JACKSON'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN
No sooner had Lee come into command than he set out to change and
reverse the existing conditions of the war. He was determined to
drive McClellan away from Richmond, to put an end to siege operations
that, if persisted in, must ultimately result in the capture of
that city, and to transfer to some more distant point the scene of
active hostilities. In other words, it was Lee's purpose to change a
dispiriting defense into an all-inspiring offense, to raise McClellan's
siege of Richmond and to institute in its stead operations that should
put Washington upon the defensive.
To that end he began by strengthening his army. He deemed the time
now ripe to adopt the plan which he had negatived as premature when
Johnston had suggested it. He called to Richmond all the available
forces that could be spared from the Southern coasts and elsewhere,
swelling his army to 70,000 or 80,000 men.
This reinforcement did not indeed give him an army equal to McClellan's
in numbers or in equipment, but it materially reduced the disparity
between the two opposing forces and opened the way to a hopeful trial
of conclusions in the field.
But there was, as already stated, a strong Federal force marching by
way of Fredericksburg to join McClellan. It numbered more than 40,000
men and was under the very capable command of General McDowell. If that
force should form a junction with McClellan the odds against Lee, in
spite of reinforcement, would be decisive, and any attempt he might
make to save the Confederate capital by offensive defense must fail.
Lee's first necessity, therefore, was to prevent McDowell's army of
40,000 men from joining McClellan before Richmond; his second purpose
was to bring all his own forces to bear at that crucial point for a
supreme effort to overthrow his adversary there.
He knew the excessive apprehension felt at the North for the safety
of Washington city, and he played upon it with masterly skill. Ever
since November, 1861, Stonewall Jackson had been in the Valley of
the Shenandoah trying with a totally inadequate force to hold that
region and upon occasion to inflict what damage he could upon the
foe, especially by destroying a section of the Baltimore and Ohio
railroad and of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, upon which the Federal
communications between the forces in West Virginia and the headquarters
at Washington depended. Jackson had done some brilliant things in that
quarter and had succeeded in detaining there a Federal force much
greater than his own, which if set free to join McClellan would have
made the Federal army before Richmond irresistible in its strength.
But inferiority of force was by no means the sorest difficulty that
Jackson had contended with during all those months of winter marchings
and fightings amid snowstorms. On the Southern as on the Northern
side every really capable general was embarrassed by the ignorant
and intrusive dictation of men in place above him. As Grant was
paralyzingly dominated by Halleck's interference at every critical
moment in his western campaigns, and as Farragut was restrained
from obviously easy and supremely desirable achievement by the hand
of ignorant authority in the Navy Department at Washington, so
Jackson, in the Valley, found his military plans brought to naught
by the interference of a civilian Secretary of War who, having
authority, chose to use it in giving orders to Jackson's troops in
the field without so much as consulting Jackson as to his reasons
for posting them as he had done. Beauregard and Johnston at Manassas
had encountered a like difficulty and had several times been upon
the point of resigning their commissions in despair of achieving any
worthy results under such conditions of ignorant and arbitrary control.
Jackson was driven further and on the thirty-first of January, 1862,
he wrote in despair to Governor Letcher of Virginia, asking that he
be ordered back to his professor's chair in the Virginia Military
Institute, and tendering his resignation as a major-general if such an
order could not be given.
The circumstances were these. With great difficulty, at serious risk
of defeat and by exacting a positively heroic endurance on the part
of his men in marches through snow and sleet and mud, Jackson had
conquered the strategic control of the region under his command from
an enemy greatly outnumbering him. The strategic key to the position
thus conquered was Romney and there Jackson had stationed Loring with
a force strong enough to hold the place while keeping in touch with
Jackson himself. This disposition rendered the valley, with all its
strategic advantages, a secure Confederate possession and a military
base from which it was easy to threaten or with reinforcements to
assail Washington and the country north of the Potomac.
No sooner had Jackson by genius and heroic endeavor secured this
advantage for the Confederate arms than the lawyer at the head of the
War Department at Richmond assumed to undo his work by an order which
Jackson obeyed as a soldier, but bitterly resented as a strategist
baffled by the ignorance and arrogant assumption of his civilian
superior officer. His letter to Governor Letcher which follows
sufficiently explains the matter:
Winchester, January 31, 1862
Governor:--This morning I received an order from the Secretary
of War to order General Loring and his command to fall back from
Romney to this place immediately. The order was promptly complied
with; but as the order was given without consulting me and is
abandoning to the enemy what has cost much preparation, expense
and exposure to secure, and is in direct conflict with my military
plans, and implies a want of confidence in my capacity to judge
when General Loring's troops should fall back, and _is an attempt
to control military operations in detail from the Secretary's
desk at a distance_,[5] I have, for the reasons set forth in the
accompanying paper, requested to be ordered back to the Institute
and if this is denied me, then to have my resignation accepted. I
ask as a special favor that you will have me ordered back to the
Institute.
As a single order like that of the Secretary may destroy the entire
fruits of a campaign I cannot reasonably expect if my operations
are thus to be interfered with to be of much service in the
field.... If I have ever acquired by the blessing of Providence any
influence over troops this undoing of my work by the Secretary may
greatly diminish that influence.
* * * * *
I desire to say nothing against the Secretary of War. I take it for
granted that he has done what he believed to be best, but I regard
such a policy as ruinous.
Very truly your friend,
T. J. JACKSON
[5] The italics are inserted by the author of this history. They
are intended to direct attention to the marrow of the matter.
