LEE'S FIRST INVASION OF MARYLAND
Lee seemed now to be master of the situation so far at least as
determining when and where the fighting should be done. Within the
brief space of two months he had raised the siege of Richmond,
maneuvered McClellan completely out of Virginia, and overthrown Pope
in a two-days' battle compelling that commander to retire behind the
defenses of Washington.
There remained no Federal army in Virginia. There was no further
defensive campaigning to be done there. Lee decided at once upon an
aggressive operation of the utmost boldness. He determined to transfer
the seat of war to the regions north of the Potomac, to threaten and if
possible to capture the Federal capital, either by direct approach or
by the conquest of Baltimore, which would isolate Washington and compel
its abandonment.
In order to understand the importance of the issues of such a campaign
as Lee now planned, the reader must bear in mind that Mr. Lincoln's
government was at that time subject to a "fire from the rear;" that
a very large part of the Northern people sympathized with the South;
that a still larger part disapproved of the war on other grounds than
sympathy--grounds of commercial interest, political prejudice and
the like. The cost of carrying on the struggle had already become
appalling to those who must meet it by the payment of taxes. The desire
to end it, and the conviction that it was hopeless of the results
proposed, were widespread.
Under such conditions it is easily obvious that if Lee could at that
time have made himself master of Washington or Baltimore or both, all
that had gone before either of victory or of defeat would have been
as dust in the balance. It would have been next to impossible, under
such circumstances for Mr. Lincoln's administration to prosecute the
struggle further. The national credit, already seriously impaired,
would have been destroyed. Neither men nor the material necessaries of
war would have been at all adequately forthcoming. A great cry must in
that case have arisen for the ending of the struggle by the recognition
of Southern independence. With the Confederates in possession of
Washington and Baltimore every foreign power would have joined its
voice to that of the doubters and malcontents at home in a clamorous
demand for an immediate "peace at any price" with a triumphant foe.
To make an end of the war in this way was the stupendous task that Lee
set himself to accomplish. His means were scanty and his grounds of
hope for success were small. But "war is a hazard of possibilities,
probabilities, luck and ill luck," and Lee was a commander given to the
taking of stupendous risks.
He had but 45,000 men with whom to undertake a task for which a quarter
of a million would not have been an excessive or even a certainly
sufficient force. But those 45,000 men were soldiers of the very best
quality imaginable. They had been seasoned by severe campaigning. They
had accustomed themselves to win in battle against heavy odds. They
believed in their leader and in themselves and were ready to undertake
any task that Lee might assign them. They were stubborn men and
stalwart, and experience on march and in battle had made them as nearly
perfect soldiers as the world has anywhere or at any time known.
On such an expedition as that which Lee planned, they were certain
to be opposed by armies greatly exceeding themselves in numbers and
immeasurably superior in equipment and supplies. But they were soldiers
of that sort that can march on a diet of hard tack and fight on no diet
at all.
So with this slender force Lee crossed the Potomac, on the fifth of
September, abandoning his base of supplies and his communications and
depending for the support of his army upon such foodstuffs as he could
secure in his enemy's country. As for reinforcements, he perfectly knew
that there were none who could come to him.
It was a desperate hazard, conspicuously Napoleonic in its daring.
Crossing the Potomac on the fifth of September, Lee established himself
on the eighth near Frederick, Maryland, a point at which his presence
threatened Washington and Baltimore about equally. And both those
cities must be guarded against his advance, the direction of which was
of course uncertain. The capture of either city would mean the speedy
surrender of the other.
To meet this danger the Federal Administration hurriedly called to
Washington every regiment and brigade it could in any wise command. It
united the armies of McClellan and Pope and reinforced them with every
regiment that could be drawn from other quarters. It restored McClellan
to command--for he had been temporarily removed in consequence of his
disastrous defeat at Richmond--and set him the task of defending the
National capital by meeting and crushing Lee in the field. If Lee had
commanded an army of half a million men instead of the meager 45,000
actually under his orders, the alarm could scarcely have been greater
or the preparations to meet him more elaborate.
President Lincoln visited McClellan in person and asked him to resume
command of the combined armies. McClellan accepted the commission.
