STRANGE FAILURES
The boggy country below Richmond swarmed with the 105,000 Federals and their hangers-on. It was the most grandly equipped army of history, and there was scarcely room for it between the York and the James. With the army was an exotic party: the Prince de Joinville, of the house of Orleans and pretender to the French throne; and his nephews, the Duc de Chartres and the Comte de Paris. They were on McClellan’s personal staff, and serious soldiers they were.
The prince was astonished that the amateur soldiers of the United States were paid the handsome sum of thirteen dollars a month and would one day draw pensions of about forty francs monthly, this for soldiers who by European standards were capricious and undependable, and so well fed that they usually threw away most of their rations. It did not look like war to the prince.
It was like a gay fete, he thought, with the observation balloons in the air, bands playing, signal flags flapping from the flowering trees. In the soft nights the ceaseless songs of mockingbirds literally wore out the Frenchman. And he marveled at New York newspapers sold on the battlefields, and at the signs of embalmers advertising their grim work.
The army shocked an American, as well, for some Federal officers lived like emperors. George A. Townsend, a gifted reporter with the invaders, wrote of one who “furnished one of the deserted mansions, and brought a lady from the North to keep it in order. He drove a span that rivalled anything in Broadway, and his wines were luscious. His establishment reminded me of that of Napoleon III, in the late Italian war, and yet, this man was receiving merely a colonel’s pay. My impression was that everybody at White House robbed the government, and in the end, to cover their delinquencies, these scoundrels set fire to an immense quantity of stores and squared their accounts thus: “Burned on the Pamunkey, June 28, commissary, quartermaster’s and hospital stores, one million dollars.”
Over this country, a few days earlier, Jeb Stuart and his troopers had dashed in their most spectacular exploit, a ride completely around McClellan’s army. They had discovered the Federal flank in the air north of the Chickahominy, where an exposed segment of the army was commanded by the dandy of the Federal forces, General Fitz John Porter.
Now, in the last days of June, the renowned aeronaut of the Union army, Professor S. T. C. Lowe, a veteran of seven thousand ascensions, floated in his balloon, Constitution, over the swamps, sending down by wire descriptions of the terrain and the enemy. Townsend rode with him in the swaying car:
“The Chickahominy was visible beyond us, winding like a ribbon of silver through the ridgy landscape. Far and wide stretched the Federal camps.… As we climbed higher … Richmond lay only a little way off … with the James stretching white and sinuous from its feet to the horizon. We could see the streets, the suburbs, the bridges, the outlying roads, nay, the moving masses of people. The Capitol sat white and colossal on Shockoe Hill.… The fortifications were revealed in part only, for they took the hue of the soil, and blended with it.… The Confederates were seen running to the cover of the woods … but we knew the location of their camp fires by the smoke.…
“A panorama so beautiful would have been rare at any time, but this was thrice interesting.… Across these plains the hordes at our feet were either to advance victoriously, or be driven eastward with dusty banners and dripping hands. Those white farmhouses were to be the receptacles for the groaning and the mangled; thousands were to be received beneath the turf of those pasture fields; and no rod of ground, on any side, should not smoke with the blood of the slain.”
Confederate cannon fire drove the balloon from the sky. This was one of the final enemy glimpses of Richmond until the dark months near the end of the war.
The entangled woodland over which the Federal balloonists gazed concealed the first moves in Lee’s huge effort to drive the enemy from Richmond’s gates. To the south of his line before the city, Lee was leaving General Magruder with little more than a token force, to hoodwink McClellan and hold him from the city—while the bulk of Confederate strength, in the divisions of A. P. Hill, Longstreet and D. H. Hill, were passed to the northward, where, at the appearance of Jackson, they would be ready to join the attack from the left flank.
The morning of June twenty-fourth brought little movement by the conquerors from the Valley. Jackson slept through several rainy hours, for he had got less than ten hours’ sleep in the past four days and nights. His command advanced a short distance, but in the front were enemy pickets, and creeks where men had to be put over on logs.
In the thronging of the army getting under way, no one seemed to think it singular that Jackson, worn by unusual service, should be responsible for the pivotal movement which was to launch the attack, though he had the longest route to cover and was, of all Lee’s lieutenants, the least familiar with the country.
On this Tuesday, Jackson had to place his trust in new guides, one of whom was Captain C. W. Dabney, brother of the ailing reverend; another was Lincoln Sydnor, a native of the region, who rode with Ewell’s portion of the Jackson column. Jackson was to miss Hotchkiss nonetheless, for despite the intensive training of his mind over the years, he had never been able to envision the full possibilities of a military landscape until he had seen it himself. And all Confederates had reason to complain of their maps this week. D. H. Hill remembered bitterly: “The map furnished me (and I suppose the six other major generals had no better) was very full in regard to everything in our own lines; but a red line on the east side of the Chickahominy and nearly parallel to it, without any points marked on it, was our only guide to the route.”
