INVASION!
Jackson wrote his usual Monday letter to Anna on September first, almost casually enumerating the battles of the past week, “in all of which God gave us the victory.” He still found an intimate relation between the Lord and Confederate triumph, as in the closing of this letter:
It greatly encourages me to feel that so many of God’s people are praying for that part of our force under my command. The Lord has answered their prayers; He has again placed us across Bull Run; and I pray that He will make our arms entirely successful, and that all the glory will be given to His holy name, and none of it to man. God has blessed me through his great mercy.
In that mood, Jackson had fought through the thunderstorm at Chantilly. By the next morning, with the assent of Jefferson Davis, Lee began the move of which Jackson had dreamed since leaving Lexington. Stonewall at last had orders to lead the army across the Potomac into Maryland. They would carry the war to the enemy’s country at last, as Jackson had urged since the first battle of Bull Run. While Pope’s whipped army crowded in the Washington defenses, the war would suddenly shift its scenes. Pennsylvania. New York, perhaps.
Lee was not blind to the condition of his army. The ranks were thin, even with the arrival of the division of D. H. Hill and the additional brigades of Lafayette McLaws and John Walker. The survivors of the bitter campaign against Pope were also worn and hungry, and straggling in such numbers that the commander put officers throughout the region to direct laggards to Winchester, where they were gathered to avoid their capture.
Lee wrote to Davis: “The army is not properly equipped for an invasion.… It lacks much of the material of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being much reduced, and the men are poorly provided with clothes and in thousands of instances are destitute of shoes.… What concerns me most is the fear of getting out of ammunition.”
The stakes were so large, however, as to make any risk seem paltry. The army’s rolls would show about sixty-five thousand men in ranks, but the commander knew that the total was swiftly dwindling as the tattered, hungry men sought food, or slipped away homeward. The word that the army was to invade the North had the curious effect of hastening desertion and straggling. By the thousands men protested that they had not enlisted to invade Yankee territory; they would fight only to defend their homes.
At Jackson’s headquarters, there was such excitement over the march that these matters got scant attention. Richmond would now be freed from the threat of attack; the Federal army would be chased all over the North, seeking to find Lee; the thousands of loyal Southerners in Maryland would flock to join the ranks.
There were changes in command which seemed of little importance just now. General Garnett went out of the division, since Jackson would not consider giving him a brigade. Of Jackson’s fourteen brigades, many were only fragments; eight were now under command of colonels; field officers of experience were suddenly rare, and general officers almost extinct.
Jackson took the road. Along the route, people who gathered to gawk at the troops particularly sought Stonewall, whose fame had spread widely. At times, crowds pressed all about him, as he glared with vexation and embarrassment, and many threw their arms about the neck of his horse. (Sorrel was still missing, having strayed or been stolen the week before. He was soon to return.)
As the army went through the village of Leesburg, a woman in a doorway recognized Jackson, dashed into the road and tossed her scarf before his horse. Jackson halted, at a loss to understand; he stared at the young woman on the sidewalk, and then at the scarf, until a staff officer advised him, “She means you to ride over it, General.”
Jackson turned with a smile, doffed his cap, and, in Anna’s words, “gallantly rode over the scarf.”
At about this time Jackson was also dealing sternly with stragglers, and with the marching problems of A. P. Hill. He gave brief orders that men leaving the ranks were to be shot on sight. And on September fourth, he put Hill under arrest, for the latest in a series of failures to get his men under way according to Jackson’s orders.
The night before, as usual, Jackson had planned an early start; and when he rode out at dawn, he found most of Powell Hill’s brigades were not only out of line; they had not yet broken camp. Jackson found Maxcy Gregg, whose men showed no sign of readiness, and asked him shortly why he had not obeyed orders. Gregg replied heatedly that the men must fill canteens, and the two bristling generals, in a brief argument in a roadway, laid the basis for future enmity.
Jackson rode with an eye on A. P. Hill, who did not take proper steps to halt straggling. After most of an hour had passed, Jackson expected the men to pause for their customary ten-minute rest, but Hill ordered no halt. Jackson, in an obvious temper, gave orders for the leading brigade to halt. Hill rode back to the commander of this brigade, Ed. Thomas, and demanded to know why he had stopped.
“By whose orders did you stop?”
“By General Jackson’s,” Thomas said.
Jackson was sitting his horse at the side of Thomas.
Hill turned to Old Jack. “If you are going to give orders, you have no need of me.” Hill unbuckled his sword and handed it to Jackson.
“Consider yourself under arrest for neglect of duty,” Jackson said.
“You’re not fit to be a general,” Hill snapped, and turned away.
Jackson placed Branch in command of Hill’s men, and the column wound on northward toward the river of the border.
The army looked more like a world congress of chicken thieves than a band of liberators as it began to ford the Potomac into enemy country. They were four days crossing at White’s Ford. The first of them waded the broad stream on September fourth, rolling their trousers to splash along on the firm, pebbly bottom, going no more than hip-deep; miles of men, with bands blaring away as they moved. When Jackson appeared on horseback and took off his cap in salute, cheering broke out. The curious from the Maryland and Virginia sides of the river gathered to watch. The passage of the cavalry was a thrilling spectacle to Heros von Borcke, the flamboyant “Major Bandbox” who was in Stuart’s coterie:
“A magnificent sight as the long column of many thousand horsemen stretched across this beautiful Potomac. The evening sun slanted upon its clear placid waters, and burnished them with gold, while the arms of the soldiers glittered and blazed in its radiance. There were few moments … of the war, of excitement more intense, or exhilaration more delightful, than when we ascended the opposite bank to the familiar but now strangely thrilling music of ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’”
But the army was lamentably ragged and hungry, and from a close inspection was by no means impressive—a stream of scarecrows limping up out of the water, their wagons and guns on leaning, creaking wheels, men wizened by sun and exposure and the long strain of battles, bedeviled by itch and vermin. On the Maryland bank a young boy who watched them go by—Leighton Parks—had this recollection:
“They were the dirtiest men I ever saw, a most ragged, lean and hungry set of wolves. Yet there was a dash about them that the Northern men lacked. They rode like circus riders. Many of them were from the far South and spoke a dialect I could scarcely understand. They were profane beyond belief and talked incessantly.”