Accomplished soldier that he was, he saw clearly that the "objective"
of his campaign must be the crushing of Lee and the enforced retreat
of the Confederates to the southern side of the Potomac. To that end
McClellan desired to employ the utmost force within call. He had about
70,000 men against Lee's 45,000, but he urgently asked for the 11,000
additional men who were guarding Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg. He
asked that those untenable positions should be abandoned and their
defenders added to the already superior force with which he was to try
conclusions again with the masterful adversary who had so conspicuously
defeated him before Richmond.
But General Halleck was now in chief command and he refused this
request.
His refusal to order the evacuation of the two untenable positions
and to add their important garrisons to McClellan's force, seriously
embarrassed Lee and contributed, in an indirect but effective way, to
the defeat of those purposes with which the Confederate chieftain had
undertaken his hazardous campaign.
Lee had assumed, quite as a matter of course, that upon his passage of
the Potomac, Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry would be evacuated, being
obviously untenable. But in fact they were not abandoned. So Lee was
compelled to pause and to send Jackson back to the south side of the
river to secure control of positions that commanded his own only secure
line of retreat in case of disaster.
This caused a very serious delay in Lee's operations, and in such a
campaign of aggression, promptitude and swiftness are all important to
the accomplishment of desired results.
Jackson went back across the river to assail Harper's Ferry from the
South. In the meanwhile McLaws, Walker and D. H. Hill seized and held
respectively Maryland Heights, Loudon Heights and Boonesboro Pass,
while Lee with the remainder of his now dangerously divided army
advanced to Hagerstown in search of food supplies.
Jackson did his part of the work perfectly, as it was his custom to do.
He drove his enemy out of Martinsburg and captured Harper's Ferry with
11,500 prisoners, seventy-three serviceable guns and important stores.
But in the meanwhile Lee's army had been scattered in a very perilous
way, and in his anxiety for its reconcentration, he wrote out an order,
giving in detail his instructions to his several subordinates.
A copy of this order somehow fell into McClellan's hands. It clearly
revealed to him Lee's divided and scattered condition, and for once
in his life McClellan hurried. If he, with 70,000 men, could manage
to attack in detail the several widely separated fragments of Lee's
army which had now been reduced by casualties to less than a total of
40,000, surely he must win.
Accordingly he hurriedly pushed forward, hoping to carry Turner's and
Crampton's Gaps in the South Mountain before Lee could concentrate for
their defense.
He was a trifle too late, however, and a stubborn defense was made
there on the fourteenth, giving Lee time to bring up the remainder
of his forces for the decisive battle at Sharpsburg or Antietam,
as the action is variously called at the South and at the North.
McClellan finally carried the gaps at cost of a loss of 2,000 men--the
Confederates losing a like number.
But in the meanwhile McClellan had lost all the strategic advantage
that he was striving for. It had been his hope to push his columns
through the gaps--as he might have done twenty-four hours earlier
without serious resistance--and to occupy commanding positions between
Lee's widely scattered forces, from which, with his vastly superior
numbers he might conquer them in detail, probably compelling Lee's
surrender as a part of the price exacted.
But McClellan was twenty-four hours late. He therefore had to fight all
day in order to force his way through passes that a day earlier had
been practically open to him.
These actions were fought on the fourteenth of September, 1862. They
were quite separate in their strategy and action, but they are classed
together in history as the Battle of South Mountain. The struggle at
both points was a fierce one and the casualties were heavy on either
side. At the end of it all McClellan held the passes and was free to
push his army through them. To that extent he had won a victory. But by
his stout defense Lee had gained the time he so badly needed in which
to bring his scattered forces together for the decisive struggle, and
as that was his sole object at the time, he justly felt that he had
accomplished the purpose with which he had undertaken the battle.
Lee promptly prepared himself for the decisive struggle. Retiring
behind Antietam Creek, he took up a strong position and awaited
McClellan's assault. He had by this time an army of less than 38,000
men with which to meet McClellan's 70,000 or 75,000--for reinforcements
were hourly coming to the Federal commander, and none to the
Confederate.
