CROSS KEYS
Jackson slowed his pace as he crossed the North Fork of the Shenandoah near the village of Mount Jackson, where he burned the only bridge on the main north-south road. The river was rising rapidly, and the pursuing Frémont, though he arrived with a bulky pontoon train, could not cross. The Federals had their bridge tossing on the current for a short time, but fresh rains drove them off with only a few troops put over, and Frémont was forced to cut his bridge and halt the chase.
The Confederates had a full day of rest from skirmishing, the first time since Front Royal they had been out of the sound of guns. Jackson felt safe enough, for the rivers were higher than they had been for twenty years, according to his topographical engineer, J. K. Boswell.
The General took out the map of Virginia given to him by Crutchfield. It was already speckled with small inked circles Jackson had drawn about the Valley villages. He circled the tiny town of Port Republic, just south of the Massanuttons, a position to his liking. Just now this was the finest spot on the chessboard, lying between the routes of Shields and Frémont, commanding the only near-by bridge; it was as strong as a fortress, and from the hills Jackson could force Shields to move up so that the latter would be open to attack. The position gave the Confederates inner lines and a good route of retreat into the hill country in case of disaster. Jackson led his men in that direction.
The world began to break in upon Old Jack, even in the remote foothills. First a Yankee reporter who had been taken at Front Royal got an interview with the General, and managed to get a pass through the lines by describing in glowing terms the charge of Jackson’s cavalry at Front Royal and the blood-curdling yells with which the horsemen had swept forward. The reporter went home to write a fanciful story about the General which amused headquarters for several days.
There were the Richmond papers, filling with praise of the Valley army, and even the Whig, which cried: “This man Jackson must be suppressed, or else he will change the humane and Christian policy of the war, and demoralize the Government.” It was clear from the bundles of newspapers that the little army was titillating the Confederacy. There was also a message from President Jefferson Davis, styling Jackson’s running duel with the enemy as a “brilliant campaign.”
Stonewall now had some welcome news from Captain Jedediah Hotchkiss, an engineer with a particular genius for terrain. Jed Hotchkiss had climbed to the crest of the Massanuttons (he could ride once over a bit of country and leave with its topography so fixed in his mind that he could render it accurately on a map).
From the mountaintop Hotchkiss saw the column of General Shields. The enemy was in camp, foiled by the boggy roads. They were still miles away, so that it was probable that Jackson would have time to fight off Frémont’s force before Shields could arrive, though this delicate matter of timing would have to be arranged while the two enemy generals were in the sound of each other’s guns.
Jackson knew that he could depend upon Hotchkiss as he could upon most of his unusual staff, civilians chosen for their talents rather than reputations. Hotchkiss was an interesting example, a transplanted Northerner, born in Windsor, New York, and educated in New York schools. He had fallen in love with Western Virginia on a walking trip when he was a youth of nineteen, had settled there and opened an academy for young people. He was now thirty-two years old, enjoying to the fullest his daily work of map making, which had heretofore been his hobby. Only now was the staff overcoming its early habit of calling him “Professor Hotchkiss.”
Jackson, above almost all Confederate officers, seemed to appreciate the value of active, pliant, nonmilitary minds. He withheld his officers from his decisions, but he kept them at work.
On June sixth, just as he was ready to clash with the enemy in decisive fighting, Jackson was robbed of his most dashing commander. On the rear of the army, as daylight began to fail, the cavalry staged a bizarre, tragic incident, of the sort which seemed to dog the steps of this irrepressible service.
General Ashby’s troopers were near Harrisonburg, resting at the roadside, when they were surprised by the approach of the First New Jersey Cavalry, which had crossed the river undetected. Ashby in his usual fashion ordered men into saddles and charged upon the Federals. The bold dash netted him sixty-four of the enemy; one of the prisoners was a spectacular bird indeed. Taylor saw him as “a stalwart man with huge mustaches, cavalry boots adorned with spurs worthy of a caballero, slouched hat and plume.” He was the regiment’s colonel, Sir Percy Wyndham, a British soldier of fortune who had fought in Austria and Italy. He had had his horse shot from under him that day and went on foot along a road crowded with Confederates, who laughed at his exotic costume and yelled, “Lookit the Yankee colonel!” The epithet “Yankee” seemed to pain him more than his predicament. He cursed the shooting of his horse, and the cowardice of his troopers who, he said, deserted him.
Major Rob Wheat, chief of the Louisiana Tigers, leaned against a rail fence, and as Wyndham passed, Wheat sprang into the road to greet the foreigner.
“Percy, old boy!” Wheat shouted.
