
We were engaged with the enemy at and near Manassa's Junction Tuesday and Wednesday, and again near the battle-field of Manassa's on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday; in all of which God was with us, and gave us the victory. All Glory be to His holy name! May He ever be with us, is my earnest prayer, and we ever be His devoted people. It greatly encourages me to feel that so many of God's people are praying for that part of our forces under my command. The Lord has answered their prayers; and my trust is in Him, that He will still continue to do [541] so. God, in His providence, has again placed us across Bull Run; and I pray that He will make our arms entirely successful, and that the glory will be given to His holy name, and none of it to man.
God has blessed and preserved me through His great mercy.
Thus his soul dwelt habitually upon the plain and familiar promises of Gospel blessings, with a simplicity of faith like that of the little child. He did not entertain his mind with theological refinements and pretended profundities or novelties; but fed it with those known truths which are the common nourishment of all God's people, wise and simple, and which are, therefore, the greatest truths of redemption. The eminence of his Christian character was not in that he affected to see doctrines unknown or recondite to others; but in this: that he embraced the doctrines common to all, with a faith so entire and prevalent. This character of his religion often suggested to those less spiritually minded than himself the opinion, that his was a common-place understanding. They forgot that it is by receiving the kingdom of God as a little child that we must enter therein. When they met Jackson in council or in action, in his own profession, they soon learned their mistake, and recognized in him the original force and power of true greatness. [542]
Chapter 17: the campaign in Maryland.
The Confederates had abundant reason to be satisfied with the results of the summer's operations. With an aggregate of about eighty thousand men in all Virginia, they had rescued the State from the grasp ofMcClellan, with his two hundred and twenty-three thousand. No invaders now polluted its soil, save at the fortified posts along the coast, where they were protected by their overwhelming naval forces, atAlexandria, and at Harper's Ferry, and Martinsburg in the Great Valley. The powerful expedition ofBurnside had been recalled from North Carolina, leaving no fruits of its exertions in the hands of his Government, except the occupation of a few feeble places. The “grand army” had been reduced by battle, desertions, captures, and sickness, from its huge proportions, so that McClellan was now able to set in the field only ninety thousand men, by concentrating all those parts which had lately outnumbered and oppressed the Confederates, from the extreme west of Maryland to the capes of the Carolinian coast. The grateful people of the South might well exclaim with Jackson, in view of so grand a deliverance: “Behold! What hath God wrought!”
General Lee now determined to pursue his advantages by invading the country of his enemy in turn, and thus giving such occupation to him as would secure to Virginia, during the remainder of the season, a respite from the cruel devastations it [543] had so long suffered.. The temper of the South demanded it, swelling with the grief of its mighty wrongs, and hungering for righteous retribution. Wise policy dictated that the soil of Virginia should, if possible, be relieved of the burden of the invading and the patriot armies, which it had so long borne, and that their ravages should be retorted upon the aggressor.Maryland, it was known, had succumbed reluctantly to his yoke, and the hope was entertained that the presence of the southern army would inspirit its people to attempt something in aid of their own liberation: or that, at least, the well-grounded fears of the despot lest their discontent should endanger his Capital, would detain so large a force to defend it and to hold them prostrate, that his army in the field might be defeated upon their own soil, and a successful incursion might carry a wholesome terror into the heart of Pennsylvania. The two veteran divisions of R. H. Anderson and D. H. Hill had now overtaken the main army, diminished indeed by the losses of thepeninsular campaign, but in excellent condition. Indeed, the former of these had reached Manassa's plains on the 30th of August, early enough to support Longstreet's centre, in its decisive advance against Pope. The fragments of his army, reinforced by McClellan, were now ensconced within their lines near Alexandria, under the skilful direction of the latter General; and to attack them there would be attended with too prodigal a waste of patriot blood. General Lee therefore determined to turn aside and promptly cross the Potomac. But notwithstanding the accessions he had just received, he was made conscious, in the very attempt, of that cruel disparity of means and numbers, which robbed the Confederates of the larger part of the fruits, of their heroism. The invasion of Maryland, he well knew, would stimulate that recruiting of the depleted armies of the enemy, which their population made so easy; while he could expect no [544] material increase of his force. They would operate along great railroads, and sustain their troops with a lavish supply of transportation, stores, and ammunition, from their vast depots just at hand. He had now left his railroad communication far behind, and must provide for the wants of his army with scanty trains of wagons; while ordnance, clothing, and shoes were deficient, and impossible to obtain in adequate quantities. No generals, therefore, ever adopted a bolder project than that of Lee and Jackson, or executed it with greater promptitude. The battle of Ox Hill ended at nightfall, September 1st, amidst thunder, tempest, and a deluge of rain. On the 2nd the last remains of the beaten Federals were whipped in under the shelter of their ramparts. On the 3rd the Confederate army was upon the march for the fords of the Potomac!
The invasion determined on, two places offered themselves to General Lee for penetrating intoMaryland. If he removed his army directly across the Blue Ridge to the Lower Valley, he could easily brush away the force which occupied Martinsburg; when the valley of central Pennsylvania would lie open before him, and his own line of communication could be established with the Central Virginia Railroad at Staunton, along that still abundant country. Or else, he might cross the Potomac between theFederal fortifications and the Blue Ridge, and entering the middle regions of Maryland, proceed as the movements of the enemy should indicate. He adopted the latter plan. His purpose was, first to draw theFederal army from the Virginian bank by violently threatening their Capital and Baltimore, from the other side, so that his field hospitals at Manassa's Plains, his own communications toward Orange, and the important work of removing his prisoners, wounded and spoils, from the scene of his late triumphs, might be relieved from their incursions for a Season. He also hoped, that when the head of his great column [545] began to insinuate itself between Washington and Harper's Ferry, the Federal detachment at the latter place would act upon the obvious dictate of the military art, evacuate that place to him without a struggle, and retire into communication with their friends; thus clearing his left of that annoyance. His purpose was then to move toward Western Maryland and Central Pennsylvania, establish his communications with the valley of Virginia, and drawing the Federalists afar from their base at Washington, fight them beyond the mountains. He therefore put the army in motion, September the 3rd, with the cavalry of Stuart and the fresh division of D. H. Hill in front, followed by the corps ofJackson, which still formed the body of the advanced force. He marched to Drainsville that day, and toLeesburg, the countyseat of Loudoun, the 4th of September. On the 5th, the corps passed thePotomac, at White's Ford, near Edwards' Ferry, a few miles distant, just below the scene of the bloody repulse of Ball's bluff, and established themselves upon the soil of Maryland without opposition. At this place the great river spreads itself out to the width of more than half a mile, over a pebbly and level bed; and its floods, reduced in volume by the summer heats, were but two or three feet deep. The infantry, and even the cannoneers passed, by wading through the water. All day long the column poured across, belting the shining river with a thin, dark line; and as the feet of the men were planted upon the northern bank, they uttered their enthusiasm in hearty cheers. Many a gallant man, who now touched that soil, was destined to sleep, till the last day, within it, in a stranger's grave. The first care of the Confederates, after gaining the northern bank, was to interrupt the navigation of the canal effectually, by destroying its locks, and opening the embankments, so that the waters escaped and left its bed dry. Jackson then advanced northward, and on the 6th of September occupied the Baltimore and Ohio [546] Railroad, and the flourishing town of Frederick. The arrival of the Confederates in Maryland awakened in a part of the population — a faint glow of enthusiasm. A committee of citizens met General Jackson with the present of a costly horse, and a few hundreds of the young men enlisted in the patriot army. But the opinions of the people in the upper regions of the State were divided, and the major part merely acquiesced in the occupation of the country, with a truckling caution. General Jackson employed the most stringent measures against straggling, and every outrage; and established in the town a police so strict, that its citizens were almost unconscious of the inconveniences of hostile occupation. Two appearances were now manifest in strong contrast, which have not failed to re-appear at every return of the Confederate army to the northern soil; on their part a generous forbearance and respect for private rights, almost incredible in men who had left their own homes desolated by outrages so diabolical; and on the part of the so called Union population, a disgusting brutality, which declared itself incompetent even to comprehend their magnanimity, by imputing it uniformly to fear.
All direct communication between Washington and Harper's Ferry was now severed. The first effect which General Lee hoped from his movement was immediately gained. McClellan, who was placed by the verbal request of Lincoln, in supreme command, began at once to withdraw his troops to the north bank of the Potomac; and the Confederate rear was delivered from all serious annoyance, save the insults of flying parties of cavalry. The other consequence, the evacuation of Harper's Ferry andMartinsburg, would also have followed, if the sound discretion of McClellan had prevailed. No sooner had he fully discovered General Lee's drift, than he requested of Halleck that the troops there and atHarper's Ferry, useless and in [547] peril where they were, should be withdrawn and brought into connexion with him. His advice was disregarded, and the speedy capture of both those detachments evinced at once the soundness of his counsel and the soundness of General Lee's expectation, that his advance on Frederick ought naturally to result in the peaceable occupation of Harper's Ferry by theConfederates. The blunder of the Federalists in remaining there, did, indeed, exert an unforeseen and indirect influence in favor of their army, as will appear in the sequel; but, as it was one which was not designed by either Halleck or McClellan, it does not acquit the former of these Generals from the charge of an error of judgment. This commander was now seized with a panic for the safety ofWashington, which obfuscated his own senses, and obstructed, for a time, every effort of McClellan to act with vigor against the invaders. He was haunted with the fear that the march into Maryland was a feint,--that only a small detachment was there, while the bulk of their army was somehow hidden away in some limbus in the woods of Fairfax, whence the terrible Jackson would suddenly emerge, seize the lines of Arlington while denuded of their defenders, and thunder with his cannon upon the White House. Again, he imagined that he would suddenly recross the Potomac somewhere in the mountains, march down its southern bank, pass it a third time below McClellan's army, and, approaching Washington by its north side, capture the place, with the precious persons of the President and his minions, before the latter General could turn about. A few days after, when he heard that Jackson was indeed passing to the south side of the Potomac at Williamsport, a hundred miles away, he was sure that the catastrophe was at hand. Hence, he detained McClellan in his march; he entreated him not to proceed far from theCapital; he warned him to look well to his endangered left. These fancies of the Generalissimo are [548] of interest only as showing the conviction of Jackson's enemies, that there was nothing which was not within reach of his rapid audacity, and as evincing how happily his prowess confounded their counsels.
These uncertain and dilatory movements of the enemy gave General Jackson a respite from the 6th to the 10th of September, at Frederick, which he improved in resting and refitting his command. The day after his arrival was the Sabbath. Such was the order and discipline of the invading army, that all the churches were opened, and the people attended their worship, with their wives and children, as in profound peace. Jackson himself appeared in the German Reformed Church, as a devout worshipper. He expressed to his wife his lively delight in participating in the divine service again, after so many weeks of privation, with a regular Christian assembly, and in a commodious temple, consecrated to God.
Meantime his cavalry, under the gallant Colonel Munford, with some supporting force, observed the approaches of the enemy on the side of Washington. This officer, who had just distinguished himself on the plains of Manassa's in the most'brilliant cavalry charge of the war, skirmished daily with the enemy's advance; and, as their masses began to press more heavily upon him, fell back toward Frederick. The whole Confederate army had arrived there, and was encamped near the town. General Lee now assembled his leading Generals in council, to devise a plan of operations for the approaching shock of arms. Harper's Ferry had not been evacuated, as he hoped. His first design, of withdrawing his army in a body toward Western Maryland, for the purpose of threatening Pennsylvania, and fighting McClellanupon ground of his own selection, was now beset with this diffioulty: that its execution would leave the garriso) at Harper's Ferry to re-open their communications with their friends, to [549] receive an accession of strength, and to sit upon his flank, threatening his new line of supply up the valley ofVirginia. Two other plans remained: the one was to leave Harper's Ferry to itself for the present, to concentrate the whole army in a good position, and fight McClellan as he advanced. The other was to withdraw the army west of the mountains, as at first designed, but by different routes, embracing the reduction of Harper's Ferry by a rapid combination in this movement; and then to re-assemble the whole at some favorable position in that region, for the decisive struggle with McClellan. The former was advocated by Jackson; he feared lest the other system of movements should prove too complex for realizing that punctual and complete concentration which sound policy required. The latter, being preferred by the Commander-in-Chief was adopted. It would be unjust to point to its partial results as proof of super rior sagacity in Jackson, for the impartial reader would remember that the plan of his preference was never tried; and, if it had been, the test of experiment might have shown that it also was only capable of imperfect success. It should be added that the execution of the plan which was actually adopted was marred, in some measure, by the untimely disclosure of it to the enemy. Either project was bold, and its execution would have been delicate and hazardous. The purposes of General Lee cannot be so clearly set forth in any way as by the order which unfolded them to his Lieutenants, issued atFrederick, September 9th:--
The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagerstown road. GeneralJackson's command will form the advance, and, after passing Middletown with such portion as he may select, will take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at As most convenient point, and by Friday night take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, capture such of [550] the enemy as may be at Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harper's Ferry.
General Longstreet's command will pursue the same road as far as Boonesborough, where it will halt with the reserve, supply, and baggage trains of the army.
General McLaws, with his own division, and that of General R. H. Anderson, will followGeneral Longstreet; on reaching Middletown he will take the route to Harper's Ferry, and by Friday morning possess himself of the Maryland Heights, and endeavor to capture the enemy at Harper's Ferry and its vicinity.
General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek's Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning; Key's Ford on his left, and the road between the end of the mountain and the. Potomac on his right. He will, as far as practicable, co-operate with General McLaws and General Jackson in intercepting the retreat of the enemy.
General D. H. Hill's division will form the rear-guard of the army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve artillery, ordnance, and supply-trains, &c., will precedeGeneral Hill.
General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany the commands of GeneralsLongstreet, Jackson, and McLaws; and with the main body of the cavalry will cover the route of the army, and bring up all stragglers that may have been left behind.
The commands of Generals Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will join the main body of the army atGreensborough or Hagerstown.
[551]
It will be seen that the advance was again committed to General Jackson, together with the task of making the longer circuit, and reducing Harper's Ferry. On the morning of Wednesday, September 10th, he set out, and marched across the mountains to Boonsborough. The next day, leavingHagerstown on his right, General Jackson marched to Williamsport; and crossing the Potomac at that place, re-entered Virginia a full day's march west of Harper's Ferry. Then, dividing his forces, he sentGeneral A. P. Hill on the direct road to Martinsburg; while he, with the other two divisions, moved to the North Mountain Depot, the nearest station west of that town. The object of these movements was to prevent the garrison of Martinsburg from escaping by the west or north. Their commander, Brigadier-General White, finding no other outlet, deserted the place on the approach of the Confederates, and retired to Harper's Ferry. They entered Martinsburg on the morning of the 12th of September, and found many valuable stores abandoned by the enemy. By the patriotic part of the population of this oppressed town General Jackson was received with an uncontrollable outburst of enthusiasm. He was now in his own military district again,--his beloved Valley; and he appeared among the astonished and delighted people almost as a visitor from the skies. The females, especially, to whom his purity and domestic virtues made him as dear as his lofty chivalry, crowded around him with their affectionate greetings; while the foremost besieged him for some little souvenir. Blushing with embarrassment, he said: “Really, ladies, this is the first time I was ever surrounded by the enemy;” and disengaged himself from them. Allotting scanty time to the indulgence of this popular emotion, he pressed forward the same day toward Harper's Ferry, and approached it from the west at eleven o'clock on the morning of the 13th. His two partners in the enterprise, Generals McLaws and [552] Walker, had not yet arrived; and it is striking evidence of his celerity, that while they had but the distance of a day's march to traverse, he completed a circuit of more than sixty miles, and arrived first. Placing his signal officer upon a conspicuous eminence, he began immediately to question the neighboring heights of Loudoun andMaryland, but received no response. He then sent by couriers; and, during the night of the 13th, received answer that General McLaws had succeeded in seizing the Maryland Heights, after a spirited and successful combat, about four and a half o'clock, P. M., while General Walker had the same evening occupied the Loudoun Heights with two regiments, without opposition.
The village of Harper's Ferry has already been described, as occupying the angle between the Potomacand Shenandoah, where these two rivers unite, immediately before their passage through the gorge of the Blue Ridge. The town ascends, in a rambling fashion, a ridge which fills the space between the two rivers, and which is itself almost a mountain. This range of highlands, known as Bolivar Heights, upon its reverse, presents a regular acclivity, looking toward the southwest over the open country of the valley, which extends from the Shenandoah to the Potomac. The former stream separates them from theLoudoun Heights, and across the latter, they are confronted by the Maryland Heights. Along the crest of Bolivar Heights the Federalists had constructed a defensive line of earthworks, with heavy abattis, and many batteries of artillery. On the morning of September 14th, General Jackson placed himself in communication with his associates, and taking the chief direction as senior officer, proceeded to dispose everything for the capture of the place, with its entire garrison. Brigadier-General Walker carried four rifled cannon to the crest of Loudoun Heights, supported by a portion of his infantry; while with the remainder he guarded [553] the roads by which the enemy might seek to escape eastward. Major-General McLaws established himself in Pleasant Valley, a mountain vale embraced between the main crest of the Blue Ridge, and a subsidiary range parallel to it on the west, known as Elk Ridge. It is the southern promontory of this, which,--immediately overlooking the river and village, is known asMaryland Heights. After seizing this commanding position, as has been related, he devoted the night of the 13th and the forenoon of the 14th, to constructing a road along the crest of Elk Ridge, by which cannon could be carried out upon its southern extremity. By two o'clock P. M. four pieces of artillery were established there, with great labor, overlooking the whole town, and a part of the enemy's works on Bolivar Heights. The remainder of General McLaws' force was employed in watching the outlets from Harper's Ferry down the Potomac, where the main road, the railroad and the caaal, passed under the mountain's foot, and to guarding his real against the approach of the heavy force of McClellan; who sought to raise the siege by pressing him from the north. But while the guns of McLaws and Walkerupon the mountains now rendered the town untenable to the Federalists, they could not dislodge them from their main line upon Bolivar Heights; and here, it was plain, they would cling, in the hope of being relieved by McClellan, until the place was actually forced. So that the main struggle, after all, fell to thecorps of General Jackson. He directed the division of Hill toward the Shenandoah, and that ofTaliaferro, under Brigadier-General J. R. Jones, to the banks of the Potomac. The division of Ewell, under Brigadier-General Lawton, marched upon the Charlestown turnpike, and supported Hill. On the 14th General Jackson, observing an eminence upon the extreme right of the enemy's line, and next thePotomac, occupied only by horsemen, directed the Stonewall Brigade, under Colonel Grigsby, to seize it. This [554] was done without much difficulty; and the hill was at once crowned by the batteries ofPoague and Carpenter. On his right, a similar operation, of still greater importance, was happily effected by General A. P. Hill. Perceiving an elevated piece of ground, (whence the Federal position along Bolivar Heights could be enfiladed at the distance of only a thousand yards,) which seemed to be defended by infantry behind a heavy abattis without artillery, Hill sent three brigades under GeneralPender, to storm it. This was effected in most gallant style, and with slight loss. During the night MajorWalker, director of his artillery, by indefatigable exertions, carried several batteries to the position thus won; while the remainder of the infantry of the division, availing themselves of the darkness, and the precipitous ravines which descend to the Shenandoah, insinuated themselves down its left bank, and took post in rear of the enemy's left. By these dispositions, the fate of the garrison was sealed. ButGeneral Jackson, to make sure of his work, also directed his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield, to pass eleven pieces of artillery from Ewell's division across the Shenandoah, and establish them upon its right bank, so as to take a part of the Federal line in reverse. To the division of Ewell was assigned the front attack, in the centre.
This arrangement of the Confederate forces has been described in its completeness, because there is no more beautiful instance in the whole history of the military art, of a grand combination absolutely complete and punctual, irrevocably deciding the struggle before it was begun, and yielding a perfect result, which left nothing more to be desired. In the afternoon of the 14th, the guns of McLaws andWalker, upon the two mountains, had given the enemy a foretaste of their overthrow, by silencing their batteries nearer the Potomac, and searching the whole encampment and barracks with their shells at will. [555] But Jackson was now ready also; and at dawn on the 15th he proceeded to give to his adversary the coup de grace. He ordered all the different batteries to open at once. McLaws andWalker plunged their shot among the Federal masses from the heights; Poague and Carpenter scourged their right with a resistless fire; Lawton advanced to the attack with artillery and infantry in front; and the enfilading batteries of General Hill and Colonel Crutchfield swept their men from the ramparts by a storm of projectiles. After an hour of furious cannonading, all the Federal batteries were silenced.General Jackson had directed that at this signal, Hill should instantly advance, and storm the place upon the right. His brigades were just moving, the gallant Pender again in front, supported by two advanced batt, ries, when amidst the surges of smoke, a white flag was seen waving from a prominent height within the town. Hill arrested the tempest of battle at once; and sending an officer to ascertain tile purpose of the enemy to surrender, soon after entered the town, and received the submission of its commander. The senior officer present, Colonel Miles, had just fallen by a mortal wound; Brigadier-General White, the next in command, surrendered at discretion, with a garrison of eleven thousand men, seventy-three pieces of artillery, thirteen thousand stand of small arms, a great. number of wagons and horses, and a vast accumulation of stores of every description. When General Hill entered the place, all was confusion and panic, and the defenders had already lost every appearance of subordination.
General Jackson granted most liberal terms to the prisoners, although they had placed themselves at his will. The officers were dismissed with their side-arms and personal effects, upon their parole; and wagons, with horses, lent them to remove their baggage to the Federal lines. The privates also, were disarmed, and released upon parole. The force of General Lee was too [556] small to permit, at this critical hour, the detachment of men to conduct them into the interior. This magnificent capture confirmed the judgment of General Joseph E. Johnston, who decided in 1861 that Harper's Ferry was an untenable position for a garrison menaced by a large army. The only resource for the Federalcommander, when he saw his enemies approaching, was a retreat to the Maryland Heights. These commanded the Loudoun Heights, as they, in turn, commanded the village. He should have retreated thither at the beginning with his light artillery, destroyed his stores, and broken up the bridges between himself and Harper's Ferry. That place would have then been as untenable to Jackson as it had been to him, and he would have speedily restored communication between himself and McClellan, who was approaching from the north.
The surrender of Harper's Ferry was received at 9 o'clock A. M., the 15th of September. GeneralJackson, assigning to Hill the receiving of the captured persons and property, immediately resumed his march to rejoin General Lee at Sharpsburg with his two remaining divisions. By a toilsome night march, he reached that place on the morning of Tuesday, September 16th. He also ordered McLaws andWalker to descend, pass through Harper's Ferry, and follow him. The Commander-in-Chief was now demanding their presence with urgency. To understand its cause, other lines of events must be resumed.