General Taylor, though he was to make most of the coming marches in an ambulance, could complain as well: “Confederate commanders knew no more about the topography of the country, the whole of it within a day’s march of the city of Richmond, than they did about Central Africa … we were profoundly ignorant … without maps, and … nearly … helpless.”
When Jackson got out of bed on June twenty-fourth, his men were leaving Beaver Dam Station, with almost forty miles to go before reaching their objective on the Federal flank—this a precise spot on the map, Hundley’s Corner, a village south of Totopotomoy Creek. The men were already learning in the rain-swept morning that the Valley marches had not held such terrors after all. They went through blind thickets at the roadside, with soft soil sucking at their boots; there were Yankees, insects, and, despite the rain, exhausting heat. Even Lincoln Sydnor was at a loss, for the enemy had cut so many new roads in the tangle that he lost his landmarks and led the column out of its way.
General Ewell cursed Sydnor so vehemently that Jackson, riding up, was forced to calm him. Ewell had threatened hanging for the guide because the heavy guns had to be wheeled about into the proper path, with long, hard labor. During the day, perhaps at the home of Henry Carter, where he stopped with some staff officers, Jackson read a memorandum of Lee’s order describing how the forces of Jackson, the Hills and Longstreet would move toward the enemy. He had this reduction, in writing, of the decision of the council of war:
Maj Gen Jackson to be in position on Wednesday night on the Hanover Ct. Ho. Road, or near that road, about half way between Half Sink Bridge, and Hanover Ct. Ho.…
Gen Jackson will commence his movement, precisely at 3 o’clock Thursday morning, and the moment he moves, send messengers to Gen Branch, who will immediately move himself.…
The order continued to specify how passage of word from Jackson to Branch to A. P. Hill would set the army in motion, and how the units, joining in the vicinity of Mechanicsville, would make the line of the enemy untenable. In the council of war, and in Lee’s headquarters, these precautions must have seemed substantial safeguards against failure of the scheme of attack. But by now Jackson, far out in the jungle country, could see that the timetable would be difficult to meet. Lee brought a slight complication with an order to Jackson during the night which gave him a somewhat longer route. Old Jack was still depended upon to turn Beaver Dam Creek and pry the Federals from their forbidding rifle pits so that a bloody frontal assault would not be necessary. No one knew just when Jackson was expected to reach the creek. Despite mounting difficulties, it was yet impossible to foresee that the army, split into awkward divisions, would fail its first great test in co-ordination, and that the resulting breakdown in command would exact heavy penalties.
General Taylor, riding near Jackson, was complaining of swamp fever: “I suffered from severe pains in the head and loins, and … found it impossible to mount my horse; so the brigade marched under the senior colonel.… I had scarce consciousness to comprehend messages.” But if Jackson felt any such illness as was claiming hundreds in each army, he made no complaint.
The next morning, Jackson looked out into more rain, though by now just a drizzle, and the roads seemed to be better. The men were sleepy and slow, however. The Reverend Dabney thought the officers incompetent slugabeds, dulled by “julep-drinking.” He recalled: “The brigade commanders would not or could not get rations cooked, their own breakfasts and their men under order earlier than an hour after sunrise.” Yet Jackson’s column somehow made more than twenty miles on this day, and by nightfall, weary and wet, camped at Ashland. Jackson was late and had seven miles to go before crossing the Virginia Central Railroad, but he saw he could not push farther tonight and let the men fall out of ranks. At sunset, he was joined by Stuart.
The cavalry chief was to cover the flank of the advance with two thousand troopers and a battery of guns. Old Jack was pleased to see Stuart, and as the two consulted at the roadside, the passing Valley troops cheered. The picture of the unkempt Jackson conversing with the knightly Stuart was striking to several observers; and the contrast between Sorrel and his dusty rider and the cavaliers of cavalry officers in gray, with cocked hats, black plumes and high boots, made an impression to outlast battle memories.
There had been faint uneasiness at Lee’s headquarters during the day, which passed without word from Jackson. All else was well. The Hills and Longstreet were nearing their objectives, having stolen away from the front lines with elaborate ruses to lull McClellan.
McClellan’s position of this day was not due to his carelessness alone. He had as many troops as seemed likely to perform well in such country, but he had been complaining to Washington that Secretary of War Stanton had willfully withheld the troops of General McDowell from him. McClellan thus thought that he lacked the proper reinforcements. Tonight the Federal general sent out a command instructing his officers that the “true field of battle” was the Union trenches. In short, he had no idea of attacking the Confederates, though this possibility was a matter of some concern at Lee’s headquarters on this day. The day passed without alarm on the part of the enemy.
