THE DASH TO RICHMOND
Far out in Western Virginia, at the village of Port Republic, it was June ninth—and for Jackson a fitting day to mark the end of a triumphant campaign which was to become his chief fame.
The Federal flight from Port Republic had left him in a rare state. He had his victory before noon, and cantered among Taylor’s brigade of Louisianans, smiling in pride, passing congratulations. He found Taylor and seized his hand, promising him the big guns his men had taken. The guns were now hot, still firing at the retreating Federals, whom Jackson’s corps had now seen in retreat the length of the Valley from Front Royal to Winchester and back to the south of the Massanuttons.
Ewell was at one of the cannon himself, helping fire final salutes at the enemy.
For the first time in his career, Jackson saw his men go mad; cheering broke from every file as they caught sight of him, and the Irish regiment broke into actual tumult. A gunner rode cockhorse on a cannon, near the generals, shouting to Taylor, “We told ye to bet on our boys!”
In the celebration, Jackson did not forget the enemy. The guns rolled until almost dark. He went into the defile, seeing far below the army of Shields, a dark current on the road to Luray. The Federals moved swiftly, not in a rout, precisely, but in full, undisguised retreat. Jackson’s men chased them for eight miles. Jackson returned to the battlefield where booty was being gathered: six big guns, eight hundred muskets, dozens of wagons, 450 prisoners.
Jackson and Ewell were together, watching. Old Jack put his hand on his lieutenant’s arm. “He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind!”
Ewell wagged his bald head, grinning, knowing that the tone of slight levity was only for him, and that Jackson was literally speaking his mind. Ewell thought, perhaps, of his own timely arrival on the scene, when his men had clawed the Federals from Jackson’s flank and saved him from disaster.
The battlefield, they noted, was more thickly covered with dead than any they had seen. Jackson’s men had paid heavily. Taylor’s fine Seventh Regiment was cut to bits, and others were shrunken.
Numbers of the men, including General Taylor, got their noon meal from the haversacks of Federal dead.
Jackson and Ewell rode over the field. Jackson hailed a medical officer.
“Did you bring off all the wounded?”
“All of ours, sir. Not the enemy’s.”
“Why not, Captain?”
“They shelled us from across the river.”
“You had your hospital flag on the field?”
“Yes, sir. In plain sight.”
“And they shelled that?”
“Yes.”
“Take your men to their quarters. I would rather let them all die than have one of my men shot intentionally under the yellow flag, trying to save their wounded.”
The anger was passing and did not mar his mood of triumph, but it endured until he had written a stern note to Shields, protesting Frémont’s shelling of medical parties. The anger flashed like fire as he spoke to Ewell of an incident in the battle.
Jackson had heard the story: A Federal officer on a white horse had galloped boldly under fire, in clear sight of Confederate riflemen, urging his men to the fight. And Ewell, taken with the show of gallantry, went down his own lines, ordering his men not to fire on the Federal and his horse. Finally, however, the brave enemy officer had fallen.
Jackson asked Ewell if the story were true. Ewell admitted that it was and commented on the stirring picture made by the officer. Jackson cut him short with a new show of wrath, of a sort he was to display more than once. “Never do such a thing again, General Ewell. This is no ordinary war. The brave Federal officers are the very kind that must be killed. Shoot the brave officers and the cowards will run away and take the men with them.”
Inexplicably, the army was hurried up the steep mountain road to the east. The troops could not know that they had seen the last of their Valley enemies and were bound for Richmond. Old Jack only pushed them on through a cold rain. The men dragged slowly. They did not recount their victories as they climbed the slope. They straggled, and men were out of ranks, though not so badly as at Winchester, when Jackson had complained to Ewell, “The evil of straggling has become enormous.” Jackson himself did not look backward through the spring fighting.
The Valley campaign was over. Its fruits were not yet visible to all, but it was plain that Jackson had immobilized many Federal divisions on the Potomac, had struck fear into Lincoln and his Cabinet, and had prevented the strong reinforcement of McClellan before Richmond.
Jackson had, in fact, saved Richmond. He had kept a potential force of 175,000 Federals from joining in the encirclement of the city which might have taken place, that spring. His campaign had made such demands on his troops as fighting men had seldom known. On many days his divisions had marched thirty-five miles. Between May thirtieth and June fifth, in the retreat southward to Port Republic, the army had made 15 miles a day, 104 miles in all.