Let the reader imagine if he can, a lawyer utterly unskilled in
military affairs and completely unacquainted with even the topography
of the valley, sitting in Richmond, and undertaking not only to direct
the movements of troops in that region but to cancel and reverse the
orders of Stonewall Jackson without so much as asking his opinion of
a situation which that Napoleonic commander had painfully wrought
out with inadequate means and in face of difficulties that might
well have appalled even his resolute spirit. Such imagining will
help to a comprehension of the peculiar difficulties at that time
needlessly thrown in the way of the men to whom was assigned the task
of conducting the war to a successful conclusion. The like thing was
a familiar story on both sides at that period of the war, and it cost
both sides many thousands of human lives and many millions of treasure.
These are not pleasant facts for the historian to record, but they must
be set down if the story of the war is to be told with truth and in a
fashion to be understood.
Not only did Judah P. Benjamin, the unmilitary lawyer who held the post
of Secretary of War, assume to interfere with Jackson's dispositions
of his troops without consulting Jackson; his arrogance had an even
more astounding manifestation. Jackson was acting in the valley under
the command of his superior officer, General Joseph E. Johnston, who
had sent him thither, who trusted him implicitly, and who very wisely
and properly left to his trained skill and well-approved judgment
every detail of a campaign, the general purport of which was all
that even Johnston, as commanding general, responsible for results,
assumed the right to dictate to such a man as Jackson. Benjamin, the
lawyer Secretary of War, was so far ignorant or negligent of those
forms and courtesies of military life upon which military success
very largely depends that he sent his order directly to Jackson,
instead of sending it, as common courtesy and all military usage
properly required, through Jackson's commander, General Johnston. This
seriously endangered results and it was an affront to Johnston which
that officer would have been fully justified in resenting with his
own resignation. It was something far worse than an affront. It was
an impertinent interference with Johnston's military plans as well as
with Jackson's--an interference of ignorance with the activities of
knowledge which might easily have defeated operations of the utmost
consequence.
It seems incredible, but it is a fact, that General Johnston, the
officer at that time charged with the supreme command in Virginia,
never knew or heard of the order of the Secretary of War to Stonewall
Jackson, utterly disorganizing his plans and directing him to surrender
all that he had painfully achieved of strategic advantage, until
Jackson's letter to Governor Letcher, tendering his resignation
in righteous resentment of the interference and in despair of
accomplishing worthy results under such conditions, came to General
Johnston in the regular course. For Jackson was far too well educated
a soldier to send his letter, even though it was personal and was
addressed to the Governor of Virginia, otherwise than through his
regular military superiors.
Upon reading that letter and its inclosed communication to the
Secretary of War and learning for the first time of Benjamin's
interference with Jackson's operations, General Johnston sought to save
to the Confederacy the inestimable services of his great lieutenant. He
wrote to Jackson as follows:
My Dear Friend:--I have just read with profound regret your letter
to the Secretary of War asking to be relieved from your present
command, either by an order to the Virginia Military Institute or
the acceptance of your resignation. Let me beg you to reconsider
this matter. Under ordinary circumstances a due sense of one's own
dignity, as well as care for professional character and official
rights, would demand such a course as yours. But the character of
the war, the great energy exhibited by the government of the United
States, the danger in which our very existence as an independent
people lies, require sacrifices from us all who have been educated
as soldiers. _I receive my information of the order of which you
have such cause to complain from your letter. Is not that as
great an official wrong to me as the order itself to you?_ Let us
dispassionately reason with the government on this subject of
command, and if we fail to influence its practice, then ask to be
relieved from positions _the authority of which is exercised by the
War Department while the responsibilities are left to us_.[6]
I have taken the liberty to detain your letter, to make this appeal
to your patriotism, not merely from warm feelings of personal
regard but from the official opinion which makes me regard you as
necessary to the service of your country in your present position.
[6] The italics are inserted by the author of this work to
emphasize the peculiar stupidity that on both sides in the war
permitted ignorance to overrule knowledge and self-assumption to
dominate skill. This particular interference came near depriving
Lee of the superb genius of Stonewall Jackson as Halleck's
interference well nigh lost Grant to the Federal army.
General Johnston's appeal to Jackson to continue in the service
in spite of the ignorant, embarrassing, and grossly ill-mannered
interference with his operations by the Secretary of War, was supported
by a multitude of letters and appeals from statesmen, citizens,
generals and common soldiers--many of the latter being men of high
social and political distinction who had enlisted in the ranks in a
war that all regarded as their own, but whose enlistment had in no
wise invalidated their right to speak with authority as representative
citizens.
Governor Letcher went at once to the War Department to plead with
Secretary Benjamin for the saving of Stonewall Jackson's genius and
devotion to the Confederate cause. Benjamin so far yielded as to hold
open the question of Jackson's resignation. He had not intended to
provoke that. It is doubtful that he would have dared it. He had not
intended anything, indeed, except to impress his own authority upon
the army. When he understood how great a loss Jackson would be to the
cause, and how narrowly his own grossly irregular interference with
Jackson had missed compelling the resignations of Beauregard, Johnston,
and a host of others in high and low position, Mr. Benjamin became
placative in an extreme degree.