At Ashland, Jackson was in a testy mood by the end of the day. Union cavalrymen had driven in Stuart’s pickets; telegraph lines from the town had been cut; the corps was still short of its objective. General Winder got the full benefit of Jackson’s temper when he came with other brigadiers to report.
“You must have your men cook and be ready to start at dawn,” Old Jack said.
“Impossible,” Winder said. “My baggage train is far back.”
“General Winder, it must be done,” Jackson barked, and even the Reverend Dabney thought the commander “scarcely courteous.”
Jackson sought to help make up lost time by changing the hour of start from 3 A.M. to 2:30 A.M., and told his brigadiers to have rations cooked overnight. He sent Lee a note on his planned time of departure and added that high streams and burned bridges had delayed him. He had hardly sent this message when he had one from Lee, suggesting that Jackson divide his forces for tomorrow’s march so that one of his columns might more quickly join General Branch.
Late at night, generals Ewell and Whiting went to Jackson’s quarters, asking permission to change their routes for the march.
“Let me think over it,” Jackson said, and as he compared their suggestion with the latest order from Lee, the officers left him. Outside, Ewell squealed:
“Don’t you know why Old Jackson wouldn’t tell us right off? He’s going to pray over it first.”
A few moments later, when he returned for a forgotten sword, Ewell saw his prophecy borne out. He opened the door to find Jackson on his knees at the bedside.
Prayers failed to bring an early start for the army; long after sunrise on Thursday, Jackson’s men were still in lines about the wells of Ashland, where water was scarce. The sun already blazed on the steaming countryside.
At eight o’clock the column was in motion on the Ashcake Road, and an hour and a half later—some six hours behind schedule—Jackson crossed the Virginia Central Railroad. He obeyed orders by sending a note to Branch, far down on the right flank, advising him of the crossing. Enemy scouts now appeared in the front, a portent of heavy resistance.
There was no frenzy of haste. Men marched under a cloudless sky, straggling to roadside springs and wells. Jackson, riding with Kyd Douglas, passed the birthplace of Henry Clay, and made some brief admiring comments on the statesman of the Old South. The next stop was in the home of a Dr. Shelton, on the route, where Jackson and Stuart talked over the country ahead.
In the middle of the day, their exact positions and progress unknown to Jackson, the big divisions to the south neared their assigned positions. In their order of proximity to Jackson they were: Branch, then A. P. Hill’s main force, D. H. Hill and Longstreet.
A. P. Hill, at this hour still cautious, had warned Branch: “Wait for Jackson’s notification before you move unless I send you further orders.”
From heights near Mechanicsville, some five miles to the southwest of Jackson’s goal, Lee had set up headquarters. Here the commander in chief waited for the far-flung and intricate operation to move to its climax.
At 3 P.M., Jackson crossed Totopotomoy Creek, drove off enemy cavalry, put out flames on a burning bridge and engaged a Federal battery. Jackson strove to keep the Union guns quiet, evidently to avoid launching the other divisions into premature attack. He found Bradley Johnson of the Marylanders near the stream.
“What’s that firing, Colonel?”
“It’s the enemy, with guns and skirmishers in the thicket.”
“Why don’t you stop them?”
“We can’t do it, without charging or shelling.”
“Well, sir, you must stop that firing. Make them keep quiet.”
Johnson brought up the Baltimore Artillery, or a couple of its guns, and drove off the Federals.
It was from this moment, which seemed so inconsequential, that the “fog of war” was to roll over the day’s fighting, obscuring the exact sequence of events and making impossible the assignment of blame for the lack of precision in Confederate movements.
Jackson and Branch came into contact without Stonewall’s knowledge. Ewell’s advance saw the North Carolina troops of Branch approach in new uniforms, so well-dressed that they appeared to be Yankees, and almost fired on them. But when the regiments joined, sadly for Lee’s plan of assault, neither Branch nor Ewell reported the fact, and thus headquarters was not informed.
Perhaps in this moment of midafternoon, the attack on the Federal line was already blighted. Perhaps Lee’s plan was too unwieldy; perhaps Jackson had been given more than he could accomplish; perhaps poor maps and ignorance of terrain was fatal; perhaps Jackson was just now slow-witted from a touch of fever or lack of sleep.
There was no such conjecture this day. There was fighting on a widely separated front. Ewell sent men toward Beaver Dam Creek in a skirmish line, and they engaged the enemy. Jackson’s column had come to its objective.
At three o’clock, while Jackson was dealing with Federal guns at Totopotomoy, A. P. Hill’s patience snapped. He ordered his men over the Chickahominy, which they passed with ease, and into Mechanicsville. His men trotted into zones of Federal fire in violation of Lee’s orders, for Hill was to move only when he heard Jackson’s guns. Hill later said blandly that he had rushed forward “rather than hazard the failure of the whole plan by longer deferring it.” In recriminations to come, the youthful redhead, notoriously impatient, was to draw bitter criticism for this afternoon’s work.
