The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (124 page)

Pope’s coat was a prize R. E. Lee could appreciate as well as the next man, not excepting his charade-staging nephew; but more important to him, by far, was the captured dispatch book which reached his headquarters the following morning, August 24. In it he found laid before him, as if he were reading over his adversary’s shoulder, a sequent and detailed account of the Federal build-up beyond the Rappahannock. In addition to Reno, whose two divisions had already joined, Pope had other forces close at hand, including one on its way from western Virgina by rail and canal boat. Most urgent, though, was the news that Porter, whose corps was the advance unit of McClellan’s army, had debarked at Aquia Creek three days ago and marched next day to Falmouth, which placed him within twenty miles of Pope’s left at Kelly’s Ford, five miles downstream from Rappahannock Station. He might have joined today—or yesterday, for that matter—along with Heintzelman, whose corps was reported steaming northward close behind him. “Forty-eight hours more and we can make you strong enough,” Halleck had wired Pope, and Pope had replied: “There need be no apprehension.” That, too, was three days ago, while Porter’s men were filing off their transports. The race was considerably nearer its finish than Lee had supposed.

In point of fact, it was over. Pope was already too strong and too securely based for Lee to engage him in a pitched battle with anything like certainty of the outcome. Unless he could maneuver him out of his present position, and by so doing gain the chance to fall on some exposed detachment, Pope would go unscathed. And unless Lee could do this quickly, he could not do it at all; for once McClellan’s whole army was on the scene, or even the greater part of it, the odds would be hopeless. Lee, then, had two choices, neither of which included standing
still. He could retreat, or he could advance. To retreat would be to give up the piedmont and probably the Shenandoah Valley; the siege of Richmond, lately raised, would be renewed under conditions worse than those which had followed Joe Johnston’s retreat. That would not do at all. And yet to advance might also worsen matters, since Pope might retire on Fredericksburg and thereby hasten the concentration Lee was seeking to delay.

The gray-bearded general studied his map, and there he found what he thought might be the answer. Pope’s supply line, the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, extended northeastward in his rear, so that to maneuver him in that direction would be to make him increase the distance between his present force and the troops coming ashore at Aquia Creek. Twice already Lee had tried to cut that artery: once with a blow aimed at Rappahannock Station, which had failed because Pope pulled back before it landed, and once more with another aimed at Catlett’s, which had failed because the rain soaked the bridge too wet for burning. Now he would try again, still farther up the line. If successful, this would not only provoke a longer retreat by threatening Pope’s main base of supplies, miles in his rear, but would also repeat the months-old Valley ruse of seeming to threaten Washington, which had yielded such rich dividends before. In reasoning thus, Lee was not discouraged by his two previous failures; rather, he resolved to profit by them. This time he would swing a heavier blow. Instead of using cavalry, he would use infantry. And he would use it in strength.

Infantry in this case meant Stonewall: not only because his three divisions were on the flank from which the march around Pope’s right would most conveniently begin, but also because he knew the country he would be traversing and his men had won their “foot cavalry” fame for long, fast marches such as the one now proposed. Conversely, Longstreet too would be assigned the kind of work he preferred and did best: holding, with his four divisions, the line of the Rappahannock against possible assault by Pope’s ten divisions across the way. This was risky in the extreme, both for Jackson and Old Pete. Pope was not only stronger now than both of them combined; he was apt to be heavily reinforced at any time, if indeed he had not been already. Furthermore, in dividing his army Lee was inviting disaster by reversing the basic military principle of concentration in the presence of a superior enemy. Yet he did not plan this out of contempt for Pope (Pope the blusterer, Pope the “miscreant” had handled his army with considerable skill throughout the five days since his escape from the constricting V); he planned it out of necessity. Unable on the one hand to stand still, or on the other to retire—either of which would do no more than postpone ruin and make it all the more ruinous when it inevitably came—Lee perceived that the only way to deal with an opponent he did not feel strong enough to fight was to maneuver him into retreat, and to do that he would have to
divide his army. Thus the argument, pro and con, came full circle to one end: He would do it because there was nothing else to do. The very thing which made such a division seem overrash—Pope’s numerical superiority—was also its strongest recommendation, according to Lee, who later remarked: “The disparity … between the contending forces rendered the risks unavoidable.”

