THE DEBUT OF GENERAL POPE
On July twelfth, Lee had learned that a new Federal offensive was under way in northern Virginia, for General John Pope had taken Culpeper, introducing a grim method of waging war. Pope intended to live off the countryside and to scourge it; there were already tales of depredations in his wake. Lee moved with a swiftness indicating that the high command had long since reached a decision. He told Jackson to march immediately to the northwest.
Jackson was to take his men, including Ewell’s division, and go as far as Gordonsville, if possible. Lee expected a blow at the enemy but he left that to Jackson’s discretion. The orders were delivered on July thirteenth, and the following day found Jackson on the move. The Valley troops left behind many of their comrades, as well as the problem of defending Richmond against McClellan.
The first day’s march ended abruptly in a rainstorm, from which Jackson took shelter in a hospitable farmhouse. The morning found him in Ashland, where he chose one of a number of breakfast invitations and sat for a time in the parlor of a roadside home, bouncing a little girl on his knee and listening as an older girl played the piano. He puzzled the young lady and his officers, asking, “Won’t you play a piece of music they call ‘Dixie’? I heard it a few days ago and thought it was beautiful.”
The girl protested that she had just sung “Dixie,” the oldest and most popular Southern war song.
“Ah, indeed,” Jackson said. “I didn’t know it.”
At a cottage on the dusty road, Jackson and his staff halted. A middle-aged woman emerged and, at the General’s request for water, brought him a big stone pitcher, without glass or dipper. Old Jack turned it up and drank for a long time. The woman, noting the air of respect the men had for this unprepossessing drinker, asked a cavalryman who he was.
The woman, evidently stricken to find herself in Stonewall’s presence, took the pitcher as in a daze, and to the surprise of the waiting thirsty, poured the water on the ground and disappeared into the house. She returned with a pail and dipper for the others, telling officers that no one else should ever drink from that pitcher; it was to be saved for her children and their heirs forever.
There were days of marching and waiting, with spies and scouts in advance to watch the invaders. One of the scouts was Captain John Mosby, who was sent to Jackson by Jeb Stuart. He was a handsome boy just out of a Federal prison, with a recommendation as “bold, intelligent, discreet.” And Stuart sent a question by Mosby: Had Jackson received the copy of Napoleon’s Maxims Stuart had sent earlier? Old Jack had indeed, but had not opened it, and at his death would leave unread these writings of his military model.
Jackson’s men approached Gordonsville, entertaining themselves with jests about the new enemy commander. Pope had arrived from the Western theater in gusts of oratory, reported to have said, “My headquarters are in the saddle.” Pope denied authorship of the striking phrase but did not halt its circulation. There was a report that Jackson, in reply to Pope, had shouted, “I can whip any man who doesn’t know his headquarters from his hindquarters.” But Kyd Douglas vowed Jackson had said no such thing; Old Jack, instead, had given only a grim smile upon hearing Pope’s declarations, hinting at bloody work ahead.
Pope had in fact, begun pompously. He had addressed his new regiments:
“Let us understand each other. I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies.… I presume I have been called here to pursue the same system.… I hear constantly of ‘taking strong positions and holding them,’ of ‘lines of retreat.’… Let us discard such ideas. The strongest position a soldier should desire to occupy is one from which he can most easily advance against the enemy.”
The army laughed over Dick Ewell’s reported reply: “By God, he’ll never see the backs of my men. Their pants are out at the rear and the sight would paralyze this Western bully.”
Jackson now had to deal with a bullying officer in his own ranks. Officers and men complained to him that General Winder was torturing his troops for the least infraction of discipline. Many men had been “bucked and gagged,” with arms tied beneath their knees and held by stakes, and with naked bayonets placed in their mouths. Jackson ordered an end to the practice, but Winder found other punishments, and Private Casler wrote in anger:
“General Winder would often have some of the men tied up by the thumbs at his headquarters all day for some small offense.