McClellan was fully prepared to meet Hill’s attack, coming as it did with no flank support, and the scene at Mechanicsville became confused, with many Confederates falling. The men of D. H. Hill and Longstreet now crowded in. No one could tell, in the growing thunder of musketry and cannon fire, just what had gone astray. Lee rode into the front but could make out little. There was no sign of Jackson. And it was about 6 P.M. before Branch, the connecting link, fought his way into Mechanicsville.
Lee could do little to mend affairs on the front. He sent T. W. Sydnor, a cavalry lieutenant, to A. P. Hill, to direct Hill not to launch another forward movement. Hill evidently thought Lee’s order left to his discretion the wisdom of a flank attack. And now, in the twilight, into veritable walls of flame, went the brigades of General Ripley and General Dorsey Pender. Their moments in the open seemed hours, for the lines of rifle pits took a heavy toll.
D. H. Hill saw “a bloody and disastrous repulse … we were lavish of blood in those days.” Nearly every officer in the storming units went down; one Georgia regiment was all but annihilated. Almost two thousand men fell here; a Union officer thought they lay “like flies in a bowl of sugar” on the exposed slope. The butchery was over at nine o’clock.
The enemy had not been shaken along the line of Beaver Dam Creek, and the Army of Northern Virginia had passed its first day of offensive without the aid of Jackson, who was to have led the way. If Old Jack had turned the northern end of the Union line, the Federals could not have held the stream. Perhaps more to the point—if A. P. Hill had obeyed orders, the great losses would not have been incurred.
Lee tried to discover the flaws, and questioned A. P. Hill and Sydnor and other officers, but there was little time, and much to be done for tomorrow. The ranks were torn, but the strength of the army was intact. While wagons groaned into Richmond with the cargoes of wounded, the army prepared for battle once more.
Jackson had reached his designated position at the height of the Mechanicsville storm, and he heard clearly the guns of Hill. It is likely that he thought they signaled nothing more daring than a crossing of the Chickahominy. Old Jack had waited, in any event. It was late, and in his position, with darkness approaching, he could have done little or nothing to save the casualties of A. P. Hill.
D. H. Hill, somewhat petulantly defending Jackson’s role of the day, was to say that “the hooded falcon cannot strike the quarry,” intimating that the Valley chieftain could fight only when independent of superiors. Jackson was to refute that in the coming campaigns. Tonight, the best that could be determined in Lee’s headquarters was that the Valley troops, for some reason, had not accomplished the miracles they had made so commonplace in the western fighting, and that the Federal flank yet held firm.
At daylight on June twenty-seventh, Lee hurled forward his whole army, intending to crush the twenty-five-thousand-odd of Fitz John Porter’s Fifth Corps; there were lingering hopes that McClellan might yet be destroyed.
A. P. Hill’s skirmishers discovered the enemy had gone from Beaver Dam Creek. The Federals had stealthily removed most of the big guns and marched to the rear. The enemy had undoubtedly found Old Jack on their flank in the night—as perhaps Jackson had foreseen—and had abandoned a position thus made useless. Lee pursued into the heavily wooded swamplands. His plan for the chase was to use roads running roughly parallel to the Chickahominy, with Longstreet nearest the river, A. P. Hill next, then D. H. Hill. In the rear of the latter, Jackson was to follow.
Near noon, Jackson’s column collided with that of D. H. Hill; and in the confusion of a sudden meeting, there was firing, with a few casualties.
Stuart and his troopers soon met the Pennsylvania Lancers, a well-tailored enemy regiment known as “the finest body of troops in the world.” Captain William W. Blackford, one of Stuart’s captains, would not forget the clash:
“I felt a little creeping of the flesh when I saw this splendid looking body of men, about seven hundred strong, drawn up in line of battle in a large open field … armed with long poles with glittering steel points … a tall forest of lances held erect and at the end of each, just below the head, a red pennant fluttering in the breeze.
“Stuart quickly threw a regiment into line … and down upon them we swept with a yell, at full speed. They lowered their lances to a level and started in fine style to meet us midway, but long before we reached them the gay lancers’ hearts failed them and they turned to fly. For miles the exciting chase was kept up, the road was strewn with lances.”
The lancers returned to fight later in the afternoon when General Porter, as Townsend saw it, “hurled lancers and cavalry upon the masses of Stonewall Jackson and the Hills, but the butternut infantry formed impenetrable squares, hemmed in with rods of steel, and as the horsemen galloped around them, searching for pervious points, they were swept from their saddles with volleys of musketry.”
