Gettysburg (11 page)

On this day, Jones also came across a memorandum concerning an interview between a Confederate official and a prominent Northern peace activist named Clement Vallandigham, who had been banished to the Confederacy for speaking out against Lincoln’s war policies. Before he left the South for Canada, the Ohio politician wanted to offer some tactical advice. Jones’ eyes must have widened considerably when he read that the well-known dove had cautioned “strongly against any invasion of pennsylvania, for that would unite all parties at the North, and so strengthen Lincoln’s hands.”

There was little apprehension in the ranks of Lee’s army, however, as the various columns approached and crossed the potomac. “I do not suppose any army ever marched into an enemies country with greater confidence in its ability to [conquer] and with more reasonable grounds for that confidence than the army of Gen. Lee,” declared Brigadier General Abner perrin of Hill’s Corps. A surgeon who served under perrin wrote, “Our army is very large now, and if … Hooker engages us you may be certain that he will be severely whipped.” A South Carolina soldier in Kershaw’s Brigade (Longstreet’s Corps) predicted, “We will march to Philadelphia (if Hooker will allow us) and I think we will end the War by the time we get back.”

Any doubt his men may have harbored was almost always overcome by Robert E. Lee’s charisma. “I could not get over the feeling that an invasion of the enemy’s territory, however tempting, was the wrong policy for us,” Maryland staff officer Henry Kyd Douglas would later recall, “but at the same time I believed that General Lee must know better than I did.” By now, William Dorsey Pender of Hill’s Corps had become a true believer: “Gen. Lee has completely outgeneraled Hooker thus far and then our numbers are more equal than they have been,” he assured his wife. “The General says he wants to meet [Hooker] … as soon as possible and crush him.” Lest he become too serious, Lee joked with Pender that he was going to begin shooting stragglers if the men did not keep up. Pender related his retort: “I told him if he gave us authority to shoot those under us he might take the same privilege with us.”

The members of Louisiana’s Washington Artillery Battalion were buoyed by the rumors they heard. “Yankee papers say that Johnston & Pemberton are driving Grant before them at Vicksburg,” noted gunner Edward Owen. “Also say that our Cavalry is in Harrisburg, Pa. & that the
Pa. Dutchmen refuse to respond to the call … for 100,000 more troops.” A. D. Betts, a Confederate chaplain, was pleased that a number of his flock had been moved by events to make a personal commitment to God. In his diary entry for June 21, he noted with pride the newly baptized: “Several are immersed in p.m.”

All of Ewell’s infantry were now across the Potomac. A lieutenant in the 49th Virginia would later remember that the river was running “up to our hips” as the troops waded to the Maryland side. Louisiana soldiers under Brigadier General Harry T. Hays stripped to the buff when their turn came. “It was amusing,” wrote a staff officer who was present, “to see the long lines of naked men fording [the river]—their clothing and accouterments slung to their guns and carried above their heads to keep them dry.” There was a bit more ceremony when the 38th Georgia made the crossing, at least according to the recollection of Private F. L. Hudgins, who described “flags fluttering and bands playing ‘Maryland, My Maryland.’”

Before he went across, gunner Henry Robinson Berkeley of the Amherst (Virginia) Artillery enjoyed his last breakfast as the guest of a farm woman who admitted to being a Union sympathizer. “She said she felt very sorry for the soldiers on both sides,” Berkeley reported, “and fed both alike.”

For his part, Abraham Lincoln now found himself mediating between Henry Halleck and Joseph Hooker. The president’s telegram of June 16, firmly placing Hooker under Halleck in the chain of command, had been his official statement, but that same day, Lincoln had also penned a private letter to the Army of the Potomac commander, seeking to mitigate the sting of that other communique. “I need and must have the professional skill of both [of you],” Lincoln wrote, “and yet these suspicions tend to deprive me of both. … Now, all I ask is that you will be in such mood that can get into our action the best cordial judgment of yourself and General Halleck, with my poor mite added.”

In the days that followed, Lincoln juggled other matters of government with a steady concern over the events transpiring just to the west of the capital. On June 23, Hooker took advantage of his proximity to Washington to pay a visit to the White House. It was a day on which Lincoln, in the opinion of one cabinet member, looked “sad and careworn.” No record was kept of any discussion between the two. Hooker departed
as quickly as he had arrived, leaving behind a growing unhappiness regarding his handling of the situation. “What disgust there is everywhere about Hooker and the [Lincoln] administration,” exclaimed the officer commanding Washington’s defenses on June 24. Word began to spread that Hooker was drinking a great deal.