Many apprehensive Marylanders expected this noisy horde to fall like a plague upon the fat countryside, but though Lee had resigned himself to feeding the men from cornfields, he imposed a rigid discipline about the town of Frederick, which lay eight miles from the site of the crossing; guards were posted at the town limits, and soldiers forbidden to enter without passes.
Lee had brought only fifty-three thousand across the river, so that at least eleven thousand stragglers fell off behind him. A Charleston newspaper reported that forty thousand pairs of shoes were needed in the army, and the barefoot condition of the troops was to exact penalties in the days ahead. The army settled down near Frederick.
As the regiments rested, there came news that the Federal Government had unhorsed Pope and replaced him with General McClellan. Despite the victories won before Richmond in the spring, the Confederate command received this as sobering news. McClellan was not bold, but he was able. Lee had respect for him.
Jackson found admirers in Maryland. He was brought many gifts, among them a big, bony, powerful gray mare, which was to substitute for the still-missing Sorrel. When he mounted the mare, Old Jack found her slow and stubborn, and touched her flanks with spurs. She reared and fell, and flung Jackson to the ground with violence. He was unconscious for a time, and for half an hour was unable to move. There was a searing pain in his back, and doctors placed him in an ambulance, fearing a crippling injury to his spine. He rapidly improved, but was to be in pain for days; temporarily, he gave command of his troops to D. H. Hill. Thus Lee and Jackson, both handicapped, remained close by their tents at Best’s Grove, near Frederick. The Marylanders saw little of them.
On September sixth, however, Jackson was trapped. Douglas witnessed his discomfort: “In the afternoon the General was called to General Lee’s tent. En route he met an open carriage containing two bright Baltimore girls, who at sight of him sprang from the carriage, rushed up to him, one took his hand, the other threw her arms about him, and talked with the wildest enthusiasm, both at the same time, until he seemed simply miserable. In a minute or two … they were driven away happy and delighted; he stood for a moment cap in hand, bowing, speechless, paralyzed.”
Jackson had missed church attendance of late, and on Sunday night, September seventh, he asked Douglas and young Joe Morrison to go into Frederick with him for worship. The General would not leave until he had gone through the formality of having a pass issued for them. Jackson rode in his ambulance, and the young officers on horseback. They went to the German Reformed Church, in the absence of a Presbyterian service.
Jackson sat quietly, and before the minister, a Reverend Zacharias, had more than opened his sermon, the General was fast asleep, chin on chest, and his cap fallen to the floor. He slept through most of the service, even while the pastor offered a daring prayer for the President of the United States, and members of the congregation stole looks at Stonewall. He roused only at the sound of the organ and the raising of a hymn.
Back in his camp, Jackson was obliged to carry on army business despite the Sabbath. He replied to Powell Hill, who had asked for a copy of the charges to be placed against him. Jackson gave him no satisfaction, saying that a copy would be sent to him if his case became the subject of a court-martial. In the meantime, the fretting General Hill was to remain with his men, uncertain as to when, where, or whether he might be given a trial; or on what charges he would be tried.
On Monday morning, disappointed at the absence of Enoch L. Lowe, a former Governor of Maryland who was expected to come and urge his people to join the Confederates, Lee released a proclamation to the people of the state. After damning the Federals for “suppression” of Maryland, the document explained that the Confederate army had come to free the state from domination and to restore its rights. The paper ended:
This, citizens of Maryland, is our mission, so far as you are concerned. No constraint upon your free will is intended; no intimidation will be allowed within the limits of this army, at least. Marylanders shall once more enjoy their ancient freedom of thought and speech. We know no enemies among you, and will protect all, of every opinion. It is for you to decide your destiny freely and without constraint. This army will respect your choice, whatever it may be; and while the Southern people will rejoice to welcome you to your natural position among them, they will only welcome you when you come of your own free will.
Many men of the army abandoned themselves to a holiday about Frederick, with resulting incidents that were to live long in memories. Stuart and von Borcke and the young officers of the cavalry staged a ball at the village of Urbana, outside Frederick, decorating their hall with the shell-torn regimental colors, dancing to music from a battle-tested regimental band. This occasion was interrupted by a raid from Federal cavalry, and the young women of the neighborhood who had gathered were forced to wait for an hour or so until, after midnight, the warriors returned.
One affair in Frederick brought Jackson a bit of anxiety. He had a report that some of his “foreign” troops, while in a store of the town, had insulted some Maryland women. Jackson instantly thought that the culprits must be men from Louisiana, and he ordered General Starke to parade his entire command through the Frederick streets, so that the guilty men might be identified. Starke rebelled. He had not only kept his men under rigid discipline, he said, but he had also arrested some officers for failure to enforce it. Starke would march his men through the town only if all other troops which might be guilty were ordered to do likewise. Jackson put him under arrest.
The crisis was passed with the discovery that the men involved came from another command. Starke’s men enjoyed the report that they were soldiers of Jackson’s own old brigade.
Here Jackson added to his staff a corporal who had lately been a Presbyterian ministerial student: James Power Smith, an aide who was to remain with him to the end. Smith, astonished at his call from Jackson, blushingly withstood inspection by civilian visitors to Jackson’s tent, and entered, expecting to be disciplined for some indiscretion:
“In a few minutes the General came in, and seating himself on the wooden stool brought from the mess hall of the Virginia Military Institute, he leaned his elbow on the little camp table with his face in his hands.… ‘I have merely sent for you to ask whether you would accept the position of aide-de-camp on my staff.’ It was like a clap of thunder from a clear sky. If he had said that I … was to be a major general, I could not have been more surprised.”
Smith soon reported for duty with a fine new mare, who, in high spirits, promptly kicked Jackson on the foot. “To the end of our life together,” Smith recalled, “he thought I rode a kicking horse, and invariably pulled away from me when I rode up to him.”