On the 12th of September, the advance of McClellan's grand army having discovered that all theConfederates had left Frederick, ventured to enter the place. The next day, a copy of General Lee's order, directing the movements of his whole army, which had been unfortunately dropped in the town, was discovered and sent to the Federal General. Satisfied at once of its authenticity, he perceived that he now had the clew for which he had been groping so cautiously, and determined to disregard the [557] groundless fears of the despotism at Washington, and to press the Confederates, henceforward, with vigor. He saw correctly that celerity of movement might now make him master of the situation, and adopted a plan of operations dictated by the highest skill. This was to push his great army westward as rapidly as possible by several parallel routes so near together as to render a concentration on either rapid and easy; to feel all the passes across the mountain which were held by Lee, and as soon as he effected an entrance at any, to collect his whole force beyond that barrier between the Confederatesnear Harper's Ferry and the other wing, supposed to be tending toward Hagerstown; to crush the former first, delivering the beleaguered garrison, and then turn upon the latter. That all this was not effected, was due to the surprising promptitude with which Jackson reduced Harper's Ferry, and to the heroic tenacity of McLaws and D. H. Hill in holding the Pleasant Valley and Boonsborough Gap against him, until the Confederate army could be concentrated. On the 14th, the Federal left wing, in great force, under General Franklin, forced Crampton's Gap, by which McLaws had approached Harper's Ferry. But when they passed the first crest of the mountain, they found McLaws, with a strong rear-guard, drawn up across the Pleasant Valley with so bold a front, that they feared both to attack him and to expose their flank by proceeding farther west. Here Franklin lost a day invaluable to his commander, by pausing to confront McLaws until the fall of Harper's Ferry on the 15th opened to the latter a safe exit, by which he retired toward the appointed rendezvous. On the 14th of September, also, the remainder of the Federal army, moving from Frederick by the main road toward Boonsbororough hurled its vast masses all day against D. H. Hill, in the mountain pass in front of that place. This determined soldier held his ground with less than five [558] thousand men, when General Longstreetcoming to his support in the afternoon, sustained the onset until nightfall. They then withdrew their divisions toward Sharpsburg, under favor of the darkness, and arrived at that position on the 15th, while their enemies pursued sluggishly, bravely resisted by the cavalry of FitzHugh Lee. In the combat of Boonsborough Gap, McClellan, with that usual exaggeration of the numbers of his enemy to which his timid temperament inclined him, placed the force of D. H. Hill at fifteen thousand, and that of Longstreetat as many more. A large portion of his army arrived in front of the Confederate position at Sharpsburgon the same day with them, and he might have immediately attacked with the prospect of overwhelming the three divisions opposed to him. But the absence of Franklin with his whole left wing, which was detained in Pleasant Valley by McLaws, the cumbrous size of his vast and sluggish host, and his own caution, consumed both that day and the 16th. Then, two divisions of the corps of Jackson and that ofGeneral Walker were in position, and the hope of beating the Southern army in detail was at an end.
The position selected-by General Lee for his final colcentration is marked by the little village ofSharpsburg, a cluster of German farm-houses, which had spent its quiet existence amidst the hills and woods, dreaming little of the fame which was to connect its name forever with the greatest battle of this gigantic campaign. It is situated at the intersection of six roads, two and a half miles east of the Potomac, and one mile west of Antietam Creek, a picturesque mill-stream, which descends from the north, and separates between the rolling hills of the great valley, and the long, sloping ridges which form the western bases of the Blue Ridge, or South Mountain. The roads which centre at the village lead southward to Harper's Ferry, northward to Hagerstown, westward to Shepherdstown, upon theVirginian [559] [560] shore of the Potomac, eastward to Boonsborough, and southeastward toPleasant Valley. It was by the last two that McClellan's army approached; and these highways passed the Antietam upon substantial bridges of stone; while other practicable crossings, above and below, were offered by fords and country roads of less note. The country around Sharpsburg is elevated and rolling, with woods, fields, farm-houses, and orchards interspersed, divided by stone fences, and scarred here and there with ledges of limestone which project a few feet from the soil. It offered, therefore, a strong defensive position for an army receiving the attack of its enemies; but the ground lay under two grave objections, of which the one was, that this army had the Potomac in its immediate rear, and the other, that its lines were almost enfiladed by the heavy rifled artillery of the assailants, posted upon the ascending ridges which rose from the eastern margin of the Antietam toward the mountain. Here, however, General Lee began the formation of his line of battle, on the 15th of September, by placing the divisions of D. H. Hill, Longstreet and Hood upon the range of hills in front of Sharpsburg, and overlooking Antietam Creek. His line was nearly parallel to this stream, and had Longstreet upon the right and Hill upon the left of the road which led to Boonsborough: while Hood's two brigades, stationed upon the left of Hill, extended that wing to the highway leading to Hagerstown. The evening of that day was expended by the Federalists in feeble reconnoissances. But on the morning of the 16th they were evidently busy in posting their batteries, and disposing their vast masses for a pitched battle. At mid-day General Jackson arrived, with the two divisions under the command of Brigadier-GeneralsJones and Lawton, and, after granting his men a few hours' repose, took position on the left of Hood, nearly filling the space between the Hagerstown road and the Potomac. To rest his extreme left in [561] the neighborhood of the river, he was compelled to retract it somewhat from the direct line. This exposed him to two inconveniences,--that his position was thereby more completely enfiladed by hostile batteries in front of his right, and that space was thus left between him and the Antietam for the collecting of a heavy force of the Federalists before his left, and on the hither side of that barrier. But no other choice was left him; the vast numbers of McClellan would otherwise have enabled that General to swing around between his extreme left and the river. General Walker, arriving with his two brigades a little after Jackson, was posted on the right of Longstreet. After spending the day in a heavy but useless cannonade, McClellan advanced to the assault about sunset on the 16th and attacked the two brigades of Hood, on the left of the centre, in great numbers. These veteran commands received the onset with firmness, and inflicted serious loss upon the assailants. The combat continued far into the night, and was suspended without result; when Hood's troops were relieved by the brigades of Trimble and Lawton, from the division of Ewell (now commanded by Lawton), that they might have a much needed respite during the night, to prepare food and replenish their ammunition. The two divisions of Jackson now occupied the whole left, from that of D. H. Hill forth, and the command of Hood became the reserve. Thus the troops lay down upon their arms, with the skirmishers immediately confronting the lines of the enemy, and sought such repose asthey might, amidst the alarms of a continual dropping fire.
The morning of the 17th of September dawned with all the mellow splendor of the American autumn; but scarcely had the sun arisen, when its quiet and beauty were obscured by the thunders and smoke of a terrific cannonade, which burst from the whole Federal line. The plan of McClellan's battle was, to advance his right first, under the lead of Generals Hooker and [562] Mansfield, who had already made a lodgement west of the Antietam, to overpower the Confederate left, and then to sweep down the stream, taking the remainder of General Lee's line in reverse, and forcing it simultaneously by a front attack. To effect the first part of this design, he hurled against the left the corps of Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner, containing, by his own statement, forty-four thousand combatants, and supported by five or six batteries of rifled artillery from his reserves, besides the numerous guns attached directly to their movements. But so far was this force from proving adequate to his purpose, he relates that the corps ofFranklin, then numbering twelve thousand men, was necessarily brought up as a reserve, and a part of it engaged, to prevent the Confederates from retorting his assault upon their left by a serious disaster. Thus, the post of danger and of glory again fell to the devoted corps of Jackson. The divisions present were now diminished by battle, straggling, and overpowering fatigues, to an aggregate of less than seven thousand men. With this little band, supported by five thousand reserves under Hood and McLaws, of whom the latter only arrived from Harper's Ferry in the crisis of the battle, did Jackson hold his ground throughout the day, and breast every onset of the deluge of enemies. His dispositions have already been described in part. The brigades of Lawton and Trimble were between the Hagerstown road and the command of D. H. Hill. On the left of these, and parallel to that road, was the division of Jones. The brigades of Early and Hayes were at first detached to support the horse artillery of General Stuart, who, with a portion of his cavalry, had seized an elevated hill distant nearly a mile from the infantry, whence he proposed to threaten the extreme right of the Federalists. Hays was immediately recalled from this movement to the support of Lawton's brigade, leaving Early to guard the batteries of Stuart. This [563] General, finding that the wide interval between him and General Jackson's left allowed the intrusion of the enemy, almost immediately removed his guns to a height somewhat farther to the rear, and nearer to his friends. From this position he rendered essential service, not only in guarding their flank, but in repulsing the onsets of the Federalists, by a spirited cannonade. But the advance of their infantry had begun simultaneously with the furious fire of their batteries, and, by sunrise, the skirmishers were hotly engaged in the woods east of the Hagerstown road. Very soon the Confederates were driven out, and the position was occupied by large masses of Federal infantry, with several batteries of artillery, which assailed the Confederate line in front, while the rifled guns in the distance raked them with a murderous fire from their right. But under this double ordeal, the veterans of Jackson stood firm, and returned the fire, inflicting a terrible slaughter upon their enemies. For more than an hour this unequal contest raged with unabated. fury. The brigade of Hayes was speedily called from the second line into the first.General Lawton, commanding the division, was severely wounded. Colonel Douglass, leading his brigade, was killed. Colonel Walker, commanding Trimble's brigade, was wounded and unhorsed.General J. R. Jones, commanding the old division of Jackson, was compelled to leave the field, and the gallant General Starke, succeeding. him, was immediately slain. Trimble's brigade had one-third, and the others half their men hors du combat; and four out of five of their field officers were killed or wounded. The whole line was speedily reduced to a shattered remnant, which still fought with invincible tenacity, from hillock to hillock, and ledge to ledge, as they retired. It was in this terrific crisis that GeneralJackson commanded Hood to return to the front and relieve the division of Lawton, and recalled Earlywith his brigade, to assume the command vacated [564] by the wounding of the latter. With his accustomed prowess the heroic Texan rushed forward against the teeming multitudes of the enemy, and stayed the tide of battle. His two little brigades engaged five times their own numbers; and in a deadly grapple, of several hours' duration, drove them steadily back a quarter of a mile, and re-established theConfederate lines. After firing away all his cartridges, he caused his men to replenish their supply from the slain of both armies, and still maintained the struggle, until the Federalists, about mid-day, remitted their exertions.
But General Early brought other succors to the failing line at the same time with Hood. Marching his brigade by its right flank over sheltered ground in the rear of the Confederate lines, he brought it, at the moment when the division of Starke was almost overpowered, to their assistance. They had been driven from the Hagerstown road, across an elevated field, and into a wood beyond, where the dauntlessColonels Grigsby and Stafford were endeavoring to rally a few score of their brigades. The Federalists had already posted a battery in the road; and, thinking the left successfully turned, were advancing heavy columns of infantry against both the right and the left of the ground which Early had just assumed. Informing General Jackson of his critical position, he assigned to Colonel Grigsby the task of holding the left column in check for a few moments, and moved his own brigade farther to the right, so as to confront the other, concealed from them by the undulations of the ground. Having gained the desired position, he suddenly disclosed his line, advanced, and attacked them with fury. They gave way before him, and he pursued them with great slaughter to the road. At this opportune moment the brigades ofGeneral McLaws began to arrive to his support,--Kershaw and Barksdale upon his right, and Semmesupon his left. The Federal column, threatening [565] that part of his line had just come far enough to endanger his left flank and rear, as he advanced against the routed enemy in his front. Early therefore arrested his men in the ardor of their pursuit, changed his front, and advanced upon this second body of enemies, in conjunction with Semmes, Grigsby, and Stafford. By this combined attack they were swept summarily, with great loss, from the woods, and the lines were finally restored. At the same time, the other brigades of McLaws were advanced on Early's right with admirable skill and spirit, by their commander; and drove the enemy across the woods and fields for half a mile, strewing the ground with killed and wounded. The whole of General Jackson's line was then re-established by the united troops of Hood, McLaws, and Early; and the conflict of the infantry sunk into a desultory skirmish of outposts. But the baffled Federalists kept up, during the remainder of the day, a furious cannonade upon his position, under which his men lay quiet behind the hillocks, rocky ledges, and fences, suffering but little loss. The share of his wearied troops in the glories of the day was now completed. In the afternoon, indeed, instructed by the Commander-in-Chief, he made an attempt to effect a diversion in favor of his comrades upon the right and centre, by attacking the extreme right of the Federalists in conjunction withGeneral Stuart. But their lines were found to extend so near tile Potomac, and to be so fortified with artillery, that the experiment was relinquished. During this terrible conflict General Jackson exposed his life with his customary imperturbable bravery, riding among his batteries and directing their fire, and communicating his own indomitable spirit to his men. Yet he said to a Christian comrade, that on no day of battle had he ever felt so calm an assurance that he should be preserved from all personal harm, through the protection of his Heavenly Father.
While McClellan was accumulating his chief strength against [566] the Confederate left, he was also diligently preparing for an attack in force upon the centre, by feeling its lines with a heavy artillery fire. No sooner had the tempest exhausted its fury upon Jackson, than it burst upon D. H. Hill andLongstreet, with almost equal violence; but it was met with the same determined resistance. To describe its course would lead the reader over a precisely parallel story of fourfold numbers, resisted by the thin Confederate lines, with a sublime heroism which supplied every defect of force; of the lamentable martyrdom of devoted officers and men, but avenged by bloody slaughters of the assailants; of shattered brigades reduced to handfuls, and of fearful onslaughts, turned back by the rally of these unconquerable men, when the effort seemed almost madness. At one moment, he would see vast masses of the enemy pouring through a breach in the single line of Hill, and about to seize the very key of the Confederateposition, arrested and turned back by that General with four field-pieces, and a few hundreds of bayonets, rallied from several broken brigades. At another, he would see Longstreet, sitting alone upon his horse, near a battery of four field-pieces, which was supported by the North Carolina regiment ofCooke, without a single cartridge, and thus confronting and beating back a whole line of battle.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, McClellan transferred his attack to the Confederate right, and attempted with the corps of Burnside, to force the bridge over the Antietam, leading from the Pleasant Valley. This was immediately defended by several batteries, and two regiments of General Toombs's Georgia brigade, stationed near the stream. These troops held the enemy's advance in check until they had passed the stream in great numbers below; when they were necessarily withdrawn, to avoid capture. Burnside now crossed the bridge in great force, and attacked Longstreet's right, under General D. R. Jones, forcing [567] him from the range of hills which commanded the approaches. An advance of a few hundred yards more would have given the enemy control of the roads leading from Sharpsburgto the Potomac; but here also through the providence of the Commander-in-Chief, timely succor was at hand. The remaining division of General Jackson's corps, under General A. P. Hill, having been ordered up from Harper's Ferry, had just reached the field, and was now sent to the support of the right wing. This General, advancing four of his brigades, with his batteries, attacked the Federalists, flushed with confidence, but disordered by the rapidity of their advance, and immediately arrested their career. Assailed in flank by Toombs, and in front by Branch, Gregg and Archer, they wavered, broke, and fled in confusion to the banks of the Antietam, where they sought protection under the fire of the numerous artillery upon the opposite hills. In this splendid combat, two thousand men of Hill's division, assisted by the brigade of Toombs, routed the fourteen thousand of Burnside, and drove them under the shelter ofMcClellan's reserves, The General was now compelled to pass from the aggressive to the defensive, and was happy to be able to prevent the Confederates from crossing the bridge in turn, forcing back his left, and separating him from the mountain base which he destined for his refuge in case of disaster. To the anxious appeals of Burnside for more men, and more guns, to meet “the overpowering odds” against him, he had no reply to give. Contenting themselves with posting their beaten infantry, and their artillery so as to contest the passage of Hill, they awaited the night, which speedily came to their assistance. With this affair, the bloody day was closed. The two armies held the same positions which they occupied when it began, save that in the centre, the Confederate line was retracted about two hundred yards. In [568] no battle of the war had the shock of arms been so violent as in this, or the cannonade so terrible. On both sides, portions of the forces engaged were almost totally disintegrated by the fury of the struggle. The whole organized remainder of brigades appeared in the form of a few companies, and divisions were reduced to the size of regiments.
The exhaustion of the Confederates forbade the thought of following up their successes. But had they been stronger, the adroit position of McClellan gave them little encouragement to attempt it. He was able to place the Antietam in his front, and to occupy upon the eastern side, ground of commanding height. Had he been forced back from this, he would have retired to ranges of hills still more elevated, whence his numerous and powerful artillery would have been employed with still more fatal effect; and had he been defeated, this would only have driven him to the mountain, where he would have been unassailable. But on the morning after the battle, General Lee firmly awaited another attack in his first position. His army had been recruited already, by the return of thousands of the foot-sore and the stragglers to their ranks, and he was nothing loth to try conclusions again, upon the same ground, with his gigantic adversary. McClellan had no stomach whatever for another wrestle of the sort he had just escaped; and thus, during the 18th, the two adversaries stood at bay, and busied themselves in burying their dead, and removing their wounded. In the afternoon, General Lee, learning that McClellan was about to receive large accessions of fresh troops, and having no corresponding increase of his own strength in prospect, determined to recross the Potomac at Shepherdstown. As soon as the darkness set in, this movement was commenced, and was continued all night. The trains, the artillery, the wounded, were passed safely over; while the troops forded the shallow stream in a continuous column. [569] Nothing was left to the enemy, except a few hundred wounded men, whose sufferings would have been aggravated by their removal, and a few disabled guns and caissons. The corps of General Jacksonnow brought up the rear; and its passage was not completed until 10 o'clock A. M. on the 19th. For hours, he was seen seated upon his horse in the middle of the river, as motionless as a statue, watching the passage of his faithful men; nor did he leave this station until the last man and the last carriage had touched the southern shore. He then retired with his troops; and having made suitable dispositions for guarding the fords, sought encampments for them, where they might find the much needed repose.
When McClellan perceived that the Confederates had retired he began to claim the battle of Sharpsburgas a glorious victory. He forgot that at Malvern Hill he had also claimed a splendid victory because he was permitted to do something similar to that which General Lee had now done, except that it was less successful. There he had stood on the defensive in the position of his choice; he had beaten off the assailants with a loss equal to his own; he had held his ground, in the main, until the close of the battle; and he had then stolen off in the darkness, leaving his enemy to bury his dead, and to care for many of his wounded. Here General Lee had received the attacks of his foe in his chosen position; had repelled them all with enormous slaughter; had slept upon his own ground; had sent his wounded to the rear; had buried his dead, save where the impetuosity of his victorious men had carried them into the enemy's line; had offered battle defiantly on the succeeding day; and, after this, had retired at his leisure, and unmolested. If Malvern Hill was a victory for McClellan, by parity of reasoning, Sharpsburg was more a victory for Lee. But the Confederates did not claim it as a decisive victory, [570] for it did not gain them the main object for which it was fought.
It has been said that this object was gained, for it was the whole end of the battle to win a safe exit out of Maryland, after the brilliant capture of Harper's Ferry. This statement is incorrect.
The evening of the day on which Harper's Ferry fell, more than half of the army was safely out ofMaryland, the corps of Jackson, and the divisions of McLaws, Anderson, and Walker; it was necessary for them to re-enter Maryland, in order to fight at Sharpsburg. Nor is it true that their return was necessary to extricate the remaining divisions of Longstreet, D. H. Hill, and Jones. These crossed the Antietam to Sharpsburg with impunity, in the face of McClellan's huge host, during the forenoon of September 15th, and the onset upon them did not begin in earnest until the dawn of the 17th. Surely the same skill and firmness might have conducted them in safety four miles farther, across the Potomac toShepherdstown. The battle of Sharpsburg was fought by the Confederates, not to purchase a secure retreat, but to open their way for triumphant invasion; to redeem their offers of aid to oppressedMaryland; to conquer. a peace by defeating their oppressors upon their own soil. This truth displays at once the daring and hardihood of General Lee's conceptions, and his confidence in the prowess of his army. He believed them capable of everything, and so was not afraid to require of them the greatest things.
In the daring policy of delivering this battle, General Jackson had emphatically concurred with him upon his arrival from Harper's Ferry in advance of his corps. When the Commander-in-Chief determined to withdraw across the Potomac again, he also approved this movement; but added that, in view of all the circumstances, it was better to have fought the battle in Maryland, than to have left it without a struggle. In the larger part of this admirable army, it may be truly said, his confidence was [571] justly reposed; but in this instance, he exacted of them that of which human nature was scarcely capable. The marches and combats which introduced the great day of Sharpsburg, exhausted the strength of the men in advance. Many were absent because they were unable to march with deficient rations, and illshod; and many others, who had faithfully dragged their weary limbs to the field, had neither strength of muscle nor animal spirits for its duties. This army, jaded, foot-sore, and half famished, was sustained under the toils of the bloody day, only by its lofty principle, and its devotion to its leaders. To their adversaries, even, they appeared wan and haggard, albeit they were as terrible as hungry wolves. Men among them were seen, while advancing to the charge through orchards of the German farmers, under a hail of death, greedily devouring the apples from the trees.
Here, then, was one explanation of the imperfection of General Lee's victory. Another, more important, was in the miserable vice of straggling, which the mistaken good nature of officers had fostered. For in this army, so heroic as a body, there were two elements commingled,--the precious metal and the vile dross,--the true, patriot, citizen soldier, animated by a high principle, and the base skulker, who did nothing, save under compulsion. The great vice of the Southern armies was on this occasion prevalent: that the ignorance of the practical details of duty among officers, with the easy bonhommie of their character, remitted the bonds of discipline; so that the base were not compelled to act with the true, as one body. The losses of the army from straggling had begun upon the Rappahannock. When it moved thence against Pope, at Manassa's, the country behind it was left infested with thousands of laggards and deserters, who preyed upon the substance of the citizens, and wandered about, with arms in their hands, defying arrest. At every stage [572] of the march this depletion increased, until, at the final struggle, there were fewer Confederate soldiers in line of battle, along the Antietam, than there were along the course of the Potomac, and the roads over which the army had marched. General Leedeclares that the battle was fought with less than forty thousand men. The confusion reigning in many parts of the army make an accurate enumeration forever impossible. But the highest estimate made by well-informed actors in the scene gave him thirty-three thousand effective men. General McClellandeclares officially, that Lee's line of battle was exeedingly short. All who fought in it testified that it was also exceedingly thin. In contrast with this sober revelation of facts, the confident estimates of theFederal General are set in a ridiculous light, when he formally announces, to a mal, the exact number present in each of the Confederate corps, and makes up an aggregate of ninetyseven thousand four hundred and forty-five combatants, opposed to him on the Antietam. The fact that the Confederatesdefended themselves successfully against the ninety thousand men whom he hurled against them, supported by the most numerous and complete artillery ever arrayed on a field of battle, is a testimony to the heroism of the men and the skill of the officers, almost inexpressibly glorious. The commendation of Jackson is best written by his adversary, when he says, in his Report, “One division of Sumner's, and all of Hooker's corps, on the right, had, after fighting most valiantly for several hours, been overpowered by numbers, driven back in great disorder, and much scattered.” Those numbers, so overpowering, were, as the reader has seen, less than seven thousand jaded men, supported by a few hundreds of reserves from McLaws. That the Confederates accomplished so much with their fragment of an army, is the best apology for the daring policy of their commander. Had all his men been in their places, and had they fought as the thirty-three thousand fought, [573] it is no idle vaticination to say, that the battle of Sharpsburg would have been a magnificent and decisive triumph. The apprehensions whichMcClellan confessed as possessing his breast after its close (September 18th), shall express its probable results. “At that moment, Virginia lost, Washington menaced, Maryland invaded, the national cause could afford no risks of defeat. One battle lost, and almost all would have been lost. Lee's army might then have marched, as it pleased, on, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York. It could have levied its supplies from a fertile and undevastated country, extorted tribute from wealthy and populous cities; and nowhere east of the Alleghanies was there another organized force able to arrest its march.”
But it will be well to pause here, and answer a question which has doubless been frequently raised in the reader's mind, by the astonishing discrepancies between the confident estimates made by McClellan of his adversary's numbers and the sober statements of the Confederate reports. The doubt has arisen, “Can it be, that a General of McClellan's acknowledged skill should be so incapable of measuring the size of the force acting before him, or that an official occupying so high a position among a civilized people can be so capable of deliberate lying concerning matters of fact?” The answer is to be found chiefly in the traits of his people. Their general vanity and falsehood prompted his officers and men, when beaten by the Confederates, to cover their own cowardice under wondrous tales of the overpowering numbers before which they gave way. Thus, McClellan, who, it was well known, was not accustomed to risk his person by too near an inspection of the incidents of battle, was perpetually made the victim of a system of lies and exaggerations, passed upon him by his subordinates, to cloak their own cowardice. It is to precisely this source that the most of his military blunders are [574] traceable. And this is one among the manifold illustrations ot the intrinsic weakness of sin. Virtue is always the stronger in the end.