“He was a good general and a brave man, and knew how to handle troops in battle, but he was very severe, and very tyrannical, so much so that he was ‘spotted’ by some of the brigade; and we could hear it remarked by some that the very next fight we got into would be the last for Winder.”
The next fight was not far away.
As they marched farther from Richmond, the troops seemed to improve in morale and to forget the terrible fields of the Chickahominy. Jackson drilled them frequently, and officers were writing home that the army had not been in such fighting trim for many months.
On July twentieth, General Ewell revealed that his spirits were returning to normal, after describing to his sister, Lizzie, the horrors of the Peninsula, where it was “impossible for twenty miles below Richmond to get out of sight and smell of dead horses.” He then wrote of the enemy near by:
“The Yankees are now in Culpeper, and, I learn, are systematically destroying all the growing crops and everything the people have to live on. Sometime they ride into the fields and swing their sabers to cut down the growing corn. They seem bent on starving out the women and children left by the war. It is astonishing to me that our people do not pass laws to form regiments of blacks. The Yankees are fighting low foreigners against the best of our people, whereas were we to fight our Negroes they would be a fair offset. We would not as now be fighting kings against men, to use a comparison from chequers.”
And on a hot day, as Ewell trotted by his troops in a roadway, he gave testimony that Jackson, too, was experiencing a return of the spirit which had moved him in the Valley, and that his mood was one of readiness to meet the enemy.
Ewell passed an army chaplain and asked, “Doctor, can you tell me where we’re going?”
“That question I should like to ask you, General, if it is a proper one.”
“I pledge you my word, Doctor, that I do not know whether we march north, south, east or west, or whether we will march at all. General Jackson simply ordered me to have the division ready to move at dawn. I have been ready ever since, and have no further intimation of his plans. That is almost all I ever know of his designs.”
Jackson was anxious for battle, but for a few days the details of preparation all but overwhelmed him. He did not become less devout, however. A Presbyterian minister, a Reverend Ewing, who took Jackson into his house for a few days, was more impressed with Old Jack’s piety than his military bearing: “There was something very striking in his prayers. He did not pray to men, but to God. His tones were deep, solemn, tremulous.… I never heard anyone pray who seemed to be pervaded more fully by a spirit of self-abnegation.” The army could sense no such spirit in its chief.
This week Jackson got heavy reinforcements. Lee sent him the twelve thousand tough veterans of A. P. Hill, spared from Richmond, though their departure left Lee only fifty-six thousand to face McClellan. Hill came gladly, for Lee had removed him from arrest by Longstreet, saying that it was for the good of the service to halt the quarrel. The young redhead must have been relieved to escape the stern discipline of Old Pete. He could not know that he was approaching an even more uncomfortable squabble.
The coming of Hill was accompanied by a warning from Lee to Jackson which illustrated the extreme candor of the commander’s relation with the Valley conqueror. In a remarkable order, Lee wrote:
A. P. Hill you will, I think, find a good officer with whom you can consult, and by advising with your division commanders as to their movements much trouble can be saved you in arranging details, as they can act more intelligently. I wish to save you trouble from increasing your command.
This scolding was undoubtedly plain to Jackson, though somewhat veiled. Lee was willing to entrust the safety of Virginia’s northwestern border to Old Jack and to give him some twenty-five thousand men for the defense, but found it necessary at this date to instruct Jackson, as if he were a young cadet, in his first lessons of command. Lee was introducing to him an officer he had known since West Point, and recommending him. More, he was warning Jackson that he must not keep secrets from Hill and urging him to abandon his customary reticence and reveal plans to his division commanders. At this order, somehow, Jackson’s ill will seemed to turn toward Powell Hill, as if he were to blame for the lecture delivered by Lee.
