IV. SECESSION. 1860–61
1861 Jackson spent ten years at Lexington, and he was just five-and-thirty when he left it. For ten years he had seen no more of military service than the drills of the cadet battalion. He had lost all touch with the army. His name had been forgotten, except by his comrades of the Mexican campaign, and he had hardly seen a regular soldier since he resigned his commission. But, even from a military point of view, those ten years had not been wasted. His mind had a wider grasp, and his brain was more active. Striving to fit himself for such duties as might devolve on him, should he be summoned to the field, like all great men and all practical men he had gone to the best masters. In the campaigns of Napoleon he had found instruction in the highest branch of his profession, and had made his own the methods of war which the greatest of modern soldiers both preached and practised. Maturer years and the search for wisdom had steadied his restless daring; and his devotion to duty, always remarkable, had become a second nature. His health, under careful and self-imposed treatment, had much improved, and the year 1861 found him in the prime of physical and mental vigour. Already it had become apparent that his life at Lexington was soon to end. The Damascus blade was not to rust upon the shelf. During the winter of 1860–61 the probability of a conflict between the free and slave-holding States, that is, between North and South, had become almost a certainty. South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, had formally seceded from the Union; and establishing a Provisional Government, with Jefferson Davis as President, at Montgomery in Alabama, had proclaimed a new Republic, under the title of the Confederate States of America. In order to explain Jackson’s attitude at this momentous crisis, it will be necessary to discuss the action of Virginia, and to investigate the motives which led her to take the side she did.
Forces which it was impossible to curb, and which but few detected, were at the root of the secession movement. The ostensible cause was the future status of the negro.
Slavery was recognised in fifteen States of the Union. In the North it had long been abolished, but this made no difference to its existence in the South. The States which composed the Union were semi-independent communities, with their own legislatures, their own magistracies, their own militia, and the power of the purse. How far their sovereign rights extended was a matter of contention; but, under the terms of the Constitution, slavery was a domestic institution, which each individual State was at liberty to retain or discard at will, and over which the Federal Government had no control whatever. Congress would have been no more justified in declaring that the slaves in Virginia were free men than in demanding that Russian conspirators should be tried by jury. Nor was the philanthropy of the Northern people, generally speaking, of an enthusiastic nature. The majority regarded slavery as a necessary evil; and, if they deplored the reproach to the Republic, they made little parade of their sentiments. A large number of Southerners believed it to be the happiest condition for the African race; but the best men, especially in the border States, of which Virginia was the principal, would have welcomed emancipation. But neither Northerner nor Southerner saw a practicable method of giving freedom to the negro. Such a measure, if carried out in its entirety, meant ruin to the South. Cotton and tobacco, the principal and most lucrative crops, required an immense number of hands, and in those hands—his negro slaves—the capital of the planter was locked up. Emancipation would have swept the whole of this capital away. Compensation, the remedy applied by England to Jamaica and South Africa, was hardly to be thought of. Instead of twenty millions sterling, it would have cost four hundred millions. It was doubtful, too, if compensation would have staved off the ruin of the planters. The labour of the free negro, naturally indolent and improvident, was well known to be most inefficient as compared with that of the slave. For some years, to say the least, after emancipation it would have been impossible to work the plantations except at a heavy loss. Moreover, abolition, in the judgment of all who knew him, meant ruin to the negro. Under the system of the plantations, honesty and morality were being gradually instilled into the coloured race. But these virtues had as yet made little progress; the Christianity of the slaves was but skin-deep; and if all restraint were removed, if the old ties were broken, and the influence of the planter and his family should cease to operate, it was only too probable that the four millions of Africans would relapse into the barbaric vices of their original condition. The hideous massacres which had followed emancipation in San Domingo had not yet been forgotten. It is little wonder, then, that the majority shrank before a problem involving such tremendous consequences.
A party, however, conspicuous both in New England and the West, had taken abolition for its watchword. Small in numbers, but vehement in denunciation, its voice was heard throughout the Union. Zeal for universal liberty rose superior to the Constitution. That instrument was repudiated as an iniquitous document. The sovereign rights of the individual States were indignantly denied. Slavery was denounced as the sum of all villainies, the slave-holder as the worst of tyrants; and no concealment was made of the intention, should political power be secured, of compelling the South to set the negroes free. In the autumn of 1860 came the Presidential election. Hitherto, of the two great political parties, the Democrats had long ruled the councils of the nation, and nearly the whole South was Democratic. The South, as regards population, was numerically inferior to the North; but the Democratic party had more than held its own at the ballot-boxes, for the reason that it had many adherents in the North. So long as the Southern and Northern Democrats held together, they far outnumbered the Republicans. In 1860, however, the two sections of the Democratic party split asunder. The Republicans, favoured by the schism, carried their own candidate, and Abraham Lincoln became President. South Carolina at once seceded and the Confederacy was soon afterwards established.
It is not at first sight apparent why a change of government should have caused so sudden a disruption of the Union. The Republican party, however, embraced sections of various shades of thought. One of these, rising every day to greater prominence, was that which advocated immediate abolition; and to this section, designated by the South as “Black Republicans,” the new President was believed to belong. It is possible that, on his advent to office, the political leaders of the South, despite the safeguards of the Constitution, saw in the near future the unconditional emancipation of the slaves; and not only this, but that the emancipated slaves would receive the right of suffrage, and be placed on a footing of complete equality with their former masters.[1] As in many districts the whites were far outnumbered by the negroes, this was tantamount to transferring all local government into the hands of the latter, and surrendering the planters to the mercies of their former bondsmen.
It is hardly necessary to say that an act of such gross injustice was never contemplated, except by hysterical abolitionists and those who truckled for their votes. It was certainly not contemplated by Mr. Lincoln; and it was hardly likely that a President who had been elected by a minority of the people would dare, even if he were so inclined, to assume unconstitutional powers. The Democratic party, taking both sections together, was still the stronger; and the Northern Democrats, temporarily severed as they were from their Southern brethren, would most assuredly have united with them in resisting any unconstitutional action on the part of the Republicans.
If, then, it might be asked, slavery ran no risk of unconditional abolition, why should the Southern political leaders have acted with such extraordinary precipitation? Why, in a country in which, to all appearances, the two sections had been cordially united, should the advent to power of one political party have been the signal for so much disquietude on the part of the other? Had the presidential seat been suddenly usurped by an abolitionist tyrant of the type of Robespierre the South could hardly have exhibited greater apprehension. Few Americans denied that a permanent Union, such as had been designed by the founders of the Republic, was the best guarantee of prosperity and peace. And yet because a certain number of misguided if well-meaning men clamoured for emancipation, the South chose to bring down in ruin the splendid fabric which their forefathers had constructed. In thus refusing to trust the good sense and fair dealing of the Republicans, it would seem, at a superficial glance, that the course adopted by the members of the new Confederacy, whether legitimate or not, could not possibly be justified.[2]
Unfortunately, something more than mere political rancour was at work. The areas of slave and of free labour were divided by an artificial frontier. “Mason and Dixon’s line,” originally fixed as the boundary between Pennsylvania on the north and Virginia and Maryland on the south, cut the territory of the United States into two distinct sections; and, little by little, these two sections, geographically as well as politically severed, had resolved themselves into what might almost be termed two distinct nations.
Many circumstances tended to increase the cleavage. The South was purely agricultural; the most prosperous part of the North was purely industrial. In the South, the great planters formed a landed aristocracy; the claims of birth were ungrudgingly admitted; class barriers were, to a certain extent, a recognised part of the social system, and the sons of the old houses were accepted as the natural leaders of the people. In the North, on the contrary, the only aristocracy was that of wealth; and even wealth, apart from merit, had no hold on the respect of the community. The distinctions of caste were slight in the extreme. The descendants of the Puritans, of those English country gentlemen who had preferred to ride with Cromwell rather than with Rupert, to pray with Baxter rather than with Laud, made no parade of their ancestry; and among the extreme Republicans existed an innate but decided aversion to the recognition of social grades. Moreover, divergent interests demanded different fiscal treatment. The cotton and tobacco of the South, monopolising the markets of the world, asked for free trade. The manufacturers of New England, struggling against foreign competition, were strong protectionists, and they were powerful enough to enforce their will in the shape of an oppressive tariff. Thus the planters of Virginia paid high prices in order that mills might flourish in Connecticut; and the sovereign States of the South, to their own detriment, were compelled to contribute to the abundance of the wealthier North. The interests of labour were not less conflicting. The competition between free and forced labour, side by side on the same continent, was bound in itself, sooner or later, to breed dissension; and if it had not yet reached an acute stage, it had at least created a certain degree of bitter feeling. But more than all—and the fact must be borne in mind if the character of the Civil War is to be fully appreciated—the natural ties which should have linked together the States on either side of Mason and Dixon’s line had weakened to a mere mechanical bond. The intercourse between North and South, social or commercial, was hardly more than that which exists between two foreign nations. The two sections knew but little of each other, and that little was not the good points but the bad.
For more than fifty years after the election of the first President, while as yet the crust of European tradition overlaid the young shoots of democracy, the supremacy, social and political, of the great landowners of the South had been practically undisputed. But when the young Republic began to take its place amongst the nations, men found that the wealth and talents which led it forward belonged as much to the busy cities of New England as to the plantations of Virginia and the Carolinas; and with the growing sentiment in favour of universal equality began the revolt against the dominion of a caste. Those who had carved out their own fortunes by sheer hard work and ability questioned the superiority of men whose positions were no guarantee of personal capacity, and whose wealth was not of their own making. Those who had borne the heat and burden of the day deemed themselves the equals and more than equals of those who had loitered in the shade; and, esteeming men for their own worth and not for that of some forgotten ancestor, they had come to despise those who toiled not neither did they spin. Tenaciously the Southerners clung to the supremacy they had inherited from a bygone age. The contempt of the Northerner was repaid in kind. In the political arena the struggle was fierce and keen. Mutual hatred, fanned by unscrupulous agitators, increased in bitterness; and, hindering reconciliation, rose the fatal barrier of slavery.
It is true that, prior to 1860, the abolitionists were not numerous in the North; and it is equally true that by many of the best men in the South the institution which had been bequeathed to them was thoroughly detested. Looking back over the years which have elapsed since the slaves were freed, the errors of the two factions are sufficiently manifest. If, on the one hand, the abolitionist, denouncing sternly, in season and out of season, the existence of slavery on the free soil of America, was unjust and worse to the slave-owner, who, to say the least, was in no way responsible for the inhuman and shortsighted policy of a former generation; on the other hand the high-principled Southerner, although in his heart deploring the condition of the negro, and sometimes imitating the example of Washington, whose dying bequest gave freedom to his slaves, made no attempt to find a remedy.[3]
The latter had the better excuse. He knew, were emancipation granted, that years must elapse before the negro could be trained to the responsibilities of freedom, and that those years would impoverish the South. It appears to have been forgotten by the abolitionists that all races upon earth have required a protracted probation to fit them for the rights of citizenship and the duties of free men. Here was a people, hardly emerged from the grossest barbarism, and possibly, from the very beginning, of inferior natural endowment, on whom they proposed to confer the same rights without any probation whatsoever. A glance at the world around them should have induced reflection. The experience of other countries was not encouraging. Hayti, where the blacks had long been masters of the soil, was still a pandemonium; and in Jamaica and South Africa the precipitate action of zealous but unpractical philanthropists had wrought incalculable mischief. Even Lincoln himself, redemption by purchase being impracticable, saw no other way out of the difficulty than the wholesale deportation of the negroes to West Africa.
In time, perhaps, under the influence of such men as Lincoln and Lee, the nation might have found a solution of the problem, and North and South have combined to rid their common country of the curse of human servitude. But between fanaticism on the one side and helplessness on the other there was no common ground. The fierce invectives of the reformers forbade all hope of temperate discussion, and their unreasoning denunciations only provoked resentment. And this resentment became the more bitter because in demanding emancipation, either by fair means or forcible, and in expressing their intention of making it a national question, the abolitionists were directly striking at a right which the people of the South held sacred.
It had never been questioned, hitherto, that the several States of the Union, so far at least as concerned their domestic institutions, were each and all of them, under the Constitution, absolutely self-governing. But the threats which the Black Republicans held out were tantamount to a proposal to set the Constitution aside. It was their charter of liberty, therefore, and not only their material prosperity, which the States that first seceded believed to be endangered by Lincoln’s election. Ignorant of the temper of the great mass of the Northern people, as loyal in reality to the Constitution as themselves, they were only too ready to be convinced that the denunciations of the abolitionists were the first presage of the storm that was presently to overwhelm them, to reduce their States to provinces, to wrest from them the freedom they had inherited, and to make them hewers of wood and drawers of water to the detested plutocrats of New England.
But the gravamen of the indictment against the Southern people is not that they seceded, but that they seceded in order to preserve and to perpetuate slavery; or, to put it more forcibly, that the liberty to enslave others was the right which most they valued. This charge, put forward by the abolitionists in order to cloak their own revolt against the Constitution, is true as regards a certain section, but as regards the South as a nation it is quite untenable, for three-fourths of the population derived rather injury than benefit from the presence in their midst of four million serfs.[4] “Had slavery continued, the system of labour,” says General Grant, “would soon have impoverished the soil and left the country poor. The non-slave-holder must have left the country, and the small slave-holder have sold out to his more fortunate neighbour.”[5] The slaves neither bought nor sold. Their wants were supplied almost entirely by their own labour; and the local markets of the South would have drawn far larger profit from a few thousand white labourers than they did from the multitude of negroes. It is true that a party in the South, more numerous perhaps among the political leaders than among the people at large, was averse to emancipation under any form or shape. There were men who looked upon their bondsmen as mere beasts of burden, more valuable but hardly more human than the cattle in their fields, and who would not only have perpetuated but have extended slavery. There were others who conscientiously believed that the negro was unfit for freedom, that he was incapable of self-improvement, and that he was far happier and more contented as a slave. Among these were ministers of the Gospel, in no small number, who, appealing to the Old Testament, preached boldly that the institution was of divine origin, that the coloured race had been created for servitude, and that to advocate emancipation was to impugn the wisdom of the Almighty.
But there were still others, including many of those who were not slave-owners, who, while they acquiesced in the existence of an institution for which they were not personally accountable, looked forward to its ultimate extinction by the voluntary action of the States concerned. It was impossible as yet to touch the question openly, for the invectives and injustice of the abolitionists had so wrought upon the Southern people, that such action would have been deemed a base surrender to the dictation of the enemy; but they trusted to time, to the spread of education, and to a feeling in favour of emancipation which was gradually pervading the whole country.[6]
The opinions of this party, with which, it may be said, the bulk of the Northern people was in close sympathy,[7] are perhaps best expressed in a letter written by Colonel Robert Lee, the head of one of the oldest families in Virginia, a large landed proprietor and slave-holder, and the same officer who had won such well-deserved renown in Mexico. “In this enlightened age,” wrote the future general-in-chief of the Confederate army, “there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it a greater evil to the white than to the coloured race, and while my feelings are strongly interested in the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa—morally, socially, and physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race, and, I hope, will prepare them for better things. How long their subjection may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influence of Christianity than from the storms and contests of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small part of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is still onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands, who sees the end and who chooses to work by slow things, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. The abolitionist must know this, and must see that he has neither the right nor the power of operating except by moral means and suasion; if he means well to the slave, he must not create angry feelings in the master. Although he may not approve of the mode by which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the result will nevertheless be the same; and the reason he gives for interference in what he has no concern holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbours when we disapprove of their conduct.”
With this view of the question Jackson was in perfect agreement. “I am very confident,” says his wife, “that he would never have fought for the sole object of perpetuating slavery. . . . He found the institution a responsible and troublesome one, and I have heard him say that he would prefer to see the negroes free, but he believed that the Bible taught that slavery was sanctioned by the Creator Himself, who maketh all men to differ, and instituted laws for the bond and free. He therefore accepted slavery, as it existed in the South, not as a thing desirable in itself, but as allowed by Providence for ends which it was not his business to determine.”
It may perhaps be maintained that to have had no dealings with “the accursed thing,” and to have publicly advocated some process of gradual emancipation, would have been the nobler course. But, setting aside the teaching of the Churches, and the bitter temper of the time, it should be remembered that slavery, although its hardships were admitted, presented itself in no repulsive aspect to the people of the Confederate States. They regarded it with feelings very different from those of the abolitionists, whose acquaintance with the condition they reprobated was small in the extreme. The lot of the slaves, the Southerners were well aware, was far preferable to that of the poor and the destitute of great cities, of the victims of the sweater and the inmates of fever dens. The helpless negro had more hands to succour him in Virginia than the starving white man in New England. The children of the plantation enjoyed a far brighter existence than the children of the slums. The worn and feeble were maintained by their masters, and the black labourer, looking forward to an old age of ease and comfort among his own people, was more fortunate than many a Northern artisan. Moreover, the brutalities ascribed to the slave-owners as a class were of rare occurrence. The people of the South were neither less humane nor less moral than the people of the North or of Europe, and it is absolutely inconceivable that men of high character and women of gentle nature should have looked with leniency on cruelty, or have failed to visit the offender with something more than reprobation. Had the calumnies[8] which were scattered broadcast by the abolitionists possessed more than a vestige of truth, men like Lee and Jackson would never have remained silent. In the minds of the Northern people slavery was associated with atrocious cruelty and continual suffering. In the eyes of the Southerners, on the other hand, it was associated with great kindness and the most affectionate relations between the planters and their bondsmen. And if the Southerners were blind, it is most difficult to explain the remarkable fact that throughout the war, although thousands of plantations and farms, together with thousands of women and children, all of whose male relatives were in the Confederate armies, were left entirely to the care of the negroes, both life and property were perfectly secure.
Such, then, was the attitude of the South towards slavery. The institution had many advocates, uncompromising and aggressive, but taking the people as a whole it was rather tolerated than approved; and, even if no evidence to the contrary were forthcoming, we should find it hard to believe that a civilised community would have plunged into revolution in order to maintain it. There can be no question but that secession was revolution; and revolutions, as has been well said, are not made for the sake of “greased cartridges”. To bring about such unanimity of purpose as took possession of the whole South, such passionate loyalty to the new Confederacy, such intense determination to resist coercion to the bitter end, needed some motive of unusual potency, and the perpetuation of slavery was not a sufficient motive. The great bulk of the population neither owned slaves nor was connected with those who did; many favoured emancipation; and the working men, a rapidly increasing class, were distinctly antagonistic to slave-labour. Moreover, the Southerners were not only warmly attached to the Union, which they had done so much to establish, but their pride in their common country, in its strength, its prestige, and its prosperity, was very great. Why, then, should they break away? History supplies us with a pertinent example.
