The Civil War_ Fort Sumter To Perryville Part 14

They had the sympathy of their new commander, who was convinced that they should not have stayed there in the first place. To the War Department the last ten days of April brought word of the fall of New Orleans and the opening of Halleck's campaign against Corinth, as well as a trickle of I-told-you-so dispatches from the lower Peninsula. Johnston declared that Magruder's lines were even more defective than he had supposed when he made his first inspection. "No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack," he reported on the 22d, and urged that some bridges across the Chickahominy, twenty-odd miles in his rear, should be repaired at once. Two days later he was suggesting that supplies be sent to meet the army on its way to the gates of the city "in the event of our being compelled to fall back from this point." On the 27th he instructed Huger to prepare to evacuate Norfolk. Two days later he wrote to Lee in the plainest language he had yet employed: "The fight for Yorktown, as I said in Richmond, must be one of artillery, in which we cannot win. The result is certain; the time only doubtful.... We must abandon the Peninsula at once."

There they had it; he had been right all along. May Day was a time of gloom in the southern capital. Ball's Bluff seemed far away and long ago.

One source of consolation existed, but it was unknown in Richmond, being hidden in the fog of war, far down the James and beyond the enemy lines. Johnston's worries were balanced-more than balanced, at least in number-by the woes of his opponent, which differed as much in quality as they did in multiplicity. The southern commander's fretfulness was based almost exclusively on strictly tactical considerations: the weakness of the Yorktown defenses and the shortage of troops to man them. But McClellan's was the product of a variety of pressures, roughly divisible under three main headings: 1) downright bad luck, 2) Lincoln, and-as always-3) his own ripe imagination.

The first of a rapid succession of blows, like the preliminary tap of a farrier taking aim, landed the moment he stepped off the steamer at Old Point Comfort. Flag Officer Goldsborough, up from the North Carolina sounds to provide naval support for the movement up the narrow tongue of land, met him with word that the fleet would not be able to a.s.sist in reducing the enemy batteries on the York or the James. The navy already had its hands full, he said, patrolling Hampton Roads to neutralize the Merrimac-Virginia Merrimac-Virginia. One of the primary conditions of success, as stated by the corps commanders on the eve of departure, thus was removed before the campaign had even begun. Fortunately, McClellan had a full day in which to absorb the shock of this. But after that brief respite the blows began to land with trip-hammer rapidity.

On the second day, April 4, as he started his army forward-much gratified by the "wonderfully cool performance" of the trio of foragers who brought him the still-warm 12-pound shot-he made two dreadful discoveries. The first was that his handsome Coastal Survey maps were woefully inaccurate. The roads all ran the wrong way, he complained, and the Warwick River, shown on the maps as an insignificant creek flowing parallel to the James, was in fact a considerable barrier, cutting squarely across his line of march. To add to its effectiveness as an obstacle, the Confederates had dammed it in five places, creating five unwadable lakes and training their heavy artillery on the boggy intervals. McClellan was amazed at the river's location and condition; "[It] grows worse the more you look at it," he wailed.

As he stood gazing forlornly at this waste of wetness in his path, another unexpected development overtook him, also involving water. It began to rain. And from this there grew an even worse disclosure. Those fine sandy roads, recommended as being "pa.s.sable at all seasons on the year," turned out to be no such thing. What they were was gumbo-and they were apparently bottomless. Guns and wagons bogged past the axles, then sat there, immovably stuck. One officer later testified that he saw a mule go completely out of sight in one of the chunk-holes, "all but the tips of its ears," but added, in the tall-tale tradition, that the mule was a rather small one.

No navy, no fit maps, no transportation: McClellan might well have thought the fates had dealt him all the weal they intended. Writing to his wife of his unenviable position-"the rebels on one side, and the abolitionists and other scoundrels on the other"-he said, "Don't worry about the wretches; they have done nearly their worst, and can't do much more." He was wrong, and before the day was over he would discover just how wrong he was. The people he referred to could do a great deal more. If McClellan did not realize this, Lincoln's two young secretaries knew it quite well already. "Gen McC is in danger," one was telling the other. "Not in front, but in rear."

Returning to army headquarters at the close of that same busy day-his first in bristling proximity to the enemy since the campaign in West Virginia, almost nine months ago-McClellan found the atmosphere of the lantern-hung interior as glum as the twilit landscape of rain-soaked fields and dripping woods through which he had just ridden. Sorrow and anger, despair and incredulity were strangely combined on the faces of his staff. Soon the Young Napoleon was sharing these mixed emotions; for the answer, or answers, lay in a batch of orders and directives just off the wire from Was.h.i.+ngton. The first was dated yesterday, April 3: Fort Monroe and its garrison of 12,000, placed under McClellan two weeks ago as a staging area and a pool from which to draw replacements, were removed forthwith from his control. Before he could recover from the shock of learning that he had lost not only that number of troops, but also command of his present base of operations, he was handed a second order, more drastic than the first. McDowell's corps of 38,000, still awaiting sailing orders at Alexandria-McClellan intended to bring it down in ma.s.s as soon as he decided where to land it, whether on the south bank of the York, for operations against Yorktown, or on the north bank, against Gloucester Point-was detached and withheld as part of the force a.s.signed to provide close-in protection for the capital. This action was given emphasis by a supplementary order creating what was called the Department of the Rappahannock, under McDowell, as well as another new one, called the Department of the Shenandoah, under Banks, whose corps was also declared no longer a part of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan was floored. Even without the loss of Banks, which made no actual change in dispositions, the combined detachments of Blenker, McDowell, and the Fort Monroe garrison-an approximate total of 60,000 fighting men-reduced by well over one third the 156,000 he had said at the outset would be necessary for the success of his Peninsula campaign.

Nor was this all. As he took to his troubled bed that night he had something else to think about: something that seemed to him and his staff conclusive proof that the Administration, disapproving of the campaign in the first place, was determined to a.s.sure its failure before the opening shot was fired. A final order, dated yesterday and signed by the Adjutant General for distribution to the governors of all the loyal states, put an end to the recruiting of volunteers throughout the Union. All recruiting offices were closed, the equipment put up for sale to the highest bidders, and all recruiting personnel were rea.s.signed to other duties. In some ways this was the hardest blow of all, or anyhow the most incredible. At a time when the Confederate authorities, sixty miles away in Richmond, were doing all they could to push through the first conscription law in American history-a law which could be expected to swell the ranks of the army facing him-it seemed to McClellan that his Was.h.i.+ngton superiors, twice that distance in his rear, had not only taken a full one third of his soldiers from him, but then had proceeded to make certain that they could never be replaced. The fact was, on the eve of b.l.o.o.d.y fighting, Lincoln and Stanton had seen to it that he would not even be able to replace his casualties. So it seemed to McClellan. At any rate, as he went to bed that night he could say, "They have done nearly their worst," and be a good deal closer to the truth.