“Why, Rob!”
There was a brief reunion of the soldiers who had fought under Garibaldi in the birth throes of the Italian republic, and Wyndham, as a distinguished visitor, was taken to Jackson’s headquarters.
As Jackson and his guest talked, the skirmishing went on, a brief inconclusive meeting of men in a roadway, so insignificant an action that it was to bear no name. Ashby caught sight of a party of Federal infantry just after the clash with the Jersey troopers and persuaded Ewell to give him the loan of three regiments of his infantry. Ewell went along himself. They met a crack outfit, the Pennsylvania Bucktails, and captured the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kane, brother of an eminent Arctic explorer and himself a prominent Philadelphian. Kane was effusive in praise of Ashby and his charging troopers. He told one of his captors:
“Today I saved the life of one of the most gallant men in either army—General Ashby—a man I admire as much as you do.”
Kane said he had seen Ashby within fifty yards of his line during the afternoon and had knocked aside the rifles of his men when they were raised to shoot the unsuspecting Confederate.
But by that hour, Ashby was dead.
He had led Ewell’s men into stubborn Federal troops whose rifle volleys broke the Confederate charge time after time. At last, Ewell had sent up Colonel Bradley Johnson and his Marylanders: “Charge, Colonel, charge and end this matter.”
There was still bitter fighting, and at least twenty men of the Maryland regiment went down in one volley. Johnson’s horse fell dead. Ashby’s horse tumbled (it was the same mount General Jackson had used at Bull Run, when he was wounded in the hand). Ashby then went ahead on foot, leading the infantrymen; they routed the Pennsylvanians. It was not soon enough for Ashby. He fell under a volley at point-blank range.
The cavalryman died in the arms of Lieutenant James Thomson, one of his most devoted followers. And Ashby’s last words, called to the men of the Fifty-eighth Virginia Regiment, were: “Charge, men! For God’s sake, charge!”
The troopers took Ashby’s body into camp on a cavalry horse and prepared for the funeral. There were strange scenes in the camp that night—scores of the cavalrymen were openly sobbing.
Jackson was told the news as he talked with Wyndham, and could scarcely accept it. He sent the English visitor away, saying, “I cannot see him further tonight.” Jackson remained alone for a time and then went to see Ashby’s body. He stared at the dark face—so dark that one Federal, when attacked by Ashby, had thought he was being shot at by a Negro. Ashby had brought Jackson trouble and sometimes indiscipline, but only once had he brought false information. The horseman had, as the troops said, fought the Yankees as if he had a contract with President Davis to go at the enemy twenty-four hours daily. The cavalry screen of the army in the Valley had fought endlessly under Ashby.
The first of the army’s legends began to arise that night as the body of the aristocrat-turned-horseman lay in state. Men talked of the spectacle of Ashby on his magnificent horses, always either jet black or spotlessly white, riding like an ancient knight with his black beard and flowing hair. Men began to see him as invincible in battle and to praise his gentle spirit, which had been so aroused by the invaders that he fought a record thirty-five battles within the last twenty-eight days. The most romantic of the soldiers began to speak of the army’s “Paladin,” which was what Ashby had become. His death at thirty-four gave the Valley army its first lesson in mourning a hero.
Jackson put the memory of him into his records:
An official report is not an appropriate place for more than a passing notice of the distinguished dead, but the close relations which General Ashby bore to my command, for most of the previous twelve months, will justify me in saying that as a partisan officer I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial, his tone of character heroic, his power of endurance almost incredible, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy.
Ashby’s body went off by a crude hearse to Charlottesville, trailed by many of his men with reversed arms, his horse, a sobbing body servant, and a number of hangers-on. Even Yankee prisoners at the roadside grieved at the passage, one diarist recalled.
Another casualty came forcibly to the notice of the Valley army, with new implications as to the place of Jackson’s force in the greater Confederate scheme. General Joseph E. Johnston had been wounded in a battle near Richmond, a place called Seven Pines, where the big army had met the Yankees under General McClellan. Jackson’s officers speculated on the logical successor to the commander in chief.
Many thought Stonewall would be called from them to take over direction of all the Southern armies. Others thought General Beauregard was the man. Ewell had another idea. “No, sir,” he shrieked. “I don’t know who they’ll pick—but I wouldn’t be scared if the choice fell on General Lee.”
It was not long until word came: Lee had assumed command and would direct the Confederate military effort in Virginia. Jackson was evidently pleased, but he said nothing. His thoughts, however, had turned more often to Richmond and the fighting in eastern Virginia. And in one of his dispatches he had gone so far as to suggest that he could bring his little army to aid in the defense of the capital, if necessary.