In one month the army had freed Staunton, checkmating the armies of Milroy and Schenck; had chased Banks from Virginia for a time; and had kept McDowell and his thirty-five thousand from their march to Richmond. The trio of great dangers—Banks, Frémont and Shields—had not only failed to crush him but had been battered in turn.
Critics, turning to classic standards, were to find flaws in Jackson’s handling of troops, cavalry, guns; but he had performed miracles of a sort and made his name known everywhere. He had made such intimate use of his knowledge of Valley terrain that it became his particular locale in history and was to be studied by soldiers of many nations. All had been accomplished with men who were largely inexperienced; almost without exception his staff, his regimental officers, his troops, were green at the start.
He had begun on March twenty-second. Since then, it was just forty-eight marching days; the troops had slogged 676 miles, an average of 14 miles a day. They had fought six formal skirmishing actions, had brushed with the enemy almost daily for the past month. There had been five pitched battles. Nowhere had Jackson commanded more than seventeen thousand men; but with few exceptions, he had managed to concentrate superior numbers and outnumber the Federals at each point of attack. Yet he had not hesitated to assault forces twice the size of his own. From start to finish he had faced about sixty-two thousand Federal troops in the region, any and all of them available to fall upon him at the whim of the Washington high command.
He had taken thirty-five hundred prisoners, counted thirty-five hundred Federal dead, captured over ten thousand muskets and rifles, seized or burned stores of incalculable value. He had captured nine precious cannon. Against this his losses seemed slight: twenty-five hundred dead and wounded, six hundred prisoners, three guns.
He could look back to errors and oversights on the part of the staff, artillery, cavalry and himself. But he had attempted to build on the errors. And on the western battlefields which he was preparing to leave, he had struck the war’s hardest blows against Federal morale: first, against Lincoln and his Washington advisers; second, against the Federal field commanders in the Valley; third, against the fine regiments of Union soldiers which, so poorly led as to be cut to pieces by superior tactics, often lost heart and gave way to panic. Jackson’s very name was now worth many Confederate divisions. In his presence, the Federal anxieties had steadily increased, and Union strategy had been seriously altered. In the praise falling upon the leader and the Valley army from all sides, it could be seen that the Confederacy recognized its most accomplished soldiers.
Jackson could now speak to Imboden of his methods, so often demonstrated in the Valley:
Always mystify. Mislead and surprise the enemy if possible. And when you strike and overcome him, never let up in pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow, for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number.
Another rule—never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own forces on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.
Struggling up the mountain this night, the army felt little of the spirit of invincibility. The rain continued; and when they camped in Brown’s Gap, the wind reached the men. The darkness was intense. One corporal, Edward Moore of the Rockbridge Artillery, recalled dolefully that he made his way up the hill by following a grisly caisson. A soldier of the Second Virginia, his head blown off by a cannon shot and a white handkerchief tied over his shoulders, had been strapped to the carriage. Moore and his companions trudged along, with eyes on the bobbing white blur. The night was uncomfortable, but morning saw the army moving down into a pleasant valley and warming weather. There was no sign of the enemy.
Before Jackson left the scene of his last battle in the Valley, he had clashed with his quartermaster, John Harman. He had told Harman to glean the field of muskets and all else of value, but muskets in particular. Harman reported that he had completed the task. Many of the guns, he said, looked like those of his own men. Jackson shouted with an anger revealing this as a sore subject with him.
“The enemy has thousands of weapons like them,” he said. “I want to hear no more such talk—and never from an officer!”
“I won’t be talked to like that,” Harman said. “I will give you my resignation this instant.”
The quartermaster stalked out angrily, despite Jackson’s call. The General was finally able to explain that he had for months been vexed by stories that Confederate soldiers were throwing away their arms, and that he had lost his temper upon hearing the tale from Harman. He refused to accept the resignation and Harman, his wrath still smoldering, agreed to remain in the service.
Jackson’s mind turned to Richmond, where Lee’s dispatches beckoned him. From afar, even to the conqueror of the Valley, the scene was dazzling. The scale of battle would be much vaster than he had known in the Shenandoah, thus the opportunity for glory would be greater. He knew well the chief of the enemy forces, McClellan, his West Point classmate. And he had troops keen for fight. They had struck hard in the Valley, and they could, of course, perform equally well in the east.