Smith’s mates of the Rockbridge Artillery scoffed when he told his news, but when they were convinced, he was carried around camp on their shoulders until a captain threatened “the whole lot, aide-de-camp and all, would be sent to the guard house.”
These diversions came to an end on September ninth, for then Lee called Jackson into his tent and began to unfold further plans of the invasion. There was one last precaution Lee must take before sweeping farther north. He must make the rear secure by wiping out the Federal garrisons at Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg, along the Potomac. Lee would take the main army west of Hagerstown, Maryland, and wait for the outposts to be taken.
Lee told Jackson that the outposts should be captured, as well as the towns seized, and that made the problem delicate and complex. He meant that three forces should be sent against Harpers Ferry: Jackson with his whole division would come against the town from the south. Lafayette McLaws and R. H. Anderson, with brigades from Longstreet’s division, would work over rough Maryland countryside to take Maryland Heights, which overlooked Harpers Ferry from the north bank of the Potomac. And General John G. Walker, whose troops were fresh from Richmond, would seize Loudoun Heights, also a commanding position over the town. All these moves were essential to take both town and garrison.
It meant a serious division of Lee’s strength in the face of the enemy, a course Longstreet had opposed with all his stubborn will during the week’s discussions. The plan offered dizzying possibilities, however. If McClellan remained quiet, as Lee was positive he would, then the army could divide for this maneuver, clear the Virginia border and concentrate once more about Hagerstown. That would place Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital, about seventy miles away. Even the greatest Northern cities would be in striking distance. Lee could interrupt the flow of men and supplies from the great Midwest.
While Lee and Jackson talked in the commander’s tent, Longstreet approached. He was on the point of leaving when he found Lee in consultation, but his heavy voice was recognized, and he was invited to join the conversation. He was unalterably opposed to the plan, and when Lee continued to expound it, Longstreet sat sulkily. He argued for the dispatch of the entire army to Harpers Ferry, a more laborious course, but one which would not involve the classic blunder of dividing force in the front of the enemy.
Lee was in no mood to heed Longstreet’s advice of caution. He outlined the orders and promised written copies for the general officers. Longstreet and Jackson left and other officers involved were called by aides. General Walker soon sat before Lee; and as the plan was explained, with the aid of a map, Walker sat open-mouthed. Lee traced the proposed route down to the Potomac, and smiled at Walker’s stare.
“You doubtless regard it hazardous to leave McClellan on my line of communication, and to march into the heart of the enemy’s country?”
Walker nodded.
“Are you acquainted with General McClellan? He is an able general, but a very cautious one. His enemies among his own people think him too much so. His army is in a very demoralized and chaotic condition, and will not be ready for offensive operations—or he will not think it so—for three or four weeks. Before that time I hope to be on the Susquehanna.”
The orders were soon prepared. Colonel R. H. Chilton, a West Pointer on Lee’s staff, was entrusted with the handling of the papers. He made a copy for each of the general officers involved. The orders were complete and concise, outlining the entire plan of operation, and including routes to be followed by each segment of the divided army. The move was to begin in the morning.
Jackson got his copy of the order during the evening, marked “Confidential. Special Order 191.” He read it carefully. Jackson determined to send D. H. Hill a copy of this order since Hill had briefly, and technically, come under Jackson’s command as the army crossed the river. Under this order, Hill was to march with Longstreet.
Jackson copied the order in his own remarkable handwriting. It went to Hill’s headquarters, where it was read. Some officer on Hill’s staff—it could not be determined just which officer—concluded that the copy of this order previously received from Lee was now of no value, and could be thrown away. He wrapped it about three cigars, and thoughtlessly thrust the package into his pocket.
Unaware of the adventures of the two flimsy sheets of paper which were to play so fateful a role in this campaign of invasion, Jackson began the movement as scheduled, on Wednesday, September tenth. He made a rather amateurish effort at deceiving the enemy as he trotted through the Frederick streets. In the hearing of a number of townspeople, he asked in a loud voice for a map of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He also stopped passers-by to ask information on roads leading northward—whereas his route lay along the Potomac, crossing to the southern side, approaching Martinsburg, and then taking Harpers Ferry from the rear.
One last visit was made by Jackson in Frederick, at the home of a Dr. Ross, the Presbyterian minister. Jackson found the pastor still abed and left a note with a servant, refusing to disturb the minister. The command then trailed out of town. Kyd Douglas noted with emphasis that the route did not pass the house of elderly Barbara Frietchie, who was an invalid of ninety-six, and in no condition to be justly included in a Whittier poem.
The road lay west through Middletown, a farm village lying in a broad valley of unsurpassed beauty, and here Jackson found the Union spirit untrammeled. Two pretty girls decked in red, white and blue ribbons stood at the roadside, waving United States flags. The girls laughed at the General, and as he lifted his cap to them, they flapped their colors under his nose. “We evidently have no friends in this town,” Old Jack said to his staff. Douglas recorded that the girls blushed and retreated.
On September eleventh, hurrying on, Jackson made a thrust at Martinsburg, but the garrison escaped to Harpers Ferry. Old Jack stopped at the Everett House, a hotel in Martinsburg, and the public besieged him. A crowd gathered, but Jackson, pleading the call of duty, fell back before them. He said he must get off dispatches to General Lee. He went to work behind locked doors and shuttered windows.
Men, women and children pecked at the windows, shouting for Jackson. Some hung about his horse, which they thought to be Sorrel and not simply a temporary mount; before a sentinel intervened, the crowd had plucked handfuls of hair from the animal’s mane and tail, for the making of bracelets and other souvenirs.
Someone soon forced a window open. Roses were flung in at Jackson. The General gave up with a gruff, pleased, “Now admit the ladies.”