Next morning, if somewhat daunted by all the knocks he had had to absorb in one short night, he was back at the front, probing the enemy defenses with his three remaining corps. Heintzelman and Keyes, on the right and left, had two divisions each, with a third on the way down Chesapeake Bay for both. Sumner, in the center, had only one; his second was en route, and his third had been Blenker. All three of these brigadiers were hard-sh.e.l.l regulars-Sumner had put in seven of his forty-three years of army service before McClellan was born, and both of the others were thirty-year men or better-but after coming under heavy fire from long-range guns and bogging down in the flooded approaches, all agreed with the Chief Engineer's report that the rebel line was "certainly one of the most extensive known to modern times." If the navy had been there to wreck the batteries on the flanks, or if the weight of McDowell's corps, the largest of the original four, could be added to the pressure the army could exert, things might be different. As it was, however, all felt obliged to agree with Keyes, who later reported bluntly: "No part of [the Yorktown-Warwick River] line, so far discovered, can be taken by a.s.sault without an enormous waste of life."

If the Confederate defenses could not be broken by flanking operations, if a.s.sault was too doubtful and expensive, only one method remained: a siege. McClellan would do it that way if he had to; he had studied siege tactics at Sebastopol. But he much preferred his original plan, which he now saw was impractical without his original army. As he rode back to headquarters this second night he decided to make a final appeal to Lincoln. Under the heading "Near Yorktown, 7.30 p.m." he outlined for the President the situation as he saw it, neglecting none of the drawbacks, and begged him to "reconsider" the order detaching McDowell. "In my deliberate judgment," he wrote, "the success of our cause will be imperiled by so greatly reducing my force when it is actually under the fire of the enemy and active operations have commenced.... I am now of the opinion that I shall have to fight all the available forces of the rebels not far from here. Do not force me to do so with diminished numbers."

Lincoln's reply, the following day, was a brief warning that delay on the Peninsula would benefit the Confederate defenders more than it would the Federal attackers: "You now have over 100,000 troops with you.... I think you better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick River at once." McClellan's first reaction, he told his wife, was "to reply that he had better come and do it himself." Instead, he wired on the 7th that, after the three recent detachments, his "entire force for duty" amounted to about 85,000 men, more than a third of whom were still en route from Alexandria. Lincoln took a day to study this, then replied on the 9th at considerable length. He was puzzled, he said, by "a curious mystery." The general's own report showed a total strength of 108,000; "How can the discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for?"

Beyond this, however, the President's main purpose was to point out to McClellan that more factors were involved in this war than those which might occur to a man with an exclusively military turn of mind. In other words, this was a Civil war. The general was aware of certain pressures in his rear, but Lincoln suggested in a final paragraph that he would gain more from studying those pressures, and maybe finding ways to relieve them, than he would from merely complaining of their presence. It was a highly personal communication, and in it he gave McClellan some highly personal advice: "Once more let me tell you that it is indispensable to you you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Mana.s.sas, was only s.h.i.+fting and not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal intrenchments in either place. The country will not fail to note-is now noting-that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Mana.s.sas repeated. I beg to a.s.sure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act." that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Mana.s.sas, was only s.h.i.+fting and not surmounting a difficulty; that we would find the same enemy and the same or equal intrenchments in either place. The country will not fail to note-is now noting-that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Mana.s.sas repeated. I beg to a.s.sure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act."

That "most anxious judgment" had been under considerable strain ever since McClellan's leading elements started down the coast in transports. Ben Wade and Zachariah Chandler were bombarding Lincoln with protests that the general's treasonable intent was plain at last for any eye to see: The whole campaign had been designed to sidetrack the main Union army by bogging it down in the slews southeast of Richmond, thus clearing the path for a direct rebel sweep on Was.h.i.+ngtion, with little to stand in its way. Stanton not only encouraged the presentation and acceptance of this view, but also enlarged it by a.s.signing additional motives to account for his former intimate's treachery: McClellan was politically ambitious, "more interested in reconstructing the Democratic party than the Army of the Potomac."

Lincoln wondered. He did not believe McClellan was a traitor, but in suggesting that the capital was in danger the Jacobins had touched him where he was tender. "This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade," he said. He could not afford the slightest risk in that direction; too much hung in the balance-including war with England and France as a result of the recognition both would almost certainly give the Confederacy once its army had occupied Was.h.i.+ngton. Then, as he pondered, an alarm was sounded which seemed to give substance to his fears.

On the day McClellan landed at Old Point Comfort, Brigadier General James Wadsworth, the elderly commander of the Was.h.i.+ngton defenses and one of the founders of the Republican Party, came to Stanton complaining that his force was inadequate for its task, both in numbers and in training. The Secretary sent his military a.s.sistant, the hapless. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k, and Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas to investigate, and when they confirmed Wadsworth's report that the capital was in danger, Stanton took him triumphantly to Lincoln. McClellan's note of the day before, claiming that he had left 77,456 men behind to give Was.h.i.+ngton the stipulated "entire feeling of security," was checked for accuracy. Certain discrepancies showed at once, and the harder the three men looked the more they saw. In the first place, by an arithmetical error, the troops at Warrenton had been counted twice. Proposed reinforcements from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York had not arrived, though they were listed. Blenker's division, on the way to Fremont, had also been included, on grounds that Banks could interrupt its march if it was needed. All these had to be subtracted. And so for that matter did the two divisions already with Banks in the Valley; Patterson's army, out there in July, had done nothing to protect the capital after the debacle at Bull Run. In fact, by actual count as Lincoln saw it, once McClellan's whole army had gone down the coast, there would be fewer than 29,000 men in all to stand in the way of a direct Confederate drive on Was.h.i.+ngton: 11,000 less than the general's own corps commanders had said were necessary.

The way to keep this from happening was to stop one corps from going to join McClellan, and that was what Lincoln did, creating in the process the Departments of the Rappahannock and the Shenandoah to give McDowell and Banks their independence. The former would make his headquarters at Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, and in time-conditions permitting-march overland to join his former chief in front of Richmond. That way, he would always be in a position to strike the front or flank of any rebel force that tried a direct lunge at Was.h.i.+ngton, and yet he would still be in on the kill when the time came. Lincoln did not want to hurt McClellan any more than he had to. In fact, on the day after telling him, "You must act," he released McDowell's lead division, under Franklin-a great favorite of McClellan's, who asked in a final desperate plea that this, at least, not be withheld-to proceed by the water route as originally planned. Exuberantly grateful, McClellan wired on April 13: "We shall soon be at them, and I am sure of the result."