McClellan’s huge army lay below Richmond after weeks of fighting its way up the Peninsula from Yorktown. Lee could hardly hope to drive it back without the aid of Jackson, and he must conceal Jackson’s coming as long as possible. To that end, he sent reinforcements to the Valley commander. These were the troops of General Whiting, which marched across the state to meet Stonewall just as he was moving eastward. There were rumors set afloat that a big offensive was planned for the Valley. Even General Whiting was left in the dark. When Lee called for secrecy, Jackson responded wholeheartedly.
Whiting had reported to Jackson at Port Republic, in ignorance of the developing plan. There was a pleasant enough greeting for the commander of fresh and veteran brigades, but the strangest and most perfunctory conversation: the weather, springtime, roads from Richmond, the absence of the enemy. Whiting returned to his troops at Staunton in a flaming temper.
“Jackson treated me like a dog. It’s an outrage!”
Surely the commander was polite, John Imboden suggested, for Jackson was never less than civil to officers.
“Oh, hang him! He was polite enough. But not one word—not after marching all this way, hurrying to him. Not a whisper of an order, or a word about his plans. Not even to me, after all this!
“Do you know what I got out of him, in the end? Why, he simply told me to come back here to Staunton, and he would send orders. I hadn’t the slightest notion what they would be. He treated me like a child, I tell you. I believe he hasn’t more sense than my horse!”
By breakfast time the hot-tempered Whiting was confirmed in his opinion. He had a brief order from Jackson: he was to board the train and move to Gordonsville, at once. Whiting roared once more.
“I told you he was a fool, didn’t I? Why, I just came through Gordonsville day before yesterday, and now he sends me back east.”
Old Jack passed a strict order that no soldier was even to mention the plans of the army, and this air of mystery in a state of ignorance afforded the troops several days of raucous jests. They trapped Jackson himself.
He rode among the men one morning and saw one of Hood’s soldiers who had wandered into an orchard, where he had climbed a cherry tree and was gobbling ripe fruit. Old Jack rode to him.
“Where are you going, soldier?”
“I don’t know.”
“What command are you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what state are you from?”
“I don’t know.”
Jackson called to another soldier. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“Well, Old Jack and Old Hood passed orders yesterday that we didn’t know a durned thing till after the next fight, and we’re keeping our mouths shut.”
Jackson laughed and trotted away.
On June thirteenth, Jackson declared a day of rest for the troops and posted a proclamation:
The fortitude of the troops under fatigue and their valor in action have again, under the blessing of divine Providence, placed it in the power of the commanding general to congratulate them on the victories of June 8 and 9.
While beset on both flanks by two boastful armies, you have escaped their toils, inflicting successively crushing blows upon each of your pursuers. Let a few more such efforts be made, and you may confidently hope that our beautiful valley will be cleansed from the pollution of the invader’s presence.
He called for a period of thanksgiving and “divine service in all regiments.”
On the same day, he called the tireless Colonel Boteler into headquarters, and once more sent him to Richmond to ask for reinforcements so that Jackson could invade the North. Boteler was to deliver the message verbally to Lee, assuring him that Jackson was ready to move to Richmond, but suggesting that the Valley army, turned loose above the Potomac, would bring the North up howling, demanding that McClellan’s grand army be brought home to defend native soil.
“If they will only give me 60,000 men,” he said in his squeaky voice. “I will go right on to Pennsylvania. I will not go down the Valley; I don’t want the people there to be harassed. I will go with 40,000 if the President will give them to me.
“My route will be along the east of the Blue Ridge—I ought not to have told you even that. But in two weeks I could be at Harrisburg.”
He was afire with the plan, but did not lose sight of Lee’s primary interest in the trenches about Richmond. He had written: “Circumstances greatly favor my moving to Richmond in accordance with your plan. I will remain if practicable in this neighborhood until I hear from you, and rest the troops who are greatly fatigued.”
Only Boteler knew of Jackson’s reincarnated scheme of invasion. The staff officers could do more than guess at their destination. For five days, in any event, few thought of movement, and the regiments lay content in the meadows of the limestone valley. Jackson wrote Anna of the place, which was familiar to her, and of Weyer’s Cave near by, where she had once been sightseeing. He asked, “Wouldn’t you like to get home again?”
Lee now sent Jackson insistent dispatches: He must hurry to Richmond. McClellan was becoming stronger, and there was danger that he might creep forward behind his trenches until the city was enveloped. Lee put the order gently: “If you agree”; but the compelling haste was clear in every line. Jackson was to conceal his movements and come as swiftly as possible to the capital. It was an order to delight Jackson; he might have written it himself. Lee had not even commented on Jackson’s plan of invading the North; he would send private word by Colonel Boteler.