In the meanwhile he had sacrificed all that Jackson's energy and genius
had accomplished in the Valley and had discouraged the army in a degree
and to an extent for which no later efficiency could by any possibility
atone. Until Benjamin interfered with him Jackson was master of the
Valley, and of all that its possession signified, by virtue of his
painful endeavors to achieve that highly desirable result by means of
arduous campaigns in snow and sleet and slush and mud. If he had been
let alone Jackson would have been in undisputed command of the upper
Potomac country; he would have had Maryland and southern Pennsylvania
thenceforth always at his mercy; and with reinforcements that might
at any moment have been sent to him he would have been in position to
threaten Washington in a way possibly to compel the instant withdrawal
of McClellan's army from Richmond and the recall of McDowell's from
Fredericksburg.
As it was, it was left to Lee to achieve those purposes in much more
arduous ways and at cost of great and otherwise needless battles,
involving the loss of human lives by tens of thousands, where but for
ignorant interference no considerable loss at all would have been
necessary.
Let us make this matter clear. If Jackson had been let alone in the
Valley, of which he had made himself complete master, his way would
have been easily open to the region in rear of Washington. With the
opening of the spring of 1862 practically the whole of Johnston's army,
then still at Manassas and Centreville, together with the troops at
Richmond reinforced from the seaboard and the South, could have been
pushed by the valley route into Maryland, threatening Washington,
Baltimore, Philadelphia and the North. If that had been done McClellan
would not have been permitted by his government to advance up the
Peninsula. His entire force would have been held at Washington or sent
northward and westward to meet the Confederate advance. It would have
been Washington, the Federal capital, and not Richmond, the seat of
Confederate government, that was besieged.
But the interference of a civilian war department spoiled the program
and made a mess of the campaign. It resulted in a siege of Richmond
which sorely discouraged not only the Confederates but also their
friends in Europe who were struggling to secure the South's recognition
as an independent power. It rendered necessary the Seven Days' battles
presently to be considered, and the campaign against Pope, as damaging
and depleting preliminaries to a campaign of aggression which, but for
the War Department's interference, would have been undertaken with the
full force of the Confederate army, unimpaired by the losses of nearly
a dozen battle conflicts.
Jackson's services were fortunately saved to the Confederates. His
position in the valley was impaired by the order of the Secretary of
War, which he obeyed in spite of its destructiveness, and the results
of his arduous campaign there were largely sacrificed to the fetish of
official authority. But at any rate Jackson's energy and genius were
not lost to the cause to which he was so ardently devoted. Johnston's
appeal and a multitude of others that poured in upon him overcame the
great general's reluctance to continue longer in a service in which
crass ignorance was permitted to interfere with and destroy the results
of military skill and heroic endeavor.
A week after his resignation was written Jackson, overwhelmed by
appeals to remain in the service, wrote to Governor Letcher as follows:
February 6, 1862
Governor:--Your letter of the 4th inst. was received this morning.
If my retiring from the army would produce the effect upon our
country that you have named in your letter, I, of course, could not
desire to leave the service, and if, upon receipt of this note,
your opinion remains unchanged, you are authorized to withdraw my
resignation unless the Secretary of War desires that it should be
accepted. My reasons for resigning were set forth in my letter of
the 31st ult. and my views remain unchanged; and _if the Secretary
persists in the ruinous policy complained of I feel that no officer
can serve his country better than by making his strongest possible
protest against it, which, in my opinion, is done by tendering his
resignation, rather than be a willing instrument in prosecuting the
war upon a ruinous principle_.
This then was the situation. Stonewall Jackson, with a miserably
inferior force, was holding the Valley throughout a long winter, and
detaining there a Federal army, which, if it had been added to the
main Federal force, would have made that force irresistible in numbers
of men and guns. Toilsomely, and at cost of desperately hard marching
and fighting, he had made himself master of the strategic position.
He could now hold the Valley secure even with his inadequate force,
and in the event of reinforcement he could threaten Washington in ways
that must compel the diversion of decisive Federal forces from the
march upon Richmond. His strategy had been masterly, his enterprise
matchless, and his achievements astonishing in their completeness.
Just as these results were achieved a lawyer who happened to be
Secretary of War, without any adequate knowledge of the military
situation, without any skill in the art of war, without consultation
with Jackson and even without sending his orders through Jackson's
commanding officer, Johnston, assumed to order Jackson to undo all his
work and withdraw his forces from points of commanding importance which
had been won with difficulty and at cost of positively heroic sacrifice.
Is it any wonder that a war so blunderingly conducted by ignorant
civilians on both sides was prolonged to four times the length it
ought properly to have endured? Is it any wonder that under such
ignorant direction the war cost scores of thousands of lives needlessly
sacrificed by mismanagement, and hundreds of millions of needlessly
expended treasure?
These details, which seem at first glance, to belong rather to
biography than to history, are set forth here, precisely as those
touching Grant's restraint from activity by Halleck and Farragut's
embarrassment by a civilian Navy Department, are set forth in other
chapters of this history, because they serve to show how the war was
conducted on both sides in those early years. As influences that caused
the prolongation of the struggle and added enormously to its cost
both in precious treasure and in more precious human life, they have
a historical meaning wholly out of proportion to their biographical
significance.
Jackson remained in command in the Valley. He had a meager
force,--usually less than one fourth that of his adversary,--and in
spite of his activity in battle at Kernstown, Romney and the rest--his
original plans having been brought to naught by the interference of the
Secretary of War--he was slowly beaten back into positions that seemed
to make of the Valley a Federal possession.
Then he turned about and by one of the most brilliant campaigns of all
the war, reversed conditions, and made himself again master where he
had seemed to be almost hopelessly on the defensive.