Lincoln had heard him say such things before; they were part of what made the Young Napoleon at once so likeable and exasperating. The President knew by now not to put much stock in such expressions, which after all only meant that McClellan was feeling good again. Lincoln himself was not. The past week had been a strain, in some ways harder than the strain which had followed defeat on the plains of Mana.s.sas. His sadness had deepened, along with the lines in his face, though he still kept his wry sense of humor. A country editor called at the White House, claiming to have been the first to suggest Lincoln's nomination for President. Lincoln was busy, but when he tried to escape by saying he had to go over to the War Department on business, the editor offered to accompany him. "Come along," Lincoln said. When they got there he told his visitor, "I shall have to see Mr Stanton alone, and you must excuse me." He turned to enter, but then, perhaps considering this too abrupt, turned back and took the editor by the hand. "Goodbye," he said. "I hope you will feel perfectly easy about having nominated me. Don't be troubled about it. I forgive you."

As April wore on and the rains continued, so did the siege preparations; McClellan was hard at work. He had not wanted this kind of campaign, but now that he had it he was enjoying it immensely. Back in the West Virginia days he had said, "I will not throw these raw men of mine into the teeth of artillery and intrenchments if it is possible to avoid it." He still felt that way about it. "I am to watch over you as a parent over his children," he had told his army the month before, and that was what he was doing. If it was to be a siege, let it be one in the grand manner, with fascines and gabions, zigzag approaches, and much digging and s.h.i.+fting of earth, preparatory to blasting the rebel fortifications clean out of existence. "Do not misunderstand the apparent inaction here," he wired Lincoln on the 23d, concerned lest a civilian fail to appreciate all this labor. "Not a day, not an hour has been lost. Works have been constructed that may almost be called gigantic."

Gigantic was particularly the word for the fifteen ten-gun batteries of 13-inch siege mortars being installed within two miles of Yorktown; on completion, they would be capable of throwing 400 tons of metal daily into the rebel defenses. Six were installed and ready before the end of the month, but McClellan held his fire, preferring to open with all of them at once. Meanwhile he neglected nothing which he thought would add to the final effect. On the 28th he wired Stanton: "Would be glad to have the 30-pounder Parrotts in the works around Was.h.i.+ngton. Am short of that excellent gun." When Lincoln saw the request, his thin-stretched patience snapped. "Your call for Parrott guns...alarms me," he answered on May Day, "chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything to be done?" McClellan replied that the Parrotts would hasten, not delay, the breaking of the enemy lines; "All is being done that human labor can accomplish." The build-up continued. Then suddenly, May 4, it paid off. The noonday Sabbath quiet of the War Department telegraph office was broken by the brief, jubilant clatter of a message from the Peninsula: "Yorktown is in our possession. Geo. B. McClellan."

That there was more to it than that, in fact a great deal more, became apparent from the messages which followed. McClellan had not "taken" Yorktown; he had received it by default. Joe Johnston had been observing all those large-scale preparations, then had pulled back on the eve of what was to have been the day of his destruction. It was Centerville-Mana.s.sas all over again, except this time the guns he left behind were real ones: 56 heavy siege pieces, many with their ammunition still neatly stacked and only three of them damaged. However, he had saved all of his field artillery and given his army a head start toward whatever defensive line he intended to occupy next. McClellan did not mean for him to do so unmolested. He sent the cavalry in pursuit at once, despite a thunderstorm that approached cloudburst proportions, and followed it with the whole army, under Sumner, while he himself remained at Yorktown to launch an amphibious end run up the York, attempting to cut off Johnston's retreat by landing Franklin's division in his rear. The result was a b.l.o.o.d.y rear-guard action next day in front of Williamsburg, antic.i.p.ated and reviewed in two telegrams he sent, the first at 9 a.m. and the last at 9.40 p.m. The former was to Stanton, an announcement of intention: "I shall push the enemy to the wall." The latter was to Franklin, who was coming up by water while McClellan himself hurried overland to where Sumner's guns were growling: "We have now a tangent hit. I arrived in time."

Johnston, whose men were plodding along the single miry road behind their slow-grinding wagon train, had not planned a halt until he crossed the Chickahominy, but the Union infantry was closing fast, unimpeded by wagons, and the cavalry was taking potshots at his rear guard before sundown. So he instructed Longstreet's division to delay the pursuit by holding Fort Magruder long enough to give the rest of the army time to draw off. When Sumner's men came slogging up they were met by a spatter of musketry that stopped them for the night. The fight next day-dignified by time into the Battle of Williamsburg-was confusion from start to finish, with lunges and counterlunges and a great deal of slipping and sliding in the mud. Cannonfire had a metallic ring in the saturated air, and generals on both sides lost their sense of direction in the rain. Sumner kept pus.h.i.+ng and probing; Longstreet had to call for help, and Major General D. H. Hill countermarched his whole division and joined the melee. In the end, the Confederates managed to hang on until nightfall, when they fell back and the Federals took possession of Fort Magruder. Both claimed a victory: the latter because they had gained the field, the former because they had delayed the pursuit. The only apparent losers were the casualties: 1703 for the South, 2239 for the North.

Whatever else it amounted to, and that seemed very little, the day-long battle had given the troops of both sides two clear gains at least. The first was that, as soldiers, they were tangibly worth their salt. Despite the confusion and the milling about, which gave the action a superficial resemblance to Bull Run, the men had fought as members of military units, not as panicky individuals. This in itself was a substantial gain, one they knew was beyond value. Training had paid off. But the second was even more appealing. This was a new confidence in their respective commanding generals, in spite of the fact that neither had been present for the fighting.

Johnston was toiling westward through the mud with his main body. Coming upon a deeply mired 12-pound bra.s.s Napoleon which a battery lieutenant was about to abandon in obedience to orders that nothing was to be allowed to impede the march, Johnston said: "Let me see what I can do." He dismounted, waded into the bog-high-polished boots, gold braid, and all-and took hold of a muddy spoke. "Now, boys: all together!" he cried, and the gun bounded clear of the chunk-hole. After that, one cannoneer said, "our battery used to swear by Old Joe."

McClellan's performance was no less endearing. Arriving just at the close of the battle, mud-stained from hard riding, his staff strung out behind him trying desperately to keep up, he went from regiment to regiment, congratulating his men for their victory and acknowledging their cheers. Often he paused for a question-and-answer exchange, strophe and antistrophe: "How do you feel, boys?"

