BATTLE OF GROVETON.
The morning of the 29th dawned calm, clear, and beautiful. Sigel obeyed
orders. He was on the northwest corner of the old battle-field, near
Dogan's house. Jackson was north of the turnpike, his right resting
on Bull Run, at Sudley Springs, and his left on the turnpike near
Groveton, along the line of an unfinished railway.
Schurz was on the right in Sigel's corps, Milroy in the center, Schenck
on the left, with Steinwehr in reserve. For an hour there was the deep
roll of artillery.
Then the line advanced. There was a sharp contest,--Sigel occupying
the ground which Jackson held in the first fight on that memorable
field, and Jackson upon the ground, where Burnside, Howard, and Hunter
formed their lines. Milroy was driven, but Schurz and Schenck held
their position. Hooker and Kearny were astir at daylight. They crossed
the stream at the Stone Bridge, swung out into the fields, and moved
north towards Sudley Springs, forcing Jackson back on Longstreet, who
was resting after his hard march, his men eating a hearty meal from the
stores captured at Manassas. He was in no condition to fight at that
early hour.
Time slipped away--precious hours! McDowell had not come. Porter had
not been heard from. "Longstreet is getting ready," was the report from
the scouts.
Noon passed. One o'clock came round. "Longstreet is joining Jackson,"
was the word from the pickets. The attack must be made at once if ever.
It began at two o'clock by Hooker and Kearny on the right, pushing
through the woods and across the fields between Dogan's house and
Sudley Church.[50]
[Footnote 50: See "My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field."]
The veterans of the Peninsula move upon an enemy whom they have met
before. Jackson has made the line of a half-finished railroad his
defense, and his men are behind the embankments and in the excavations.
It is a long, desperate conflict. There are charges upon the enemy's
lines and repulses. Three,--four,--five o'clock, and Porter has not
come. McDowell, who should have marched northwest to Groveton to meet
Longstreet, has, through some mistake, marched east of that place, and
joined the line where Kearny and Hooker are driving Jackson.
At this hour, sunset, on August 29th, Kearny, Hooker, and Reno are
pushing west, north of the turnpike, close upon the heels of Jackson.
King's division of McDowell's corps is moving west along the turnpike
past Dogan's house, to attack what has been Jackson's right center,
but which is now the left center of the united forces of Jackson and
Longstreet. Sigel's brigades have been shattered, and are merely
holding their ground south of the turnpike. O, if Porter with his
twelve thousand fresh troops was only there to fall on Jackson's right
flank! But he is not in sight. Nothing has been heard from him. He has
had all day to march five miles over an unobstructed road. He has had
his imperative orders,--has heard the roar of battle. He is an officer
in the Regular service, and knows that it is the first requisite of an
officer or a soldier to obey orders.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF GROVETON.
1 Hooker.
2 Kearny.
3 Reno.
4 Porter.
5 McDowell.
6 Sigel.
A Rebel left wing, commanded by Jackson.
B Rebel right wing, commanded by Longstreet.
C Stone Bridge.
D Dogan's House.
RR Unfinished Railroad.]
Longstreet is too late upon the ground to make an attack with his whole
force. The sun goes down and darkness comes on. The contest for the day
is over. Jackson has been driven on his right, and Heintzelman's corps
holds the ground. Both armies sleep on their arms.
The auspicious moment for crushing Jackson had passed. The most that
Pope could hope for was to hold his ground till Franklin and Sumner,
who had landed at Alexandria, could join him. Thus far the battle had
been in his favor. He wished to save his wagons which were at Manassas.
If he retreated across Bull Run and made that his line of defense, he
must abandon his trains at Manassas. If he did this, Banks would be cut
off. He hoped, with Porter's magnificent corps holding his left flank,
to defeat Lee.
The morning of the 30th dawned. The pickets of the two armies were
within a hundred yards of each other. The air was calm, the sky clear,
and the morning as bright and beautiful as that Sabbath when the first
great battle of the war was fought.
The Rebel line was crescent-shaped. Its left under Jackson reached from
Sudley Springs to a point near the turnpike, about a mile and a half
west of Groveton. Longstreet commanded the right wing, which extended
from Jackson's command far to the southwest, stretching beyond the
Manassas Gap Railroad.
This point was the center of the Rebel line. It was a high knoll or
ridge of land which commanded two thirds of Lee's front. Here were
forty-eight pieces of artillery. It was a very strong position. From
this knoll eastward, the Rebel artillerymen looked down a long slope
broken by undulations, the ground partitioned by fences, dividing it
into fields, pastures, and wooded hills and hollows.
Pope had about forty thousand men, who stood face to face with the army
which had driven McClellan from the Chickahominy, and which met him a
few days later at Antietam.