In preparation for that campaign he earnestly begged Lee for
reinforcements--Lee being then in general command of the Confederate
forces--and all that Lee could do was to assign to his command the
little force under Edward Johnson west of Staunton, with the privilege
of calling to his aid such troops as General Ewell had with him on the
line of the Rappahannock, east of the Blue Ridge. His own immediate
command, together with Ewell's and Edward Johnson's, amounted in all
to a little less than 17,000 men, divided into three widely separated
columns with the Blue Ridge and a whole day's march between his own
position and that of his chief lieutenant. Opposed to him were Banks at
Harrisonburg with 19,000 men,--or more than Jackson's total possible
strength--Milroy and Schenck lying to the west of Staunton with 6,000
men and Fremont advancing from West Virginia with 9,000 more.
In brief, by concentrating all his widely scattered forces, Jackson
could bring to bear upon his problem no more than 17,000 men at the
very most, while he stood beleaguered by no less than 34,000, under
generals who already held the greater part of the valley and seemed
easily able to occupy the rest of it, including Staunton and the chief
railroad lines, at will.
When Jackson definitely learned that he could have no other help than
that of Ewell and Edward Johnson, he boldly planned to concentrate his
17,000 men and with them make war upon his 34,000 adversaries. His hope
lay in secrecy and celerity of operation. His plan was to bring the
three widely separated parts of his army together without the enemy's
knowledge, and to hurl the whole like a thunderbolt against one after
another of his enemy's divisions.
The largest of those divisions,--that under Banks's personal command at
Harrisonburg--outnumbered Jackson's total force by all of 2,000 men,
while the other two divisions were nearly enough equal to his own to
make an assault upon either of them perilous. Moreover the geographical
problem was such that Jackson could at no point bring all his inferior
force to bear at once. He must always keep a considerable part of it
detached and out of action, lest his adversary seize upon a position
of commanding importance.
Nevertheless, this truly Napoleonic commander planned a campaign in
which, with his 17,000 men, he should defend Staunton and destroy in
detail his adversary's double numbers.
Thus began that campaign whose strategy has been called by a historian
"massive thimble-rigging," because its success depended upon Jackson's
ability to conceal his movements and make sudden appearances in quite
unexpected places.
The season was highly unfavorable for rapid marchings. The roads were
quagmires and the fields on either side of the highways were morasses.
Sometimes it was impossible, even by the most heroic endeavors, to move
the guns more than five miles in a day. Rain and mud offered obstacles
immeasurably more obstinate than hostile battalions, but in spite of
all, Jackson persisted.
His first purpose was to unite the force under his own immediate
command at Swift Run Gap, with the troops under Edward Johnson at
West View, west of Staunton and forty miles or more away. He began by
ordering Ewell, with his 8,000 men, to cross the Blue Ridge from the
east, and occupy Swift Run Gap. While Ewell was executing this movement
Jackson, with his 6,000 men and with the purpose of deceiving his
enemy, moved northward down the valley, turned eastward, crossed the
mountains to their eastern side, and then by a circuitous route made
his way back again westward across the mountains to join Edward Johnson
west of Staunton. His purpose in all this was to convince his enemy
that he was abandoning and evacuating the Valley and marching to join
the Confederate forces defending Richmond.
He accomplished that deception perfectly, and so secretly was his
return to the Valley conducted that the pushing of his column into
Staunton astonished the Confederates there quite as much as it would
have astonished the Federals if they had known of it, as they did not.
Ewell, had in the meanwhile, crossed the Blue Ridge and occupied the
position left by Jackson in the Elk Run valley. Unfortunately for
Jackson, that position must be held at all hazards, and so it was
impossible for him, for the present at least, to add Ewell's 8,000 men
to the meager forces with which he intended to assail the Federals
farther west.
Thus Jackson's campaign was begun with only Edward Johnson's force,
numbering a scant 3,000 men, and his own battalions, amounting to
6,000, or somewhat less. He had in all a force of about 8,500 men or
perhaps a trifle more, with which to deal with Milroy and Schenck, who
had 6,000 men at McDowell, the much larger forces of Fremont advancing
from the west, and such reinforcements as Banks might choose to send to
them from his army of 19,000 men at Harrisonburg.
A glance at a map of the Valley will show the reader clearly that in
assailing Milroy and Schenck, Jackson in fact invited battle with all
of Fremont's and Banks's forces--in other words, that with 9,000 men
he risked and boldly challenged a conflict with no less than 34,000.
But so careful and so masterly had his dispositions been that the
chance of such a concentration against him amounted to scarcely more
than zero. For Ewell with his 8,000 men was at Elk Run, and Ewell was
an enterprising officer, greatly given to fighting upon the smallest
provocation. Had Banks detached any considerable part of his force from
the Harrisonburg position to aid Milroy and Schenck, Ewell would very
certainly have moved to the conquest of Harrisonburg, and the success
of such a movement would have meant of necessity the quick reconquering
of the whole valley by the Confederates.
Reckoning upon this Jackson joined Johnson and together they fell upon
the Federals at McDowell, where a small but severe battle ensued on
the eighth of May, in which after four hours of determined fighting
the Federals were driven from the field and compelled, during the
succeeding night, to withdraw from their position at McDowell, and fall
back, the Confederates closely pursuing them. The retreat lasted for
several days and was marked by some picturesque incidents.
Schenck, though beaten in battle and driven into retreat, was still
formidable and the fighting quality of his men had not been impaired.