The week was a busy one, too, because of a court-martial. Jackson had never given up the affair of General Garnett, whom he had charged with neglect of duty on that cold March Sunday at Kernstown. Through postponements caused by battle, Old Jack had pursued the cause, and Lee had regretfully sent a traveling court with Jackson’s army. It was sitting this week in Ewell’s headquarters. Jackson was also trying, with less success, to push to a conclusion the trial of Colonel Z. T. Conner, who had run from his troops at Front Royal in the Valley campaign.
But Jackson could not give full time even to these matters of such compelling interest to him. The cavalry still plagued him. Since the death of Ashby, and Jackson’s transfer to the Richmond front, the Valley cavalrymen had been more or less independent, and had elected their own officers, as was the practice in other regiments. But now Jefferson Davis intervened. Without consulting Jackson, and spurning the suggestions of Lee, the President named Beverly Robertson, an old West Pointer with a bald head and a flowing mustache, as chief of Jackson’s cavalry. Robertson had seen little active fighting, and he brought with him a taste for the most severe discipline. There was an immediate reaction from the troopers, long accustomed to free and easy ways which not even Jackson had been able to mend in the days of Ashby. There were complaints. The problem was the more difficult for Jackson because he disapproved of Robertson, perhaps because the cavalryman had been thrust upon him.
But now matters reached a climax. On Robertson’s orders, Colonel W. E. (“Grumble”) Jones had taken his Seventh Virginia troopers toward the Rapidan River and had run into Federal cavalry at the village of Orange. Jones was wounded and his men were roughly handled, with ten dead and fifty captured. Robertson had offered no support. Jackson asked Lee to remove Robertson from his command and to replace him with Jones.
The patient reply from Lee was couched in firm paternal tones:
That subject is not so easily arranged, and without knowing any of the circumstances attending it except as related by you, I fear the judgment passed [on Robertson] may be hasty. Neither am I sufficiently informed of the qualifications of Col. W. E. Jones, though having for him high esteem, to say whether he is better qualified.
In short, it was a rebuke, and an ultimatum scarcely concealed. Jackson was to attend to the affairs of his army and leave at rest such problems of command. Even so, Lee had not allowed all of his feeling to creep into the dispatch to Jackson, for he had lately written President Davis an explanation of the affair: “Probably Jackson may expect too much, and Robertson may be preparing his men for service, which I have understood they much needed. With uninstructed officers, an undisciplined brigade of cavalry is no trifling undertaking and requires time to regulate.”
It was an impressive demonstration that Lee, busy as he was with the watching of McClellan on the James and the army of General Burnside at Fortress Monroe, had still a complete understanding of Jackson, his problems, needs and moods; and though he could be inflexibly firm with him, yet gave full rein to the talents of his lieutenant. Lee was in almost constant touch with Gordonsville.
Amid these concerns, Jackson wrote Anna a letter reflecting no difficult moments, but which instead was aglow with confidence and religious joy.
My darling wife, I am just overburdened with work, and I hope you will not think hard at receiving only short letters from your loving husband. A number of officers are with me, but people keep coming to my tent—though let me say no more. A Christian should never complain. The apostle Paul said, “I glory in tribulations!” What a bright example for others!
One affair which he did not appear to bear as a tribulation was the court-martial of Garnett, where he appeared as a stern-faced accuser and took the witness stand, submitting to cross-examination by Garnett.
“What was your plan of battle at Kernstown?” Garnett asked.
“First to defeat the enemy by gaining heights on his right, which commanded his position, pressing on toward Winchester, then turning his right and getting in his rear.”
Garnett, waiting through the reply with the air of a man conscious of his advantage, asked, “Did you communicate this plan to me before or during the action?”
“I did not to my recollection.” Jackson’s voice and face were uncompromising, and by his air he was unconscious of the fact that he was defending one of his unique military principles. The spectacle was enjoyable to listening officers, though Jackson’s stand was scarcely a surprise to them.
