The Army of Northern: Lee’s Army in the American Civil War 1861–1865

THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Lee’s Un in the American Civil War 1861–1865

The Great Armies A series of books that examines the great armies of history. By looking in detail at the separate components of each army, and how these components combined effectively, each title presents a unique view of a particular army, and explains why it was so successful in battle. Each volume analyzes the various elements required to make an army a battle-winning force: an efficient supply system, good chain of command, effective tactics, good equipment, high morale, and fine leadership. But these separate elements are only effective when combined successfully, and so each volume analyzes how they interacted to forge an effective fighting force, and why a particular army under examination did it more effectively than its opponents.

THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA Lee’s Army in the American Civil War 1861–1865

Philip Katcher

FITZROY DEARBORN An Imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group New York • London

© 2003 The Brown Reference Group plc All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form Published by Fitzroy Dearborn An imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001–2299 and This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Fitzroy Dearborn An imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Katcher, Philip R.N. The Army of Northern : Lee’s army in the American Civil War, 1861–1865/Philip Katcher. p. cm. -- (The great armies) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. ISBN 1-57958-331-8 (alk. paper) 1. Confederate States of America. Army of Northern Virginia—History. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Regimental histories. 3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. I. Title II. Series. E470.2.K245 2003 973.7’455-dc21 2003044888 For The Brown Reference Group plc Editorial Director: Lindsey Lowe Editors: Martha Bremser, Peter Darman, Matt Turner Designer: Mike LeBihan Cartographer: Bob Garwood Picture Research: Susannah Jayes Production Director: Alastair Gourlay Picture credits: Brown Reference Group: National Archives 228, 253. Corbis: 170.

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Mary Evans Picture Library: 69, 82, 88, 100, 110, 118, 160, 164, 186, 236, 300, 310. Robert Hunt Library: 22, 59, 85, 125, 145, 176, 225, 239, 244, 249, 263, 267. Peter Newark’s Pictures: 10, 15, 25, 26, 28, 59, 62, 78, 103, 109, 113, 124, 128, 131, 148, 153, 157, 177, 179, 190, 212, 230, 243, 314, 328, 339, 341. Northwind Picture Archives: 42, 56, 56, 66, 70, 73, 77, 99, 121, 133, 138, 141, 154, 172, 182, 188, 192, 195, 199, 202, 205, 208, 217, 233, 255, 258, 260, 271, 277, 286, 290, 297, 319, 334. ISBN 0-203-49101-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-59325-1 (Adobe eReader Format)

Contents

Key to maps

PART I

Foreword

ix

Introduction

x

CREATING THE MACHINE BACKGROUND TO WAR

PART II

PART III

PART IV

viii

1 3

RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING

20

NATURE OF THE WAR

36

LOGISTICS

54

THE YEARS OF ATTACK

72

THE FIRST MANASSAS CAMPAIGN

74

JACKSON’S VALLEY CAMPAIGN

92

THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN

110

THE SECOND MANASSAS CAMPAIGN

129

THE 1862 MARYLAND CAMPAIGN

145

FREDERICKSBURG

162

CHANCELLORSVILLE

180

GETTYSBURG

199

THE NATURE OF THE ARMY

220

ROBERT E.LEE

222

THE SENIOR COMMAND STRUCTURE

236

THE RANK AND FILE

249

THE ARMY AND THE STATE AUTHORITIES

262

THE YEARS OF DEFENSE

274

vii

THE WINTER OF 1863–64

276

THE WILDERNESS TO COLD HARBOR

290

COLD HARBOR TO PETERSBURG

304

THE FINAL CAMPAIGN

318

APPENDIX ORDER OF BATTLE, PETERSBURG APRIL 2, 1865

331

THE FINAL ORDERS

340

Bibliography

341

Index

345

Key to Maps

Military Units—Sizes

Army Movements

Army

Attack/advance (in national colors)

Corps

Retreat (in national colors)

Division

Defensive works

Brigade

Geographical Symbols

Regiment

River Road

Battalion

Railroad

Military Units—Types

Urban area

Infantry Cavalry

Town Trees

General Military Symbols Cannons

Bridge

Battle

Hill

National Colors Confederate Union

Mountains

Foreword

After four years of service, on April 9, 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered to the U.S. Army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Within days its men had all turned in their arms, been paroled, and headed off on sometimes very long treks home. Although its surrender did not mark the ending of all fighting in the Civil War at that point, most Southerners knew and accepted that their bid to establish an independent nation was over. The army came together as volunteer units in 1861 to defend this new wouldbe Confederate States of America, and fought a hard-pressed war for that purpose. Yet within days of surrendering no physical trace of the army remained. The legacy of that army did not die. Famed twentieth-century novelist William Faulkner, son of a regimental commander in the Army of Northern Virginia, suggested that for every Southerner of his generation time would always be stopped at that point just before Lee gambled by sending two divisions straight into Union lines at Gettysburg. Today, thousands of costumed men armed with copies of period weapons throughout the world reenact units and battles of that army. So, too, were the actions fought by the Army of Northern Virginia studied by future military historians and theorists for years thereafter. Lee’s army was remarkable in its ability to confuse and defeat superior forces in the field time after time. West Point instructors point to Chancellorsville, where Lee not only had considerably fewer men available to him than did his enemy commander, but he even split that smaller number to obtain a stunning victory, as one of history’s most perfect battles. The Army of Northern Virginia, created out of volunteer civilians with a smattering of trained, professional soldiers in command positions, was by its nature an army of individuals. Therefore this account not only discusses the campaigns and battles of the army, it also stresses the individuals from the wellknown generals such as Lee, “Stonewall” Jackson, “Jeb” Stuart, and the rest, down to the rifleman in the ranks who did not hesitate to offer his opinion on everything the army and his superiors did. There were many controversies within the army’s ranks. Who lost the Battle of Gettysburg? Should Lee have struck after the Union army’s failed assault at Fredericksburg? Why did Jackson, who had done so well in the Valley of Virginia, behave so sluggishly on the Peninsula? While answers were no clearer then than now, proud Southerners held their positions on them strongly. The top level of command was riddled with feuding generals. A.P. Hill and James Longstreet fell out over press reports after the Peninsula Campaign. Hill also feuded with Jackson, who actually placed him under arrest. Notwithstanding all this, added to generally poor, amateurish staff work for much of the war, the Army of Northern Virginia fought long and well until finally totally overwhelmed and forced to surrender. The army’s legacy, however, lives on to this very day. Philip Katcher, Devon, Pennsylvania, February 2003

Introduction

How did an army that was always poorly equipped and understrength enjoy the success it did and for the length of time it did? Historical studies on the Army of Northern Virginia have gone through a number of different points of view. At first the leading historians of the army were its veterans, starting with President Jefferson Davis, Vice-President Alexander H. Stevens, and generals James Longstreet, Jubal Early, John Bell Hood, E.Porter Alexander, and Maxey Sorrel. Their accounts all varied in quality. They all had individual arguments to prove. Alexander, whose work seems to be the most honest, still had harsh words about his superior, artillery chief William Pendleton. Primarily these generals felt that they had to show why, despite such hard fighting and great victories, their side lost. One of Lee’s staff officers, Walter H.Taylor, produced studies from morning reports that showed how very small the army was at every battle compared to its opponents, finishing with proof, according to him, that the army was simply worn down and overwhelmed. However, a Union veteran and amateur historian, Thomas L.Livermore, disagreed with Taylor’s raw data, instead relying on a variety of different sources to come up with notably larger overall figures, which he published in 1900. In much the same, dismissing charges that the Union army simply wore out the Army of Northern Virginia in a war of attrition, Steven Newton in his Lost for the Cause, the Confederate Army in 1864 (2000), showed that, despite heavy fighting with accompanying losses and the much-claimed desertion rates, Lee’s army stayed relatively stable in terms of numbers. Wherever numbers appear in this book they are taken from the latest best estimates, and generally rounded off since obviously exact numbers are rare. The next generation of Army of Northern Virginia historians were often drawn from the sons and grandsons of veterans, led by Richmond newspaperman Douglas Southall Freeman, whose three-volume Lee’s Lieutenants became the standard history of the army. Jennings C.Wise, grandson of a Confederate general and Virginia Military Institute graduate, published his account of the Army of Northern Virginia’s artillery, The Long Arm of Lee, in 1915. While these accounts were a bit more even handed, they still somewhat overly lauded the army and its overall leadership, especially Lee’s own leadership. In recent years historians have tended to focus more on the man in the ranks, resulting in a number of collections of letters home, memoirs, and diaries appearing in print. These volumes have helped produce a more rounded appreciation of the quality of the army. In recent years, too, many scholars have begun to question all aspects of Lee and his army. In 1977 Thomas Connelly, for example, produced his The Marble Man, Robert E.Lee and His Image in American Society. More recently Professor Gary Gallagher, in his Lee & His Army in Confederate History (2001), brought the pendulum back towards the center. This volume attempts to show both the weaknesses and strengths that existed in one of America’s most famous military formations, the Army of Northern Virginia.

PART I CREATING THE MACHINE

2

Slaves work a Southern sugarcane field under the eyes of an armed overseer (from an antislavery publication c. 1860). It was one of the myths of the antebellum South that the use of slaves was necessary to the cultivation of sugarcane and cotton, because the American climate and conditions made it physically impossible for whites to do hard labor. And hard labor it was. By the 1850s the economics of slavery meant that each field hand was expected to cultivate up to 10 acres (4 hectares) of sugarcane.