They came in a rush, taking his hands, chattering happily at him. Small boys asked to join his ranks, little girls asked furloughs for their fathers. One girl asked for a button from his coat, and he cut off one for her. As if that were a signal to dismember him, the crowd lunged forward. Buttons disappeared from his coat, even at the rear, where boys stripped them from his coattails. Jackson smiled and stammered, at a complete loss, “Thank you, thank you.” He went through a few moments of autographing when the buttons were gone. He signed a book for a young girl and then, since the besiegers lacked paper, he had foolscap brought, and scrawled over and over the all-but-illegible “T. J. Jackson.” A woman begged for a lock of hair, and the General, passing a quick hand over his thin locks, took alarm. He brought the interview to an end, and officers moved the crowd from the building.
At noon he disappeared for an hour or so, and his staff could not find him. The officers thought he was visiting on a back street of the town, eating lunch with a “plain old man and his wife” who had a son marching in his old brigade.
Early on the next day, September thirteenth, destined to be a day of misfortune for Lee and the army, Jackson moved toward Harpers Ferry. Before noon his vanguard looked down on the town. There was no sign of McLaws or Walker across the river. Jackson went into camp.
On this day, too, Powell Hill saw the approach of battle and could no longer contain himself. Impatient to be removed from arrest, he asked Douglas to intercede for him with Jackson. Hill said only that he wanted no other man to command his troops in action; he offered no apologies.
It was surprisingly simple. Jackson listened as Douglas spoke of Hill’s desire to fight and sent him instantly to order Hill to active command. General Branch was notified of the change; and the red-haired Hill, stubborn and able in battle, and Jackson’s lone experienced division commander, was once more ready for action. Jackson’s righteous anger at a breach of discipline could not overcome his respect for a sturdy fighter. The commander had succumbed to Hill’s plea without even a comment.
Jackson was not ready to storm Harpers Ferry, for all the forces were late. The surrounding hills were bare of troops, and old Jack’s signal officers got no response to their insistent flagging. The General spread his men and took precautions to prevent the garrison’s escape. He waited.
Back in Frederick, on this day, the slow advance of the Federal army arrived, skirmishers leading the vast force of almost ninety thousand men. McClellan was creeping now, precisely as Lee had calculated when he dared to order the division of the Confederate army. The Federals were concentrating, drawing in more supplies, asking reinforcements, taking measured steps of caution.
At noon, the men of the Twelfth Army Corps appeared in Frederick, among them the Twenty-seventh Indiana Volunteers. The soldiers halted in a grove near the village, broke ranks and stacked their arms. On this site, so recently, the Confederate troops of D. H. Hill had camped. There was still the gamy odor of their rags and their crude facilities.
In Company F of the Twenty-seventh Indiana, Private B. W. Mitchell stacked his gun with others and stooped to take from the ground three cigars, encased in a wrapper of heavy paper. He was attracted by the writing on this paper: “Confidential.” It was addressed from the Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, and dated September ninth. It seemed to be an order for marching, and was undoubtedly Rebel.
Mitchell called to his sergeant, John M. Bloss. The sergeant read the names of Longstreet, Jackson, McLaws and Walker, and the signature itself: “By command of Gen’l. R. E. Lee, R. H. Chilton, A. A. Gen’l.” Perhaps Bloss appropriated the cigars; he took Mitchell and his paper to their commander, General Silas Cosgrove. The General in turn sent it to his commander, General A. S. Williams.
In the headquarters of Williams was Colonel Samuel Pittman, an Old Army man who had served with Chilton of Lee’s staff. Pittman instantly recognized the handwriting. The document was genuine. It went upward to McClellan’s headquarters.
The small man who found pleasure in likening himself to Napoleon must have reached the climax of his career as he grinned over the lost order. He accepted it as authentic, for within an hour his military personality was transformed. He had the army driving forward, as if he knew precisely what moves should be made and would brook no delay. It was a new McClellan who moved to the chase.
The order spared none of Lee’s secrets. It read, in part:
The army will resume its march tomorrow, taking the Hagerstown Road. Gen’l. Jackson’s command will form the advance, and after passing Middletown with such portions as he may select, take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and by Friday morning take possession of the B.&O.R.R., capture such of the enemy as may be at Martinsburg and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harpers Ferry.
Gen’l Longstreet’s command will pursue the main road as far as Boonsboro, where it will halt with reserve supply and baggage wagons of this army.
The order was even more specific about the moves of General McLaws, General Anderson and General Walker. McClellan, tracing the marching order of the Confederates on his map, could envision the supreme opportunity to destroy Lee. The Confederates could not conceivably pull together the isolated columns before he was among them. McClellan wrote to Lincoln:
“Here is a paper with which, if I cannot whip Bobbie Lee I will be willing to go home.”
He was to have in answer to his trumpeting of confidence only the sober reply from Lincoln:
“Destroy the Rebel army if possible.”
It appeared that McClellan would do just that. His cavalry bobbed up where Lee had least expected it. And to the west, where D. H. Hill’s troops lay along South Mountain, anticipating nothing more adventurous than skirmishing, there rolled a crashing prelude to battle. From Turner’s Gap, Hill’s men saw thousands of campfires and knew that they faced the Federal army, and not simply a couple of cavalry brigades.
Lee puzzled over the new aggressiveness and the startlingly perceptive moves of McClellan, but did not allow this to deter action to save his army. Hill was ordered to hold South Mountain as long as possible, with the aid of Stuart, who was covering the passes. More than that, Lee sent backward the heavy column of Longstreet for rear-guard action. Until the three columns of assault returned from Harpers Ferry, McClellan must be held off.
Lee was becoming concerned for the regiments he had sent to the east. There was a report in the army that a Southern sympathizer had come through the lines during the night, bringing word that McClellan had found the “Lost Order.” Whether Lee learned of this is uncertain, but he could not have remained long in doubt that the enemy had gained rare insight into his plans. While Jackson waited at Harpers Ferry for McLaws and Walker to close in from the north, and Lee watched the threatening developments from near Hagerstown, Harvey Hill was forced to fight a strange battle at South Mountain.
Hill was unfamiliar with the peaks he was to defend and was slow in getting his men to the heights. When he had moved but three thousand of them into place, he could look eastward to a sight which moved him, the oncoming Federal army: “The marching columns extended back as far as eye could see in the distance; but many of the troops had already arrived and were in double lines of battle, and those advancing were taking up positions as soon as they arrived. It was a grand and glorious spectacle, and it was impossible to look at it without admiration. I had never seen so tremendous an army before, and I did not see one like it afterward.”