Jackson feared that the force retreating before him might be reinforced
from Banks's strong army at Harrisonburg. In that case it would turn
again and rend him. But the reinforcements, if sent at all, must
be sent through certain narrow and heavily-wooded defiles, and to
check their advance Jackson sent out detachments to obstruct those
passageways by felling timber across them. He also asked the aid of
the farmers in such work and right willingly they responded.
In the meanwhile Schenck protected his retreat from too close a pursuit
by setting fire to the dense woods and literally stifling his enemy
with smoke. Jackson's men found it sometimes impossible to go forward
without actual suffocation and so Schenck gained time in which to
effect his retreat.
The destruction of superb timber, the growth of fifty or a hundred
years, which the operations of both the contestants involved, was only
a small part of that waste which makes war the most costly of all human
arbitraments.
Human lives are of course more precious in many ways than forest
growths, but human life is easily and quickly reproduced, while a
forest destroyed upon steep mountain sides is so much of God's good
gift to man forever taken away.
Jackson had now completely accomplished his purpose of driving Schenck
back upon Fremont. He had no desire to press on and bring about a
battle with the united forces of the two in the difficult mountain
country. He had effectually prevented a junction of Fremont or Schenck
with Banks's army at Harrisonburg. He had prevented the capture of
Staunton by the Federals, thus protecting the railroad connections of
the Confederates, and he had kept between thirty and forty thousand
Federal troops busy in the Valley, who might otherwise have been sent
to reinforce McClellan.
Still more important, his operations had compelled the Federal
Government to stop the advance of McDowell's army by way of
Fredericksburg and thus to deprive McClellan, assailing Richmond,
of a reinforcement which might have rendered his assault absolutely
irresistible.
Jackson's next necessity was to unite his meager force with the
column of Ewell which was posted at Elk Run for the double purpose
of threatening Banks at Harrisonburg and standing ready to march at
a moment's warning to the assistance of the beleaguered garrison at
Richmond. It was the grandest of grand strategy that Jackson was
engaged in, and it was directed by the masterful genius of Robert E.
Lee, acting through and by the genius of Stonewall Jackson.
Milroy and Schenck had been dislodged from the positions that
threatened Staunton. They had been driven westward. They had also been
effectually cut off for the time at least from a possible junction with
Banks. So Jackson decided to effect the speediest possible junction
between his own force in the field and Ewell's command of 8,000 men at
Elk Run valley, and with the force thus concentrated to assail Banks at
Harrisonburg. He hoped by a precipitate movement to defeat Banks before
Fremont, whose plans of campaign he had so greatly interfered with,
could come to that general's assistance.
But Banks did not wait for Jackson. In face of the fact that his 19,000
men at Harrisonburg outnumbered the whole of Jackson's widely scattered
forces, Banks retreated northward down the Valley as soon as Jackson
began his campaign. On the first of May he evacuated Harrisonburg and
slowly retired to Newmarket. There he lost more than half his force
by the detachment of Shields with 11,000 men, who moved on May 12, by
way of Luray and Front Royal to join the force at Fredericksburg, thus
emphasizing that threat to Richmond which it was Jackson's function to
divert.
So far Jackson's strategy was unsuccessful. He had defeated Schenck
and Milroy. He had prevented a junction of their forces with those of
Banks; but he had not prevented Banks from sending 11,000 men and a
proportionate number of guns to strengthen the column at Fredericksburg
which was intended to join McClellan before Richmond and to render him
irresistible.
From Newmarket Banks continued his retreat down the
valley--northward--until he rested at Strasburg and Front Royal.
In the meanwhile the administration at Washington, nervously and even
absurdly apprehensive as it was, plucked up courage enough to order
McDowell, with the army at Fredericksburg, reinforced by Shields with
11,000 men, to march on the twenty-sixth across country by way of the
Richmond and Fredericksburg railroad, and join McClellan's right wing
before Richmond.
Timidity itself could not have hesitated to consent to this movement.
It placed an army of more than 40,000 men in front of Washington and
between that capital and the Confederate forces of 60,000 men or less,
that McClellan was already beleaguering at Richmond with 120,000 men,
while it left Banks in the Valley with 8,000 and the easy support of
Fremont's 15,000 men to check any movement that Jackson might make
upon Washington with his force of not more than 15,000 or 16,000.
Yet so great was the apprehension felt at Washington for the safety of
that city that when the time came, Lee played upon it with success and
by his play upon it deprived McClellan of reinforcements from McDowell,
Banks and Fremont, aggregating nearly 65,000 men.
Turning about, after his pursuit of Schenck, Jackson quickly formed
a junction of his own force with Ewell's, and with 16,000 or 17,000
men turned upon Banks, who was now retreating down the Valley toward
Strasburg. He struck first at a detachment at Front Royal which he
surprised and almost completely destroyed on the twenty-third of May.
On the twenty-fourth Banks decided to abandon Strasburg and retreat to
Winchester, destroying his stores and such wagons of his train as he
could not save from capture. Jackson's cavalry destroyed a multitude
more of them on march, throwing the Federal trains into the utmost
confusion. Jackson now had a much stronger force than Banks--about
three men indeed to Banks's one.
With his vastly superior force Jackson set out to obey his orders,
which were to "clear the valley and threaten Washington," so as to
compel the diversion of McDowell's army from McClellan's reinforcement
before Richmond.
The task was an inviting one and Jackson accomplished it promptly.
Marching tirelessly, by night as well as by day, he quickly drove
Banks from Strasburg to Middletown and from Middletown to Winchester.