Today was Sunday. Shortly after noon, having made his decision, he rode to left-wing headquarters at Jeffersonton to give Stonewall his assignment. Jeffersonton was two miles back from the river, where a noisy artillery duel was in progress from opposite banks; Lee spoke above the rumble of the guns. The march would begin tomorrow, he said. Moving upstream for a crossing well above Pope’s right, Jackson would then swing northward behind the screen of the Bull Run Mountains, beyond which he would turn southeast through Thoroughfare Gap—the route he had followed thirteen months ago, coming down from the Valley to reach the field where he had won his nickname—for a strike at Pope’s supply line, far in his rear. No precise objective was assigned. Anywhere back there along the railroad would do, Lee said, just so Pope was properly alarmed for the safety of his communications, the welfare of his supply base, and perhaps for the security of Washington itself. Lee explained that he did not want a general engagement; he wanted Pope drawn away from the reinforcements being assembled on the lower Rappahannock. Once that was done, the two wings would reunite in the vicinity of Manassas and take advantage of any opening Pope afforded, either through negligence or panic.

Jackson began his preparations at once. After sending a topographical engineer ahead to select the best route around the Bull Run Mountains, he set his camps astir. The march would begin at earliest dawn, “with the utmost promptitude, without knapsacks”—without everything, in fact, except weapons, the ordnance train, and ambulances. Beef on the hoof would serve for food, supplemented by green corn pulled from fields along the way. Ewell would lead, followed by A. P. Hill; Winder’s division, now under Brigadier General W. B. Taliaferro, would bring up the rear, with orders to tread on the heels of Hill’s men if they lagged. During the night, Longstreet’s guns replaced Jackson’s along the Rappahannock south of Waterloo Bridge, and Lee, who would be left with 32,000 troops—including Stuart’s cavalry, which would join the flanking column the second day—prepared to stage whatever demonstrations would be needed to conceal from Pope the departure of Jackson’s 23,000.

What with the moving guns, the messengers coming and going, the night-long activity in the camps, Stonewall himself got little sleep before the dawn of August 25. He rose early, ate a light breakfast, and took a moment, now that the Sabbath was over, to write a brief note to his wife. In it he said nothing of the march that lay ahead; merely that “I
have only time to tell you how much I love my little pet dove.” Presently he was in the saddle, doubling the column. The men looked up and sideways at him as he passed, the bill of his mangy cadet cap pulled down over his pale eyes. As usual, they did not know where they were going, only that there would most likely be fighting when they got there. Meanwhile, they did the marching and left the thinking to Old Jack. “Close up, men. Close up,” he said.

Ten days ago, still down on the Peninsula, preparing for the withdrawal he had unsuccessfully protested, McClellan had warned Halleck: “I don’t like Jackson’s movements. He will suddenly appear where least expected.”

This was not exactly news to Halleck, coming as it did on the heels of Banks’ repulse at Cedar Mountain. Besides, Old Brains had other problems on his mind: not the least of which was the situation in the West, where his carefully worked-out tactical dispositions seemed about to come unglued. Kirby Smith left Knoxville that same week, bound for Kentucky, and Bragg had his whole army at Chattanooga, apparently poised for a leap in the same direction. Lincoln was distressed, and so was Halleck. So, presently, was McClellan. Earlier, to encourage haste in the evacuation, Halleck had assured him: “It is my intention that you shall command all the troops in Virginia as soon as we can get them together.” McClellan’s spirits rose at the prospect. To Burnside, who arrived with further assurances of Halleck’s good will, he said as they stood beside the road down which his army was withdrawing to Fort Monroe: “Look at them, Burn. Did you ever see finer men? Oh, I want to see those men beside of Pope’s.” But there were subsequent delays, chiefly the result of a shortage of transports, and Halleck’s cries for haste once more grew strident: so much so, in fact, that McClellan felt obliged to take official exception to what he called his “tone.” Privately he protested to his wife that Halleck “did not even behave with common politeness; he is a
bien mauvais sujet—
he is not a gentleman.… I fear that I am very mad.”