To return. Another cause of imperfect success to the Confederate arms, was the too great dispersion of their forces before the battle. The fact that so much was effected with the portion present on the morning of the 17th, shows how complete the victory might have been, had all the divisions been on the ground, and suitably refreshed by rest and food. The prize at Harper's Ferry, left within General Lee's grasp, not by the forecast, but by the folly of the enemy, yet proved the occasion of their rescue from destruction. The splendid bait was seized; but it caused Jackson to arrive wearied and depleted by forced marches, and it detained the divisions of A. P. Hill, McLaws, and Anderson, and then placed them at the scene of combat with exhausted strength, after it had been raging for hours. Had those forces been present at the beginning, which arrived during the day, a concerted onset would have converted the repulse of McClellan into a disastrous defeat.
The cause of the Confederates suffered also from indiscreet management of their artillery in some parts of the field. Inferior in number and range of guns, in the quantity and quality of ammunition, and in the experience of the gunners, it should not have attempted to cope with the distant Federal batteries. To them: it should have made no reply: but, protecting itself from their fire until the auspicious moment, it should have confined itself to driving back their masses of infantry, when they ventured to expose themselves at close quarters.
The prime error of McClellan in this campaign was his mistake concerning the numbers of his opponent; for out of this his other errors grew. Of these, not the least was his timid delay in pressing General Leeat Sharpsburg, and McLaws at Pleasant [575] Valley, on the 15th and 16th. He had then attained that opportunity to deal with the parts of the invading army separated, for which he represented himself as manoeuvring: a great captain would have used the precious advantage while it lasted, by hurling his troops at once, with such imperfect preparation as they might have, against their foes. His handling of his forces on the 17th was also faulty in two important particulars. His attacks upon the Confederate left, centre, and right, were successive, instead of simultaneous. The one movement was decided adversely before the next was seriously begun, and the wings of his army consequently gave each other little mutual support. And second: it was an inexcusable error to permit the day to be decided against him, with fifteen thousand reserves of veteran troops lying passive behind the Antietam. For all useful purposes, the corps of Fitz-John Porter might as well have been in Washington City. It may be right for the General who is very distant from his supplies and reinforcements, to husband his reserves, even at the cost of surrendering a victory; but McClellan was very near to his, having two or three fresh divisions within a few hours' march. It appears, therefore, that the faults of his tactics here were again those of over-caution. His best apology is to be found in the indomitable quality of the troops opposed to him.
It remains to speak of the losses of the two parties to this sanguinary battle. General Jackson reported a total loss in his command, during the operations at Harper's Ferry and Sharpsburg, of three hundred and fifty-one officers and men killed, two thousand and thirty wounded, and fifty-seven missing. Nearly all of this loss was incurred at the latter place. The loss of the whole Confederate army, while in Maryland, was ten thousand three hundred, killed and wounded, of whom one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven were killed. The confusions of the [576] campaign left no means to discriminate between those lost at Boonsborough and Crampton's Gaps, at Harper's Ferry, and in the final struggle. GeneralMcClellan asserts that the losses of the Confederates in killed and wounded, at the two places first named, were as great as two thousand five hundred. If this is true, then the casualties of theConfederates at Sharpsburg were under eight thousand. He sets down the aggregate of his own losses during the Maryland campaign at about fifteen thousand two hundred men, of whom two thousand were killed and wounded in the preliminary skirmishes and combats. He thus leaves thirteen thousand as his loss in the battle of Sharpsburg. His own blunders, in the indiscreet attempts he so often made to estimate the casualties of his adversary, are a lesson of caution against a too dogmatic attempt to correct this statement. It will therefore be left, with the accompanying fact, that the hospital returns of the medical authorities of his Government showed an increase of thirty thousand patients, from his command, as consequent upon the operations of this short campaign.
The close of this series of events was marked by one more combat, which shed a parting beam of glory upon the military genius of General Jackson, and the bravery of a part of his troops. After crossing thePotomac upon the 19th of September, he withdrew his corps four miles, upon the road towardMartinsburg, and caused them to encamp. Brigadier-General Pendleton, the chief of the reserved artillery of General Lee's army, was stationed with thirty guns upon the heights overlooking the river, supported by the shattered remnant of Lawton's brigade, to guard it against the passage of the enemy in pursuit. These arrangements had not long been made, when the Federalists began to establish heavy batteries of artillery upon the opposite heights, to protect the advance of their troops to the attack; andFitz-John Porter's corps, which had been held in reserve at [577] Sharpsburg, appeared on the river-bank. This General,. after nightfall, sent a detachment across a point above the batteries of Pendleton; which, advancing unobserved, came so near the base of the heights upon which he was posted, as to be protected from an effectual cannonade; while the infantry, discouraged by their previous losses, and the absence of their accustomed commander, were seized with panic, and fled. The thirty guns of Pendletonwere now exposed to capture, and four of them fell at once into the hands of the Federalists; while the captains of the other batteries withdrew the remainder, to rescue them from a similar fate. At midnightGeneral Pendleton came to the camps of the army, to report these alarming facts; and added to them, what he then supposed to be true, that all his guns had met the fate of the four first taken.
“ Lee had already made provision against a pursuit of McClellan, although deeming him probably too much crippled at Sharpsburg to venture immediately into Virginia, by entrusting the defence of his rear to General Jackson, and by sending General Stuart with his cavalry back across the river atWilliamsport, to threaten the enemy's right flank and harass his movements. But now, concluding from the report of General Pendleton, that the Federal army might be attempting to follow him, he sent at once to General Jackson, directing him to prepare for assailing them, and informing him of his purpose to support the attack, if necessary, with his whole army. But General Jackson, to whom Pendleton had made the same report, as to the General commanding the approaches next the enemy, did not tarry for further prompting. He had already risen, and gone toward Boteler's Ford, a crossing a little below the position just lost by Pendleton, and had ordered the division of A. P. Hill, that of Early, (who was now the successor of Lawton,) and that of D. H. Hill, (which had the day before been permanently. [578] assigned to his corps,) to follow him thither immediately. Meantime General Lee had sent orders toGeneral Longstreet to countermarch his corps and rejoin him, that he might proceed with him to the support of Jackson. The messengers sent to place the latter in communication with the Commander-in-Chief, with difficulty found him, in advance of all his troops, without escort, examining the posture of the enemy's force, while the division of A. P. Hill was rapidly advancing to the front.”
On the north bank of the Potomac were planted seventy pieces of heavy artillery, while under their protection, a considerable force of infantry had passed to the southern side, and were drawn up in line upon the high banks next the river. Under the direction of General Jackson, Hill formed his gallant division in two lines, and advanced to the attack, regardless of the terrific storm of projectiles from the batteries beyond the river. The enemy attempted for a time to resist him, by bearing heavily against his left; but his second line, marching by the left flank, disclosed itself from behind the first, and advanced to its support; when the two charging simultaneously, and converging toward the mass of the Federalists, swept them down the hill, and drove them into the river. Now occurred a scene of carnage, in which the bloodiest spirit of revenge might have sated itself for all the losses suffered at the hands of the enemy. The troops of Hill rushed down the declivity regardless of the plunging shot and shell of the opposing batteries, hurled their adversaries by hundreds into the water, and as they endeavored to struggle across, picked them off with unerring aim. The surface of the broad river was black with the corpses of the foe, and few of the luckless column ever reached the northern bank. This was one of those rare opportunities, which victory sometimes gives to her favorites, to repay themselves in one triumphant hour for all the sufferings and injuries of a campaign; [579] and well did the veterans of Hill employ the precious season. When the last of the intruders was destroyed or escaped, they withdrew a short distance, and guarded the ford for the remainder of the day; but McClellan had learned a lesson which inspired due regard for the Confederate rear, and henceforth kept a respectful distance. When a second messenger from General Lee arrived, to seek for General Jackson, he found him watching the repulse of the enemy. His only remark was: “With the blessing of Providence, they will soon be driven back.” In this combat, General A. P. Hill did not employ a single piece of artillery, but relied upon the musket and bayonet alone. Early was at hand with his division to support him; but no occasion arose for his assistance. The whole loss of the Confederates was thirty killed, and two hundred and thirty-one wounded. The Federalists admitted a loss of three thousand killed and drowned, and two hundred prisoners; and one large brigade was nearly extinguished by the disaster.
General McClellan, in his narrative of his war, only notices the combat of Boteler's Ford as areconnoissance of secondary importance, which he despatches in a few lines. But it does not admit of question, that it was the beginning of a General advance against General Lee. Commanders do not make mere reconnoissances with seventy pieces of heavy artillery, laboriously posted upon difficult heights. General McClellan declared himself under the most urgent pressure from Washington, not to allow the “Rebels,” whom he had described to his masters as a herd of fugitives discomfited by his mighty arm, to escape without destruction. He was commanded to follow stroke with stroke, until they were consumed from off the face of the earth. He found it necessary to make a formal argument, to show that he was not blameworthy for postponing their destruction later than the morning of September 18th. He declared that all his [580] dispositions were made to fight a general action on the 19th, and that nothing prevented it, save the retreat of General Lee during the night. The reader who duly weighs these things will hardly believe but that the advance of the 20th, at Boteler's Ford, was the commencement of that general assault, intended for the previous day.
This truth is necessary to enable him to apprehend the value of the service now rendered to his country by the military genius of Jackson. The Confederate army, wearied by almost superhuman exertions; reduced by battle and straggling; deprived of its known leaders, by the wounding or death of the larger number of the gallant field officers present; and disheartened by its terrible sufferings,--was in no condition to fight another pitched battle. General Jackson appreciated these facts, and hence felt the urgent necessity of avoiding a general action by a prompt resistance to the initial movements of the Federalists. When he had decided this, he showed equal judgment in selecting the division of A. P. Hillto lead the attack-This body of troops, arriving at Sharpsburg late in that dreadful day, had taken a short and comparatively bloodless, but glorious, share in its labors in repulsing the corps of the feebleBurnside. Their numbers were less diminished and their spirits less worn than those of any other troops in the army. To them, therefore, General Jackson entrusted the post of honor on this morning,--and well did they discharge the trust. Through them, General Jackson probably saved the army on that occasion from destruction.
It is always as unwise as it is evil, to misrepresent the truth. The Federalists, in their overweening vanity and arrogance, claimed a victory at Sharpsburg to which they knew they were not entitled; and filled the public ear with fictions of the discomfiture of the Confederates which they knew were exaggerated. [581] They thus created for themselves a moral necessity to press them with boldness, and the penalty was the slaughter of September 20th. The three thousand corpses floating down the Potomac, or lining its banks, were the price paid by them for the rain boastings of September 17th.
Chapter 18: Fredericksburg.
A respite now occurred in the storms of war, when it was permitted to contemplate General Jacksonand his soldiers in a more peaceful and pleasing attitude. The army was withdrawn a few miles, to the banks of the Opequon, a tributary of the Potomac, which flows to the eastward of Winchester andMartinsburg, and empties into it a little above Harper's Ferry. Here they encamped for a number of weeks, in the bosom of the most charming regions of the lower Valley. The beauty of the season surpassed even the accustomed glories of the Virginian autumn; and amidst days of unclouded serenity, free alike from the ardors of summer, and the extremes of winter, the tired soldiers recruited their strength, reposing upon the rich meadows and pastures of the Opequon. Man and beast alike revelled in abundance; for the teeming productiveness of those Valley farms seemed to defy the exhaustion of war, and the sweet and luxuriant greensward made the war-horse forget the necessity of other provender. Here, a few days of repose restored the elastic spirits of the men; for the Southern soldier is quick to forget his toils, and resume his hopes. The bivouacs under the golden and crimson foliage of the trees, echoed with exuberant laugthter and mirth; and the heroes of a score of deadly fields, with the light hearts of pleased children, made a jest of every trifle. Their passionate attachment to “Old Stonewall” [583] was now at its height; and his appearance rarely failed to evoke a burst of enthusiasm. As the men heard the mighty cheer rolling toward them like a wave, from the distant camps, they sprung to their feet, saying, “There comes old Jack,” and prepared to join in swelling the chorus. His heart also was soothed and gladdened with the rest, and the society of the people of his beloved District. He was now in the Valley, for which he had fought first and longest, the region of his chosen home, the scenery in which he most delighted, and amidst that sturdy population whose loyalty so cheered his heart.Winchester, that gallant and hospitable town, was near by; and he could once more mingle there with the friends of the first year of the war, and see them emancipated from the hated yoke of the Federals.
But General Jackson's rest was never idleness. He was diligently improving the interval of quiet, in refitting his men with shoes and clothing, in recalling the stragglers to the ranks, and composing the disorders of organization, produced by the arduous service of the summer. His regiments were again rapidly filled up by the return of the foot-sore, the wounded, and the sick, and the addition of new recruits; and his corps was enlarged to the proportions of a gallant army. On the 11th of October, theGovernment conferred on him the rank of Lieutenant-General, next to the highest military grade in its service. The army of General Lee was now divided into two great corps, or wings, of which the one was permanently assigned to Jackson, and the other to Longstreet. Henceforth these two great soldiers became as the two hands of their Commander, and served him with a generous emulation and mutual respect, as honorable to them as their well proved heroism. The organization of General Jackson'scorps, was now confirmed. It consisted of four divisions, the original division commanded by him in the [584] Valley campaign, now led by Brigadier-General Wm. B. Taliaferro; the division of Ewell, commanded by Brigadier-General Early, who was soon after rewarded for his eminent services by the rank of Major-General; the division of Major-General A. P. Hill; and that of Major-General D. H. Hill. To these were attached numerous batteries, arranged into battalions of artillery under the various division Generals, but all supervised by Colonel Crutchfield. A part of the spoils of Harper's Ferry was now assigned to the most meritorious of these batteries; and their equipment became more perfect than ever before. To the famous company of Poague, of the Stonewall Brigade, especially, were assigned four of the heavy rifled guns, upon the construction of which the Federals had exhausted all their resources of skill and wealth; and this battery continued to hold its hardly earned place as the elite body of the corps.
This pleasing leisure was also employed in a manner yet more congenial to the heart of Jackson, in extraordinary labors for the spiritual good of the men. Not only did the chaplains now redouble their diligence in preaching, and instructing the soldiers from tent to tent; but many eminent ministers availed themselves of the lull in the storm of war, and of the genial weather, to visit the camps, and preach the gospel as missionaries. These were received by General Jackson with affectionate hospitality; and while no military duty was neglected for a moment, to make way for their ministrations, his pious ingenuity found abundant openings for them. It was now that the series of labors, and the ingathering of precious souls began in the Confederate army, which have continued ever since so extraordinary a feature of its character. The most enlightened and apostolic clergymen of the country, forgetting for the time the distinctions of sect, joined in these meetings. Nightly, these novel and sacred scenes might be witnessed; after the drill and the labors of the day [585] were over. From the bosom of some moon-lit grove a hymn was heard, raised by a few voices, the signal for the service; and, at this sound, the multitudinous noises of the camps died away, while the men were seen gathering from every side, until the group from which the hymn had arisen was swelled into a great crowd. The man of God then arose, and began his service by the light of a solitary candle, or a fire of resinous pine-wood, elevated on a rude platform. While his face and the pages of the holy Word were illuminated thus, all else was in solemn shadow; and his eye could distinguish nothing of his audience, save the dusky outline of the multitude seated all around, in a wide circle, upon the dry leaves, or the greensward. But though his eye could not mark the impress of the truth, it was drank in by eager ears; and many was the bearded cheek, which had not been blanched amidst the horrors of Sharpsburg, which was now wet with silent tears. At some of these meetings General Jackson was a constant worshipper, seated modestly in an unnoticed corner amidst the common soldiers, but setting the example of the most devout attention. In his letters to his friends, he related the success of the Word among his men, with ascriptions of warm and adoring gratitude to God. One of these, addressed to Mrs. Jackson, must suffice as an instance:--
Bunker Hill, October 13th.
Mr. G — invited me to be present at communion in his church yesterday, but I was prevented from enjoying the privilege. But I heard an Excellent sermon from the Rev. Dr. S---. His text was I.Timothy, chap. II: 5th and 6th verses. “（” For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time. “）” It was a powerful exposition of the word of God. He is a great revival minister; and when he came to [586] the word himself he placed an emphasis on it, and gave to it, through God's blessing, a power that I never before felt .... And I felt, with an intensity that I never before recollect having realized, that truly the sinner who does not, under gospel privileges, turn to God, deserves the agonies of perdition. The Doctor several times in appealing to the sinner, repeated the sixth verse “ Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time,” What more could God do than give himself a ransom? .... He is laboring in a revival in General Ewell's division. Oh, it is a glorious privilege to be a minister of the gospel of the Prince of Peace! There is no equal position in this world.
Such was the estimate of the worth of the minister's work, by one whose fame was then filling the civilized world. It may be added, once for all, that this religious reformation, which was destined to be spread so widely through the army by General Jackson's efforts, bore the fruits of a true work of God's grace. That there was more apparent bloom than fruit, as in every other ingathering which ever blessed the Church, from the Pentecostal down, is, of course, fully admitted. It is not to be supposed that there were no good people engaged in it, whose mistaken zeal led them to push it on by indiscreet means, and no converts whose temporary warmth was due rather to the gregarious sympathies of the camp, than to the truth and Spirit. But still, there was a glorious reformation in many souls to true holiness, diminishing permanently the wickedness of the camps, turning many finally away from their sins. It was the uniform testimony of even the ungodly, that the commands most largely blessed by this reform became the most efficient in the service of their country; with the best discipline, the fewest stragglers, and the steadiest behavior in battle. It was the general conclusion of the whole people, that the subsequent efficiency [587] of the corps was promoted as much by this work of divine grace as by the professional ability ofGeneral Jackson.
It was a little after the date of the letter just quoted, that one of those instances arose in which he disclosed to others his spiritual emotions. The night was damp and rainy, when a brother officer whom he greatly valued visited him on business. After this was despatched, Jackson seemed to have a leisure unwonted for him, and urged his friend to remain, and spend a short time in relaxation. Although the latter did not yet call himself a Christian, indeed, he was one for whose spiritual good the General was greatly concerned. The conversation was soon insensibly turned on the things of Redemption. His friend related how Dr. S.,--the eminent minister mentioned in the last letter,had been understood by him to declare, that the fear of wrath did not enter at all as an element of that godly sorrow for sin, which marks true repentance; but that it was prompted solely by love and gratitude. The General answered, that the doctrine intended by Dr. S. had probably been misapprehended by him. For his part, he supposed that, in the new-born believer, both fear and love actuated his repentance. But as his assurance became more clear of the Redeemer's mercy to his soul, his obedience became less servile, and more affectionate; until, in the most favored saints, perfect love cast out fear. He then declared that he had been, himself, for a long time, a stranger to fear of wrath; because he knew and was assured of the love of Christ to his soul; that he felt not the faintest dread that he should ever fall under the wrath of God, although a great sinner; because he knew that it was forever reconciled by the righteousness ofChrist, and that love for God and Christ was now the practical spring of all his penitence. Speaking thus,Jackson arose from his seat, and, with an impressive union of humility and solemn elation, continued in substance thus: “Nothing earthly can mar [588] my happiness. I know that heaven is in store for me; and I should rejoice in the prospect of going there to-morrow. Understand me: I am not sick; I am not sad; God has greatly blessed me; and I have as much to love here as any man, and life is very bright to me. But, still, I am ready to leave it any day, without trepidation or regret, for that heaven which I know awaits me, through the mercy of my Heavenly Father. And I would not agree to the slightest diminution of one shade of my glory there” --[Here he paused, as though to consider what terrestrial measure he might best select to express the largeness of his joys]--“No: not for all the fame which I have acquired, or shall ever win in this world.” With these words he sunk into his chair, and his friend retired-awe-struck, as though he had seen the face of an angel. But he did not fail to notice the revelation made ofJackson's master-passion by nature, in the object he had chosen to express the value of his heavenly inheritance. It was fame! Not wealth, nor domestic joys, nor literature — but well-earned fame. Let the young aspirant consider also, how even this passion, which the world calls the most honorable of all, was chastened and crucified in him by a nobler longing.
It was manifestly about the same time, that the following letter was written to Mrs. Jackson. Mentioning several presents, he says:
Oct. 27.
Our God makes me so many friends I mention these things in order that you may see how much kindness has been shown me; and to express things for which I should be more grateful, and to give you renewed cause for gratitude. ...
Don't trouble yourself about representations that are made of me. These things are earthly and transitory. There are real and glorious blessings, I trust, in reserve for us, beyond this [589] life. It is best for us to keep our eyes fixed upon the throne of God, and the realities of a more glorious existence beyond the verge of time. It is gratifying to be beloved, and to have our conduct approved by our fellow men; bnt this is not worthy to be compared with the glory that is in reservation for us, in the presence of the glorified Redeemer. Let us endeavor to adorn the doctrine of Christ our Saviour, in all things; knowing that there awaits us “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” I would not relinquish the slightest diminution of that glory, for all this world, and all that it can give. My prayer is, that such may ever be the feeling of my heart. It appears to me that it would be better for you not to have any thing written about me. Let us follow the teaching of inspiration: “Let another praise thee, and not thyself.” I appreciate the loving interest that prompted the desire.
Chapter 19: Chancellorsville.
As the time drew near for that resumption of active hostilities, which General Jackson knew to be inevitable, his temper began to rise in its animation and resolve, to meet the crisis. He now spoke with less reserve than before, to the members of his military family, concerning the general principles which should govern the war, upon the Confederate side. Speaking of the coming campaign, he said with an intense concentration of fire and will: “We must make it an exceedingly active one. Only thus can a weaker country cope with a stronger; it must make up in activity what it lacks in strength. A defensive campaign can only be made successful by taking the aggressive at the proper time. Napoleon never waited for his adversary to become fully prepared; but struck him the first blow, by virtue of his superior activity.”
Early upon the 29th of April, he was aroused by a message, which said that an officer was below with something important to communicate immediately. As he arose he remarked: “That sounds as if something stirring were afoot.” After a few moments, he returned and informed Mrs. Jackson, thatGeneral Early, to whom he had committed the guardianship of the river bank, had sent his adjutant to report that Hooker was crossing in force. He said that great events were probably at hand, and that he must go immediately to verify the news he had received; [661] that if it were as he supposed, and the hostilities were about to be resumed on a great scale, Mr. Yerby's would be no place for a lady and infant; and she would be compelled to retire to Richmond. He therefore, requested Mrs. Jackson to make immediate preparations for her journey, so that, if his surmises proved true, she might leave at a moment's warning, in the forenoon. He promised, if it were practicable, to return in person and assist her departure, but added that, as his duties might deprive him of the power to do so, he would say good-by now. Thus, after an affectionate leave-taking, he hurried away, without breakfast, and she saw him no more until she returned to the side of his dying bed. Her heart was oppressed with gloomy forebodings for his safety, arising from her anticipation of the desperate struggle into which she well knew, it was his purpose to plunge, rather than yield ground to his gigantic adversary; his animated eagerness seemed to leave him no time for such thoughts for self.
Hurrying to his troops, he now made it his first business to communicate the movements of the enemy to the Commanderin-Chief. The Aide whom he sent, found him still in his tent; and in reply to the message, he said, “Well, I heard firing; and I was beginning to think it was time some of you lazy young fellows were coming, to tell me what it was all about. Say to General Jackson, that he knows just as well what to do with the enemy, as I do.” This answer indicated his high confidence in his great Lieutenant; and the strain of kindly pleasantry, habitual with Lee, had a happy influence in infusing into all who came near him, his own composure and serene courage in great emergencies. When General Jackson joined his troops, he found so much demanding his oversight, that he did not return to the assistance of his wife; but sent her brother, his Aide, Lieutenant Joseph Morrison, to provide her with an ambulance, and escort [662] her to Guinea's Station; whence she was to proceed by railroad to Richmond. This young officer, eager to be in the post of danger with his chief, transferred his task to his chaplain; who convoyed her to Guinea's, and then also hurried back to his duties with the army.
