Gettysburg (12 page)

A
t about 1:00
A.M.
on June 25, in the village of Salem, Virginia, Jeb Stuart made a final, satisfied survey of the long, dark columns of mounted troops awaiting his word of command. Anxious to preserve some modicum of deception regarding what he was about to attempt, Stuart said loudly enough for those nearby to hear, “Ho! for the Valley!,” and waved his riders in the direction of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The misdirection, if that was what it was, did not last long. Just outside Salem, he turned the column south and then east. By early morning, his scouts had secured passage through Glasscock Gap in the Bull Run Mountains. Jeb Stuart was now committed to what would become the most controversial operation of his military career.

The three days following his and Lee’s decision to undertake a possible ride around the Union forces had been marked by efforts on the part of several individuals to refine the operational orders so there could be no misunderstandings. Lee began the exchange by advising Stuart, in a note sent on June 22, that if he found Hooker’s army “moving northward,” he could march three brigades “into Maryland, and take position on General Ewell’s right,” which “will probably move toward the Susquehanna [River] by the Emmittsburg … [or] Chambersburg [routes].” This set an overall objective and provided a triggering action.

To further clarify one of the cavalryman’s options, Lee’s First Corps commander, James Longstreet, sent Stuart a message at 7:00
P.M.
that same day, summarizing a conversation he had just had with Lee. In it, the
army chief had described Stuart’s action as “passing by the rear of the enemy,” and specified a route through Hopewell Gap. Longstreet seconded Lee’s choice of route but cautioned that Stuart’s moving directly north would “disclose our plans.”

Then, at 5:00
P.M.
on June 23, Lee sent Stuart orders that were slight refinements of the instructions of the day before. “If General Hooker’s army remains inactive,” the dispatch read (removing the need for a triggering action), “you can leave two brigades to watch him, and withdraw with the three others”—but if at any time before the operation began, the enemy appeared to be “moving northward,”
^*
Lee advised, “I think you had better withdraw this side of the mountain to-morrow night, cross at Shepherdstown next day, and move over to Frederick.” Thus, if the Federals were on the move, Lee preferred Stuart take the more congested route.

Yet another message from Lee to Stuart arrived at the cavalryman’s headquarters that evening implying that Lee had changed his mind. Although the communique was later lost, the staff officer who received it would never forget its contents: “The letter suggested that, as the roads leading northward from Shepherdstown and williamsport were already encumbered by the infantry, the artillery, and the transportation of the army, the delay … in passing by these would, perhaps, be greater than would ensue if General Stuart passed around the enemy’s rear.” The city of York, Pennsylvania, was named by Lee as the most likely place for Stuart to connect with Ewell’s right flank.

Stuart made his first mistake in this operation on June 24. Faced with the task of deciding which two brigades would remain behind and which three would undertake the movement, Stuart chose the best to accompany him. Left with the army were the brigades of Brigadier Generals Beverly
H.
Robertson and William E. (“Grumble”) Jones. Robertson had muffed an important assignment at Brandy Station on June 9, and Jones and Stuart were barely on speaking terms. Neither was well known to Lee, nor did either enjoy his confidence or comprehend his expectations. Although he was following his instructions to the letter, Stuart had badly misread the degree of personal connection his superior required. Longstreet understood this about Lee, and so had specifically requested that Stuart select an officer whom Lee knew and trusted, Brigadier General Wade Hampton, to coordinate the cavalry remaining with the army. Stuart’s failure to comply embittered Longstreet. The infantryman’s later recollections would roundly condemn the cavalryman’s vainglorious ride, and not always fairly so.

Stuart had valid reasons for being where he was on the morning of June 25, and he had Lee’s sanction to “judge whether you can pass around their army without hindrance, doing them all the damage you can, and cross the [Potomac] river east of the [Blue Ridge] mountains.”

Once his scouts had cleared the way through Glasscock Gap, his riders continued toward Centreville, where John Mosby’s information suggested they might find easy passage through Hooker’s rear echelon.