At Winchester he broke Banks's force into bits in a hotly contested
battle, and having cut off the Federal general's retreat to Harper's
Ferry, sent him flying in confusion by way of Martinsburg to
Williamsport on the upper Potomac. Banks fought stubbornly against such
odds as no commander could hope to overcome, but finding himself beaten
and his columns disintegrated he skilfully retreated over the space
of thirty-four miles in a single day, and successfully placed himself
behind the Potomac where his force could threaten Jackson's flank, if
the great Confederate should move upon Washington by way of Harper's
Ferry.
Apart from its brilliant incidents which cannot be here related in
detail Jackson's Valley campaign had thus far completely accomplished
its strategic purpose. It had detained Fremont and Schenck with 15,000
men in the mountains when McClellan needed them before Richmond. It
had kept Banks busy and finally had driven him out of the Valley and
into a position from which he could render no assistance to the Federal
armies anywhere. Finally it had so greatly alarmed the authorities at
Washington that they completely diverted McDowell's 40,000 men from
McClellan's reinforcement, sending the major part of that force upon
the fruitless errand of destroying Jackson and employing the rest of it
in the direct defense of Washington.
All this was precisely what Robert E. Lee had planned and intended,
and it was perfectly accomplished. If larger space is here given to
an account of this campaign than the size and direct importance of
its battles would seem to justify, it is because of the tremendous
strategic consequences of the operations involved. Jackson's activity
made possible not only Lee's superb campaign of dislodgment against
McClellan, but all the stupendous campaigning that followed, including
the overthrow of Pope at Manassas, the invasion of Maryland, the battle
of Antietam, the Fredericksburg battle and the later Chancellorsville
and Gettysburg.
The story of all that will follow in later chapters. In the meanwhile,
it is pleasant to record here one step forward in civilization which
was made during this campaign and the author of which, Dr. Hunter
McGuire, deserves remembrance for his humanity. Until that time, and
indeed for long afterwards, surgeons in charge of hospitals full of
wounded men, upon falling into the enemy's hands, were treated as
prisoners of war. After every battle, therefore, the surgeons of a
retiring army, in charge of wounded men from both sides, must make a
hard choice. They must either abandon their patients--many of whom were
in desperate need of immediate surgical attention, or they must submit
themselves to the rigors and sufferings of a military imprisonment,
precisely as if they had been taken in battle. As a result of this
peculiar barbarism of war the wounded--by the flight of their
surgeons--were often left unattended at the critical moment that meant
to them the difference between life and death. Many precious lives were
needlessly sacrificed to this barbaric military practice.
At the battle of Winchester Jackson captured all the Federal surgeons
in charge of the field hospitals there, but instead of sending them
to Belle Isle or Andersonville or Libby Prison, he acted upon the
suggestion of his medical director, Dr. Hunter McGuire, and released
the doctors unconditionally upon the rational and humane ground that
surgeons do not make war, and ought not to be subjected to war's pains
and penalties, and upon the still more rational and humane ground that
it is needful for the care of the wounded on both sides that surgeons
shall be permitted to remain at their posts until surgeons on the other
side can replace them, regardless of army movements and without fear of
being sent to a loathsome prison as a punishment for their faithfulness
to their merciful duty.
This step forward in the amelioration of war's horrors was not
generally followed up until two years later when, during the tremendous
struggle of 1864, General Lee and General Grant, acting upon their own
humane impulses and with no authority except the confidence of each
that his acts would be approved, agreed that surgeons in charge of
wounded men should not be made prisoners of war, but should be subject
only to such temporary detention as might be necessary to prevent them
from carrying tidings of strategic importance across the lines.
It was Dr. Hunter McGuire who first offered this suggestion in
behalf of humanity, and it was Stonewall Jackson who first took the
responsibility of acting upon it. To their memory history should accord
honor for it.
Jackson's Valley campaign had completely accomplished its chief
purpose. It had thrown the War Department at Washington into a panic
which is reflected in the dispatches of President Lincoln and Secretary
Stanton sent about that time. Neither McClellan nor McDowell regarded
the situation in any such serious light as that in which it was viewed
by Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton. McClellan and McDowell were trained
and educated soldiers, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were civilians.
The two soldiers perfectly understood that while Jackson had driven
Fremont back into the West Virginia mountains and had chased Banks to
and across the Potomac, he could not with his meager force--now reduced
to less than 15,000 men--sanely cross into Maryland or without madness
undertake a serious campaign against Washington. They knew Jackson to
be a perfectly sane man, and hence they did not expect him to undertake
either of those crazy operations. They were agreed in thinking that
the proper course was for McDowell to push on to Richmond and join
McClellan there before Jackson could add his force to Lee's.
If they had been permitted to do this, McClellan's force before the
Confederate capital would have been sufficient, within three or four
days, to overpower all conceivable opposition and to capture Richmond.
But Lee knew how almost insanely the administration at Washington
dreaded every threat against that city or the country north of it, and
he had successfully counted upon that absurd nervousness to enable
Jackson, with 16,000 or 17,000 men, to neutralize McDowell's army of
40,000 in the great game then being played for the possession of
Richmond. He had made a zero of Fremont and Schenck in the problem. He
had converted Banks's army into a Potomac river-picket guard, and he
had compelled McDowell's 40,000 men to remain inactive as a garrison
defending Washington.
Never in all the war was so small a force as Jackson's made to
neutralize so large a force. By the simple virtue of Lee's masterful
strategy and Jackson's extraordinary capacity in execution, 17,000 men
occupied 65,000 and kept them completely out of the decisive struggle.