Jackson had already closed the roads about him with his cavalry and taken trouble to confuse the enemy. At almost the same moment Jackson read Lee’s order, General Nathaniel P. Banks was telegraphing Washington that Old Jack was advancing on him in overwhelming force.
Jackson began to spin his veil of secrecy in earnest. The army began to tell this story of him, though it was of dubious accuracy:
One night he rode out in the rain to play his mysterious game. He had written Colonel T. T. Munford, his new cavalry chief, ordering a meeting at the village of Mount Crawford, ten miles away on the Valley turnpike. They were to meet at the head of the single street, and Munford was warned “not to ask for me or anybody.”
Munford reached the village at the proper hour. Dim light revealed a motionless figure in the road. Munford approached, and the figure saluted.
“Ah, Colonel, here you are. Any news from the front?”
“All quiet, General.”
“Good. Now, Munford, I want you to produce on the enemy the impression that I am going to advance.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jackson sat for two or three minutes telling his cavalryman how the dismounted riflemen should be pressed close against the enemy lines, and pickets kept there, alert; how to keep plentiful fires burning and to spread false reports. Abruptly, the General called farewell and rode off, Sorrel going into a slow gallop in the resounding darkness. Munford stared after him.
Jackson sent for Jed Hotchkiss, and the engineer went in with his maps. The General put him through a catechism on roads and streams and the points of strength in the Valley. Hotchkiss, when dismissed, had the idea that the coming offensive would be in the direction of Lexington.
Within half an hour, Hotchkiss was puzzled by a second call from Jackson. Casually, close-mouthed, like a horse trader’s opening to his intended victim, Jackson said, “Major, there’s been some fighting down about Richmond, there at Seven Pines, I believe. Will you let me see maps of that country?”
Hotchkiss fetched maps of lowland Virginia—poor ones—and for most of the afternoon the two studied the roads, woodlands, streams, fords, heights, swamps, and all eminences and obstructions. When it was done: “Thank you, Major. That will be all.”
Hotchkiss went to his tent with the suspicion that the army was to sweep eastward and join the fight for Richmond.
Even Ewell knew nothing; he blithely gave leave to some of his staff officers, telling them in confidence that reinforcements were coming and that the Valley army would soon fall upon Banks again. The good-humored Ewell did not resent secrecy now. When some of Jackson’s staff, left behind, reported to Ewell for duty, the bald Indian fighter said with heavy sarcasm, “I ain’t commanding but a division, and am only marching under orders. I don’t know where, of course. I’ve not got much staff left, but that’s more than I’ve any use for, the way it is now. I have a little suspicion about Richmond, but I can’t say.”
And Jackson’s staff, without instructions, set out in pursuit of their commander, who had disappeared.
Now and again officers bearded Jackson about his overpowering love of secrecy. Old Jack would smile patiently: “If my coat knew my plans, as Frederick the Great once said, I would take it off and burn it. And if I can deceive my friends, I can make certain of deceiving my enemies.”
On June seventeenth, the troops had begun the eastward swing. Jackson met one of his brigade commanders near headquarters.
“Colonel, have you received the order?”
“No, sir.”
“I want you to march.”
“When, sir.”
“Now.”
“Which way?”
“Get in the cars—go with Lawton.”
“How must I send my wagons and battery?”
“By the road.”
“Well, General, I hate to keep asking fool questions, but I can’t send my men off without knowing which road to send them.”
Jackson laughed, but only briefly. “Send them by the road the others take.” And he rode on.
The next day he had most of his troops in Staunton, moving along the Virginia Central Railroad. Still his officers did not know that Lee had called in the Valley troops, nor that Boteler had returned, bringing verbal refusal of Jackson’s offensive into the North. The prospect of a blow into Pennsylvania appealed to Lee, but the straits in which the capital found itself made invasion an impossibility. First things first; the investing of Richmond must be foiled without delay.
Jackson was out of Staunton and into Waynesboro within a few hours. In the dusk the General, riding with Major Hotchkiss, a courier and another officer, had a spectacular view of the army, which lay in camp over the Blue Ridge, for miles. Campfires blazed on either side of the climbing road, from the base to the summit. Hotchkiss went ahead to find quarters for the General. He once failed and returned to report.
“General, I fear we will not find our wagons tonight.”