Joseph Hooker’s troop movements this day were essentially defensive in nature. Three corps (the First, Third, and Eleventh), under the overall command of John Reynolds, were ordered to the northern side of the Potomac. Their objective was to take control of Crampton’s and Turner’s gaps through the South Mountains in order to prevent Confederate forces from interdicting the Army of the Potomac’s crossing. Hooker was not expecting a fight. “My advices of last night inform me that the rebels do not hold [the passes],” he assured Reynolds. Provost Marshal Patrick caught something of the sudden urgency in the air as he noted in his diary, “Genl. Hooker intends that
all
shall be over the River by tomorrow night.”

The first Eleventh Corps soldiers began to cross the Edward’s Ferry pontoon bridge a little before 4:00
A.M
. A member of the 107th Ohio judged the river at that point to be “about one-fourth of a mile wide.” Private John T. McMahon, a witness to the June 17 sheep slaughter, would remember this day for its long tramp, with rain in the afternoon. The weary boys got some encouragement as they passed through Poolesville: “The women cheered us and waved their handkerchiefs [as] well,” McMahon recollected. Also on the Eleventh Corps’ line of march today was the village of Jefferson, where, recalled an Ohio soldier, “we stopped and got lots of good things to eat.”

After Howard’s men had cleared out, shortly after midday, Reynolds’ First Corps made the river crossing, followed later in the afternoon by the Third. A Pennsylvania sergeant marching in the Third Corps paid especial attention to the pontoon bridge. As he explained it, “First, boats are built with flat bottoms about twenty feet long and three or four feet wide. … When it is desired to lay a bridge these boats are … placed in the water about six to eight feet apart, with the ends up and down stream, where they are securely anchored from both ends. Then timbers already fitted are laid across these boards from shore to shore, furnishing stringers upon which planks are laid, just as in any bridge.”

The route taken by the Third Corps, once it was across the river, ran parallel to the Potomac, following the towpath for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It was anything but pleasant. “No man who participated in
that march can ever forget the driving rain, the slippery and narrow pathway, with water to the right of us, water to the left of us, water above, water below,” complained a Pennsylvania soldier in the 26th regiment. A weary private John Haley grumbled that “we slipped back as fast as we could proceed.” A more cynical Massachusetts man thought he knew why this route had been selected: “As the General commanding desired to make the [mouth of the] Monocacy [River] before stopping, he had the shrewdness to take the towpath … from which there was no egress till we arrived at that place—no houses or barns, no woods for men to straggle off to, out of sight of the Provost Guard; so they were obliged to keep along.”

Robert E. Lee planned to cross the Potomac himself this morning. Just before and just after he did so, he penned letters to Jefferson Davis. In the first (written “opposite Williamsport”), Lee worried that his thrust into the North might prove
too
successful. He mentioned the militia forces that Lincoln had called out, and passed along rumors he had heard of Union troop transfers that all seemed to be aimed at stopping him. “It is plain that if all the Federal Army is concentrated upon this [army],” Lee asserted, “it will result in our accomplishing nothing, and being compelled to return to Virginia.”

He restated his scheme to have P.
G. T.
Beauregard establish “an army, even in effigy, … at Culpeper Court-House.” Claiming that his need to have every musket in line was such that he could not spare the men necessary to maintain direct communication with Richmond, Lee announced that he was going to break the link. He concluded with a statement evidently intended to limit expectations for his current campaign: “I think I can throw Genl Hooker’s army across the Potomac and draw troops from the south, embarrassing their plan of campaign in a measure, if I can do nothing more and have to return.”

Lee’s second note this day (headed “Williamsport”) presented his strategic views. Referencing Union news reported in Richmond papers, he cited stories of a yellow fever outbreak along the North Carolina coast to buttress his contention that the “enemy contemplates nothing important in that region.” Lee urged Davis to send Confederate troops from that area to Culpeper and place them under Beauregard. Unconfirmed reports of Federal pullbacks in Kentucky suggested to Lee that a thrust there by Confederate forces could “render valuable service by collecting
and bringing out supplies,” as well as preventing Union “troops now there from being sent to other points.” Of course, he added, those Confederate troops could always be moved back into Virginia to help bulk up the Beauregard force. “It should never be forgotten that our concentration at any point compels that of the enemy, and, his numbers being limited, tends to relieve all other threatened localities,” Lee lectured.