Background To War

The divide between North and South opened over bitterly contested issues including slavery and trade tariffs. When Southern states threatened to break up the Union, and the newly elected Republican promised to hold it together, conflict was inevitable. In a fully democratic nation, as the United States of America eventually became, the Army of Northern Virginia would never have existed. It was created to defend a breakaway part of the United States, the slaveholding Southern states, most of whose citizens had decided to leave the nation and form their own. For years the populations of the geographic regions of the country had grown ever more different. Indeed, they had started differently. Colonists in the North settled to do good, while those in the South came to do well. That is, Northern settlers came to create good lives for themselves and a good society for all, often basing this society on religious principles such as those of the Puritans of Massachusetts and the Quakers of Pennsylvania. For the most part, Southern settlers came to make as much money as quickly and as easily as possible, and leave, unconcerned with anybody but themselves. Northern crops were foodstuffs such as wheat and rye, while Southern crops were tobacco and cotton; and though the latter were easier to grow and more profitable to sell, they were nonetheless labor-intensive. It is not surprising then, that in the 17th century, when human slavery was introduced throughout what would become the United States, it was in the South that it found the most fertile ground. The system would die by the end of the next century in New England and the mid-Atlantic states as far south as Pennsylvania and New Jersey because it ran against their basic ethical beliefs, as well as the fact that it made less economic sense on the small farms of those areas. In the South, where farmers aspired to own large plantations dedicated to one or two cash crops, slavery was quickly adopted widely. At first laborers were both white and black. Whites, however, served for only a set period of years before being relieved of their duties. This short-term (or indentured) servitude was less efficient than lifelong slavery, but Southern whites were not willing to support anything more for other whites. Blacks, however, first introduced as slaves in Virginia in 1619, were quickly seen as heathens little suited for, or capable of, operating as free men. Racial discrimination soon became institutionalized, both in peoples’ minds and in the legal systems of the Southern states. By the mid-1850s (at which point the indenture system had been obsolete for a half-century) Southern thinking was totally rigid on the question. Growing pressure by moralists against the use of slavery only further hardened their positions. In May 1850 South Carolina Presbyterian minister James Thornwell preached a sermon showing that he and his congregation were aware that they stood very much alone in the world in supporting slavery and they were determined to do so regardless. “God has not permitted such a remarkable phenomenon as the unanimity of the civilized world, in its execration of

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THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

slavery, to take place without design,” he said. “Truth must triumph. God will vindicate the appointments of His Providence—and if our institutions are indeed consistent with righteousness and truth, we can calmly afford to bide our time—we can watch the storm which is beating furiously against us, without terror or dismay—we can receive the assault of the civilized world—trusting in Him who has all the elements at His command, and can save as easily by one as a thousand…” Who Owned the Slaves Only a minority of Southerners owned slaves—some three-quarters held none at all—and an even smaller minority held more than one or two who acted as farm hands. But a combination of the Southern contempt for manual labor, coupled with racial bigotry against blacks, gave even non-slaveholders a social class they could lord over. This reinforced their own sense of social status and, for that reason, led to wholesale support of the slaveholding minority. In fact, slaves damaged the actual economic status of non-slaveowners, in that wages were kept artificially low by owners being able to employ slaves in all areas of agriculture and industry, as well as increasing the number of acres owned by individuals in plantation estates, which naturally concentrated wealth in a few hands. No slavery and no plantations would have meant that the South would have largely been made up of small farms with more equally distributed wealth. But few if any small farmers in the South put this all together. At the same time, notions of racial superiority produced a feeling of being a member of an aristocracy, not just an aristocracy over blacks, but over foreigners and anybody who differed from one’s own class. This would naturally include the many Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, and others who flocked to Northern cities in the first half of the 19th century. Plantation owners saw themselves as 18th-century English squires, who took care of their local villages and raised regiments to fight for their sovereign in times of war. In the early years of the republic, Southern politicians dominated the national government. Their states were the most populous, especially Virginia, and economically all the states were similar in that they were agrarian, rather than industrial. By 1820, however, Southern leaders began to lose their power. Northern states grew in terms of population and economic progress much more quickly than Southern ones. At the same time, the nation began to see a growing moral indignation about holding human beings as slaves, a movement that started in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. This gave Southern leaders cause for concern that they now had to defend a major part of their culture with an ever- decreasing amount of economic and political power. As a result, the notion of “states’ rights,” something not found in the Constitution, gained credence in the popular Southern mind. John Brown’s Raid Finally, these leaders found themselves under physical attack. The assailant would be John Brown, a radical abolitionist who grew up mostly in Ohio and who was taught by his parents to hate slavery, and an unsuccessful businessman who began to brood over wrongs done to those without power. He finally believed himself to be an instrument of God, sent to rid the country of slavery, and went to Kansas in 1855 to physically attack proslavery men there. After Kansas he went to Missouri to steal slaves, but had little luck and so decided to transfer operations to the east. On October 16, 1859, Brown and 21 followers armed with weapons secretly provided by New England abolitionist leaders attacked the U.S. Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. They intended to strike the spark of a slave revolt that they would arm with the pikes they had brought with them, as well as weapons from the arsenal, and spread freedom by force of arms throughout the land. They were “to purge this land with blood,” as Brown himself put it.

BACKGROUND TO WAR

5

The division of the United States c.1860. Under contention were the vast tracts of land to the west, particularly the newly settled states such as Kansas. The slave states of the South saw their security and future in the extension of the slavery to these areas, while many in the North, particularly abolitionists, sought to deny slavery in the West as a way of putting pressure on the South’s “peculiar institution” of human slavery.

Brown’s raid was, for his immediate purposes, a dismal failure. No slaves came to join them. Word of the attack reached Washington, D.C., by telegraph and quickly Marines under the command of U.S. Army colonel Robert E.Lee, a native Virginian, accompanied by another native Virginian, U.S. Army lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, arrived. They set siege to the fire-engine roundhouse in which Brown and his followers had barricaded themselves. After a relatively short exchange of fire, they stormed the building on the 18th and arrested Brown with six followers. Ten of Brown’s men were killed in the fighting. Brown himself was turned over to Virginia authorities to stand trial for treason against the state. He was found guilty in a very short time as he expected to be, saying, “Let them hang me,” and was sentenced to be executed on December 2, 1859. His stoic demeanor during the trial up to his very hanging did much to win his favor in the North, if certainly not in the South. Virginian Henry Kyd Douglas was in the courtroom when he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. “Brown’s bearing on that occasion was admirable and I was told it had been so during the whole trial, which did not last long,” Douglas wrote. “This feeling of indignation and bitter criticism aroused in the North by the execution of these criminals filled me with confusion and amazement as to its significance.” Northern officials did not endorse the Brown raid and officially the country returned to the status quo. But in fact, many Northerners saw Brown as a martyr and Southerners began to fear that their rights to hold slaves would be taken from them by force if the opposition in the North grew too strong. Virginians and other Southern states’ citizens began to form volunteer militia units in earnest. “After the John Brown affair I was so firmly convinced that there might be trouble that I took active steps to raise a cavalry company in Washington County,” remembered W.W.Blackford, who would rise to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Army of Northern Virginia. “I canvassed for it and then called a meeting in Abingdon… We named the

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THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

company The Washington Mounted Rifles. I procured a copy of Hardee’s [light infantry] tactics and studied it intently, drilling the men every court day. At first only a dozen or so took interest in it but during the winter of 1860–61 many more joined.” Founding of the Militia Originally every male colonist who came to America was a potential member of a local militia, required to own weapons and equipment and to be able to serve as required. Such a system led to worthless units that existed largely on paper. The U.S. Congress passed its Federal Militia Act in 1792 that basically set up the militia system most states used thereafter. All men aged between 18 and 45 within a state were liable for militia service, with the exception of free blacks, indentured whites, the indigent, and men in exempted positions such as ferrymen, millers, or various government officials. Within this universal body, however, there was a “volunteer corps,” made of companies formed by volunteers who selected their own officers, designed their own uniforms, created their own drill times and places, and turned out for civic functions such as the Fourth of July parades. Many received weapons from the state armory, while others procured their own. Some of these, such as the Richmond Light Infantry Blues, formed in 1793, became as much social clubs as well-trained military units. Members were elected, and uniforms and accoutrements could cost small fortunes. Robert Stiles, from Richmond, joined the elite Richmond Howitzers and found that the men in it were “those whom for the most part I met in a social way.” Stiles’ new unit was “made up largely of young business men and clerks of the highest grade and best character from the city of Richmond, but included also a number of country boys, for the most part of excellent families, with a very considerable infusion of college-bred men.” The Howitzers boasted their own glee club, trained by a professional musician, and a “law club” that held mock trials and whose members gave speeches in English, Latin, and Greek. Though the militia system was largely moribund by the 1850s, select units in Virginia proved the exception. In 1851 the Virginia legislature authorized its volunteers to unify and form full regiments, and in 1852 they were authorized to form battalions as well. A regiment had a minimum of ten companies, two of which were “flank companies.” A battalion consisted of the eight companies left over after the flank companies were removed. A regiment, however, could hold two or more battalions. Volunteer units began to cooperate with each other in holding large drills as well as parades and ceremonies. In November 1860 some 15 mounted companies met in Richmond and held a mounted review that the Richmond Enquirer described as a “magnificent spectacle.” It went on to state that, “On no previous occasion has so large a force of cavalry assembled for drill in this State.” In January 1860 volunteer militia officers met in Richmond under direction of State Major-General William B. Taliaferro who served as the convention president. The convention passed a number of resolutions dealing with the training and growth of the volunteer militia corps, and these apparently formed the basis of legislation later passed by the state government. By November 1860, spurred on by the increase in tensions after the John Brown raid as well as the presidential election results, there were three volunteer regiments and six more battalions, State Adjutant General William H.Richardson reported. This number grew to five regiments and six battalions by the following April. Still there was no war. What finally triggered the conflict was the election of Abraham Lincoln, the second candidate of the Northern-based Republican Party founded in 1854.

