Gettysburg (15 page)

They were now passing through what one member of Stuart’s staff described as a “wild and desolate locality, swarming with abandoned cabins and army
debris.
” Stuart had hoped to contact John Mosby, who was, however, nowhere to be found.
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When the detached brigade arrived, bringing news that the Yankees had cleared the area and were said to be
off toward Leesburg, Stuart was faced with some important decisions. As a staff officer later articulated it, the question was, “What would Stuart do—what route would he now follow?”

The two brigades that Stuart had left behind to watch over Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps remained in place. Given a choice between displaying some possibly insubordinate initiative and strictly following orders, Beverly H. Robertson was content to do the latter. “The orders left with me by General Stuart …,” he would later protest, “were exactly obeyed by me.” What Robertson knew about the situation in his front has always been a matter of conjecture, but a scout from the 7th Virginia Cavalry (part of Grumble Jones’ Brigade) spent most of this day in Leesburg, where it was obvious that the Federal infantry had departed.

With Stuart’s cavalry off on its ride, Robertson’s and Jones’ troopers tied down watching vacated mountain gaps, and Jenkins’ small mounted brigade screening Ewell’s advance, there was painfully lax security along the main line of Lee’s march. The implications of this were demonstrated today when two wagonloads of Hagerstown refugees came unimpeded into the Union lines. “They unite in saying that … Ewell’s, Longstreet’s and Hill’s corps have passed through Hagerstown,” reported the Eleventh Corps’ provost marshal. The fleeing civilians also testified that Rebel foraging “parties were going in every direction, picking up cattle and sheep and other supplies.” Another who slipped easily through Lee’s ineffective security this day was a perceptive blacksmith named Thomas McCammon, who arrived on horseback from Hagerstown. He and two friends had made a careful accounting of the numbers of Rebels passing through the town, and they tallied the enemy artillery strength at 275 guns. The testimony of these citizens added important details to the picture of Lee’s army being put together by George Sharpe and his Bureau of Military Information.

In Chambersburg today, Robert E. Lee kept his small headquarters staff busy making copies for distribution of his General Orders number 73. The document began with praise for the “high spirit” and “fortitude” his men had shown, before gently taking them to task for “instances of forgetfulness” involving the “destruction of private property.” It concluded with an earnest exhortation urging the men “to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property,” and enjoining officers to inflict “summary punishment” on violators.

“Our orders are very strict here,” noted a North Carolina soldier in Ewell’s Corps. “Nothing is wantonly destroyed, no private seizures are allowed, and nothing taken without due orders and authority.” A Georgian under Longstreet later maintained that the “people of Pennsylvania
were as safe in their homes, their persons and property, whilst the country was occupied by Lee’s army, as was any territory in the South within the Confederate lines.” This assertion was seconded by an officer with Hill, who swore that “no depredations were committed by our troops on the march, no one (citizens) were molested.” “The greater part of the supplies that found their way into camp were paid for in Confederate money,” claimed a Texas soldier with Longstreet, adding that “the rest were voluntary offerings.”

“The infantry did not have much chance to plunder, as we were kept close in ranks and marched slowly,” recalled Texan John Casler. “Of course we could go to the houses and get all we wanted to eat without money, for they did not want our money, and were glad to give us plenty through fear.” A Virginia soldier in Ewell’s Corps penned in his diary, with improvised spelling, “Morning. Went out a foraging. Sitisons scared nearly to death. Give the last thing they have If we only spare there lives.” Another forager was well pleased with the results of his efforts: “The people are scared into fits and break their necks nearly to wait on me,” he wrote.

While Lee’s General Orders number 73 prohibited personally injurious and wanton acts, it legitimized whole categories of confiscation. A Georgia private named I. G. Bradwell observed that the “quartermasters and the small cavalry force with us were busy collecting horses, cattle, and sheep for the use of the army.” “Our army is pressing in provision and horses by the whole sale and some of the finest horses I ever saw,” marveled a fellow Georgia native in Hill’s Corps. “We have provisions in abundance,” recorded yet another Georgian. “The boys have played havoc with hogs, sheep, poultry, &c.” “I heard one man say there were ninety-five sheep skins in [our] … camp,” related a Texas infantryman, “and when some one spoke to him about it, he said that no man’s sheep could bite his men without getting hurt.” A juridically inclined officer in Ewell’s command argued that his men had applied the “Confederate ‘conscript law’ in drafting Pennsylvania horses into service.”

There was a dark foundation beneath these carefully legitimized and seemingly benign activities. “I hope the officers will devastate the territory and give the enemy a taste of the horrors of war,” wrote a grim North Carolina man. The sentiment was loudly echoed by a Virginia soldier who vowed, “The wrath of southern vengeance will be wreaked upon the pennsilvanians & all property belonging to the abolition horde
which we cross.” A member of the Stonewall Brigade
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declared that “the people in this state did not know any thing of war times only what they herd and read … but they feel the effects of war at this time.”

“Our men did very bad in M.D. and Penn.,” a North Carolina soldier confessed in a letter to his sister. “They robed every house about such battle field not only of eatables but of everything they could lay their hands on. They tore up dresses to bits and broke all the furniture.” Another roughly tutored North Carolinian wrote to his wife from “Franklin County, the State of Pennsylvania”: “We are now in the enemy country we know not what will befall us for some of our solders have done mity bad since they have ben here.” “The most of our Virginia boys treat [the Northern civilians] verry kind though there is some [of] our extreams southern troops has treated the people badley,” observed a private in the 38th Virginia. “I treated everybody like I do at home, if anything better,” an Alabama soldier swore to this sister. “But some of the army treated the citizens very badly.”