When General Jackson got his corps under arms, he saw that the Federalists were crossing in great force below Deep Run, and entrenching themselves at the edge of the plateau; on the same ground occupied by Franklin and Hooker at the battle of Fredericksburg. He estimated their numbers at thirty-five thousand men. But he saw at a glance, that there was, as yet, no sufficient evidence that Hookerwas about to provoke a serious collision on the ground which had been so disastrous to Burnside. That ground had now been strengthened by a continous line of field-works, along the edge of the plateaunear the Spottsylvania hills, and by a second partial line within the verge of the forest. He suspected that this crossing was the feint, while the real movement was made upon one or the other flank; and he therefore awaited the reports of the vigilant Stuart, whose cavalry pickets were stretched from Port Royal to the higher course of the Rappahannock. It has already been explained, that the character of the ground, rendered an assault upon the enemy near the northern edge of the plain inexpedient, because of their commanding artillery upon the Stafford heights.
The Confederate Generals were not left long in doubt. Stuart soon reported appearances which indicated a passage of the Rappahannock by Hooker west of Fredericksburg, He had now restored theFederal army to the same vast numbers which had accompanied Burnside; and discarding the three grand divisions with their commanders, which had afforded to him, when one of the three, so good a pretext for insubordination, had thrown his forces into nine corps d'armee commanded by as many generals, [663] besides the cavalry division under Stoneman. The plan of campaign which he now adopted, was a complicated one. He proposed with three corps under General Sedgwick, to cross theRappahannock below Fredericksburg, and make a demonstration sufficiently formidable in appearance, to occupy General Lee there. Meantime, the remainder of his great army was to proceed by forced marches up the northern bank of the Rappahannock, screened from observation by the forest country, and an intervening line of pickets, to Kelly's ford. There he proposed to force a passage into Culpepper, and marching rapidly to Germanna and Ely's fords, upon the Rapid Ann, in a southeasterly direction, to cross them while the Confederates were amused at Fredericksburg, establish himself in the Wildernessof Spottsylvania and fortify on General Lee's flank. If he remained at Fredericksburg, Hookerpersuaded himself that he would be able, from this new temporary base, to command his communications with Richmond. If he left Fredericksburg, to make head against this formidable threat upon his left and rear, Hooker proposed to withdraw the larger part of his troops employed in the feint there, to bring them over by the United States' ford, which his movement into the Wilderness would uncover to him, and receive the attack of General Lee in his entrenched position. While his infantry was thus employed, nearly all his cavalry, under Stoneman, was to cross the Rapid Ann above the army, upon a grand raid, to penetrate the country across the Central Railroad, destroy it, pass down toward the junction of the Central and Fredericksburg roads, cut the latter, and thus break up all communication between the Confederates and their Capital. The Federal Commander had persuaded himself thatGeneral Lee was laid aside by sickness, that all his force, except Jackson's corps, was either absent with Longstreet, or disaffected and scattered, and that with his vast numbers he would [664] easily surround and crush the remainder, leaving no organized foe between him and Richmond. In his usual boastful spirit, he exalted the invincibility of his host declaring it to be “the finest army upon the planet.”
To meet this tremendous force, General Lee had the corps of General Jackson, and two divisions of thecorps of General Longstreet, those of Anderson and McLaws. The other three, with Longstreet, underHood, Pickett, Ransom, were absent in Southeastern Virginia, making a demonstration against Suffolk, whither they had been directed by,the scarcity of forage and food in Spottsylvania. The corps ofGeneral Jackson now consisted of four divisions,--those of A. P. Hill; D. H. Hill, commanded byBrigadier General Rhodes; Trimble, commanded by Brigadier General Colston; and Early.--General D. H. Hill had been detached to another and more important command, and Major-General Trimble was detained by infirmity at his home. The four divisions now contained about twenty-eight thousand muskets, and an aggregate of more than thirty thousand men and officers. They were supported by twenty-eight field batteries, containing one hundred and fifteen guns; but of these many were deficient in horses to move them with promptitude. The scarcity of forage had reduced the larger part of the artillery horses, and had destroyed not a few. Besides these batteries, the army was still accompanied by a reserved corps of artillery, commanded by Brigadier General Pendleton. Stuart's division of cavalry was also acting upon the left. So that General Lee had, in all, an aggregate of about forty-five thousand men, with which to meet one hundred and twenty-five thousand.
The enemy no sooner appeared upon the Rapid Ann, than General Anderson's division was marched westward to meet them, supported by a part of McLaws's. On Thursday, the remainder of McLaws's brigades, except one left upon Marye's Hill, [665] was sent to the support of Anderson. Meantime,General Jackson lay in the lines occupied by the Confederate army on the 13th of December, watching the proceedings of Sedgwick before him, who was ostentatiously parading his force, and seeking to magnify the impression of.his numbers. The attitude of Hooker was now most threatening to theConfederates; but he had committed the capital error of dividing his army, and operating with the parts upon two lines, which, although convergent, were exterior lines to General Lee. The latter had his option to attack the one or the other part with the weight of his main force, and thus to deal with the two fragments in detail. No doubt could be entertained by the true strategist as to this leading principle. When some person about the Staff, after the development of Hooker's plan, expressed his anxiety and his fear lest the army should be compelled to retreat before him, General Jackson replied sharply, “Who said that? No, sir, we shall not fall back; we shall attack them.” But the question to be decided was, which part should be attacked first? In favor of assailing Sedgwick were some plausible reasons. Time was an important element in the movements of the inferior army, possessing the interior lines; and if it were not improved, the loss of its own line of communications, or the approximation of the two separated parts of its enemy would speedily transfer the advantage of concentration to him again. ButJackson was already in front of Sedgwick, and no march was necessary to bring him into collision with him; whereas a day must be consumed in going to the Wilderness, to seek Hooker. Sedgwick's was also the smaller force; but still, its overthrow would probably decide the failure of Hooker's grand combination. These considerations were counterbalanced by the facts, that Sedgwick had now entrenched himself, and that the assault upon him must be made under the fire of the Stafford batteries. After animated discussion between [666] Generals Lee and Jackson, the former decided to meetSedgwick's feint by a feint; to leave Early's division, of about seven thousand men, in the entrenchments with Barksdale's brigade, upon Marye's Hill, to confront his thirty-five thousand, while the whole remainder of the army stole away to reinforce Generals Anderson and McLaws, and to take the aggressive against Hooker. In this plan General Jackson cheerfully acquiesced.
Thursday, the 30th of April, had now arrived, and he prepared to break up his quarters. The opening of the campaign had metamorphosed the whole man. Those who had seen him in his winter-quarters, toiling with a patient smile over his heaps of official papers, who had received his gentle and almost feminine kindnesses there, who had only beheld him among his chaplains, or at public worship, the deferential and tender Christian, had been tempted to wonder whether this were indeed the thunderbolt of war, he was described by fame; and whether so meek a spirit as his would be capable of directing its terrors. But when they met him on this morning, all such doubts fled before his first glance. His step was quick and firm, his whole stature unconsciously erected and elate with genius and majesty, while all comprehending thought, decision, and unconquerable will, burned in his eye. His mind seemed, with equal rapidity and clearness, to remember everything, and to judge everything. In a firm and decisive tone, he issued his rapid orders to every branch of his service, overlooking nothing which could possibly affect the efficiency of his corps. The tents which for a month and a half had formed his quarters, were now about to be struck and removed, when he rode up to them for the last time; a mob of officers, aids, soldiers, and teamsters, was bustling around, in all the confusion of a hurried removal, when he dismounted and threw the rein of his horse to his servant Jim, and retired within his tent. A moment after, he raised his hand to the people [667] around, With a warning gesture, and whispered: “Hush. . .. the General is praying” An instant silence fell on every person. After a full quarter of an hour he raised the curtain and came out, with an elevated and serene countenance, and mounting his horse, after some final directions, rode away. That tent had doubtless been pitched with prayer; and now the last act of its occupant was prayer. With this final preparation he turned to meet the enemies of his country.
General Lee had now proceeded in person to examine the formidable demonstration of Hooker above, and had written back to General Jackson, informing him of the situation of affairs, and instructing him to move to his support. The enemy, in great force, had crossed the Rapid Ann at Germanna and Ely's fords, driving back the guards placed there by General Stuart, had advanced into the country a number of miles, uncovering for themselves the United States ford, which crosses the Rappahannock a mile below the junction of the two rivers, and had established themselves at the villa of Chancellorsville, fifteen miles west of Fredericksburg. The reader's attention must now be claimed for a description of the place. Two main roads lead from Fredericksburg, westward to Orange; the one called the old turnpike, because first made, the other, called the plankroad; because once paved with wooden boards. The plankroad is south of the old turnpike, and separated from it during the most of its course, by a space of a few miles. But the traveller who proceeds along it from Fredericksburg, westward, at the distance of fifteen miles from the town, finds the two thoroughfares merge themselves into one, and continue to pursue the same track for three miles; when they again diverge, even more widely than before; the plank-road, as before, bearing toward the left or south. At the spot where the two highways unite, stood the ample villa of Chancellor, in the midst of a [668] farm of a mile in extent, which, like an island amidst the waters, was surrounded on every side by forests. From the same spot, two other roads diverged, the one leading toward the northeast and Banks' ford, the other toward the northwest. This last, after proceeding two miles, divided into two, of which the right or northern branch led to the United States ford, and the left or western, to the ford of Ely, over the Rapid Ann. The surface of the country around Chancellorsville is undulating, but presents no hills of great altitude. Immediately west of that farm, begins the country known as the Wilderness of Spottsylvania; a region interspersed with a few small and inferior farms, but whose poor and gravelly soil is otherwise covered, for a few miles, with a tangled forest of oak and shrubbery. It was in this region, that the fuel had been cut, ever since the days when Governor Spottiswoode of the colony, first wrought the iron mines of the neighborhood, to supply the furnaces. Hence arose the dense coppices which covered the larger part of the surface of the country; in which every stump had sent up two or three minor stems in place of the parent trunk remoyed by the axe of the woodsman, and the undergrowth had availed itself of the temporary flood of sunlight let in upon the soil, to occupy it with an almost impenetrable thicket of dwarf oak, chinquepin, and whortleberry. But six or seven miles west of Chancellorsville, the Wilderness Run, a pellucid stream flowing northward to the Rapid Ann presents a zone of better soil, which is covered with handsome farms and country seats.
Hooker had concentrated, his forces at Chancellorsville by the 30th of April, and was now busy in protecting himself by barricades and earthworks fronting toward the east, south, and southwest; which, with an irregular circuit conformed to the gentle declivities of the surface, embraced, not only the whole farm of Chancellor, but an annular belt of the forest in which [669] it was embosomed also. By this arrangement, Hooker's whole circuit of defences was masked in the woods; and, as the thickets in front were infested with his sharp-shooters, an exact discovery of the position and nature of his works could only be made by an attack in force. The difficulties of the assault were thus vastly increased; and it was with some show of reason that the braggart general declared on Thursday that he now had a position from which nothing could dislodge him. The longer axis of the partially entrenched camp thus formed, extending from east to west, was about two miles. But other works were stretched two or three miles farther westward, fronting toward the south and southwest, and designed to cover the turnpike and the two farms of Melzi Chancellor and Talley, which were also occupied with Federal camps, from an attack coming from the south.
Having thus established himself, Hooker began on Thursday to push forward his skirmishing parties to the east, in order to feel his way toward General Lee's supposed rear, and to reach his hand towardSedgwick. Proceeding three miles toward Fredericksburg, he was estopped by the division of GeneralAnderson, at Tabernacle Church, which was drawn up on a strong north and south line, and defended on its flanks by artillery and cavalry! To his assistance McLaws also came speedily; and it was expected that General Stuart, who had retired out of Culpepper before the Federalists, and had placed himself upon their south front, would connect himself with General Anderson's left before dawn on Friday morning. Meantime Hooker was endeavoring to watch every Confederate movement, by means of sundry balloons raised to the sky from the north side of the Rappahannock; from which his scouts maintained a constant intercourse with the earth and with his headquarters by telegraph [670] wires. Such was the position of affairs at nightfall on the last day of April.
General Jackson now debated with himself the question of moving to the support of General Andersonat once by a night march, or of awaiting the dawn of Friday, the 1st of May. He was reluctant to adopt the former determination, because the troops would be unfitted for the arduous work before them by occupying in the toil of a march the hours which should be devoted to sleep. But, on the other hand, he was powerfully persuaded to it by the facts that Anderson and McLaws might be assailed with overwhelming numbers at the dawn of the next morning, and that a night march would conceal his withdrawal much more effectually from Sedgwick. Having obtained trusty guides, he therefore determined to draw his whole corps, except the division of Early, out of the trenches silently, beginning at midnight, to retire a few miles southward, as though proceeding toward Spottsylvania Court House, and then make his way by the country roads of the interior across to the Orange plankroad, and thus proceed westward. Orders were accordingly issued to all the staff departments and commanders of divisions, and the movement was begun at the appointed time by the light of a brilliant moon. The column was led by the division of General D. H. Hill, under Brigadier-General Rhodes. Before the mists of the morning had cleared away, the whole corps was far on its way, and securely out of view amidst the woods of the interior, beyond the most piercing espionage of Hooker's balloonists. General Jacksonreached the position of Anderson about eleven o'clock A. M., and found him still confronting the detachments of Hooker, which were of unknown strength. The Confederate line now reached from the plank road northward to the old turnpike, and thence toward the Rappahannock through a region chiefly covered with dense woods and thickets. [671]
General Jackson, as the superior officer under the Commander-in-Chief, was now entrusted with the direction of the field, and was ordered to take the aggressive and press back the Federal out-posts, untilHooker's real strength and position were disclosed. This he proceeded to do, with all his accustomed vigor. Some of the best regiments of Anderson's and his own divisions were deployed as skirmishers, and steadily advanced through the woods, hunting put the concealed enemy, and driving them in with continual slaughter. The rattle of the rifles was heard creeping along, upon a front of several miles' extent, like the crackling of some vast forest conflagration, while a few light field-pieces, advanced along the several roads, abreast of the riflemen, cleared the way as often as the enemy attempted to gather a force in any open space. General Jackson himself rode with the line of skirmishers, and often before them, urging them on whenever they paused, and assuring them of his powerful support. There are few services which put the nerve of the brave soldier to a more trying test, than such an advance upon a concealed enemy in a tangled wood. He knows not what danger is near him in front, or at what moment the stealthy shot may burst upon him from an unseen foe. He cannot practise the same concealment with the enemy who lies in ambush for him, because he is continually in motion. But the Confederate line, urged on by General Jackson and his Staff, kept up a slow but steady advance throughout the afternoon, until the Federal pickets were, at nightfall, driven in upon their main line. Hooker, on his part, endeavored to retard their advance by detachments of riflemen, and by batteries, which, masked behind the dense woods, dropped their shells over in every direction toward the roads which were occupied by the Confederates. But all this proved rather an annoyance than a resistance, and the successes of the day were won with slight loss. [672]
When Friday night arrived, Generals Lee and Jackson met, at a spot where the road to the Catharine Iron Furnace turned southwestward from the plank-road, which was barely a mile in front of Hooker's works. Here, upon the brow of a gentle hill, grew a cluster of pine-trees, while the gound was carpeted with the clean, dry sedge and fallen leaves. They selected this spot, with their respective Staffs, to bivouac, while the army lay upon their weapons, a few yards before them, and prepared to sleep upon the ground, like their men. General Stuart had now joined them, and reported the results of hisreconnoissances upon the south and west of Hooker's position. He had ascertained that the Federalcommander had left a whole corps, under General Reynolds, at Ely's Ford, to guard his communications there, and that he had massed ninety thousand men around Chancellorsville, under his own eye, fortifying them upon the east, south and, southwest, as has been described. But upon the west and northwest his encampments were open, and their movements were watched by Stuart's pickets, who were secreted in the wilderness there. He had also ascertained, that almost all their cavalry had broken through the line of the Rapid Ann in one body, and had invaded the south, followed and watched by the brigade of W. H. Lee, evidently bent upon a grand raid against the Confederatecommunications.
Generals Lee and Jackson now withdrew, and held an anxious consultation. That Hooker must be attacked, and that speedily, was clear to the judgments of both. It was not to be hoped that the absence of Jackson's corps from the front of Sedgwick could remain very long unknown to that General; or thatEarly's seven thousand could permanently restrain his corps, with such additions as it might receive fromHooker. To hold the stationary defensive in front of Chancellorsville would, therefore, be equivalent to the loss of the whole line of the Rappahannock, [673] with a hazardous retreat along a new and crooked line of operations; for the success of Sedgwick would deprive them of the direct one, and place him in alarming proximity to any other which they might adopt. Hooker, then, must be at once fought and beaten, or the initial act of the campaign would close in disaster.
General Lee had promptly concluded, that while, on the one hand, immediate attack was proper, some more favorable place for assault must be sought, by moving farther toward Hooker's right. The attempt to rout ninety thousand well armed troops, entrenched at their leisure, by a front attack, with thirty-five thousand, would be too prodigal of patriot blood, and would offer too great a risk of repulse. He had accordingly already commanded his troops to commence a movement toward their left, and communicated his views to General Jackson, who warmly concurred in their wisdom. A report was about this time received from General FitzHugh Lee, of Stuart's command, describing the position of theFederal army, and the roads which he held with his cavalry leading to its rear. General Jackson now proposed to throw his command entirely into Hooker's rear, availing himself of the absence of theFederal cavalry, and the presence of the Confederate horse, and to assail him from the West, in concert with Anderson and McLaws.
Stuart was there with his active horsemen to cover this movement; and he believed that it could be made with comparatively little risk, and, when accomplished, would enable him to crush the surprised enemy. He well knew that he was apparently proposing a “grand detachment” ; a measure pronounced by military science so reprehensible, in the presence of an active adversary. It might seem that, in venturing one instance of this hazardous measure,--the detaching of Early to remain at [674] Fredericksburg,--they had tempted fortune sufficiently far, without again repeating it by a further division of forces beforeHooker. But the maxims of the military art should be our servants, and not our masters; and the part of good sense is to modify their application to actual instances, according to circumstances. In this case, the only choice was between his proposed expedient, which he well knew was unusual and hazardous, and another measure still more hazardous. The unwieldy and sluggish strategy of the huge Federal armies was to be considered; and, along with that, the unsuspecting, boastful, and overweening temper of their chief, who was precisely the man to be thus dealt with. He was known to be a man who would make a stubborn fight against a plain, front attack; but whose lack of vigilance would make surprise practicable, and whose small resources of mind in the moment of confusion would probably offer him little aid in extricating himself from that surprise. It must be remembered also, that if General Jackson's proposal were adopted, it would be the body moving with him which would really be the main army, and the divisions of Anderson and McLaws which would be the detachment. But if the issue of affairs atChancellorsville were adverse, whatever were the plan of assault adopted, the retreat which must follow must be by a new line at any rate; so that the separation of his corps from its original line of operations was not, in this case, a valid objection. It would still have its chance of retreat upon the Central Railroad in Louisa county; and in whatever shape a repulse came at Chancellorsville, if it should perchance come, the army there would have no other resort. But if the assault were a victory, then the question of lines of retreat lost all its importance. Last, the two parts of the army would be in supporting distance during the whole movement.
After profound reflection, General Lee gave the sanction of [675] his judgment to this plan, and committed its execution to General Jackson. He proposed to remain with Anderson and McLaws, and superintend their efforts to “contain” the vast army of Hooker until the hour for the critical attack should arrive. They then lay down upon the ground to seek a few hours of repose, which they so much needed.General Jackson, with his usual self-forgetfulness, had left his quarters, his mind absorbed in the care of the army, without any of those provisions of overcoat or blanket, which the professional soldier is usually so careful to attach to his saddle. He now lay down at the foot of a pine-tree, without covering. One of his adjutants, Colonel Alex. S. Pendleton, urged upon him his overcoat; but he, with persistent politeness, declined it. He then detached the large cape, and spread it over the General, retaining the body of the garment for himself. The General remained quiet until Pendleton fell asleep, when he arose and spread the cape upon him, and resumed his place without covering. In the morning he awoke chilled, and found that he had contracted a cold, but made no remark about it.
When his chaplain awoke in the morning, before the dawn of day, he perceived a little fire kindled under the trees, and General Jackson sitting by it upon a box, such as was used to contain biscuit for the soldiers. The General knew that his former pastoral labors had led him to this region, and desired to learn something from him about its by-roads. He therefore requested him to sit beside him on the box; and when the other declined to incommode him by doing so, made room for him and repeated: “Come, sit down: I wish to talk with you.” As he took his seat, he perceived that Jackson was shuddering with cold, and was embracing the little blaze with expressions of great enjoyment. He then proceeded to state that the enemy were in great force at Chancellorsville, in a fortified position, [676] and that to dislodge them by a front attack, would cost a fearful loss of life. He wished to know whether he was acquainted with any way, by which their flank might be turned, either on the right or the left. He was informed in reply, that after proceeding southward along the furnace road for a space, a blind road would present itself, leading westward and nearly parallel to the Orange plank-road, which, in its turn, would conduct into a plainer route, that fell into the great road four miles above Chancellorsville. The General, quickly drawing from his pocket an outline map, prepared for him by one of his engineers, and a pencil, said: “Take this map, and mark it down for me.” When he saw it, he said: “That is too near: it goes within the line of the enemy's pickets. I wish to get around well to his rear, without being observed: Do you know no other road?” He replied that he had no perfect knowledge of any other, but presumed that the road which he had described as entering the Orange plank-road, four miles aboveChancellorsville, must intersect the furnace road somewhere in the interior, because their directions were convergent. “Then,” said Jackson: “Where can you find this out certainly?” He was told that everything could doubtless be learned at the house of the proprietor of the furnace, a mile and a half distant, whose son, a patriotic and gallant man, would be an excellent guide. He then said: “Go with Mr. Hotchkiss (his topographical engineer) to the furnace, ascertain whether those roads meet, at what distance, and whether they are practicable for artillery — send Mr. Hotchkiss back with the information, and do you procure me a guide.”
The desired information was speedily obtained; and it was discovered that the two roads crossed each other at the distance of a few miles; so that, by a circuit of fifteen miles, a point would be reached nearWilderness Run, several miles above the [677] farthest outposts of Hooker. The intersecting road, by which the Orange plank-road was to be regained, was known as the Brock road. Leading fromCulpepper southeastward, it crosses the old turnpike near the Wilderness tavern, and the plankroad two or three miles south of it; so that by this route General Jackson's purposes were perfectly. met. As soon as he received the necessary assurance of this, he gave orders for his corps to begin their march, and a little after sunrise appeared at the furnace at the head of the column. He declined the urgent request of the family there to partake of the breakfast which they were preparing for him, and without any refreshment busied himself in pushing on his troops. Forgetful of no prudent precaution, he directed that a regiment of General McLaws should be sent to guard the entrance of the blind road near theFurnace, lest the Federalists should attack the side of his passing column by that outlet. He then caused the regiments of Stuart, which were present, to patrol the country between his line of march and their outposts, that they might learn nothing of his journey.
But, before the whole column had passed the Furnace, some of Hooker's scouts, mounted in the tops of the highest trees southeast of Chancellor's house, perceived it, and reported its movement to him. That sagacious commander was now perfectly certain that the disheartened “Rebels” were in full retreat uponRichmond. Their early march to the southward could bear, in his judgment, no other explanation. He therefore prepared to harass the rear of their flight; and to this end posted some artillery upon the declivities facing the Furnace Road, which cannonaded the ammunition train of General Jackson; and sent down a few regiments, after a time, to ascertain the direction of his retreat. These came into collision with the regiment of McLaws, captured a part of them, and were, in turn [678] driven off by a demonstration of other Confederate troops from the plank-road. Hooker now found the same firm resistance upon his eastern front which he had met the day before, and, after some feeble skirmishing of artillery and riflemen, became quiescent, awaiting further developments. It was here that he committed his fatal blunder,--a blunder inexcusable even when judged, in the absence of the light cast upon his situation by subsequent events, by his own professed conclusions. If he believed that the Confederate army was indeed retreating into the interior of Spottsylvania, and thence toward Richmond, it is strange that the bold front still maintained against him on the east by General Lee did not suggest an anxious doubt. Was not this a new manner for the rear-guard of a baffled and fleeing army to behave? Did it not point, too strongly for a moment's hesitation, to the propriety of his at once attacking them in such force as to learn what they truly meant? And if he found them obstinate and immovable upon his east front, would not that result dictate still more clearly that he should move upon their south or left flank, if necessary, with his whole force, until they were forced back, and the mystery of Jackson's disappearance on that side, and of the unaccountable gap which he was placing between himself and his friends, was cleared up? The history of war contains no stronger instance of the danger of the policy of “the stationary defensive,” when adhered to in disregard of new circumstances. It was very properly a part of Hooker's programme, after gaining his strong position at Chancellorsville, to await the attack of the Confederates. But the prudence of this plan depended wholly upon their making that attack in that mode in which he had prepared himself to receive it. Just as soon as it became doubtful whether they purposed to do this, the defensive policy became of doubtful propriety; and sound judgment dictated that Hooker should modify his purposes also, and [679] should immediately assume the aggressive, sufficiently, at least, to determine their true project. By sitting still now, he forfeited all the strength of his defensive position. The best justification of General Jackson's strategy is found in the fact that he so correctly estimated the temper of his adversary, and anticipated the blunder which he would commit.