BACKGROUND TO WAR

Jefferson Davis c.1862. A former secretary of war, Davis withdrew from the U.S. Senate on January 21,1860, after his state of Mississippi seceded. He was inaugurated president of the Confederate States on February 18, 1861, at Montgomery, Alabama, 14 days before Lincoln’s own inauguration on March 4. The 1860 Election The candidate of the new Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln, one-time representative from lllinois and frontier lawyer before the election, ran for president with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as vice president, on a ticket that endorsed government homesteads, citizenship, and even free land for German immigrants; protection for American Industries in the form of tariffs, which were hated in the South; and a brake on the westward spread of slavery, None of these were issues that found favor in the Southern states. Lincoln himself was on the record as being against slavery, For example, in a debate for a Senate seat with the eventual winner, Stephen A. Douglas in 1858, he said, “I should be exceedingly glad to see Slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses the constitutional power to abolish it, yet as a member of Congress I should not be in favor, with my present views of interfering, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, unless it should be upon three conditions: First, That the abolition should be gradual; in the second place, that it should be upon the vote of a majority of the qualified voters within the district, and lastly, with compensation to unwilling owners.” Lincoln was no

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THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

abolitionist in the sense that many of them were, in that he proposed neither liberation nor equality between the races, In another in this series of debates he said, “I will say, then, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way, the social and political equality of the white and black races.” The Democratic Party gathered in Charleston in April 1860 to pick their candidate and selected lllinois senator Stephen A. Douglas for president and Georgia’s Herschel Johnson for vice president. Douglas was not proslavery enough for many Southerners, who voted to leave the party. This sizable splinter group then met in Baltimore under the name of the Southern Democratic Party to nominate its own candidates. They proceeded to renominate their own candidate, John C.Breckinridge of Kentucky, who had been nominated in the Charleston convention but lost by popular vote to Douglas, and, as his running mate, Joseph Lane of Oregon. The New York Times explained the move to its readers on June 25, 1860: “It is the game of the Southern wing to defeat an election by the people and carry it into Congress, where they think they are reasonably certain of electing Breckinridge in the House and thus perpetuate their control over the Government, or else elect Lincoln, which will give them an opportunity to rally the South in favor of dissolution.” The idea of winning an election in the House of Representatives is feasible because according to the Constitution, U.S. citizens don’t vote directly for the president, but for an elector in their state who then votes for the president. So, according to the Constitution, if nobody has a majority of electors, “then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like manner chuse [sic] the President.” One could therefore win a popular election, but not carry enough electors for a majority and then go on to lose the election in the House. Indeed, some years after the 1860 election this did happen. To further make this a real possibility in the 1860 election, a third party arose, made up of Unionists and moderate Whigs, one of the country’s original parties that had failed with the growth of the Republican Party. (The Republicans drew most of their members from the more liberal wing of the Whigs.) This third party called itself the Constitutional Unton Party, and Its members nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president, and the well-known orator Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice president As it turned out, splitting the vote on geographic lines did not allow the Southerners to win in the House. Lincoln took a large majority of electoral votes, in all 180 to Breckinridge’s 72, Bell’s 39, and Douglas’s 12. They were right, in that the popular vote would not be as strong an endorsement of a Lincoln administration. Lincoln received 1,866,452 votes, while Douglas got 1,376,957 votes. Breckinridge, drawing strictly in the South, won a disappointing 849,781 votes, white Bell, who got a number of pro-Union Southern votes in areas such as western Virginia and the hills of North Carolina, got 588,879 votes, Certainly Lincoln was a minority president, yet proslavery votes were also in an even smaller minority, Southern leaders felt that they could not submit to the democratic will without jeopardizing slavery, They felt that their obvious move would be to disavow the election and leave the nation.

Seceding from the Union The possibility of Southern states actually leaving the Union had been under discussion since 1832 when South Carolina’s legislature declared the national tariffs of 1828 and 1832 “null and void” (tariffs tended to protect industry, which was found in the North, at the expense of farmers who had to import all their manufactured goods). At that time, the U.S. Congress authorized the president to send troops to South Carolina to enforce its rules, but this was avoided by Congressman Henry Clay from Kentucky who arranged a compromise tariff, so that South Carolina felt free to void her previous null and void act. War had been avoided for the moment, but Southern leaders were aware of what had happened and many of them wanted it to happen again in the near future. As early as 1828 South Carolina leader Robert Barnwell

BACKGROUND TO WAR

9

Abraham Lincoln’s election as president on November 6, 1860, provided Southern secessionists with the reason they needed to break with the Union. South Carolina began the split and seceded on December 20. It was followed by Mississippi on January 9, Florida on the 10th, Alabama on the 11th, Georgia on the 19th, Louisiana on the 26th, and Texas on February 1. These states convened to form a new nation on February 4.

Rhett wrote, “The day of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Constitution cannot be far off; and it is that it may not go down in blood that we call upon you to resist… If you love life better than honor,— prefer ease to perilous glory, awake not! stir not!…live in smiling peace with your insatiable oppressors, and die with the noble consolation that your submissive patience will survive triumphant with your beggary and despair.” The reason most quoted after the war by Southern leaders for trying to break up the republic was to “defend states’ rights” (the right of a state’s population to overrule the decisions of the national majority, and to protect certain privileges and customs, particularly the practice of slavery). The politicians who most

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THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

strongly felt this was necessary saw themselves as defending the existing status quo, indeed, reverting to the original national government founded by the soldiers of the Revolution, and its leaders, men like Thomas Jefferson. They saw themselves as similar to those men, in that both stood against tyranny from a distant government. In their vision, the state was the dominant political body, and the national government was simply an organization made up of these states. The actual election of 1860 was not even over when a number of Southern leaders began to call for action if Lincoln were to win. The governor of South Carolina, where nullification was first proclaimed, polled fellow Southern governors as to what they were to do if the election went against them. Alabama and Florida said they would leave the Union, while Mississippi and Louisiana called for a Southern convention to plan on a united course of action. Virginia and North Carolina preferred to stay in the Union, while Georgia’s independent governor, Joe Brown, said the state would leave if the Federal government carried out some act of aggression first. Once the results of the election were known, however, South Carolina decided not to wait, but called a state convention for December 17, the day on which they voted the state out of the Union. From there, there was no going back. South Carolina’s secession was soon followed by conventions in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, all of which, by large majorities, voted to dissolve their ties with the United States. The next step was for these like-minded states to band together. They picked the town of Montgomery, Alabama, as the site of their convention, which was opened on February 4, 1861. Once there they voted to form a new nation, the Confederate States of America. Being naturally conservative, they did not go far for the model for their constitution. It was largely the U.S. Constitution, heavily modified in respect of slavery but with minor changes elsewhere (such as giving the president a single six-year term instead of any number of four-year terms). They picked for their president a moderate, Jefferson Davis from Mississippi. President Davis Davis had been educated in the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but left the army, only to return as colonel of the Mississippi Rifles during the Mexican War of 1846–48. The especially heroic action of that regiment, and its colonel, at the Battle of Buena Vista in 1847 helped win that battle. After the war, Davis went into politics, becoming a representative and then a senator. He served as Secretary of War where he proved a creative thinker. Under him the M1855 rifled musket was adopted and the army experimented with using camels in the deserts of the Southwest. Davis was a much more experienced and trained administrator than was Lincoln, and his election as president of the Confederacy looked like a good one. His vice president was a constitutional scholar, Georgia Senator Alexander Stephens. As it turned out, the two did not get along, and Stephens spent most of the war in Georgia rather at the new nation’s capital in Virginia. “Through many of years of controversy with our late associates of the Northern States, we have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled,” Davis said in his first inaugural address as president of the provisional Confederate government on February 18, 1861. “If a just perception of mutual interest shall permit us peaceably to pursue our separate political career, my most earnest desire will have been fulfilled. But if this be denied to us, and the integrity of our territory and jurisdiction be assailed, it will but remain for us with firm resolve to appeal to arms and invoke the blessing of Providence on a just cause.” Moreover, he emphasized, “Actuated solely by the desire to preserve our own rights, and promote our own welfare, the separation by the Confederate States has been marked by no aggression upon others, and followed by no domestic convulsion.” In other words, Davis and his compatriots wanted to leave the Union peacefully.

BACKGROUND TO WAR

11

The distribution of the principal slave crops in the South c.1860. Another staple crop was hemp, grown in some counties of Missouri and Kentucky. Census estimates of 1850 put the number of slaves on cotton plantations as 1, 815,000, while 125,000 slaves were producing rice, 350,000 tobacco, and 150,000 were cultivating sugarcane.

Lincoln was not yet the president when Davis was sworn in. Lincoln was not due to be inaugurated until March and took the time to travel slowly east from Illinois to Washington, D.C., stopping along the way to make speeches and listen to concerns. His one theme was that he had been elected and would be sworn in with an oath to uphold the Constitution and the integrity of the Union and enforce the laws, even if that meant “holding its own forts, or taking those forts which belong to it,…or…the collection of duties upon foreign importations …or even the withdrawal of the mails from those portions of the country where the mails themselves are habitually violated.” The question of forts was a serious one. There were several that had not been immediately seized by Southern forces after their states left the Union. U.S. Army garrisons still manned Fort Pickens in Florida and Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The outgoing administration of James Buchanan, while doing little

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By 1860 the United States had some 30,600 miles (48,960 km) of railroad, though only 8,500 miles (13,600 km) of this was in the Southern states. The Southern railroad network largely ran from the Appalachians east to the coast, and there was only one direct rail link from Richmond south to the Mississippi, which ran through Chattanooga to Memphis. The Civil War was to become the world’s first “railroad war” with strategically important Southern rail junctions such as Petersburg and Chattanooga becoming the focus of Union offensives to take them.

positively to stop states leaving the Union, nevertheless also declined to give up the forts the Federal government held. On March 4, 1860 Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the United States. In his inaugural address he stated flatly that “the Union of these States is perpetual.” Moreover, attempts to leave it were “insurrectionary or revolutionary. I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and, to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.” While it was clear that Lincoln and his administration were willing to fight a war to prevent the Southern states from leaving, it was less clear that the general public would follow them. Large areas of the North, such as northern New Jersey which had many economic ties to the South, were pro-Southern. Factory workers felt no special desire to put on a uniform and go south to enforce Federal laws. Unless there was