Jackson, more earnestly than the occasion called for, Hotchkiss thought, replied, “Never take counsel of your fears, Major. See if you can find us a place to sleep, and something to eat if you can.”
The four finally rode through the gap and down the eastern slope, to a farmhouse owned by one James McCue. They ate well there, and retired to a single large room with three beds.
When the lamp had been blown out, Hotchkiss and the General lay for a time talking. The Major idly reviewed for Jackson the gossip of the day, about the destination of the army. Jackson laughed at each guess Hotchkiss made. Just before they fell silent, the General piped, “Do any of them say I’m going to Washington?” He laughed as if this were the greatest joke of all.
Hotchkiss saw Jackson kneel by his bed for more than five minutes. He thought of what Jim had told the staff somewhere back on the route of the Valley campaign:
“Gentlemen, when my General goes to getting up in the night to pray, you better watch out. There’s going to be hell to pay. He prays all the time, but when I see him up at night, I never asks no questions. I pack the haversack, because he’s sure to call for it next morning.”
The next day Jackson reached Mechum’s River. He met the Reverend Dabney there and beckoned him into a little hotel room, locking the door.
“I am going to Richmond ahead of the troops. To see General Lee. On the train. The corps is going to join in an attack on McClellan—but I will be back to you before you reach Richmond.
“Dabney, I want you to march the troops to Richmond, following the rail line as much as you can. I want you to march at the head of Ewell’s division.”
He gave Dabney orders to preserve secrecy, and shook hands. He went out to board an express train for the east. Kyd Douglas thought he looked like a passenger bound for Europe, shaking hands with everyone in sight. Old Jack clambered into the mail car, but even there could hardly break off a conversation with an elderly man who had hung around the station, clumsily trying to discover Jackson’s destination. Just before the train moved, the old man surrendered subtlety and shouted, “General, where are you going?”
“Can you keep a secret?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Ah, so can I.”
The train left the old man grinning after it.
Jackson had scarcely disappeared when Ewell beseiged Dabney, “Dammit, now, excuse me, Major. Reverend. But Jackson is driving us mad. He don’t say a word to so much as move a horse. And here, now, he’s gone off on the railroad without trusting me—his senior Major General—with a single solitary word. No order, no hint of where we’re going.
“But that quartermaster of his, that Old John Harman, he knows it all, I suppose. He’s been telling the troops we’re heading for Richmond to fight McClellan.”
Dabney offered consoling words, assuring Ewell that he ranked high in Jackson’s esteem, and that Harman, if he knew anything, had only guessed it. Ewell continued to protest. This time, Jackson had gone too far; it was an additional insult to Ewell because he had so lately recanted from his original opinion that Jackson was insane. He had said as much to Colonel Munford:
“I take it all back, and will never prejudge another man. Old Jackson is no fool; he knows how to keep his own counsel, and does curious things; but he has method in his madness; he has disappointed me entirely.”
Today it appeared that this might not be a mature judgment, after all. This season of secrecy seemed more irrational than any other Jackson had yet displayed.
General Winder, too, was still smarting from a hurt Jackson had given him. As the swing to Richmond began, Winder, the able West Point-trained brigade commander who led the Stonewall Brigade, had asked Jackson for a brief leave. He wanted, innocently, to go to Richmond itself. He was as ignorant of the developing movement as anyone else, and was incensed when Jackson refused him, bluntly and without reason given. Winder was already tender where Jackson was concerned, for he felt that Stonewall interfered unnecessarily in the command of his old brigade. Today he bristled. He had no means of knowing Jackson’s distracted mind was far away, already in the moist trenches of the Peninsula, facing McClellan. Winder offered his resignation. Jackson accepted it.
General Taylor saved the day. Winder went to the Louisiana camp with his news, and Taylor became unusually excited, for he admired the ability of this effective field commander. Taylor went to Jackson, begging that he reconsider and persuade Winder to remain. The crafty young officer first described the glory Old Jack had won in the Valley, and pictured his honors as enduring to late ages. He saw something in Jackson’s face like pleasure. He wrote:
“Observing him closely, I caught a glimpse of the man’s inner nature. It was but a glimpse. The curtain closed, and he was absorbed in prayer. Yet in that moment I saw an ambition as boundless as Cromwell’s, and as merciless.”
Jackson remained speechless. He gave no promise to make amends with Winder; but as Taylor left, Old Jack rose. “I think I’ll ride out with you, General,” he said.