The troops which had come from the Army of the Potomac were worn and
dispirited. Hooker's and Kearny's divisions had been in nearly all the
battles of the Peninsula. Almost alone they had fought the battle of
Williamsburg. They were at Seven Pines, in skirmish after skirmish on
the Chickahominy, and at Glendale and Malvern. Hooker on this morning
of the 30th had but two thousand four hundred and forty-one men--so
sadly had disease and battle thinned the ranks.
Porter came up tardily. He had twelve thousand men, but they did not
like General Pope. They believed that General McClellan had been
cruelly sacrificed by the government. There was no hearty co-operation
by the officers of Porter's command with General Pope. Griffin's and
Piatt's brigades took the road to Centreville, either by mistake or
otherwise, and were not in the battle.[51] Instead of twelve thousand,
Porter brought but seven thousand to the field. Sigel's troops were
mainly Germans, wanting in discipline, vigor, energy, and endurance.
Pope's army was a conglomeration, wanting coherence. He had, besides
the troops from the Army of the Potomac, McDowell's, who had been
an army by themselves; Sigel's, who had served under Fremont, whom
they idolized; Reno's, who looked upon Burnside as the only commander
who had achieved victories. General Pope was from the West. He was
unacquainted with his troops, and they with him. He had issued an
order permitting them to forage at will, which had produced laxity of
discipline and demoralization. Yet with all these things against him,
he felt it to be his duty to offer battle to Lee.
[Footnote 51: Pope's Report.]
Porter arrived with his seven thousand about nine o'clock, more than
twenty-four hours late. He came into position in front of Sigel on the
turnpike. Pope's line was thus complete. Hooker on the right at Sudley;
Kearny and Reno next reaching to the turnpike; Porter next, with Sigel
in rear; and McDowell commanding Reynolds's, King's, and Ricketts's
divisions on the left, near the ground where the Rebels made their last
stand in the first battle of Manassas.
Had General Pope awaited an attack, the battle might have had a
different ending, but his provisions were exhausted, and he could not
wait. He must fight at once and win a victory or retreat.
He had sent to Alexandria for provisions. General McClellan was there.
The Army of the Potomac, when it arrived there, was in the department
commanded by General Pope, and was therefore subject to his orders,
which left McClellan without a command. Franklin and Sumner, with
thirty thousand men, were moving out and could guard the trains. At
daylight, while General Pope was forming his lines, endeavoring to
hold at bay the army before which McClellan had retired from the
Chickahominy, Savage Station, Glendale, and Malvern, General McClellan
informed General Pope that the supplies would be loaded into cars and
wagons as soon as Pope would send in a cavalry escort, to guard the
trains!
"Such a letter," says General Pope, "when we were fighting the enemy,
and Alexandria swarming with troops, needs no comment. Bad as was the
situation of the cavalry, I was in no situation to spare troops from
the front, nor could they have gone to Alexandria and returned within
a time by which we must have had provisions or have fallen back in the
direction of Washington. Nor do I see what service cavalry could give
in guarding railroad trains. It was not till I received this letter,
that I began to feel discouraged and nearly hopeless of any successful
issue to the operations with which I was charged."[52]
[Footnote 52: Pope's Report.]
The battle at that moment was beginning; the reveille of the cannonade
at that early hour was waking thousands to engage in their last day's
work in the service of their country. Through the forenoon there was a
lively picket firing, accompanying an artillery duel.
"The enemy is making a movement to turn our left," was Sigel's message
to Pope a little past noon. Lee's division, as they passed down from
Thoroughfare Gap, marched towards Manassas Junction, and came into line
beyond McDowell.
General Reynolds, who was south of the turnpike, advanced to feel of
Longstreet's position. He found the enemy sheltered in the woods. The
musketry began. Porter, southwest of Dogan's house, moved into the
forest, where the battle had raged the night before. He was received
with sharp volleys. His men fought but a short time and retreated.
"Why are you retreating so soon?" General Sigel asked of the men.
"We are out of ammunition."[53]
[Footnote 53: Sigel's Report.]
They passed on to Sigel's rear.
Suddenly there were thundering volleys on the left. Lee was attacking
with great vigor. At the same moment, Hooker, Kearny, and Reno were
driving Jackson towards Sudley, swinging him back from his advanced
position.
The battle line was swinging like a gate pivoted on its center. The
Rebels followed Porter, cheering and shouting. Grover's brigade of
Hooker's division, which had been facing west, changed its line of
march to the south, came down past Dogan's house, to the line of
unfinished railroad which Lee had taken for his defense.
Milroy's brigade of Sigel's corps was lying in the road which leads
from Groveton towards the south.
The Rebels were advancing upon him. Schurz, who was still farther
south, was retiring before the mass of Rebel troops, who came within
reach of Milroy's guns, which thinned their ranks at every discharge.
But the Rebels were on Milroy's left flank, which was bending like a
bruised reed before their advance. Grover came down with those men who
had never failed to do their whole duty.