For some hours the trial went on, with the generals clashing over details of that battleground of March twenty-third, so intent that they might well have been on the scene this day. The versions of Garnett and Jackson were incompatible, just as were the long written reports each had filed. Garnett had written that Jackson had kept him “entirely ignorant,” as profoundly ignorant “as the humblest private.” Jackson was vindictive, Garnett said, and had treacherously filed secret charges against him, seeking to drive him out of the army. He challenged Jackson’s “motives and truthfulness.” Across the face of Jackson’s charges Garnett wrote the single word “Lie.”
The court was destined to adjourn without a decision, and just now war interrupted. Spies came to Jackson with news from the front, and news of a sort he could not disregard: The enemy was vulnerable. Pope had scattered his force, and though it occupied Culpeper, only a fraction had arrived there. With haste, the Confederates had an opportunity for attack. Jackson suspended the court-martial and issued orders that sent men streaming from the three big camps about Gordonsville. There were a few inconsequential delays.
The army moved in a heat wave; and the baked air soughed in one room where there was genuine consternation at news of the march. There lay General Winder, so ill for the past few days that Dr. McGuire forbade him to go into the field. Winder suffered today, for if Jackson went into battle, he felt that he must rejoin his brigade, whatever McGuire’s orders; on the other hand, if the army was simply changing positions, Winder would be content to lie obediently in bed. In this dilemma he sent young McHenry Howard, a staff officer, to try and find out from Jackson the plans of the army. Howard was reluctant, knowing the fierce defense of privacy which was habitual with Jackson. He went only on Winder’s direct order.
Howard found Jackson kneeling in his room as he packed a carpetbag for the road.
“General Winder sent me to say that he is too sick to go with the command.”
“General Winder sick? I’m sorry for that.”
“Yes, sir, and the medical director has told him he must not go with the brigade. But he sent me to ask you if there will be a battle, and if so, when, and he would be up, and which way the army is going.”
After this nervous utterance, Howard stood as if expecting a lightning bolt. Jackson remained on his knees in deep thought, and smiled at the uncertain boy.
“Say to General Winder that I am truly sorry that he is sick.” He paused. “That there will be a battle, but not tomorrow, and I hope he will be up; tell him the army will march to Barnett’s Ford, and he can learn its further direction from there.”
Howard went from the headquarters as if from the presence of a miracle.
Even as he emerged, troops were moving.
Jackson had sent Captain Blackford of Stuart’s command to scout the enemy, and the horseman returned with a full report of Pope’s strength. Jackson called for him to appear in person. Blackford wrote:
“I found the General in a tent with nothing but a roll of blankets … and two stools and a table. He was seated on one stool and motioned me to the other, asking … me to tell what I had seen. After … a few minutes I perceived he was fast asleep. I stopped and waited for several minutes. He woke up and said: ‘Proceed.’ I did so for a few minutes when I noted he was asleep again so I stopped. He slept longer this time and when he awoke he said … ‘You may proceed to your quarters.’”
On the afternoon of August seventh, two regiments of Federal cavalry were driven from the fords of the Rapidan and fled into Culpeper, reporting a huge Confederate advance. General Pope, thinking this a Rebel feint, placed an entire regiment under arrest for cowardice.
That night, Jackson’s army camped around Orange Court House. When the commander arrived in the village, not finding a house at his immediate disposal, he sat on a stile in a street and soon fell asleep. He was taken to the home of the Willis family near by. Before retiring, Jackson gave marching orders. The army would move at dawn, with Ewell leading, Powell Hill following, and Jackson’s old brigade, now under Winder, as a rear guard. Jackson made changes in the orders, deciding after a further study of his maps to send Ewell on a different road from the other divisions. The army was to reunite at Barnett’s Ford.
The change of plan was a refinement Jackson added to give more protection to his wagon trains. General Hill knew nothing of the change—or later said so. The result was a traffic snarl among marching troops that opened a long feud between Hill and Jackson.