Hill fought poorly on his little mountain, even considering the meagerness of his strength. Though his men met the enemy with courage, their commander seemed at a loss, and in an unconscious moment he confessed his discomfort in a role of independent command. “I do not remember ever to have experienced a feeling of greater loneliness. It seemed as though we were deserted ‘by all the world and the rest of mankind.’”
Hill was saved by the timidity or stupidity of McClellan’s field officers, for the Yankee skirmishers, after they had rolled the few Rebels off the commanding ridge of South Mountain, were halted in their tracks, as if their officers could not conceive of their having been successful on this height. Hill’s men took a welcome two-hour rest from fighting, and when the enemy resumed attacks, reinforcements had come up. By nightfall, the arrival of Longstreet’s vanguard gave Hill security. After lunging toward the exposed army of Lee, McClellan had paused, hesitated, and now his momentum was lost.
Jackson, across the Potomac at Harpers Ferry, had no reassurance of Federal difficulties as September fourteenth dawned. He had troubles of his own.
His signalmen were in touch with General Walker, across the river, but could not reach McLaws. Walker’s big guns were in place and ready to join the cannonade upon Harpers Ferry. He was anxious to begin.
Jackson soon learned the cause of the delay in McLaws’s arrival. His column had been attacked from the rear. A brief, savage battle was fought by McLaws, who ended in confusion as did Harvey Hill, higher on the mountain. But here, too, the Federals halted just when they had victory in their grasp.
Jackson could do little but stare over the broad river at its junction with the Shenandoah. The day dragged on with Stonewall complaining of the slow progress of signals and the failure of McLaws to appear. In the afternoon, he advanced one brigade slightly, toward Harpers Ferry, and this simple move seemed to panic the enemy, who fell back from a strong position at the mere sight of the gray files. With limited artillery fire, Jackson closed the ring tighter about the town. At dark he wrote Lee:
Through God’s blessing, the advance which commenced this evening, has been successful thus far, and I look to Him for complete success tomorrow. The advance has been directed to resume at dawn tomorrow morning. I am thankful that our loss has been small.
When Lee read that, he felt relief for the first time since his adventure had begun to escape his control. The commander had been on the point of sending D. H. Hill’s hard-pressed men south of the Potomac, and retreating with his entire army, thus bringing the invasion to an end. Now, with the reassuring news that Jackson would soon be free of his task, Lee returned to his original plan. The army could concentrate to the westward and receive the enemy.
Jackson prepared the final blow at Harpers Ferry during the night, and through the hours of darkness men and animals strained to lift the guns into position. In the first light, a circle of guns began to flame, and after an hour of this fire the garrison was overcome. Answering fire, never heavy, dwindled and ceased, and almost before the infantry attack could get into the open, the Union men emerged with a white flag.
Jackson received General Julius White from the garrison, and staff officers noted the contrast between the immaculate Union victim and the dusty, wrinkled conqueror. White asked for terms. Jackson refused, saying that surrender must be unconditional. White was turned over to A. P. Hill and was soon delighted to learn that Jackson, overcome by a fit of generosity—or puzzled as to how to care for prisoners—had paroled the eleven thousand captive officers and men and allowed them to keep their small arms. The Federal property was seized, excepting a supply of rations, which he allowed the garrison to eat.
Jackson wrote Lee that he was coming to his aid, leaving only A. P. Hill on the scene at Harpers Ferry. He promised to move when he had fed his troops. Hill would have to care for most of the seventy-three big guns and thirteen thousand muskets captured in the town.
Old Jack soon tore his men away from captured food and put his column in motion. He found time to speak with Stuart’s strutting von Borcke at the time of departure: “Ah, this is all very well, Major, but we have yet much hard work ahead of us.”
Douglas overheard a well-fed captive call as Jackson passed, “Boys, he ain’t much for looks, but if we’d had him we wouldn’t have got caught in this trap.” The Union ranks shouted at sight of Jackson, and he exchanged salutes with them. A Northern reporter found Old Jack unimpressive and “seedy,” and “in general appearance was in no respect to be distinguished from the mongrel, barefooted crew who follow his fortunes. I had heard much of the decayed appearance of the rebel soldiers, but such a looking crowd! Ireland in her worst straits could present no parallel, and yet they glory in their shame.”
By midafternoon, the ragged men were already on their way to the rescue of Lee—who had asked Jackson to meet him at Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Jackson pushed them all night, for the situation at Sharpsburg had become threatening. McClellan was advancing as if ready to attack. Old Jack’s men rejoined the army early on September sixteenth, after a march of sixteen miles that even their commander found “severe.” With Jackson and Longstreet at hand, Lee now had twenty-two brigades to face the enemy and could make a stout fight. If McClellan did not attack at once, perhaps McLaws and Walker would arrive with their men, perhaps A. P. Hill would complete the paroling of prisoners at Harpers Ferry and take his place in the line. If all the troops could be assembled, Lee would be ready for a major battle. McClellan gave him one more day’s respite.
General Walker arrived at Sharpsburg in the afternoon, increasing Lee’s strength; but it was still just twenty-five thousand. Three divisions were missing, and if they came up before the blue masses across Antietam Creek surged forward, the Confederates would have but forty thousand troops, as against the eighty-seven thousand of McClellan.
Walker found Lee curiously calm: “If he had had a well-equipped army of 100,000 veterans at his back he could not have appeared more composed and confident.” The day before, Lee had ventured the opinion that McClellan would not attack despite his vast strength. But tonight he revealed his anxiety by sending riders splashing over the Potomac with urgent messages for A. P. Hill: He must hurry. The life of the army was at stake.
There were a few vicious stabs by the enemy as night drew on. Artillery banged away, and in some spots the skirmish lines tangled. The enemy appeared in great numbers. There was promise of early slaughter tomorrow.