"We feel bully, General!" they cried.

"Do you think anything can stop you from going to Richmond?"

"No! No!" they shouted, all together.

Little Mac would give them his jaunty salute, made even flas.h.i.+er today by the glazed waterproof cover he was wearing on his cap, and be off down the line at a gallop, to halt again in front of another regiment: "How do you feel, boys?"

"We feel bully, General!"

"Do you think anything can stop you from going to Richmond?"

"No! No!"

Rain-soaked and hungry, but glad to be out of the trenches, the Confederates continued their march toward the Chickahominy. Smith, in the lead, was instructed to halt at Barhamsville, eighteen miles beyond Williamsburg, and guard against a flank attack from the direction of York River while the other three divisions were catching up. He got there on the afternoon of the 6th, just as Franklin's men were coming ash.o.r.e at Eltham Landing, six miles away, to execute the movement Johnston feared. Informed of this, Johnston ordered Magruder, Longstreet, and Hill to hurry forward. While they were doing so, Smith moved toward Eltham to attack. Deciding that it would be better not to try to stop the Yankees within range of their gunboats, he waited until next morning when they were a couple of miles from the landing, then hit them with Hampton's Legion and a brigade of Texans and Georgians under a 30-year-old West Pointer named John Bell Hood, a prewar junior lieutenant in Sidney Johnston's 2d Cavalry. Franklin's men, deep in unfamiliar country and not knowing how many graybacks might be coming at them, gave ground rapidly until they regained the covering fire of the gunboats.

They had been hit harder than Johnston intended, anxious as he was to avoid the delay another general engagement would have entailed. Later he admonished the blond-bearded six-foot-two-inch Kentucky brigadier: "General Hood, have you given an ill.u.s.tration of the Texas idea of feeling an enemy gently and falling back? What would your Texans have done, sir, if I had ordered them to charge and drive back the enemy?" Hood's blue eyes were somber. He said gravely, "I suppose, General, they would have driven them into the river, and tried to swim out and capture the gunboats."

At any rate Smith was satisfied; Franklin was disposed of, and the wagon train was well along the road. He led his and Magruder's divisions on through New Kent Courthouse and made camp the following night beside the road, nineteen miles from Barhamsville and within easy reach of Bottom's Bridge across the Chickahominy. Five miles downstream, at Long Bridge, the divisions of Hill and Longstreet tried to sleep in a torrent of rain which finally sent them slos.h.i.+ng off in search of higher ground. Whatever their discomfort, Johnston's reaction was primarily a feeling of relief that his 54,000 soldiers had escaped a trap laid by twice their number. Not that he was through retreating. Already he had notified Lee in Richmond: "The want of provision and of any mode of obtaining it here, still more the dearth of forage, makes it impossible to wait to attack [the enemy] while landing. The sight of the ironclad boats makes me apprehensive for Richmond, too, so I move on...."

The Federals were after him, moving slowly, however, along the cut-up roads. Sumner at Williamsburg and Franklin at Eltham Landing had failed to bag the retreating enemy, but McClellan was not discouraged. His men had shown all the dash a commander could ask for, and the rebels were dribbling casualties and equipment as they fled. "My troops are in motion and in magnificent spirits," he informed the War Department. "They have all the air and feelings of veterans. It will do your heart good to see them." The frontal attack, up the middle of the Peninsula, had left the foe no time to get set for another prolonged resistance, and the long end run, despite the savage repulse next day, had "fully served its purpose in clearing our front to the banks of the Chickahominy." In accordance with plans made months ago, when Urbanna was the intended place of debarkation, he set up his base at West Point, the terminus of the 35-mile-long Richmond & York River Railroad. Here the Mattapony and the Pamunkey converged to form the York, which afforded a deep-draft supply line all the way back to Chesapeake Bay. Regiment after regiment, division after division of reinforcements could be landed here, fresh for combat, and McClellan was quick to suggest that this be done. May 8 he wired Stanton: "The time has arrived to bring all the troops in Eastern Virginia into perfect cooperation. I expect to fight another and very severe battle before reaching Richmond and with all the troops the Confederates can bring together.... All the troops on the Rappahannock, and if possible those on the Shenandoah, should take part in the approaching battle. We ought immediately to concentrate everything."

The wire did not have to go all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton; the Secretary was at Fort Monroe. He had arrived two days ago with Lincoln and Chase, primarily for relaxation and a look-see, but as it turned out was lending a hand in the direction of one of the strangest small-scale campaigns in American military history.

Amazed to find that McClellan had made no provision for the capture of Norfolk, outflanked by the drive up the opposite bank of the James, the President decided to undertake the operation himself, employing the fortress garrison under Major General John E. Wool. Wool was 78, two years older than Winfield Scott, and though he was more active physically than his fellow veteran of the War of 1812-he could still mount a horse, for instance-he had other infirmities all his own. After twenty-five years as Inspector General, his hands trembled; he repeated things he had said a short while back, and he had to ask his aide if he had put his hat on straight. However, there was no deficiency of the courage he had shown under Anthony Wayne. He said he would gladly undertake the movement his Commander in Chief proposed.

The first trouble came with the navy: Goldsborough thought it would be dangerous to ferry the men across the Roads with the Merrimac Merrimac still on the loose. But Lincoln not only overruled him, he and Chase got in separate tugs and reconnoitered the opposite sh.o.r.e for a suitable landing place. When they returned, however, they found that Wool had already chosen one from the chart and was embarking with the troops who were to seize it. Chase went along, but Lincoln and Stanton stayed behind to maintain a command post at the fort and question various colonels and generals who, the President thought, were to follow in support. still on the loose. But Lincoln not only overruled him, he and Chase got in separate tugs and reconnoitered the opposite sh.o.r.e for a suitable landing place. When they returned, however, they found that Wool had already chosen one from the chart and was embarking with the troops who were to seize it. Chase went along, but Lincoln and Stanton stayed behind to maintain a command post at the fort and question various colonels and generals who, the President thought, were to follow in support.

"Where is your command?" he asked one, and got the answer: "I am awaiting orders." To another he said, "Why are you here? Why not on the other side?" and was told: "I am ordered to the fort." Experiencing for the first time some of the vexations likely to plague a field commander, Lincoln lost his temper. He took off his tall hat and slammed it on the floor. "Send me someone who can write," he said, exasperated. When the someone came forward-a colonel on Wool's staff-the President dictated an order for the advance to be pushed and supported.