Headquarters for the Army of the Potomac was moved today from Poolesville to Frederick, Maryland. In making the ride between those two places, Provost Marshal Marsena Patrick was able to indulge his dislike of the army’s commander. “We started & came on 6 or 8 miles before being overtaken by Head Quarters,” he recorded in his diary. “I never ride with Head Quarters longer than I am obliged to and held back.” Joseph Hooker passed Patrick on his way to visit Harper’s Ferry. Hooker rode as far as Point of Rocks, where he sent a message back to his chief of staff, Daniel Butterfield, holding station in Poolesville. “Direct that the cavalry be sent well to the advance of Frederick, in the direction of Gettysburg and Emmitsburg,” Hooker ordered, “and see what they can of the movements of the enemy.”

Before closing up shop in Poolesville, Hooker had sent a note to Halleck in which he tallied his current strength at not more than 105,000 men. “I state these facts that there may not be expected of me more than I have material to do with,” Hooker had declared for the record. He had also taken care to copy President Lincoln on his note. Hooker’s sights were now set on appropriating the garrison at Harper’s Ferry. Halleck had seen this coming, however, and even before Hooker reached that
point, there was an answer waiting for him. The fortified heights at Harper’s Ferry, Halleck explained, “have always been regarded as an important point to be held by us. … I cannot approve their abandonment, except in the case of absolute necessity.”

The battle of wills between Hooker and Halleck was joined again, in full force. Soon after arriving at Harper’s Ferry, Hooker sent Halleck his unsolicited assessment of conditions there: “I find 10,000 men here, in condition to take the field. Here they are of no earthly account. … Now they are but a bait for the rebels, should they return. I beg that this may be presented to the Secretary of War and His Excellency the President.”

Hard on the heels of this memo came a second from Hooker, suggesting that he had been handed Halleck’s message after dispatching his first note. The refUsal of Lincoln’s general in chief to let Hooker absorb that garrison pushed the Army of the Potomac commander to declare a situation of “absolute necessity”:

To a friend and officer serving with the Harper’s Ferry garrison, Hooker muttered, “‘Halleck’s dispatch severs my connection with the Army of the Potomac.’” In later testimony before Congress, Hooker would charge that it had been “expected of me by the country that I would not only whip the army of the enemy, but prevent it from escaping. This I considered too much for the authorities to expect with the force I had.”

The precise role that Henry Halleck played in bringing affairs to this pass may never be fully known. Halleck was a deeply flawed individual invested with enormous authority. His position at the president’s right hand made him indispensable, even as his unwillingness and inability to take charge of situations rendered him simultaneously undependable and unpredictable. While his advice could be astute and insightful, it could also be specious and spurred by panic. Navy secretary Gideon Welles
deemed Halleck “offusticated, muddy, uncertain and stupid.” In any event, Halleck’s known animosity toward Hooker must cast a veil of suspicion over his motivations and actions in this case. There is some evidence that the general in chief was not alone in his feelings: referring to this period, his chief of staff, Brigadier General George Washington Cullum, would later brag to a friend, “‘I did my share in getting rid of Hooker, in whom I never had confidence.’”

Isaac R. Trimble had fought with distinction under Stonewall Jackson at Second Manassas, in which battle he had been seriously wounded. After a determined recuperation, he had taken a largely administrative post in the Shenandoah Valley, where he had remained until the passage of Lee’s forces through his district persuaded him that an important campaign was under way. Because sitting on the sidelines would never do for a man of action, Trimble appended himself to Lee’s headquarters, hoping for a combat posting. He got one of sorts this afternoon, when Lee asked him to ride ahead and advise Richard Ewell regarding the lay of the land around Harrisburg—something Trimble knew about from his work in the region before the war, as a civil engineer. During his briefing, Trimble found Lee uncharacteristically loquacious.

“‘Our army is in good spirits, not over fatigued, and can be concentrated on any one point in twenty-four hours or less,’” Lee stated. The absence of any positive reports from his cavalry (Stuart and Robertson) indicated that Hooker’s army was not yet across the Potomac. “‘When they hear where we are they will make forced marches to interpose their forces between us and Baltimore and Philadelphia,’” Trimble recalled Lee’s saying. “‘They will come up, probably through Frederick, broken down with hunger and hard marching, strung out on a long line and much demoralized, when they come into Pennsylvania. I shall throw an overwhelming force on their advance, crush it, follow up the success, drive one
corps back on another, and by successive repulses and surprises before they can concentrate, create a panic and virtually destroy the army.’”

While these two were conversing, more of Longstreet’s men were passing through Chambersburg. The promising artillery officer E. P. Alexander could not help but see the United States flags defiantly displayed by some of the town’s residents. It was a point of pride for him, however, that his well-disciplined men “took not the slightest notice” of this provocation. A “stout” girl, taking their indifference as a challenge, began waving a small Union flag “almost in the faces of the men, marching on the side walk.” The protest action came to an abrupt halt when one of Alexander’s gunners stopped in front of the girl and shouted “Boo!” “A roar of laughter & cheers went up along the line,” Alexander recounted, “under which the young lady retreated to the porch.”