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some spark to unite Northerners behind the common cause, Jefferson Davis and his Confederate supporters had a real chance to secede peacefully as he desired. Fort Sumter would be the place where that spark would be struck. The fort itself was a minor concern, an unfinished brick pile in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. Originally it was manned only by construction workers who were finishing it up, but its commander, a Kentuckian named Robert Anderson, realized that Fort Moultrie, on the harbor’s edge, where his garrison was stationed, was very vulnerable to attack from the rear. The Federal forces therefore abandoned Fort Moultrie one dark night and rowed over to Fort Sumter where they were less vulnerable to attack overland. Once there, however, his provisions were limited and indeed, he reported to Washington on February 28, 1861 that it would take some 20,000 men to hold Charleston’s forts and, before reinforcements would arrive, his supplies would be exhausted. On March 29 President Lincoln decided to send provisions to Fort Sumter, and he made this decision known to the South Carolina officials on April 6. As this was obviously the first place where an armed conflict was likely, in the meantime, Confederate officials in Montgomery, Alabama, took over running their side’s responses, and sent one of their most senior generals, P.G.T. Beauregard, to Charleston. Beauregard, a Louisiana native and professional soldier and engineer, was told by the Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy P.Walker, that on learning the fort was to be resupplied, “at once demand its evacuation, and if this is refused proceed, in such manner as you may determine, to reduce it.” The Attack on Fort Sumter With those instructions, the Confederate government set in motion the wheels that would lead to its own downfall. On April 11 Beauregard sent word to the fort that it had to surrender. Anderson refused, adding to one of the envoys that he would be forced to surrender in a few days anyway. The Confederate high command declined to take this hint to resolve the situation peacefully, and an hour before midnight that evening opened fire on Sumter. The bombardment lasted over 30 hours, although no casualties were reported. On April 13 Anderson surrendered as he knew he would eventually, and with colors flying the Federal garrison abandoned Fort Sumter the following day. The damage was done for the Confederacy, however: there was no going back. Where people in the North had been lukewarm about a war with the Southern states before, they were ready to avenge the insult once the flag was fired on. Alfred Bellard, who was to join the 5th New Jersey Regiment, later wrote: “When Fort Sumter was fired into by the Rebels under Genl. Beauregard from Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor, my military spirit along with the rest of the people in the Northern States rose to boiling pitch…” Even Southerners were aware of their mistake in firing on Fort Sumter. Luther Hopkins, 6th Virginia Cavalry, later wrote that, “The firing on Fort Sumter was like throwing a stone into a hornet’s nest. All the North was aroused.” On April 15 Lincoln issued a proclamation calling out “the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of 75,000, in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed.” While numbers began to pour in from Northern states, the border states such as Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, where slavery was legal but secession was not popular, resisted the call to arms. A day later John Letcher, governor of Virginia, responded: “In reply to this communication I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern states, and a requisition made upon me for such an object—an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795—will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South.”

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A lithograph from an original photograph of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis, at the Alabama State House in Montgomery, on February 18, 1861. The decision to move the Confederate capital to Richmond was made by the Confederate Congress on May 20 in order to tie the Southern cause into the vital strategic and industrially important border state of Virginia.

Other border states reacted the same way, and sent delegates to their own secession conventions. The Virginia one was held in Richmond starting April 17, and its members approved an ordnance dissolving the state’s ties to the Union by a vote of 88 to 55. The ordnance was to be placed on statewide ballot for popular approval on May 23, but essentially the delegates had taken Virginia out of the United States and committed it to the Confederacy. Western Virginians, from an area where few men owned slaves or had ties to a plantation system, strongly dissented, and met quickly thereafter to plan their own secession, this time from the Richmond government. By the end of May, ten Southern states had voted to join the Confederate States: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina. Border slave states such as Delaware and Maryland would remain in the Union, while Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri would be divided, forming governments that would be accepted in the Confederacy, while pro-Union governments would remain in the U.S., and men would do battle on both sides. Immediately Virginia’s Governor Letcher called out volunteers to defend the state. But defense was the main word. There were no plans of taking the war to Northern territory. There was still some hope in the

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Confederacy that Northerners would not respond to the Lincoln administration’s call for volunteers and, even if they did, a peaceful settlement could be worked out on the basis of Southern independence. Virginia Prepares For War In the meantime, Virginia prepared as best it could for war. Some of its sons were soldiers in the Regular U.S. Army, and they now resigned from that service to return to the state. Colonel Robert E. Lee, commander of the 2nd Cavalry, resigned on April 20, 1861, writing his sister that day, “The whole south is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn; and, though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for a redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native state.” In the end, he chose state over nation. Many others, including future high ranking officers of the Army of Northern Virginia such as J.E.B. Stuart and A.P. Hill, did the same. The day Lee resigned, U.S. Navy officers evacuated and partially burned the Gosport Navy Yard near Norfolk, Virginia, which was being threatened by local volunteer troops. These troops moved in quickly to find that, while five vessels had been burned to the water-line, their machinery and hulls were still useful. One of them, the USS Merrimac, became the South’s first ironclad, the CSS Virginia. Otherwise, they captured thousands of cannon that would line the walls of Southern forts, a usable dry dock, and an industrial plant. The Federal garrison at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, where an arsenal was one of the two major suppliers of infantry small arms to the U.S. Army, were more successful in burning the buildings down before Virginians took over the town. Even so, much of the machinery for weapons’ manufacture was saved. Machinery for making rifled muskets was shipped to Richmond to form the basis of the armory there, while rifle-making machinery was sent further South to the old U.S. Army arsenal at Fayetteville, North Carolina. This equipment would be badly needed, since the South would no longer be able to import everything it needed. On April 17 Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of the entire Southern coast, extending this to Virginia several days later. To begin with, such a blockade was nothing more than a scrap of paper to Southerners. The minuscule U.S. Navy had only three ships in the immediate vicinity when the blockade was proclaimed, and only a handful were in foreign ports from where they could join a blockading force. This force, such as it was, would have to watch 3,549 miles (5,678 km) of coast, with some 180 bays, inlets, river mouths, channels, lagoons, and swamps that could be used for shipping. However, the economic and industrial might of the North meant that by December 1861 the U.S. Navy could report that it had acquired 136 vessels, repaired 34, and was building another 52. In fairly short time, the main source of supply for the Confederacy would have to be within its own borders. On May 6, 1861 the Confederate Congress passed an act that recognized a state of war between the Union and Confederate States. There was no turning back. Nine days later General Joseph E. Johnston was named commander of Confederate troops near Harper’s Ferry. They had been previously commanded by an eccentric professor from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), Thomas J. Jackson. Johnston, the senior field general in the Confederacy, was a prickly Virginia: Battleground in the East Virginia was a key state to the success of the Confederacy. If Virginia were to go to war it would largely rest on the state’s shoulders to support the war effort of the army that would defend it. Luckily for those who are interested in seeing the differences between the warring sides, the United States conducted its constitutionally required national census in 1860, and the raw data produces information

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that any clear-thinking Southerner would have seen would mean eventual defeat to a determined enemy when war began. In most economic areas Virginia was the leading power in the South, and the single one best able to support an army in the field. According to the 1860 census, Virginia was the sixth largest state in the Union, with an area of 61,352 square miles (158,901 sq km). It had a population of 1,596,318, making it the fifth largest state in terms of population, behind number one, New York with its 3,880,735; Pennsylvania with 2,906,115; Ohio with 2,339,592; and lllinois with 1,711,951. It was the largest slaveholding state. Of Virginia’s total population in 1860, only 528,897 were white males. There were another 249,483 male slaves who could be used to produce food on the farms, work the factories to produce war goods, and assist in building fortifications and the like, but they needed careful watching, which would create a manpower drain on the number of white males available to be sent away to fight. Some 518,514 Virginians were female. Traditionally, especially in the South, these women would not have worked outside the home. However, they could be used both on farms and plantations to oversee foodstuff production, and in the cities in manufacturing facilities. Many of them, to supplement their meager incomes, would eventually work as seamstresses producing uniforms for the Richmond Clothing Manufactory, wrappers of paper cartridges in the Richmond Armory, and even signers of Confederate currency. In such a way, they too became an economic asset. In terms of geography, the state varied widely. The eastern part of Virginia was relatively flat, but rivers running west into the Chesapeake and the Atlantic made natural barriers against invading forces, This was good farming land. In the center of the state, the Shenandoah Valley ran south to north, a wide strip of exceptionally fertile farmlands defended on either side by mountain ridges cut through by only a handful of passes. It ended at the Maryland border, at Harper’s Ferry on the Potomac River. Western Virginia, just the other side of the Shenandoah Valley, was all mountainous, and hard to march and fight through. With a lack of good ways to keep food fresh, soldiers would have to eat food largely produced in the state. Virginia drew on 11,435,954 acres (4,620,125 hectares) of farming land, which all told produced $371,696,211 worth of agricultural products in 1860. Virginia was on an upswing in replacing cotton with food stuffs on its farms, with the value of flour and meal produced in 1850 at $9,498,892, which jumped 61.5 percent to $15,212,060 in 1860. There were 62 plants that made spirituous liquors in the state. The state was the second-largest salt producer in the country, making 2,056,513 bushels (unit of capacity: one bushel was 32 quarts, or 1,126 litres) in 1860, only next to the 7,521,335 produced in New York. There were 13,461,712 bushels of butter produced in 1860 in Virginia, far below the 103,097,279 bushels produced in New Jersey, which still calls itself “the garden state.” There were, in 1860, 330,627 milch cows, 97,862 oxen, 1,014,122 sheep (needed for the wool they produced as well as for eating), and 1,589, 519 swine in the state. All of this looks good on paper, but northern states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, to name a few, had considerably more animals of every description at the same time. In 1860 Virginia produced 13,129,180 bushels of wheat, 515,004 bushels of peas and beans, 2,292,118 bushels of Irish potatoes, 1,960,808 bushels of sweet potatoes, 68,759 bushels of barley, 477,808 bushels of buckwheat, and 8,225 bushels of rice. One can easily see, however, that more profitable cash crops were more common, since in the same year the state’s farmers produced 123,967,757 bushels of tobacco, something that would be good for morale, but would do little to silence soldiers’ grumbling bellies. Cavalry and artillery took a lot of horses. In 1860 Virginia had 287,522 horses and 41,014 mules and asses on hand. The equine population of Pennsylvania, on the other hand, at the same time, was 437,654, with another 8,832 mules and asses. To feed these animals, the state produced 445,529 bushels of hay that year. Most major manufacturing facilities in the South were either in Virginia or Louisiana, which was too far away to be a major contributor to the eastern war effort. Virginia’s iron-founding volume had grown from a value of $409,836 in 1850 to $809,955 in 1860, which was best in the South, although far from the