Later in the night, Taylor learned Jackson had visited Winder, that the resignation was withdrawn, and the service had saved a fine officer.
The army moved rapidly eastward, despite all handicaps. Raiding Federal cavalry had burned a railroad bridge of the South Anna River near the village of Frederickshall, and Jackson’s officers were obliged to move the troops and supplies over a broken rail line, using fewer than two hundred small cars. They used an ingenious “riding and tying plan,” loading the cars with supplies at the western terminus near Charlottesville, unloading them at the South Anna, then shuttling the cars back again to pick up troops along the route. The corps thus moved toward Richmond, but in considerable disorder.
The Reverend Dabney was outraged at the lack of discipline. He found one officer who had allowed his wagons to roll far ahead of his mounted guard, but when Dabney upbraided him, the officer said blandly, “I just come along. I had no orders from nobody.”
It was an eloquent statement of the confusion inherent in a movement by an army whose commander could not bring himself to reveal the destination. When Dabney complained to Jackson of the lack of discipline, he was assured that there was a more pressing problem at hand: however it could be done, the corps must be pushed into place in front of Richmond before the enemy collected his wits and came out of the trenches to end the war.
On Saturday, June twenty-first, Jackson and Dabney took an enforced rest in Gordonsville, while Jackson sent out scouts to investigate a rumor that a Federal raid was reaching toward his line of march, with Union infantry only sixteen miles away, on the Rapidan. The rumor proved to be false, and the army moved on.
Until this moment, the gossips had a wide range of choice as objectives for the army, for it could still have moved toward Washington. But Jackson ended that possibility, going on to the east, so that the army could now be aiming only for Fredericksburg or Richmond. Jackson preserved his secrecy.
He muttered to Dabney, “Will you take a railroad ride with me? We will leave our horses with the staff.” The two boarded a train after dark. Jackson fell asleep in the bunk of the mail clerk almost at once. Sidings were so infrequent, and traffic so heavy, that it was dawn before they reached Frederickshall, only twenty-six miles away. Jackson went to the home of Nathaniel Harris, where General Hood and General Whiting already had quarters. He went out to hear Dabney preach during the day, and talked with a guide Dabney had found, who was to show them the roads to Richmond.
In the afternoon, Jackson said cautious farewells to his generals in the Harris house. Late at night, Jackson had Whiting aroused to write out a pass and an impressment order so that he might get relays of fresh horses on the route to Richmond. Quartermaster Harman was to ride with Jackson from Frederickshall. He got firm orders to address Old Jack only as “Colonel,” so that no chance remark might identify him. Mrs. Harris asked Jackson what time he would like his breakfast tomorrow, but the General could not bring himself to divulge his plans, even then. He said he would eat at the usual hour.
It was not an easy ride, fifty-two miles in about fourteen hours. They were forced into a late start by Jackson’s insistence that they wait until 1 A.M., so that he would not break the Sabbath. They avoided crowds and took the most covert route through the city, after entering on Three Chopt Road; few people saw them, and those who recognized the General were so certain that he was still in the Valley that they did not believe their eyes.
Jackson came to Lee’s headquarters in the Dabbs’s farmhouse near Nine Mile Bridge in the midafternoon, confident that his week-long efforts to baffle the enemy had been successful, and that he had taken every precaution to screen the move of the corps. The enemy, he thought, could not dream that he was near. He was wrong.
A Confederate deserter had left Gordonsville at about the time Jackson rode to the east, having divined that Stonewall was heading for Richmond. This man was picked up by Union horsemen on June twenty-fourth at Hanover Court House, and he—nameless in the official records—provided McClellan with the news. The deserter reported Jackson near Richmond with his entire army from the Valley, ready to strike the Union flank. He estimated Jackson’s strength at fifteen brigades. A telegram to Washington brought a flurry of new orders, and the Federals attempted to prepare a reception. Jackson was to find that all things, including military security, were different here in the east.
Jackson was badly worn by the ride and dismounted stiffly, dust-covered, sore and sleepy. He found that Lee was at work and waited for him in the yard, resting against the picket fence, head down. He was slumped there when General D. H. Hill rode up. The grizzled little South Carolinian had been called from his camp near Seven Pines for a conference with Lee. He was surprised to see his newly famous brother-in-law. Jackson, he was positive, had only yesterday been far down the Valley, confronting Banks and Shields; heavy reinforcements had gone to him. Yet here he was. The two had not met since Jackson had earned his exalted reputation in the Valley. They passed warm greetings.