Previous to 1765 the honour of England was dear to the people of the American colonies. King George had no more devoted subjects; his enemies no fiercer foes. And yet it required very little to reverse the scroll. The right claimed by the Crown to tax the colonists hardly menaced their material prosperity. A few shillings more or less would neither have added to the burdens nor have diminished the comforts of a well-to-do and thrifty people, and there was some justice in the demand that they should contribute to the defence of the British Empire. But the demand, as formulated by the Government, involved a principle which they were unwilling to admit, and in defence of their birthright as free citizens they flew to arms. So, in defence of the principle of States’ Rights the Southern people resolved upon secession with all its consequences.
It might be said, however, that South Carolina and her sister States seceded under the threat of a mere faction; that there was nothing in the attitude of the Federal Government to justify the apprehension that the Constitution would be set aside; and that their action, therefore, was neither more nor less than rank rebellion. But, whether their rights had been infringed or not, a large majority of the Southern people believed that secession, at any moment and for any cause, was perfectly legitimate. The several States of the Union, according to their political creed, were each and all of them sovereign and independent nations. The Constitution, they held, was nothing more than a treaty which they had entered into for their own convenience, and which, in the exercise of their sovereign powers, individually or collectively, they might abrogate when they pleased. This interpretation was not admitted in the North, either by Republicans or Democrats; yet there was nothing in the letter of the Constitution which denied it, and as regards the spirit of that covenant North and South held opposite opinions. But both were perfectly sincere, and in leaving the Union, therefore, and in creating for themselves a new government, the people of the seceding States considered that they were absolutely within their right.[9]
It must be admitted, at the same time, that the action of the States which first seceded was marked by a petulant haste; and it is only too probable that the people of these States suffered themselves to be too easily persuaded that the North meant mischief. It is impossible to determine how far the professional politician was responsible for the Civil War. But when we recall the fact that secession followed close on the overthrow of a faction which had long monopolised the spoils of office, and that this faction found compensation in the establishment of a new government, it is not easy to resist the suspicion that the secession movement was neither more nor less than a conspiracy, hatched by a clever and unscrupulous cabal.
It would be unwise, however, to brand the whole, or even the majority, of the Southern leaders as selfish and unprincipled. Unless he has real grievances on which to work, or unless those who listen to him are supremely ignorant, the mere agitator is powerless; and it is most assuredly incredible that seven millions of Anglo-Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons of the purest strain—English, Lowland Scottish, and North Irish—should have been beguiled by silver tongues of a few ambitious or hare-brained demagogues. The latter undoubtedly had a share in bringing matters to a crisis. But the South was ripe for revolution long before the presidential election. The forces which were at work needed no artificial impulse to propel them forward. It was instinctively recognised that the nation had outgrown the Constitution; and it was to this, and not to the attacks upon slavery, that secession was really due. The North had come to regard the American people as one nation, and the will of the majority as paramount.[10] The South, on the other hand, holding, as it had always held, that each State was a nation in itself, denied in toto that the will of the majority, except in certain specified cases, had any power whatever; and where political creeds were in such direct antagonism no compromise was possible. Moreover, as the action of the abolitionists very plainly showed, there was a growing tendency in the North to disregard altogether the rights of the minority. Secession, in fact, was a protest against mob rule. The weaker community, hopeless of maintaining its most cherished principles within the Union, was ready to seize the first pretext for leaving it; and the strength of the popular sentiment may be measured by the willingness of every class, gentle and simple, rich and poor, to risk all and to suffer all, in order to free themselves from bonds which must soon have become unbearable. It is always difficult to analyse the motives of those by whom revolution is provoked; but if a whole people acquiesce, it is a certain proof of the existence of universal apprehension and deep-rooted discontent. The spirit of self-sacrifice which animated the Confederate South has been characteristic of every revolution which has been the expression of a nation’s wrongs, but it has never yet accompanied mere factious insurrection.
When, in process of time, the history of Secession comes to be viewed with the same freedom from prejudice as the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it will be clear that the fourth great Revolution of the English-speaking race differs in no essential characteristic from those which preceded it. It was not simply because the five members were illegally impeached in 1642, the seven bishops illegally tried in 1688, men shot at Lexington in 1775, or slavery threatened in 1861, that the people rose. These were the occasions, not the causes of revolt. In each case a great principle was at stake: in 1642 the liberty of the subject; in 1688 the integrity of the Protestant faith; in 1775 taxation only with consent of the taxed; in 1861 the sovereignty of the individual States.[11]
The accuracy of this statement, as already suggested, has been consistently denied. That the only principle involved in Secession was the establishment of slavery on a firmer basis, and that the cry of States’ Rights was raised only by way of securing sympathy, is a very general opinion. But before it can be accepted, it is necessary to make several admissions; first, that the Southerners were absolutely callous to the evils produced by the institution they had determined to make permanent; second, that they had persuaded themselves, in face of the tendencies of civilisation, that it was possible to make it permanent; and third, that they conscientiously held their progress and prosperity to be dependent on its continued existence. Are we to believe that the standard of morals and intelligence was so low as these admissions would indicate? Are we to believe that if they had been approached in a charitable spirit, that if the Republican party, disclaiming all right of interference, had offered to aid them in substituting, by some means which would have provided for the control of the negro and, at the same time, have prevented an entire collapse of the social fabric, a system more consonant with humanity, the Southerners would have still preferred to leave the Union, and by creating a great slave-power earn the execration of the Christian world?
Unless the South be credited with an unusual measure of depravity and of short-sightedness, the reply can hardly be in the affirmative. And if it be otherwise, there remains but one explanation of the conduct of the seceding States—namely the dread that if they remained in the Union they would not be fairly treated.
It is futile to argue that the people were dragooned into secession by the slave-holders. What power had the slave-holders over the great mass of the population, over the professional classes, over the small farmer, the mechanic, the tradesman, the labourer? Yet it is constantly asserted by Northern writers, although the statement is virtually an admission that only the few were prepared to fight for slavery, that the Federal sentiment was so strong among the Southerners that terrorism must have had a large share in turning them into Separatists. The answer, putting aside the very patent fact that the Southerner was not easily coerced, is very plain. Undoubtedly, throughout the South there was much affection for the Union; but so in the first Revolution there was much loyalty to the Crown, and yet it has never been asserted that the people of Virginia or of New England were forced into sedition against their will. The truth is that there were many Southerners who, in the vain hope of compromise, would have postponed the rupture; but when the right of secession was questioned, and the right of coercion was proclaimed, all differences of opinion were swept away, and the people, thenceforward, were of one heart and mind. The action of Virginia is a striking illustration.
The great border State, the most important of those south of Mason and Dixon’s line, was not a member of the Confederacy when the Provisional Government was established at Montgomery. Nor did the secession movement secure any strong measure of approval. In fact, the people of Virginia, owing to their closer proximity to, and to their more intimate knowledge of, the North, were by no means inclined to make of the Black Republican President the bugbear he appeared to the States which bordered on the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst acknowledging that the South had grievances, they saw no reason to believe that redress might not be obtained by constitutional means. At the same time, although they questioned the expediency, they held no half-hearted opinion as to the right, of secession, and in their particular case the right seems undeniable. When the Constitution of the United States was ratified, Virginia, by the mouth of its Legislature, had solemnly declared “that the powers granted [to the Federal Government] under the Constitution, being truly derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression.” And this declaration had been more than once reaffirmed. As already stated, this view of the political status of the Virginia citizen was not endorsed by the North. Nevertheless, it was not definitely rejected. The majority of the Northern people held the Federal Government paramount, but, at the same time, they held that it had no power either to punish or coerce the individual States. This had been the attitude of the founders of the Republic, and it is perfectly clear that their interpretation of the Constitution was this: although the several States were morally bound to maintain the compact into which they had voluntarily entered, the obligation, if any one State chose to repudiate it, could not be legally enforced. Their ideal was a Union based upon fraternal affection; and in the halcyon days of Washington’s first presidency, when the long and victorious struggle against a common enemy was still fresh in men’s minds, and the sun of liberty shone in an unclouded sky, a vision so Utopian perhaps seemed capable of realisation. At all events, the promise of a new era of unbroken peace and prosperity was not to be sullied by cold precautions against civil dissensions and conflicting interests. The new order, under which every man was his own sovereign, would surely strengthen the links of kindly sympathy, and by those links alone it was believed that the Union would be held together. Such was the dream of the unselfish patriots who ruled the destinies of the infant Republic. Such were the ideas that so far influenced their deliberations that, with all their wisdom, they left a legacy to their posterity which deluged the land in blood.
Mr. Lincoln’s predecessor in the presidential chair had publicly proclaimed that coercion was both illegal and inexpedient; and for the three months which intervened between the secession of South Carolina and the inauguration of the Republican President, the Government made not the slightest attempt to interfere with the peaceable establishment of the new Confederacy. Not a single soldier reinforced the garrisons of the military posts in the South. Not a single regiment was recalled from the western frontiers; and the seceded States, without a word of protest, were permitted to take possession, with few exceptions, of the forts, arsenals, navy yards and custom houses which stood on their own territory. It seemed that the Federal Government was only waiting until an amicable arrangement might be arrived at as to the terms of separation.
If, in addition to the words in which she had assented to the Constitution, further justification were needed for the belief of Virginia in the right of secession, it was assuredly to be found in the apparent want of unanimity on so grave a question even in the Republican party, and in the acquiescent attitude of the Federal Government.
The people of Virginia, however, saw in the election of a Republican President no immediate danger of the Constitution being “perverted to their injury and oppression.” The North, generally speaking, regarded the action of the secessionists with that strange and good-humoured tolerance with which the American citizen too often regards internal politics. The common sense of the nation asserted itself in all its strength. A Union which could only be maintained by force was a strange and obnoxious idea to the majority. Amid the storm of abuse and insult in which the two extreme parties indulged, the abolitionists on the one side, the politicians on the other, Lincoln,
“The still strong man in a blatant land,”
stood calm and steadfast, promising justice to the South, and eager for reconciliation. And Lincoln represented the real temper of the Northern people.
So, in the earlier months of 1861, there was no sign whatever that the Old Dominion might be compelled to use the alternative her original representatives had reserved. The question of slavery was no longer to the fore. While reprobating the action of the Confederates, the President, in his inaugural address (March 4, 1861), had declared that the Government had no right to interfere with the domestic institutions of the individual States; and throughout Virginia the feeling was strong in favour of the Union. Earnest endeavours were made to effect a compromise, under which the seceded communities might renew the Federal compact. The Legislature called a Convention of the People to deliberate on the part that the State should play, and the other States were invited to join in a Peace Conference at Washington.
It need hardly be said that during the period of negotiation excitement rose to the highest pitch. The political situation was the sole theme of discussion. In Lexington as elsewhere the one absorbing topic ousted all others, and in Lexington as elsewhere there was much difference of opinion. But the general sentiment was strongly Unionist, and in the election of members of the Convention an overwhelming majority had pronounced against secession. Between the two parties, however, there were sharp conflicts. A flagstaff flying the national ensign had been erected in Main Street, Lexington. The cadets fired on the flag, and substituting the State colours placed a guard over them. Next morning a report reached the Institute that the local company of volunteers had driven off the guard, and were about to restore the Stars and Stripes. It was a holiday, and there were no officers present. The drums beat to arms. The boys rushed down to their parade-ground, buckling on their belts, and carrying their rifles. Ammunition was distributed, and the whole battalion, under the cadet officers, marched out of the Institute gates, determined to lower the emblem of Northern tyranny and drive away the volunteers. A collision would certainly have ensued had not the attacking column been met by the Commandant.
In every discussion on the action of the State Jackson had spoken strongly on the side of the majority. In terse phrase he had summed up his view of the situation. He was no advocate of secession. He deprecated the hasty action of South Carolina. “It is better,” he said, “for the South to fight for her rights in the Union than out of it.” But much as they loved the Union, the people of Virginia revered still more the principles inculcated by their forefathers, the right of secession and the illegality of coercion. And when the proposals of the Peace Conference came to nothing, when all hope of compromise died away, and the Federal Government showed no sign of recognising the Provisional Government, it became evident even to the staunchest Unionist that civil war could no longer be postponed. From the very first no shadow of a doubt had existed in Jackson’s mind as to the side he should espouse, or the course he should pursue. “If I know myself,” he wrote, “all I am and all I have is at the service of my country.”
According to his political creed his country was his native State, and such was the creed of the whole South. In conforming to the Ordinance of Secession enacted by the legislatures of their own States, the people, according to their reading of the Constitution, acted as loyal and patriotic citizens; to resist that ordinance was treason and rebellion; and in taking up arms “they were not, in their own opinion, rebels at all; they were defending their States—that is, the nations to which they conceived themselves to belong, from invasion and conquest.”[12]
When, after the incident described above, the cadets marched back to barracks, it was already so certain that the Stars and Stripes would soon be torn down from every flagstaff in Virginia that their breach of discipline was easily condoned. They were addressed by the Commandant, and amid growing excitement officer after officer, hardly concealing his sympathy with their action, gave vent to his opinions on the approaching crisis. Jackson was silent. At length, perhaps in anticipation of some amusement, for he was known to be a stumbling speaker, the cadets called on him by name. In answer to the summons he stood before them, not, as was his wont in public assemblies, with ill-dissembled shyness and awkward gesture, but with body erect and eyes sparkling. “Soldiers,” he said, “when they make speeches should say but few words, and speak them to the point, and I admire, young gentlemen, the spirit you have shown in rushing to the defence of your comrades; but I must commend you particularly for the readiness with which you listened to the counsel and obeyed the commands of your superior officer. The time may come,” he continued, and the deep tones, vibrating with unsuspected resolution, held his audience spellbound, “when your State will need your services; and if that time does come, then draw your swords and throw away the scabbards.”
The crisis was not long postponed. Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbour, the port of South Carolina, was held by a Federal garrison. The State had demanded its surrender, but no reply had been vouchsafed by Lincoln. On April 8 a message was conveyed to the Governor of the State that an attempt would be made to supply the troops with provisions. This message was telegraphed to Montgomery, still the capital of the Confederacy, and the Government ordered the reduction of the fort. On the morning of April 12 the Southern batteries opened fire, and the next day, when the flames were already scorching the doors of the magazine, the standard of the Union was hauled down.
Two days later Lincoln spoke with no uncertain voice. 75,000 militia were called out to suppress the “rebellion.” The North gave the President loyal support. The insult to the flag set the blood of the nation, of Democrat and Republican, aflame. The time for reconciliation was passed. The Confederates had committed an unpardonable crime. They had forfeited all title to consideration; and even in the minds of those Northerners who had shared their political creed the memory of their grievances was obliterated.
So far Virginia had given no overt sign of sympathy with the revolution. But she was now called upon to furnish her quota of regiments for the Federal army. To have acceded to the demand would have been to abjure the most cherished principles of her political existence. As the Federal Government, according to her political faith, had no jurisdiction whatever within the boundaries of States which had chosen to secede, it had not the slightest right to maintain a garrison in Fort Sumter. The action of the Confederacy in enforcing the withdrawal of the troops was not generally approved of, but it was held to be perfectly legitimate; and Mr. Lincoln’s appeal to arms, for the purpose of suppressing what, in the opinion of Virginia, was a strictly constitutional movement, was instantly and fiercely challenged.
Neutrality was impossible. She was bound to furnish her tale of troops, and thus belie her principles; or to secede at once, and reject with a clean conscience the President’s mandate. On April 17 she chose the latter, deliberately and with her eyes open, knowing that war would be the result, and knowing the vast resources of the North. She was followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.[13]
The world has long since done justice to the motives of Cromwell and of Washington, and signs are not wanting that before many years have passed it will do justice to the motives of the Southern people. They were true to their interpretation of the Constitution; and if the morality of secession may be questioned, if South Carolina acted with undue haste and without sufficient provocation, if certain of the Southern politicians desired emancipation for themselves that they might continue to enslave others, it can hardly be denied that the action of Virginia was not only fully justified, but beyond suspicion. The wildest threats of the Black Republicans, their loudly expressed determination, in defiance of the Constitution, to abolish slavery, if necessary by the bullet and the sabre, shook in no degree whatever her loyalty to the Union. Her best endeavours were exerted to maintain the peace between the hostile sections; and not till her liberties were menaced did she repudiate a compact which had become intolerable. It was to preserve the freedom which her forefathers had bequeathed her, and which she desired to hand down unsullied to future generations, that she acquiesced in the revolution.
The North, in resolving to maintain the Union by force of arms, was upheld by the belief that she was acting in accordance with the Constitution. The South, in asserting her independence and resisting coercion, found moral support in the same conviction, and the patriotism of those who fought for the Union was neither purer nor more ardent than the patriotism of those who fought for States’ Rights. Long ago, a parliament of that nation to which Jackson and so many of his compatriots owed their origin made petition to the Pope that he should require the English king “to respect the independence of Scotland, and to mind his own affairs. So long as a hundred of us are left alive,” said the signatories, “we will never in any degree be subjected to the English. It is not for glory, or for riches, or for honour that we fight, but for liberty alone, which no good man loses but with his life.” More than five hundred years later, for the same noble cause and in the same uncompromising spirit, the people of Virginia made appeal to the God of battles.
