Gettysburg (7 page)

Lee, meanwhile, was wasting no time. The day after Brandy Station, the lead elements of Ewell’s Corps left Culpeper, heading north.

L
ee’s buildup near Culpeper had not gone unnoticed by Northern civilian authorities. Pennsylvania’s governor, Andrew W. Curtin, pressed the War Department for action. On June 10, having decided that a single command embracing the entire southern portion of Curtin’s state was too unwieldy, Washington split the region into two smaller military districts: the Department of the Monongahela for the western half (including Pittsburgh) and the Department of the Susquehanna for the eastern side. Major General Darius N. Couch, a Pennsylvanian then unhappily commanding the Army of the Potomac’s Second Corps (he was no friend of Hooker’s), was tapped for the eastern department and left at once. Responsibility for the capable Second Corps passed to Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, an aggressive, popular officer.

On June 12, Curtin alerted Pennsylvanians that “a large rebel force” was poised to raid the state. In measured tones, Curtin urged his citizens to fill the ranks of the militia units then being organized for the “defense of our own homes, firesides, and property.” Few of his constituents took the threat seriously. That complacency, coupled with enlistment terms that many found unappealing, resulted in a response that was, in the words of one resident, “not … as general and prompt as desired.”

In Washington, Lincoln’s response to Hooker’s telegram seeking permission to march on the Rebel capital was lukewarm at best. In a coded message sent on June 10, Lincoln advised Hooker that “Lee’s army, and not Richmond, is your true objective.” The following day, Lincoln
showed Hooker’s dispatch to Henry Halleck, who promptly telegraphed the Army of the Potomac commander seconding everything the president had said. In reply, Hooker again claimed that he was outnumbered. On June 12, he informed Halleck that the enemy at Fredericksburg “has been greatly reinforced.” Two days later he estimated Lee’s infantry strength at about 100,000.

Lincoln planned to meet with Hooker late on June IS, ostensibly to witness testing of a new incendiary shell. The tug carrying the president left Washington at I:00
P.M.
that day and had reached Alexandria, Virginia, when a frantic message from shore halted the journey: Joe Hooker was putting his army in motion.

Except for the Sixth Corps’ scrap near Franklin’s Crossing, June 10 was another routine day. An Eleventh Corps officer charted the pattern in his Wednesday journal entry: 5:00
A.M.
up and dressed, 6:00
A.M
. breakfast and camp inspection, 7:00
A.M.
battalion drill, 8:00
A.M.
guard mounting, 9:00
A.M.
noncommissioned officer drill, 10:00
A.M.
to 4:00
P.M.
various camp duties, 4:00
P.M.
more drill, and 6:00
P.M
. dress parade, “which ends the day.” Things were much the same in the First Corps, where the 16th Maine added a bit of horsing around to the combat practice. A diarist in the regiment wrote that the men “charge[d] double quick, the band [got in the way, and the players] … climb[ed] trees and skedadled, spoiled one drum.”

Even in the midst of such routines, men died. The gunners of the 9th Massachusetts Battery recalled June 10 as the day they buried Edwin H. Balson, a victim of lung congestion. “He was nineteen years old, an excellent soldier, liked by officers and men,” recalled a batterymate. Balson was laid to rest at sundown, under an apple tree, with a final ceremonial volley fired by the artillerymen from their standard-issue revolvers.

Another death that many would long remember took place two days after Balson’s. This time the cause was military justice. Parts of Hooker’s army were moving just then, as their commander repositioned his strength northward, fretting about a Rebel retaliatory strike for Brandy Station. John Reynolds’ First Corps was one of the units involved. Among its best-known components was the brigade that was all number one: First Brigade, First Division, First Corps. Its men hailed from the states of Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. They sported a distinctive bit of headgear, a black (Hardee) hat with a brim that many wore turned up on one side. Their stubborn courage at the Battle of Antietam had earned the Indiana and Wisconsin boys (the Michigan regiment had not yet joined at that point) a proud sobriquet: they were known as the Iron Brigade.