Things were bad in these parts, the barbed-tongued Hill told Jackson. His men had been falling back before McClellan’s army, which was all but numberless. There was little food; for the last three days his men had been issued nothing but corn in the shuck. Several thousand soldiers had fled to Richmond on pretext of sickness. And the very cannon were untrustworthy; the scoundrels of the ordnance department used brittle metal in gun barrels, and shells often burst in the mouths of artillery pieces.
Jackson made little reply to his outspoken friend, whom he had known so well for so many years. Hill was in some ways like Jackson—a schoolteacher who had married one of the Morrison girls; a man of strong religious bent; a firm warrior for temperance who had ordered liquor poured out when found in his camps. He was now fresh from the bloody holding action against McClellan, which had ceased only when the Federals, within sight of the spires of Richmond, had dug in to gather strength for the kill.
Hill and Jackson went in to Lee. The commander in chief, gravely courteous, greeted them and offered refreshments. Jackson took only a glass of milk and downed it in a few gulps. Lee began to explain the plan of assault on the Yankees, though in general terms. It was a bold plan, born of desperation in an effort to stave off a siege of Richmond. Lee offered it calmly, clothed with assurance, as if it were an everyday affair to abandon the capital city by stripping it of troops and, with a force of 85,000 men, to march against the trenches of an enemy of 105,000. But there was none too much daring here for Jackson, who had more than once pressed bolder schemes upon Lee. Old Jack considered with a cold mind.
The other general officers entered, and Lee began to explain in detail. He now faced Jackson, D. H. Hill, Longstreet, and A. P. Hill.
But for A. P. Hill, a year younger at thirty-seven, Jackson was the junior officer in the council; yet he brought to the conference room a prestige the others lacked, even Lee.
The conqueror from the western battlefields was surely not a presence: an inexpressive face, almost hostile with indifference, a beard yellowed with dust; the uniform wrinkled from the road. Yet about him clung his Valley reputation, and there was a delicate note of deference in the air. Jackson wore the greenest laurels of the Confederacy, though as if utterly unaware of them. He was, to this day, the South’s lone invincible general.
Old Jack watched Lee closely. He had not seen the commander for months, though they had exchanged messages almost daily. His admiration of the older man was sincere; he had not joined the gossip about the ascent of the staff officer, the paper-shuffler, the engineer.
Lee was fifty-five. He had held command for just three weeks, and had fought no battle beyond direction of the final hours of the inconclusive action at Seven Pines. He was, Jackson knew, intimately influential with President Davis; a man of ability and charm who would have little difficulty with his officers. There was a gentle authority in his voice. His manner of offering his plan of battle bordered on humility, but Jackson was quick to see its daring of conception. Here was true Virginia aristocracy, too, if a man believed in that: The commander was a son of Washington’s great cavalryman of the Revolution, who had left as an echo behind him, “First in war, first in peace …”
Lee had overcome family shame and bankruptcy, had led a distinguished career in the United States Army, and at last had left the fine ancestral home of his wife to the enemy and come to Richmond to follow his destiny with Virginia. Jackson trusted Lee. If the role of lieutenant was uncomfortable to him, Old Jack did not reveal it.
Jackson had no fear of Lee’s background, either as aristocrat or Old Army engineer. He had marked the vision of the commander during the Valley campaign, as well as his lack of that false pride which had already overcome many a Confederate dandy.
Lee had once shown himself to the troops of the army he had begun to call, somewhat grandly, the Army of Northern Virginia. One sharp-eyed cannoneer had recorded his debut:
“General Lee first appeared before us in citizens’ dress, in white duck with a bob tail coat; jogging along without our suspecting who he was. We thought at first he was a jolly easy going miller or distiller on a visit as a civilian to the front, and perhaps carrying out a canteen of whisky for the boys. He showed himself good-natured … stopping once to reprove, though very gently, the drivers for unmercifully beating their horses when they stalled; and walking about and laughing at one of Artemus Ward’s stories; and kept in a good humor about it the rest of the day.”
Lee spoke as became the man who had lately written, on taking command from the wounded Johnston: “I wish that his mantle had fallen on an abler man, or that I were able to drive our enemies back to their homes. I have no ambition and no desire but the attainment of this object, and therefore only wish for its accomplishment by him that can do it most speedily and thoroughly.”