And as if to add emphasis to the situation, the 17,000 who had thus
paralyzed three or four times their number, were themselves brought
upon the field before Richmond in time to play their full part in the
critical and decisive actions from which their previous activity had
excluded so great a number of their opponents.
But the story of the Valley campaign is not yet fully told. Having
driven Fremont back into West Virginia and Banks beyond the Potomac
at Williamsport, Jackson was ordered by Lee to make a demonstration
threatening an invasion of Maryland and seeming to threaten an assault
upon Washington, by way of still further disarranging the Federal plans
and diverting Federal forces from the assault upon Richmond.
Jackson moved at once upon Harper's Ferry and for a time seemed not
only determined but quite easily able to cross the Potomac there
and push forward into Maryland and Pennsylvania or to sweep with
enthusiastic fury upon Washington itself.
The result was what Lee had planned that it should be. Fremont, whose
force ought to have been moved to McClellan's reinforcement, was
ordered to advance from the fastnesses of the West Virginia mountains
into the Valley, there to assail Jackson. Banks, driven to cover at
Williamsport on the Potomac above Harper's Ferry, was ordered to hold
the crossings there against a possible advance of Jackson by that route
and presently to return to the Valley and assail Jackson. Saxton, with
7,000 or 8,000 men, withdrawn from McDowell's army, was sent to hold
the heights about Harper's Ferry and at the proper time to advance.
McDowell's carefully planned march upon Richmond was suspended and the
greater part of his force was ordered to the Valley. The purpose was
by concurrent action on the part of Fremont moving from West Virginia,
Banks moving back up the Valley from Williamsport, Saxton's advancing
from the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, and McDowell's strong column
crossing the Blue Ridge from Fredericksburg, completely to surround,
overwhelm and destroy Jackson, whose total force was now reduced to a
scant 15,000, while the forces thus set to the task of making an end of
him, aggregated not less than 55,000 or 60,000 men. It was his task,
with 15,000 men not only to meet and destroy these forces in detail,
so far as that might be done, but in any case to escape from the trap
set for him and unite his army with that of Lee before Richmond in time
to lend his enthusiasm and his strength to that assault upon McClellan
which was planned for the immediate future.
If the reader will look at a map he will see almost at a glance how
perilous a problem Jackson had to solve. With less than 15,000 men he
was threatening Harper's Ferry and the strongholds round about, held
by Saxton with 7,000 men and eighteen pieces of artillery. Banks with
about 9,000 men was now advancing from Williamsport to assail him in
flank and rear, and cut off his retreat. Fremont with 10,000 or 15,000
men was advancing from West Virginia and had by telegraph promised
Mr. Lincoln that he would be in Strasburg--seventeen miles south of
Winchester and commanding Jackson's route of retreat--on Saturday, May
31. In the meanwhile Shields, commanding 20,000 men from McDowell's
army and followed by McDowell himself with the rest of it, was hurrying
from Fredericksburg into the Valley and was due at Strasburg by noon of
the thirty-first.
In other words four armies, numbering in the aggregate more than 50,000
men, were threatening to envelop and overwhelm Jackson. Of these forces
no less than 35,000 men were rapidly concentrating in Jackson's rear
upon the lines over which he must march in order to escape from the
trap set for him and add his force to Lee's in time for the impending
battle before Richmond.
It was Jackson's problem not only to escape from these forces, rapidly
concentrating to destroy him, but so far to defeat them in detail with
his little army as to keep them where they were, while moving his own
army to Lee's assistance.
This required grand strategy on a grand scale, and Jackson responded to
the demand with a brilliancy wholly unmatched in any other operation
of the war. Putting aside details that would only serve to confuse
the reader's mind, let us tell in outline the story of what the great
commander of the "foot cavalry" did in this complex emergency.
First of all, he withdrew his troops hurriedly from the neighborhood
of Harper's Ferry to Winchester. When he got there he found that
McDowell's force was in possession of Front Royal, only twelve miles
from Strasburg, and Fremont was at Wardensville, only twenty miles
away, while the head of his own column was eighteen miles distant
from the crucial point, and its rear forty-three miles away. A large
part of his force was footsore and exhausted after a hurried march
of twenty-five miles in a single day, with frequent skirmishings to
punctuate their progress.
Nevertheless Jackson determined to reach and occupy Strasburg before
his enemies could get there. He had eighteen miles to go while one of
the enemy's columns had twenty and the other only twelve to travel.
Their combined forces outnumbered his own about three to one, to say
nothing of the 15,000 men of Banks and Saxton who had been pressing
his rear all day. But he believed it possible for him, reckoning upon
the extraordinary marching qualities of his men, to reach Strasburg
before the enemy's columns could concentrate there. If he could do that
he counted upon the superb fighting spirit of his men to overcome the
enemy's three detachments by striking them separately in spite of the
fact that one of those detachments outnumbered him by thirty-three per
cent while each of the others nearly or quite equaled him in numbers.
He acted instantly. His march was incumbered by 2,300 Federal prisoners
and an embarrassingly large train consisting in its major part of
wagons loaded with precious stores which he had captured from the
enemy. But in spite of all he marched all the way to Strasburg on the
31st of May, while his rear guard succeeded in passing well beyond
Winchester, some parts of it having covered thirty-five miles since the
morning. The Federals pursuing under Saxton had stopped at Charlestown,
their commander afterwards reporting that their exhaustion was such as
to forbid a further advance.