As things turned out, no push or support was needed. The Confederates had evacuated Norfolk the day before, leaving only a handful of men behind to complete the wrecking of Gosport Navy Yard. Chase and Wool were met just short of the city limits by a munic.i.p.al delegation, including the mayor, who carried a large bunch of rusty keys and a sheaf of doc.u.ments which he insisted on reading, down to the final line, before making the final formal gesture of handing over the keys. Unknown to Wool and the Secretary, while the mayor droned on, the rebel demolition crew was completing its work and setting out for Richmond. Then Chase and the general moved in with their troops and took charge, sending word back to Lincoln that his first field campaign had been a complete success, despite vexations.

One demolition job remained, and it was done that night. No nation ever owed more to a single s.h.i.+p than the Confederacy owed the Merrimac-Virginia; Merrimac-Virginia; yet, with Norfolk gone, she had not only lost her home, she had lost her occupation. Josiah Tattnall, who had dipped his colors in salute to his old friend Du Pont at Port Royal and had been in command of the ironclad since late March, saw two choices: either to steer her out into the Roads for a suicidal finish, taking as many of the enemy with her as possible when she sank, or else to try and lighten her enough to ascend the James. In point of fact, however, there was really no choice. No matter how fitting the former seemed as a death for a gallant vessel, it obviously would not benefit the country; whereas the latter course would preserve her for future service, a second career. She now drew twenty-three feet as a result of recent additions to her armor, but the pilots a.s.sured the commodore that if she could be lightened to eighteen feet before daylight they would take her up to Harrison's Landing or City Point, where she could be put in fighting trim again. Tattnall a.s.sembled the crew and told them what had to be done. They gave three cheers and got to work, heaving everything movable over the side except her powder and shot. She had been lightened three feet by midnight-when the pilots announced that a strong west wind had reduced the tide so much that she could not be taken up at all. yet, with Norfolk gone, she had not only lost her home, she had lost her occupation. Josiah Tattnall, who had dipped his colors in salute to his old friend Du Pont at Port Royal and had been in command of the ironclad since late March, saw two choices: either to steer her out into the Roads for a suicidal finish, taking as many of the enemy with her as possible when she sank, or else to try and lighten her enough to ascend the James. In point of fact, however, there was really no choice. No matter how fitting the former seemed as a death for a gallant vessel, it obviously would not benefit the country; whereas the latter course would preserve her for future service, a second career. She now drew twenty-three feet as a result of recent additions to her armor, but the pilots a.s.sured the commodore that if she could be lightened to eighteen feet before daylight they would take her up to Harrison's Landing or City Point, where she could be put in fighting trim again. Tattnall a.s.sembled the crew and told them what had to be done. They gave three cheers and got to work, heaving everything movable over the side except her powder and shot. She had been lightened three feet by midnight-when the pilots announced that a strong west wind had reduced the tide so much that she could not be taken up at all.

The first choice was gone with the second, for the work had exposed two feet of her hull below the s.h.i.+eld, and to let in water ballast to settle her again would be to flood her fires and magazines. Now that she could neither run nor fight, a third choice, unconsidered at the outset, was all that remained: to destroy her. Tattnall gave the necessary orders. The Virginia Virginia was run ash.o.r.e near Craney Island and set afire. By the light of her burning, the crew set out on their march to Suffolk, where they took the cars for Richmond. There they were ordered to Drewry's Bluff, whose batteries now were all that stood between the Confederate capital and the Federal fleet, including their old adversary the was run ash.o.r.e near Craney Island and set afire. By the light of her burning, the crew set out on their march to Suffolk, where they took the cars for Richmond. There they were ordered to Drewry's Bluff, whose batteries now were all that stood between the Confederate capital and the Federal fleet, including their old adversary the Monitor Monitor.

Those batteries were of primary concern to Lee, who also had lost a good part of his occupation when Johnston came down and took command on the Peninsula. All through late April and early May, while Johnston was warning that he was about to bring the war to the outskirts of Richmond, Lee had been supervising work on the close-in defenses, of which the installations at Drewry's were a part, and now that Johnston was falling back with all the speed the mud allowed, Lee continued to do what he could to protect his ancestral capital from a.s.sault. Called on at a cabinet meeting to say where the next stand could be made if the city had to be abandoned, he made an unaccustomed show of his emotions. It would have to be along the Staunton River, he said calmly, a hundred miles southwest. Then suddenly his eyes brimmed with tears. "But Richmond must not be given up; it shall not be given up!" he exclaimed.

Davis felt much the same way about it. Twice he had ridden down to Drewry's with Lee to inspect the work in progress there, the hulks being sunk alongside pilings driven across the channel and the heavy naval cannon being emplaced on the high bluff. But in spite of hearing that Butler's men, with Farragut on his way up the Mississippi, were sacking and looting Briarfield, he kept an even closer rein on his emotions than did the Virginian who had been nicknamed "The Marble Monument" while they were at the Academy together. Many interpreted this calmness to mean a lack of concern by the Chief Executive, and when he was baptized and confirmed at St Paul's on the 9th, the Examiner Examiner took him to task for finding time for such ministrations on the day of Norfolk's evacuation. Faced with imminent a.s.sault by land and water, the people wanted a.s.surance from Davis that Richmond would be defended, block by block and house by house. A committee called at his office on the morning of May 15, inquiring whether the government shared their determination, but their spokesman was interrupted by a messenger who came to inform the President that the masts of Federal wars.h.i.+ps had been sighted on the James from the hills of the city. "This manifestly concludes the matter," Davis said, dismissing the committee. took him to task for finding time for such ministrations on the day of Norfolk's evacuation. Faced with imminent a.s.sault by land and water, the people wanted a.s.surance from Davis that Richmond would be defended, block by block and house by house. A committee called at his office on the morning of May 15, inquiring whether the government shared their determination, but their spokesman was interrupted by a messenger who came to inform the President that the masts of Federal wars.h.i.+ps had been sighted on the James from the hills of the city. "This manifestly concludes the matter," Davis said, dismissing the committee.

Soon the guns began to roar, clangorous on the hilltops and reverberant in the hollows. They kept it up for three full hours and twenty minutes, rattling Richmond windows from a distance of eight miles. It was deafening; people trembled at the sound. Then suddenly it stopped, and that was worse. With the abrupt descent of silence, they took their hands down from their ears and looked at one another, not knowing which to expect: a messenger announcing that the a.s.sault had been repulsed, or the gunboats celebrating a victory by lobbing 11-inch sh.e.l.ls into the city. Presently they had the answer.