The narrative returns now to his march. The troops, comprehending instantly that he was engaged in one of his famous assaults upon his enemy's flanks, responded to his eager spirit zealously, and pressed forward along the narrow country road at a rapid gait. Often the men were compelled to advance at a double-quick, in order to close up the column. After proceeding southwest, a few miles beyond the Catharine furnace, they came to the intersection of the Brock road, and turning to the right at a sharp angle, assumed a northwestern direction. When General Jackson reached the plank-road again, he quietly advanced the Stonewall Brigade down it, under General Paxton, with instructions to form across it at the junction of the road which led thence toward Germanna ford, so as to prevent egress at that place. He then continued his march, with the remainder of the corps, until he found himself in the old turnpike near Wilderness Run. He had marched fifteen miles, and three o'clock in the afternoon had arrived. He was six miles west of Chancellorsville, and upon precisely the opposite side of the enemy to that occupied by General Lee. He now addressed to him the following, which is the last of his official notes:
near 3 P. M., May 2nd, 1863.
General--
The enemy has made a stand at Chancellor's, which is about two miles from Chancellorsville. I hope, so soon as practicable, to attack. [680]
I trust that an ever kind Providence will bless us with success.
Respectfully, T. J. Jackson, Lieutenant-General. General Robert E. Lee.
P. S. The leading division is up, and the next two appear to be well closed.
T. J. J.
The place here mentioned as Chancellor's, two miles west of Chancellorsville, was the farm of MelziChancellor, which was embraced within the western wing of Hooker's defences, and occupied by thecorps of Sigel, now commanded by General Howard. General Jackson found both the plank-road, and the old turnpike guarded on the west by the vigilant pickets of Stuart. Advancing to these outposts, he gained a glimpse of the position of the enemy, which convinced him that he had obtained the desired vantage ground from which to attack them. He therefore directed his column to advance across the old turnpike, and then to wheel to the eastward, so as to present a line toward the foe. The open fields near the old Wilderness Tavern afforded him space in which to complete his array. He now formed his army in three parallel lines: the division of Rhodes in front, that of Colston next, and that of A. P. Hill in the rear. He detailed one or two picked batteries to advance along the turnpike, which marked the centre of his lines; and such was the extent of the thickets into which he was about to plunge, that no position could be gained for his other artillery. Two hours were consumed by the issuing of orders, and the galloping of aides and orderlies, when, between five and six o'clock, everything was ready for the advance. The three lines swept grandly forward, at the word, in battle array, and speedily buried themselves in the tangled forests. So dense were the thickets, that the [681] soldiers had their clothing almost torn from their bodies, and could only advance by creeping through the thickest spots; but still the lines swept forward, in tolerable order, and with high enthusiasm. General A. P. Hill, finding this toilsome march unnecessary to support Rhodes, whose division had Colston just in their rear, was allowed to withdraw his men from line into column again, and thus advanced along the turnpike, leaving a part of its breadth open for the passage of artillery and ambulances, but ready to reinforce any part of the line which might waver.
As the Confederates approached the little farms of Talley and Melzi Chancellor, after a march of two miles through the woods, they came upon the right wing of Hooker's army, in all the security of unsuspicious indolence. Their little earthworks, which fronted the south, were taken in reverse, and the men were scattered about the fields and woods, preparing for their evening meal. With a wild hurra, the line of Rhodes burst upon them from the woods, and the first volley decided their utter rout. The second line, commanded by Colston, unable to restrain their impetuosity, rushed forward at the shout, pressed upon the first, filling up their gaps, and firing over their heads, so that thenceforward the two were almost merged into one, and advanced together, a dense and impetuous mass. For three miles the Federalists were now swept back by a resistless charge. Even the works which confronted the west afforded them no protection; no sooner were they manned by the enemy, than the Confederates dashed upon them with the bayonet, and the defenders were either captured or again put to flight. The battle was but a continued onward march, with no other pause than that required for the rectification of the line, disordered by the density of the woods. The eleven thousand German mercenaries of Howard fled almost without resistance, carrying away with them the troops sent to their support; they did not pause [682] in Hooker's entrenched camp, but dashing through his whole army in frantic terror, without muskets, without hats, they rushed toward the fords of the Rappahannock. Fugitives, armed men, ambulances, artillery, were mixed together in vast masses, all struggling madly to flee as rapidly as possible from the deadly volleys which were scourging their rear, and those terrible war-cries of the vengeful patriots. While these confused herds offered an unfailing mark for the bullets of theConfederates, they were able to make no effective reply. Hence the slaughter of the Federalists was heavy, and the loss of the assailants trifling. The ground moreover was left strewed with incalculable amounts of spoils. The lavish equipments with which the Federal Government fitted out its armies, now fell a prey, in a moment, to the victors. Blankets, clothing, arms, ammunition, cooking utensils, food, almost covered the surface of the highway, and were thickly scattered though the fields and coppices for three miles.
In this fashion General Jackson urged forward the attack until after nightfall. After the dispositions for the first attack were made, the only order given by him had been his favorite battle-cry: “Press forward.” This was his message to every General, and his answer to every inquiry. As he uttered it, he leaned forward upon his horse, and waved his hand as though endeavoring, by its single strength, to urge forward his whole line. Never before had his pre-occupation of mind, and his insensibility to danger been so great. At every cheer from the front, which announced some new success, the smile of triumph flashed over his face, followed and banished immediately by the reverential gratitude, with which he raised his face and his right hand to the heavens in prayer and thanksgiving. It was evident that he regarded this as his greatest victory, and never before was he seen so frequently engaged in worship upon [683] the field. Eight o'clock arrived, and the moon was shedding a doubtful light through the openings of the forest, but the darkness was sufficient to arrest the pursuit of the fugitives. The line ofRhodes was now within a mile of Chancellorsville, but still enveloped within the bushy woods which surrounded the entrenchments there; and they had no means of knowing what was the character of the ground, or of the defences before them. Their array had been much disordered by their rapid advance; and now, by a species of common impulse, the whole line, finding no visible enemy, and no firing in their front, paused to rest. The men, leaving their places in the ranks, were clustering in groups, to discuss the triumphs of the evening, and many were reclining at the roots of the trees. They had now marched more than twenty miles since the morning, had fought over three miles of difficult ground, and their weariness demanded repose. General Jackson perceiving this, determined to relieve his front line, by replacing them with the fresh troops of A. P. Hill, who had closely followed up his advance, keeping the head of his columns a little behind the line of battle, upon both margins of the turnpike. He therefore directed that General to file a part of his brigade to the right, and a part to the left of the highway, to replace those ofRhodes and Colston, which were to be withdrawn to the second line, as fast as the others were ready to take their places. But his vigilance was dissatisfied with the disorder to which the men in front had yielded; he knew that the present quiet was but a lull in the storm of war; and that the completion of his own movement would be so ruinous to Hooker, it was impossible that General could fail to make another attempt to arrest it. He therefore expected another collision, with fresh troops, and knew not when it might begin.
It was just at this moment that the gallant Colonel Cobb, of [684] the 44th Virginia regiment, inColston's division, came to report to him, that advancing through the woods on the right of the turnpike, a little space beyond the line where the Confederates had paused in their career, he had captured a number of prisoners, and had also ascertained the existence of a strong barricade of timber, fronted by an abattis which, beginning at the right margin of the road, seemed to run down a gentle, sinuous vale of the forest, an indefinite distance, toward the south and east, and was now deserted by the Federalists. (This defence was, in fact, a part of the main circuit by which Hooker had enclosed his entrenched camp at Chancellorsville, and was now surrendered into General Jackson's hands, almost without a struggle. So complete were the results of his attack, the very citadel of Hooker was now in his grasp.) He found General Jackson near the road, busily engaged in correcting the partial disorder into which the men had fallen. Riding along the lines, he was saying, “Men, get into line! get into line! Whose regiment is this? Colonel, get your men instantly into line.” He was almost unattended, and had obviously sent away his Staff to aid in correcting the confusion, or to direct the advance of A. P. Hill's division to the front. Upon receiving the report of Cobb, he said to him, “Find General Rhodes, and tell him to occupy that barricade at once, with his troops.” He added, “I need your help for a time; this disorder must be corrected. As you go along the right, tell the troops, from me, to get into line, and preserve their order.” He then busily resumed his efforts for the same object, and a moment after rode along the turnpike toward Chancellorsville, endeavoring to discover the intentions of the enemy.
His anticipations were, indeed, verified at once. Hooker was just then advancing a powerful body of fresh troops, to endeavor to break the fatal cordon which General Jackson was drawing around his rear, and to escape from General Lee, who was [685] pressing his front. He was pushing a strong battery along the highway, preceded by infantry skirmishers, and in front of General Jackson's right, was sending a heavy line of infantry through the woods, to retake the all-important barricade. The latter, according to the usual perfidy of the enemy's tactics, was preceded by a flag of truce, which attempted to amuse General Rhodes with some trumpery fable, until the enemy could creep upon him unprepared.Rhodes, instantly perceiving the cheat, directed him to be taken to General Jackson with his message; and resumed the effort to man the barricade in accordance with his order. But the trick was partially successful. The men had not yet resumed their ranks, nor was the work fully occupied, before theFederal line of battle appeared upon the brow of the little hill within it, and poured a heavy volley upon the Confederates, at point blank distance. They replied, firing wildly, and made efforts to sustain the strife, but in a feeble and irrregular fashion. This combat upon the right was the signal for the resumption of the battle along the whole line; and in its opening upon the turnpike, General Jackson received a mortal wound.
He had now advanced a hundred yards beyond his line of battle, evidently supposing that, in accordance with his constant orders, a line of skirmishers had been sent to the front, immediately upon the recent cessation of the advance. He probably intended to proceed to the place where he supposed this line crossed the turnpike, to ascertain from them what they could learn concerning the enemy. He was attended only by a half dozen mounted orderlies, his signal officer, Captain Wilbourne, with one of his men, and his aide, Lieutenant Morrison, who had just returned to him. General A. P. Hill, with his staff also proceeded immediately after him, to the front of the line, accompanied by Captain Boswell of the Engineers, whom General [686] Jackson had just detached to assist him. After the General and his escort had proceeded down the road a hundred yards, they were surprised by a volley of musketry from the right, which spread toward their front, until the bullets began to whistle among them, and struck several horses. This was, in fact, the advance of the Federal line assailing the barricade, which they were attempting to regain. General Jackson was now aware of their proximity, and perceived that there was no picket or skirmisher between him and his enemies. He therefore, turned to ride hurriedly back to his own troops; and, to avoid the fire, which was, thus far, limited to the south side of the road, he turned into the woods upon the north side. It so happened that General Hill, with his escort, had been directed by the same motive almost to the same spot. As the party approached within twenty paces of theConfederate troops, these, evidently mistaking them for cavalry, stooped, and delivered a deadly fire. So sudden and stunning was this volley, and so near at hand, that every horse which was not shot down, recoiled from it in panic, and turned to rush back, bearing their riders toward the approaching enemy. Several fell dead upon the spot, among them the amiable and courageous Boswell; and more were wounded. Among the latter was General Jackson. His right hand was penetrated by a ball, his left fore arm lacerated by another, and the same limb broken a little below the shoulder by a third, which not only crushed the bone, but severed the main artery. His horse also dashed, panic-stricken, toward the enemy, carrying him beneath the boughs of a tree which inflicted severe blows, lacerated his face, and almost dragged him from the saddle. His bridle hand was now powerless, but seizing the reins with the right hand, notwithstanding its wound, he arrested his career, and brought the animal back toward his own lines. He was followed by his faithful attendant, Captain Wilbourne, and [687] his assistant, Wynn, who overtook him as he paused again in the turnpike, near the spot where he had received the fatal shots. The firing of the Confederates had now been arrested by the officers: but the wounded and frantic horses were rushing, without riders, through the woods, and the ground was strewn with the dead and dying. Here General Jackson drew up his horse, and sat for an instant gazing toward his own men, as if in astonishment at their cruel mistake, and in doubt whether he should again venture to approach them. To the anxious inquiries of Captain Wilbourne, he replied that he believed his arm was broken; and requested him to assist him from his horse, and examine whether the wounds were bleeding dangerously. But before he could dismount he sunk fainting into their arms, so completely prostrate, that they were compelled to disengage his feet from the stirrups. They now bore him aside a few yards into the woods north of the turnpike, to shield him from the expected advance of the Federalists; and whileWynn was sent for an ambulance and surgeon, Wilbourne proceeded, supporting his head upon his bosom, to strip his mangled arm, and bind up his wound. The warm blood was flowing in a stream down his wrist; his clothing impeded all access to its source, and nothing was at hand more efficient than a penknife, to remove the obstructions. But at this terrible moment, he saw General Hill, with the remnant of his staff, approaching; and called to him for assistance. He, with his volunteer aide, MajorLeigh, dismounted, and taking the body of the General into his arms, succeeded in reaching the wound, and stanching the blood with a handkerchief. The swelling of the lacerated flesh had already performed this office in part. His two aides, Lieutenants Smith and Morrison, arrived at this moment, the former having been left at the rear to execute some orders, and the latter having just saved himself, at the expense of a stunning fall, [688] by leaping from his horse, as he was carrying him, in uncontrolable fright, into the enemy's ranks. Morrison, the General's brother by marriage, was agitated by grief; butSmith was full at once of tenderness, and of that clear self-possession, which is so valuable in the hour of danger. With the skilful direction of General Hill, they now effectually arrested the hemorrhage, and adjusted a sling to support the mangled arm.
It was at this moment that two Federal skirmishers approached within a few feet of the spot where he lay, with their muskets cocked. They little knew what a prize was in their grasp; and when, at the command of General Hill, two orderlies arose from the kneeling group, and demanded their surrender, they seemed amazed at their nearness to their enemies, and yielded their arms without resistance.Lieutenant Morrison, suspecting from their approach that the Federalists must be near at hand, stepped out into the road to examine; and by the light of the moon saw a field-piece pointed toward him, apparently not more than a hundred yards distant. Indeed it was so near that the orders given by the officers to the cannoneers could be distinctly heard. Returning hurriedly, he announced that the enemy were planting artillery in the road, and that the General must be immediately removed. General Hill now remounted, and hurried back to make his dispositions to meet this attack. In the combat which ensued he was himself wounded a few moments after, and compelled to leave the field. No ambulance or litter was yet at hand, although Captain Wilbourne had also been sent to seek them; and the necessity of an immediate removal suggested that they should bear the General away in their arms. To this he replied, that if they would assist him to rise, he could walk to the rear; and he was accordingly raised to his feet, and leaning upon the shoulders of Major Leigh and Lieutenant Smith, went slowly out into the highway, and toward [689] his troops. The party was now met by a litter, which some one had sent from the rear; and the General was placed upon it, and borne along by two soldiers, and Lieutenants Smith andMorrison. As they were placing him upon it, the enemy fired a volley of canister-shot up the road, which passed over their heads. But they had proceeded only a few steps before the discharge was repeated, with a more accurate aim. One of the soldiers bearing the litter was struck down, severely wounded; and had not Major Leigh, who was walking beside it, broken his fall, the General would have been precipitated to the ground. He was placed again upon the earth; and the causeway was now swept by a hurricane of projectiles of every species, before which it seemed that no living thing could survive. The bearers of the litter, and all the attendants, excepting Major Leigh and the General's two aides, left him, and fled into the woods on either hand, to escape the fatal tempest; while the sufferer lay along the road, with his feet toward the foe, exposed to all its fury. It was now that his three faithful attendants displayed a heroic fidelity, which deserves to go down with the immortal name of Jackson to future ages. Disdaining to save their lives by deserting their chief, they lay down beside him in the causeway, and sought to protect him as far as possible with their bodies. On one side was Major Leigh, and on the other Lieutenant Smith. Again and again was the earth around them torn with volleys of canister, while shells and minie balls flew hissing over them, and the stroke of the iron hail raised sparkling flashes from the flinty gravel of the roadway. General Jackson struggled violently to rise, as though to endeavor to leave the road; but Smith threw his arm over him, and with friendly force held him to the earth, saying: “Sir, you must lie still; it will cost you your life if you rise.” He speedily acquiesced, and lay quiet; but none of the four hoped to escape alive. Yet, almost by miracle, they were [690] unharmed; and, after a few moments, the Federalists, having cleared the road of all except this little party, ceased to fire along it, and directed their aim to another quarter.
They now arose, and resumed their retreat, the General leaning upon his friends, and proceeding along the gutter at the margin of the highway, in order to avoid the troops who were again hurrying to the front. Perceiving that he was recognized by some of them, they diverged still farther into the edge of the thicket. It was here that General Pender of North Carolina, who had succeeded to the command ofHill's division upon the wounding of that officer, recognized General Jackson, and, after expressing his hearty sympathy for his sufferings, added, “My men are thrown into such confusion by this fire, that I fear I shall not be able to hold my ground.” Almost fainting with anguish and loss of blood, he still replied, in a voice feeble but full of his old determination and authority, “General Pender, you must keep your men together, and hold your ground.” This was the last military order ever given by Jackson! How fit was the termination for such a career as his, and how expressive of the resolute purpose of his soul! His bleeding country could do nothing better than to adopt this as her motto in her hour of trial, inscribe it on all her banners, and make it the rallying cry of all her armies.
General Jackson now complained of faintness, and was again placed upon the litter; and, after some difficulty, men were obtained to bear him. To avoid the enemy's fire, which was again sweeping the road, they made their way through the tangled brushwood, almost tearing his clothing from him, and lacerating his face, in their hurried progress. The foot of one of the men bearing his head was here entangled in a vine, and he fell prostrate. The General was thus thrown heavily to the ground upon his wounded side, inflicting painful bruises on his body [691] and intolerable agony on his mangled arm, and renewing the flow of blood from it. As they lifted him up, he uttered one piteous groan,--the only complaint which escaped his lips during the whole scene. Lieutenant Smith raised his head upon his bosom, almost fearing to see him expiring in his arms, and asked, “General, are you much hurt?” He replied, “No, Mr. Smith; don't trouble yourself about me.” He was then replaced a second time upon the litter, and, under a continuous shower of shells and cannon-balls, borne a half mile farther to the rear, when an ambulance was found, containing his chief of artillery, Colonel Crutchfield, who was also wounded. In this he was placed, and hurried towards the field hospital near Wilderness Run. As the vehicle passed the house of Melzi Chancellor, Dr. McGuire met the party. Colonel Pendleton, the faithful adjutant of General Jackson, upon ascertaining the misfortune of his chief, had taken upon himself the task of seeking him, and bringing him to the General's aid. Indeed, one of the first requests made by the latter was to ask for this well-tried friend; and he was, therefore, summoned from the rear, where he was busily engaged organizing the relief for the numerous wounded from the battle. Upon meeting the sad cavalcade, Dr. McGuire obtained a candle, and sprung into the ambulance to examine the wound. He found the General almost pulseless, but the hemorrhage had again ceased. Some alcoholic stimulant had been anxiously sought for him, but hitherto only a few drops could be obtained. Now through the activity of the Rev. Mr. Vass, a chaplain in the Stonewall Brigade, a sufficient quantity of spirits was found, and the patient was freely stimulated. They then resumed their way to the field hospital near Wilderness Run, Dr. McGuire supporting the General as he sat beside him in the carriage. To his anxious inquiries he replied that he was now somewhat revived, but that several times he had felt as though he were about to [692] die. This he said in a tone of perfect calmness. It was, doubtless, the literal truth, and during the removal he was indeed vibrating upon the very turn between life and death. The artery of his left arm was severed; and, in consequence of the inexperience and distress of his affectionate assistants, and yet more of the horrible confusion of the battle, he had nearly bled to death before his wound was stanched. Arriving at the hospital, he was tenderly removed to a tent which had been erected for him; where he was laid in a camp bed, and covered with blankets, in an atmosphere carefully warmed. Here he speedily sank into a deep sleep, which showed the thorough prostration of his energies.
The melancholy scene which has now been simply and exactly described, occupied but a few minutes; for the events followed each other with stunning rapidity. The report of the discovery of the deserted barricade by Colonel Cobb, the order to General Rhodes to occupy it, the attempt to restore the order to his line of battle, the advance of the General and his escort down the road, his collision with the advancing enemy, his hurried retreat, and the fatal fire of his own men, all followed each other almost as rapidly as they are here recited. While he lay upon the ground, assisted at first only by CaptainWilbourne and his man, and afterwards by General A. P. Hill and the officers of the two escorts, the battle was again joined between Hooker and the Confederates; and it was just as the difficult removal of the General was made, that it raged through its short but furious course. General Hill had scarcely flown to assume the command of his line, in order to resist the onset, and protect General Jackson from capture, when he was himself struck down with a violent contusion, and compelled to leave the field, surrendering the direction of affairs to Brigadier-Generals Rhodes and Pender. Colonel Crutchfield,chief-of-artillery, and his [693] assistant, Major Rogers, attempting to make an effective reply to the cannonade which swept the great road, were both severely wounded. In the darkness and confusion, the Federalists regained their barricade, and pushed back the right of the Confederates a short distance; but here their successes ended; and the brigades of Hill stubbornly held their ground in the thickets near the turnpike. The fire now gradually died away into a fitful skirmish, which was continued at intervals all night, without result on either side.
While General Jackson lay bleeding upon the ground, he displayed several traits very characteristic of his nature. Amidst all his sufferings, he was absolutely uncomplaining; save when his agonizing fall wrung a groan from his breast. It was only in answer to the questions of his friends, that he said, “I believe my arm is broken,” and, “It gives me severe pain;” but this was uttered in a tone perfectly calm and self-possessed. When he was asked whether he was hurt elsewhere, he replied: “Yes, in the right hand.” (He seemed to be unconscious that the other fore-arm was shattered by a third ball: nor did the surgeons themselves advert to it, until they examined it in preparing for the amputation.) When he was asked whether his right hand should not also be bound up, he replied: “No, never mind; it is a trifle.” Yet two of the bones were broken, and the palm was almost perforated by the bullet To the many exclamations touching the source of his misfortune, he answered decisively, but without a shade of passion: “All my wounds were undoubtedly from my own men;” and added that they were exactly simultaneous. When he was informed, in answer to his first demand for the assistance of Dr. McGuire, that that officer must be now engaged in his onerous duties far to the rear, and could not be immediately brought to him, he said to Captain Wilbourne, “Then I wish you to get me a skilful [694] surgeon.” On the arrival of General Hill, the anxious inquiry was made of him, where a surgeon could be most quickly found. He stated that Dr. Barr, an assistant surgeon in one of the regiments of Pender, which had just come to the front, was near at hand; and this gentleman being called, promptly answered. GeneralJackson now repeated in a whisper, to General Hill, the question: “Is he a skilful surgeon?” He answered in substance, that he stood high in his brigade; and that at most, he did not propose to have him do anything until Dr. McGuire arrived, save the necessary precautionary acts. To this GeneralJackson replied: “Very good;” and Dr. Barr speedily procured a tourniquet to apply above the wound: but finding the blood no longer flowing, postponed its application. When General Jackson's field-glass and haversack were removed, they were preserved by Captain Wilbourne. The latter was found to contain no refreshments: its only contents were a few official papers, and two Gospel-tracts. No sooner had friends began to gather around him, than numerous suggestions were made, concerning the importance of concealing his fall from his troops. While he was lying upon General Hill's breast, that bfficer commanded that no one should tell the men he was wounded. General Jackson opened his eyes, and looking fixedly upon his Aides Smith and Morrison, said: “Tell them simply that you have a wounded Confederate officer.” He recognized, on the one hand, the importance of concealment; but on the other hand, he was anxious that the truth should not be violated in any degree, upon his account. With these exceptions, he lay silent and passive in the arms of his friends; his soul doubtless occupied with silent prayer. As he was led past the column of Pender, the unusual attention paid him excited the lively curiosity of the men. Many asked: “Whom have you there?” and some made vigorous exertions to gain a view of his face. Notwithstanding [695] the efforts of Captain Wilbourne to shield him from their view, one or two recognized him; and exclaimed, their faces blanched with horror and grief: “Great God! It is General Jackson.” Thus the news of the catastrophe rapidly spread along the lines; but the men believed that his wounds were slight: and their sorrow only made them more determined.