Lee and Jackson met for the first time on the field of battle at 1 P.M., near a church east of Beaver Dam Creek. Curious Alabamans of Trimble’s brigade watched them. Jackson saluted, reined short and dismounted. Lee’s grandly dressed staff stared at the strange figure of the army’s most famous field officer, as Stonewall took instructions from the commander. Lee sat on a cedar stump at the roadside, himself looking so undistinguished that the Reverend Dabney had to be told who he was. Jackson listened with his disreputable cap in hand, and soon mounted to ride away. The Alabamans remained to stare at the gold-braided brilliance of the young men who rode with Lee.
By two o’clock, the battle raged in A. P. Hill’s front toward the river, in a wilderness of thickets. Few Federals were in Jackson’s front at this hour. A cultured South Carolina fire-eater, Maxcy Gregg, found himself in the van of Lee’s army, and his men stormed through undergrowth to the site of Gaines’ Mill, where Lee had thought McClellan might make a stand. Gregg found the place unoccupied, and since strong hills lay there, he spread his men along them and waited for the enemy. Gregg began the fighting on the spot which was to give its name to the battle of the day.
When the Confederates finally reached the main strength of McClellan, there was no mistaking it, for a very hurricane of firing tore the woodlands. The Union troops had been waiting in thick cover, a position almost unassailable, in front of which the Rebel divisions were cruelly bled in the early afternoon. While this fighting raged, all but beyond control, nothing had been heard from Jackson on the far left of Lee’s position. Old Jack had not reported since he had left Lee at their private conference. And he now had marching with him a potent force, fourteen brigades, including those of D. H. Hill, his brother-in-law.
In the lengthening hours, Lee watched the troops of Longstreet and A. P. Hill take punishment; still Jackson did not appear. Men in the ranks openly doubted that Stonewall had come down from the Valley. At headquarters there was anxiety even deeper than yesterday’s. Where could Jackson be now?
Not even the lengthy report he would write in the winter to come would answer that question fully. He had been busy since leaving Lee, orienting his troops in the green maze. At three o’clock, it was known, he had been at the Cold Harbor Crossroads with his brigadiers, Ewell, Elzey, Lawton and Whiting. D. H. Hill was ahead of him, waiting near the menacing Federal position at a place known as Boatswain Swamp. Harvey Hill had halted because the enemy guns covered the only road over which he could bring up artillery. Jackson was needed there. That he was delayed could be blamed on nothing but his old habit of secretiveness, which was to him a cardinal military virtue.
Jackson had found a native guide and told him no more than he thought essential—that the army wanted to march to Old Cold Harbor (there was also a Cold Harbor near by). The guide had taken the column four miles astray southward in the swampland, down the shortest road to Jackson’s announced destination. Jackson discovered the error only when he came within sound of guns. They were in the wrong quarter.
“Where is that firing?”
“About Gaines’ Mill,” the guide said.
“Does this road lead by there?”
“Yes. By there to Cold Harbor.”
“But I do not want to go to Gaines’ Mill, I want to go to Cold Harbor, coming in so that the Mill is on the right.”
The guide, becoming vexed, explained that the column should have long ago taken an eastbound road to make a longer circuit—which it could have done with ease if Jackson had not been so close-mouthed. Jackson held his temper. A few moments later, when an officer suggested that the delay of an hour or more might be disastrous to the waiting army, Jackson was able to reply, “No, let us trust that the providence of God will so overrule that no mischief will result.”
Lee was not so trusting. He had sent his aide, Major Walter Taylor, to locate Jackson, and Taylor came upon Ewell in the narrow road at the head of the Valley column. Jackson was toward the rear, but if Lee must have help, Ewell could offer three brigades. After a brief conference, Ewell led the troops of Richard Taylor, Isaac Trimble and Arnold Elzey off the road into confusing woodlands. The men had no idea in what direction they moved; they came in on the flank of A. P. Hill’s desperate men, who shouted to them that certain death waited if they charged ahead. The Valley veterans gave derisive replies and went on toward the enemy. It was impossible for any single regiment to make out the situation, which in general was that the Federals lay along a ridge in this wilderness, between the Confederates and the Chickahominy, and it appeared that nothing could move them.
Ewell seemed everywhere in the strange fighting. When the Fifteenth Alabama ran out of ammunition, Ewell himself went to see more brought up, and sent in support the Fourth Texas, men who came in at a crouching run through the swamp, like turkey hunters. When it seemed that Ewell’s men must fall back, one regiment after another being torn and unable to move forward in one continuous line, reinforcements came. Lawton’s brigade of Georgians—men with new rifles from home, three thousand strong, not yet blooded—struck hard. There was a good deal of shouting at sight of them. Some Marylanders plunged forward at about the same time, though in one corner a curious diversion caught hundreds: a soldier waved aloft bundles of mail from home, and men crowded about him while charging infantry passed.