The attack had been led by two ironclads, the Monitor Monitor and the and the Galena Galena, supported by two wooden vessels. The latter kept their distance, but the armored s.h.i.+ps began the bombardment at a range of 800 yards. The Monitor Monitor soon retired, unable to elevate her guns enough to reach the batteries on the bluff. The soon retired, unable to elevate her guns enough to reach the batteries on the bluff. The Galena Galena stayed and took twenty-eight hits, including eighteen perforations which cost her 13 killed and 11 wounded, before she dropped back down the river with the others, winding lamely out of sight around the bend. The Confederate gunners leaped on the unfinished parapets, cheering and tossing their caps: especially the sailors off the stayed and took twenty-eight hits, including eighteen perforations which cost her 13 killed and 11 wounded, before she dropped back down the river with the others, winding lamely out of sight around the bend. The Confederate gunners leaped on the unfinished parapets, cheering and tossing their caps: especially the sailors off the Virginia Virginia, who at last had scored the triumph that had been beyond their reach at water level.

Richmond had been delivered, at least for a day. But Johnston was still retreating. That same morning he abandoned the middle and lower stretches of the Chickahominy, taking up an intermediary position which he abandoned in turn, two days later, because he found it tactically weak and inadequately supplied with drinking water. What he would do next he would not say, not even to the President. A South Carolinian recalled that before the war Wade Hampton had brought Johnston down there on a bird hunt, but Johnston had not fired a shot all day. "The bird flew too high or too low; the dogs were too far or too near. Things never did suit exactly." It seemed to be that way with him now, but one thing at least was clear. The next withdrawal would have to be beyond the capital. His present left was at Fairfield Race Course, just outside the northeast city limits, and his right was on the near bank of the James, across from Drewry's Bluff. Richmond was beleaguered. At nightfall people saw from her hills the semicircular twinkle of the campfires of the Army of Northern Virginia. Beyond them, a greater refulgence along the eastern and northeastern sky reflected the glow of campfires kindled by McClellan's hundred thousand.

In preparation for what he believed might be the last great battle of the war, the Federal commander had reorganized his army while it was still on the march toward the Chickahominy crossings. Shuffling and reconsolidating while in motion, he created two new corps, one under Fitz-John Porter, the other under Franklin-both of them original pro-McClellan brigadiers-which gave him five corps in all, each with two three-brigade divisions. The order of battle, as reported in mid-May:

gave him a tightly knit yet highly flexible fighting force of 102,236 front-line soldiers and 300 guns. Another 5000 extra-duty men, including cooks and teamsters, laborers and suchlike, were with the advance, while 21,000 more had been left at various points along the road from Fort Monroe, sick or absent without leave or on garrison duty, to give him an over-all total of 128,864.

McClellan did not consider this a man too many. In fact he was convinced it was not enough. Pinkerton was at work again, questioning prisoners and contrabands and totting up figures he received from his operatives beyond the enemy lines. A month ago, in front of Yorktown, he had said that the Confederates were issuing 119,000 daily rations. Presently this grew to 180,000, reported along with a warning that the figure was probably low, since 200 separate regiments of southern infantry had already been identified on the Peninsula, plus a.s.sorted battalions of artillery, cavalry, and combat engineers. One corps commander wrote in his journal that 240,000 rebels were concentrated in front of the northern army. McClellan never believed the figure was quite that high, but he clearly believed it might be. Complaining to the War Department on May 10 that he himself could put barely 70,000 on the firing line, he continued to plead for more: "If I am not reinforced, it is probable that I will be obliged to fight nearly double my numbers, strongly intrenched."

Whatever their strength, the Confederates kept falling back and McClellan continued to follow. By May 15 he had advanced his base another fifteen miles along the railroad, from West Point to the head of navigation on the Pamunkey, which gave him both water and rail facilities for bringing supplies forward. Here was a large southern mansion called the White House, where the nation's first President had courted the Widow Custis, and there was a note attached to the front door. "Northern soldiers who profess to reverence Was.h.i.+ngton," it read, "forbear to desecrate the home of his first married life, the property of his wife, now owned by her descendants. A Grand-daughter of Mrs Was.h.i.+ngton." The author of the note was Mrs R. E. Lee. She had already lost one home in the path of war-Arlington, near Alexandria-and McClellan respected her wishes in regard to this one. He pitched his headquarters tents in the yard and set up a permanent supply dump at the landing, but he stationed guards around the house itself to keep out prowlers and souvenir-hunters, and provided an escort with a flag of truce to see the lady through the lines to join her husband.

Glad of this chance to show that the practice of chivalry was not restricted to soldiers dressed in gray, he then enjoyed a brief sojourn among the relics. Even though the house itself was a reconstruction, the sensation of being on the site where Was.h.i.+ngton had slept and eaten and taken his ease gave the youthful commander a feeling of being borne up and on by the stream of history; he hoped, he said, "that I might serve my country as well as he did." Riding toward the front on May 16, he came to old St Peter's Church, where Was.h.i.+ngton was married. Here too he stopped, dismounted, and went in. That night he wrote his wife: "As I happened to be there alone for a few minutes, I could not help kneeling at the chancel and praying."

What followed next day was enough to convince an agnostic of the efficacy of prayer. Officially and out of the blue, he heard from Stanton that McDowell was being reinforced by a division already on its way from Banks in the Shenandoah Valley. As soon as it got there, McClellan was told, McDowell would move south to join him in front of Richmond with an additional 40,000 men.

This was the one calamity beyond all others Lee had been seeking for means to avoid. McClellan was a hovering threat-his frontline troops could hear the clocks of Richmond strike the hours-but at least Johnston stood in his path; whereas at present there was nothing between McDowell and Richmond that he could not brush aside with an almost careless gesture, and if Johnston sidled to block him too, the capital's defenses would be stretched beyond the snapping point. The fall of the city would follow as surely as nightfall followed sunset of the day McDowell got there.

For possible deliverance, Lee looked north. Numerically the odds were even longer in Northern Virginia than they were on the Peninsula-three-to-two against Johnston, three-to-one against the troops he had left behind-but Johnston was wedged tight in coffin corner, while northward there was still room for maneuver. If anything, there was too much room. A brigade of 2500 under Brigadier General Charles Field-another of Sidney Johnston's ubiquitous former U.S. Cavalry lieutenants-had been left on the Rappahannock to watch McDowell. Jackson's command, grown by now to about 6000, opposed Banks in the Valley. Ewell's 8500 were posted at Gordonsville, equidistant from both, instructed to be ready to march in support of whichever needed him worse. Beyond Jackson, Edward Johnson with 2800 was observing Fremont's Allegheny preparations. McDowell, with Franklin detached, had 30,000; Banks had 21,000; Fremont had 17,000 and more on the way. Numerically, then-with 68,000 Federals distributed along a perimeter guarded by just under 20,000 Confederates-the outlook was as gloomy there as elsewhere, even gloomier. But Lee saw possibilities through the gloom. If the two largest southern commands, under Jackson and Ewell, could be combined, they might be able to hit one of the three opposing forces hard enough to alarm the Union high command into delaying the advance of all the rest: including McDowell. That is, Lee would stop McDowell not by striking him-he was too strong-but by striking Banks or Fremont, who would call on him for help.