[1] Grant’s Memoirs, vol. i, p. 214.Return to passage
[2] I have been somewhat severely taken to task for attaching the epithets “misguided,” “unpractical,” “fanatical,’ to the abolitionists. I see no reason, however, to modify my language. It is too often the case that men of the loftiest ideals seek to attain them by the most objectionable means, and the maxim “Fiat justitia ruat cœlum” cannot be literally applied to great affairs. The conversion of the Mahomedan world to Christianity would be a nobler work than even the emancipation of the negro, but the missionary who began with reviling the faithful, and then proceeded to threaten them with fire and the sword unless they changed their creed, would justly be called a fanatic. Yet the abolitionists did worse than this, for they incited the negroes to insurrection. Nor do I think that the question is affected by the fact that many of the abolitionists were upright, earnest, and devout. A good man is not necessarily a wise man, and I remember that Samuel Johnson and John Wesley supported King George against the American colonists.Return to passage
[3] On the publication of the first edition my views on the action of the abolitionists were traversed by critics whose opinions demand consideration. They implied that in condemning the unwisdom and violence of the anti-slavery party, I had not taken into account the aggressive tendencies of the Southern politicians from 1850 onwards, that I had ignored the attempts to extend slavery to the Territories, and that I had overlooked the effect of the Fugitive Slave Law. A close study of abolitionist literature, however, had made it very clear to me that the advocates of emancipation, although actuated by the highest motives, never at any time approached the question in a conciliatory spirit; and that long before 1850 their fierce cries for vengeance had roused the very bitterest feelings in the South. In fact they had already made war inevitable. Draper, the Northern historian, admits that so early as 1844 “the contest between the abolitionists on one side and the slave-holders on the other hand had become a mortal duel.” It may be argued, perhaps, that the abolitionists saw that the slave-power would never yield except to armed force, and that they therefore showed good judgment in provoking the South into secession and civil war. But forcing the hand of the Almighty is something more than a questionable doctrine.Return to passage
[4] Of 8.3 million whites in the fifteen slave-holding States, only 346,000 were slave-holders, and of these 69,000 owned only one negro.Return to passage
[5] Battles and Leaders, vol. iii, p. 689.Return to passage
[6] There is no doubt that a feeling of aversion to slavery was fast spreading among a numerous and powerful class in the South. In Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri the number of slaves was decreasing, and in Delaware the institution had almost disappeared.Return to passage
[7] Grant’s Memoirs, p. 214.Return to passage
[8] Uncle Tom’s Cabin to wit.Return to passage
[9] For an admirable statement of the Southern doctrine, see Ropes’ History of the Civil War, vol. i, chap. i.Return to passage
[10] “The Government had been Federal under the Articles of Confederation (1781), but the [Northern] people quickly recognised that that relation was changing under the Constitution (1789). They began to discern that the power they thought they had delegated was in fact surrendered, and that henceforth no single State could meet the general Government as sovereign and equal.” Draper’s History of the American Civil War, vol. i, p. 286.Return to passage
[11] It has been remarked that States’ Rights, as a political principle, cannot be placed on the same plane as those with which it is here grouped. History, however, proves conclusively that, although it may be less vital to the common weal, the right of self-government is just as deeply cherished. A people that has once enjoyed independence can seldom be brought to admit that a Union with others deprives it of the prerogatives of sovereignty, and it would seem that the treatment of this instinct of nationality is one of the most delicate and important tasks of statesmanship.Return to passage
[12] History of the Civil War, Ropes, chap. i, p. 3.Return to passage
[13] Kentucky and Missouri attempted to remain neutral. Maryland was held in check by the Federal Government, and Delaware sided with the North. The first three, however, supplied large contingents to the Confederate armies.Return to passage
V. HARPER’S FERRY
1861 Immediately it became apparent that the North was bent upon re-conquest Jackson offered his sword to his native State. He was determined to take his share in defending her rights and liberties, even if it were only as a private soldier. Devotion to Virginia was his sole motive. He shrank from the horrors of civil strife. The thought that the land he loved so well was to be deluged with the blood of her own children, that the happy hearths of America were to be desecrated by the hideous image of war, stifled the promptings of professional ambition. “If the general Government,” he said, “should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war, and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.”
The methods he resorted to in order that the conflict might be averted were characteristic. He proposed to the minister of his church that all Christian people should be called upon to unite in prayer; and in his own devotions, says his wife, he asked with importunity that, if it were God’s will, the whole land might be at peace.
His work, after the Ordinance of Secession had been passed, was constant and absorbing. The Governor of Virginia had informed the Superintendent of the Institute that he should need the services of the more advanced classes as drill-masters, and that they must be prepared to leave for Richmond, under the command of Major Jackson, at a moment’s notice.
The Lexington Presbytery was holding its spring meeting in the church which Jackson attended, and some of the members were entertained at his house; but he found no time to attend a single service—every hour was devoted to the duty he had in hand.
On the Saturday of that eventful week he expressed the hope that he would not be called upon to leave till Monday; and, bidding his wife dismiss from her thoughts everything pertaining to the war and his departure, they spent that evening as they had been accustomed, reading aloud from religious magazines, and studying together the lesson which was to be taught on the morrow in the Sunday-school.
But at dawn the next morning came a telegram, directing Major Jackson to bring the cadets to Richmond immediately. He repaired at once to the Institute; and at one o’clock, after divine service, at his request, had been held at the head of the command, the cadet battalion marched to Staunton, on the Virginia Central Railway, and there took train.
Camp Lee, the rendezvous of the Virginia army, presented a peculiar if animated scene. With few exceptions, every man capable of serving in the field belonged either to the militia or the volunteers. Some of the companies had a smattering of drill, but the majority were absolutely untaught, and the whole were without the slightest conception of what was meant by discipline. And it was difficult to teach them. The non-commissioned officers and men of the United States army were either Irish or Germans, without State ties, and they had consequently no inducement to join the South. With the officers it was different. They were citizens first, and soldiers afterwards; and as citizens, their allegiance, so far as those of Southern birth were concerned, was due to their native States. Out of the twelve hundred graduates of West Point who, at the beginning of 1861, were still fit for service, a fourth were Southerners, and these, almost without exception, at once took service with the Confederacy. But the regular officers were almost all required for the higher commands, for technical duties, and the staff; thus very few were left to instruct the volunteers. The intelligence of the men was high, for every profession and every class was represented in the ranks, and many of the wealthiest planters preferred, so earnest was their patriotism, to serve as privates; but as yet they were merely the elements of a fine army, and nothing more. Their equipment left as much to be desired as their training. Arms were far scarcer than men. The limited supply of rifles in the State arsenals was soon exhausted. Flintlock muskets, converted to percussion action, were then supplied; but no inconsiderable numbers of fowling-pieces and shot-guns were to be seen amongst the infantry, while the cavalry, in default of sabres, carried rude lances fabricated by country blacksmiths. Some of the troops wore uniform, the blue of the militia or the grey of the cadet; but many of the companies drilled and manœuvred in plain clothes; and it was not till three months later, on the eve of the first great battle, that the whole of the infantry had received their bayonets and cartridge boxes.
An assemblage so motley could hardly be called an army; and the daring of the Government, who, with this levée en masse as their only bulwark against invasion, had defied a great power, seems at first sight strongly allied to folly. But there was little cause for apprehension. The Federal authorities were as yet powerless to enforce the policy of invasion on which the President had resolved. The great bulk of the Northern troops were just as far from being soldiers as the Virginians, and the regular army was too small to be feared.
The people of the United States had long cherished the Utopian dream that war was impossible upon their favoured soil. The militia was considered an archæological absurdity. The regular troops, admirable as was their work upon the frontier, were far from being a source of national pride. The uniform was held to be a badge of servitude. The drunken loafer, bartering his vote for a dollar or a dram, looked down with the contempt of a sovereign citizen upon men who submitted to the indignity of discipline; and, in denouncing the expense of a standing army, unscrupulous politicians found a sure path to popular favour. So, when secession became something more than a mere threat, the armed forces of the commonwealth had been reduced almost to extinction; and when the flag was fired upon, the nation found itself powerless to resent the insult. The military establishment mustered no more than 16,000 officers and men. There was no reserve, no transport, no organisation for war, and the troops were scattered in distant garrisons. The navy consisted of six screw-frigates, only one of which was in commission, of five steam sloops, some twenty sailing ships, and a few gun-boats. The majority of the vessels, although well armed, were out of date. 9,000 officers and men were the extent of the personnel, and several useful craft, together with more than 1,200 guns, were laid up in Norfolk dockyard, on the coast of Virginia, within a hundred miles of Richmond.[1]
The cause of the Confederacy, although her white population of seven million souls was smaller by two-thirds than that of the North, was thus far from hopeless. The North undoubtedly possessed immense resources. But an efficient army, even when the supply of men and arms be unlimited, cannot be created in a few weeks, or even in a few months, least of all an army of invasion. Undisciplined troops, if the enemy be ill-handled, may possibly stand their ground on the defensive, as did Jackson’s riflemen at New Orleans, or the colonials at Bunker’s Hill. But fighting behind earthworks is a very different matter to making long marches, and executing complicated manœuvres under heavy fire. Without a trained staff and an efficient administration, an army is incapable of movement. Even with a well-organised commissariat it is a most difficult business to keep a marching column supplied with food and forage; and the problem of transport, unless a railway or a river be available, taxes the ability of the most experienced leader. A march of eighty or one hundred miles into an enemy’s country sounds a simple feat, but unless every detail has been most carefully thought out, it will not improbably be more disastrous than a lost battle. A march of two or three hundred miles is a great military operation; a march of six hundred an enterprise of which there are few examples. To handle an army in battle is much less difficult than to bring it on to the field in good condition; and the student of the Civil War may note with profit how exceedingly chary were the generals, during the first campaigns, of leaving their magazines. It was not till their auxiliary services had gained experience that they dared to manœuvre freely; and the reason lay not only in deficiencies of organisation, but in the nature of the country. Even for a stationary force, standing on the defensive, unless immediately backed by a large town or a railway, the difficulties of bringing up supplies were enormous. For an invading army, increasing day by day the distance from its base, they became almost insuperable. In 1861, the population of the United States, spread over a territory as large as Europe, was less than that of England, and a great part of that territory was practically unexplored. Even at the present day their seventy millions are but a handful in comparison with the size of their dominions, and their extraordinary material progress is not much more than a scratch on the surface of the continent. In Europe Nature has long since receded before the works of man. In America the struggle between them has but just begun; and except upon the Atlantic seaboard man is almost lost to sight in the vast spaces he has yet to conquer. In many of the oldest States of the Union the cities seem set in clearings of the primeval forest. The wild woodland encroaches on the suburbs, and within easy reach of the very capital are districts where the Indian hunter might still roam undisturbed. The traveller lands in a metropolis as large as Paris; before a few hours have passed he may find himself in a wilderness as solitary as the Transvaal; and although within the boundaries of the townships he sees little that differs from the England of the nineteenth century—beyond them there is much that resembles the England of the Restoration. Except over a comparatively small area an army operating in the United States would meet with the same obstacles as did the soldiers of Cromwell and Turenne. Roads are few and indifferent; towns few and far between; food and forage are not easily obtainable, for the country is but partially cultivated; great rivers, bridged at rare intervals, issue from the barren solitudes of rugged plateaus; in many low-lying regions a single storm is sufficient to convert the undrained alluvial into a fetid swamp, and tracts as large as an English county are covered with pathless forest. Steam and the telegraph, penetrating even the most lonely jungles, afford, it is true, such facilities for moving and feeding large bodies of men that the difficulties presented by untamed Nature have undoubtedly been much reduced. Nevertheless the whole country, even to-day, would be essentially different from any European theatre of war, save the steppes of Russia; and in 1861 railways were few, and the population comparatively insignificant.
The impediments, then, in the way of military operations were such as no soldier of experience would willingly encounter with an improvised army. It was no petty republic that the North had undertaken to coerce. The frontiers of the Confederacy were far apart. The coast washed by the Gulf of Mexico is eight hundred miles south of Harper’s Ferry on the Potomac; the Rio Grande, the river boundary of Texas, is seventeen hundred miles west of Charleston on the Atlantic. And over this vast expanse ran but six continuous lines of railway:—
From the Potomac.
1. [Washington,] Richmond, Lynchburg, Chattanooga, Memphis, New Orleans. 2. [Washington,] Richmond, Weldon, Greensboro, Columbia, Atlanta, New Orleans. (These connected Richmond with the Mississippi.)
From the Ohio.
3. Cairo, Memphis, New Orleans. 4. Cairo, Corinth, Mobile.
5. Louisville, Nashville, Dalton, Atlanta, Mobile. (These connected the Ohio with the Gulf of Mexico.) 6. Richmond, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah. (This connected Richmond with the ports on the Atlantic.)
Although in the Potomac and the Ohio the Federals possessed two excellent bases of invasion, on which it was easy to accumulate both men and supplies, the task before them, even had the regular army been large and well equipped, would have been sufficiently formidable. The city of Atlanta, which may be considered as the heart of the Confederacy, was sixty days’ march from the Potomac, the same distance as Vienna from the English Channel, or Moscow from the Niemen. New Orleans, the commercial metropolis, was thirty-six days’ march from the Ohio, the same distance as Berlin from the Moselle. Thus space was all in favour of the South; even should the enemy overrun her borders, her principal cities, few in number, were far removed from the hostile bases, and the important railway junctions were perfectly secure from sudden attack. And space, especially when means of communication are scanty, and the country affords few supplies, is the greatest of all obstacles. The hostile territory must be subjugated piecemeal, state by state, province by province, as was Asia by Alexander; and after each victory a new base of supply must be provisioned and secured, no matter at what cost of time, before a further advance can be attempted. Had Napoleon in the campaign against Russia remained for the winter at Smolensko, and firmly established himself in Poland, Moscow might have been captured and held during the ensuing summer. But the occupation of Moscow would not have ended the war. Russia in many respects was not unlike the Confederacy. She had given no hostages to fortune in the shape of rich commercial towns; she possessed no historic fortresses; and so offered but few objectives to an invader. If defeated or retreating, her armies could always find refuge in distant fastnesses. The climate was severe; the internal trade inconsiderable; to bring the burden of war home to the mass of the population was difficult, and to hold the country by force impracticable. Such were the difficulties which the genius of Napoleon was powerless to overcome, and Napoleon invaded Russia with half a million of seasoned soldiers.
And yet with an army of 75,000 volunteers, and without the least preparation, the Federal Government was about to attempt an enterprise of even greater magnitude. The Northern States were not bent merely on invasion, but on re-conquest; not merely on defeating the hostile armies, on occupying their capital, and exacting contributions, but on forcing a proud people to surrender their most cherished principles, to give up their own government, and to submit themselves, for good and all, to what was practically a foreign yoke. And this was not all. It has been well said by a soldier of Napoleon, writing of the war in Spain, that neither the government nor the army are the real bulwarks against foreign aggression, but the national character. The downfall of Austria and of Prussia was practically decided by the first great battle. The nations yielded without further struggle. Strangers to freedom, crushed by military absolutism, the prostration of each and all to an irresponsible despot had paralysed individual energy. Spain, on the other hand, without an army and without a ruler, but deriving new strength from each successive defeat, first taught Napoleon that he was not invincible. And the same spirit of liberty which inspired the people of the Peninsula inspired, to an even higher degree, the people of the Confederate States.
[Illustration: Map of the United States 1861.] For larger view click on image.
The Northern States, moreover, were about to make a new departure in war. The manhood of a country has often been called upon to defend its borders; but never before had it been proposed to invade a vast territory with a civilian army, composed, it is true, of the best blood in the Republic, but without the least tincture of military experience. Nor did the senior officers, professionals though they were, appear more fitted for the enterprise than the men they led. The command of a company or squadron against the redskins was hardly an adequate probation for the command of an army,[2] or even a brigade, of raw troops against a well-armed foe. Had the volunteers been associated with an equal number of trained and disciplined soldiers, as had been the case in Mexico,[3] they would have derived both confidence from their presence, and stability from their example; had there been even an experienced staff, capable of dealing with large forces, and an efficient commissariat, capable of rapid expansion, they might have crushed all organised opposition. But only 3,000 regulars could be drawn from the Western borders; the staff was as feeble as the commissariat; and so, from a purely military point of view, the conquest of the South appeared impossible. Her self-sustaining power was far greater than has been usually imagined. On the broad prairies of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana ranged innumerable herds. The area under cultivation was almost equal to that north of the Potomac and the Ohio. The pastoral districts—the beautiful Valley of Virginia, the great plains of Georgia, the fertile bottoms of Alabama, were inexhaustible granaries. The amount of live stock—horses, mules, oxen, and sheep—was actually larger than in the North; and if the acreage under wheat was less extensive, the deficiency was more than balanced by the great harvests of rice and maize.[4] Men of high ability, but profoundly ignorant of the conditions which govern military operations, prophesied that the South would be brought back to the Union within ninety days; General Winfield Scott, on the other hand, Commander-in-Chief of the Federal armies, declared that its conquest might be achieved “in two or three years, by a young and able general—a Wolfe, a Desaix, a Hoche—with 300,000 disciplined men kept up to that number.”
Nevertheless, despite the extent of her territory and her scanty means of communication, the South was peculiarly vulnerable. Few factories or foundries had been established within her frontiers. She manufactured nothing; and not only for all luxuries, but for almost every necessary of life, she was dependent upon others. Her cotton and tobacco brought leather and cloth in exchange from England. Metals, machinery, rails, rolling stock, salt, and even medicines came, for the most part, from the North. The weapons which she put into her soldiers’ hands during the first year of the war, her cannon, powder, and ammunition, were of foreign make. More than all, her mercantile marine was very small. Her foreign trade was in the hands of Northern merchants. She had ship-yards, for Norfolk and Pensacola, both national establishments, were within her boundaries; but her seafaring population was inconsiderable, and shipbuilding was almost an unknown industry. Strong on land, she was powerless at sea, and yet it was on the sea that her prosperity depended. Cotton, the principal staple of her wealth, demanded free access to the European markets. But without a navy, and without the means of constructing one, or of manning the vessels that she might easily have purchased, she was unable to keep open her communications across the Atlantic.
Nor was it on the ocean alone that the South was at a disadvantage. The Mississippi, the main artery of her commerce, which brought the harvests of the plantations to New Orleans, and which divided her territory into two distinct portions, was navigable throughout; while other great rivers and many estuaries, leading into the heart of her dominions, formed the easiest of highways for the advance of an invading army. Very early had her fatal weakness been detected. Immediately Fort Sumter fell, Lincoln had taken measures to isolate the seceding States, to close every channel by which they could receive either succour or supplies, and if need be to starve them into submission. The maritime resources of the Union were so large that the navy was rapidly expanded. Numbers of trained seamen, recruited from the merchant service and the fisheries, were at once available.
The Northern shipbuilders had long been famous; and both men and vessels, if the necessity should arise, might be procured in Europe. Judicious indeed was the policy which, at the very outset of the war, brought the tremendous pressure of the sea-power to bear against the South; and, had her statesmen possessed the knowledge of what that pressure meant, they must have realised that Abraham Lincoln was no ordinary foe. In forcing the Confederates to become the aggressors, and to fire on the national ensign, he had created a united North; in establishing a blockade of their coasts he brought into play a force, which, like the mills of God, “grinds slowly, but grinds exceeding small.”
But for the present the Federal navy was far too small to watch three thousand miles of littoral indented by spacious harbours and secluded bays, protected in many cases by natural breakwaters, and communicating by numerous channels with the open sea. Moreover, it was still an even chance whether cotton became a source of weakness to the Confederacy or a source of strength. If the markets of Europe were closed to her by the hostile battle-ships, the credit of the young Republic would undoubtedly be seriously impaired; but the majority of the Southern politicians believed that the great powers beyond the Atlantic would never allow the North to enforce her restrictive policy. England and France, a large portion of whose population depended for their livelihood on the harvests of the South, were especially interested; and England and France, both great maritime States, were not likely to brook interference with their trade. Nor had the Southern people a high opinion of Northern patriotism. They could hardly conceive that the maintenance of the Union, which they themselves considered so light a bond, had been exalted elsewhere to the height of a sacred principle. Least of all did they believe that the great Democratic party, which embraced so large a proportion of the Northern people, and which, for so many years, had been in close sympathy with themselves, would support the President in his coercive measures.