Also on June 24, Hooker sent Halleck his assessment of the strategic picture. Ewell’s Corps, he conceded, “is over the river … for purposes of plunder,” but he was sanguine that Pennsylvania’s militiamen “should be able to check any extended advance of that column.” He had no news to convey about the rest of Lee’s army. Provided that Lee did not heavily reinforce Ewell, Hooker felt it would make sense for the Army of the Potomac to “strike for his line of retreat in the direction of Richmond.” Also included in Hooker’s note were complaints about officers serving in the Washington defenses who were not cooperating with him. Until Halleck issued definitive orders placing him in overall command, the Army of the Potomac commander claimed not to know whether he was “standing on [his] … head or feet.”

Robert
E.
Lee set up his headquarters just outside Berryville, Virginia, on June 20. Straightaway he dashed off a letter to the officer in charge of the Confederate Department of Western Virginia, urging him to “threaten Western Virginia [so that] … you may at least prevent the [U.S.] troops in that region from being sent to reinforce other points.” The officer commanding the Southern cavalry operating in western Maryland was advised to concentrate his force and advance along the flank of the Army of Northern Virginia as it moved north. Writing to the C.S. president, Lee once more asked that the brigades that he had been promised, but that Davis was still holding near Richmond, “be sent to me.”

Lee returned to some of his favorite subjects in a June 23 dispatch to Davis. He argued yet again that the hot summer made it impossible for the enemy to “undertake active operations on the Carolina and Georgia coast,” and suggested that “a part … of the troops … can be employed at this time to great advantage in Virginia.” Lee reminded Davis of an idea he had broached at the May meeting, proposing that instead of being sent to him, or even being used to replace troops intended for him, this force “be organized under the command of General [P. G. T.] Beauregard, and pushed forward to Culpeper Court-House, threatening Washington from that direction.”

Lee also tried to lower expectations regarding what he might achieve in his current campaign. If he was successful, and Davis went along with the Beauregard ploy, then Lee felt they “might even hope to compel the recall of some of the enemy’s troops from the west.” In a private conversation he had this day with Major General Isaac R. Trimble, present at headquarters as a supernumerary, Lee hinted that his personal aspirations had not waned. “We have again out-maneuvered the enemy,” he told Trimble, adding that the great lead he enjoyed over Hooker would force the Yankee general “to follow us by forced marches. I hope with these advantages to accomplish some signal result, and to end the war if Providence favors us.”

Getting Ewell’s Corps to move deeper into Pennsylvania was the first item on Lee’s agenda. He was confident that he could hold Hooker off and thereby afford Ewell considerable freedom of action, but he had no control over the weather. The Potomac was still running high, keeping Early’s Division stranded on the Virginia side as late as June 21. However, the indications pointed to its being fordable within twenty-four hours. On June 22, Lee ordered Ewell to advance into Pennsylvania and then spread his force eastward in three separate columns to maximize the area he could scour for supplies, his ultimate objective being the Susquehanna River. Lee gave Ewell wide discretion: “If Harrisburg comes within your means, capture it,” he instructed. Of course, everything depended on what Lee termed the “development of circumstances.”

Lee also wanted Stuart’s cavalry to lend direct support to Ewell’s advance by operating just off its right flank. Delays incurred in fending off the Union thrusts into the Loudoun Valley had permitted Hill’s and Longstreet’s corps to pass behind Stuart, creating a logistical problem. For Stuart’s riders, getting to their proper place with Ewell’s men would mean having to work their way forward using roads already clogged with columns of infantry and slow wagon trains. Stuart had another idea.

His plan had originated with Major John S. Mosby, one of Stuart’s most trusted officers, who had been on detached service throughout the greater Loudoun Valley, conducting a highly effective harassment campaign against Union outposts and supply lines. Mosby had a good sense of troop dispositions and a boldness that recognized opportunities. He knew from personal observation that Hooker’s army was “spread out like a fan—his left being at Thoroughfare Gap and his right on the Potomac at Leesburg.” Mosby had conveyed this information to Stuart, who had then decided that “with the approval of General Lee, [he would move] to
pass around, or rather through them, as the shortest route to Ewell.” Lee, meeting with Stuart on June 21, had given his cavalry commander provisional orders allowing him the freedom to move in any way practicable to achieve his objective of closing on Ewell’s flank. Lee and Stuart had planned this kind of movement before; neither anticipated any serious problems.