Daring as the conception was, a great deal more than daring would be needed before it could be translated into action. Field, for instance, would have to be reinforced. To leave him where he was, without support from Ewell, would be to invite McDowell to smother him. But when Lee appealed to Johnston to spare the men from the Yorktown intrenchments, Johnston would not hear of it. "To detach troops from this position would be ruin to those left," he said. Once more Lee had to improvise, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and this he did. Burnside's aggressiveness having subsided, he took three brigades from North and South Carolina, 10,000 men in all, and sent them up to Fredericksburg under Brigadier General J. R. Anderson, who combined them with Field's brigade and a.s.sumed command by seniority. Ewell could now slide westward toward the Blue Ridge and conjunction with Jackson.

They were a strange pair: so strange, indeed, that perhaps the most daring thing about Lee's plan was that he was willing to trust it to these two to carry out. d.i.c.k Ewell was an eccentric, a queer-looking forty-five-year-old bachelor who spoke with a sort of twittering lisp and subsisted on a diet of cracked wheat to palliate the tortures of dyspepsia. With his sharp nose and bald-domed head, which he frequently let droop far toward one shoulder, he reminded many people of a bird-an eagle, some said; others said a woodc.o.c.k. He was a West Pointer, but a generation of frontier duty, he declared, had taught him all about handling fifty dragoons and driven all other knowledge from his mind. So far, his only appreciable service in the war had been at the Battle of Mana.s.sas, where he crossed and recrossed Bull Run, far on the right, and never came to grips with the enemy at all. He had a habit of interjecting odd remarks into everyday conversations: as for instance, "Now why do you suppose President Davis made me a major general anyway?"

Stonewall seemed about as bad. The fame he had won along with his nickname at Mana.s.sas had been tarnished by last winter's fruitless Romney expedition, which resulted in much friction with the War Department, as well as by the b.l.o.o.d.y repulse he had blundered into recently at Kernstown. His abrupt cas.h.i.+ering of Garnett after that fight had caused his officers to think of him distastefully, and quite accurately, as a man who would be quick to throw the book at a subordinate who stepped or wandered out of line. Like Ewell, who was three months his junior in rank and seven years his senior in age, he had adopted a peculiar diet to ease the pains of dyspepsia: raspberries and plain bread and milk, supplemented by lemons-many lemons-though he would take no seasoning in his food: pepper made his left leg ache, he said. Nor was his appearance rea.s.suring. His uniform was a single-breasted threadbare coat he had worn in the Mexican War, a rusty V.M.I. cadet cap, which he wore with the broken visor pulled well down over his weary-looking eyes, and an outsized pair of flop-top cavalry boots. A religious fanatic, he sometimes interrupted his soldiers at their poker and chuckaluck games by strolling through camp to hand out Sunday School pamphlets. They did not object to this so much, however, as they did to the possible truth of rumors that he imagined himself a southern Joshua and in combat got so carried away by the notion that he lost his mental balance. They feared it might be so with him, for they had seen his pale blue eyes take on a wild unearthly glitter in the gunsmoke; Old Blue Light, they called him. And there was substance for their fears. Just now he was writing his wife that he hoped to make his Valley command "an army of the living G.o.d as well as of its country."

Such as they were, they were all Lee had-and strictly speaking he did not even have them. Both were still a part of Johnston's army, subject to Johnston's orders, and Johnston was extremely touchy about out-of-channels interference. Whatever was to be done in Northern Virginia would have to be done with his cooperation, or anyhow his acquiescence, which he seemed likely to withhold in the case of a proposal that violated, as this one did, his cherished principles of "concentration." On the other hand, Lee had Davis to sustain him. Unlike Lincoln, who did not count a soldier as part of the Was.h.i.+ngton defenses unless he could ride out and touch him in the course of an afternoon's round-trip carriage drive from the White House, Davis could see that a man a hundred miles away might do more to relieve the pressure, or stave off a threat, than if he stood on the capital ramparts. With the President's approval, Lee went ahead, trusting that he and Johnston would not issue conflicting orders-or, in Lee's case, suggestions-to the generals out in the Valley.

April 21 he wrote to Jackson, outlining the situation at Richmond and emphasizing the need for holding McDowell on the Rappahannock line. The key force, as he saw it, was Ewell's, which could be used in one of three ways: either by leaving it where it was, or by reinforcing Field-Anderson was still on the way-or by reinforcing Jackson. Lee preferred the latter, and he was writing to find out whether Stonewall thought it practicable: "If you can use General Ewell's division in an attack on General Banks, and to drive him back, it will prove a great relief to the pressure on Fredericksburg." A letter went to Ewell the same day, stressing the necessity for "a speedy blow." Four days later this emphasis on the necessity for speed was added in another note to Jackson: "The blow, wherever struck, must, to be successful, be sudden and heavy. The troops used must be efficient and light."

Jackson replied that he did indeed think an attack was practicable, either against Banks, who had advanced to Harrisonburg, or against Fremont's lead division, which was threatening Edward Johnson near the village of McDowell, west of Staunton. In fact, now that Ewell was at hand, Jackson had formulated three alternate plans of attack: 1) to reinforce Johnson for a sudden lunge at Fremont, leaving Ewell to watch Banks; 2) to combine with Ewell for a frontal a.s.sault on Banks; or 3) to march far down the Valley and strike Banks's rear by swinging around the north end of Ma.s.sanutton Mountain. For the present, he wrote, he preferred the first; "for, if successful, I would afterward only have Banks to contend with, and in doing this would be reinforced by General Edward Johnson."

That was the last Lee heard from Stonewall for a while, though on May Day Ewell informed him, in a postscript to a report: "He moves toward Staunton and I take his position." Plan One was in the course of execution. Ten days later the silence was broken by a wire from Jackson himself. Routed through Staunton, it was dated the 9th: "G.o.d blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday."