History, moreover, not always an infallible guide, supplied many plausible arguments to those who sought to forecast the immediate future. In the War of Independence, not only had the impracticable nature of the country, especially of the South, baffled the armies of Great Britain, but the European powers, actuated by old grudges and commercial jealousy, had come to the aid of the insurgents. On a theatre of war where trained and well-organised forces had failed, it was hardly to be expected that raw levies would succeed; and if England, opposed in 1782 by the fleets of France, Spain, and Holland, had been compelled to let the colonies go, it was hardly likely that the North, confronted by the naval strength of England and France, would long maintain the struggle with the South. Trusting then to foreign intervention, to the dissensions of their opponents, and to their own hardihood and unanimity, the Southerners faced the future with few misgivings.
At Richmond, finding himself without occupation, Major Jackson volunteered to assist in the drilling of the new levies. The duty to which he was first assigned was distasteful. He was an indifferent draughtsman, and a post in the topographical department was one for which he was hardly fitted. The appointment, fortunately, was not confirmed. Some of his friends in the Confederate Congress proposed that he should be sent to command at Harper’s Ferry, an important outpost on the northern frontier of Virginia. There was some opposition, not personal to Jackson and of little moment, but it called forth a remark that shows the estimation in which he was held by men who knew him.
“Who is this Major Jackson?” it was asked.
“He is one,” was the reply, “who, if you order him to hold a post, will never leave it alive to be occupied by the enemy.”
Harper’s Ferry, the spot where the first collision might confidently be expected, was a charge after Jackson’s own heart.
April 26 “Last Saturday,” he writes to his wife, “the Governor handed me my commission as Colonel of Virginia Volunteers, the post I prefer above all others, and has given me an independent command. Little one, you must not expect to hear from me very often, as I expect to have more work than I ever had in the same length of time before; but don’t be concerned about your husband, for our kind Heavenly Father will give every needful aid.”
The garrison at Harper’s Ferry consisted of a large number of independent companies of infantry, a few light companies, as they were called, of cavalry, and fifteen smooth-bore cannon of small calibre. This force numbered 4,500 officers and men, of whom all but 400 were Virginians. Jackson’s appearance was not hailed with acclamation. The officers of the State militia had hitherto exercised the functions of command over the ill-knit concourse of enthusiastic patriots. The militia, however, was hardly more than a force on paper, and the camps swarmed with generals and field-officers who were merely civilians in gaudy uniform. By order of the State Legislature these gentlemen were now deprived of their fine feathers. Every militia officer above the rank of captain was deposed; and the Governor of Virginia was authorised to fill the vacancies. This measure was by no means popular. Both by officers and men it was denounced as an outrage on freemen and volunteers; and the companies met in convention for the purpose of passing denunciatory resolutions.
Their new commander was a sorry substitute for the brilliant figures he had superseded. The militia generals had surrounded themselves with a numerous staff, and on fine afternoons, it was said, the official display in Harper’s Ferry would have done no discredit to the Champs-Elysées. Jackson had but two assistants, who, like himself, still wore the plain blue uniform of the Military Institute. To eyes accustomed to the splendid trappings and prancing steeds of his predecessors there seemed an almost painful want of pomp and circumstance about the colonel of volunteers. There was not a particle of gold lace about him. He rode a horse as quiet as himself. His seat in the saddle was ungraceful. His well-worn cadet cap was always tilted over his eyes; he was sparing of speech; his voice was very quiet, and he seldom smiled. He made no orations, he held no reviews, and his orders were remarkable for their brevity. Even with his officers he had little intercourse. He confided his plans to no one, and not a single item of information, useful or otherwise, escaped his lips.
Some members of the Maryland Legislature, a body whom it was important to conciliate, visited Harper’s Ferry during his tenure of command. They were received with the utmost politeness, and in return plied the general with many questions. His answers were unsatisfactory, and at length one more bold than the rest asked him frankly how many men he had at his disposal. “Sir,” was the reply, “I should be glad if President Lincoln thought I had fifty thousand.” Nor was this reticence observed only towards those whose discretion he mistrusted. He was silent on principle. In the campaign of 1814, the distribution of the French troops at a most critical moment was made known to the allies by the capture of a courier carrying a letter from Napoleon to the Empress. There was little chance of a letter to Mrs. Jackson, who was now in North Carolina, falling into the hands of the Federals; but even in so small a matter Jackson was consistent.
“You say,” he wrote, “that your husband never writes you any news. I suppose you mean military news, for I have written you a great deal about your sposo and how much he loves you. What do you want with military news? Don’t you know that it is unmilitary and unlike an officer to write news respecting one’s post? You couldn’t wish your husband to do an unofficer-like thing, could you?”
And then, the claims of duty being thus clearly defined, he proceeds to describe the roses which climbed round the window of his temporary quarters, adding, with that lover-like devotion which every letter betrays, “but my sweet little sunny face is what I want to see most of all.”
Careful as he was to keep the enemy in the dark, he was exceedingly particular when he visited his distant posts on the Potomac that his presence should be unobserved. Had it become known to the Federal generals that the commander at Harper’s Ferry had reconnoitred a certain point of passage, a clue might have been given to his designs. The Confederate officers, therefore, in charge of these posts, were told that Colonel Jackson did not wish them to recognise him. He rode out accompanied by a single staff officer, and the men were seldom aware that the brigadier had been through their camps.
Never was a commander who fell so far short of the popular idea of a dashing leader. This quiet gentleman, who came and went unnoticed, who had nothing to say, and was so anxious to avoid observation, was a type of soldier unfamiliar to the volunteers. He was duty personified and nothing more.
But at the same time the troops instinctively felt that this absence of ostentation meant hard work. They began to realise the magnitude of the obligations they had assumed. Soldiering was evidently something more than a series of brilliant spectacles and social gatherings. Here was a man in earnest, who looked upon war as a serious business, who was completely oblivious to what people said or thought; and his example was not without effect. The conventions came to nothing; and when the companies were organised in battalions, and some of the deposed officers were reappointed to command, the men went willingly to work. Their previous knowledge, even of drill, was of the scantiest. Officers and men had to begin as recruits, and Jackson was not the man to cut short essential preliminaries. Seven hours’ drill daily was a heavy tax upon enthusiasm; but it was severely enforced, and the garrison of the frontier post soon learned the elements of manœuvre. Discipline was a lesson more difficult than drill. The military code, in all its rigour, could not be at once applied to a body of high-spirited and inexperienced civilians. Undue severity might have produced the very worst results. The observance, therefore, of those regulations which were not in themselves essential to efficiency or health was not insisted on. Lapses in military etiquette were suffered to pass unnoticed; no attempt was made to draw a hard and fast line between officers and men; and many things which in a regular army would be considered grossly irregular were tacitly permitted. Jackson was well aware that volunteers of the type he commanded needed most delicate and tactful handling. The chief use of minute regulations and exacting routine is the creation of the instinct of obedience. Time was wanting to instil such instinct into the Confederate troops; and the intelligence and patriotism of the men, largely of high class and good position, who filled the ranks, might be relied upon to prevent serious misconduct. Had they been burdened with the constant acknowledgment of superior authority which becomes a second nature to the regular soldier, disgust and discontent might have taken the place of high spirit and good-will. But at the same time wilful misbehaviour was severely checked. Neglect of duty and insubordination were crimes which Jackson never forgave, and deliberate disobedience was in his eyes as unmanly an offence as cowardice. He knew when to be firm as well as when to relax, and it was not only in the administration of discipline that he showed his tact. He was the most patient of instructors. So long as those under him were trying to do their best, no one could have been kinder or more forbearing; and he constantly urged his officers to come to his tent when they required explanation as to the details of their duty.
Besides discipline and instruction, Jackson had the entire administration of his command upon his hands. Ammunition was exceedingly scarce, and he had to provide for the manufacture of ball-cartridges. Transport there was none, but the great waggons of the Valley farmers supplied the deficiency. The equipment of the artillery left much to be desired, and ammunition carts (or caissons) were constructed by fixing roughly made chests on the running gear of waggons. The supply and medical services were non-existent, and everything had to be organised de novo. Thus the officer in command at Harper’s Ferry had his hands full; and in addition to his administrative labours there was the enemy to be watched, information to be obtained, and measures of defence to be considered. A glance at the map will show the responsibilities of Jackson’s position.
The Virginia of the Confederacy was cut in two by the Blue Ridge, a chain of mountains three hundred and thirty miles in length, which, rising in North Carolina, passes under different names through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont, and sinks to the level on the Canadian frontier.
The Blue Ridge varies in height from 2,000 to 6,000 feet. Densely wooded, it is traversed in Virginia only by the Gaps, through which ran three railways and several roads. These Gaps were of great strategic importance, for if they were once secured, a Northern army, moving up the Valley of the Shenandoah, would find a covered line of approach towards the Virginia and Tennessee railway, which connected Richmond with the Mississippi. Nor was this the only advantage it would gain. From Lexington at its head, to Harper’s Ferry, where it strikes the Potomac, throughout its whole length of one hundred and forty miles, the Valley was rich in agricultural produce. Its average width, for it is bounded on the west by the eastern ranges of the Alleghenies, is not more than four-and-twenty miles; but there are few districts of the earth’s surface, of equal extent, more favoured by Nature or more highly cultivated. It was the granary of Virginia; and not Richmond only, but the frontier garrisons, depended largely for subsistence on the farms of the Shenandoah.
Moreover, if the Valley were occupied by the Federals, North-western Virginia would be cut off from the Confederacy; and Jackson’s native mountains, inhabited by a brave and hardy race, would be lost as a recruiting ground.
In order, then, to secure the loyalty of the mountaineers, to supply the armies, and to protect the railways, the retention of the Valley was of the utmost importance to the Confederacy. The key of the communication with the North-west was Winchester, the chief town of the lower Valley, twenty-six miles, in an air-line, south-west of Harper’s Ferry. From Winchester two highways lead westward, by Romney and Moorefield; four lead east and south-east, crossing the Blue Ridge by Snicker’s, Ashby’s, Manassas, and Chester’s Gaps; and the first object of the Confederate force at Harper’s Ferry was to cover this nucleus of roads.
During the month of May the garrison of the frontier post was undisturbed by the enemy. Lincoln’s first call had been for 75,000 volunteers. On May 3 he asked for an additional 40,000; these when trained, with 18,000 seamen and a detachment of regulars, would place at his disposal 150,000 men. The greater part of this force had assembled at Washington; but a contingent of 10,000 or 12,000 men under General Patterson, a regular officer of many years’ service, was collecting in Pennsylvania, and an outpost of 3,000 men was established at Chambersburg, forty-five miles north of Harper’s Ferry.
These troops, however, though formidable in numbers, were as ill-prepared for war as the Confederates, and no immediate movement was to be anticipated. Not only had the Federal authorities to equip and organise their levies, but the position of Washington was the cause of much embarrassment. The District of Columbia—the sixty square miles set apart for the seat of the Federal Government—lies on the Potomac, fifty miles south-east of Harper’s Ferry, wedged in between Virginia on the one side and Maryland on the other.
The loyalty of Maryland to the Union was more than doubtful. As a slave-holding State, her sympathies were strongly Southern; and it was only her geographical situation, north of the Potomac, and with no strong frontier to protect her from invasion, which had held her back from joining the Confederacy. As only a single line of railway connected Washington with the North, passing through Baltimore, the chief city of Maryland, a very hot-bed of secession sentiment, the attitude of the State was a matter of the utmost anxiety to the Federal Government. An attempt to send troops through Baltimore to Washington had provoked a popular commotion and some bloodshed. Stern measures had been necessary to keep the railway open. Baltimore was placed under martial law, and strongly garrisoned. But despite these precautions, for some weeks the feeling in Maryland was so hostile to the Union that it was not considered safe for the Northern troops to cross her territory except in large numbers; and the concentration at Washington of a force sufficient to defend it was thus attended with much difficulty.
A single railroad, too, the Baltimore and Ohio, connected Washington with the West. Crossing the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry, and following the course of the river, it ran for one hundred and twenty miles within the confines of Virginia. Thus the district commanded by Jackson embraced an artery of supply and communication which was of great importance to the enemy. The natural course would have been to destroy the line at once; but the susceptibilities of both Maryland and West Virginia had to be considered. The stoppage of all traffic on their main trade route would have done much to alienate the people from the South, and there was still hope that Maryland might throw in her lot with her seceded sisters.
The line was therefore left intact, and the company was permitted to maintain the regular service of trains, including the mails. For this privilege, however, Jackson exacted toll. The Confederate railways were deficient in rolling stock, and he determined to effect a large transfer from the Baltimore and Ohio. From Point of Rocks, twelve miles east of Harper’s Ferry, to Martinsburg, fifteen miles west, the line was double. “The coal traffic along it,” says General Imboden, “was immense, for the Washington Government was accumulating supplies of coal on the seaboard. These coal trains passed Harper’s Ferry at all hours of the day and night, and thus furnished Jackson with a pretext for arranging a brilliant capture. A detachment was posted at Point of Rocks, and the 5th Virginia Infantry at Martinsburg. He then complained to the President of the Baltimore and Ohio that the night trains, eastward bound, disturbed the repose of his camp, and requested a change of schedule that would pass all east-bound trains by Harper’s Ferry between eleven and one o’clock in the daytime. The request was complied with, and thereafter for several days was heard the constant roar of passing trains for an hour before and an hour after noon. But since the ‘empties’ were sent up the road at night, Jackson again complained that the nuisance was as great as ever, and, as the road had two tracks, said he must insist that the west-bound trains should pass during the same hour as those going east. Again he was obliged, and we then had, for two hours every day, the liveliest railroad in America.
“One night, as soon as the schedule was working at its best, Jackson instructed the officer commanding at Point of Rocks to take a force of men across to the Maryland side of the river the next day at eleven o’clock, and letting all west-bound trains pass till twelve o’clock, to permit none to go east. He ordered the reverse to be done at Martinsburg.
“Thus he caught all the trains that were going east or west between these points, and ran them up to Winchester, thirty-two miles on the branch line, whence they were removed by horse power to the railway at Strasbourg, eighteen miles further south.”[5]
May 24 This capture was Jackson’s only exploit whilst in command at Harper’s Ferry. On May 24 he was relieved by General Joseph E. Johnston, one of the senior officers of the Confederate army. The transfer of authority was not, however, at once effected. Johnston reached Harper’s Ferry in advance of his letter of appointment. Jackson had not been instructed that he was to hand over his command, and, strictly conforming to the regulations, he respectfully declined to vacate his post. Fortunately a communication soon came from General Lee, commanding the Virginia troops, in which he referred to Johnston as in command at Harper’s Ferry. Jackson at once recognised this letter as official evidence that he was superseded, and from that time forth rendered his superior the most faithful and zealous support. He seems at first to have expected that he would be sent to North-west Virginia, and his one ambition at this time was to be selected as the instrument of saving his native mountains to the South. But the Confederate Government had other views. At the beginning of June a more compact organisation was given to the regiments at Harper’s Ferry, and Jackson was assigned to the command of the First Brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah.[6]
Recruited in the Valley of the Shenandoah and the western mountains, the brigade consisted of the following regiments:—
The 2nd Virginia, Colonel Allen.
The 4th Virginia, Colonel Preston.
The 5th Virginia, Colonel Harper.
The 27th Virginia, Lieutenant-Colonel Echols.
The 33rd Virginia, Colonel Cummings.
A battery of artillery, raised in Rockbridge County, was attached to the brigade. Commanded by the Reverend Dr. Pendleton, the rector of Lexington, an old West Point graduate, who was afterwards distinguished as Lee’s chief of artillery, and recruited largely from theological colleges, it soon became peculiarly efficient.[7]
No better material for soldiers ever existed than the men of the Valley. Most of them were of Scotch-Irish descent, but from the more northern counties came many of English blood, and from those in the centre of Swiss and German. But whatever their origin, they were thoroughly well qualified for their new trade. All classes mingled in the ranks, and all ages; the heirs of the oldest families, and the humblest of the sons of toil; boys whom it was impossible to keep at school, and men whose white beards hung below their cross-belts; youths who had been reared in luxury, and rough hunters from their lonely cabins. They were a mountain people, nurtured in a wholesome climate, bred to manly sports, and hardened by the free life of the field and forest. To social distinctions they gave little heed. They were united for a common purpose; they had taken arms to defend Virginia and to maintain her rights; and their patriotism was proved by the sacrifice of all personal consideration and individual interest. Nor is the purity of their motives to be questioned. They had implicit faith in the righteousness of their cause. Slave-owners were few in the Valley, and the farms were tilled mainly by free labour. The abolition of negro servitude would have affected but little the population west of the Blue Ridge. But, nevertheless, west of the Blue Ridge the doctrine of State Rights was as firmly rooted as in the Carolinas, the idea that a State could be coerced into remaining within the Union as fiercely repudiated; and the men of the Valley faced the gathering hosts of the North in the same spirit that they would have faced the hosts of a foreign foe.
In the first weeks of June the military situation became more threatening. The Union armies were taking shape. The levies of volunteers seemed sufficiently trained to render reconquest practicable, and the great wave of invasion had already mounted the horizon. A force of 25,000 men, based on the Ohio, threatened North-west Virginia. There had been collisions on the Atlantic seaboard, where the Federals held Fortress Monroe, a strong citadel within eighty miles of Richmond, and Richmond had become the capital of the Confederacy. There had been fighting in Missouri, and the partisans of the South in that State had already been badly worsted. The vast power of the North was making itself felt on land, and on the sea had asserted an ascendency which it never lost. The blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico were patrolled by a fleet with which the Confederates had no means of coping. From the sea-wall of Charleston, the great Atlantic port of the South, the masts of the blockading squadron were visible in the offing; and beyond the mouths of the Mississippi, closing the approaches to New Orleans, the long black hulls steamed slowly to and fro.
But it was about Manassas Junction—thirty miles south-west of Washington and barring the road to Richmond—that all interest centred during the first campaign. Here was posted the main army of the Confederacy, 20,000 volunteers under General Beauregard, the Manassas Gap Railway forming an easy means of communication with the Army of the Shenandoah.
Johnston’s force had been gradually increased to 10,000 officers and men. But the general was by no means convinced of the desirability of holding Harper’s Ferry. The place itself was insignificant. It had contained an arsenal, but this had been burnt by the Federals when they evacuated the post; and it was absolutely untenable against attack. To the east runs the Shenandoah; and immediately above the river stands a spur of the Blue Ridge, the Loudoun Heights, completely commanding the little town. Beyond the Potomac is a crest of equal altitude, covered with forest trees and undergrowth, and bearing the name of the Maryland Heights.