Early August eighth, Hill rose, alert and ready for work. He followed Jackson’s orders, going to the road to which his troops had been assigned. He assumed that troops passing him there belonged to Ewell’s division, as the original orders had specified. After thousands of these men had passed, Hill found that they were Winder’s men instead, and that Ewell was on some other route.
Hill decided that, rather than break into the marching column to take his place, he would await its passage and then put his men behind. Jackson rode up to him in the roadway, and in short tones asked why Hill’s men were not marching. Hill tried to explain. An argument began which lasted most of the day.
Orders went awry. Hill claimed that Jackson sent him word to halt the comedy of errors and return to Orange Court House. Jackson recalled nothing of the sort and said he had twice urged Hill to press forward. In any event, Ewell moved but eight miles, and Hill but one, though their troops were legendary marchers. And while the command fretted, men suffered. Private Casler reported that eight men in ranks dropped dead from sunstroke.
Whatever was to blame for the failure of the army today, Jackson had not given heed to the strong advice of Lee; he had refused to give his confidence to Powell Hill, as he had refused it to others. His inability to share his plans had cost him a long march against the enemy.
Saturday, August ninth, began with few signs of looming battle. At 4 A.M. Jackson had given the insistent Winder formal command of his division, and though this officer remained in an ambulance, he clung to his post.
Caution was in order today, for Jackson knew little of the situation ahead. He did not know to what extent Pope’s command was separated. He was by no means optimistic over his own affairs. Before leaving headquarters, he wrote to Lee:
I am not making much progress. The enemy’s cavalry yesterday and last night also threatened my train.… Today I do not expect much more than to close up and clear the country around the train of the enemy’s cavalry. I fear that the expedition will, in consequence of my tardy movements, be productive of but little good.… The enemy’s infantry, from reports brought in last night, is about 5 miles in front; his cavalry near ours.
The day continued unpromising as Jackson rode through the moving army toward the Robertson River. For once the Federal cavalry was being fought with skill and daring, and Pope had flung the shifting screen of blue riders for as much as twenty miles before him—it was a handicap to which Jackson was not accustomed.
An amusing incident at a ford entertained several officers. Jackson had come up while Old John Harman was empurpling the air with his oaths, trying to push over the wagons by the very power of profanity.
“Don’t you think you could do as well without such cursing?” Jackson asked.
Harman roared. “You think anybody can make a damned set of mules pull without swearing, you just try it, General! Go ahead, I’ll stand by.”
Harman stepped back and Jackson presided over the ford as a lightly loaded wagon splashed across with no difficulty. “You see how easy it is, Major?” he called.
“Wait till one of them damned ordnance wagons comes along!”
At that moment, a huge ammunition wagon jolted into the stream and stuck. Harman shouted, “Better let me damn ’em, General. Nothing else will do.”
Jackson left when another wagon became stuck in the place, saying mildly, “Well, Major. I guess you will have to have your way.”
As he rode from earshot, Harman blasted forth with such torrents of profanity that mules and Negro drivers yanked their wagons from the ford and shortly passed Jackson.
Jackson sent impatient messages to Beverly Robertson, urging him to get information on the enemy. Invariably, he got the surprising reply that Robertson was helpless, since so many of his men were straggling. Jackson became uneasy, and ten miles south of Culpeper, when he had crossed the river, he left his twelve hundred loaded wagons, or most of them, guarded by two brigades under Maxcy Gregg and A. R. Lawton. The rest of the column pushed northward.
Jackson had placed the troops of General Jubal Early in the front; Early had lately recovered from a wound of the Peninsula campaign, and now had General Elzey’s old brigade. Behind him were some of the Louisiana troops, and then Winder’s. Despite the heat of the day, Winder had emerged from his ambulance and now rode with his troops, daring the sun. At the rear, with discipline tense, came the division of A. P. Hill, who seemed determined to give Jackson no opportunity to repeat yesterday’s critical scowls.
