Gettysburg (8 page)

Everything pointed to June 14 as a day of decision.

T
here was little acknowledgment of Sunday’s pastoral character within the Army of the Potomac. Hooker’s headquarters was transferred to Dumfries even as the Sixth and Twelfth corps vacated the Fredericksburg area, leaving Hancock’s Second Corps as their rear guard. A severe thunderstorm rumbled through the region on the night of June 13, messing up the dirt roads and making the march “tedious and toilsome,” according to one of Sedgwick’s soldiers. It was no simple task to move more than 80,000 men with their wagons and animals. Mistakes were made. Someone neglected to dismantle the tent-city hospital at Aquia Landing, an oversight that Hooker’s fuming chief of staff termed a “shameful waste and abandonment of property.” He ordered that the materiel be salvaged, even “if the surgeons have to pack [it all] on their own horses.”

Four of Hooker’s corps were now operating along the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, tramping eastward the better to cover Washington. John Reynolds, in charge of this wing, was not sparing the shoe leather: “We marched Sunday morning and all day Sunday and all night,” wrote an Iron Brigade officer, adding, “Our army is in a great hurry for something.” Howard’s Eleventh Corps had a great distance to cover, though a Wisconsin officer in its ranks still found time for observation and reflection. “We passed over farms where rich clover was growing,” he noted, “but deserted ruins only mark the spots where the Virginia husbandman and his family once were happy.”

Richard S. Ewell spent the first part of Sunday morning planning his attack on Winchester. The Yankee troops holding the town were concentrated in a series of strong points located on high ground northwest of the settled areas. Any force attempting an assault from the south would be first scrambled by having to move through the town streets and then chopped up on exposure to the enemy’s fields of fire beyond. Ewell was so discouraged by his initial assessment that he sent a message to Lee concluding that Milroy’s position was “too strong to be attacked.” Lee did the best he could from a distance: his reply expressed confidence in Ewell’s on-site judgment and offered the corps commander the option of holding Milroy in place with one division while moving the other up to the Potomac. By the time this exchange was completed, however, Ewell had come up with a viable plan of his own.

A dominating hill that the enemy had not fortified, rising just west of the Federal positions, provided the key. Jubal Early, recognizing the opportunity it presented, suggested a movement that Ewell approved of. By 11:00
A.M.,
a strong column was in motion on a wide flanking swing to the west while everyone else held position south of Winchester. At about the same time, another of Ewell’s division commanders, Major General Robert Rodes, having frightened a small Union garrison out of Berryville, was marching his men north toward Martinsburg, close to the Potomac River.

That there were any Union troops at all in Winchester was the result more of bad decisions than of any positive purpose. Robert Milroy, in charge of the Federal forces in the town, got his orders through Major General Robert C. Schenck, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The two shared the mistaken belief that Stuart’s concentration near Culpeper portended a cavalry raid, an offensive tactic that would pose little danger to a fortified garrison. Confident in their misapprehension, they ignored clues that something far more serious was in fact in the offing. Thus, on June 11, when the War Department ordered Schenck to evacuate Winchester, he conveyed the order to Milroy as an instruction to
prepare
for a withdrawal. It was June 13 before Schenck realized that much more than a mere cavalry raid was under way. He sent an urgent message ordering Winchester’s evacuation, but it never reached its destination because Ewell’s men cut the telegraph wires as they closed in. Milroy was left with no option but to stand fast.

President Lincoln, monitoring the situation through the War Department, could not believe what was happening. At 1:14
P.M.
on June 14, he
queried Hooker, “Do you consider it possible that 15,000 of Ewell’s men can now be at Winchester?” Hooker’s answer, received at 5:40
P.M.,
was unhelpful, as it was based on information now twenty-four hours old. Ten minutes later, the line at Hooker’s Dumfries headquarters was clacking again. If Milroy’s men could hold out for a few days, Lincoln was asking, “can you help them? If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it … between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him?”

Robert E. Lee attended Sunday services at Culpeper’s Episcopal Church, where he was seen by a young artilleryman in Parker’s Virginia Battery. James Longstreet was with Lee, underscoring the fact that his men had no marching orders for this day. They were holding at Culpeper, as were Stuart’s horsemen at Brandy Station, just in case the Federal forces clustered to the east intended to cross the Rappahannock.

At Fredericksburg, A. P. Hill sent Anderson’s Division of his corps off toward Culpeper. A Georgia soldier marching in Anderson’s column recalled it as a “hot day” and noted that “many were stricken by the intense heat.” The continued presence of union troops across the river (Hancock’s rear guard) gave Hill enough pause that he kept Heth’s and Pender’s divisions in place.

Lee sent no communication to Richmond this Sunday. Neither did the Confederate War Department have any news from Vicksburg. Perhaps for this reason, a petty squabble regarding control of the local militia units assigned to defend the capital commanded war clerk Jones’ full attention. Jefferson Davis and the C.S. War Department were claiming suzerainty over troops said to fall under the control of Virginia authorities. Jones simply could not comprehend how so many important people could be caught up in this affair “when the common enemy is thundering at all our gates!”