Jackson, without waiting for instructions, had taken on himself to hold and fortify the Maryland Heights. “I am of opinion,” he had written to General Lee, “that this place should be defended with the spirit which actuated the defenders of Thermopylæ, and if left to myself such is my determination. The fall of this place would, I fear, result in the loss of the north-western part of the State, and who can estimate the moral power thus gained to the enemy and lost to ourselves?”[8]
Lee, also, was averse to evacuation. Such a measure, he said, would be depressing to the cause of the South, and would leave Maryland isolated. The post, it was true, could be easily turned. By crossing the Potomac, at Williamsport and Shepherdstown, twenty and ten miles north-west respectively, the Federals would threaten the communications of the garrison with Winchester; in case they were attacked, the Confederates would have to fight with their backs to the Shenandoah, broad, deep, and unbridged; and the ground westward of Harper’s Ferry was ill adapted for defence. Attack, in Lee’s opinion, would have been best met by a resolute offensive.[9] Johnston, however, believed his troops unfitted for active manœuvres, and he was permitted to choose his own course. The incident is of small importance, but it serves to show an identity of opinion between Lee and Jackson, and a regard for the moral aspect of the situation which was to make itself manifest, with extraordinary results, at a later period.
June 14 On June 14, Johnston destroyed the railway bridge over the Potomac, removed the machinery that had been rescued from the arsenal, burned the public buildings, and the next day retired on Winchester. His immediate opponent, General Patterson, had crossed the Pennsylvania border, and, moving through Maryland, had occupied Williamsport with 14,000 men. A detachment of Confederate militia had been driven from Romney, thirty-five miles north-west of Winchester, and the general forward movement of the enemy had become pronounced.
June 20 On June 20 Jackson’s brigade was ordered to destroy the workshops of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway at Martinsburg, together with the whole of the rolling stock that might there be found, and to support the cavalry. The first of these tasks, although Martinsburg is no more than ten miles distant from Williamsport, was easily accomplished. Four locomotives were sent back to Winchester, drawn by teams of horses; and several more, together with many waggons, were given to the flames. The second task demanded no unusual exertions. The Federals, as yet, manifested no intention of marching upon Winchester, nor was the Confederate cavalry in need of immediate assistance. The force numbered 300 sabres. The men were untrained; but they were first-rate horsemen, they knew every inch of the country, and they were exceedingly well commanded. Lieutenant-Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, who had been a captain of dragoons in the United States army, had already given token of those remarkable qualities which were afterwards to make him famous. Of an old Virginia family, he was the very type of the Cavalier, fearless and untiring, “boisterous as March, yet fresh as May.”
“Educated at West Point, and trained in Indian fighting in the prairies, he brought to the great struggle upon which he had now entered a thorough knowledge of arms, a bold and fertile conception, and a constitution of body which enabled him to bear up against fatigues which would have prostrated the strength of other men. Those who saw him at this time are eloquent in their description of the energy and the habits of the man. They tell how he remained almost constantly in the saddle; how he never failed to instruct personally every squad which went out on picket; how he was everywhere present, at all hours of the day and night, along the line which he guarded; and how, by infusing into the raw cavalry his own activity and watchfulness, he was enabled, in spite of the small force which he commanded, to observe the whole part of the Potomac from Point of Rocks to beyond Williamsport. His animal spirits were unconquerable, his gaiety and humour unfailing; he had a ready jest for all, and made the forests ring with his songs as he marched at the head of his column. So great was his activity that General Johnston compared him to that species of hornet called ‘a yellow jacket,’ and said that ‘he was no sooner brushed off than he lit back again.’ When the general was subsequently transferred to the West he wrote to Stuart: ‘How can I eat, sleep, or rest in peace without you upon the outpost?’”[10]
No officer in the Confederacy was more trusted by his superiors or more popular with the men; and Jackson was no more proof than others against the attractions of his sunny and noble nature. As a soldier, Stuart was a colleague after his own heart; and, as a man, he was hardly less congenial. The dashing horseman of eight-and-twenty, who rivalled Murat in his fondness for gay colours, and to all appearance looked upon war as a delightful frolic, held a rule of life as strict as that of his Presbyterian comrade; and outwardly a sharp contrast, inwardly they were in the closest sympathy. Stuart’s fame as a leader was to be won in larger fields than those west of the Blue Ridge, and, although sprung from the same Scotch-Irish stock, he was in no way connected with the Valley soldiers. But from the very outbreak of the war he was intimately associated with Jackson and his men. Fortune seemed to take a curious delight in bringing them together; they were together in their first skirmish, and in their last great victory; and now, on the banks of the Potomac, watching the hostile masses that were assembling on the further shore, they first learned to know each other’s worth.
July 2 On July 2 Patterson crossed the river. The movement was at once reported by Stuart, and Jackson, with the 5th Virginia and a battery, advanced to meet the enemy. His instructions from Johnston were to ascertain the strength of the hostile force, and then to retire under cover of the cavalry. Four regiments of his brigade were therefore left in camp; the baggage was sent back, and when the 5th Virginia had marched out a short distance, three of the four guns were halted. Near Falling Waters, a country church some five miles south of the Potomac, Patterson’s advanced guard was discovered on the road. The country on either hand, like the greater part of the Valley, was open, undulating, and highly cultivated, view and movement being obstructed only by rail fences and patches of high timber.
The Virginians were partially concealed by a strip of woodland, and when the Federal skirmishers, deployed on either side of the highway, moved forward to the attack, they were received by a heavy and unexpected fire. As the enemy fell back, a portion of the Confederate line was thrown forward, occupying a house and barn; and despite the fire of two guns which the Federals had brought up, the men, with the impetuous rashness of young troops, dashed out to the attack. But Jackson intervened. The enemy, who had two brigades of infantry well closed up, was deploying a heavy force; his skirmishers were again advancing, and the 5th Virginia, in danger of being outflanked, was ordered to retire to its first position. The movement was misconstrued by the Federals, and down the high road, in solid column, came the pursuing cavalry. A well-aimed shot from the single field-piece sufficed to check their progress; a confused mass of horsemen went flying to the rear; and the Confederate gunners turned their attention to the hostile battery. Stuart, at the same time, performed a notable feat. He had moved with fifty troopers to attack the enemy’s right flank, and in reconnoitring through the woods had become detached for the moment from his command. As he rode along a winding lane he saw resting in a field a company of Federal infantry. He still wore the uniform of the United States army; the enemy suspected nothing, taking him for one of their own cavalry, and he determined to effect their capture. Riding up to the fence he bade one of the men remove the bars. This was done with respectful alacrity, and he then galloped among them, shouting “Throw down your arms, or you are all dead men!” The stentorian order was at once obeyed: the raw troops not only dropped their rifles but fell upon their faces, and the Confederate troopers, coming to their leader’s aid, marched the whole company as prisoners to the rear.
So firm was the attitude of Jackson’s command that General Patterson was thoroughly imposed upon. Slowly and cautiously he pushed out right and left, and it was not till near noon that the Confederates were finally ordered to retreat. Beyond desultory skirmishing there was no further fighting. The 5th Virginia fell back on the main body; Stuart came in with his string of captives, and leaving the cavalry to watch the enemy, the First Brigade went into camp some two miles south of Martinsburg. Patterson reported to his Government that he had been opposed by 3,500 men, exactly ten times Jackson’s actual number.[11] The losses on either side were inconsiderable, a few men killed and 10 or 15 wounded; and if the Confederates carried off 50 prisoners, the Federals had the satisfaction of burning some tents which Jackson had been unable to remove. The engagement, however, had the best effect on the morale of the Southern troops, and they were not so ignorant as to overlook the skill and coolness with which they had been manœuvred. It is possible that their commander appeared in an unexpected light, and that they had watched his behaviour with some amount of curiosity. They certainly discovered that a distaste for show and frippery is no indication of an unwarlike spirit. In the midst of the action, while he was writing a dispatch, a cannon ball had torn a tree above his head to splinters. Not a muscle moved, and he wrote on as if he were seated in his own tent.
July 3 The day after Falling Waters, on Johnston’s recommendation, Jackson received from General Lee his commission as brigadier-general in the Confederate army. “My promotion,” he wrote to his wife, “was beyond what I had anticipated, as I only expected it to be in the Volunteer forces of the State. One of my greatest desires for advancement is the gratification it will give my darling, and (the opportunity) of serving my country more efficiently. I have had all that I ought to desire in the line of promotion. I should be very ungrateful if I were not contented, and exceedingly thankful to our kind Heavenly Father.”
Of Patterson’s further movements it is unnecessary to speak at length. The Federal army crawled on to Martinsburg. Halting seven miles south-west Jackson was reinforced by Johnston’s whole command; and here, for four days, the Confederates, drawn up in line of battle, awaited attack. But the Federals stood fast in Martinsburg; and on the fourth day Johnston withdrew to Winchester. The Virginia soldiers were bitterly dissatisfied. At first even Jackson chafed. He was eager for further action. His experiences at Falling Waters had given him no exalted notion of the enemy’s prowess, and he was ready to engage them single-handed. “I want my brigade,” he said, “to feel that it can itself whip Patterson’s whole army, and I believe we can do it.” But Johnston’s self-control was admirable. He was ready to receive attack, believing that, in his selected position, he could repulse superior numbers. But he was deaf to all who clamoured for an offensive movement, to the murmurs of the men, and to the remonstrances of the officers. The stone houses of Martinsburg and its walled inclosures were proof against assault, and promised at most a bloody victory. His stock of ammunition was scanty in the extreme; the infantry had but fourteen cartridges apiece; and although his patience was construed by his troops as a want of enterprise, he had in truth displayed great daring in offering battle south of Martinsburg.
The Federal army at Washington, commanded by General McDowell, amounted to 50,000 men; a portion of this force was already south of the Potomac, and Beauregard’s 20,000 Confederates, at Manassas Junction, were seriously threatened. In West Virginia the enemy had advanced, moving, fortunately, in the direction of Staunton, at the southern end of the Valley, and not on Winchester.
July 11 On July 11, this force of 20,000 men defeated a Confederate detachment at Rich Mountain, not far from Jackson’s birthplace; and although it was still in the heart of the Alleghenies, a few marches, which there were practically no troops to oppose, would give it the control of the Upper Valley.
Thus menaced by three columns of invasion, numbering together over 80,000 men, the chances of the Confederates, who mustered no more than 32,000 all told, looked small indeed. But the three Federal columns were widely separated, and it was possible, by means of the Manassas Gap Railway, for Johnston and Beauregard to unite with greater rapidity than their opponents.
President Davis, acting on the advice of General Lee, had therefore determined to concentrate the whole available force at Manassas Junction, and to meet at that point the column advancing from Washington.[12] The difficulty was for the Army of the Shenandoah to give Patterson the slip. This could easily have been done while that officer stood fast at Martinsburg; but, in Lee’s opinion, if the enemy found that the whole force of the Confederacy was concentrating at Manassas Junction, the Washington column would remain within its intrenchments round the capital, and the Confederates “would be put to the great disadvantage of achieving nothing, and leaving the other points (Winchester and Staunton) exposed.” The concentration, therefore, was to be postponed until the Washington column advanced.[13]
But by that time Patterson might be close to Winchester or threatening the Manassas Railway. Johnston had thus a most delicate task before him; and in view of the superior numbers which the Federals could bring against Manassas, it was essential that not a man should he wasted in minor enterprises. The defeat of Patterson, even had it been practicable, would not have prevented the Washington column from advancing; and every Confederate rifleman who fell in the Valley would be one the less at Manassas.
July 15 On July 15 Patterson left Martinsburg and moved in the direction of Winchester. On the 16th he remained halted at Bunker’s Hill, nine miles north; and on the 17th, instead of continuing his advance, moved to his left and occupied Charlestown. His indecision was manifest. He, too, had no easy part to play. His instructions were to hold Johnston in the Valley, while McDowell advanced against Beauregard. But his instructions were either too definite or not definite enough, and he himself was overcautious. He believed, and so did General Scott, that Johnston might be retained at Winchester by demonstrations—that is, by making a show of strength and by feigned attacks. For more vigorous action Patterson was not in the least inclined; and we can hardly wonder if he hesitated to trust his ill-trained regiments to the confusion and chances of an attack. Even in that day of raw soldiers and inexperienced leaders his troops had an unenviable reputation. They had enlisted for three months, and their term of service was nearly up. Their commander had no influence with them; and, turning a deaf ear to his appeals, they stubbornly refused to remain with the colours even for a few days over their term of service. They were possibly disgusted with the treatment they had received from the Government. The men had received no pay. Many were without shoes, and others, according to their general, were “without pants!” “They cannot march,” he adds, “and, unless a paymaster goes with them, they will be indecently clad and have just cause of complaint.”[14]
Nevertheless, the Federal authorities made a grievous mistake when they allowed Patterson and his sans-culottes to move to Charlestown. McDowell marched against Beauregard on the afternoon of the 16th, and Patterson should have been instructed to attack Johnston at any cost. Even had the latter been successful, he could hardly have reinforced the main army in time to meet McDowell.
July 18 At 1 a.m. on the morning of the 18th Johnston received a telegram from the President to the effect that McDowell was advancing on Manassas. Stuart was immediately directed to keep Patterson amused; and leaving their sick, 1,700 in number, to the care of Winchester, the troops were ordered to strike tents and prepare to march. No man knew the object of the movement, and when the regiments passed through Winchester, marching southward, with their backs to the enemy, the step was lagging and the men dispirited. A few miles out, as they turned eastward, the brigades were halted and an order was read to them. “Our gallant army under General Beauregard is now attacked by overwhelming numbers. The Commanding General hopes that his troops will step out like men, and make a forced march to save the country.” The effect of this stirring appeal was instantaneous. “The soldiers,” says Jackson, “rent the air with shouts of joy, and all was eagerness and animation.” The march was resumed, and as mile after mile was passed, although there was much useless delay and the pace was slow, the faint outlines of the Blue Ridge, rising high above the Valley, changed imperceptibly to a mighty wall of rock and forest. As the night came down a long reach of the Shenandoah crossed the road. The ford was waist-deep, but the tall Virginians, plunging without hesitation into the strong current, gained the opposite shore with little loss of time. The guns and waggons followed in long succession through the darkling waters, and still the heavy tramp of the toiling column passed eastward through the quiet fields. The Blue Ridge was crossed at Ashby’s Gap; and at two o’clock in the morning, near the little village of Paris, the First Brigade was halted on the further slope. They had marched over twenty miles, and so great was their exhaustion that the men sank prostrate on the ground beside their muskets.[15] They were already sleeping, when an officer reminded Jackson that there were no pickets round the bivouac. “Let the poor fellows sleep,” was the reply; “I will guard the camp myself.” And so, through the watches of the summer night, the general himself stood sentry over his unconscious troops.[16]
[1] Strength of the Federal Navy at different periods:— March 4, 1861: 42 ships in commission. December 1, 1861: 264 ships in commission. December 1, 1862: 427 ships in commission. December 1, 1863: 588 ships in commission. December 1, 1864: 671 ships in commission.Return to passage
[2] Even after the Peninsular War had enlarged the experience of the British army, Sir Charles Napier declared that he knew but one general who could handle 100,000 men, and that was the Duke of Wellington.Return to passage
[3] Grant’s Memoirs, vol. i, p. 168.Return to passage
[4] Cf. U.S. Census Returns 1860.Return to passage
[5] Battles and Leaders, vol. i.Return to passage
[6] The Virginia troops were merged in the army of the Confederate States on June 8, 1861. The total strength was 40,000 men and 115 guns. O.R., vol. ii, p. 928.Return to passage
[7] When the battery arrived at Harper’s Ferry, it was quartered in a church, already occupied by a company called the Grayson Dare-devils, who, wishing to show their hospitality, assigned the pulpit to Captain Pendleton as an appropriate lodging. The four guns were at once christened Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.Return to passage
[8] O.R., vol. ii, p. 814.Return to passage
[9] Ibid., pp. 881, 889, 897, 898, 901, 923.Return to passage
[10] Cooke, p. 47.Return to passage
[11] O.R., vol. ii, p. 157.Return to passage
[12] O.R., vol. ii, p. 515.Return to passage
[13] O.R., vol. ii, p. 507.Return to passage
[14] O.R., vol. ii, pp. 169, 170.Return to passage
[15] “The discouragements of that day’s march,” says Johnston, “to one accustomed to the steady gait of regular soldiers, is indescribable. The views of military obedience and command then taken both by officers and men confined their duties and obligations almost exclusively to the drill-ground and guards. In camps and marches they were scarcely known. Consequently, frequent and unreasonable delays caused so slow a rate of marching as to make me despair of joining General Beauregard in time to aid him.”— Johnston’s Narrative.Return to passage
[16] Letter to Mrs. Jackson, Memoirs, p. 176.Return to passage
VI. THE FIRST BATTLE OF MANASSAS OR BULL RUN
July 19 At the first streak of dawn, Jackson aroused his men and resumed the march. Before the column gained the plain, Stuart’s cavalry clattered past, leaving Patterson at Charlestown, in ignorance of his adversary’s escape, and congratulating himself on the success of his cautious strategy. At Piedmont, a station at the foot of the Blue Ridge, trains were waiting for the conveyance of the troops; and at four o’clock in the afternoon Jackson and his brigade had reached Manassas Junction. The cavalry, artillery, and waggons moved by road; and the remainder of Johnston’s infantry was expected to follow the First Brigade without delay. But in war, unless there has been ample time for preparation, railways are not always an expeditious means of travel. The line was single; so short notice had been given that it was impossible to collect enough rolling-stock; the officials were inexperienced; there was much mismanagement; and on the morning of Sunday, July 21, only three brigades of the Army of the Shenandoah—Jackson’s, Bee’s, and Bartow’s—together with the cavalry and artillery, had joined Beauregard. Kirby Smith’s brigade, about 1,900 strong, was still upon the railway.
The delay might easily have been disastrous. Happily, the Federal movements were even more tardy. Had the invading army been well organised, Beauregard would probably have been defeated before Johnston could have reached him. McDowell had advanced from Washington on the afternoon of the 16th with 35,000 men. On the morning of the 18th, the greater part of his force was concentrated at Centreville, twenty-two miles from Washington, and five and a half north-east of Manassas Junction. Beauregard’s outposts had already fallen back to the banks of Bull Run, a stream made difficult by wooded and precipitous banks, from two to three miles south, and of much the same width as the Thames at Oxford.