Just now, however, events pressed upon him at Port Republic, whence he had moved his troops on the day after Ashby’s death. Frémont and Shields moved toward him by parallel roads on either side of the Massanutton ridge, at the Southern tip of which lay a complex bit of terrain:
The village of Port Republic stood in the arms of the North and South Rivers, near their junction, where they formed the South Fork of the Shenandoah. The bottom lands of the rivers were open and commanded by abrupt ridges rising over them. There was a single bridge north of the village; otherwise, the streams were to be crossed only by fords, impracticable for troops when the water was high.
On Saturday, June seventh, under clearing skies, Ewell and his troops were placed about four miles northwest of Port Republic, at a place called Cross Keys from a tavern of that name. There was a junction of roads here, and near by was a Dunker church. Ewell put his five thousand men on high ground and waited.
Jackson took the balance of the force back to Port Republic itself, where it camped on the dominating ridge. All day Jackson sought to lure Frémont to attack by the exposure of Ewell’s men at Cross Keys, but the Federals seemed timid. There were a few shots at sunset, but no charge came. Jackson continued his wait. He began to despair of an opportunity for action.
He sent a message to Lee: “At present I do not see that I can do much more than rest my command and devote its time to drilling.”
The situation was to change swiftly.
The next morning Jackson was in his headquarters at the home of a Dr. Kemper in Port Republic, piecing together the vague bits of information he had on the enemy. Major Dabney bustled in, asking if the army would fight on this day.
The General replied firmly. “No. You know that I always try to keep the Sabbath if the enemy will let me.”
Dabney left him, and was on his way to preach the usual sermon to the troops, when an excited courier burst into headquarters with bad news. Federals were pouring into Port Republic from the east, crossing the lower ford of South River.
The General had no time for orders. “Go back and fight them,” he said.
And he hurried off. Jim brought up Sorrel, and Jackson galloped toward the bridge leading to safety. The Union horsemen made prisoners of two staff officers, Colonel Crutchfield and Lieutenant Edward Willis. Jackson escaped handily and sent an urgent message to General Taylor at Cross Keys, asking for help. Within an hour, however, the Southerners had cleared the few Federals from Port Republic and the reinforcements were halted. It became clear that the day’s formal action would be limited to Cross Keys—good news, since it meant that Jackson could meet the twin enemy forces in turn.
For an hour, a confused artillery duel raged about the town, and there was some skirmishing. The enemy soon pulled back, however. The work required little of Jackson’s skill. He brought up two infantry brigades to guard the bridge and the affair was almost over. In the final moments Jackson had a personal brush with the enemy.
Some of his artillerymen had recently got new uniforms; and when Jackson saw a cannon pull into position by the bridge below him, he could not be sure whether the artillerymen serving the gun were the enemy or his own men; he had just ordered Captain W. T. Poague toward the bridge with one of the Rockbridge guns.
Poague, seeing the new and mysterious gun himself, turned to Jackson: “That can’t be my gun, sir. They’ve not had time to set it up yet. It may be one of Carrington’s.”
Jackson studied the cannon’s crew, and as he sat his horse by one of Poague’s guns, he shouted to the men at the bridge, his womanish voice carrying through the town: “Bring up that gun! Bring it up here!” There was no reply. He stood in his stirrups. “Bring that gun up here, I say!”
The strange gun crew then moved, but only to turn the mouth of the cannon so as to bear on Poague, Jackson and the artillery piece at their side. They were Federals. Jackson’s reaction was immediate. “Let ’em have it.”
His own gun blasted at the enemy crew, driving it from the bridge. Jackson sent infantrymen down the hill with bayonets. As the troops rushed ahead of him, Jackson threw up his hands, posing as if in prayer. The men shouted and soon cleared the enemy from the village.
At this moment, Old Jack heard big guns. Ewell was going into action. Jackson sent reinforcements but did not go to Cross Keys himself. He would leave direction of that phase to Ewell and remain in Port Republic to guard against the second enemy army.
He looked about at his positions on the grim hills. His officers were wondering if they were to fight two armies this morning, conjecturing that General Shields would now drive in to join the attack with Frémont. In the midst of such talk, Jackson spoke dramatically, “No, sir! No!” He gestured to the ranked batteries on the hillside. “He cannot do it. I should tear him to pieces!”
Colonel Crutchfield and Lieutenant Willis now returned, Willis bringing a Yankee prisoner with him; Crutchfield had been abandoned as the enemy was driven from the village. They brought a reassuring report on enemy artillery: Four guns had been captured, three of them left in the swampy roadway across the river.