Jackson seemed apprehensive of what lay ahead. At about ten o’clock, General Hood asked Old Jack to allow his Texans to retire from the front line so that they could cook. His men were near starvation, Hood said. He had already asked Lee for help, but the commander had no replacements. Jackson agreed to spread his thin line, if Hood would return tomorrow in case of need. In a soft rain, with pickets fretful and firing at shadows, two brigades from Ewell’s old division went into the line and the Texans moved to the rear.
The Confederate line lay in a crude arc, on knolls between the village of Sharpsburg and Antietam Creek, facing the rolling country which looked toward South Mountain in the east. Both right and left the flanks came near the Potomac, which coiled about the town. From north to south, the divisions were placed: Jackson (with the troops of D. H. Hill included) along the Hagerstown Road; Longstreet, spraddling the Boonsboro Road and shielding the village; and last, General Walker, on the lower flank overlooking the Antietam.
There were striking landmarks, soon to become famous in the history of these armies: Burnside’s Bridge, to earn its name on the flank of Longstreet; a Dunker Church on Hagerstown Road, with groves near by known as East Wood and West Wood; and, not far from the church, a farm road to be known as Bloody Lane.
Jackson, holding the upper part of this position, felt the first Union thrust in the darkness before dawn. At the first light, artillery began. McClellan had long delayed, for reasons which were to remain obscure. The Federal commander realized that some of Lee’s divisions had been south of the Potomac. Perhaps the mere presence of Lee had deepened his instinct of caution. His discovery of the Lost Order had brought him to Sharpsburg, but for one long day had not overcome his timidity.
This morning, however, he was fully awake. At six thirty, a crushing attack by Hooker’s corps caved a huge gap in Lee’s line between Jackson and Hill. This drive routed the brigade of Lawton and brushed aside the heavy reinforcements of three brigades as if they were nothing. Federals were streaming along the Hagerstown Road and taking strong positions in the wood about the Dunker Church.
Jackson called up Hood’s men, but they could do little more than join the stubborn retreat. Already the army was in danger of annihilation. A scramble ensued at Lee’s headquarters, as the commander sought every available man in an effort to stem the tide until the troops of McLaws and Anderson could arrive from the south. They were near by in Sharpsburg, resting after an exhausting march, but Lee hurried them into the breach.
Lee was improvising a perilous concentration, pulling men from the right and center to help Jackson in his effort to repair the left. The Confederate line was now defended weakly by seven brigades along a front of a mile and a half, where McClellan might attack at any moment. But Lee had little choice. He must halt the enemy on the north, or the war might well end for him today. Nor was Jackson’s plight his only concern. At some distance from the furious fighting at the Dunker Church, D. H. Hill’s three thousand men were caught in such intense action that they had long ago forgotten their flanks and fought for their lives. General Anderson’s brigade now moved into the line.
The army was without reserves. Until A. P. Hill came marching up from the river, there was nothing to be done but fight with the outnumbered men already so heavily engaged.
After he had withstood the enemy fire for more than an hour, General Hood sent a message: “Tell General Jackson unless I get reinforcements I must be forced back, but I am going on while I can.” Hood’s men were running out of ammunition and giving ground. To a fellow officer who asked where Hood’s division was, the Texan replied, “Dead on the field.”
Not far from this scene was the big cornfield where so many men were to die. Major Rufus Dawes of the Federal army, who came in with his Wisconsin boys, wrote:
“As we appeared at the edge of the corn, a long line of men in butternut and gray rose up from the ground. Simultaneously, the hostile battle lines opened a tremendous fire upon each other. Men, I can not say fell; they were knocked out of the ranks by the dozens. But we jumped over the fence and pushed on, loading, firing, and shouting.… There was … great … excitement … reckless disregard of life …
“Everybody tears cartridges, loads, passes guns, or shoots.… The men are loading and firing with demoniacal fury and shouting and laughing hysterically, and the whole field before us is covered with rebels fleeing for life, into the woods. Great numbers of them are shot while climbing over the high post and rail fences along the turnpike. We push on over the open fields half way to the little church. The powder is bad, and the guns have become very dirty. It takes hard pounding to get the bullets down, and our firing is becoming slow. A long and steady line of rebel gray … comes sweeping down through the woods around the church. They raise the yell and fire. It is like a scythe running through our line. ‘Now save, who can.’ It is a race for life that each man runs for the cornfield … the headlong flight continues … Of 280 men who were at the cornfield and pike, 150 were killed or wounded. This was the most dreadful slaughter to which our regiment was subjected in the war.”
This and near-by fighting had all but wrecked the Confederate army. More than half of two brigades—Lawton’s and Hays’s—had been killed or wounded at the first attack. General Lawton was wounded, as were two other commanders, John R. Jones and Starke, the latter mortally. The First Texas had lost eight successive color bearers; the Tenth Georgia lost 57 per cent of its men.
But somehow, though the most courageous officers were becoming desperate, the front began to reform. Strangely, McClellan had not flung his fresh and heavy corps into the breach won by Hooker’s assault. There was, however, scarcely time to take notice of this tactical error on the fighting line. General Hood had called, “For God’s sake, more troops.”
In the sunken road becoming known as Bloody Lane broke out fighting that was to be celebrated as the most terrible of the war. Some of it was seen by the Federal, Thomas Livermore, of New Hampshire:
“I heard old General Richardson cry out … and saw that gallant old fellow advancing … almost alone, afoot and with his bare sword in his hand, and his face as black as a thunder cloud … and he roared out, ‘God damn the field officers!’…
“We swept over the road into the cornfield … and down into a ravine … all the time being pelted with canister.… We opened a withering, literally withering, fire on the rebels.…
“On looking around me I found that we were in the old, sunken road … In this road there lay so many dead rebels that they formed a line which one might have walked upon as far as I could see, many … killed by the most horrible wounds of shot and shell, and they lay just as they had been killed apparently, amid the blood which was soaking the earth. It was on this ghastly flooring that we kneeled for the last struggle.”