Thus the army, twenty-four thousand strong, waded the river and hurried on. Just before noon it was halted. Robertson’s cavalry found Federal cavalry massed on a hilltop. Early’s infantry came up and fired a few cannon at the enemy. This drew an ominous reply—heavy artillery fire from the rear of the blue-coats. The Federals were on hand in some force.
Early halted at a fork of the road on a pleasant landscape, and Ewell soon came up. They saw heavy woods marking a fork of the road, the right turn of which led to Culpeper; the left, to Madison Court House. Small streams ran on either side of the road, crossing the Culpeper fork. On every quarter except the front, cleared land rolled away in meadows and, on the right, extended to the bluff slopes of Cedar Mountain, known locally as Slaughter’s Mountain.
After about an hour of reconnaissance by Early and Ewell, Jackson arrived. This was about 11:30 A.M. He found his two generals at a farmhouse and interrupted Ewell’s play on the porch, where the latter romped with some children.
Jackson spread a map on the porch floor and leaned over it with Ewell. This was a brief scene, for Jackson found the terrain uninvolved. The General was almost casual. He and Ewell saw instantly the importance of Cedar Mountain, the key to this field, from which guns could sweep most of the open space. Jackson wasted no time with orders: Ewell was to send forward two brigades to the right, over the slopes of the mountain toward the Federal flank. Early was to push along the Culpeper road, with Winder’s brigade to his left and rear. Hill’s men were not put into line. These plans were made almost contemptuously, for Jackson did not go up to study the Federal position, nor did he send officers to do so.
As he finished with his map, Jackson lay down on the porch, his old cap over his eyes, and slept for a few moments while the infantry went into position. And, at this example, Ewell found a shady spot and napped himself. It was as if, in the bustle of preparing for battle, Jackson felt a supreme confidence, an absolute disregard for his adversary; as if, having survived the massive battles of the eastern swamps, he would fight in his familiar open country without a thought for the outcome.
As Jackson slept, there was an unusual stir among the enemy in the neighborhood of Culpeper. The reporter, Alfred Town-send, admired the scene as the Union soldiers went out to meet Stonewall:
“Regiments were pouring by all the roads and lanes … thousands of bayonets, extending as far as the eye could reach … enhanced by the music of a score of bands, throbbing all at the same moment with wild music … volunteers roared their national ballads. ‘St. Patrick’s Day’… ‘Bonnie Dundee’… snatches of German sword-songs were drowned by the thrilling chorus of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’… a stave of ‘John Brown’s Body,’ and the wild, mournful music would be caught up by all—Germans, Celts, Saxons, till the little town rang with the thunder.… Suddenly, as if by rehearsal, all hats would go up, all bayonets toss and glisten, and huzzas would deafen the winds, while the horses reared … the masses passed eastward, while the prisoners in the court house cupola looked down, and the citizens peeped in fear through crevices of windows.”
The Federals who approached Slaughter’s Mountain in such martial fashion saw a chilling view: High on a cedar-studded mountainside ahead of them, with cannon smoke dappling the woodland, the Rebels were shelling skirmishers. Thick woods, a small stream, wheat and cornfields lay in front. The line of waiting Federal ambulances was no more depressing than this landscape. A wicked little engagement was under way, with losses mounting. The Confederate guns commanded the open ground in the front.
Jackson had prepared for the arrival of the enemy with his customary reticence. Only Ewell knew his entire battle plan; and some general officers, including Powell Hill, were told almost nothing. General Taliaferro, next in command to Winder, had the most limited orders. One result was that the left wing of the army went forward with Early, near the Culpeper road, and was insecurely placed by Winder, without protection, at the edge of a dense woodland. Perhaps because he was ill, Winder was slow in moving. It was four o’clock before his men were settled, and by then Early, commanding in the center, had his guns firing on the enemy.