In normal times the dispatch would have been received with an exultation to match the sender's, but this was the day the Federals took Norfolk, forcing the Virginia' Virginia's destruction, and Pensacola toppled. down on the Gulf. From Mississippi came news that Farragut had followed his occupation of New Orleans by forcing the upriver surrender of Baton Rouge and Natchez, while Halleck's ponderous southward advance inched closer and closer to Corinth. Worse still, from Richmond's point of view, Johnston's army was crossing the Chickahominy, near the end of its muddy retreat up the Peninsula. The government archives were being loaded onto ca.n.a.l boats for s.h.i.+pment to Lynchburg, in antic.i.p.ation of the fall of the capital; the Treasury's gold reserve was packed aboard a special train with a full head of steam kept in its boiler, ready to whisk it out of the city ahead of the Yankees. President Davis had sent his wife and children to North Carolina, and there was talk that he and the cabinet were soon to follow. The soldiers seemed disheartened by their long retreat, and their general had submitted his resignation in a fit of pique because men under his command on the south side of the James had been ordered about by Lee. "My authority does not extend beyond the troops immediately around me," Johnston wrote. "I request therefore to be relieved of a merely nominal geographical command."

Lee managed to calm Johnston down-"suage him" was the term he generally employed in such cases-but the flare-up seemed likely to occur again whenever the general thought he detected signs of circ.u.mvention; which he well might do if he looked out toward the Valley. It was a testy business at best. By now, too, details of Jackson's "victory at McDowell" had shown it to be less spectacular than the brief dispatch had indicated. As at Kernstown, more Confederates than Federals had fallen. In fact, except that the outnumbered enemy had retreated, it hardly seemed a victory at all. Meanwhile, alarming news had come from Ewell: Banks was moving northward down the Valley toward the Mana.s.sas Gap Railroad, which could speed his army eastward to reinforce McDowell or McClellan. Apparently Jackson's strategy had soured. His attack on Fremont's van seemed to have had an effect quite opposite from the one he had intended.

Lee did not despair. On May 16, the day after the repulse of the Union gunboats on the James-perhaps as McClellan knelt in prayer at the chancel of St Peter's-he wrote to Stonewall, urging an immediate attack: "Whatever may be Banks' intention, it is very desirable to prevent him from going either to Fredericksburg or the Peninsula.... A successful blow struck at him would delay, if it does not prevent, his moving to either place." A closing sentence opened vistas; Banks was not the only high-ranking Federal the Valley blow was aimed at. "Whatever movement you make against Banks do it speedily, and if successful drive him back toward the Potomac, and create the impression, as far as practicable, that you design threatening that line."

2 McDowell, the sharp but limited engagement fought twenty-five miles beyond Staunton on May 8, was in the nature of a prologue to the drama about to be performed in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson at any rate thought of it as such, and though, like a good actor, he gave it his best effort, all through it he was looking forward to the larger action whose cast and properties-Ewell and Banks, with their two armies, and the mountains and rivers with their gaps and bridges-were already in position, awaiting the entrance of the star who would give them their cues and put them to use. In the wings there were supernumeraries, some of whom did not yet know that they were to be called on stage: McDowell, for example, who by coincidence shared his surname with the furious little battle that served as prologue and signaled the raising of the curtain.

As such it held the seeds of much that followed, and this was especially true of the manner in which Stonewall put his army in motion to reinforce Edward Johnson for the attack on Fremont's van. Staunton lay to the southwest, with Johnson west of there; but Jackson marched southeast, toward Richmond, so that his men, along with whatever Federal scouts and spies might be observing, thought they were on the way to help Joe Johnston stop McClellan. Leaving his cavalry with Ewell, who moved in through Swift Run Gap to take over the job of watching Banks while he was gone, the Valley commander took his 5000 infantry through Brown's Gap, then-apparently in rehearsal for the boggy work awaiting them on the Peninsula-exposed them to a three-day nightmare of floundering through eighteen miles of ankle-deep mud before they struck the Virginia Central Railroad, ten miles short of Charlottesville, and boarded a long string of boxcars, double-headed for speed with two locomotives. When the train jerked into motion the men cheered; for it headed not east, toward Richmond, but west toward Staunton. Sunday, May 4, they got there-to the delight of the townspeople, who had thought they were being left at the mercy of Fremont, whose 3500-man advance under Brigadier General Robert Milroy was already pressing Johnson back. In compensation for the violated Sabbath, Jackson gave his men two days' rest, acquired a new uniform-it was homespun and ill-fitting, but at least it was regulation gray-then marched westward to combine with Johnson for a surprise attack that would outnumber the enemy better than two to one.

Numerically it did not work out that way; nor was it a surprise. Despite Stonewall's roundabout approach and careful picketing of the roads, Federal scouts and spies had informed Milroy of the odds he faced. He fell back to the village of McDowell-a sort of miniature Harpers Ferry, surrounded by heights-and called for help from his fellow brigadier, Robert Schenck, thirty-four miles away at Franklin. Schenck got started before midday of May 7, made a driving all-night march with 1500 men, and arrived next morning, just as Jackson was a.s.sembling his 8000 for a downhill charge against Milroy, who was in position on the outskirts of McDowell, firing gamely with the trails of his guns set in trenches to elevate the tubes. Reinforced to 5000, he decided to attack before the Confederates got their artillery on the heights. It was done with spirit, catching Jackson off balance and rocking him on his heels. But Milroy fell back on the town, lacking the strength for anything more than one hard punch, and retreated toward Franklin under cover of darkness, having inflicted 498 casualties at a cost of 256.

Jackson took up the pursuit next morning and continued it for three days, including another violated Sabbath, but gained nothing from it except some abandoned wagons. Milroy was not only too quick for him; to make matters worse, he set the woods afire along the road, causing the rebels to dance on embers as they groped their way through eye-stinging clouds of smoke. With regretful admiration, Stonewall called a halt near Franklin and issued a congratulatory order, urging his men "to unite with me, this morning, in thanksgiving to Almighty G.o.d, for having thus crowned your arms with success." Having done what he came west to do-knock Fremont back from Staunton-he now was ready, as he later reported, to "return to the open country of the Shenandoah Valley, hoping, through the blessing of Providence, to defeat Banks before he should receive reinforcements."

It was open only by comparison, but it had opened itself to him. Long and painful hours spent committing its geography to memory with the a.s.sistance of mileage charts, listing the distance between any two points in the region, had enabled him to quote from the map as readily as he could quote from Scripture, sight unseen. From Staunton to Winchester, eighty miles, the Valley Turnpike led northeast, cradled by the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. Whoever controlled the macadamized pike could move the fastest, particularly in rainy weather; but there were possibilities for maneuver. East of the pike, from Harrisonbur