The flanking attack designed by Jubal Early and approved by Richard S. Ewell began with a bang at 6:00
P.M.,
when a line of twenty guns that had been quietly rolled into place opened a furious cannonade against the Yankee forts west of Winchester. A staff officer who was present thought it a “rapid and well directed fire.” He watched with satisfaction as “some of the shells [exploded] … in the [enemy’s] work[s], while others struck the [enemy fort’s] parapet making great holes in it [and] sending the dirt high up in the air.” Forty-five minutes later, Louisiana troops charged across two hundred yards of exposed ground, clawed their way through the fort’s protecting entanglements, and overran the position. Ewell, who was cheering his men on from a hill just south of Winchester, staggered as a spent bullet thumped his chest. The one-legged general was lucky this time: he was only bruised, and determined to remain in touch with the action. His frustrated surgeon took away his crutches, but even that did not keep Ewell from propping himself up and continuing to direct affairs. Suspecting that the Federal general would try to evacuate after dark, Ewell put units in motion to cut him off, even as he sent a note outlining his success to Lee at Culpeper.

Joe Hooker spent most of June 15 in the dark, at least regarding matters at Winchester. His forces remained concentrated along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, largely between Manassas Junction and Fairfax Station. Army headquarters was moved this day to that latter place. Most of the Second Corps began to close the distance, leaving part of its force to watch over the stores still stacked at Aquia Landing. The Fifth, Sixth, and Twelfth corps joined the First, Third, and Eleventh, while the cavalry left Warrenton for the same area of concentration.

The weather and poor road conditions made Hancock’s tramp hard on the men. “The day was very hot, the roads were filled with dust, and the march of twenty-eight miles was so oppressive that a number of the men fell from sunstroke and exhaustion,” complained a Pennsylvania soldier. Those in the Sixth and Twelfth corps had a lot of ground to cover as well. As a weary New Jerseyman in the 15th Regiment collapsed in camp that evening, he had enough strength left to scribble in his diary, “They came verry near Marched us to death.” “The men carried heavy loads with them,” noted a New York comrade in the Twelfth Corps. “All through the long day they dragged themselves along.”

One unplanned casualty of the movement was the town of Stafford Court House. The 1st Minnesota, part of Hancock’s rear guard, reached it at about 9:00
A.M.
“Here the court house was in flames,” observed a soldier, “having been fired by some wretches from the preceding column.” “I wondered at this act of vandalism,” declared a member of the 148th Pennsylvania. A soldier in the First Corps was particularly incensed at the consequent loss of so many historic documents: “The destruction of such relics I consider an act of vandalism far beneath the dignity of our American soldier in this enlightened age,” he wrote.

Early on June 15, President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for states throughout the region threatened by Lee’s raid to provide 100,000 militia for local defense. “This call is made from outside pressure …,” fumed Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, “and not from the War Department or Headquarters.”

Shortly after 9:00
P.M.,
Joseph Hooker, at Fairfax Station, received a presidential message that succinctly summarized the known situation. “Winchester and Martinsburg were both besieged yesterday,” Lincoln reported, adding that the Federal troops there had been driven off, so that “the enemy [now] holds both places.” Even more chilling was Lincoln’s statement that Confederate troops were “crossing the Potomac at Williamsport.” The president ended his brief message with the words “I would like to hear from you.”

Just as Ewell had predicted, Robert Milroy tried to retreat after darkness fell on June 14. In the early-morning hours of June 15, the Yankee soldiers ran into what one of them called a “murderous trap” at a place named Stephenson’s Depot, where they were attacked by elements from Johnson’s Division, sent there by Ewell for just that purpose. It was a
night fight, marked by confusion on both sides, but by dawn, several thousand Yankee soldiers had been taken prisoner, and most of the rest were scattered across the countryside, seeking escape. Among those slipping through the net was the hated Milroy, who reached the friendly garrison at Harper’s Ferry. It was a grand victory for Confederate arms, and Ewell was the man of the hour. An officer on Ewell’s staff who had served with the great Stonewall wrote that if the “spirits disembodied can see what goes on in this world, I am sure that General Jackson has felt unfeigned pleasure since yesterday.”

Going almost unnoticed amid all the celebration was the activity of Ewell’s third division, commanded by Robert Rodes. On June 14, Rodes’ men had marched virtually unchallenged through Martinsburg; the next day they continued north for fifteen miles to the Potomac River. There Rodes spent the following two days crossing his three brigades into Maryland. Tarheel Louis Leon recorded that the river was “knee-deep” where they forded it, and that the Maryland citizens they met on the other side were “mixed in their sympathies, some Confederates and some Yankees.”

Taking the point on Rodes’ advance was a small cavalry brigade commanded by Brigadier General Albert G. Jenkins. The thirty-two-year-old Virginian (who habitually tucked his long beard into his belt when the wind blew) was a competent warrior, though out of his depth directing men in such an operation. On the evening of June 14, Rodes had instructed Jenkins to press ahead the next day as far as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Accordingly, his four mounted regiments were called to horse while it was still dark, and set off at 2:00
A.M.

Refugees had already sounded the alarm in Chambersburg. This prosperous Pennsylvania town had been visited by Confederate raiders in 1862, so the local merchants knew just what to do. One such merchant, Jacob Hoke, would later recollect, “The usual work of sending away and secreting merchandise and other valuables was begun.” The packing, shipping, and hiding took place against an unsettling cavalcade of refugees displaced by recent events. “Horses, wagons, and cattle crowded every avenue of escape northward,” Hoke explained. The worst moment came when a military supply train fleeing Winchester tumbled into town, its half-crazed animals lashed by panic-stricken teamsters. Chaos threatened, but a Federal officer who was on hand with a small cavalry patrol stopped the drivers and forced them to continue their journey at a more measured pace. By the time evening came on June 15, the streets were mostly empty.