The Federals next swung their piecemeal attack to the Confederate center. Here Colonel John B. Gordon of Lee’s front line was cut down with five wounds. Gordon had taken his place with ringing oratory: “These men are going to stay here, General, till the sun goes down or victory is ours!”
General R. H. Anderson had fallen in this area, and, like other units robbed of their officers, his brigade began to wander. The situation deteriorated to the point where General D. H. Hill dismounted and led a futile charge of some two hundred infantrymen against Federal guns. Longstreet joined a battery, held the horses and helped call the results of the fire as the cannon held off the enemy from a gap in his line.
Just as it seemed that the center must cave in, taking the entire army to ruin, there came a lull. For the second time, with a great body of fresh troops at hand, the enemy failed to press the advantage. The battle droned away to an artillery duel in the hot hour after noon.
It appeared that Jackson’s wing had passed its fiery crisis. For more than six hours, Stonewall had struggled to prevent the battle being snatched from his hands. Despite the furious charge and countercharge of the morning, he had played a major role in saving the army this morning.
In the face of ruin, he could not forget his compulsion for attack. Once, during the morning, he saw the Thirty-third North Carolina of Colonel Matt Ransom charge Federal guns but come running back. He ordered Ransom to try once more. Ransom said the guns were too heavily supported. Jackson scoffed. He called for a volunteer to climb a tall tree, and Private William Hood was soon high in the limbs. Jackson looked up.
“How many troops can you see over there?”
“Oceans of them.”
“Count the flags, sir!”
“One, two, three.” Federal sharpshooters sent bullets winging through the tree, clipping foliage. Jackson took no notice, and the private continued to count under the fire until he had reached “Thirty-nine!”
Even for Jackson, there were too many regiments to permit a charge by Ransom, and he fell then to arguing with the North Carolinian as to why he had dared to attack so heavy a formation.
Stonewall remained with his staff in the West Wood near the Dunker Church in the fury of the first Union attack, and even as he saw his line overwhelmed by numbers, he made plans for attack. While men went mad in the cornfield and Bloody Lane, and Hood’s Texans were disintegrating, and all commanders called for reinforcements, the cool, detached mind of Jackson turned to attack.
He displayed no excitement when he sent an aide to General Walker at the heaviest of the fighting: Support Hood, clear the enemy from West Wood, put men between the church and the nearest artillery battery. And as Walker thus held the line and for a moment stabilized the front, Jackson rode to find General McLaws, and told him to strike at the right of the enemy’s attack. He rode swiftly for several minutes, giving the orders himself.
It was the result of that work which sent the “long and steady line of rebel gray” sweeping into the cornfield, and in an instant put General Sedgwick’s big Federal division in such straits that an officer wrote: “Change of front was impossible. In less time than it takes to tell it the ground was strewn with the bodies of the dead and wounded.… Nearly 2,000 men were disabled in a moment.”
At the climax of this, Jackson, sitting his horse near McLaws, was moved by the yelping of the Rebel Yell over the fields, and he said, “God has been very kind to us this day.”
He was to see nothing so incredible as victory, however, even on his limited front. The Federals soon had heavy reinforcements and support from their fine artillery, and they turned to break Jackson’s attack with great slaughter. He had once more confused the enemy and canceled other planned attacks, but Jackson had done little more than survive.
The Confederate army was fearfully torn, yet the enemy had paid even more dearly. Six hours of fighting had cost the combatants some thirteen thousand men, sixteen of them general officers.
It was Lee, in his decision to remain north of the Potomac and his further choice of the unfortunate terrain, who had set the day’s price for survival. For his part, Jackson had fought with about nineteen thousand troops and with them had flung off thirty thousand. The enemy had outnumbered him in cannon, by one hundred to forty.
Officers found Jackson calm, almost serene, in the morning’s action. Dr. McGuire, who sought removal of field hospitals to the safety of the south bank of the Potomac, found Stonewall apparently little concerned over the outcome of the battle. He accepted some peaches brought by McGuire, and was eating them as the medical director, expressing fear for the afternoon, reported on the casualties. Jackson pointed to the enemy. “Dr. McGuire, they have done their worst.”
So far as Jackson’s wing was concerned, the Federals bore out his prediction. At 2 P.M., having failed at both left and center, McClellan struck at Lee’s right, where the withdrawal of men had left only the command of General D. R. Jones, with a front of a mile and a half defended by a mere two thousand men.
The Antietam wandered through this front; and there was a stone bridge just below the position of the tiny band of General Toombs. Federals had half-heartedly rushed the bridge in the morning but had been badly defeated as they came up over an exposed route. Now, abruptly, as Jones and Toombs arrayed their survivors on the hillside, two Federal regiments ran to the crossing and were pouring over before cannon could be brought to bear on them. The enemy line fanned upward.
Lee had been given a few moments to save himself, not long enough to bring up support from other segments of the line, but enough to crowd more guns on this front. The artillerymen brought in loads of canister, and when the Federals broke into a run on the slope, a barrage fell upon them. The guns made the fighting equal for a time, but it could not last, even with the cheering news that A. P. Hill was coming up, finally. The right began to sag; Union troops stole in on the flank. One brigade after another was forced from the heights and pushed back, with heavy casualties, into the village of Sharpsburg, and fighting rolled into the dusty streets. Officers went down, among them General L. O’B. Branch. The Union troops were within a mile and a half of cutting the only Confederate line of retreat. Resistance was becoming scattered on this flank, and Lee seemed near the end of his resources.
Two hopes remained. A. P. Hill was not far away with his troops. And Jackson was attempting a flank movement against the enemy’s right, seeking to circle to McClellan’s rear.
General Walker described how, when enemy attacks ceased on Jackson’s front, he had found Stonewall:
“Under an apple tree, sitting on his horse, with one leg thrown carelessly over the pommel of his saddle, plucking and eating the fruit. Without making any reply to my report, he asked me abruptly, ‘Can you spare me a regiment and a battery?’”
Walker offered him the strong Forty-ninth North Carolina.