Located some twenty-five miles east of Chambersburg, through a pass in the South Mountains called the Cashtown Gap, the town of Gettysburg (population approximately 2,400) endured the great uncertainties of the times. Communications reaching the Adams County seat may have been garbled, but they were swift. On June 15, the same day Jenkins rode into Chambersburg, Gettysburg diarist Sarah Broadhead had written that the “Rebels were crossing the river in heavy force and advancing on this state.” The town’s merchants were soon taking the same precautions as their Chambersburg counterparts. Every traveler was grilled about what he knew or had heard.

Jenkins’ abrupt pullback from Chambersburg had left residents breathing easier. Another Gettysburg citizen, Fannie Buehler, would note that “it grew to be an old story. We tried to make ourselves believe that they would never come.” There was hard evidence to the contrary, however. On June 17, a small crowd had seen off a group of eighty-three men, volunteers from Gettysburg’s college and seminary, who were heading to Harrisburg in response to Governor Curtin’s call for militiamen. Two days later, a mounted local defense force was organized under Captain Robert Bell and immediately set about patrolling the Chambersburg pike.

There had been a further portent of things to come on June 22. A band of Gettysburg men who had offered to help fell trees to block the Cashtown Gap were fired on as they approached that place. The axmen returned with their job undone. On June 24, word spread that the state militia unit that included Gettysburg’s young men would arrive in town the next day. Sarah Broadhead mentally compared the known fighting qualities of Lee’s veterans with those of the hastily trained, untested militia. “We do not feel much safer,” she concluded.

June 23 was a clear day, perfect for the Federal observers posted on high ground near Harper’s Ferry. The men sharpened the focus on their
binoculars as they peered toward Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown. The Rebels who had been camped at the former location were gone, their passage marked by a line of supply wagons slowly trailing behind them. A large number of Confederate troops could be seen gathering at the Shepherdstown river crossing. Identifying these units now became objective number one for George Sharpe and his staff at the Bureau of Military Information.

After collating information from several sources, Sharpe felt certain that all of Ewell’s Corps was now in Pennsylvania, with cavalry detachments fanning out ahead of it. The troops preparing to cross the Potomac must be Longstreet’s, as Sharpe figured it. The enemy First Corps had been second in the line of march since the movement began, and a Rebel courier who had been taken near Harper’s Ferry claimed to be from that corps. Williamsport was too far away to be monitored from Harper’s Ferry, but Sharpe had received data via Harrisburg that placed Hill’s men over the river. In one of those sudden moments of brutal clarity, George Sharpe realized that everything pointed to the conclusion that Lee’s entire army, or most of it, was north of the Potomac.

Even with this assessment in hand, Hooker held off on moving his army. He also had a report from his Twelfth Corps commander at Leesburg that 6,000 Rebels, said to be commanded by Longstreet, were in the Loudoun Valley. Not until Sharpe provided additional confirmation from Harper’s Ferry (in the form of more prisoners’ professing to belong to Longstreet’s Corps), along with word from his officer in Frederick, Maryland, that “the last of Lee’s entire army has passed through Martinsburg towards the Potomac,” was Hooker convinced. At 11:35
P.M
. on June 24, orders were sent to Oliver Otis Howard and his Eleventh Corps to cross the Potomac the next morning. The rest of the Army of the Potomac would follow.

It was one of the grand ironies of this operation that Hooker’s most critical and best decision was based on incorrect data. Longstreet’s Corps was not across the Potomac by June 24, nor was it anywhere near Shepherdstown. Because they had stopped to hold the Blue Ridge Mountain gaps behind Stuart’s cavalry, Longstreet’s troops had been leapfrogged by Hill’s men, who were then routed to Shepherdstown. All the intelligence supporting the Longstreet identification had been either planted by the Confederates, as deliberate misinformation, or else plucked from the rumor pit to bolster prior assumptions. Joe Hooker was making his most important move of the campaign for all the wrong reasons.