This defensive battle was not at all what the Confederate general had
hoped for or intended. He had been baffled of his purposes by adverse
circumstances. Had his enemy promptly evacuated Harper's Ferry as
he had expected and as McClellan had urged, Lee would have pushed
on towards Washington or Baltimore, giving battle as the assailant
wherever his march might have been opposed. The necessity of pausing
to reduce Harper's Ferry had delayed him during precious days, during
which McClellan's advance had completely changed the aspect of the
campaign. Instead of advancing to conquer Washington or Baltimore,
Lee fell back into a defensive position, there to meet an army nearly
or quite twice as large as his own. In the meanwhile the necessity of
living upon the country had completely demoralized those "lewd fellows
of the baser sort," who constitute a pestilently important contingent
in every fighting force. Men were away raiding chicken coops when
they should have been in line with guns in their hands. Straggling
was general beyond precedent, so that Lee declared that his army was
"ruined" by it, while D. H. Hill said in his report of operations
that "Had all our stragglers been up McClellan's army would have been
completely crushed or annihilated. Thousands of thievish poltroons had
kept away from sheer cowardice."
But the fact stares us in the face that McClellan had under his command
quite all of 70,000 men and probably more, while Lee had at most
considerably less than 40,000,--and as both armies were composed of
seasoned soldiers who had fought before, it is by no means safe to say
that if this or if that had been changed the result would have been
other than it was. With an "if," it is easy to demonstrate anything.
The simple facts are that on the seventeenth of September, 1862, the
two armies met on Antietam Creek in front of Sharpsburg, that they
fought all day with high courage and desperate determination on both
sides; that the Federals lost, by official report, 12,469 men, while
the Confederate loss, never accurately reported, was estimated at
between 9,000 and 10,000 men; that at the end of the struggle each army
held the position it had occupied at the beginning, neither having
yielded position to the other.
So far were both reluctant to renew the struggle that they lay still,
facing each other during the whole of the next day, neither side firing
a gun, and neither undertaking a maneuver of any kind.
That was what is technically called a drawn battle, a battle in which
neither army can claim advantage over the other. And in fact that was
the exact situation. Lee's men prided themselves upon the fact that
they had held their own against nearly or quite twice their numbers,
McClellan's men were proud to think that they had not been beaten as
other armies had been by this phenomenal fighting machine of Robert E.
Lee's; that they had not been flanked or caught in the rear, or in any
other way outmaneuvered or outfought, but had been able to hold their
own throughout the day and to maintain their ground when the day was
done.
Considered by itself this was in fact a drawn battle. But considered
more broadly in its relation to the general course of the war, it was
very clearly a defeat for Lee, and a victory for his adversary. It made
a final end of the Confederate general's scheme of invasion. It baffled
all of his cherished purposes. It rendered utterly futile the plans
in pursuit of which he had crossed the Potomac. It ended his hope of
winning the war by the conquest of Washington or Baltimore, or both. It
referred military operations again to Virginia, relieving all states
north of the Potomac of their share in the sufferings incident to
battles and campaigning.
Lee, being too badly crippled to continue his campaign, retired after
a day's rest, to Virginia. McClellan, being too badly hurt to risk
another contest, declined to follow him or in any way to interfere with
his purposes.
The net results of Lee's campaign were that he had captured 11,500
prisoners at Harper's Ferry together with seventy-three guns and a
vast store of food and munitions. He had inflicted upon his enemy
in battle a loss of 12,469 men. On the other hand he had suffered a
loss of 9,000 or 10,000 men; his army was reduced to 30,000 or less,
and the strategic purpose of the campaign had utterly failed. He had
encountered no disaster, but the expedition undertaken with high hopes
and positively Napoleonic purposes had come to naught.
Then occurred one of those prolonged and unexplainable pauses in the
war to which wondering reference has been made in an earlier chapter
of this work. With all the superb autumn weather before them--the very
best campaigning weather known to Virginia--neither side did anything
or tried to do anything. Lee remained in the neighborhood of Winchester
for a month, at once inactive and unmolested. Then he slowly retired to
Fredericksburg, where he fortified himself to meet the advance which
Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan, seemed to threaten by taking up
a position at Acquia Creek, seven miles or so in Fredericksburg's front.
But the battle at Sharpsburg or Antietam, had occurred on the
seventeenth of September and it was not until near the middle of
December that either of these two armies again challenged the other to
a contest of arms.
END OF VOL. I.
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Transcribers' note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors, including occasional unpaired quotation
marks, were corrected.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Page 340: "Pass á l'Outre" was printed with that accent mark.