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$5,912,698 worth of value in New York, or $3,092,347 in Pennsylvania, Virginia produced 9,542,627 bushels of coal, mostly in western Virginia in 1860, considerably below the 66,994,295 produced in Pennsylvania. The state produced 1,500 tons (1,524 tonnes) of copper, vitally important in arms manufacture, Transportation would be a major problem, both in getting troops where they were needed and in moving supplies to troops in the field. Virginia started the war with 1,771.16 miles (2,833.8 km) of railroad track; compare this to the 2,542.49 miles (4,067.9 km) in more industrialized Pennsylvania at the same time. There were 20 different railroad companies in the state, many with track gauges that differed from connecting lines. Some, such as the Alexandria and Washington with its 6.12 miles (9.79 km) of track, were tiny. The major lines the army would depend on would be the Richmond and Danville, with 143 miles (228 km) of track, the Orange and Alexandria with 156.7 miles (250.72 km), the Virginia Central with 189.19 miles (302.7 km), and the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac with 78. 5 miles (125.6km).

fellow who had been a career soldier in the U.S. Army, holding the position of quartermaster general and brigadier-general, before resigning his commission in April 1861. He was thereafter commissioned a major in Virginia’s State Army on May 14, but soon took a commission as brigadier-general in the Confederate service. The Confederates were taking over Virginia’s defense, as troops from the Deep South arrived to reinforce Johnston’s forces in Harper’s Ferry. After all, Virginia was bound to be the frontline of the war since, on May 20, the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States voted to move their capital from the small, inland town of Montgomery, Alabama, to Virginia’s capital city, Richmond. Jefferson Davis arrived there himself, to the wild enthusiasm of local crowds, on May 29, 1861. The advantages to such a move were that it would guarantee government interest in Virginia’s defense, most important because of the economic and industrial power, such as it was, of the state. Such a move also locked Virginia into the Confederacy. On the other hand, it meant that more attention would be paid to the war in the east than in the equally important west. Moreover, having a capital so close to the enemy capital of Washington, D.C., only a day’s trip away, meant that its defense would be much more intense than if it were buried in the center of a Deep South state.

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General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, one of the South’s leading soldiers in 1861. This native of Louisiana was appointed superintendent of West Point in January 1861, but was dismissed after a few days for his outspoken proSouthern views. Resigning his commission in February, he later became the Confederacy’s first brigadier-general, commanding the attack on Fort Sumter and Southern forces at First Manassas. He is also remembered for designing the Confederate battle flag.

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A rare image of rank and file Confederates. These are the men of the 3rd Arkansas State Infantry parading with their officers in Arkadelphia, AR, in June 1861. Their lines may be a little ragged and their uniforms homespun, but they are all armed and ready to meet the enemy, complete with their drums and unit flag held high.

Recruitment and Training

After the South issued a call to arms in April 1861, volunteers rapidly assembled, and Confederate officials took over the defense of Virginia. Infantry units were organized, training camps were established, and the new army began. Even before Virginia officially seceded, local officials started calling out the state militia. In the Richmond Dispatch of April 15, 1861 a number of official notices like this one appeared: “ATTENTION, 4th COMPANY, 2d BATTALION 19th REGIMENT VIRGINIA MILITIA.—Assemble for instruction in Drill, at Leigh Street African Church on TUESDAY, the 16th inst., at 4 o’clock P.M.” In case individuals did not know that they were members of this company, the notice went on to state: “This Company District is bounded as follows: Commencing on the Northwest corner of Duval and 2d streets; thence North side of Duval street to Brooke Avenue; thence East side of Brooke Avenue to the corporation line; thence along the corporation line to the West side of 2d street; thence along 2d street to the place of starting. All persons subject to militia duty within this district will report promptly. This parade is required by law, and all absentees will be fined to the fullest extent of the law.” Men who were already in pre-war volunteer companies were exempt from universal militia service, and such militia, anyway, would not be considered of a quality good enough to do much serious fighting. The volunteer companies would make up the main line of Virginia’s forces. At first men in volunteer companies tended simply to gather together at their customary meeting places, armed and ready to move as directed. One of many notices in the same paper as called out the universal companies called for a typical volunteer company muster: “MONTGOMERY GUARD, COMP’Y C, 1st REG’T VA. VOLS. Drill on the Capitol Square, Monday EVENING, 15th inst., at a quarter before 8 o’clk, with Rifle-Muskets, Waist Belts, Bayonet Scabbord, Cap Boxes, and ten [percussion] caps each man.” On April 17, 1861 Virginia’s legislature authorized the governor to call on these volunteers to “repel invasion and protect the citizens of the state in the present emergency.” The volunteers, who were organized in companies already, were to be gathered and put into regiments that would then form brigades and, eventually, divisions. This would need the work of generals and their staffs and regimental officers, and the legislature provided for them as well. Robert E.Lee Accepts a Virginia Command On April 19 the state’s Convention passed an ordinance that called for a state “commander of the military and forces of Virginia,” to rank as a major-general. This post was offered to, and accepted by, Robert E.Lee, who was commissioned on April 24 as both a major-general of volunteers and a major-general in the

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In stark contrast to the type of uniforms and equipment the state of Arkansas could afford, these men of the “Duplin Grays”—a volunteer company from North Carolina—parade in May 1861 with the best gear available: the officers’ uniforms complete with swords and sashes. The hard realities of campaigning and problems of resupply would make this kind of show a fond memory within a year.

Provisional Army of Virginia. On April 20, after Virginians had captured Harper’s Ferry and the Gosport Navy Yards, the law of April 17 was generally announced and volunteers were called for. A day later the governor proclaimed that every volunteer company from the Blue Ridge to Richmond, including those in the Shenandoah Valley to the Tennessee border, were to be ready to move at short notice. Many of these companies were already gathered and ready for duty, having assembled at locations where they had seen others head earlier. By April 21, officials at Harper’s Ferry reported that some 2,000 volunteers were already there, with another 5,000 soon expected. In the meantime, on the same day, Virginia’s military force set up its adjutant general’s, quartermaster’s, subsistence, medical, and pay departments and a Corps of Engineers. Four days later Colonel Robert S.Garnett was named adjutant general; Major Eugene E.McLean was named quartermaster; Colonel Charles B.Gibson became surgeon general; and Major George C.Hutter became paymaster. Later still Major James R. Crenshaw was named to head the subsistence department, and Colonel Andrew Talcott, an old friend of Lee’s, was appointed commander of the Corps of Engineers. The state then sent out instructions for mustering troops in to various population centers, ranging from the Kanawha Valley in Western Virginia, to Wheeling, Weston, Harper’s Ferry, Norfolk, Richmond, Alexandria, and Fredericksburg. They called for units—the pre-war volunteer companies— that arrived already armed and uniformed to be organized into regiments, with companies from the same parts of the state to be kept together as much as possible. In May these instructions were sent to all parts of the state, even down toward the North Carolina border.

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The Condition of the Troops One of the first things the new military organization needed to know was the status of its troops already in camps and in the field. Even basic information was largely missing. Ordnance chief Colonel Charles Dimmock, years later to become the engineer who designed the line of works around Petersburg, had to advertise in local newspapers, “Commanding officer of foot and mounted troops, who have procured arms from elsewhere than the Armory at Richmond would please send to this Department the size [caliber] of their bullets, in order that ammunition may be prepared for them when needed. It would be best to send one or two bullets, a cap or two, the size of the cone [the musket’s chamber], and the name of the maker of the piece.” Right across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., the Federal capital city, Virginians had very little time to prepare. Alexandrian Alexander Hunter, whose company would end up in the 17th Virginia Regiment, was in a pre-war volunteer company when Virginia voted to leave the Union. “We were ordered into barracks on the 18th of April, 1861, and settled down into a quiet but hard-working routine. Guards were posted, pickets set, and in short, everything was brought down to war footing. Volunteers now fully realized that this was to be no child’s play, but war in grim, hard earnest…Then arrived an old army officer, Major George Hunter Terrett, a West Pointer [no such individual, however, is listed as having attended the U.S. Military Academy], to train these untried soldiers into more military bearing. He at once treated the dilettante volunteers as regulars, and ordered that the private salute the officer; he placed guards at the door of the barracks and permitted none to leave for an hour without a pass countersigned by himself. One drill was hardly over before another was called; no fancy drilling, but hard work in fatigue uniform… “The new volunteers who flocked to the armory every day to be enrolled were drilled apart in the first rudiments of forming in line, marking time, &c., and were known as the ‘goose squad.’ Some of them were very green and could have as easily jumped through a hoop or performed the great bare-back act in a circus as to load their muskets properly… Every morning at 5 o’clock the drum beat the reveille, and up would jump a set of poor fellows huddling on their clothes, half asleep, trying frantically to shove a number six foot up the arm of a jacket and getting an arm in a breeches leg. Then would be formed a line of miserable, sleepy-looking wretches, who would stand yawning and gaping until roll call and the order given ‘break ranks,’ after which there would be a rush back to bed again … After breakfast one hour was given for recreation, and if grumbling was recreation, every man had plenty of it… Nine o’clock, and the ‘old confounded sheepskin’ was heard again and the sergeant was wont to put his carrotty head in the door and yell out: ‘Fall in, men for squad drill!’ And after one long blessed hour there was nothing but tramp, tramp, tramping on the commons, until there was not a square inch in all its limits that had not felt the tread of each man’s foot. At eleven, guard mount! Dinner at twelve. Battalion drill at two P.M. Then no longer had the men, half-dead, come limping back than they were ordered to reform and practice ‘Company drill.’ Any reasonable person would have imagined this would wind up work for one day, but no! after crawling back there yet remained ‘Dress parade.’ About dusk a weary, wretched lot would wriggle back to the barracks and be given supper at seven. At eight, ‘Roll call.’ At nine the drum sounded the ‘Tattoo,’ and ‘All lights out!’ ordered and obeyed.” Hunter’s experience was typical of most volunteers. Generally, the Federals across the river from Alexandria were as unprepared as the Confederates, and the new regiments on both sides had time to learn their manuals of arms and drill tactics well before seeing action. Ted Barclay, a member of the Liberty Hall Volunteers, which became a part of the 4th Virginia Regiment, wrote home from his camp near Darkesville, in Western Virginia, on June 25: “We drill six times a day, once before sunrise, directly after breakfast, then from eleven to twelve o’clock, and three times in the evening. We have four regiments of Virginia Troops here, about 3,500 men in all.”