Ewell’s columns charged through a ghostly dust cloud in a field of stubble, and hundreds more died there as the sickly sun began to set. It was all but dark when Ewell led the final charge against the Federal line. Here at last the Confederate line was straightened out and drove the enemy. Before the guns had ceased, the lanterns of doctors and burial parties bobbed in the thickets.
Jackson had begun to work swiftly as Ewell attacked. He sent a message to Lee by Captain Boswell, reporting that the Valley men had closed on the enemy flank; this was soon apparent to all by the swelling of fire. Kyd Douglas said that he never again heard such a heavy volume of musketry. At sound of it, officers rode down the lines of other divisions, yelling that Jackson had struck. There were cheers in the storm of sound.
Jackson conferred with A. P. Hill and then D. H. Hill and was aware of the situation on their fronts. As Ewell’s battle raged, Douglas noted, Jackson went to the region of heavy fighting: “At that moment someone handed him a lemon … immediately a small piece was bitten out of it and slowly and unsparingly he began to extract its flavor and juice. From that moment until darkness ended the battle, that lemon scarcely left his lips except to be used … to emphasize an order. He listened to Yankee shout or Rebel Yell, to the sound of musketry … to all the signs of promise or apprehension, but he never for an instant lost his interest in that lemon.”
Once Jackson paused, his face as calm as ever. “I think I never had a better lemon.” He held the fruit until Sandie Pendleton came up to explain that a vast yell carrying through the forest came from the Stonewall Brigade, which Winder had taken into the swamp on a pell-mell charge. Jackson then tossed away the lemon.
“We soon shall have good news from that charge,” he said. “Yes. They are driving the enemy.”
The day had already cost fearfully in both officers and men. The Louisiana Tigers, for the first time, had been driven back and broken. And Major Rob Wheat was dead.
To the last, Wheat had asked for Jackson at each passage of a staff officer and sent a blessing to “The Old General.” That day Douglas had seen Wheat’s last meeting with Jackson.
“General, we are about to get into a hot fight,” Wheat said. “It’s likely many of us may be killed. I want to ask you for myself and my men not to expose yourself.… Just let me tell them that you promised not to expose yourself and then they’ll fight like—er—ah—Tigers!”
Jackson shook hands with Wheat, thanking him. “Just like Wheat,” he said to a staff officer. “He thinks of the safety of others. Too brave ever to think of himself.”
Wheat was soon dead under Union fire, and officers reported that as he died he asked if Jackson had escaped harm and said a prayer for the General.
One of the day’s delays under Jackson grew from a shortage of staff officers. In the instant that Old Jack found Ewell was engaged, he had to send simultaneous messages to Whiting and Winder that they must move up in echelon and come between Ewell and D. H. Hill into the developing line of battle. He sent his quartermaster, John Harman, with the message. Harman was a wagoner and not a scholar, and in passing the order to Whiting, he became confused and managed to give the impression that Whiting was to remain just where he was. Whiting’s understanding was not improved by his feelings toward Jackson at the moment. It was Whiting who had felt Old Jack’s wrath after the collision with D. H. Hill’s men in the morning.
At any rate, Whiting did not move, and thus Winder could not, for the road was barred by troops, and Ewell suffered alone. The troops must soon get into line if the day was to be won. The Reverend Dabney stepped into the breach. He had overheard the conversation between Jackson and Harman, and he shrewdly suspected that Harman needed an interpreter for the phrase “in echelon.” Dabney went to Whiting as soon as he could finish his own errand and asked if the instructions had come through. Whiting growled, “Yes. That man has been here with a farrago of which I could understand nothing.” Dabney urged Whiting to attack at once and save Ewell’s men. Whiting’s brigade moved. It was now that the big advance began.
Jackson met Lee in a roadway. The commander in chief had no rebuke for Jackson’s tardy attack. Instead:
“Ah, General. I am very glad to see you. I had hoped to be with you before now.”
Jackson mumbled something that could not be heard and jerked his head.
“That fire is very heavy,” Lee said. “Do you think your men can stand it?”
“They can stand almost anything. They can stand that.”
Lee talked of his plan for battle in the short remaining daylight, and Jackson went into the perplexing area of fields and pine groves and swamp thickets to watch over the vital left flank.
After five hours of heavy fighting, at a cost it could ill afford to pay, the Army of Northern Virginia had at last concentrated and was moving forward as a unit. All the divisions now surged ahead. Jackson sent his brigadiers a dramatic order: “This affair has hung in the balance long enough; sweep the field with the bayonet.”
The Federals broke, first where Hood had swept in with his Texans (the First Texas lost about six hundred of its eight hundred men; the Fourth Texas lost all field officers, and ended under command of a captain). As darkness closed in, Lee held most of the field.