About midnight, Dr. McGuire summoned as assistants, Drs. Coleman, Black and Walls, and watched the pulse of the General for such evidences of the re-action of his exhausted powers, as would permit a more thorough dealing with his wound. Perceiving that the animal heat had returned, and the pulsations had resumed their volume, they aroused him; and on examining the whole extent of his injuries, were convinced beyond all doubt, that his left arm should be immediately removed. Dr. McGuire now explained to him that it seemed necessary to amputate his arm; and inquired whether he was willing that it should be done immediately. He replied, without tremor: “Dr. MGuire; do for me what you think best; I am resigned to whatever is necessary.” Preparations were then made for the work. Chloroform was administered by Dr. Coleman; Dr. McGuire, with a steady and deliberate hand, severed the mangled limb from the shoulder; Dr. Walls secured the arteries, and Dr. Black watched the pulse; whileLieutenant Smith stood by, holding the lights. The General seemed insensible to pain, although he spoke once or twice, as though conscious, saying with a placid and dreamy voice: “Dr. McGuire; I am lying very comfortably.” The ball was also extracted from his right hand, and the wound was dressed. The surgeons then directed Smith to watch beside him the remainder of the night; and after an interval of half an hour, to arouse him, in order that he might drink a cup of coffee. During this interval, he lay perfectly quiet, as though sleeping: but when he was called, awoke promptly and in full possession [696] of his faculties. He received the coffee, drank it with appetite, and remarked that it was very good and refreshing. This was, indeed, the first nourishment which he had taken since Friday evening. He now looked at the stump of his arm; and comprehending its loss fully, asked Mr. Smith: “Were you here?” (meaning when the operation was performed.) He then, after a moment's silence, inquired whether he had said anything when under the power of the chloroform; and continued, after being satisfied on this point, in substance thus: “I have always thought it wrong to administer chloroform, in cases where there is a probability of immediate death. But it was, I think, the most delightful physical sensation I ever enjoyed. I had enough consciousness to know what was doing; and at one time thought I heard the most delightful music that ever greeted my ears. I believe it was the sawing of the bone. But I should dislike above all things, to enter eternity in such a conditiqn.” His meaning evidently was, that he would not wish to be ushered into that spiritual existence, from the midst of sensations so thoroughly physical and illusory. He afterwards exclaimed to other friends; “What an inestimable blessing is chloroform to the sufferer!” His condition now appeared to be every way hopeful; and Mr. Smith exhorted him to postpone conversation, and to resign himself to sleep. He acquiesced in this, and being well wrapped up, soon fell into a quiet slumber, which continued until nine o'clock in the Sabbath morning.
Leaving him to his much needed sleep, the narrative will now return to the history of the great battle which he had so gloriously begun; that the interest of the reader in it may be briefly satisfied. About dark on Saturday evening, General Jackson had directed Brigadier-General Pender, to send him a regiment for a special service. The 16th North Carolina, Colonel McElroy, was sent. Jackson commanded him to [697] accompany a squadron of cavalry detached by General Stuart, to Ely's Ford, where they would find a corps of Federal troops encamped; to approach them as nearly as possible, and at a preconcerted signal, to fire three volleys into them, with loud cheers, and then make their way back to their Brigade. Colonel McElroy reached the enemy's encampment about midnight, and carried out his instructions to the letter. He returned to the field of battle at three o'clock in the morning; and remained for a time ignorant alike of the reasons and results of this strange proceeding. The Federal officers ofReynolds' corps at last revealed it. They, stated that while resting for the night at Ely's Ford, on their way to Chancellorsville, they were so furiously attacked by the “Rebels” in the darkness, that their leader arrested his march, and commenced fortifying his position; and in this work the Sabbath was consumed. Had this large corps arrived at the main scene of battle that morning, the odds already so fearful against the Confederates, might have become overpowering. But by this adroit manoeuvre they were detained where they were wholly useless. Such was the last of the strokes, by which the ubiquitous Jackson was accustomed to astonish and baffle his foes.
Upon the retirement of General Hill from the field, a hurried consultation was held between ColonelPendleton, the acting adjutant of the corps, and the remaining Generals, touching the command of the troops. The night was passing away, and they well knew that the morning must bring a fierce renewal of the struggle; or all that had been won would be lost. Brigadier General Rhodes, commanding the former division of D. H. Hill, was found to be the senior officer upon the field; and his modesty, with the lack of acquaintanceship between him and the army, made him concur in the suggestion, that Major-GeneralStuart should be sent for, and requested to assume the [698] direction of affairs until the pleasure of theCommander-in-Chief should be known. This measure was therefore adopted. It has been said that he was selected by General Jackson, to complete the battle after he was himself disabled. This is an error. He was too strict in his obedience to the rules and proprieties of the service, to transcend under any circumstances, his powers as the commander of a corps; and he knew that all his authority could do, was to transmit his functions to the General next in rank in his own command. If any other disposition was to be made of them, he knew that it must be done by an authority higher than his own. But whenColonel Pendleton, the next morning, reported to him the assumption of temporary command byGeneral Stuart he cheerfully acquiesced. In reply to the request of Stuart that he would communicate, through Pendleton, his plans for the second day, he answered, that he preferred to leave everything to his own judgment. This reply was an eminent instance of his wisdom. He knew, on the one hand: that as all the reconnaissances on which he himself had acted, had been made by General Stuart, that officer was fully possessed of the enemy's attitude. But on the other hand, he was not now informed what changes in the posture of affairs might have occurred, which, if he were on the field, might modify his plans. To seem to enjoin upon General Stuart the execution of all his purposes of yesterday, might therefore impose on him mischievous trammels. He well knew, moreover, that the wisdom of the methods adopted by himself, depended in part on his ownprestige, his moral power over his men, his celerity in action, the momentum of his tremendous will; properties in which no other leader might be able to imitate him. He therefore left General Stuart to adopt his own plan of battle, believing, what was doubtless true, that an inferior conception of that commander's mind, applied by him, would be more successful than the impracticable [699] effort to unite the plan of one, with the execution of another.
But both General Stuart and General Rhodes proved them selves worthy of the command: and both of them followed their great exemplar to a soldier's grave, in the subsequent campaigns of 1864. The brilliant execution of General Jackson's orders by Rhodes at Chancellorsville, won his warm applause; and he declared that his commission as Major-General should date from the 2nd of May: when, with one division, he drove before him the whole right wing of Hooker for three hours. This purpose ofGeneral Jackson the Government fulfilled immediately after his death; and General Rhodes was promoted and placed in permanent command of the division. He continued to lead this with consummate gallantry and skill, until the disastrous battle of Winchester, in the autumn of 1864; when he fell at its head, in the execution of an attack against the enemy as splendid and as successful as that ofChancellorsville. And with his fall victory departed from the Confederate banners, to perch upon those of the oppressors.
But we are not left in doubt concerning General Jackson's own designs. Speaking afterward to his friends, he said that if he had had an hour more of daylight, or had not been wounded, he should have occupied the outlets toward Ely's and United States fords, as well as those on the west. (It has been already explained that of the four roads diverging from Chancellorsville, the one which leads north, after proceeding for a mile and a half m that direction, turns northwestward, and divides into two, the left hand leading to Ely's, and the right to United States ford. And the point of their junction, afterwards so carefully fortified by Hooker, was on Saturday night entirely open.) General Jackson proposed, therefore, to move still farther to his left, during the night, and occupy that point. He declared that if he had [700] been able to do so, the dispersion or capture of Hooker's army would have been certain. “For,” said he, “my men sometimes fail to drive the enemy from their position; but the enemy are never able to drive my men from theirs.” It has already been seen, that in the confusion of his fall, aa important vantageground, won by him almost without loss, was forfeited; and it was necessary to fight over this ground again on the morrow. General Stuart now departed from the plans of General Jackson, by extending his right rather than his left, so as to approximate the Confederate troops on the southeast of Chancellorsvillei under the immediate command of General Lee. Thus, the weight of his attack was thrown against the southwest side of Hooker's position. General Jackson would rather have thrown it against the northwest. But the true design of the latter was to assume the defensive for a few hours, on Sabbath morning, after occupying both the Orange turnpike, and the road to Ely's ford. He purposed to stand at bay there, and receive, amidst the dense thickets, the attack, which he knew this occupation of his line of retreat would force upon Hooker; while General Lee thundered upon his other side. Then, after permitting him to break his strength in these vain assaults, he would have advanced upon his disheartened masses, over ground defended by no works; and Hooker would have been crushed between the upper and the nether mill-stones. To comprehend the plausibility of this design, it must be remembered that Chancellorsville, with its few adjoining farms, was an island, completely environed by a sea of forests, through whose tangled depths infantry could scarcely march in line; and the passage of carriages was impossible. Of the four roads which centred at the Villa, General Lee held two, the old turnpike, and the plank-road, leading toward Fredericksburg. General Jackson proposed to occupy the other two. Had this been done, the strong defence of the [701] surrounding woods, in which Hookertrusted, would have been his ruin; he would have found his imaginary castle his prison The necessity which compelled him again to take the aggressive iit the leafy woods, would have thrown the advantage vastly to General Jackson; by rendering the powerful Federal artillery, in which they so much trusted, a cypher, and by requiring the Federals to come to close quarters with the terrible Confederate infantry. And this was a work always more dreaded by them, than the meeting of a “bear bereaved of her whelps.” But on the southwest side of his position, within the open farm of Chancellor, Hooker had constructed a second and interior line of works, upon the brow of a long declivity, consisting of a row of lunettes pierced for artillery, and of rifle-pits. General Stuart's line of battle, after running the barricade, once before won by General Jackson, and emerging from the belt of woods which enveloped it, found themselves confronted by these works, manned by numerous batteries; and hence the cruel loss at which the splendid victory of Sunday was won.
The Brigadiers of General Jackson's corps, after determining t9 offer the temporary command toGeneral Stuart, sent Captain Wilbourne to General Lee, to announce what had been done, and to request that he would himself come to that side and assume the direction of affairs. That officer, accompanied by Captain Hotchkiss, reached the cluster of pines east of Chancellorsville, where he lay, before the break of day, and they announced themselves to his Chief-of-Staff. They found the Generallying upon the ground, beneath a thick pine-tree; and he at once requested them to come to him and tell the news. They related the incidents of the battle, and described the glorious victory; but when they told the wounding of their General, he said, after a pause, in which he was struggling to suppress his emotion, “Ah! any victory is dearly bought which deprives us of the [702] services of Jackson, even for a short time.” When reminded that General Rhodes was now the senior officer in the corps, he said he was a gallant, efficient, and energetic officer. But he acquiesced in the selection of General Stuart to lead the troops on that day, and, after a multitude of inquiries, called his adjutant to write instructions for him. He also dictated that generous note to General Jackson, which has conferred equal honor on its author and its recipient, and which deserves to be immortalized along with the fame of the two noble men. It was in these words:--
General: I have just received your note, informing me that you were wounded. I cannot express my regret at the occurrence. Could I have directed events, I should have chosen, for the good of the country, to have been disabled in your stead.
I congratulate you upon the victory which is due to your skill and energy.
Most truly yours, (Signed) R. E. Lee, General.
One of the messengers then informed him that General Jackson, after his wounding, had only expressed this thought concerning the future management of the campaign: that “the enemy should be pressed in the morning.” General Lee replied, “Those people shall be pressed immediately” ; arose, and in a few moments was in the saddle, and busy with his dispositions for attack. Meanwhile, General Stuart, on his side, brought forward the Stonewall Brigade from the junction of the Orange and Culpepper plank-roads, and joined it to his line of battle. The remainder of the night was spent in busy preparation. When the light appeared, both wings of the Confederate army assumed the aggressive, and advanced against the Federal lines. General Lee thundered from the east and south, and General Stuart from [703] the west. The latter, especially, hurled his infantry impetuously against their enemies, and a furious and bloody struggle ensued. Twenty-one thousand men now composed the whole of Jackson's corpspresent upon the field; and these, assisted by the two divisions of McLaws and Anderson, now assailed eighty thousand. In three hours, seven thousand men, one-third of the whole number, were killed and wounded from the corps. But the enemy were steadily driven from every work, with frightful losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners, until they took refuge in a new line of entrenchments, covering theUnited States ford. Seven thousand captives, forty thousand muskets, and a quantity of spoil almost incredible fell into the hands of the conquerors. When the general onset was ordered by Stuart, the Stonewall Brigade advanced with the cry, “Charge; and remember Jackson” Even as they moved from their position, their General, Paxton, his friend and former adjutant, was struck dead where he stood! His men rushed forward, unconscious of his absence, and, without other leader than the name which formed their battle-cry, swept everything before them.
The sequel of the campaign of Chancellorsville may now be related in a few words. While this great struggle was raging there, General Sedgwick retired to the north bank of the Rappahannock, and laying down his bridges again opposite to Fredericksburg, on Sunday morning crossed into the town, and with one corps captured Marye's Hill by a surprise. His other corps were despatched, through Stafford, to the support of Hooker, while he retained about eighteen thousand men. General Early now confronted Marye's Hill on another line, while Sedgwick; leaving a detachment to hold him in check, marched westward to open his way to Hooker, at Chancellorsville. But the fate of that General had been already sealed. General Lee was now at liberty to send a part of his force to meet Sedgwick; so [704] that on Monday, he found himself confronted and arrested in his march by his troops, while General Early re-captured Marye's Hill, and cut off his retreat toward Fredericksburg. Nothing now remained for him save a retreat across the river at Banks's Ford,--a point between that town and Hooker's position,which, by the aid of his artillery upon the northern bank, he effected, though not without heavy loss. The next day, his chief also made preparation to retire; and during the night of Tuesday, withdrew the remainder of his army. Thus ended the invasion, and the short career of Hooker as a commander. His cavalry, which had met with slight resistance, had penetrated as far south as the River James, which they reached fifty miles above Richmond. Thence they spread themselves downward through the country, and some detachments had the audacity to venture within ten miles of the city. They caused temporary interruptions in the Central and Fredericksburg Railroads, and the James River Canal; and then, upon hearing of Hooker's disasters, retired precipitately, having effected no other result than a villanous plundering of the peaceful inhabitants.
The short campaign of Chancellorsville was the most brilliant of all which General Lee had hitherto conducted, and stamped his fame as that of a commander of transcendent courage and ability. With forty-five thousand men, he had met and defeated one hundred and twenty-five thousand, who were equipped for their onset with everything which lavish wealth, careful discipline, and deliberate preparation, could provide. He had inflicted on them a total loss nearly equal to his whole army, had captured enough small arms and camp equipage to furnish forth every man in his command, and, in precisely a week, had hurled back the fragments of this multitudinous host to its starting point, baffled and broken. His line of defence was successfully turned on his right and left, by an adroit movement; his communications [705] severed; and his little army seemingly placed within the jaws of destruction. But with an impregnable equanimity, he had awaited the full development of his adversary's designs; and then, disregarding for the time those parts of his assault which his wisdom showed him were not vital, had concentrated his chief strength upon the important point, and with a towering courage which no odds could appal, had assailed his gigantic adversary on his vulnerable side with resistless fury. How much of the credit of this unexampled success is due to the assistance of General Jackson, has already been indicated. But the history would be incomplete if it failed to refute the statement, which has been made by some of the pretended assertors of Jackson's fame; that the victories of Lee were due wholly to his military genius, and ceased when he fell. The reputation of Jackson does not need to be supported by these invidious follies. The Commander-in-Chief was the first to recognize, with unrivalled grace and magnanimity, his obligations to Jackson's valued assistance. But he fell in the midst of the struggle, andLee conducted it to its close with the same skill, genius, and happy audacity, with which it was commenced. It was the glory of Virginia that, superior to the lioness, which rears but one young lion, her fruitful breasts could nourish at once the greatness of more than one heroic son. [706]
Chapter 20: death and burial.
The history of Jackson now turns finally from the camp and the battle-field, to the sacred quiet of the sick room, and the dying bed. The far different scenes which are to be unfolded, may be appropriately introduced by a reference to the calm and thorough acquiescence of General Jackson in his sudden helplessness. So eager and determined a spirit as his might have been expected to chafe at his enforced inactivity at such a time. It might be expected that he would now be seen, like an eagle with broken pinion, beating against the bars of his cage, with a tumultuous struggle to soar again into the storm-cloud which was his native air. Such anticipations did injustice to the Christian temper which he constantly cultivated. To the amazement of his own nearest friends, from the moment he felt the hand ofProvidence laid upon his efforts, in the shape of those wounds, he dismissed all the cares of command, and the heat of his soul sank into a sweet and placid calm. He who, just before, seemed to be pursuing victory with a devouring hunger, was now all acquiescence. He cast upon God every anxiety for his country, and seemed unconscious of the grand designs which, the day before, were burning in his heart. When he awoke from his long and quiet slumber on the Sabbath morning, the distant sounds of a furious cannonade told his experienced ear, that a great battle was again raging. But the [707] thought did not quicken his pulse, nor draw from him a single expression of restlessness. He waited for news of the result with full faith in God, and in the valor of his army, only expressing such anxieties as an affectionate female might feel, for the safety of his comrades in arms.
His first act, after receiving refreshments, was to request Lieut. Morrison to go to Richmond, and bringMrs. Jackson to his bedside. He then admitted his chaplain, Rev. Mr. Lacy, who had just arrived, and learned his misfortune, to his tent. As he entered, and saw th6 stump where the left arm had lately been, he exclaimed in distress, “Oh, General! What a calamity!” Jackson first thanked him, with his usual courtesy, for his sympathy, and then proceeded, with marked deliberation and emphasis, as though delivering his Christian testimony touching God's dealing with him, to speak in substance thus; and at a length which was unusual with his taciturn habits. “You see me severely wounded, but not depressed; not unhappy. I believe that it has been done according to God's holy will, and I acquiesce entirely in it. You may think it strange; but you never saw me more perfectly contented than I am to-day; for I am sure that my Heavenly Father designs this affliction for my good. I am perfectly satisfied, that either in this life, or in that which is to come, I shall discover that what is now regarded as a calamity, is a blessing. And if it appears a great calamity, (as it surely will be a great inconvenience, to be deprived of my arm,) it will result in a great blessing. I can wait, until God, in his own time, shall make known to me the object he has in thus afflicting me. But why should I not rather rejoice in it as a blessing, and not look on it as a calamity at all? If it were in my power to replace my arm, I would not dare to do it, unless I could know it was the will of my Heavenly Father.”
He then spoke, in answer to inquiries, of all the incidents of [708] his fall, with entire freedom and quiet. After a little he added, that he thought when he fell from the litter, that he should die upon the field, and gave himself up into the hands of his Heavenly Father without a fear. He declared that he was in possession of perfect peace, while thus expecting immediate death. “It has been,” he said, “a precious experience to me, that I was brought face to face with death, and found all was well. I then learned an important lesson, that one who has been the subject of converting grace, and is the child of God, can, in the midst of the severest sufferings, fix the thoughts upon God and heavenly things, and derive great comfort and peace: but, that one who had never made his peace with God would be unable to control his mind, under such sufferings, so as to understand properly the way of salvation, and repent and believe on Christ. I felt that if I had neglected the salvation of my soul before, it would have been too late then.”
These are nearly the exact words, in which this valuable witness was borne by General Jackson; for the minister, impressed with their solemn weight, charged his memdry with them, and speedily committed them to writing. It is needless to moralize upon them, in order that their lesson may be felt by every reader. The General was disposed to speak yet more upon these themes; but acquiesced in the friendly caution of his nurse and physician, and remained for a long time in perfect quiet.
About eleven o'clock, A. M., Captain Douglass, his Assistant Inspector, arrived from the field with definite news of the victory, and taking his faithful nurse, Lieutenant Smith aside, detailed such things as he thought would most interest the General. The latter went into the tent, and recited them to him, relating, among other things the magnificent onset of the Stonewall Brigade. General Stuart had gone to them at the crisis of the battle, and pointing out to them the work which he wished them to do, had [709] commanded them to “charge and remember Jackson” Whereupon they had sprung forward, and driving before them threefold numbers with irresistible enthusiasm, had decided the great day. The General listened with glistening eyes, and after a strong effort to repress his tears said; “It was just like them to do so; just like them. They are a noble body of men.” Smith replied; “They have indeed behaved splendidly; but you can easily suppose, General, that it was not without a loss of many valuable men.” His anxiety was immediately aroused; and he asked quickly: “Have you heard of any one that is killed?” Said Smith, “Yes sir; I am sorry to say, they'have lost their commander.” He exclaimed: “Paxton? Paxton?” Smith.--“Yes sir, he has fallen.” Thereupon he turned his face to the wall, closed his eyes, and remained a long time quiet, laboring to suppress his emotion. He then, without any Other expression of his own sense of bereavement, began to speak in a serious and tender strain of the genius and virtues of that officer. Smith said that Mr. Lacy had talked confidentially with General, Paxton about his spiritual interests, had found him by no means the stranger, that some supposed him, to the religion of the heart, and believed him a regenerate man., Jackson replied, in a tone of high satisfaction: “That's good; that's good I” It may be added in confirmation of this judgment, that the last occupation ofGeneral Paxton on the battle-field, after he had placed his regiments in position, was to employ the interval of leisure in reading his New Testament; and that as he received the order to carry them into action, he replaced the book in his pocket, and accompanied his command to'move, with a brief exhortation to those around him, to entrust their safety into the hand of the Almighty, in the faithful performance of their duty. It was by this Christian courage, that the victories of the Confederacy were won. [710]
General Jackson now directed Lieutenant Smith to obtain materials for writing, and dictated to him a note to General Lee. In the most unpretending words, he stated that he had been disabled by his wounds, and had accordingly demitted his command to the General next him in rank, A. P. Hill. He then congratulated the Commander-in-Chief upon the great victory which God had that day vouchsafed to his arms. He received soon after the note of General-Lee, which was given above. When this was read to him, he was evidently much gratified; and'after a little pause, said: “General Lee is very kind: but he should give the glory to God.” At a later hour he remarked: “Our movement yesterday was a great success: I think, the most successful military movement of my life. But I expect to receive far more credit for it than I deserve. Most men will think that I had planned it all from the first; but it was not so — I simply took advantage of circumstances as they were presented to me in the providence of God. I feel that His hand led me: Let us give Him all the glory.” These words undoubtedly give the most exact representation of the character of his strategy. While no commander was ever more painstaking in his forecast, none was ever fuller of ready resource, or more prompt to modify his plans according to the new circumstances which emerged. And when he was once possessed of the posture of affairs, his decision was as swift as it was correct. The plan of attacking Hooker from the west was conceived and matured on the evening of Friday, almost in a moment. At that time he met General Stuart at the old furnace in front of Chancellorsville; he gained a view thence of the comparative altitude of that place; he saw the position of the Federal batteries which Stuart was then engaging; and, at a glance, divined thence the disposition of Hooker's forces; he learned the absence of the hostile cavalry; and the friendly screen of forests which [711] surrounded Chancellorsville was described to him. It was then that his decision was made; and after a few moments anxious conference with General Stuart, he rode rapidly back to seek General Lee, and to communicate his conclusion to him.