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The First Training Camps On the eastern side of the state, the 3rd Virginia Infantry Regiment, which had been organized in 1856 in Portsmouth, was called up April 20. Recalled Lieutenant John H.Lewis of that regiment, when they gathered, “Naturally, all was bustle and hurry; war was new to us. With soldiers arriving and to be provided for, new officers to appoint, such as quartermasters and commissaries, the vast amount of camp equippage and rations, kept everybody on the move. But soon things began to assume shape, and quiet and order were restored… The troops as they arrived were placed in camp, and began the routine life of the soldier, drilling, doing guard duty, eating and sleeping; in fact, in a month or so a great many of the soldiers began to look on the matter as a holiday and few thought they would ever be called on to fight. It seemed to be the great fear at this time with many of the soldiers that the war would close before they would have the pleasure of killing some one; many of us had in after years worried for fear somebody might kill us. Thus the days went by, and with the pranks of the boys who were learning all kinds of deviltry, as soldiers in camp generally learn; even then camp hung heavy on all heads; but this was only the beginning.”

Main Street, Richmond, VA, in the late 1850s (the U.S. flag still flies over the citythough not for very much longer). If there can be said to be a center of the Confederate war effort in the east, this is it. From the arrival of Jefferson Davis in May 1861 and the meeting of Congress on November 18, Richmond became the focus of the struggle for independence. Some states such as South Carolina set up supply depots for their regiments on this street, while others such as Georgia headquartered their hospitals and relief organizations.

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Richmond, the largest city in the state, had a number of pre-war volunteer units. John H.Worsham of the elite Company F noted his company was called up April 24 and sent to Fredericksburg with the equally elite Richmond Light Infantry Blues. Once there, they “marched to the courthouse, and camped for the night. A load of straw that was sent to us was spread on the floor and benches and made a very good bed. Citizens invited us into their homes for supper. We went to bed that night in regular military order—had a camp guard, lights out by taps, etc… “In the morning citizens supplied us with breakfast. We remained in the town, living in this manner for several days. Then we marched to the Fair Grounds, where we found that the Blues had preceded us. Here we went regularly into camp, which was called Camp Mercer. Our company was assigned to the sheds of the horse department. The floors were covered with straw, and three men were assigned to a stall. Camp duty, with its guard mounting, policing, drills, etc., began at once, and dress parade was held every fair evening. Most of the young ladies of the town came out to witness the drill, and they seemed to enjoy it as much as we did their presence. The men formed messes, each consisting of about ten men and each employing a Negro man as cook…” There were only so many volunteer companies ready to muster, however, and they were not enough to defend the entire state. By May 1 it was obvious that, poorly prepared as the state was in terms of munitions, arms, and equipment, individual volunteers would have to be accepted and formed into companies. On May 3 Governor Letcher authorized Robert E.Lee to “call out and be mustered into the service of Virginia, from time to time as the public exigencies may require, such additional number of volunteers as he may deem necessary.” The experience of John O.Casler from western Virginia was typical of how volunteers joined the army. He was visiting his parents in Perkersburg when “the Governor of Virginia was calling for volunteers. There had been a company raised at Springfield, my native town, and they were in service and camped at Blue’s Gap, fifteen miles [24 km] east of Romney, on the road leading to Winchester. As I had but fifteen miles to go to reach them, I bad farewell to my Camp of Instruction Regulations (from Confederate Army Regulations of 1863) 1441. The depots for recruits are established by orders from the Adjutant and Inspector General’s office. 1442. To each depot there will be assigned a suitable number of officers to command and instruct the recruits; and when necessary, such a number of enlisted men as may be designated at the Adjutant and Inspector General’s office, will be selected for the permanent party, to do garrison duty and for drill masters. 1443. The number of recruits at depots to be assigned to each arm and regiment is directed from the Adjutant and Inspector General’s office. 1444. The recruits are to be dressed in uniform according to their respective arms, and will be regularly mustered and inspected. They are to be well drilled in infantry tactics, through the school of the soldier to that of the battalion, and in the exercise of field and garrison pieces. Duty is to be done according to the strict rules of the service. 1445. The general superintendent will cause such of the recruits as are found to possess a natural talent for music, to be instructed (besides the drill of the soldier) on the fife, bugle, and drum, and other military instruments; and boys of twelve years of age and upward may, under his direction, be enlisted for this purpose. But as recruits under eighteen years of age and under size must be discharged, if they are not capable of learning music, care should be taken to enlist only those who have a natural talent for music, and, if practicable, they should be taken on trial for some time before being enlisted.

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1446. Regiments will be furnished with field music on the requisitions of their commanders, made, from time to time, direct on the general superintendent; and when requested by regimental commanders, the superintendents will endeavor to have suitable men selected from the recruits, or enlisted for the regimental bands. 1447. To give encouragement to recruits, and hold out inducements to good conduct, the commanding officer of the depot may promote such of them to be lance corporals and lance sergeants as exhibit the requisite qualifications, not exceeding the proper proportion to the number of recruits at the depot. These appointments will be announced in orders in the usual way, and will be continued in force until they join their regiments, unless sooner revoked. No allowance of pay or emoluments is to be assigned to these appointments; they are only to be considered as recommendations to the captains of companies and colonels of regiments for the places in which the recruits may have acted; but such noncommissioned officers are to be treated with all the respect and to have all the authority which may belong to the stations of sergeant and corporal. 1448. Permanent parties at depots, and recruiting parties, will be mustered, inspected, and paid in the same manner as other soldiers. Recruits will be mustered for pay only at depots, and when paid there, one half of their monthly pay will be retained until they join their regiments. 1449. When recruits are received at a garrison post, the commanding officer will place them under the charge of a commissioned officer. 1450. Recruits are not to be put to any labor or work which would interfere with their instruction, nor are they to be employed otherwise than as soldiers, in the regular duties of garrison and camp. 1451. Every enlisted man discharged as a minor, or for other cause involving fraud on his part in the enlistment, or discharged by the civil authority, shall forfeit all pay and allowances due at the time of the discharge. 1452. The Rules and Articles of War are to be read to the recruits every month, after the inspection; and so much thereof as relates to the duties of non-commissioned officers and soldiers will be read to them every week.

parents and sisters and went to the company, and arrived that evening in camp.” Casler got into the service without any medical examination that he mentioned. “I met old schoolmates and acquaintances whom I had parted from two years before in the school room, and now found them in arms. I signed my name to the musterroll, put on the uniform of gray, and was mustered into service for one year.” Casler’s company, however, would not receive any training, before moving straight away to the front. “The next morning, which was the 19th of June, we were ordered to fall in, and marched to Romney. The day was hot and the road dusty, and marching went quite hard with us, especially myself, who had never marched a day in my life; but I kept in ranks, for, ‘Who would not a soldier be, and with the soldiers march?’ Arriving in Romney about 3 p.m., we quartered in an old building, took a good wash, had some refreshments, and felt like soldiers indeed, with our clothes covered with brass buttons and the ladies smiling at us and cheering us on.” Within that week, Casler’s company, now formed into a regiment, skirmished with a scouting Federal regiment. These volunteers were to report, either in new companies or as individuals, to one of many camps of instruction set up to train the men while organizing new regiments. Camp Lee was the artillery camp of instruction, set up in 1861 on a farm near Richmond. Captain John C.Shields, 1st Howitzers, was named the camp’s first commander. Having obtained a copy of the 1860 U.S. Army artillery manual, he had used that book to teach tactics and drill to the 75 batteries that passed through his camp between November 1861 and June 1862. For battalion drill, practiced when he had enough batteries together to allow it, he used a translated French manual.

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Training Manuals Obtaining sufficient training manuals was a major problem for the Confederate Army. These were items that were not on many booksellers’ shelves. But they were essential because these books of “tactics” were not simply drill manuals or books of instructions as we would think of them today, but books designed to tell company and regimental officers how to actually conduct troops in battle. The U.S. Army infantry in the Mexican War had used a three-volume series of manuals translated from the French by the army’s commanding general, Winfield Scott. Mexican War veterans, and those who had seen much earlier army service, would be most familiar with Scott’s Tactics, as they were called. These were designed for infantry using smoothbore flintlocks, however, and this weapon had largely been replaced by 1842 with the longarm that used a copper percussion cap to fire its load. A more significant development was the rifled barrel, which increased accuracy over longer range. In 1855, short rifles—rifled percussion-cap weapons—began appearing in U.S. Army ranks, and a Regular Army officer, William Hardee, wrote a manual for light infantry using these weapons. A “rifled musket,” similar to the M1855 rifle but using a triangular-bladed bayonet rather than the sword bayonet of the shorter rifle, and fitted with three bands around its longer barrel rather than two, was also adopted in 1855. Hardee modified his system of tactics in 1861 to serve soldiers using the M1855 rifled musket. However, Hardee’s Tactics were hard to come by for the new company and regimental officers. Local printers began to reproduce any manuals they could find. The first manual advertised in the Richmond Dispatch was listed on April 20, and was called “A useful military book on infantry camp duty, field fortifications and coast defence,” priced at a reasonable 50 cents. Three days later the same publisher offered Tactics for Officers of Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery, arranged and compiled by W.Buckholtz. Soon a member of the pre-war 1st Regiment of Virginia Volunteers, Jas. K.Lee, produced “The Volunteer’s Hand Book: containing an abridgment of Hardee’s Infantry Tactics, adapted to the use of the percussion musket in squad and company exercises, manual of arms for riflemen and United States Army regulations as to parades, reviews, inspections, guard mounting, etc., published in Richmond.” Virginia Military Institute tactics instructor William Gilham published a widely used manual before the war, one often reprinted in the South, that had sections on infantry, light artillery, and cavalry tactics as well as instructions to company officers and regimental staff members and a discussion of courts martial. It was, however, not widely available and therefore not as widely used among infantrymen as the various versions of Hardee’s Tactics. A man arousing suspicion and captured by Federals in 1862 told his captors he was not a military man and “he never studied military tactics, but…[had] frequently looked over Gilham’s and Hardee’s.” Gilham’s manual did not cover tactics for heavy artillery units, which manned siege and coastal guns. However, these units were in luck since just before the war a Richmond printer started producing copies of the U.S. Army’s Instructions for Heavy Artillery. When war broke out in 1861 the printer quickly substituted the words ‘Confederate’ for ‘United’ and the South had a new heavy artillery manual. The story was different for light artillery training manuals. LieutenantColonel Snowden Andrews, who commanded a field artillery battalion in the Army of Northern Virginia, recalled that the only manual available at first was an old U.S. Army manual that referred to “horse artillery” in which every member is mounted, rather than field artillery, in which only a handful are mounted. Hence, Andrews recalled, “the explanations of the various maneuvers were found to be complex and confusing.” In fact, Andrews did not get a good field manual until he found on the battlefield at Mechanicsville, Virginia in 1862, “a little work on Field Artillery, by Mr Patten, late officer United States army, published in New York, in November, 1861.”