On June 12, these mostly combat-tested veterans marched under orders to kill one of their own. John P. Woods, a private in the 19th Indiana’s Company F, had three times absented himself from the ranks on the eve of an engagement. Twice he had returned or been brought back, but the third time he had changed into a Confederate uniform in an attempt to pass himself off as a Rebel deserter. At his court-martial, Woods tried to explain his actions: “I cannot stand it to fight,” he said. The court,
finding him guilty, sentenced him to death. After the judgment was confirmed, orders were issued calling for the punishment to be carried out on June 12, between noon and 4:00
P.M.
That the First Corps was marching that day made no difference: the condemned man was hauled along in an ambulance, under guard, his hands and feet shackled.

Lieutenant Clayton Rogers of the 6th Wisconsin was provost marshal for the First Division, which was commanded by Brigadier General James
S.
Wadsworth. It was Rogers’ responsibility to perform the execution. “I had a rough box prepared for [Woods’] remains,” he would recall after the war, “and [I selected] a detail of twelve men for guard and firing.” The First Corps tramped all morning, then halted for dinner about midday. John Reynolds had a schedule to keep, so he sent an aide to Wadsworth “to have the affair hurried up.” The officer hastened away after delivering the message, grateful that he did not have to witness the event. “It seemed rather hard to march a man all the morning and then shoot him at noon,” he reflected.

Wadsworth took Reynolds’ hint. The four regiments of the Iron Brigade were formed in a hollow square, a U-shaped formation with one side left open, between 1:00 and 2:00
P.M.
The rude coffin had been placed on the ground at the square’s open end. The ambulance was driven to that point, and Woods was pulled out, allowed a last moment with the chaplain, and seated on the box. The firing squad was drawn up. As Clayton Rogers remembered it, Woods “requested me not to bandage his eyes, a request that was not granted”; he opened the condemned man’s shirt to expose his chest to the executioners. The chaplain who accompanied Woods declared that his “firmness, composure and naturalness … [were] astonishing.” A soldier watching from the ranks marveled that the doomed private sat waiting patiently, as one might wait for a photographer to prepare his equipment.

Wadsworth gave the firing squad a few words of encouragement before the men filed into line some thirty feet from their target. Eight stood ready to carry out the death sentence, while four more waited in reserve. Rogers called out “Attention!” and then lifted his hat. A quick glance showed him that the men were set. The hat came down, and the eight fired a ragged volley. The impact of the large-caliber bullets punched Woods back over the coffin but failed to kill him. The first pair of the reserve stepped up and grimly fired into the body, finishing the job. “We left the men digging his grave,” wrote an Iron Brigade soldier, “and resumed the march as if nothing had happened.”

At Army of the Potomac headquarters, near Falmouth, the cloudy crystal ball was clearing. George Sharpe and his staff were close to having a trustworthy sense of Lee’s troop positions. Cavalry prisoners taken at Brandy Station had helped to confirm the presence of Hood’s Division in Culpeper. The intelligence officers strongly suspected that McLaws was there, too, with Pickett’s Division also close at hand. And Robert E. Lee himself had been reliably spotted near Culpeper. Yet it was not until the afternoon of June 13 that Sharpe was able to verify to his satisfaction the interrogation reports of two blacks who had just passed through Culpeper. One of them knew what Richard Ewell looked like and was certain he was there.

That was the final piece of the puzzle. For the first time, Hooker now had persuasive evidence that Lee had moved most of his army from Fredericksburg to Culpeper. Couriers began to stream out of headquarters with messages for the various corps commanders, instructing them to be ready to move. It would take until nightfall for Hooker to remove Sedgwick’s men from the southern bank, but that was just the beginning: no sooner had the weary soldiers recrossed the Rappahannock than they were ordered to set out at once on roads leading north.