The reporter Townsend saw the retreat: “An immense throng of panic-stricken people came surging down the slippery bridge. A few carried muskets, but I saw several wantonly throw their pieces into the flood.… Fear, anguish, cowardice, despair, disgust were the predominant expressions.… A horseman rode past me, with blood streaming from his mouth and hanging in gouts from his saturated beard … black boys were besetting the wounded with buckets of cool lemonade. It was a common occurrence for the couples that carried the wounded on stretchers to stop on the way, purchase a glass of the beverage, and drink it.”
In the Confederate rear, a group of fifteen or twenty prisoners moved, almost jauntily. One called to bystanders, “Gentlemen, we had the honor of being captured by Stonewall Jackson himself.” The General, exposed during the bewildering engagement of the two huge armed mobs, had come upon these men in a road and impetuously charged them, ordering their surrender.
At night, having played a major, if belated, role in the concentration of the army for its first major thrust, Jackson visited Stuart. He ordered the cavalryman to go forward at daylight and to try to reach the White House, the home of W. H. F. Lee, now used as McClellan’s headquarters. The two daring commanders schemed to capture the Union general and all his staff.
Jackson then went to Selwyn, the home of the Hogan family, where he met Lee and Longstreet. Lee sent a victory message to President Davis, giving credit to the Lord for the saving of Richmond, in a phrase Jackson might have used: “Profoundly grateful to Almighty God.”
The generals talked over the terrible day, whose casualties were not fully known to them. Longstreet thought there had been more brave deeds on this field than on any other of the war. Lee had made general plans for the next day: He would pursue McClellan wherever the trail led.
Jackson left for his own headquarters. He found many of his ablest officers among the thirty-seven hundred casualties of his division. Among the dead were colonels Isaac Seymour of the Louisianans, Sam Fulkerson of the Third Brigade, and J. W. Allen of the Second Virginia. General Elzey had a painful head wound. In all, the army had lost eight thousand; ten colonels were dead, and many others wounded.
Deep among the Chickahominy swamps tonight, General McClellan sat in the White House, his small frame tense with anger. He wrote to Secretary Stanton, now in disregard for the consequences:
I now know the full history of the day. Our men did all that men could do, but they were overwhelmed by vastly superior numbers.
I again repeat that I am not responsible for this, and I say it with the earnestness of a general who feels in his heart the loss of every brave man who has been needlessly sacrificed today.
If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington.
You have done your best to sacrifice this army.
A grave misconception had heightened McClellan’s anger. His spies, led by the far-famed Allan Pinkerton, had convinced him that Lee’s army outnumbered him, almost two to one.
In the uncertain lantern light the Federal general saw that it was twenty minutes after midnight, and he signed the message which contained all the defiance and contempt of a military man for civilian meddlers, and sent it on to Washington, where it was to play a part in changing his destiny and that of the Union.
On Saturday morning, June twenty-eighth, Lee allowed the army to stand on the line of battle; and while men attended the wounded and buried the dead, he attempted to puzzle out the intentions of McClellan. At 10 A.M., he had Jackson send Ewell’s division along the river, pushing as far as Bottom’s Bridge, to see what had happened in the front. The news from there was exciting. The enemy had burned the Chickahominy bridges they had built with such patience and everywhere had abandoned rich stores. Ewell’s men were feasting on desiccated vegetables and fresh Java from Union supply dumps. The smoke of burning magazines lay over the swamps.
Jackson gave part of the morning to riding over the field of last night’s fighting. One officer thought he looked “brisk enough” today. When Old Jack came to the littered spot where the Texans of Hood had hit the enemy, he spoke as he seldom did: “The men who carried this position were soldiers indeed.”
The roads were dry, and dust clouds hung over the lowlands. It was clear that McClellan was on the move, but Lee could not yet know just where. The problem was fairly simple, but needed time to unravel:
Lee could not afford to uncover Richmond to give chase; yet he must soon strike, or permit McClellan to escape altogether. The Federals might be moving down the Peninsula toward York-town, whence they had come; they might also be moving southward to the James, to make a major change in the line of assault upon Richmond. Lee had shrewdly concluded that McClellan would take the latter course long before reports of scouts made that clear. In the evening, Lee went to bed in the home of a Dr. Gaines, where Longstreet was already sleeping. Orders were ready to open the pursuit in the morning.
Early on Sunday, the divisions of Longstreet and A. P. Hill crossed the Chickahominy, moving southward, hurrying after the enemy. Lee’s plan was now to strike McClellan as he moved, for the enemy had to cross a vast bog known as White Oak Swamp, on the fringes of the river, which made a large bend in the area. The Federals must take their endless trains over the narrow swamp roads and cross the river once more. Lee reasoned that he might fall upon the retreating column today if he could drive down the riverside.
Two of Longstreet’s engineers had found Federal trenches on the Chickahominy empty, even the big fortifications at Golding’s Farm, which was the keystone of the enemy line. It was clear that McClellan had given up hopes of taking Richmond in this campaign, or at least over this route. Lee made hurried plans to trap The Little Napoleon in or near White Oak Swamp.