"We stood in three lines," said a wounded Rebel officer to me at
Warrington, two months after the battle. "They fell upon us like a
thunderbolt. They paid no attention to our volleys. We mowed them down,
but they went right through our first line, through our second, and
advanced to the railroad embankment, and there we stopped them. They
did it so splendidly that we couldn't help cheering them. It made me
feel bad to fire on such brave fellows."
They had charged into the thickest of the enemy's columns, but could
not hold the position, and were forced back.
Lee formed his lines for the decisive onset. Making the point on the
turnpike, where Longstreet's command joined Jackson's, he swung his
right against McDowell, Sigel, and Porter.
Hood was on the left of the charging column, nearest the turnpike;
then Pickett, Jenkins, Toombs, and Kemper. Evans and Anderson were in
reserve.
It was impossible to withstand this force; yet it was a furious,
obstinate, bloody fight.
"It had been a task of almost superhuman labor," writes Pollard,
the Southern historian, "to drive the enemy from his strong points,
defended as they were by the best artillery and infantry in the Federal
army, but in less than four hours from the commencement of the battle,
our indomitable energy had accomplished everything. The arrival of
Anderson with his reserves, proved a timely acquisition, and the
handsome manner in which he brought his troops into position showed the
cool and skilful general. Our generals, Lee, Longstreet, Hood, Kemper,
Evans, Jones, Jenkins, and others, all shared the dangers to which they
exposed their men."[54]
[Footnote 54: Southern History, Second Year, p. 113.]
Night put an end to the conflict. When darkness came on, Lee found that
he was still confronted by men in line, with cannon well posted on the
eminences towards Stone Bridge. He had gained the battle-ground, but
had not routed the Union army.
The retreat was conducted in good order across Bull Run. General
Stahl's brigade was the last to cross Stone Bridge, which was
accomplished at midnight, without molestation from Lee, who was too
much exhausted to make the attempt to rout the forty thousand men, who
had resisted the attack of all his troops,--the same army which had
compelled General McClellan, commanding an army of a hundred thousand,
to move from the Chickahominy to the James.
General Pope states his own force to have been not over forty thousand.
If the whole of Porter's corps had been engaged, and if Banks had
been available, he would have had about fifty thousand men. The force
against him numbered not less than eighty thousand. In the subsequent
battle of Antietam, Lee had the same army which fought this battle,
estimated by General McClellan to number ninety-seven thousand men,[55]
with the exception of those lost him at South Mountain and Harper's
Ferry.
[Footnote 55: General McClellan's Report, p. 213.]
The battle of Groveton was therefore one of the most bravely fought and
obstinate contests of the war,--fought by General Pope under adverse
circumstances,--great inferiority of numbers, with a subordinate
commander who disobeyed orders; with other officers who manifested no
hearty co-operation. It will be for the future historian to do full
justice to the brave men who made so noble a fight, who, had they been
supported as they should have been, would doubtless have won a glorious
victory.
THE RETREAT TO WASHINGTON.
General Sumner and General Franklin joined General Pope at Centreville.
But the army was disorganized. The defeat, the want of co-operation
on the part of some of the officers of the Army of the Potomac, had a
demoralizing influence.
General McClellan was at Alexandria. On the 29th, while Pope was trying
to crush Jackson before the arrival of Longstreet, waiting anxiously
for the appearance of Porter, who had disobeyed the order given him,
the President, solicitous to hear from the army, inquired by telegram
of him: "What's the news from Manassas?"
"Stragglers report," was the reply, "that the enemy are evacuating
Centreville, and retiring through Thoroughfare Gap. I am clear that
one of two courses should be adopted: first, to concentrate all our
available force, to open communication with Pope; second, to leave Pope
to get out of his scrape, and at once use all our means to make the
capital safe."[56]
[Footnote 56: McClellan's Report.]
General Pope had opened his communications unaided by General
McClellan. He had moved to the Rapidan, to enable General McClellan to
withdraw from the Peninsula; had held his ground till the Rebel cavalry
cut the railroad at Manassas; then with great rapidity he had moved to
crush Jackson, and had failed only through the deliberate disobedience
of orders by General Porter.
Lee, on the second day after the battle of Groveton, made another
flank movement north of Centreville, to cut off the Union army from
Washington. There was a fight at Chantilly, where the brave and
impetuous Kearny was killed, and the enemy fell back behind the
intrenchments in front of Washington, and passed from the hands of
General Pope into the hands of General McClellan.
It will be for the future historian to determine the measure of blame
or praise upon him,--the causes of disaster to the Army of the Potomac
on the Peninsula, and to the Army of Virginia at Manassas. A military
tribunal, composed of the peers of General Porter, has pronounced its
verdict upon him. He has been cashiered,--lost his place and his good
name forever.