In between writing these notes, Lee crossed the Potomac. Artilleryman Francis W. Dawson remembered it as a “dreary day,” with rain “falling in torrents.” He saw “Genl Lee, Genl Longstreet and Genl Pickett … riding together followed by their staffs.” As the group reached the Maryland side, they were met by “several patriotic ladies with small feet and big umbrellas,” who insisted on presenting Lee with a large wreath. A bit of delicate negotiation ended with a courier’s taking the bulky offering and conveying the general’s thanks. All around them, recalled one of Longstreet’s officers, “the inspiriting strains of ‘Dixie’ burst forth from bands of music.”

As the twisting files of Lee’s army began to spread into Pennsylvania, the men kept a nervous watch over their shoulders—a detail that in later years they would omit from their storytelling. Most recollections of the Confederate march into the Keystone State treated the civilian population with bemused indifference, but that seemingly docile populace had a dark side that few Southerners cared to remember. The danger they felt from civilian snipers was real. One North Carolina soldier described how the men in his unit “were bound to form squads of some strength to prevent ‘bushwhackers’ and the enraged citizens from attacking us on the road.” A member of Pickett’s Division, recalling the march from Chambersburg toward Gettysburg, noted that his “command was frequently fired on during the day by bushwhackers.” A cavalryman preceding the foot soldiers into the same region observed that it “seems to be full of ‘bushwhackers.’” The threat posed was more than theoretical: in nearby McConnellsburg, a pair of Rebel stragglers, rounded up without arms, “were simply led out and shot.”

Those four of Hooker’s infantry corps that did not cross the Potomac today formed a long screen stretching from Slocum’s Twelfth, near the
river at Leesburg; through Meade’s Fifth, holding position near Aldie; down to Hancock’s Second and Sedgwick’s Sixth, watching for any enemy movement from the southwest. Throughout the day, all these units started to fall back slowly toward Edward’s Ferry.

Hancock’s men had begun backing away from Thoroughfare Gap in the early morning. It was around noon when Harrow’s Brigade of Gibbon’s Division reached what one soldier called the “insignificant hamlet” of Haymarket, where the line of march turned to the north. What happened next was scribbled down later this day by Corporal Stephen E. Martin of the 1st Minnesota, writing in his diary: “After marching 2 miles the [Rebel] cavalry got on a knoll and when the troops came along the road comenced to shell us[.] [T]he 1st shells was at our Regt.” Another Minnesota diarist, Private Isaac Lyman Taylor, provided a bit more detail: “At 12 m.,” he wrote, “as we approach Haymarket some cavalry appear on a bluff south of us & while the boys are earnestly arguing the question ‘Are they our men?’, a white puff of smoke and the unearthly screech of a shell closes the debate & a unanimous decision is rendered in the Neg[ative].”

“There were several casualties,” affirmed Lieutenant William Lochren of the 1st, “and Colonel [William] Colvill’s horse was killed under him.” “The exploding shells put to flight and into a great panic a crowd of sutlers, negroes, and other camp followers that were lingering in the rear of Gibbon’s Division,” reported the 1st Minnesota’s historian, “and it is said that there were some ludicrous scenes.”

The 1st was not the only unit targeted. One of the exploding shells struck Private Israel D. Jones of the 19th Maine, who became the first man of his regiment to be killed by enemy action. “In less than ten minutes from the time that Mr. Jones was chatting cheerfully with the man marching at his side, he was buried by the roadside,” observed the regiment’s historian. “The forming of Harrow’s brigade and the advance of Webb’s [Brigade] caused [the Rebel cavalry] … to leave the field,” related a 1st Minnesota man.