“Jackson said that he wished to make up, from the different commands on our left, a force of four or five thousand men, and give them to Stuart, with orders to turn the enemy’s right and attack him in the rear; that I must give orders to my division to … attack the enemy as soon as I should hear Stuart’s guns—and that our whole left wing would move to the attack at the same time. Then, replacing his foot in the stirrup, he said with great emphasis: ‘We’ll drive McClellan into the Potomac.’”
Years later Walker marveled at Jackson’s audacity in plotting this assault, in the face of disaster, as imperturbably as if putting his cadets through maneuvers on the Lexington parade ground.
The army waited hours for Jackson. When, at three thirty, the guns had not been heard, Longstreet ordered a charge. Walker explained Jackson’s plan, and Longstreet withdrew his order. Walker recalled:
“While we were discussing this subject, Jackson himself joined us with the information of Stuart’s failure to turn the Federal right, for the reason that he had found it securely posted on the Potomac. Upon my expressing surprise at this statement, Jackson replied that he had also been surprised, as he supposed the Potomac much farther away.… He added: ‘It is a great pity—we should have driven McClellan into the Potomac.’”
At that moment, on the right of the line, McClellan was very near to driving Lee against the river himself. The Confederates fell back through Sharpsburg. And then, at an instant which seemed miraculous, Hill’s men came trotting through the village, going straight at the enemy. Hill rode past in his fiery red battle shirt. These men turned back the enemy on this flank. Help had come at a moment when all seemed lost.
David Thompson, in the ranks of General Burnside as the Federals stormed the bridge and mounted the hill, saw things with a remarkable clarity as his comrades began to break:
“I remember … seeing an officer riding diagonally across the field, a most inviting target, instinctively bending his head down over his horse’s neck, as though he were riding through a driving rain. While my eye was on him I saw, between me and him, a rolled overcoat with its straps on bound into the air and fall among the furrows. One of the enemy’s grapeshot had plowed a groove in the skull of a young fellow and had cut his overcoat from his shoulders. He never stirred from his position, but lay there face downward—a dreadful spectacle. A moment after, I heard a man cursing a comrade for lying on him heavily. He was cursing a dying man.…
“Human nature was on the rack, and there burst forth from it the most vehement, terrible swearing I have ever heard.… Whether the regiment was thrown into disorder or not, I never knew. I only remember that as we rose and started all the fire that had been held back so long was loosed. In a second the air was full of the hiss of bullets.… The mental strain was so great that I saw at that moment the singular effect mentioned, I think, in the life of Goethe in a similar occasion—the whole landscape for an instant turned slightly red.”
As night came down, the victorious Rebel Yell announced the retreat of Burnside; and among the ten thousand of the Confederate dead and wounded, Lee settled down to wait. His general officers evidently expected him to withdraw in the night, but he stayed on the ground. With daylight it was clear that the enemy had not moved, and that McClellan had posted his big guns as if anticipating attack. Almost incredibly, the Yankees did not come forward. The grateful Confederates cooked and ate almost all day, for rations were more plentiful than they had been since before Second Manassas.
The battle of Sharpsburg was over, the bloodiest single day of the war. The horrors were not over for women of the neighborhood who looked after the wounded. One of the nurses, aghast at the sight of so much suffering, finally cried, “Oh, I hope if I faint some one will kick me into a corner and let me lie there!”
Another nurse, Mary Bedinger Mitchell, wrote:
“We would catch our breath and listen, and try not to sob, and turn back to the forlorn hospitals.… On our side of the river there were noise, confusion, dust; throngs of stragglers, horsemen galloping about; wagons blocking each other, and teamsters wrangling; and a continued din of shouting, swearing and rumbling, in the midst of which men were dying, fresh wounded arriving, surgeons amputating limbs and dressing wounds … The wounded filled every building and overflowed into the country around, into farm houses, barns, corn-cribs, cabins … There were six churches, and they were all full; the Odd Fellows’ Hall, the Freemasons’… every inch of space, and yet the cry was for more room …”
There was a lull through the day on the battlefield, as both armies cared for the wounded and buried the dead. In one ravine, men remembered in horror, bodies were piled fifteen feet deep. McClellan could now count the grim toll of twenty-seven thousand casualties for the Maryland campaign, including the captives of Harpers Ferry. Lee found more than a third of his army on the bloody rolls today.
Lee had won his daring gamble that McClellan would not attack on the second day at Sharpsburg; but it was clear that he could not himself attack, with all those blue masses within sight and his own line dangerously near the river banks.
The lone gay spirit of the day was an unidentified North Carolinian who had been captured by the Federals. He ambled along toward a Union prison, a ragged, drawling man who afforded his captors much amusement.
“To what command do you belong?”
“To old Stonewall, more’n anybody else.”
The marching prisoners passed a park of artillery, and the Tarheel stopped to admire it. He read aloud the mark on each big barrel: “U.S.”
“Well, what now, Johnny Reb?” one of the Federals asked.
“I swear, Mister, you all has got most as many of these-here U.S. guns as we’uns has.”
Lee announced a retreat, and at dark on September eighteenth, Longstreet’s men led the army from the battlefield southward, over the Potomac into Virginia. The army passed the river all night, and near dawn General Walker approached the ford. He wrote:
“I was among the last to cross the Potomac. As I rode into the river I passed General Lee, sitting on his horse in the stream, watching the crossing of the wagons and artillery. Returning my greeting, he inquired as to what was still behind. There was nothing but the wagons containing my wounded, and a battery of artillery, all of which were near at hand, and I told him so. ‘Thank God,’ I heard him say as I rode on.”
The invasion was over.
Lee would complain to President Davis that “desertion and straggling … were the main causes of … retiring from Maryland.”
And from Washington a stricken Lincoln would soon visit McClellan, and then write him in reply to a claim that weary horses prevented his chasing Lee:
“Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”
But nothing was to restore Lee’s lost opportunity which circumstance had destroyed, and nothing was to force McClellan into serious pursuit. With the creaking of the last wagon wheel out of the Potomac ford, early on September nineteenth, the war returned to its familiar scenes in Virginia.