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John Brown’s attack on the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, VA, on October 16, 1859, was one of the sparks that ignited the Civil War. As an incitement to mass slave revolt it was a failure. The fighting lasted barely 36 hours and ended when U.S. Marines led by Colonel Robert E.Lee stormed the fire-engine house in which Brown and six others had taken a stand. Brown’s attack inflamed Virginians, who saw it as a blatant attempt by Northern abolitionists to undermine their state by violence.

Eventually Andrews went on to publish his own Confederate manual, which appeared first in 1863. Indeed, by 1863 official manuals were being widely published. North Carolina, for example, produced a single volume that contained the first two volumes of Hardee’s Tactics for troops armed with rifled muskets along with the third volume of Scott’s Tactics, which dealt with maneuvers of a brigade or larger sized force. The Confederate Ordnance Department issued a field manual in 1862, followed by a full-sized Ordnance Manual, essentially a reprint of the U.S. Ordnance Department manual, in 1863. Indeed, the Confederate War Department even produced a booklet called A System for Conducting Musketry Instruction Prepared and Printed by Order of General Bragg for the Army of Tennessee in September 1863, some copies of which undoubtedly saw use in the Army of Northern Virginia. Those who held brigade command had not held such large commands before and also needed manuals. Gilham’s included a section on how to fight a battle, but the main book everyone relied on was a French book, The Art of War, by Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, which had been first published in 1838. The author drew on his firsthand experience in the Napoleonic Wars, where he had served both in the French Army and as an aide-de-camp to the Czar of Russia. Although it drew on examples from armies using flintlock, smoothbored muskets, and smoothbored artillery, it was considered state-of-the-art for the time and indeed, an edition was published at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1862. For smaller sized actions, the standard reference was produced by a professor at that Academy, D.H.Mahan, whose book was entitled An Elementary Treatise on Advanced-Guard, Outpost, and Detachment Service of Troops. The Confederate Government in Richmond Officials of the Confederate government soon arrived in Richmond to take over the running of the national defense, and on June 6, 1861 Virginia’s military forces, including staff departments, were transferred to the

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Confederate service, although in fact this would not officially happen until July 1, the date of a new fiscal quarter for the Confederate government. At the same time, Virginians were relieved of being wholly responsible for their state’s defense as troops from outside states began to pour in. McHenry Howard from Maryland—which had not seceded, but which was determined to fight for the South—arrived in Richmond on June 6 and began, with other Marylanders, to organize an infantry company from individuals who had come to the city to enlist. Georgian Moxley Sorrell was one of those who quit a volunteer infantry company that apparently was not going to the front, to travel to “Virginia and seek employment there.” Having arrived, he wrote, “Richmond looked like a camp when I arrived, in July. It was full of officers in their smart uniforms, all busy with their duties, and the greatest efforts were made for equipping and arming the men now pouring in from the South. They were posted first in camps of instruction, where, by means of younger officers, they attained some drill before being sent…[to] the army” From the south, even as far away as Texas, units were organized, packed up, and marched to what would obviously be the seat of the war, Virginia. The parting scenes were almost always the same. Sometimes the town’s women would present a flag to the new company. A prayer would be said. Then, as Jonathan Stevens, an officer of the 5th Texas Infantry recalled, “Embracing our loved ones fervently, and imprinting a kiss that cannot be expressed in words—probably our last forever—we slowly and sadly filed out to the gate where our horses were hitched, and mounting we slowly rode away. As I reached the last turn in the road, from which my home could be seen, I turned my head and took a last look at my dear wife with her infant in her arms and my oldest of three years standing by her side. While my mind retains its functions, that day will be but yesterday in my memory. I have no desire to lose it in this life.” Once out of the home town, the trip to Virginia was, for most units, a triumphant parade. Tally Simpson, 3rd South Carolina Regiment, wrote home from his camp near Richmond on June 20 that, “The ladies from one end of our trip to the other manifested the greatest enthusiasm towards the soldiers… Ladies at little stations, and even in towns and cities, would go up to the soldiers, any and every one, and converse with them as familiarly as old friends. As we were passing up the street, an old lady was standing upon the sidewalk who, seeing one of the soldiers near her, asked where he was from. Upon his answering S.C., she stretched out her hand, gave him a hearty shake, and said emphatically, welcome.” These demonstrations were unexpected when the men left; indeed they had no idea what to expect. The question naturally arises why would men, especially the majority of men who had no direct stake in slaveholding, fight in Virginia for the cause of secession. Very few of them thought in terms of defending slavery at all, although many did worry that the new government would enforce equality with blacks. The political situation had grown so solidified that, as Jonathan Stevens later wrote, “Excitement was at a white heat, the public mind was soon wrought up to such a pitch that every man had to align himself with the secession movement or stand as an enemy of the South. A middle ground status was impossible.” Henry Kyd Douglas, soon to be a private in the 2nd Virginia, put it succinctly: “When on the 17th April, 1861, Virginia passed the Ordinance of Secession, I had no doubt of my duty.” The Southern Cause H.C.Wall, of the 23rd North Carolina, whose company left the state in June to go to Richmond, noted that, “The cause of the South was felt to be the cause of all; controversy was at an end; difference in opinion, as to the principles involved, was swallowed up in the stern reality that forced itself upon the minds of our people; the great heart of the community throbbed in unison of sentiment and feeling, and all parties were ready to contribute of their means and sympathy to forward and promote the common cause.” On April 4 John Esten Cooke, who had recently joined a Southern artillery battery, wrote his cousin J.E.B.Stuart, still

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serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, “I don’t intend to go into any talk about the Lincoln government and that at Montgomery. I have no doubt that you despise the one and admire the other as much as I do. But I say—the time is imminently here at hand when you and Uncle will be aides and abettors of the sworn foes —and active foes —of your country (I mean the South, for that is your country) and your own kindred.” In other words, a man had to go to fight, if possible, or neighbors, including local women, considered him a traitor to the South. One ended up going as much because everyone else did as for any philosophical reasons. Typically the older volunteer units had already set up their command structures but, in keeping with American volunteer tradition, the new units elected their officers as part of their first functions. On June 12 McHenry Howard’s Marylanders “elected our commissioned officers…and marched from Weston’s to Capitol Square to be mustered into the Virginia service, for as yet the different states had their own troops, which a little later were turned over to the general government. Our expectation was to be enlisted, like most of the other commands, for the term of twelve months…” Once set up, these companies were sent from Richmond’s train stations and hotels into camps of instruction to be organized into larger units. Stevens described Camp Winder, where his Texans went to eventually be formed into the Texas Brigade: “Imagine some 500 or more temporary buildings, 100×20 or 25 feet in regular order, on streets or open ways running at right angles with each The Physical Examination One of the primary missions of the surgeons at each camp of instruction was to screen conscripts to accept only those medically fit. Instructions went out on August 14,1862 as to what was acceptable and what was not: “At each camp of instruction and at such military stations and other points as may be designated, an experienced army surgeon from a different section of the county will be detailed to examine conscripts.” The instructions continued: All conscripts capable of bearing arms will be received. Conscripts not equal to all military duty may be valuable in the hospital, quartermaster’s, or other staff departments; and if so will be received. Blindness, excessive deafness, and permanent lameness, or other great deformity, are obvious reasons for exemptions. Confirmed consumption, large incurable ulcers, and chronic contagious diseases of the skin are causes of exemption. Single reducible hernia, the loss of any or of several fingers will not incapacitate the subject for the performance of military duty. A certificate of disability of a conscript given by a private physician will not be considered unless affidavit is made that the conscript is confined to bed or that his health and life would be endangered by removal to the place of enrollment. But when a conscript is incapacitated by temporary sickness he must present himself so soon as recovered to the enrolling officer or to the nearest school for conscripts. No previous discharge, certificate, or exemption from any source will be acknowledged, except those granted to foreigners not domiciled, and to those persons who have furnished substitutes. Medical officers of the Army are not allowed to examine conscripts and give certificates unless they are regularly detailed for that duty.

other 25 or thirty feet wide. Into these buildings we were assigned, as many as could conveniently occupy each building. Our blankets were our bedding; our cooking was done in the streets or open ways in camp kettles or skillets issued to us by messes. We were formed into messes, usually five men to the mess sometimes one or two more—often less than five. Our quarters were divided into divisions, each street or

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row of buildings formed a division, and each house a section. Each house and division bore its particular number.” Unit Organization The units organized were filled to numbers set by an act of Confederate Congress of March 6, 1861. An infantry regiment was to “consist of one colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, one major, and ten companies; each company shall consist of one captain, one first lieutenant, two second lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals, two musicians, and ninety privates, and to each regiment there shall be attached one adjutant, to be selected from the lieutenants, and one sergeantmajor, to be selected from the enlisted men of the regiment. “The regiment of cavalry shall consist of one colonel, one lieutenant-colonel, one major, and ten companies, each of which shall consist of one captain, one first lieutenant, two second lieutenants, four sergeants, four corporals, one farrier, one blacksmith, two musicians, and sixty privates. There shall also be one adjutant and one sergeant-major, to be selected as aforesaid.” Light artillery organization was set up on November 1, 1862, with General Order #81 that called for each four-gun battery to have: “One captain, 1 first lieutenant, 2 second lieutenants, 1 sergeant-major or first sergeant, 1 quartermaster sergeant, 4 sergeants, 8 corporals, 2 buglers, 1 guidon, 2 artificers, 64 to 125 privates.” Heavy artillery units were initially organized the same as infantry companies. On March 3, 1862 Adjutant & Inspector General Samuel Cooper wrote to the secretary of war, Judah P.Benjamin, that such an organization gave each unit too few officers and NCOs: “Each section of two pieces should be commanded by a lieutenant and each gun should be provided with a sergeant and corporal, so that a company serving a battery of eight guns should have four lieutenants, eight sergeants, and eight corporals; whereas at present organized the company consists of only three lieutenants, five sergeants, and four corporals.” Benjamin agreed, passing the suggestion on to Congress, which also agreed, reorganizing heavy artillery to be the same as light artillery batteries as of April 3, 1862. Once this initial group of units were at the front, the Confederate government set up permanent camps of instruction to train new volunteers for its service. However, the government soon realized that new volunteers were not turning up in nearly the numbers needed. Moreover, the units that had been taken into Confederate service in the spring of 1861 had one-year terms, and most of the men planned to return home rather than reenlist and stay at the front. Therefore, the Confederate Congress passed a conscription act on April 16, 1862. It provided that all able-bodied white males between the age of 18 and 35 could be called into Confederate service. Civilians in one of the job categories such as newspaper editor, cleric, state official, or overseer on a plantation with a set number of slaves would be exempt. However, anybody already in the Confederate Army would either have to reenlist at the end of his one year term or be conscripted just as if he’d never been in service before. News of this act swept the army in Virginia, with a universally negative reaction. Volunteers hated being called conscripts if they did not reenlist. A cannoneer wrote on May 10, 1862, “Conscript has made his appearance in camp much to the displeasure of our twelve month boys, who made some awful threats against the old gentlemen placid & quiet. We are pressed in for two years more, much against our inclination & wishes; but I suppose we will have to put up with it no matter how much we dislike it. It is very unjust & I fear will cause many to desert the army who would have been free volunteers for the war.”