One detail which had escaped Jackson because of his failure to study the ground was an extension of the enemy line, which made it impossible for Winder to carry out a contemplated attack from his flank. The officer on the far end of the line here, under Winder, was Lieutenant Colonel T. S. Garnett, of limited field experience. It was in his sector that the army was most vulnerable, though that had not yet become obvious.
An artillery duel rumbled in the hills, and though it seemed a minor skirmish to veterans of the Seven Days, men were killed and guns put out of action. General Winder, who had stripped off his coat in the heat, stood by one of his batteries and was shouting directions when a shell tore through his arm and chest. He fell stiffly to the ground; and as he lay quivering and unconscious, an officer arrived from General Early with the warning that a Federal infantry column was creeping in on the position. The enemy was concentrating in the woods to the left, beyond the wheat field.
Winder soon left the field on a stretcher. His aide, McHenry Howard, leaned over him. “General, do you know me?”
“Oh, yes.” Winder spoke a few wandering words about his wife and children, and a chaplain approached.
“General, lift up your head to God.”
“I do. I do lift it up to him.”
Howard was with Winder when he died at sunset in a roadside grove; Winder’s hand in Howard’s grew colder soon after he had seen the Stonewall Brigade going in to fight; and Winder asked how the battle was going, then died. Jackson and others were to write feelingly of his passing, but Private Casler, who saw Winder on his stretcher, wrote:
“His death was not much lamented by the brigade, for it probably saved some of them the trouble of carrying out their threats to kill him.”
Word of Winder’s fate went quickly to Taliaferro, who realized his own ignorance of a front suddenly entrusted to him. Taliaferro went far to the left, exploring, and found the last of his regiment in the deep woods, exposed to attack. He returned to direct artillery fire upon the gathering Federals as the only feasible means of defense.
Jackson soon learned of the loss of Winder and rode to the spot where Colonel Garnett held the flank. Old Jack had but the briefest of warnings: “Look well to the left flank.” Garnett would be sent reinforcements, Jackson said. These came, and the afternoon wore on in cannon fire, a concentration of wagons and men on the road in the Confederate center, and a spreading confusion. It was late, nearing six o’clock, when the artillery duel ceased at last. A Federal infantry attack broke upon Jackson’s left.
The enemy had never attacked more savagely. It was but a few minutes until the remnants of the far-left Confederate brigades came tumbling in retreat across the lines to the rear, their guns gone. Cheers of the enemy drowned even the heavy musketry on the front, and now the bluecoats came hurtling about the rear of Taliaferro’s men. Three brigades broke, following the example of the frightened men of the left. Reinforcements from Hill’s division were coming up, but if they were not hurried the lines would fall to pieces before Jackson could halt the rout.
Everywhere, in the cornfield, at the edge of the wheat, and along the woodlands of the stream, Federals and Confederates fought hand to hand, with musket butts and bayonets. Jackson saw his big guns endangered by the reckless enemy charge, and had them taken to the rear, a sight which spurred the enemy to even fiercer charges. Whole companies on either side were captured and recaptured within moments. Every commander in Garnett’s brigade was down, dead or wounded. Not even on the Chickahominy had the Valley troops been so near to ruin.
Jackson appeared at the edge of the woods amid his struggling men. A staff officer’s memory was that he shouted these dramatic words: “Rally, brave men, and press forward! Your general will lead you! Jackson will lead you! Follow me!”
He was not to go forward, however, for as he yelled, General Taliaferro insisted that he go to the rear. Jackson stared for a moment at the turmoil of the fight, and then went back, muttering his curious, familiar “Good, good.”