During the Sabbath, General Lee sent word to him that he regarded the Wilderness as so exposed to the insults of the Federal cavalry, that it would be prudent to remove to Guinea's Station as soon as possible. Dr. McGuire therefore determined to attempt the journey on the morrow. The General hoped, after resting there for a day or two, to proceed to Ashland, a rural village on the same railroad, twelve miles from Richmond, and thence to his beloved Lexington. He dreaded the bustle of the capital, and sighed for the quiet of his home; where, he said, the pure mountain air would soon heal his wounds, and invigorate his exhausted body. On Monday morning he appeared so exceedingly well, that it was determined to attempt the journey. A mattress was placed in an ambulance, and he was laid upon it, with every appliance for his comfort which could be devised. Dr. McGuire took his place within, by his side, while Lieutenant Smith rode near, and Mr. Hotchkiss, with a party of pioneers, preceded the vehicle, removing everything from the road, which might cause a jostle to the sufferer. He seemed bright and cheerful during the journey, and conversed with spirit concerning military affairs and religion. The route taken led southward, by Spottsylvania Court House, and the distance to Guinea's was thus made twenty-five miles.. The road was encumbered by the army teamsters, usually a rude and uncouth race, conveying supplies to the army at Chancellorsville. But when they were told that the ambulance contained the wounded General, they made way for it with tender respect; and their frequent reply to the escort was: “I wish it was I, who was wounded.” At nightfall, the party reached the house of Mr.Chandler, near the railroad [712] station, whose hospitality General Jackson had shared the previous winter, when he first came from the Valley. Here he was gladly received, and everything possible was done for his comfort; for it was a notable trait of his character, that he inspired in all the people, and especially in the purest and most Christian, that unbounded devotion, which counted every exertion made for him a precious privilege. The house of Mr. Chandler was already full of wounded officers, to whom he sent, by his attendants, most courteous and sympathizing messages. He arrived at this resting place wearied and painful, complaining of some nausea, and pain in his bruised side; but still declared that he had made the journey with unexpected comfort, for which he should be very grateful to God. Referring to his previous advantage in the use of the remedies of Preissnitz, he earnestly entreated that wet towels should now be placed on his stomach and side. Dr. McGuire consenting to this, the ambulance was arrested, fresh water was obtained from a spring on the roadside, and the application was made, as he declared, to his great relief. When he was removed to his bed at Mr. Chandler's, he took some supper with relish, and then spent the night in quiet sleep.
During this journey, it has been remarked, General Jackson appeared full of vivacity and hope, conversing with his physician, his chaplain, and Mr. Smith, on every topic of common interest. He referred again to the Stonewall Brigade, and to the proposal which was mooted among them, to ask formal authority from the Government to assume that name as their own, on their rolls and colors. He said with enthusiasm: “They are a noble body of patriots; when this war is ended, the survivors will be proud to say: ‘I was a member of the old Stonewall Brigade.’ The Government ought certainly to accede to their request, and authorize them to assume this title; for it [713] was fairly earned.” He then, with characteristic modesty, added, that “the name, Stonewall, ought to be attached wholly to the men of the Brigade, and not to him; for it was their steadfast heroism which had earned it at FirstManassa's.” Some one asked him of the plan of campaign which Hooker had just attempted to execute. He said: “It was, in the main, a good conception, sir; an excellent plan. But he should not have sent away his cavalry; that was his great blunder. It was that which enabled me to turn him, without his being aware of it, and to take him by his rear. Had he kept his cavalry with him, his plan would have been a very good one.” It may be added, in accordance with this verdict of the highest authority, that the strategy of the Federal Generals, from that of McDowell on the first field of Manassa's, onward, was usually good enough, had it been seconded by the courage of their troops. The Federal is rarely found deficient in anything which cunning or diligence can supply; his defect is in the manhood of the soldiery.
On Monday morning, General Jackson awoke refreshed, and his wounds were pronounced to be in an admirable condition. He now began to look forward to his restoration to his command, and inquired ofDr. McGuire, how many weeks would probably elapse before he would be fit for the field. He also requested his chaplain to visit him at ten o'clock each morning, for reading the Scriptures and prayer. These seasons were the occasions of much religious conversation, in which he unbosomed himself with unusual freedom and candor. He declared that his faith and hope in his Redeemer were clear. He said he was perfectly willing to die at that time; but believed that his time was not yet come, that his Heavenly Father still had a work for him to do in defence of his beloved country, and that until that was completed, he should be spared. During these morning [714] hours, he delighted to enlarge on his favorite topics of practical religion; which were such as these: The Christian should carry his religion into everything. Christianity makes man better in any lawful calling; it equally makes the general a better commander, and the shoemaker a better mechanic. In the case of the cobbler, or the tailor, for instance, religion will produce more care in promising work, more punctuality, and more fidelity in executing it, from conscientious motives; and these homely examples were fair illustrations of its value in more exalted functions. So, prayer aids any man, in any lawful business, not only by bringing down the divine blessing, which is its direct and prime object, but by harmonizing his own mind and heart. In the commander of an army at the critical hour, it calmed his perplexities, moderated his anxieties, steadied the scales of judgment, and thus preserved him from exaggerated and rash conclusions. Again he urged, that every act of man's life should be a religious act. He recited with much pleasure, the ideas ofDoddridge, where he pictured himself as spiritualizing every act of his daily life; as thinking when he washed himself, of the cleansing blood of Calvary; as praying while he put on his garments, that he might be clothed with the righteousness of the saints; as endeavoring, while he was eating, to feed upon the Bread of Heaven. General Jackson now also enforced his favorite dogma, that the Bible furnished men with rules for every thing. If they would search, he said, they would find a precept, an example, or ageneral principle, applicable to every possible emergency of duty, no matter what was a man's calling. There the military man might find guidance for every exigency. Then, turning to Lieutenant Smith, he asked him, smiling: “Can you tell me where the Bible gives generals a model for their official reports of battles?” He answered, laughing, that it never entered his mind to think of looking for such a thing in [715] the Scriptures. “Nevertheless,” said the General, “there are such: and excellent models, too. Look, for instance, at the narrative of Joshua's battle with the Amalekites; there you have one. It has clearness, brevity, fairness, modesty; and it traces the victory to its right source, the blessing of God.”
After Monday, the bright promise of his recovery began to be overcast; pain and restlessness gradually increased, and he was necessarily limited in conversation. It became necessary again to resort to his favorite remedy, the wet napkins, and to employ anodynes to soothe his nerves. Under the influence of the opiates, his sleep now became disturbed and full of dreams. He several times inquired anxiously about the issue of the battles. On Tuesday he was told that Hooker was entrenched north ofChancellorsville; when he said: “That is bad; very bad.” Falling asleep afterwards, he aroused himself exclaiming: “Major Pendleton; send in and see if there is higher ground back of Chancellorsville.” His soul was again struggling, in his dreams, for his invaded country; and he thought of his artillery crowning some eminence, and thence pelting the intruder from his stronghold. It was also on this day that the whole line of the railroad was agitated with rumors of the approach of Stoneman's vagrant cavalry; which had attacked Ashland, and was expected to advance thence toward Fredericksburg, ravaging all the stations. General Jackson expressed the most perfect calmness, in view of this danger and said, that he doubted not if they captured him, God would cause them to treat him with kindness. The confusion prevalent along the railroad had retarded Mr. Morrison in his journey to Richmond; and now made it dangerous for Mrs. Jackson to travel by that route. On Thursday, however, she determined to delay no longer, and setting out by railroad, reached Mr. Chandler's in the forenoon.
But meantime, the symptoms of General Jackson's case had [716] become still more ominous. Wednesday brought a cold, drenching rain, with a chilling atmosphere, unhealthy for his enfeebled system. Wednesday evening, Dr. McGuire, who had scarcely permitted himself to sleep for three or four nights, overpowered by fatigue, retired to rest. But during the night, the General began to complain of an intense pain in his side, and urged his servant Jim, who was watching with him, to apply wet towels. He complied; but the remedy failed to bring relief; and as morning approached, he summoned the Doctor again. The General was found with a quickened pulse, laboring respiration, and severe pain. Pneumonia was clearly developed, but not with alarming intensity; the pain and difficult breathing being more accounted for by a neuralgic Pleurodinia, constricting the muscles of the chest, than by actual inflammation of the lungs. The physician therefore resorted to the more vigorous remedies of sinapisms and cupping; but with only partial effect. The chaplain was now despatched to the army, which had returned to its old quarters near Fredericksburg, to bring the General's family physician, Dr. Morrison, now chief surgeon of Early's Division. Mr. Lacy, while seeking him, called on General Lee, and told him that the General's condition was more threatening. He replied that he was confident God would not take-Jackson away from him at such a time, when his country needed him so much. “Give him,” he added, “my affectionate regards, and tell him to make haste and get well, and come back to me as soon as he can. He has lost his left arm; but I have lost my right arm.”
Meantime, Mrs. Jackson had arrived with her infant. The duties of the sick room delayed her introduction for an hour, and they sought to prepare her feelings for the change which she must see in her husband. He had asked for a glass of lemonade, and some one proposed, as a kindly relief to her anxiety, that she should busy herself in preparing it. When Mr. Smith [717] took it to him, he tasted, and looking up, said quickly; “You did not mix this, it is too sweet; take it back.” Disease had produced a surprising change in his temper in one respect, that he who, in health, was almost indifferent to the quality of his food and drink, and satisfied with the simplest, had become critical and exacting in those particulars. He was now informed that Mrs. Jackson had arrived, and expressed great delight. When she entered his room, she saw him sadly changed; his features were sunken by the prostration of his energies; and were marked by two or three angry scars, where they had been torn by his horse, as he rushed through the brushwood. His cheeks burned with a swarthy, and almost livid flush. Yet his face beamed with joy, when, awaking from his disturbed slumber, he saw her near him. When he noted the shade of woful apprehension which passed over her face, he said tenderly, “Now Anna, cheer up, and don't wear a long face; you know I love a bright face in a sick room.” And nobly did she obey. With a spirit as truly courageous as that of her warrior husband, she commanded her grief, and addressed herself cheerfully to the ministry of love. Many a tear was poured out over her unconscious suckling, yet she returned to his sick room always with a serene countenance; and continued to be, until the clouds of death descended upon his vision, what he had delighted to call her in the hours of prosperity, his “Sunshine.” He now added, with reference to his impaired hearing, that he wished her to speak distinctly while in his room, because he wanted to hear every word she said.
At two o'clock, P. M., Dr. Morrison arrived. When he spoke to him, the General looked up, and said affectionately: “That's an old, familiar face.” His condition was now examined thoroughly, and was found so critical that it was determined to send Mr. Smith to Richmond, to bring some female friend to Mrs[718] Jackson's assistance, and to call in the aid of Dr. Tucker, of that city, whose skill in pulmonary diseases was greatly valued. But the best treatment which medical science could suggest was immediately commenced; and the symptoms of Pneumonia were partially subdued. Nature, however, did not rally as this enemy receded; the vital forces were too much exhausted to be effectually revived. There remained no organic disease of sufficient force to destroy the lungs of an infant; but still his “constitutional symptoms” grew steadily more discouraging. The causes of this decline were several; the cold which he had contracted Friday night; the fatigue and exhaustion of his long continued abstinence, labor and intense excitement during the march and battle; the cruel fall from the litter; and above all, the fatal hemorrhage. It was during the horrid confusion of that night combat in the thicket, that his strength was drained away; the deceitful appearance of the succeeding days was but a partial flowing again of the tides of life, which were proved too weak to fill their accustomed channel, and so ebbed forever. During his remaining hours, he was at times oppressed by something, which was not delirium, but the burthen of a profound prostration, combined with the slumberous drugs which were given to command his pain. Whenever he was addressed by any one whom he knew, he roused himself; and memory, reason and consciousness were found in full exercise; but at other times he lay with closed eyes, seemingly engaged in silent prayer, or overcome by sleep which was visited with disturbed visions; and at others again, he entered into the conversation around his bed, with so much intelligence and animation, that his physicians checked his exertions of his failing strength. During Thursday night, Dr.Morrison had occasion to arouse him from sleep, to take some draught, saying: “Will you take this, General?” He looked steadily into his face and said: “Do your duty.” [719] Then, as though to signify that he intended what he said, and wished the physician to do for him precisely what his judgment dictated, he repeated, “Do your duty.” His vagrant thoughts in sleep were obviously wandering back to the field of strife; at one time he was heard to say quickly: “A. P. Hill, prepare for action;” and several times: “Tell Major Hawks to send forward provisions for the troops.”
On Friday morning Dr. Morrison suggested his fear of a fatal termination of his disease. He dissented from this expectation positively, and said, precisely in these words, “I am not afraid to die; I am willing to abide by the will of my Heavenly Father. But I do not believe that I shall die at this time; I am persuaded the Almighty has yet a work for me to perform.” It was not at random that he then employed two different terms to denote God; but their use was intentional, and was a remarkable manifestation of his religion. The favorite term by which he was accustomed to speak of God in the relations of redemption to his own soul, as the attentive reader will have noticed already, was, “My Heavenly Father.” It was this dear name which he now used, when he would express his acquiescence in the Divine will concerning himself. But when, in the next breath, he spoke of the'work which he expected God, as the Ruler of nations, to assign to him, he called Him “The Almighty.” He also insisted that Dr.McGuire should be called in, and the appeal be made to him. When he entered, he candidly admitted that he shared his fears; but General Jackson, while perfectly willing to die, was still as sturdy as ever in declaring his expectation of life. It may be added, that even so late as Saturday night, when Dr.Morrison renewed the expression of his fears, he still dissented, saying: “I don't think so: I think I shall be better by morning.”
On Friday morning Mr. Smith returned from Richmond with [720] the additional assistance which he had gone to seek. But medical skill could suggest no means to replace the vital forces which were surely failing, at the fountain of life. It was on the afternoon of this day that he asked Dr. McGuire whether he supposed the diseased persons healed by the miraculous touch of the Saviour ever suffered again from the same malady. He continued to say, that he did not believe they did; that the healing virtue of the Redeemer was too potent, and that the poor paralytic to whom He had once said, “I will: be thou healed,” never shook again with palsy. He then, as though invoking the same aid, exclaimed: “Oh for infinite power!” After a season of quiet reflection, he said to Mr. Smith, (who, being designed for the pulpit, had-received a thorough theological training,) “what were the Headquarters of Christianity after the crucifixion?” He replied that Jerusalem was at first the chief seat; but after the dispersion of the disciples thence by persecution, there was none for a time, until Antioch, Iconium, Rome, andAlexandria, were finally established as centres of influence. The General interrupted him: “Why do you say ‘centres of influence ’ ! is not Headquarters a better term?” He then requested him to go on, andSmith, encouraged by Dr. McGuire, proceeded to explain how the Apostles were directed by Divine Providence, seemingly, to plant their most flourishing churches, at an early period, in these great cities, which were rendered by their political, commercial, and ethnical relations, “Headquarters” of influence for the whole civilized world. Jackson wao much interested in the explanation, and at its end, said: “Mr.Smith, I wish you would get the map, and show me precisely where Iconium was.” He replied that he thought there was no map at hand, where that ancient city would be found. Said the General, “Yes, Sir: you will find it in the Atlas which is in my old trunk.” This trunk was searched, but the Atlas was not found [721] there, and Mr. Smith suggested that it was probably left in his portable desk. He said: “Yes, you are right, I left it in my desk,” (mentioning the shelf.) Then, after musing for a moment, he added, “Mr. Smith, I wish you would examine into that matter, and report to me.” His meaning was, that he should refresh his knowledge of this interesting feature of the history of the infant Church, by reference to books, and thus prepare himself to unfold it more fully to him.
On Saturday morning, while he was suffering cruelly from fever and restlessness, and tossing about upon his bed, Mrs. Jackson proposed to read him some Psalms from the Old Testament, hoping their sublime consolations would soothe his pains. He at first replied that he was suffering too much to attend, but soon after added, “Yes, we must never refuse that; get the Bible, and read them.” In the afternoon he requested that he might see his chaplain. He was then so ill, and his respiration so difficult, that it was thought all conversation would be injurious, and they attempted to dissuade him. But he continued to ask so repeatedly and eagerly, that it was judged better to yield. When Mr. Lacy entered, he inquired whether he was endeavoring to further those views of Sabbath observance of which he had spoken to him. On his assuring him that he was, he entered at some length into conversation with him upon that subject. Thus, his last care and labor for the Church of God was an effort to secure the sanctification of His holy day. As the evening wore away, his sufferings increased, and he requested Mrs. Jackson to sing some psalms, with the assistance of all his friends around his bed, selecting the most spiritual pieces they could. She, with her brother, then sung several of his favorite pieces, concluding, at his request, with the 51st Psalm,
Show pity, Lord, O Lord forgive.
[722] sung to the “Old Hundredth.” The night was spent by him in feverish tossings, and without quiet sleep. During all its weary hours, the attendants sat by his side, sponging his brow with cool water, the only palliative of his pain which seemed to avail. Whenever they paused, he looked up, and by some gesture or sign, begged them to continue.
Thus the morning of Sabbath, the 10th of May, was ushered in, a holy day which he was destined to begin on earth, and to end in heaven. He had often said that he desired to die upon the Sabbath; and this wish was now about to be fulfilled. His end was evidently so near that Dr. Morrison felt it was due to Mrs. Jackson to inform her plainly of his condition. She remembered that he had often said, when speaking of death, that although he was willing to die at any time, if it was the will of God, he should greatly desire to have a few hours' notice of the approach of his last struggle. She therefore declared that he must be distinctly informed of his nearness to death; and agonizing as was the task, she would herself assume the duty of breaking the solemn news to him. He was now lying quiet, and apparently oppressed by the incubus of his deep prostration. She went to his bedside and aroused him, when he immediately recognized her, although he did not appear at first to apprehend distinctly the tenor of her announcement. The progress of the disease had now nearly robbed him of the power of speech. She repeated several times: “Do you know the Doctors say, you must very soon be in heaven? Do you not feel willing to acquiesce in God's allotment, if He wills you to go to-day?” He looked her full in the face, and said, with difficulty: “I prefer it.” Then, as though fearing that the intelligence of his answer might not be fully appreciated, he said again: “I prefer it.” She said: “Well, before this day closes, you will be with the blessed Saviour in His glory.” He replied with great distinctness [723] and deliberation: “I will be an infinite gainer to be translated.”
He had before requested that the chaplain should preach, as usual, at his Headquarters, but he now seemed to be oblivious of the fact. When Colonel Pendleton, his Adjutant, entered the room, he greeted him with his unfailing courtesy; and then asked, who was preaching at Headquarters. When he was told that the chaplain was gone to do it, he expressed much satisfaction. Mrs. Jackson now determined to employ the fleeting moments, to learn his last wishes; first asking for one final assurance more, that his Saviour was present with him in his extremity. To this he only answered with a distinct “Yes.” His wife asked him whether it was his will that she and his daughter should reside with her father, Dr. Morrison. He answered: “Yes, you have a kind and good father; but no one is so kind and good as your Heavenly Father.” She then inquired where he preferred that his body should be buried. To this he made no reply. When she suggested Lexington, he assented, saying: “Yes, in Lexington;” but his tone expressed rather acquiescence than lively interest. His infant was now brought to receive his last embrace; and as soon as, she appeared in the doorway, which he was watching with his eyes, his face was lit up with a beaming smile, and he motioned her toward him, saying fondly “Little darling!” She was seated on the bed by his side, and he embraced her, and endeavored to caress her with his poor, lacerated hand — while she smiled upon him with infantile delight. Thus he continued to toy with her, until the near approach of death unnerved his arm, and unconsciousness settled down upon him.
In his restless sleep, he seemed attempting to speak; and at length said audibly: “Let us pass over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.” These were the last words he [724] uttered. Was his soul wandering back in dreams to the river of his beloved valley, the Shenandoah, (the “river of sparkling waters,” ) whose verdant meads and groves he had redeemed from the invader, and across whose floods he had so often won his passage through the toils of battle? Or was he reaching forward across the River of Death, to the golden streets of the Celestial City, and the trees whose leaves are for the healing of the nations? It was to these that God was bringing him, through his last battle and victory; and under their shade he walks, with the blessed company of the redeemed.
His attendants, now believing that consciousness had finally departed, ceased to restrain his wife; and she was permitted to abandon herself to all the desolation of her grief. But they were mistaken. Bowing down over him, her eyes raining tears upon his dying face, and covering it with kisses, she cried: “Oh, doctor; cannot you do something more?” That voice had power to recall him once more, for a moment, from the very threshold of heaven's gate; he opened his eyes fully, and gazing upward at her face, with a long look of full intelligence and love, closed them again forever. His breath then, after a few more inspirations, ceased; and his laboring breast was stilled. And thus died the hero of so many battles, who had so often confronted death when clothed with his gloomiest terrors; with his last earthly look fixed upon the face which was dearer to him than all else, except that Saviour, whom he was next to behold in glory.
While he was thus passing down beneath the shadow of the portals of death, two different scenes were enacting, connected with his fate, contrasted in their actors and accessories as widely as the extremes of earth well admit. But it is not easy to decide which paid the most touching tribute to the dying warrior.Mrs. Chandler, the hostess to whose affectionate hospitality the [725] General was now indebted for a shelter, had a daughter of five years old, whose heart he had won, as he stole the hearts of all the ingenuous, during his short visit of the previous winter. This winning child had noticed the tears which moistened her mother's cheeks, as she was engaged about her household duties; and for a long time, had followed her about the house with a restless and wistful countenance. At length she ventured to ask: “Mamma, will General Jackson die?” She was told that the Doctors said they could not save him, and he was going to die. Fixing her large, solemn eyes upon her mother's face with a look of intense earnestness, she replied: “Oh, I wish God would let me die for him, for if I did, you would cry for me; but if he dies, all the people in the country will cry.”
The cotemporaneous scene was at the quarters of the Staff of General Jackson's corps, where a vast congregation of nearly two thousand men, with the Commander-in-Chief, and a brilliant assemblage ofGenerals, was collected for public worship. When General Lee saw the chaplain approaching, he met him, and anxiously inquired after the sufferer's condition. He was told that it was nearly, or quite hopeless; when with great feeling he said: “Surely General Jackson must recover. God will not take him from us, now that we need him so much. Surely he will be spared to us, in answer to the many prayers which are offered for him.” He afterwards added: “When you return, I trust you will find him better. When a suitable occasion offers, give him my love, and tell him that I wrestled in prayer for him last night, as I never prayed, I believe, for myself.” With these words, he hastily turned away, to hide his uncontrollable emotion. This message has not yet been delivered. After public worship, in which the whole multitude was melted into grief while joining in the prayers for his recovery, Mr. Lacy returned, only to find him gone. He had expired about three o'clock in the afternoon. [726]
The dying scene has now been exactly related, without attempt at any dramatic embellishment; for it is believed that this faithful and homely narrative will be more impressive to every rightly constituted mind, than any effort of literary art. Nor will any reflections be added, upon the lessons of such a death to the hearts of the readers; but each one will be left, in the silence of his own soul, to draw them for himself. They are too plain and solemn to need repetition.