Richard S. Ewell began marching his corps north from Culpeper on June 10. An artilleryman in one of the long, snaking columns described it as a “very hot and dusty day.” Regardless, the men were primed for what lay ahead. “We had but few stragglers,” wrote George W. Nichols, a Georgia private. “We made excellent time.” Johnson’s and Early’s divisions tramped along the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, while Rodes’ men followed on a parallel route farther east. On June 11, after meeting with Lee, Ewell himself would ride out of Culpeper, eventually catching up with Johnson and Early about half a day’s march from Chester Gap. Once his troops were through the Blue Ridge and into the Shenandoah Valley, Ewell would face his first testing as a corps commander. The town of Winchester, sitting astride several important valley roads, was occupied by a 6,000-man Union garrison commanded by Major General Robert H. Milroy, whose iron-fisted military rule oppressed local Virginians loyal to the Confederacy. Clearing this obstacle was Ewell’s task.

For Hill’s troops, patiently watching over the dormant Union incursion near Franklin’s Crossing, June 10 was, in the words of one diarist, “all quiet along our lines.” The lull gave soldiers of all ranks a chance to
write home, and the boy colonel of the 26th North Carolina took full advantage of it. In a note to his family, Henry King Burgwyn Jr. displayed some of the ambition that had helped to make him one of the Confederacy’s youngest colonels. Looking ahead to the prospect of an active campaign, Burgwyn wrote that it would inevitably create “sufficient vacancies & sufficient opportunities.”

Robert
E.
Lee spent part of June 10 in Culpeper composing a long, reflective letter to Jefferson Davis. He offered no information regarding his troop movements but instead took to task Confederate politicians and newspaper editors who had been pouring public scorn on various Northern peace movements. As Lee saw it, the South’s armies were “growing weaker” for the lack of fresh recruits, so anything that divided Northern opinion seemed to him a good thing. He urged Davis to “give all the encouragement we can … to the rising peace party of the North.” Lee also sent a heartfelt note to his son, Rooney, who had been wounded at Brandy Station. “I wish I could see you,” he wrote, “but I cannot.”

On June 11, the first of Ewell’s troops passed through Chester Gap to reach Front Royal, tucked along the southern fork of the Shenandoah River. It was a pleasant day’s march. A North Carolina soldier under Early enjoyed hearing a band play “Bonnie Blew Flag” and did his share of gawking at the “pritty and kind ladies” in the small town of Washington who provided fresh water to the passing soldiers. Lee penned a letter of concern to his wife, then suffering through an arthritic episode that kept her confined to her room. “I grieve I fear too much over my separation from you, my children & friends,” he wrote.

Ewell made plans on June 12 to knock out Winchester. Two of his divisions, Johnson’s and Early’s, would march directly on the town, while his third, Rodes’, would tackle a small Federal force posted at Berryville. By 4:30
A.M.
on June 13, all three were in motion.

Even as his infantry columns were heading into battle, Robert
E.
Lee crossed swords again with James Seddon. On June 9 and 10, the secretary of war had sent notes to Lee that, while professing support for his “aggressive movements,” also painted a dire picture of Richmond’s defenses. Union forces garrisoned on Virginia’s eastern peninsula were stirring, causing Seddon considerable anxiety. “Our great want here is some cavalry, to scout and give timely notice,” Seddon had complained to Lee. In his reply, Lee made it clear that he could not both undertake an “offensive movement” and “cover Richmond.” After downplaying the threat posed by Federal troops on the peninsula, Lee proclaimed that he
barely had enough cavalry to cover his
own
operations. Were he forced to weaken that screen, he feared that a “heavier calamity may befall us.”

The fight for Winchester began at around noon on June 13, a few miles south of town, along the road to Front Royal. Virginia troops moving ahead of Johnson’s Division contended with Yankee outposts. As more of Johnson’s brigades arrived on the scene, they found the well-positioned Federals not inclined to give way. Johnson decided to wait and see if Early had any better luck. For their part, Early’s soldiers ran into stiffer opposition blocking the Valley Pike, so they likewise held back. Off to the east, Rodes advanced to Berryville only to discover that the Federals posted there had slipped away to reinforce Milroy at Winchester.