It would have been possible to have attacked on the morning of the 19th, but the Federal commander was confronted by many obstacles. He knew little of the country. Although it was almost within sight of the capital, the maps were indifferent. Guides who could describe roads and positions from a military point of view were not forthcoming. All information had to be procured by personal reconnaissance, and few of his officers had been trained to such work. Moreover, the army was most unwieldy. 35,000 men, together with ten batteries, and the requisite train of waggons, was a force far larger than any American officer had yet set eyes upon; and the movement of such a mass demanded precise arrangement on the part of the staff, and on the part of the troops most careful attention to order and punctuality; but of these both staff and troops were incapable. The invading force might have done well in a defensive position, which it would have had time to occupy, and where the supply of food and forage, carried on from stationary magazines, would have been comparatively easy; but directly it was put in motion, inexperience and indiscipline stood like giants in the path. The Federal troops were utterly unfitted for offensive movement, and both Scott and McDowell had protested against an immediate advance. The regiments had only been organised in brigades a week previously. They had never been exercised in mass. Deployment for battle had not yet been practised, and to deploy 10,000 or 20,000 men for attack is a difficult operation, even with well-drilled troops and an experienced staff. Nor were the supply arrangements yet completed. The full complement of waggons had not arrived, and the drivers on the spot were as ignorant as they were insubordinate. The troops had received no instruction in musketry, and many of the regiments went into action without having once fired their rifles. But the protests of the generals were of no effect. The Federal Cabinet decided that in face of the public impatience it was impossible to postpone the movement. “On to Richmond” was the universal cry. The halls of Congress resounded with the fervid eloquence of the politicians. The press teemed with bombastic articles, in which the Northern troops were favourably compared with the regular armies of Europe, and the need of discipline and training for the fearless and intelligent representatives of the sovereign people was scornfully repudiated. Ignorance of war and contempt for the lessons of history were to cost the nation dear.
The march from Washington was a brilliant spectacle. The roads south of the Potomac were covered with masses of men, well armed and well clothed, amply furnished with artillery, and led by regular officers. To the sound of martial music they had defiled before the President. They were accompanied by scores of carriages. Senators, members of Congress, and even ladies swelled the long procession. A crowd of reporters rode beside the columns; and the return of a victorious army could hardly have been hailed with more enthusiasm than the departure of these untrained and unblooded volunteers. Yet, pitiful masquerade as the march must have appeared to a soldier’s eye, the majority of those who broke camp that summer morning were brave men and good Americans. To restore the Union, to avenge the insult to their country’s flag, they had come forward with no other compulsion than the love of their mother-land. If their self-confidence was supreme and even arrogant, it was the self-confidence of a strong and a fearless people, and their patriotism was of the loftiest kind. It would have been easy for the North, with her enormous wealth, to have organised a vast army of mercenaries wherewith to crush the South. But no! her sons were not willing that their country’s honour should be committed to meaner hands.
As they advanced into Virginia, the men, animated by their surroundings, stepped briskly forward, and the country-side was gay with fantastic uniforms and gorgeous standards. But the heat was oppressive, and the roads lay deep in dust. Knapsack, rifle, and blankets became a grievous burden. The excitement died away, and unbroken to the monotonous exertion of the march the three-months’ recruits lost all semblance of subordination. The compact array of the columns was gradually lost, and a tail of laggards, rapidly increasing, brought up the rear. Regiment mingled with regiment. By each roadside brook the men fell out in numbers. Every blackberry bush was surrounded by a knot of stragglers; and, heedless of the orders of those officers who still attempted to keep them in the ranks, scores of so-called soldiers sought the cool shade of the surrounding woods.[1] When darkness fell the army was but six miles from its morning bivouacs; and it was not till late the next day that the stragglers rejoined their regiments.
McDowell had intended to attack at once. “But I could not,” he says, “get the troops forward earlier than we did. I wished them to go to Centreville the second day, but when I went to urge them forward, I was told that it was impossible for the men to march further. They had only come from Vienna, about six miles, and it was not more than six and a half miles further to Centreville, in all a march of twelve and a half miles; but the men were foot-weary—not so much, I was told, by the distance marched, as by the time they had been on foot, caused by the obstructions in the road, and the slow pace we had to move to avoid ambuscades. The men were, moreover, unaccustomed to marching, and not used to carrying even the load of ‘light marching order.’ . . . The trains, hurriedly gotten together, with horses, waggons, drivers, and waggon-masters all new and unused to each other, moved with difficulty and disorder, and were the cause of a day’s delay in getting the provisions forward.”[2]
On the morning of the 18th, in order to attract the enemy’s attention from his right, a brigade was sent south, in the direction of Bull Run. The Confederate outposts fell back over Blackburn’s Ford. The woods about the stream concealed the defenders’ forces, and the Federals pushed on, bringing artillery into action. Two Confederate guns, after firing a few shots, were withdrawn under cover, and the attacking troops reached the ford. Suddenly, from the high timber on the further bank, volleys of musketry blazed out in their very faces, and then came proof that some at least of the Federal regiments were no more to be relied upon in action than on the march. A portion of the force, despite the strong position of the enemy and the heavy fire, showed a bold front, but at least one regiment turned and fled, and was only rallied far in rear. The whole affair was a mistake on the part of the commander. His troops had been heedlessly pushed forward, and General Longstreet, commanding the opposing brigade, by carefully concealing his infantry, had drawn him into an ambuscade. The results of the action were not without importance. The Federals fell back with a loss of 83 officers and men, and the Confederates were much elated at their easy success. Among some of the Northerners, on the other hand, the sudden check to the advance, and the bold bearing of the enemy, turned confidence and enthusiasm into irrational despondency. A regiment and a battery, which had enlisted for three months and whose time was up, demanded their discharge, and notwithstanding the appeals of the Secretary of War, “moved to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.”[3]
McDowell’s plans were affected by the behaviour of his troops. He was still ignorant, so skilfully had the march from the Valley been carried out, that Johnston had escaped Patterson. He was well aware, however, that such movement was within the bounds of possibility, yet he found himself compelled to postpone attack until the 21st. The 19th and 20th were spent in reconnaissance, and in bringing up supplies; and the lack of organisation made the issue of rations a long process. But it was the general’s want of confidence in his soldiers that was the main cause of delay.
The Confederates were strongly posted. The bridges and fords across Bull Run, with the exception of Sudley Ford, a long way up stream to the Federal right, were obstructed with felled trees, and covered by rude intrenchments. Even with regular troops a direct attack on a single point of passage would have been difficult. McDowell’s first idea was to pass across the front of the defences, and turn the right at Wolf Run Shoals, five miles south-east of Union Mills. The country, however, on this flank was found to be unfit for the operations of large masses, and it was consequently determined to turn the Confederate left by way of Sudley Springs.
The Federal army consisted of five divisions of infantry, forty-three guns, and seven troops of regular cavalry. Nine batteries and eight companies of infantry were supplied by the United States army, and there was a small battalion of marines. The strength of the force told off for the attack amounted to 30,000 all told.[4]
The Confederates, along the banks of Bull Run, disposed of 26,000 infantry, 2,500 cavalry, and 55 guns. Johnston, who had arrived on the 20th, had assumed command; but, ignorant of the country, he had allowed Beauregard to make the dispositions for the expected battle. The line occupied was extensive, six miles in length, stretching from the Stone Bridge, where the Warrenton highroad crosses Bull Run, on the left, to the ford at Union Mills on the right. Besides these two points of passage there were no less than six fords, to each of which ran a road from Centreville. The country to the north was undulating and densely wooded, and it would have been possible for the Federals, especially as the Southern cavalry was held back south of the stream, to mass before any one of the fords, unobserved, in superior numbers. Several of the fords, moreover, were weakly guarded, for Beauregard, who had made up his mind to attack, had massed the greater part of his army near the railroad. The Shenandoah troops were in reserve; Bee’s and Bartow’s brigades between McLean’s and Blackburn’s fords, Jackson’s between Blackburn’s and Mitchell’s fords, in rear of the right centre.
The position south of Bull Run, originally selected by General Lee,[5] was better adapted for defence than for attack. The stream, with its high banks, ran like the ditch of a fortress along the front; and to the south was the plateau on which stands Manassas Junction. The plateau is intersected by several creeks, running through deep depressions, and dividing the high ground into a series of bold undulations, level on the top, and with gentle slopes. The most important of the creeks is Young’s Branch, surrounding on two sides the commanding eminence crowned by the Henry House, and joining Bull Run a short distance below the Stone Bridge. That part of the field which borders on Flat Run, and lies immediately north of Manassas Junction, is generally thickly wooded; but shortly after passing New Market, the Manassas-Sudley road, running north-west, emerges into more open country, and, from the Henry House onward, passes over several parallel ridges, deep in grass and corn, and studded between with groves of oak and pine. Here the large fields, without hedges, and scantily fenced, formed an admirable manœuvre ground; the wide depressions of the creeks, separating the crests of the ridges by a space of fifteen or sixteen hundred yards, gave free play to the artillery; the long easy slopes could be swept by fire, and the groves were no obstruction to the view. The left flank of the Confederate position, facing north, on either side of the Manassas-Sudley road, was thus an ideal battle-field.
July 21, 6.30 a.m. Sunday morning, the 21st of July, broke clear and warm. Through a miscarriage of orders, the Confederate offensive movement was delayed; and soon after six o’clock the Federals opened with musketry and artillery against the small brigade commanded by Colonel Evans, which held the Stone Bridge on the extreme left of the Confederate line. An hour later the Shenandoah brigades, Bee’s, Bartow’s, and Jackson’s, together with Bonham’s, were ordered up in support.
8.30 a.m. The attack was feebly pressed, and at 8.30 Evans, observing a heavy cloud of dust rising above the woods to the north of the Warrenton road, became satisfied that the movement to his front was but a feint, and that a column of the enemy was meanwhile marching to turn his flank by way of Sudley Springs, about two miles north-west.
9 a.m. Sending back this information to the next brigade, he left four companies to hold the bridge; and with six companies of riflemen, a battalion called the Louisiana Tigers, and two six-pounder howitzers, he moved across Young’s Branch, and took post on the Matthews Hill, a long ridge, which, at the same elevation, faces the Henry Hill.
Evans’ soldierly instinct had penetrated the design of the Federal commander, and his ready assumption of responsibility threw a strong force across the path of the turning column, and gave time for his superiors to alter their dispositions and bring up the reserves.
The Federal force opposite the Stone Bridge consisted of a whole division; and its commander, General Tyler, had been instructed to divert attention, by means of a vigorous demonstration, from the march of Hunter’s and Heintzleman’s divisions to a ford near Sudley Springs. Part of the Fifth Division was retained in reserve at Centreville, and part threatened the fords over Bull Run below the Stone Bridge. The Fourth Division had been left upon the railroad, seven miles in rear of Centreville, in order to guard the communications with Washington.
Already, in forming the line of march, there had been much confusion. The divisions had bivouacked in loose order, without any regard for the morrow’s movements, and their concentration previous to the advance was very tedious. The brigades crossed each other’s route; the march was slow; and the turning column, blocked by Tyler’s division on its way to the Stone Bridge, was delayed for nearly three hours.
9.30 a.m. At last, however, Hunter and Heintzleman crossed Sudley Ford; and after marching a mile in the direction of Manassas Junction, the leading brigade struck Evans’ riflemen. The Confederates were concealed by a fringe of woods, and the Federals were twice repulsed. But supports came crowding up, and Evans sent back for reinforcements. The fight had lasted for an hour. It was near eleven o’clock, and the check to the enemy’s advance had given time for the Confederates to form a line of battle on the Henry Hill. Bee and Bartow, accompanied by Imboden’s battery, were in position; Hampton’s Legion, a regiment raised and commanded by an officer who was one of the wealthiest planters in South Carolina, and who became one of the finest soldiers in the Confederacy, was not far behind; and Jackson was coming up.[6]
Again the situation was saved by the prompt initiative of a brigade commander. Bee had been ordered to support the troops at the Stone Bridge. Moving forward towards the Henry Hill, he had been informed by a mounted orderly that the whole Federal army seemed to be moving to the north-west. A signal officer on the plateau who had caught the glint of the brass field-pieces which accompanied the hostile column, still several miles distant, had sent the message. Bee waited for no further instructions. Ordering Bartow to follow, he climbed the Henry Hill. The wide and beautiful landscape lay spread before him; Evans’ small command was nearly a mile distant, on the Matthews Hill; and on the ridges to the far north-west he saw the glitter of many bayonets.
11 a.m. Rapidly placing his battery in position near the Henry House, Bee formed a line of battle on the crest above Young’s Branch; but very shortly afterwards, acceding to an appeal for help from Evans, he hurried his troops forward to the Matthews Hill. His new position protected the rear of the companies which held the Stone Bridge; and so long as the bridge was held the two wings of the Federal army were unable to co-operate. But on the Matthews Hill, the enemy’s strength, especially in artillery, was overwhelming; and the Confederates were soon compelled to fall back to the Henry Hill. McDowell had already sent word to Tyler to force the Stone Bridge; and Sherman’s brigade of this division, passing the stream by a ford, threatened the flank of Bee and Evans as they retreated across Young’s Branch.
The Federals now swarmed over the Matthews Hill; but Imboden’s battery, which Bee had again posted on the Henry Hill, and Hampton’s Legion, occupying the Robinson House, a wooden tenement on the open spur which projects towards the Stone Bridge, covered the retirement of the discomfited brigades. They were not, however, suffered to fall back unharassed.
A long line of guns, following fast upon their tracks, and crossing the fields at a gallop, came into action on the opposite slope. In vain Imboden’s gunners, with their pieces well placed behind a swell of ground, strove to divert their attention from the retreating infantry, now climbing the slopes of the Henry Hill. The Federal batteries, powerful in numbers, in discipline, and in materiel, plied their fire fast. The shells fell in quick succession amongst the disordered ranks of the Southern regiments, and not all the efforts of their officers could stay their flight.
The day seemed lost. Strong masses of Northern infantry were moving forward past the Stone House on the Warrenton turnpike. Hampton’s Legion was retiring on the right. Imboden’s battery, with but three rounds remaining for each piece, galloped back across the Henry Hill, and this commanding height, the key of the battle-ground, was abandoned to the enemy. But help was at hand. Jackson, like Bee and Bartow, had been ordered to the Stone Bridge. Hearing the heavy fire to his left increasing in intensity, he had turned the head of his column towards the most pressing danger, and had sent a messenger to Bee to announce his coming. As he pushed rapidly forward, part of the troops he intended to support swept by in disorder to the rear. Imboden’s battery came dashing back, and that officer, meeting Jackson, expressed with a profanity which was evidently displeasing to the general his disgust at being left without support. “I’ll support your battery,” was the brief reply; “unlimber right here.”
11.30 a.m. At this moment appeared General Bee, approaching at full gallop, and he and Jackson met face to face. The latter was cool and composed; Bee covered with dust and sweat, his sword in his hand, and his horse foaming. “General,” he said, “they are beating us back!” “Then, sir, we will give them the bayonet;” the thin lips closed like a vice, and the First Brigade, pressing up the slope, formed into line on the eastern edge of the Henry Hill.
Jackson’s determined bearing inspired Bee with renewed confidence. He turned bridle and galloped back to the ravine where his officers were attempting to reform their broken companies. Riding into the midst of the throng, he pointed with his sword to the Virginia regiments, deployed in well-ordered array on the height above. “Look!” he shouted, “there is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” The men took up the cry; and the happy augury of the expression, applied at a time when defeat seemed imminent and hearts were failing, was remembered when the danger had passed away.
The position which Jackson had occupied was the strongest that could be found. He had not gone forward to the crest which looks down upon Young’s Branch, and commands the slopes by which the Federals were advancing. From that crest extended a wide view, and a wide field of fire; but both flanks would have been exposed. The Henry House was nothing more than a cottage; neither here nor elsewhere was there shelter for his riflemen, and they would have been exposed to the full force of the Federal artillery without power of reply. But on the eastern edge of the hill, where he had chosen to deploy, ran a belt of young pines, affording excellent cover, which merged into a dense oak wood near the Sudley road.
Along the edge of the pines Jackson placed his regiments, with six guns to support them. Lying in rear of the guns were the 4th and 27th Virginia; on the right was the 5th; on the left the 2nd and 33rd. Both flanks were in the woods, and Stuart, whom Jackson had called upon to secure his left, was watching the ground beyond the road. To the front, for a space of five hundred yards, stretched the level crest of the hill; and the ground beyond the Henry House, dipping to the valley of Young’s Branch, where the Federals were now gathering, was wholly unseen. But as the tactics of Wellington so often proved, a position from which the view is limited, well in rear of a crest line, may be exceedingly strong for defence, provided that troops who hold it can use the bayonet. It would be difficult in the extreme for the Federals to pave the way for their attack with artillery. From the guns on the Matthews Hill the Virginia regiments were well sheltered, and the range was long. To do effective work the hostile batteries would have to cross Young’s Branch, ascend the Henry Hill, and come into action within five hundred yards of Jackson’s line. Even if they were able to hold their ground at so short a range, they could make no accurate practice under the fire of the Confederate marksmen.
12 noon In rear of Jackson’s line, Bee, Bartow, and Evans were rallying their men, when Johnston and Beauregard, compelled, by the unexpected movement of the Federals, to abandon all idea of attack, appeared upon the Henry Hill. They were accompanied by two batteries of artillery, Pendleton’s and Alburtis’. The colours of the broken regiments were ordered to the front, and the men rallied, taking post on Jackson’s right. The moment was critical. The blue masses of the Federals, the dust rolling high above them, were already descending the opposite slopes. The guns flashed fiercely through the yellow cloud; and the Confederate force was but a handful. Three brigades had been summoned from the fords; but the nearest was four miles distant, and many of the troops upon the plateau were already half-demoralised by retreat. The generals set themselves to revive the courage of their soldiers. Beauregard galloped along the line, cheering the regiments in every portion of the field, and then, with the colour-bearers accompanying him, rode forward to the crest. Johnston was equally conspicuous. The enemy’s shells were bursting on every side, and the shouts of the Confederates, recognising their leaders as they dashed across the front, redoubled the uproar. Meanwhile, before the centre of his line, with an unconcern which had a marvellous effect on his untried command, Jackson rode slowly to and fro. Except that his face was a little paler, and his eyes brighter, he looked exactly as his men had seen him so often on parade; and as he passed along the crest above them they heard from time to time the reassuring words, uttered in a tone which betrayed no trace of excitement, “Steady, men! steady! all’s well!”