Colonel Pendleton immediately informed General Lee, and the Governor of the Commonwealth, of the departure of Jackson's soul; and by the latter, it was communicated to the Confederate Government. In a few hours the electric telegraph had conveyed the news to all the Confederate States; and to every heart it came as a chilling shock. All over the land, hundreds of miles away from the regions which he had illustrated by his prowess, the people who had never seen his face, grieved for him as men grieve for their nearest kindred. Other countries and ages may have witnessed such a national sorrow; but the men of this generation never saw so profound and universal grief, as that which throbbed in the heart of the Confederate people at the death of Jackson. Women, who had never known him save by the fame of his virtues and exploits, wept for him as passionately as for a brother. The faces of the men were black with dismay, as they heard that the tower of their strength was fallen. All felt what many mouths expressed, that no language could declare their sense of bereavement so well as the requiem of David for his princely friend, Jonathan. “How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thy high places. I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me; thy love was wonderful, passing the love of women. How are the mighty fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” Men said that they had never [727] admitted among their fears of possible calamity, the apprehension that Jackson could fall in battle; for he had passed unscathed through so many perils, that he seemed to them to wear a charmed life. He was to his fellow-citizens the man of destiny, the anointed of God to bring in deliverance for his oppressed Church and Country. They had seen his form leading the van of victory, with such trust as the ancient Hebrews reposed in their kings and judges, when they went forth to turn to flight the armies of the aliens, anointed with holy oil, and guided to sure triumph by the oracles of Urim and Thummim and inspired seers. Even those who did not pray themselves, believed with a perfect assurance, that his prayers found certain access to the heavens, and that the cause for which he interceded was secure under — the shield of omnipotence. The people of God, with a more intelligent and scriptural trust, gloried in his sanctity and Christian zeal, as a signal proof that the cause of their country was the cause of righteousness, in his pious example as a precious influence for good upon their sons who followed his banners, and in the homage done to Christ and His Gospel by his devotion. His soldiers trusted in his prestige with a perfect faith; for they had seen Fortune perch so regularly upon his flag, that the fickleness of her nature seemed to be changed, for him, into constancy. Jackson's corps, when fighting under his eye, always assailed the enemy with the certain expectation that victory, and nothing but victory, was to be the issue. His Commander-in-Chief, who best knew the value of his sleepless vigilance, his industry, his wisdom in council, and his vigor in action, appreciated his loss most fully of all. Men were everywhere speculating with solemn anxiety upon the meaning of his death. They asked themselves: Has God “taken the good man away from the evil to come?” Has he adjudged us as unworthy, because of our ingratitude and disobedience, of such a deliverer; [728] and after proving us for a time by lending a Jackson to our cause, has He now withdrawn the gift, in judicial displeasure? Or does He only mean to render the example of his military and Christian virtues more shining and instructive by his translation, and thus, while He teaches us to trust more exclusively in Himself, raise up, after this model, a company of Jacksons, to defend their country? While some answered these questions in both ways, according to their temperaments, the greater number wisely left them to be solved by God Himself, in the evolution of His providence. In one conclusion all agreed, that the imitation of Jackson's example by his countrymen would make his people invincible, and their final triumph absolutely certain, and that this was the practical lesson set forth by God in his life and death.
Gen. Jackson's remains were shrouded by his Staff, Sunday evening, in his military garments, and deposited in an open coffin of wood, which was procured near by. His coat had been almost torn to pieces by his friends, in their eagerness to reach and bind up his wounds, the night he fell; and it was now replaced by the civilian's coat which he sometimes wore in his hours of relaxation. But his military overcoat covered and concealed this exception. The Congress of the Confederate States had a short time before adopted a design for their flag, and a large and elegant model had just been completed, the first ever made, which was intended to be unfurled from the roof of the Capitol. This flag the Presidentnow sent, as the gift of the country, to be the winding sheet of the corpse. The Governor of Virginia, assuming the care of the funeral, sent up a metallic coffin, with a company of embalmers, on Sunday night, together with a deputation of eminent civilians and military men, to escort the remains toRichmond. During that night they were finally prepared for the tomb, and on Monday morning, May [729] 11th, were conveyed to the Capital by a special train, attended by the General's Staff, his widow and her female friends, and the Governor's Committee. When they approached the suburb through which the Fredericksburg Railroad enters the city, the gathering throng warned them to pause and seek a more quiet approach for the afflicted ladies. The train was therefore arrested, and the wife of theGovernor, receiving Mrs. Jackson and her attendants into her carriages, drove rapidly and by circuitous and less frequented streets, to his Mansion on the Capitol Square. The cars then slowly advanced into the city, through an avenue which, for two miles, was thronged with myriads of men and women. Business had been suspended, and the whole city, as one man, was come forth to meet the mighty dead; Amidst a solemn silence, only broken by the boom of the minute guns and the wails of a military dirge, the coffin was borne into the Governor's gates, and hidden for the time, from the eyes of the multitude, of which the major part were wet with tears.
For the next day, a great civic and military pomp was devised, which was thus described in a cotemporary publication. “At the hour appointed, the coffin was borne to the hearse, a signal gun was fired from near the Washington monument, and the procession began to move to the solemn strains of the Dead March in Saul. The hearse was preceded by two regiments of Gen. Pickett's division, with arms reversed, that General and his Staff, the Fayette artillery, and Wren's company of cavalry. Behind came the horse of the dead soldier, caparisoned for battle, and led by a groom; his Staff officers, members of the Stonewall Brigade, invalids and wounded; and then a vast array of officials, headed by the President of the Confederate States, and members of his Cabinet, followed by all the general officers in Richmond; after whom came a mighty throng of civic dignitaries, and citizens. The procession moved through the main [730] streets of the city, and then returned to the Capitol. Every place of business was closed, and every avenue thronged with solemn and tearful spectators, while a silence more impressive than that of the Sabbath, brooded over the whole town. When the hearse reached the steps of the Capitol, the pall bearers, headed by Gen. Longstreet, the great comrade of the departed, bore the corpse into the hall of the lower house of the Congress, where it was placed upon a species of altar, draped with snowy white, before the Speaker's chair. The coffin was still enfolded with the white,blue, and red, of the Confederate flag.”
There the head was uncovered, and the people were permitted, during the remainder of the day, to enter and view the features of the dead for the last time. The face was found to be in perfect repose; the livid flush of fever had passed away; the broad and lofty forehead was now smooth and snow white, the cheeks thin, and bronzed by sun and breeze, the expressive mouth firmly closed; while an expression of shining calm shed a species of ghostly radiance over the countenance. During the whole afternoon the people streamed through the room, ladies, legislators, old men, children, rugged soldiers, in a mingled, silent throng, looked a moment on the dead face, and passed out another way; until twenty thousand persons had paid this last tribute of affection. The women brought some exotic or sweet flower to lay upon the coffin; and these offerings became so numerous, that they loaded the whole bier, and the table on which it rested, and rose to a great heap. Before the pious interest of the people could be satisfied, the hour had arrived for closing the doors, and the officials warned the throng of people to retire. Just then, a mutilated veteran from Jackson's old division, was seen anxiously pressing through the crowd, to take his last look at the face of his beloved leader. They told him that he was too late, that they were already closing up the coffin for the last time, and that [731] the order had been given to clear the hall. He still struggled forward, refusing to take a denial, until one of the Marshals of the day was about to exercise his authority to force him back. Upon, this, the old soldier lifted the stump of his right arm toward the heavens, and with tears running down his bearded face, exclaimed: “By this arm, which I lost for my country, I demand the privilege of seeing my General once more.” Such an appeal as this was irresistible; and at the instance of the Governor of the Commonwealth, the pomp was arrested until this humble comrade had also dropped his tear upon the face of his dead leader. And this was the last, and surely, not the least glorious tribute which was offered to him, before his remains were finally sealed up for the tomb. The Government shrouded Jackson in their battle-flag; but the people shrouded him in Mayflowers. The former contributed to the funereal pomp the outward circumstances of grandeur, the procession, the drooping banners, the dirge, and the gloomy thunders of the burial-salute; but the true tribute paid to the memory of Jackson was that given by the unprompted homage of the people. No ceremonial could be so honorable to him as the tears which were dropped around his corpse by almost every eye, and the order, and solemn quiet, in which the vast crowds assembled and dispersed. No such homage was ever paid to an American.
On Wednesday, the coffin, followed now by the widow and the General's Staff, was carried by way ofGordonsville to Lynchburg. At every station the people with a similar spirit, were assembled in crowds, with offerings of flowers. At Lynchburg the scenes of Richmond were repeated; and the remains were placed upon a barge in the Canal, to be conveyed in that way to Lexington. They reached the village Thursday evening, and were borne by the Cadets to the Military Institute, where they were laid in theLecture Room, which Jackson had occupied as [732] professor, and guarded during the night by his former pupils. Friday, the 15th of May, they were finally brought forth to the church where he had so much delighted to worship, and committed to his venerable and weeping pastor, Dr. White. This good man then celebrated the last rites before a great multitude of weeping worshipers, with an unpretending simplicity and tenderness, far more appropriate to the memory of Jackson than the pomp of rhetoric. Thence they bore the coffin, followed by the whole population of the vicinage, to the village buryingground, and committed it to the earth. His grave was marked by nothing but a green mound, and the fresh garlands which the love of the people, unbidden, had never forgotten to renew. The cemetery covers the smooth crest of a hill, which swells up at the western entrance of the village, and commands a full view of all the smiling landscape, and of the grand ramparts of mountains in which it is encircled. It is a fit resting place for the body of the modest hero; amidst the village fathers, whose virtues had blessed their happy, Christian homes, with the peaceful sounds of domestic life and of the Sabbath worship near by, whose sanctities Jackson died to protect from the polluting invader. At the distance of a few steps rest the remains of his lamented comrade, General Paxton, and of his cousin, Alfred Jackson, who gave his life for the liberties of his native soil, which had exiled him for his patriotism. There is no mark to distinguish the grave of Jackson, the humblest in all that simple resting place; but the stranger needs none to guide him to it. Multitudes of feet, in their pilgrimage to it, have worn a path which cannot be mistaken; and no Confederate ever passes the spot withont turning aside, to seek a new lesson of patriotism and fortitude from the suggestions of the scene.
The Stonewall Brigade, while expressing their sense of their bereavement, asked permission to assume the task of building [733] his tomb. An association of gentlemen also began to raise funds to erect, at the Capitol, a grand monument to his memory. The continuance of the war has prevented the completion of both these designs, for the present. It would be tedious to recite all the formal expressions of sorrow made by the military, legislative, and judicial bodies of the country. Only the General Order ofLee, announcing his death to the army, will be appended, as giving utterance in the most happy and dignified terms, to the universal grief.
General orders no. 61.
|Headquarters army of Northern Virginia, May 11th. 1863.
With deep grief, the commanding General announces to the army, the death of Lieutenant-General T. J. Jackson, who expired on the 10th inst., at quarter past three P. M. The daring, skill, and energy of this great and good soldier, by the decree of an All-Wise Providence, are now lost to us. But while we mourn his death, we feel that his spirit still lives, and will inspire the whole army with his indomitable courage, and unshaken confidence in God, as our hope and strength. Let his name be a watchword to his corps, who have followed him to victory on so many fields. Let his officers and soldiers emulate his invincible determination to do everything in the defence of our beloved country.
R. E. Lee, General.
The narrative of Gen. Jackson's career is now closed. The full description given of his person, character and capacity at a former part of this work, makes it unnecessary to enter at length into a discussion of his merits as a commander here. Every reader will draw his own conclusions for himself, from the facts which have been faithfully related above. But, a few observations remain to be made, without which the historical portraiture of Jackson would be incorrect. It is to be remarked that, while he rose very rapidly, in the first two years of this war, to the foremost place as a great soldier, none of his comrades have yet [734] displaced him from his eminence. His reputation is manifestly no “nine days wonder,” but one which is destined to endure, and to leave his name among the great of all ages. Few or none of those who inhabit with him the temple of Fame, won their way to it by a career so short. All of the events by which his glory was earned, are comprised within two years time. As a strategist, the firstNapoleon was undoubtedly his model. He had studied his campaigns diligently, and he was accustomed to remark with enthusiasm upon the evidences of his genius. He said that he was the first to show what an army could be made to accomplish, and to replace the old technical art of war with the conceptions of true science. Napoleon had shown what was the value of time as an element of strategic combinations, and had evinced that good troops could be made, if well cared for, to march twenty-five miles daily, and win battles besides. And this war should show that Confederate soldiers could do as much.
Few generals have waged war with such unvarying success as Gen. Jackson. It has been truly remarked of him, that he was never routed in battle; that he was never successfully surprised by his enemies; that he never had a train, or any organized portion of his army, captured by them; and that he never made entrenchments. His success did not come by chance. While no commander recognized so devoutly and habitually the direction of Divine Providence, none was ever more unwearied in providing the conditions of success. It was his rule that his chief Quartermaster and chief Commissary should see him every day at 10 o'clock, A. M., unless sent for at other hours, and report fully the condition of their departments. Twenty-four hours never passed without interviews with both of them; and he knew the exact state of all his supplies and trains, at all times. He was exceedingly jealous for the comfort of his men, so far as this [735] was compatible with celerity of movement. Many instances might be cited of his care about their rations. When preparing for his march to Romney in the winter of 1862, he directed the chief Commissary to carry along rations of rice for the army, in addition to the other supplies. That officer remarked that rice was not much favored by the men as an article of food, and that they seldom drew it when in quarters. The General replied that nevertheless, they might desire it when on the march, and he did not wish them to be deprived of any part of their appointed supplies. Several hogsheads of rice were accordingly carried along, and brought back untouched. So, his care of his wounded was great, and no commander kept his medical department more efficiently organized than he.
Gem Jackson's personal demeanor toward his soldiers was reserved, but courteous. It was impossible for any to assume an improper familiarity towards him; and no one could be farther than he from all the arts of the demagogue. He never did anything for dramatic effect or for popularity, and never practised any of those means for inspiring enthusiasm, in which Napoleon was such an adept. The only manifestation which he ever made of himself to his command was in the simple, single-minded performance of his duty. He never was known to show himself, of set purpose, to his troops, never made them speeches, and whenever they cheered him, escaped as quickly as possible. But his politeness to the men was unfailing, and carried its own evidence of sincerity. For instance, he was one day riding where scores of soldiers off duty were passing, and whenever one of these touched his hat to him he did not fail to return the same salutation. After thus noticing perhaps a hundred of them, one more deferential than the rest, lifted his hat from his head, when the General also, instead of touching his hat again, removed his wholly, and returned the soldier's bow. [736]
His ideas of discipline and subordination were strict, and he was exacting of his subordinates, in proportion as their rank approximated his own. It was his maxim that he who would govern others, must himself set the example of punctilious obedience. Hence, to his Colonels he was a stricter master than to his private soldiers; and to his Generals, more exacting than to his Colonels. If he found in an officer a hearty and zealous purpose to do all his duty, with a willing and self-sacrificing courage and devotion, he was, to him, the most tolerant and gracious of superiors, overlooking blunders and mistakes with unbounded patience, and repairing them by his own exertions, without even a sign of vexation. But, if he believed that his subordinates were self-indulgent or contumacious, he became a stern and exacting master, seeming even to watch for an opportunity to visit their shortcomings upon them. It must, in candor, be added, that by this temper he was sometimes misled into prejudice; and during his career, a causeless friction was produced in the working of his government over several gallant and meritorious officers who served under him. This was almost the sole fault of his military character; that by this jealousy of intentional inefficiency, he diminished the sympathy between himself and the general officersnext his person, by whom his orders were to be executed. Had he been able to exercise the same energetic authority, through the medium of a zealous personal affection, he would have been a more perfect leader of armies. But where he had committed unconscious injustice, he was ever ready to amend it, and to correct his estimate of his officers' merits: and nothing was so sure to melt away the last particle of his prejudice, as an act of courage and vigor upon the field of battle. The utter absence of the Puritanical turn of mind in him, was strongly displayed in the liberal spirit with which he disregarded his own personal tastes, and even his own [737] moral and religious appetencies, in promoting every man who displayed the elements of efficiency, notwithstanding his private repugnance to his personal character. The man's manners, tastes, religious condition, might all be utterly repulsive to GeneralJackson's private preferences, but if he saw in him ability to serve the cause, he employed him. Yet all appearance of indifference to error or vice, or of a Sadducean temper, was removed effectually by the care with which he rebuked and suppressed every impropriety in his own presence.
That devotion to duty which he exacted of others, he practised with most exemplary fidelity himself. Never was there a man who lived more “as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye,” consecrating every hour and every energy to his country, with an utter disdain of ease and self. From the day he left his home, in April, 1861, to that when he was brought back to it amidst the tears and benedictions of his people, he never had a furlough; was never off duty for a day, whether sick or well; never visited his family; and never even slept one night outside the lines of his own command.
His personal courage was of the truest temper. When the history of his early infirmities is recalled, it will appear very unlikely that he was by nature endowed with that hardihood of animal nerve, which makes the courage of the pugilist and gladiator. This surmise will appear more probable, when the strange confession is related, which he made to his medical director, Dr. McGuire. His care for his wounded and sick has been stated; yet he rarely visited the hospital in person. He excused himself by saying that he would often do so, but that when he was in cold blood, the sight of wounds and all their disgusting accessaries was insupportable to his nerves! It was not unusual to see him pale and tremulous with excitement at the firing of the first gun of an opening battle. But the only true courage is [738] moral courage; and this was so perfect in him, that it had absolutely changed his corporeal nature. No man could exhibit a more calm indifference to personal danger, and more perfect selfpossession and equanimity in the greatest perils. The determination of his spirit so controlled his body, that his very flesh became impassive; the nearest hissing of bullets seemed to produce no quiver of the nerves; and when cannon balls hurtled across his path, there was no involuntary shrinking of the bridle hand. The power of concentration was of unrivalled force in his mind, and when occupied in profound thought, or inspired with some great purpose, he seemed to become almost unconscious of external things. This was the true explanation of that seeming recklessness, with which he sometimes exposed himself on the field of battle. The populace, who love exaggerations, called him fatalist, and imagined that, like a Mohammedan, he thought natural precautions inconsistent with his firm belief in an overrulingProvidence. But nothing could be more untrue. He always recognized the obligations of prudence and declared that it was not his purpose to expose himself without necessity.
But this perfect courage does not wholly explain the position which he held in the hearts of his people. In this land of heroic memories and brave men, others besides Jackson have displayed true courage. He was not endowed with several of those native gifts which are supposed to allure the idolatry of mankind towards their heroes. He affected no kingly mien, nor martial pomp:; but always bore himself with the modest propriety of the Christian. His port on the battle-field was usually rather suggestive of the zeal and industry of the faithful servant, than of the contagious exaltation of the master-spirit. His was a masterspirit; but it was too simply grand to study dramatic sensations. It impressed its might upon the souls of his countrymen, not through deportment, but through deeds. Its discourses were [739] toilsome marches and stubborn battles; its perorations were the thunder-claps of defeat hurled upon the enemies of his country. It revealed itself only through the purity and force of his action; and thence, in part, the intensity of the impression.
This aids to explain the enigma of his reputation. How is it that this man, of all others least accustomed to exercise his own fancy, or address that of others, has stimulated the imagination, not only of his own countrymen, but of the civilized world, above all the sons of genius among us? How has he, the most unromantic of great men, become the hero of a living romance, the ideal of an inflamed fancy, even before his life has been invested with the mystery of distance? How did that calm eye kindle the fire of so passionate a love and admiration in the heart of his people? He was brave; but not the only brave. He revealed transcendent military talent.; but the diadem of his country glowed with a galaxy of such talent. He was successful; but it had more than one captain, whose banner never stooped before an enemy. The solution is chiefly to be found in the singleness, purity, and elevation of his aims. Every one who observed him was as thoroughly convinced of his unselfish devotion to duty, as of his courage, it was no more evident that his was a soul of perfect courage, than that no thought of personal advancement, of ambition or applause, ever for one instant divided the homage of his heart with his great cause, and that “all the ends he aimed at were his country's, his God's and truth's.” The corrupt men, whose own patriotism was merely the mask of ambition or greedy avarice, and who had been accustomed to mock at disinterested virtue in their secret hearts, as an empty dream, when they saw the life of Jackson, had as heartfelt a conviction of his ingenuous devotion, as the noblest spirits who delighted to form their souls by the mirror of his example. In the presence of his sincerity, the basest were as thoroughly [740] silenced and convinced as the good. The confidence of his countrymen was, therefore, the testimony of the common conscience to the beauty of holiness. It recognized the truth, that the strength of Jackson was in his exalted integrity of soul. It was the confession of our natures, that the virtue of the Sacred Scriptures, is true greatness; grander than knowledge, talent courage, philosophy or success.
May it not be concluded then, that this was God's chief lesson in this life and death! He would teach the beauty and power of true Christianity as an element of national life. Therefore He took an exemplar of Christian sincerity, as near perfection as the infirmities of nature would permit, and formed and trained it in an honorable retirement. He set it in the furnace of trial at an hour when great events and dangers had awakened the popular heart to most intense action; He illustrated it with that species of distinction which, above all others, fires the popular enthusiasm, military glory; and held it up to the admiring inspection of a country grateful for the deliverances it had wrought. Thus God teaches how good, how strong a thing, His fear is. He makes all men see and acknowledge, that in this man Christianity was the source of those virtues which they so rapturously applauded; that it was the fear of God which made him so fearless of all else; that it was the love of God which animated his energies; that it was the singleness of his aims which caused his whole body to be full of light, so that the unerring decisions of his judgment suggested to the unthinking the belief of his actual inspiration; that the lofty chivalry of his nature was but the reflex of the spirit of Christ. Even the profane admit, in their hearts, this explanation of his power, and are prompt to declare that it was Jackson's religion which made him what he was. His life is God's lesson, teaching that “it is righteousness that exalteth a nation.”
His fall in the, midst of the great struggle for the existence of [741] his country, and in the morning of his usefulness and fame, has appeared to his people a fearful mystery. But if his own interests be regarded, it will appear a time well chosen for God to call him to his rest; when his powers were in their undimmed prime, and his glory at its zenith; when his greatest victory had just been won; and the last sounds which reached him from the outer world were the thanksgivings and blessings of a nation in raptures with his achievements, in tears for his fall.
This tribute to his memory will now be closed with a record of the names of the zealous and faithful men, who at the time of his death, composed his Staff. In their selection, he had displayed a certain independence, or what many deemed a singularity of judgment. Not many of them were men of military education; for he was of all men least restricted by professional trammels. But their efficiency was the best justification of his judgment. His Adjutant and Chief of Staff, at the time of his fall, was the Hon. Charles James Faulkner, lately minister of the United States to France: who succeeded General Paxtonin this office, when the latter took command of the Stonewall Brigade. At the battle of ChancellorsvilleColonel Faulkner was absent on sick leave. The Assistant Adjutant was Lieutenant Colonel Alex. S.Pendleton, a zealous and spirited officer, who, after rising to the highest distinction, gave his life to his country in the disastrous campaign of September, 1864, in the Valley. The Chief Quartermaster wasMajor John Harman, and the Chief Commissary, Major Wm. Hawks. The Medical Director was Dr. Hunter McGuire. These four served under Jackson during his whole career. The Chief of Artillery wasColonel S. Crutchfield, who wag wounded at Chancellorsville a few moments after his General. The Chief of Engineers was Captain Boswell, who fell by the same fatal volley which cost Jackson his life. He was assisted by Mr. J. Hotchkiss, as Topographical [742] Engineer; an accomplished draughtsman, whose useful labors are still continued. Captain Wilbourne conducted the signal service. Colonel Allenmanaged, with unrivalled efficiency, the ordnance of the corps. Lieutenants Smith and Morrison wereAides-de-Camp and personal attendants to the General. The Inspectors of the corps were Colonel A.Smead, and Captain H. Douglass. These gentlemen formed a military family of the happiest character, and all, excepting those of the supply departments, messed together. While their mess table was simple as that of the privates of the army; and the General forbade that any luxuries should be habitually introduced, which were excluded from the soldiers' rations; refinement, courtesy, and purity presided over all their intercourse. Nothing was ever heard in that circle, which could raise a blush on the cheek of woman, or provoke a frown from the sacred ministers of religion. It is no detraction from the merit of the gallant men who composed it, to say that this propriety was, in part, the result of the elevated example of the General