Quiet fell in the town. The roar of battle from Cross Keys came in quite clearly.
At about this moment, in near-by Federal headquarters, General Shields was sending a dispatch to General Frémont:
I write by your scout. I think by this time there will be 12 pieces of artillery opposite Jackson’s wagon trains at Port Republic.… I hope to have two brigades at Port Republic today.… If the enemy … attempts to force a passage … I hope you will thunder down on his rear.… I think Jackson is caught this time.
Frémont was finding life as an apprentice thunderer difficult indeed.
Early in the sunny morning, his skirmish line went toward the ridge held by Ewell’s veterans. The Federals first met the Eighteenth Alabama of General Ike Trimble’s command. This gallant old soldier had gone through early troubles with Ewell, but was now highly regarded. This morning, to be sure, he had been wounded by a Jackson joke. Trimble wore a black army hat adorned with cord and feathers; and today, when someone mentioned “fancy soldiers” to Jackson, Stonewall had waved to Trimble, saying, “There’s the only fancy soldier in my command.”
The enemy had a rousing reception from Trimble’s outposts and under the warming sun floundered through grainfields for a mile, until they finally pushed the Alabamans across a field of buckwheat which lay before Trimble’s main force. Here the Confederate retreat halted. The Federals had no luck with Trimble’s front, for it was shrewdly chosen.
The fine Union guns blazed at the Rebel center, and when this furore died down, blue infantry bobbed up in the buckwheat. They were going to storm Trimble’s position. For two or three minutes in the rustling and crumping sounds of boots in the grainfield the Yankees came on, seeing nothing in front of them. The first files took the slope in orderly, drill-field fashion. Near the peak of the ridge, Trimble’s muskets roared; in the smoke the torn Federal line attempted to form on its surviving officers, but under a second volley the remnants fell back down the hill. Through the rest of the action wounded men cried from the face of that hill and in the day’s increasing heat begged for water. These were the survivors of the Eighth New York Regiment, all but annihilated by Trimble’s fire—with more than five hundred casualties.
Frémont again turned to his artillery, and the guns raked the Confederate front, doing great damage in some quarters. General Elzey, for one, was wounded, and could no longer direct the answering fire. General Steuart received a shoulder wound.
The day dragged on. There was infrequent firing from blue-coats in thick woods across a ravine, but little more. Ewell kept shifting his strength impatiently. On a report that the enemy was gathering on the right, he sent fresh brigades two miles down the line. He fretted over the passing chance at action, but Jackson’s orders forbade an attack in view of the situation in Port Republic, where a new battle might develop at any moment. Afternoon drew on with Ewell holding stubbornly to his ridge.
Ewell would not sit still, and in the late hours of the day ordered his skirmish line forward, until it lay in the position the enemy had occupied during the night. Frémont was behaving strangely, and seeming to invite attack, but it could not be delivered. Ewell, already nettled by his dilemma, was galled by the fury with which old Trimble beset him.
Trimble had been garrulously urging an attack all day, and he besieged Ewell with pleas for a night assault. When Ewell refused permission, Trimble went to Jackson, who said only, “Consult General Ewell and be guided by him.” Ewell again shook his head, telling Trimble that he had fought well during the day, and attempting to explain the army’s holding action. Trimble shouted: “Drive Frémont tonight, or he’s going to press the army in the morning. You’d better fight one army at the time.” He went off muttering about Jackson’s hare-brained plans to time his blows against first one foe and then the other. He was almost the last sound of the night, growling his discontent.
The staff had a closer look at Jackson’s spirit in the waning hours of fighting, near by at Cross Keys. Sitting his horse above the landscape of Port Republic, watching and waiting, the General turned to the Reverend Dabney.
“Wouldn’t it be a blessed thing if the Lord would give us a glorious victory today?”
No one heard Dabney’s reply, but a boy lieutenant who gazed in fascination wrote:
“Jackson’s expression was that of a child hoping to receive some favor.”
The General had little time for prayer or recapitulation tonight. He knew his casualties were light, and that the army was still ready for battle. (It developed that Ewell’s loss was 287 men, only 48 dead; the Federals reported 664 casualties.)
Jackson stayed up late, studying means of assisting the Lord. His thoughts roved over the predicament of General Frémont, who had withdrawn so gingerly when smashed on one flank. And he dwelt, with greater respect, on the situation of the approaching General Shields. If he could concentrate the army tomorrow, by hurriedly withdrawing Ewell across the river, he might be able to whip Shields here at Port Republic. It would require some soldiering.