All the same, he made what haste he could. Porter left for Aquia Creek on August 20, and Heintzelman left next day for Alexandria. Both were to join Pope at once, the former by moving up the left bank of the Rappahannock, the latter by moving down the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. But Lee was across the Rapidan by now. “The forces of Burnside and Pope are hard-pressed,” Halleck wired, “and require aid as quickly as you can send it. Come yourself as soon as you can.” The bitter satisfaction McClellan found in this appeal was expressed in a letter to his wife: “Now they are in trouble they seem to want the ‘Quaker,’ the ‘procrastinator,’ the ‘coward,’ and the ‘traitor.’
Bien.”
Two days later, Franklin followed Heintzelman to Alexandria, and Sumner embarked the following day to follow Porter to Aquia Creek. Four of the five
corps were gone, leaving Keyes to man the Yorktown defenses: McClellan had answered Halleck’s cries for haste. But he no longer put any stock in any promises made him, either by the general in chief or by any other representative of the Administration. In fact, he told his wife as he left Old Point Comfort, August 23, “I take it for granted that my orders will be as disagreeable as it is possible to make them—unless Pope is beaten,” he added, “in which case they will want me to save Washington again. Nothing but their fears will induce them to give me any command of importance or to treat me otherwise than with discourtesy.”

Sure enough, when he got to Aquia next morning—Sunday—he found that Porter and Heintzelman had already been released to Pope, and when he wired for instructions Halleck replied: “You can either remain at Aquia or come to Alexandria, as you may deem best, so as to direct the landing of your troops.” In other words, it didn’t matter; the Young Napoleon was merely to serve as an expediter, dispatching the rest of his men to Pope as fast as they came ashore at those two points. He chose Alexandria, presumably to be close at hand for the call he believed would follow the calamity he expected. Monday and Tuesday were doubtful days; Pope’s scouts had spotted a column of “well-closed infantry” moving northward, up the far bank of the Rappahannock, and Pope reported Lee’s whole army bound for the Shenandoah Valley “by way of Luray and Front Royal.” Then Tuesday night the line went dead. All was silent beyond Manassas Junction, where there had been some sort of explosion.…

The next five days were smoke and flame; McClellan ran the gamut of emotions. With Porter and Heintzelman committed, he sent Franklin to join them, saying: “Go, and whatever may happen, don’t allow it to be said that the Army of the Potomac failed to do its utmost for the country.” Sumner followed. “You now have every man … within my reach,” McClellan told Halleck, requesting that “I may be permitted to go to the scene of battle with my staff, merely to be with my own men, if nothing more. They will fight none the worse for my being with them.” Halleck replied, “I cannot answer without seeing the President, as General Pope is in command, by his orders, of the department.” When McClellan asked where this left him, the answer came from the War Department: “General McClellan commands that portion of the Army of the Potomac that has not been sent forward to General Pope’s command.” In all, this amounted to nothing more than his staff and the handful of convalescents at Alexandria. Instead of being removed from command, as he had feared at the outset, he now perceived that his command had been removed from him.

He was left, he told his wife, “flat on my back without any command whatever.… I feel too blue and disgusted to write any more now, so I will smoke a cigar and try to get into a better humor.” It did no good. Far off, beyond Fairfax, he could hear the rumble of guns from a field
where his soldiers were fighting under a man he despised and considered professionally incompetent. Unable to go, yet unable to sit still, doing nothing, he took up his pen. “They have taken all my troops from me! I have even sent off my personal escort and camp guard, and am here with a few orderlies and the aides. I have been listening to the sound of a great battle in the distance. My men engaged in it and I away! I never felt worse in my life.”