It was at this juncture, while the confusion of taking up a new position with shattered and ill-drilled troops was at the highest, that the battle lulled. The Federal infantry, after defeating Bee and Evans, had to cross the deep gully and marshy banks of Young’s Branch, to climb the slope of the Henry Hill, and to form for a fresh attack. Even with trained soldiers a hot fight is so conducive of disorder, that it is difficult to initiate a rapid pursuit, and the Northern regiments were very slow in resuming their formations. At the same time, too, the fire of their batteries became less heavy. From their position beyond Young’s Branch the rifled guns had been able to ply the Confederate lines with shell, and their effective practice had rendered the work of rallying the troops exceedingly difficult. But when his infantry advanced, McDowell ordered one half of his artillery, two fine batteries of regulars, made up principally of rifled guns, to cross Young’s Branch. This respite was of the utmost value to the Confederates. The men, encouraged by the gallant bearing of their leaders, fell in at once upon the colours, and when Hunter’s regiments appeared on the further rim of the plateau they were received with a fire which for a moment drove them back. But the regular batteries were close at hand, and as they came into action the battle became general on the Henry Hill. The Federals had 16,000 infantry available; the Confederates no more than 6,500. But the latter were superior in artillery, 16 pieces confronting 12. The Federal guns, however, were of heavier calibre; the gunners were old soldiers, and both friend and foe testify to the accuracy of their fire, their fine discipline, and staunch endurance. The infantry, on the other hand, was not well handled. The attack was purely frontal. No attempt whatever was made to turn the Confederate flanks, although the Stone Bridge, except for the abattis, was now open, and Johnston’s line might easily have been taken in reverse. Nor does it appear that the cavalry was employed to ascertain where the flanks rested. Moreover, instead of massing the troops for a determined onslaught, driven home by sheer weight of numbers, the attack was made by successive brigades, those in rear waiting till those in front had been defeated; and, in the same manner, the brigades attacked by successive regiments. Such tactics were inexcusable. It was certainly necessary to push the attack home before the Confederate reinforcements could get up; and troops who had never drilled in mass would have taken much time to assume the orthodox formation of several lines of battle, closely supporting one another. Yet there was no valid reason, beyond the inexperience of the generals in dealing with large bodies, that brigades should have been sent into action piecemeal, or that the flanks of the defence should have been neglected. The fighting, nevertheless, was fierce. The Federal regiments, inspirited by their success on the Matthews Hill, advanced with confidence, and soon pushed forward past the Henry House. “The contest that ensued,” says General Imboden, “was terrific. Jackson ordered me to go from battery to battery and see that the guns were properly aimed and the fuses cut the right length. This was the work of but a few minutes. On returning to the left of the line of guns, I stopped to ask General Jackson’s permission to rejoin my battery. The fight was just then hot enough to make him feel well. His eyes fairly blazed. He had a way of throwing up his left hand with the open palm towards the person he was addressing. And, as he told me to go, he made this gesture. The air was full of flying missiles, and as he spoke he jerked down his hand, and I saw that blood was streaming from it. I exclaimed, “General, you are wounded.” “Only a scratch—a mere scratch,” he replied, and binding it hastily with a handkerchief, he galloped away along his line.”[7]
1.30 p.m. When the battle was at its height, and across that narrow space, not more than five hundred yards in width, the cannon thundered, and the long lines of infantry struggled for the mastery, the two Federal batteries, protected by two regiments of infantry on their right, advanced to a more effective position. The movement was fatal. Stuart, still guarding the Confederate left, was eagerly awaiting his opportunity, and now, with 150 troopers, filing through the fences on Bald Hill, he boldly charged the enemy’s right. The regiment thus assailed, a body of Zouaves, in blue and scarlet, with white turbans, was ridden down, and almost at the same moment the 33rd Virginia, posted on Jackson’s left, charged forward from the copse in which they had been hidden. The uniforms in the two armies at this time were much alike, and from the direction of their approach it was difficult at first for the officers in charge of the Federal batteries to make sure that the advancing troops were not their own. A moment more and the doubtful regiment proved its identity by a deadly volley, delivered at a range of seventy yards. Every gunner was shot down; the teams were almost annihilated, and several officers fell killed or wounded. The Zouaves, already much shaken by Stuart’s well-timed charge, fled down the slopes, dragging with them another regiment of infantry.
Three guns alone escaped the marksmen of the 33rd. The remainder stood upon the field, silent and abandoned, surrounded by dying horses, midway between the opposing lines.
This success, however, brought but short relief to the Confederates. The enemy was not yet done with. Fresh regiments passed to the attack. The 33rd was driven back, and the thin line upon the plateau was hard put to it to retain its ground. The Southerners had lost heavily. Bee and Bartow had been killed, and Hampton wounded. Few reinforcements had reached the Henry Hill. Stragglers and skulkers were streaming to the rear. The Federals were thronging forward, and it seemed that the exhausted defenders must inevitably give way before the successive blows of superior numbers. The troops were losing confidence. Yet no thought of defeat crossed Jackson’s mind. “General,” said an officer, riding hastily towards him, “the day is going against us.” “If you think so, sir,” was the quiet reply, “you had better not say anything about it.” And although affairs seemed desperate, in reality the crisis of the battle had already passed. McDowell had but two brigades remaining in reserve, and one of these—of Tyler’s division—was still beyond Bull Run. His troops were thoroughly exhausted; they had been marching and fighting since midnight; the day was intensely hot; they had encountered fierce resistance; their rifled batteries had been silenced, and the Confederate reinforcements were coming up. Two of Bonham’s regiments had taken post on Jackson’s right, and a heavy force was approaching on the left. Kirby Smith’s brigade, of the Army of the Shenandoah, coming up by train, had reached Manassas Junction while the battle was in progress. It was immediately ordered to the field, and had been already instructed by Johnston to turn the enemy’s right.
But before the weight of Smith’s 1,900 bayonets could be thrown into the scale, the Federals made a vigorous effort to carry the Henry Hill. Those portions of the Confederate line which stood on the open ground gave way before them. Some of the guns, ordered to take up a position from which they could cover the retreat, were limbering up; and with the exception of the belt of pines, the plateau was abandoned to the hostile infantry, who were beginning to press forward at every point. The Federal engineers were already clearing away the abattis from the Stone Bridge, in order to give passage to Tyler’s third brigade and a battery of artillery; “and all were certain,” says McDowell, “that the day was ours.”
2.45 p.m. Jackson’s men were lying beneath the crest of the plateau. Only one of his regiments—the 33rd—had as yet been engaged in the open, and his guns in front still held their own. Riding to the centre of his line, where the 2nd and 4th Virginia were stationed, he gave orders for a counterstroke. “Reserve your fire till they come within fifty yards, then fire and give them the bayonet; and when you charge, yell like furies!” Right well did the hot Virginian blood respond. Inactive from the stroke of noon till three o’clock, with the crash and cries of battle in their ears, and the shells ploughing gaps in their recumbent ranks, the men were chafing under the stern discipline which held them back from the conflict they longed to join. The Federals swept on, extending from the right and left, cheering as they came, and following the flying batteries in the ardour of success. Suddenly, a long grey line sprang from the ground in their very faces; a rolling volley threw them back in confusion; and then, with their fierce shouts pealing high above the tumult, the 2nd and 4th Virginia, supported by the 5th, charged forward across the hill. At the same moment that the enemy’s centre was thus unexpectedly assailed, Kirby Smith’s fresh brigade bore down upon the flank,[8] and Beauregard, with ready judgment, dispatched his staff officers to order a general advance. The broken remnants of Bee, Hampton, and Evans advanced upon Jackson’s right, and victory, long wavering, crowned the standards of the South. The Federals were driven past the guns, now finally abandoned, past the Henry House, and down the slope. McDowell made one desperate endeavour to stay the rout. Howard’s brigade was rapidly thrown in. But the centre had been completely broken by Jackson’s charge; the right was giving way, and the Confederates, manning the captured guns, turned them on the masses which covered the fields below.
Howard, although his men fought bravely, was easily repulsed; in a few minutes not a single Federal soldier, save the dead and dying, was to be seen upon the plateau.
Illustration: Map of the field of Bull Run. For larger view click on image
3.30 p.m. A final stand was made by McDowell along Young’s Branch; and there, at half-past three, a line of battle was once more established, the battalion of regular infantry forming a strong centre. But another Confederate brigade, under General Early, had now arrived, and again the enemy’s right was overthrown, while Beauregard, leaving Jackson, whose brigade had lost all order and many men in its swift advance, to hold the plateau, swept forward towards the Matthews Hill. The movement was decisive. McDowell’s volunteers broke up in the utmost confusion. The Confederate infantry was in no condition to pursue, but the cavalry was let loose, and before long the retreat became a panic. The regular battalion, composed of young soldiers, but led by experienced officers, alone preserved its discipline, moving steadily in close order through the throng of fugitives, and checking the pursuing troopers by its firm and confident bearing. The remainder of the army dissolved into a mob. It was not that the men were completely demoralised, but simply that discipline had not become a habit. They had marched as individuals, going just so far as they pleased, and halting when they pleased; they had fought as individuals, bravely enough, but with little combination; and when they found that they were beaten, as individuals they retreated. “The old soldier,” wrote one of the regular officers a week later, “feels safe in the ranks, unsafe out of the ranks, and the greater the danger the more pertinaciously he clings to his place. The volunteer of three months never attains this instinct of discipline. Under danger, and even under mere excitement, he flies away from his ranks, and hopes for safety in dispersion. At four o’clock in the afternoon of the 21st there were more than 12,000 volunteers on the battle-field of Bull Run who had entirely lost their regimental organisation. They could no longer be handled as troops, for the officers and men were not together. Men and officers mingled together promiscuously; and it is worthy of remark that this disorganisation did not result from defeat or fear, for up to four o’clock we had been uniformly successful. The instinct of discipline which keeps every man in his place had not been acquired. We cannot suppose that the enemy had attained a higher degree of discipline than our own, but they acted on the defensive, and were not equally exposed to disorganisation.”[9]
“Cohesion was lost,” says one of McDowell’s staff; “and the men walked quietly off. There was no special excitement except that arising from the frantic efforts of officers to stop men who paid little or no attention to anything that was said; and there was no panic, in the ordinary sense and meaning of the word, until the retiring soldiers, guns, waggons, Congressmen and carriages, were fired upon, on the road east of Bull Run.”[10]
At Centreville the reserve division stood fast; and the fact that these troops were proof against the infection of panic and the exaggerated stories of the fugitives is in itself strong testimony to the native courage of the soldiery.
A lack of competent Staff officers, which, earlier in the day, had prevented an advance on Centreville by the Confederate right, brought Johnston’s arrangements for pursuit to naught. The cavalry, weak in numbers, was soon incumbered with squads of prisoners; darkness fell upon the field, and the defeated army streamed over the roads to Washington, followed only by its own fears.
Why the Confederate generals did not follow up their success on the following day is a question round which controversy raged for many a year. Deficiencies in commissariat and transport; the disorganisation of the army after the victory; the difficulties of a direct attack upon Washington, defended as it was by a river a mile broad, with but a single bridge, and patrolled by gunboats; the determination of the Government to limit its military operations to a passive defence of Confederate territory, have all been pressed into service as excuses. “Give me 10,000 fresh troops,” said Jackson, as the surgeon dressed his wound, “and I would be in Washington to-morrow.” Before twenty-four hours had passed reinforcements had increased the strength of Johnston’s army to 40,000. Want of organisation had undoubtedly prevented McDowell from winning a victory on the 19th or 20th, but pursuit is a far less difficult business than attack. There was nothing to interfere with a forward movement. There were supplies along the railway, and if the mechanism for their distribution and the means for their carriage were wanting, the counties adjoining the Potomac were rich and fertile. Herds of bullocks were grazing in the pastures, and the barns of the farmers were loaded with grain. It was not a long supply train that was lacking, nor an experienced staff, nor even well-disciplined battalions; but a general who grasped the full meaning of victory, who understood how a defeated army, more especially of new troops, yields at a touch, and who, above all, saw the necessity of giving the North no leisure to develop her immense resources. For three days Jackson impatiently awaited the order to advance, and his men were held ready with three days’ cooked rations in their haversacks. But his superiors gave no sign, and he was reluctantly compelled to abandon all hope of reaping the fruits of victory.
It is true that the Confederates were no more fit for offensive operations than McDowell’s troops. “Our army,” says General Johnston, “was more disorganised by victory than that of the United States by defeat.” But it is to be remembered that if the Southerners had moved into Maryland, crossing the Potomac by some of the numerous fords near Harper’s Ferry, they would have found no organised opposition, save the débris of McDowell’s army, between them and the Northern capital. On July 26, five days after the battle, the general who was to succeed McDowell arrived in Washington and rode round the city. “I found,” he wrote, “no preparations whatever for defence, not even to the extent of putting the troops in military position. Not a regiment was properly encamped, not a single avenue of approach guarded. All was chaos, and the streets, hotels, and bar-rooms were filled with drunken officers and men, absent from their regiments without leave, a perfect pandemonium. Many had even gone to their homes, their flight from Bull Run terminating in New York, or even in New Hampshire and Maine. There was really nothing to prevent a small cavalry force from riding into the city. A determined attack would doubtless have carried Arlington Heights and placed the city at the mercy of a battery of rifled guns. If the Secessionists attached any value to the possession of Washington, they committed their greatest error in not following up the victory of Bull Run.” On the same date, the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, wrote as follows: “The capture of Washington seems now to be inevitable; during the whole of Monday and Tuesday [July 22 and 23] it might have been taken without resistance. The rout, overthrow, and demoralisation of the whole army were complete.”[11]
Of his own share in the battle, either at the time or afterwards, Jackson said but little. A day or two after the battle an anxious crowd was gathered round the post-office at Lexington, awaiting intelligence from the front. A letter was handed to the Reverend Dr. White, who, recognising the handwriting, exclaimed to the eager groups about him, “Now we shall know all the facts.” On opening it he found the following, and no more:
“My dear Pastor,—In my tent last night, after a fatiguing day’s service, I remembered that I had failed to send you my contribution to our coloured Sunday school. Enclosed you will find my check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience, and oblige yours faithfully, T. J. Jackson.”
To his wife, however, he was less reserved. “Yesterday,” he wrote, we “fought a great battle and gained a great victory, for which all the glory is due to God alone. . . . Whilst great credit is due to other parts of our gallant army, God made my brigade more instrumental than any other in repulsing the main attack. This is for your information only—say nothing about it. Let others speak praise, not myself.”
Again, on August 5: “And so you think the papers ought to say more about your husband. My brigade is not a brigade of newspaper correspondents. I know that the First Brigade was the first to meet and pass our retreating forces—to push on with no other aid than the smiles of God; to boldly take up its position with the artillery that was under my command—to arrest the victorious foe in his onward progress—to hold him in check until the reinforcements arrived—and finally to charge bayonets, and, thus advancing, to pierce the enemy’s centre. I am well satisfied with what it did, and so are my generals, Johnston and Beauregard. It is not to be expected that I should receive the credit that Generals Johnston and Beauregard would, because I was under them; but I am thankful to my ever-kind Heavenly Father that He makes me content to await His own good time and pleasure for commendation—knowing that all things work together for my good. If my brigade can always play so important and useful a part as it did in the last battle, I trust I shall ever be most grateful. As you think the papers do not notice me enough, I send a specimen, which you will see from the upper part of the paper is a ‘leader.’ My darling, never distrust our God, Who doeth all things well. In due time He will make manifest all His pleasure, which is all His people should desire. You must not be concerned at seeing other parts of the army lauded, and my brigade not mentioned. Truth is mighty and will prevail. When the official reports are published, if not before, I expect to see justice done to this noble body of patriots.”[12]
These letters reveal a generous pride in the valour of his troops, and a very human love of approbation struggles with the curb which his religious principles had placed on his ambition. Like Nelson, he felt perhaps that before long he would have “a Gazette of his own.” But still, of his own achievements, of his skilful tactics, of his personal behaviour, of his well-timed orders, he spoke no word, and the victory was ascribed to a higher power. “The charge of the 2nd and 4th Virginia,” he wrote in his modest report, “through the blessing of God, Who gave us the victory, pierced the centre of the enemy.”[13]
And Jackson’s attitude was that of the Southern people. When the news of Bull Run reached Richmond, and through the crowds that thronged the streets passed the tidings of the victory, there was neither wild excitement nor uproarious joy. No bonfires lit the darkness of the night; no cannon thundered out salutes; the steeples were silent till the morrow, and then were heard only the solemn tones that called the people to prayer. It was resolved, on the day following the battle, by the Confederate Congress: “That we recognise the hand of the Most High God, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in the glorious victory with which He has crowned our arms at Manassas, and that the people of these Confederate States are invited, by appropriate services on the ensuing Sabbath, to offer up their united thanksgivings and prayers for this mighty deliverance.”
The spoils of Bull Run were large; 1,500 prisoners, 25 guns, ten stand of colours, several thousand rifles, a large quantity of ammunition and hospital stores, twenty-six waggons, and several ambulances were left in the victors’ hands. The Federal losses were 460 killed and 1,124 wounded; the Confederate, 387 killed, 1,582 wounded, and 13 missing. The First Brigade suffered more severely than any other in the Southern army. Of 3,000 officers and men, 488 were killed or wounded, nearly a fourth of the total loss.
A few days after the battle Johnston advanced to Centreville, and from the heights above the broad Potomac his cavalry vedettes looked upon the spires of Washington. But it was in vain that the Confederate troopers rode to and fro on the river bank and watered their horses within sight of the Capitol. The enemy was not to be beguiled across the protecting stream. But it was not from fear. Although the disaster had been as crushing as unexpected, it was bravely met. The President’s demand for another army was cheerfully complied with. Volunteers poured in from every State. The men were no longer asked to serve for three months, but for three years. Washington became transformed into an enormous camp; great earthworks rose on the surrounding heights; and the training of the new levies went steadily forward. There was no cry for immediate action. Men were not wanting who believed that the task of coercion was impossible. Able statesmen and influential journalists advised the President to abandon the attempt. But Lincoln, true to the trust which had been committed to his keeping, never flinched from his resolve that the Union should be restored. He, too, stood like a wall between his defeated legions and the victorious foe. Nor was the nation less determined. The dregs of humiliation had been drained, and though the draught was bitter it was salutary. The President was sustained with no half-hearted loyalty. His political opponents raved and threatened; but under the storm of recrimination the work of reorganising the army went steadily forward, and the people were content that until the generals declared the army fit for action the hour of vengeance should be postponed.
To the South, Bull Run was a Pyrrhic victory. It relieved Virginia of the pressure of the invasion; it proved to the world that the attitude of the Confederacy was something more than the reckless revolt of a small section; but it led the Government to indulge vain hopes of foreign intervention, and it increased the universal contempt for the military qualities of the Northern soldiers. The hasty judgment of the people construed a single victory as proof of their superior capacity for war, and the defeat of McDowell’s army was attributed to the cowardice of his volunteers. The opinion was absolutely erroneous. Some of the Federal regiments had misbehaved, it is true; seized with sudden panic, to which all raw troops are peculiarly susceptible, they had dispersed before the strong counterstroke of the Confederates. But the majority had displayed a sterling courage. There can be little question that the spirit of the infantry depends greatly on the staunchness of the artillery. A single battery, pushed boldly forward into the front of battle, has often restored the vigour of a wavering line. Although the losses it inflicts may not be large, the moral effect of its support is undeniable. So long as the guns hold fast victory seems possible. But when these useful auxiliaries are driven back or captured a general depression becomes inevitable. The retreat of the artillery strikes a chill into the fighting line which is ominous of defeat, and it is a wise regulation that compels the batteries, even when their ammunition is exhausted, to stand their ground. The Federal infantry at Bull Run had seen their artillery overwhelmed, the teams destroyed, the gunners shot down, and the enemy’s riflemen swarming amongst the abandoned pieces. But so vigorous had been their efforts to restore the battle, that the front of the defence had been with difficulty maintained; the guns, though they were eventually lost, had been retaken; and without the assistance of their artillery, but exposed to the fire, at closest range, of more than one battery, the Northern regiments had boldly pushed forward across the Henry Hill. The Confederates, during the greater part of the battle, were certainly outnumbered; but at the close they were the stronger, and the piecemeal attacks of the Federals neutralised the superiority which the invading army originally possessed.