A few men rallied around Jackson, and a semblance of a line gathered to face the enemy. More important, the rapid, almost intuitive, orders he had given at the moment of the Federal onslaught were being carried out with magical effect. The Stonewall Brigade came up from reserve, cutting through the mass. Its heavy fire began to drive off the enemy, and though the new line was short and exposed to counterattack, the Federals retreated toward their ridge. As a new moment of danger arrived, Jackson left the field, galloping back to find some of Hill’s men. He discovered the leading brigade near the front in a woodland, halted as their commander, General L. O’B. Branch, an oratorical North Carolinian, shouted to them a speech of encouragement. Jackson smiled, but there was no humor in his quick, “Push forward, General. Push forward.” This brigade charged and Jackson’s line was joined again. He now watched it advance at a swift trot, and was so pleased that he rode up and down behind the men of Branch, doffing his hat to the troops.
In a twinkling, Jackson had won his victory, and just at the moment of darkness. His day was assured when Ewell, escaping cross fire which had halted him on the left, came across and joined the center. The Federals were on the point of a rout when they crossed the stream. In a last effort to save his infantry, the Union commander threw a handful of cavalry into the open—174 men who dashed down the road against the Confederate mass. There was a flurry of firing, and only seventy-one of the brave bluecoats went back to their lines.
The little battle of Cedar Mountain was over (it was also to be known as Cedar Run and Slaughter’s Mountain). Jackson pushed Hill’s division forward in the road; but except for a moonlight artillery duel, there was little action. A prisoner said that a new Federal corps had been brought up; Jackson called a halt. His army filled the countryside, and there was no house for him, though the staff searched up and down the roads. Wounded occupied every shelter.
Jackson took a cloak from one of his staff and was soon asleep in grass at the roadside. He was offered food but turned away. “No. I want rest. Nothing but rest.”
He had lost about twelve hundred, and had been badly hurt, despite his great advantage in numbers. Only 229 of his casualties were dead, however; half of the losses were in the ranks of Garnett and Taliaferro. The Federal advantage had come from a combination of careless reconnaissance by Jackson, uninformed officers, and the accidents of the field, particularly the death of Winder. The Federals, paying heavily for their rash charge over the open into superior forces, had lost almost a third of their force, some twenty-four hundred casualties.
It had been a near thing for Jackson, despite the foolhardiness of the enemy. Perhaps he had been too casual, even insolent, in launching his own movement before Hill’s men were at hand; perhaps he had not taken precautions on his flanks which were to be expected of a veteran field commander.
Yet in the thick of the fighting, when the enemy had been on the verge of victory, Jackson’s decisions had come like lightning, fashioning a series of orders: Bring up fresh troops. Extend the lines. Launch Ewell’s wing.
Jackson was to say that this battle was the most successful he fought, but in his report to Lee he offered the usual, modest “God blessed our arms with another victory.”
His troops spent August tenth gathering and burying the dead and picking up spoils of the field. Stuart arrived on a tour of inspection of his cavalry. For a few days, at least, Jackson would be assured of keen eyes on the surrounding countryside, and Robertson’s fumbling would not vex him.
There was a truce the next day, to continue burial of the dead, and that night Jackson took his troops back southward over the Rapidan, where the enemy did not follow.
He wrote to Anna August twelfth:
On last Saturday our God again crowned our arms with victory.… I can hardly think of the fall of Brigadier-General C. S. Winder without tearful eyes. Let us all unite more earnestly in imploring God’s aid in fighting our battles for us.… If God be for us, who can be against us? That He will still be with us and give us victory until our independence shall be established … is my earnest and oft-repeated prayer. While we attach so much importance to being free from temporal bondage, we must attach far more to being free from the bondage of sin.
He added to his official report to Richmond:
In order to render thanks to Almighty God for the victory at Cedar Run, and other victories, and to implore His continued favor in the future, divine service was held in the army on the 14th of August.
The battle had shown Old Jack a stern taskmaster toward young Joe Morrison, Anna’s brother, who had recently joined the staff. Morrison had ridden into the most dangerous part of the field and when his horse was shot in the head, the lieutenant was covered with blood. When staff officers warned Jackson that the boy should be sent toward the rear, the General remarked, “His behavior will be an example to the troops—and he will learn discretion after one or two battles.”