Having thus eluded his pursuers, Banks and Saxton, Jackson pushed his
foot cavalry into Strasburg in advance of both Fremont and Shields,
though each of them had had a much shorter line of march than his own
in order to reach that place. He had shaken off Banks and Saxton for a
time at least, but he had pushed his small force in between Fremont's
equal army on the one hand and Shields's superior one, which was now
supported by additional troops under McDowell's own command, on the
other. His problem was to prevent the junction of these two armies
sent to crush him, to escape them and--if possible--to defeat them
separately. One of these armies outnumbered his own in the proportion
of four men to three while the other equaled his force. But if he could
keep them separated and attack them in positions of his own choosing,
where they could not both fight him at once, he did not despair of
beating them.
McDowell, reckoning upon the easy superiority of his force, sent
detachments hither and yon, to "head off" Jackson, and prevent his
escape, that seeming now to be the only thing to be done with a fleeing
general whose army was beset on every side, outnumbered, and hopelessly
entangled.
In execution of these orders a whole day was wasted by Shields, through
mistakes as to routes, and Jackson slipped out of Strasburg on his
way to Harrisonburg, Cross Keys and Port Republic, points at which he
planned to turn upon his enemy and fight him in detail.
By the burning of bridges and the adroit disposition of troops in a
region broken by mountain ranges and laced by streams at that time of
year unfordable, Jackson managed to keep the divisions of his adversary
separated as they severally pursued his retreat, intent upon capturing
or destroying him.
So greatly overwhelming were the Federal numbers that General Shields
urgently protested to General McDowell against the sending of any more
men to his assistance. Says General McDowell in an official utterance:
He [Shields] had been in that country before and his command had
suffered somewhat. He wrote me a letter stating his apprehensions,
saying that if troops instead of supplies kept coming over, the
troops would starve, and asking why I should bring so many there;
that he had enough men to clear the Valley out and for God's sake
not to send him any more men.
McDowell reassured Shields as to the abundance of supplies and that
commander, with his superabundance of men, cheerfully undertook the
task of "clearing out the Valley" which seemed to him easy. He had not
adequately reckoned upon the genius of Stonewall Jackson--that was all.
The "foot cavalry" had now retreated with splendid success, as far as
Jackson intended that they should. He was pursued by the two armies,
but he had succeeded in keeping them separated by an unfordable river,
while divesting himself of his embarrassing supply train and his still
more embarrassing company of Federal prisoners. These, together with
his own sick and wounded, he had sent under escort to Staunton.
Thus, stripped for action, he turned upon his pursuers to rend them.
Fremont's force and that under Shields were separated by a river.
Jackson had destroyed every bridge that crossed that stream except the
one at Port Republic, which he securely held for his own use in the
contemplated operations. He had about 13,000 men of all arms available
for battle uses. Fremont, who was hotly pursuing him, had about 11,500,
while Shields's force--weakened by detachments--marching down the other
side of the river, was much smaller, not over three or four thousand
effectives. Exact figures are unattainable.
Jackson had effectually prevented the union of these two armies. He
decided to fight them now, one at a time.
On the eighth of June, at Cross Keys, a few miles north of Port
Republic, he turned upon Fremont. He was forced to reduce his firing
line heavily by detaching a part of his little army to hold Shields in
check on the other side of the river, and another part to hold Port
Republic and the bridge which constituted his communication. He posted
the remainder of his troops in a position of his own choosing and there
awaited Fremont's attack.
That attack was made on the eighth of June and was repulsed with so
much ease and so much completeness, that Jackson at once decided to
assail his other adversary, Shields, in the hope of defeating him in
his turn. Leaving a sufficient force on Fremont's side of the river
to hold that general in check, or, if need be to destroy the bridge
and prevent his crossing, he withdrew his battalions and precipitately
assailed Shields, falling upon him in Napoleonic fashion with the
head of his own column and trusting to expeditious marching for the
coming up of reinforcements in time to prevent a possible failure from
maturing into a disaster.
Shields resisted so valiantly and so stubbornly that Jackson's advance
corps was very nearly overthrown, but in the end the Confederate
commander brought a superior force to bear and completely crushed
Shields's defense.
Immediately Fremont and Shields gave up the contest and retreated
northward down the Valley, while Jackson rested his army preparatory
to a hurried march to join Lee before Richmond while the fear of him
should continue to hold Fremont's and McDowell's and Banks's, and what
had been Saxton's, forces in the Valley.
For that march and junction Lee had fully prepared. He secretly
sent instructions to Jackson to march at once to Ashland, a dozen
miles from Richmond, and thence sweep down between the Pamunkey and
Chickahominy rivers, in aid of Lee's own movement against McClellan.
Then he ordered two divisions ostentatiously detached from the army
before Richmond, to go to Jackson's reinforcement in the Valley, and
directed Jackson to do all he could to impress the enemy with the
belief that he was planning, with a strongly reinforced army, to
sweep down the Valley again and press on into Maryland, threatening
Washington and Baltimore. Pains were taken to impress the fact of
Jackson's strong reinforcement upon Federal officers who, as prisoners,
were about to be paroled and sent north and they carried the news,
as it was meant that they should do. The deception was so complete
that even while Jackson was actively assailing McClellan's rear on
the Chickahominy a few days later, General Banks was sending from the
Valley dispatches warning the Washington authorities that Stonewall
Jackson was preparing immediately to sweep down the Valley at the head
of a reinforced and now quite irresistible army.
The result was that Jackson and the divisions sent ostensibly to
reinforce him, joined Lee in front of Richmond in time to aid in the
Seven Days' battles for McClellan's dislodgment.