McDowell appears to have employed 18,000 troops in the attack; Johnston and Beauregard about the same number.[14]
A comparison of the relative strength of the two armies, considering that raw troops have a decided advantage on the defensive, detracts, to a certain degree, from the credit of the victory; and it will hardly be questioned that had the tactics of the Federals been better the victory would have been theirs. The turning movement by Sudley Springs was a skilful manœuvre, and completely surprised both Johnston and Beauregard. It was undoubtedly risky, but it was far less dangerous than a direct attack on the strong position along Bull Run.
The retention of the Fourth Division between Washington and Centreville would seem to have been a blunder; another 5,000 men on the field of battle should certainly have turned the scale. But more men were hardly wanted. The Federals during the first period of the fight were strong enough to have seized the Henry Hill. Bee, Bartow, Evans, and Hampton had been driven in, and Jackson alone stood fast. A strong and sustained attack, supported by the fire of the regular batteries, must have succeeded.[15] The Federal regiments, however, were practically incapable of movement under fire. The least change of position broke them into fragments; there was much wild firing; it was impossible to manœuvre; and the courage of individuals proved a sorry substitute for order and cohesion. The Confederates owed their victory simply and solely to the fact that their enemies had not yet learned to use their strength.
The summer months went by without further fighting on the Potomac; but the camps at Fairfax and at Centreville saw the army of Manassas thinned by furloughs and by sickness. The Southern youth had come out for battle, and the monotonous routine of the outpost line and the parade-ground was little to their taste. The Government dared not refuse the numberless applications for leave of absence, the more so that in the crowded camps the sultry heat of the Virginia woodlands bred disease of a virulent type. The First Brigade seems to have escaped from all these evils. Its commander found his health improved by his life in the open air. His wound had been painful. A finger was broken, but the hand was saved, and some temporary inconvenience alone resulted. As he claimed no furlough for himself, so he permitted no absence from duty among his troops. “I can’t be absent,” he wrote to his wife, “as my attention is necessary in preparing my troops for hard fighting, should it be required; and as my officers and soldiers are not permitted to visit their wives and families, I ought not to see mine. It might make the troops feel that they are badly treated, and that I consult my own comfort, regardless of theirs.”
In September his wife joined him for a few days at Centreville, and later came Dr. White, at his invitation, to preach to his command. Beyond a few fruitless marches to support the cavalry on the outposts, of active service there was none. But Jackson was not the man to let the time pass uselessly. He had his whole brigade under his hand, a force which wanted but one quality to make it an instrument worthy of the hand that wielded it, and that quality was discipline. Courage and enthusiasm it possessed in abundance; and when both were untrained the Confederate was a more useful soldier than the Northerner. In the South nearly every man was a hunter, accustomed from boyhood to the use of firearms. Game was abundant, and it was free to all. Sport in one form or another was the chief recreation of the people, and their pastoral pursuits left them much leisure for its indulgence. Every great plantation had its pack of hounds, and fox-hunting, an heirloom from the English colonists, still flourished. His stud was the pride of every Southern gentleman, and the love of horse-flesh was inherent in the whole population. No man walked when he could ride, and hundreds of fine horsemen, mounted on steeds of famous lineage, recruited the Confederate squadrons.
But, despite their skill with the rifle, their hunter’s craft, and their dashing horsemanship, the first great battle had been hardly won. The city-bred Northerners, unused to arms and uninured to hardship, had fought with extraordinary determination; and the same want of discipline that had driven them in rout to Washington had dissolved the victorious Confederates into a tumultuous mob.[16] If Jackson knew the worth of his volunteers, he was no stranger to their shortcomings. His thoughts might be crystallised in the words of Wellington, words which should never be forgotten by those nations which depend for their defence on the services of their citizen soldiery.
“They want,” said the great Duke, speaking of the Portuguese in 1809, “the habits and the spirit of soldiers,—the habits of command on one side, and of obedience on the other—mutual confidence between officers and men.”
In order that during the respite now offered he might instil these habits into his brigade, Jackson neither took furlough himself nor granted it to others. His regiments were constantly exercised on the parade-ground. Shoulder to shoulder they advanced and retired, marched and countermarched, massed in column, formed line to front or flank, until they learned to move as a machine, until the limbs obeyed before the order had passed from ear to brain, until obedience became an instinct and cohesion a necessity of their nature. They learned to listen for the word of the officer, to look to him before they moved hand or foot; and, in that subjection of their own individuality to the will of their superior, they acquired that steadiness in battle, that energy on the march, that discipline in quarters which made the First Brigade worthy of the name it had already won. “Every officer and soldier,” said their commander, “who is able to do duty ought to be busily engaged in military preparation by hard drilling, in order that, through the blessing of God, we may be victorious in the battles which in His all-wise providence may await us.”
Jackson’s tactical ideas, as regards the fire of infantry, expressed at this time, are worth recording. “I rather think,” he said, “that fire by file [independent firing] is best on the whole, for it gives the enemy an idea that the fire is heavier than if it was by company or battalion (volley firing). Sometimes, however, one may be best, sometimes the other, according to circumstances. But my opinion is that there ought not to be much firing at all. My idea is that the best mode of fighting is to reserve your fire till the enemy get—or you get them—to close quarters. Then deliver one deadly, deliberate fire—and charge!”
Although the newspapers did scant justice to the part played by the brigade in the battle of Bull Run, Bee’s epithet survived, and Jackson became known as Stonewall throughout the army. To one of his acquaintances the general revealed the source of his composure under fire. “Three days after the battle, hearing that Jackson was suffering from his wound, I rode,” writes Imboden, “to his quarters near Centreville. Of course the battle was the only topic discussed during breakfast. ‘General,’ I remarked, ‘how is it that you can keep so cool, and appear so utterly insensible to danger in such a storm of shell and bullets as rained about you when your hand was hit?’ He instantly became grave and reverential in his manner, and answered, in a low tone of great earnestness: ‘Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.’ He added, after a pause, looking me full in the face: ‘That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.’”[17]
Although the war upon the borders had not yet touched the cities of the South, the patriotism of Virginia saw with uneasiness the inroads of the enemy in that portion of the State which lies beyond the Alleghenies, especially the north-west. The country was overrun with Federal soldiers, and part of the population of the district had declared openly for the Union. In that district was Jackson’s birth-place, the home of his childhood, and his mother’s grave. His interest and his affections were bound by many ties to the country and the people, and in the autumn of 1861 he had not yet come to believe that they were at heart disloyal to their native State. A vigorous effort, he believed, might still restore to the Confederacy a splendid recruiting-ground, and he made no secret of his desire for employment in that region. The strategical advantages of this corner of Virginia were clearly apparent, as will be seen hereafter, to his perception. Along its western border runs the Ohio, a river navigable to its junction with the Mississippi, and giving an easy line of communication into the heart of Kentucky. Through its northern counties passed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the main line of communication between Washington and the West; and alongside the railway ran the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, a second and most important line of supply. Above all, projecting as it did towards the great lakes of the North, the north-western angle, or Virginia Panhandle, narrowed the passage between East and West to an isthmus not more than a hundred miles in breadth. With this territory in the possession of the Confederates, the Federal dominions would be practically cut in two; and in North-western Virginia, traversed by many ranges of well-nigh pathless mountains, with few towns and still fewer roads, a small army might defy a large one with impunity.
Nov. 4 On November 4 Jackson’s wish was partially granted. He was assigned to the command of the Shenandoah Valley District, embracing the northern part of the area between the Alleghenies and the Blue Ridge. The order was received with gratitude, but dashed by the fact that he had to depart alone. “Had this communication,” he said to Dr. White, “not come as an order, I should instantly have declined it, and continued in command of my brave old brigade.”
Whether he or his soldiers felt the parting most it is hard to say. Certain it is that the men had a warm regard for their leader. There was no more about him at Centreville to attract the popular fancy than there had been at Harper’s Ferry. When the troops passed in review the eye of the spectator turned at once to the trim carriage of Johnston and of Beauregard, to the glittering uniform of Stuart, to the superb chargers and the martial bearing of young officers fresh from the Indian frontier. The silent professor, absent and unsmiling, who dressed as plainly as he lived, had little in common with those dashing soldiers. The tent where every night the general and his staff gathered together for their evening devotions, where the conversation ran not on the merits of horse and hound, on strategy and tactics, but on the power of faith and the mysteries of the redemption, seemed out of place in an army of high-spirited youths. But, while they smiled at his peculiarities, the Confederate soldiers remembered the fierce counterstroke on the heights above Bull Run. If the Presbyterian general was earnest in prayer, they knew that he was prompt in battle and indefatigable in quarters. He had the respect of all men, and from his own brigade he had something more. Very early in their service, away by the rippling Shenandoah, they had heard the stories of his daring in Mexico. They had experienced his skill and coolness at Falling Waters; they had seen at Bull Run, while the shells burst in never-ending succession among the pines, the quiet figure riding slowly to and fro on the crest above them; they had heard the stern command, “Wait till they come within fifty yards and then give them the bayonet,” and they had followed him far in that victorious rush into the receding ranks of their astonished foe.
Little wonder that these enthusiastic youths, new to the soldier’s trade, should have been captivated by a nature so strong and fearless. The Stonewall Brigade had made Jackson a hero, and he had won more from them than their admiration. His incessant watchfulness for their comfort and well-being; the patient care with which he instructed them; his courtesy to the youngest private; the tact and thoughtfulness he showed in all his relations with them, had won their affection. His very peculiarities endeared him to them. Old Jack or Stonewall were his nicknames in the lines of his own command, and stories went round the camp fire of how he had been seen walking in the woods round Centreville absorbed in prayer, or lifting his left hand with that peculiar gesture which the men believed was an appeal to Heaven, but which, in reality, was made to relieve the pain of his wounded finger. But while they discussed his oddities, not a man in the brigade but acknowledged his ability, and when the time came not a man but regretted his departure.
His farewell to his troops was a striking scene. The forest, already donning its gorgeous autumnal robes, shut in the grassy clearing where the troops were drawn up. There stood the grey columns of the five regiments, with the colours, already tattered, waving in the mild November air. The general rode up, their own general, and not a sound was heard. Motionless and silent they stood, a veritable stone wall, whilst his eye ran along the ranks and scanned the familiar faces. “I am not here to make a speech,” he said, “but simply to say farewell. I first met you at Harper’s Ferry, at the commencement of the war, and I cannot take leave of you without giving expression to my admiration of your conduct from that day to this, whether on the march, in the bivouac, or on the bloody plains of Manassas, where you gained the well-deserved reputation of having decided the fate of battle.
“Throughout the broad extent of country through which you have marched, by your respect for the rights and property of citizens, you have shown that you are soldiers not only to defend, but able and willing both to defend and protect. You have already won a brilliant reputation throughout the army of the whole Confederacy; and I trust, in the future, by your deeds in the field, and by the assistance of the same kind Providence who has hitherto favoured our cause, you will win more victories and add lustre to the reputation you now enjoy. You have already gained a proud position in the future history of this our second War of Independence. I shall look with great anxiety to your future movements, and I trust whenever I shall hear of the First Brigade on the field of battle, it will be of still nobler deeds achieved, and higher reputation won!” Then there was a pause; general and soldiers looked upon each other, and the heart of the leader went out to those who had followed him with such devotion. He had spoken his words of formal praise, but both he and they knew the bonds between them were too strong to be thus coldly severed. For once he gave way to impulse; his eye kindled, and rising in his stirrups and throwing the reins upon his horse’s neck, he spoke in tones which betrayed the proud memories that thronged upon him:—
“In the Army of the Shenandoah you were the First Brigade! In the Army of the Potomac you were the First Brigade! In the Second Corps of the army you are the First Brigade! You are the First Brigade in the affections of your general, and I hope by your future deeds and bearing you will be handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this our second War of Independence. Farewell!”
For a moment there was silence; then the pent-up feeling found expression, and cheer upon cheer burst forth from the ranks of the Valley regiments. Waving his hand in token of farewell, Jackson galloped from the field.
NOTE I
THE TROOPS EMPLOYED ON THE HENRY HILL
FEDERAL
First Division: TYLER
Brigade Keyes Brigade Sherman Brigade Shenck = 4,500
Second Division: HUNTER
Brigade Porter Brigade Burnside = 6,000
Third Division: HEINTZLEMAN
Brigade Franklin Brigade Wilcox Brigade Howard = 7,500
Total 18,000, and 30 guns.
CONFEDERATE
Army of the Shenandoah [JOHNSTON]
Brigade Jackson Brigade Bee Brigade Bartow Brigade Kirby Smith = 8,700
Army of the Potomac [BEAUREGARD]
Brigade Bonham Brigade Cocke Brigade Early 7th Louisiana Regiment 8th Louisiana Regiment Hampton’s Legion Cavalry = 9,300
Total 18,000, and 21 guns.
NOTE II
THE COST OF AN INADEQUATE ARMY
Lord Wolseley has been somewhat severely criticised for asserting that in the Civil War, “from first to last, the co-operation of even one army corps (35,000 men) of regular troops would have given complete victory to whichever side it fought on.” Whatever may be argued as to the latter period of the conflict, it is impossible for anyone who understands the power of organisation, of discipline, of training, and of a proper system of command, to dispute the accuracy of this statement as regards the year 1861, that is, for the first eight months.
It is far too often assumed that the number of able-bodied men is the true criterion of national strength. In the Confederate States, for instance, there were probably 750,000 citizens who were liable for service in the militia, and yet had the United States possessed a single regular army corps, with a trained staff, an efficient commissariat, and a fully-organised system of transport, it is difficult to see how these 750,000 Southerners could have done more than wage a guerilla warfare. The army corps would have absorbed into itself the best of the Northern militia and volunteers; the staff and commissariat would have given them mobility, and 60,000 or 70,000 men, moving on Richmond directly Sumter fell, with the speed and certainty which organisation gives, would have marched from victory to victory. Their 750,000 enemies would never have had time to arm, to assemble, to organise, to create an army, to train a staff, or to arrange for their supplies. Each gathering of volunteers would have been swept away before it had attained consistency, and Virginia, at least, must have been conquered in the first few months.
And matters would have been no different if the army corps had been directed against the Union. In the Northern States there were over 2,000,000 men who were liable for service; and yet the Union States, notwithstanding their superior resources, were just as vulnerable as the Confederacy. Numbers, even if they amount to millions, are useless, and worse than useless, without training and organisation; the more men that are collected on the battle-field, the more crushing and far-reaching their defeat. Nor can the theory be sustained that a small army, invading a rich and populous country, would be “stung to death” by the numbers of its foes, even if they dared not oppose it in the open field. Of what avail were the stupendous efforts of the French Republic in 1870 and 1871? Enormous armies were raised and equipped; the ranks were filled with brave men; the generals were not unskilful; and yet time after time they were defeated by the far inferior forces of their seasoned enemies. Even in America itself, on two occasions, at Sharpsburg in 1862, and at Gettysburg in 1863, it was admitted by the North that the Southerners were “within a stone’s throw of independence.” And yet hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men had not yet joined the Federal armies. Nor can Spain be quoted as an instance of an unconquerable nation. Throughout the war with Napoleon the English armies, not only that under Wellington, but those at Cadiz, Tarifa, and Gibraltar, afforded solid rallying-points for the defeated Spaniards, and by a succession of victories inspired the whole Peninsula with hope and courage.
The patriot with a rifle may be equal, or even superior, man for man, to the professional soldier; but even patriots must be fed, and to win victories they must be able to manœuvre, and to manœuvre they must have leaders. If it could remain stationary, protected by earthworks, and supplied by railways, with which the enemy did not interfere, a host of hastily raised levies, if armed and equipped, might hold its own against even a regular army. But against troops which can manœuvre earthworks are useless, as the history of Sherman’s brilliant operations in 1864 conclusively shows. To win battles and to protect their country armies must be capable of counter-manœuvre, and it is when troops are set in motion that the real difficulty of supplying them begins.
If it is nothing else, the War of Secession, with its awful expenditure of blood and treasure, is a most startling object-lesson in National Insurance.
[1] Sherman’s Memoirs, vol. i, p. 181.
[2] O.R., vol. ii, p. 324. McDowell’s Report.
[3] O.R., vol. ii, p. 324. McDowell’s Report.
[4] The rifles (muzzle-loaders) used throughout the war by both Federals and Confederates compare as follows with more modern weapons:—
Sighted to Effective range American Needle-gun (1866 and 1870) Chassepôt (1870) Martini-Henry Magazine 1,000 yards 660 yards 1,320 yards 2,100 yards 3,200 yards 250 yards 250 yards 350 yards 400 yards 600 yards
By effective range is meant the distance where, under ordinary conditions, the enemy’s losses are sufficient to stop his advance. The effective range of Brown Bess was about 60 yards. The American rifled artillery was effective, in clear weather, at 2,000 yards, the 12-pounder smooth-bore at 1,600, the 6-pounder at 1,200.
[5] O.R., vol. ii, p. 505.Return to passage
[6] Hunter and Heintzleman had 13,200 officers and men; Tyler, 12,000. Bee and Barrow had 3200 officers and men; Hampton, 630; Jackson, 3,000.Return to passage
[7] Battles and Leaders, vol. i, p. 236.Return to passage
[8] General Kirby Smith being severely wounded, the command of this brigade devolved upon Colonel Elzey.Return to passage
[9] Report of Captain Woodbury, U.S. Engineers, O.R., vol. ii, p. 334.Return to passage
[10] General J. B. Fry, Battles and Leaders, vol. i, p. 191.Return to passage
[11] McClellan’s Own Story, pp. 66, 67.Return to passage
[12] Both Johnston and Beauregard, in their official reports, did full justice to Jackson and his brigade.Return to passage
[13] O.R., vol. ii, p. 482.Return to passage
[14] For the strength of divisions and brigades, see the Note at the end of the chapter.Return to passage
[15] “Had an attack,” said General Johnston, “been made in force, with double line of battle, such as any major-general in the United States service would now make, we could not have held [the position] for half an hour, for they would have enveloped us on both flanks.”—Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac, W. Swinton, p. 58.Return to passage
[16] Colonel Williams, of the 5th Virginia, writes that the Stonewall Brigade was a notable exception to the general disintegration, and that it was in good condition for immediate service on the morning after the battle.Return to passage
[17] Battles and Leaders, vol. i, pp. 122, 123.Return to passage