Jackson listened to Lee, perhaps surprised by the candor with which the commander laid his problem before subordinates, a course Jackson could not have taken. The Valley conqueror was perhaps less attentive than he might have been to the other lieutenants present. All were West Pointers, able soldiers, evidently in high favor with Lee. Longstreet, a captain and Union paymaster when war came; squat, domineering, stubborn, becoming deaf at the age of forty-one. Jackson had known him slightly in Mexico. Red-haired A. P. Hill, hot-tempered and brilliant, had been with Jackson at West Point; he was yet untested in field command. Jackson knew D. H. Hill thoroughly from Lexington friendship. Hill had a tongue noted for its asperity, was nearsighted, wore thick spectacles, and was prone to be intolerant of others, though a thorough soldier.
The other men were aware of the details of Lee’s plan and its development in days of conversation with President Davis. Lee explained for Jackson’s benefit that McClellan’s forces lay roughly along a north-south line, across the Chickahominy River. The northern flank seemed to invite attack. Victory there would pinch off the enemy’s rail transport and force his troops to the south to retreat, or to come from their trenches and fight.
Only details of the plan remained, for the proposal had been argued freely by the generals before Jackson’s arrival. Lee spoke briefly, saying that Jackson’s command was near by and would take part in the attack. He showed Jackson how his Valley troops would push the attack north of the river, coming down from Totopotomoy Creek to the southward, thereby opening the Chickahominy bridges to other units of the army, which would not have to cross in face of enemy fire. He said little more. Lee left the room to attend to other business and left the officers to confer. Longstreet led the discussion.
Jackson did not challenge the decision that his corps should take the longest road (his men now lay at Beaver Dam Station, fifteen miles northwest of Richmond) and assume the most difficult objective. He was to march through strange country to Ashland, a railroad station just north of Richmond, and then move southward, advising General Branch of A. P. Hill’s division, which would be the unit on his right. The word would be passed in turn to the other divisions, lying still farther south and east. The divisions were to move eastward in echelon, on roughly parallel roads, and strike the enemy simultaneously, or almost so. Jackson’s objective lay near the village of Mechanicsville, where the council anticipated little resistance. Hill and Jackson, united, would push from there toward Cold Harbor and McClellan’s exposed line of supply. That would enable Longstreet to move up, over a bridge made safe by Jackson’s advance.
Jackson frowned in concentration, for though he had pored over the maps of this region with Hotchkiss, he was not familiar with the details; and Hotchkiss was gone, sent back to the Valley to more map making. Jackson was by no means at home with the terrain of which the others spoke so familiarly, but he made no protest.
When could he move? How soon could the Jackson troops pass Ashland, ready to march down against Mechanicsville? Perhaps in memory of the open Valley country, confident of the ability of the Foot Cavalry, Jackson said, “Tomorrow.”
That meant that battle could be given on the following day, which would be June twenty-fifth. But Longstreet demurred. He knew well the kinds of roads Jackson was to meet: narrow, screened with jungles of luxuriant swamp growth, cut by sluggish streams, meandering and confusing. He proposed that Jackson allow two days for the movement. Jackson agreed.
Lee returned to hear Longstreet’s summary of their decision and nodded approval. He promised a set of written orders covering the movement of the four big divisions. It was almost dark when the officers left the Dabbs’s farmhouse, and Jackson began the long ride back to meet his men.
On his way, he ran afoul one of his well-trained pickets, who refused to let him pass and engaged in a terse exchange with Old Jack, the soldier admitting only that he belonged to “Company D, Southern army.” The soldier scolded Jackson for his inquisitiveness, until a companion recognized the General and allowed him to go by.
Jackson reached his troops at Beaver Dam Station in a downpour of rain. Things were in a state. Major Dabney had fallen ill of some intestinal complaint, and even before his illness had been unable to cope with the scattered troops. The column was strung out almost halfway to the Valley; twenty miles and more separated the lead and rear brigades, and the wagons were everywhere. His other officers were weary for lack of sleep, and Old Jack himself, all but sleepless for two nights, was on the verge of collapse. If he saw anything dangerous in the condition of his division, however, he said nothing. He gave no orders for furious haste.
Jackson fell into bed, leaving his mud-soaked uniform and boots at the fireside. He had been a bit feverish, but it did not seem serious, and this was known only to Jim. His miserable columns pulled themselves together in the rain as he slept, but made little progress in preparation for the first big assault of the combined armies. The eastern rivers rose, the swamps filled, and a few miles away waited the massive lines of the enemy.