Jackson’s column, near the ruined Grapevine Bridge, was ordered to repair the structure, cross the river, drive down the right bank and give support to General John Magruder. There might be battle at the swamp.
There were diversions today. The Federals, bent upon destroying what they could not salvage, plunged many locomotives over a broken bridge into the Chickahominy, most of them loaded with ammunition, which exploded the boilers in the sluggish stream and sent vast echoes over the bottom lands. Stuart and his riders found unusual loot.
Cavalrymen made lemonade by the barrel and pawed among cases of fine wines and liquors. Some eggs, packed in barrels of salt, had been roasted in the fires, and men broke open the kegs, picking out the tasty eggs. Colonel W. H. F. Lee, who went in with Stuart, had trouble with his riders; before he was aware of it, scores of them were roaring drunk. Lee cannily spread the rumor that the liquor was poisoned by the enemy. Blackford saw “bottles of champagne and beer and whisky … sailing through the air, exploding as they fell like little bomb-shells; while the expression of agony on the tipsy faces of those who had indulged too freely, as they held their hands to their stomachs, was ludicrous in the extreme.”
The troopers were busy all day. Among their chores was destroying a few surviving locomotives, which they did by firing cannon into the boilers at short range. They also came upon Yankee newspapers which commented sagely on McClellan’s strategy of “changing base,” and the cavalrymen joked over that. A dog fight, when one of the combatants ran, drew cries of, “Look at him changing his base!”
At the Grapevine Bridge, Jackson was about the more mundane task of repairing his bridge so that he might cross the river. The Reverend Dabney was charged with repairs, but his party of soldiers moved so slowly that Jackson impatiently called in Major Claibourne R. Mason, one of the group of civilian specialists the General had gathered about him. And Mason, though he was not an engineer, quickly raised a stout bridge. Still, it was midaftermoon when Jackson himself crossed the incompleted structure and rode to the abandoned headquarters of McClellan in the Trent House. He was here in the late afternoon when General Magruder, after some confusing hours, attacked the Federal rear guard at Savage’s Station. This action took place not far from Jackson, but he made no effort to join it since his troops had not yet come over the bridge.
Magruder’s attack, limited as it was, stood as the only substantial action of the day. The army had advanced only five miles, giving the enemy another day of grace to cross the dangerous swamp.
Lee did not hide his chagrin in a dispatch to Magruder, who had been in the position of attack and thus drew the commander’s blame: “I regret very much that you have made so little progress today in the pursuit of the enemy.… We must lose no more time or he will escape us entirely.”
Lee also sent Major Walter Taylor to talk with Magruder. Handsome John told Taylor with some vehemence the curious story of Jackson’s behavior during the day:
General D. R. Jones, one of Magruder’s officers, had expected Jackson’s aid in the attack on Savage’s Station, since their troops held adjoining positions. Before the attack, Jones sent to Jackson for assurance of his co-operation, and got the reply: “I have other important duty to perform.” It went into the official records, and some were to hazard the guess that Jackson could not fight at this moment, since he had to say his prayers. There was a more logical explanation.
When the messenger from Jones approached him, Jackson was making an effort to get troops over the river, and making little progress. He saw that he was three miles from the scene of skirmishing and could not move his brigades in time. Therefore, in his customary mood of reticence, he probably told the messenger of his “other important work”—meaning the essential river crossing.
Whatever the explanation, it remained that Jackson had not spent a profitable day. His orders had been simple and clear, and his task did not appear too difficult; once more the Valley army had failed to shine. Lee might have justly asked himself if Stonewall seemed still in the grip of the inexplicable malady which had slowed him at Gaines’ Mill and immobilized him at Mechanicsville. From headquarters, it seemed that Old Jack had been a long time at repairing his bridge, and that once he crossed the river, he was in superb position to pounce on Savage’s Station, a short distance away.
The entire army had achieved little; there was no brilliance to report. Longstreet and A. P. Hill had waited in reserve for developments which had not been forthcoming.
Jackson spent an uncomfortable night. He went to sleep in the open soon after dark, having issued orders to march before dawn. Near midnight, a torrential rain burst over the Peninsula, ruining Jackson’s sleep. He rose and prepared to work through the night.
At 3:30 A.M. he appeared at Magruder’s headquarters, and “Prince John,” Jackson’s old commander of the Mexican War, seemed pathetically happy to see him. Jackson gave assurances that the Valley troops would be moving at daylight, and Magruder could now bring himself to rest. His report read: “I then slept an hour—the first in forty-eight.”
The enemy retreated in the night and the last dark hours found Lee working, determined on a course of action. He would seek to get between McClellan and the James and strike him heavily. Then, perhaps, not only would Richmond be saved. Perhaps the war hung in the balance, as well.