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There was a wide variety of uniform types to be found among the armies of 1861, and it was often difficult in these early months of war to distinguish one side from the other. These are the Charleston Zouave Cadets. The Zouaves’ uniforms and drill were inspired by French colonial troops of the 1830s and such units, and their often colorful uniforms, could be found on both sides. Indicative of the shortage of Southern-made weapons, these Confederates carry the U.S. Model 1841 rifled musket.

Voting For Officers Men could also switch units, while existing units were to be reorganized with new officers voted into place. Now officers who had practiced strict discipline were out. Even Gilham, of Tactics-writing fame, was voted out as colonel of his Virginia regiment, never to hold a line command again. Throughout the army, all ranks realized this was a bad move. “The wisdom of this procedure has been much questioned,” wrote William Poague, an artillery battalion commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. “Officers who tried to keep up discipline were not popular and failed of re-election.” Private Worsham, then in the Shenandoah Valley, agreed, “The reorganization of the army took place while we were in this camp. This was a great misfortune to us. Many good officers were thrown out, and men who were popular were elected in their stead. In many instances men were elected who were utterly unfit for their positions.” At the same time, the first conscripts caught under the new system started arriving in camps of instruction. These had their basis in orders that were issued on October 11, 1862 to each state’s commandant of conscripts: “He will establish one or more camps, in which conscripts will be assembled and instructed, and may recommend for appointment a surgeon, a quartermaster, a commissary, and a requisite number of drill-masters for each camp. If more than one camp be established, he may also recommend a commandant for each camp not under his own immediate command. “A hospital will be established, and huts for winter quarters constructed at each camp; and all conscripts assembled at the camps will be promptly vaccinated, if it has not already been done. “The commandant of conscripts will require from each camp a report on the first Monday in every month, showing the expenses of the preceding month, the number of conscripts in the camp, the number

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received and sent away during the preceding month, the regiments, battalions, or companies to which they were sent, the number transferred to the Navy, the number of sick, the nature of their diseases, and the number of deaths. He will make a consolidated monthly report to the Adjutant and Inspector Gen. of the Army. “The commandants of all regiments, battalion, squadrons, or unattached companies which were in service on the 16th of April, 1862, desiring to receive conscripts may transmit, through the Adjutant and Inspector Gen. of the Army, statements of the strength of their commands to the commandant of conscripts in their respective States, who, unless otherwise ordered, will, as far as practicable, distribute the conscripts of the State among its regiments, battalions, and companies thereof, in proportion to their respective deficiencies. He will consult the wishes of the conscripts in assigning them to companies or regiments so far as may be consistent with their proper distribution, and will not separate men from the same county, district, or parish if it can be avoided. The same rule will be observed by the commandants of corps in assigning conscripts to companies. “Conscripts for cavalry will only be taken from those who furnish their own horses. No conscripts can be assigned to companies mustered into service since the 16th of April, 1862.” Each state had a different number of camps, according to their needs. Alabama, for example, had two, one at Tallageda and the other in Macon County. There were several in the Richmond area alone that sent troops into the frontline defending Virginia. The Fitness of the Troops One of the first things done at each camp was to screen out those physically unable to fight. Everyone, regardless of physical condition, had to appear for this examination. The result was that at any given time there were apt to be more men in camp unfit for duty than fit. The governor of Florida wrote Richmond officials that in his state, “The great majority now in camps are invalids, never will be able to render efficient service upon the field, in hospitals, or in any of the departments of the Government, and at home would be of some service in taking care of the comforting women and children. The camp of instruction has more the appearance of a camp provided for those afflicted with lameness and diseases than a military camp.” There were no instructions for commandants of these camps to actually provide military training and, indeed, such training was hit or miss. Few of these camps had enough weapons on hand for a real training program, and many of the conscripts in the camp spent more time working on the camp gardens, in which much of their food was grown, than in training. Actual training, many commandants figured, would be done when the man reached his eventual unit. Indeed, much time was spent by commandants just making sure their assigned men stayed in camp. According to an order of July 14, 1862, “All persons engaged in enrolling conscripts are hereby authorized and required to arrest deserters from the Army and to deliver them to the commandant of the nearest camp of instruction, or to lodge them in the nearest jail, and to return their names, company, and regiment to the Adjutant and Inspector Gen.” J.W.Reid of South Carolina was drafted, after serving a term in an infantry regiment from which he was discharged, and ended up in the South Carolina camp of instruction near the state capital of Columbia. “I will state for the information of those who have no knowledge of this institution, that this camp of instruction (although, for my life I can’t see what instruction was given there), was where all the men of the State subject to conscription were sent previous to going into the army. Most of these men had never been in service, and to say the truth, the greater part were unfit for it. The lame, the halt, the blind were taken there and examined by doctors, some of whom could not have told what was the matter with a man broken out with the measles, and if a person could walk a dozen steps without falling or fainting they were pronounced

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Winter quarters built and occupied by regiments of the Army of Northern Virginia around Manassas, 1862. When the hard winter months began, and campaigning became impossible, armies on both sides built huge, semipermanent camps in which to wait out the weather and prepare for the following year’s fighting. This ensured that the army stayed together and could begin campaigning immediately spring arrivied. Feeding and housing these thousands, however, put an added strain on the already hard-pressed resources of northern Virginia.

able for duty. Sometimes it would be light duty, but I have never yet found what light duty is to a common soldier. Light places there are, but not for a private soldier.” Reid went on, “At the time of which I am speaking, the men carried to the camp of instruction were allowed to go into any part of the army they chose, and that being the case, there were recruiting officers there from all parts and branches of the service. Those who did not go with the recruiting officer were sent to whatever part of the service they were thought to be needed the most, under guard, and for that reason most of the men would join a recruiting officer rather than be sent off under guard.” The average stay at each camp was only a couple of weeks before the men were sent to a frontline unit or discharged for medical reasons. Lieutenant-Colonel J.S. Shields, who commanded two camps near Richmond, reported a typical strength on November 1, 1862: CAMP OF INSTRUCTION, Richmond Depot, November 1, 1862 Conscripts on hand at date of last report (October 20)........40 Conscripts received since date of last report........ 76 Conscripts assigned since last report........11 Conscripts detailed since last report........2 Conscripts discharged by order Secretary of War……1 Conscripts absent with leave........16 Conscripts absent without leave........1 Dunkards [members of a pacifist Christian sect] discharged by paying $500 to Confederate States........8 Dunkards furloughed until second Monday in December........26 Conscripts furnished substitutes........1 Balance........44 CAMP OF INSTRUCTION, Dublin Depot, November 1, 1862

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Conscripts on hand at date of last report (October 1)........31 Conscripts received since date of last report........76 Conscripts assigned since date of last report........24 Conscripts detailed since date of last report........4 Conscripts discharged since date of last report........57 Conscripts furloughed since date of last report........5 Conscripts deserted since date of last report........4 Balance........13 RECAPITULATION. NOVEMBER 1, 1862 Conscripts remaining in camp in Richmond........44 Conscripts remaining in camp of instruction at Dublin Depot........13 Total........57.

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A Confederate artilleryman of 1862. The cannoneer’s branch of service would have been distinguished by the red stripes on his uniform trousers. The field gun represented here is the Model 1857 12-pounder Napoleon, the most widely used and successful smoothbore artillery piece of the war.

Nature of the War

The Civil War marked a turning point in the way battles were fought. Deadly new firearms —when they could be obtained—forced the development of new combat tactics among infantry and artillery, while the traditional cavalry charge was consigned to history. In 1775 Americans went to war with smoothbore flintlock muskets and 6pounder smoothbore cannon. They fought with linear tactics—that is, infantry regiments stood in line and fired in volleys like a gigantic shotgun until their enemies’ regiments faltered, and then charged with a fixed bayonet, or were driven from the field themselves. Artillery lined up between the regiments on the frontline to support the infantry. Cavalry guarded the flanks and then charged a fleeing foe. Essentially these tactics lasted through to the Mexican War of 1846, though there were minor changes. The artillery in that war featured one battery of horse artillery per regiment, providing maneuverable frontline fire support. There were other advances as well. In 1842, only four years before the Mexican War, the U.S. Army adopted a smoothbore musket that used a copper percussion cap instead of a flintlock. This made the weapon usable in rain, something that dampened the powder in the flintlock pan of muskets and made them unusable. British weapons expert George Hanger wrote of British smoothbore flintlock muskets in the 18th century, “A soldier’s musket, if it was not exceedingly ill-bored (as many of them are), will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards [73 m]; it may even at 100 [91 m]; but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards [137 m], provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards [182 m] with a common musket, you may just as well fire at the moon and have the same hopes of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove, whenever called on, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards by a common soldier’s musket, by the person who aimed at him.” The weapon Hanger described was essentially the smoothbore musket used by the U.S. Army in the Mexican War, be it percussion cap or flintlock. To make up for this lack of accuracy, the U.S. Army adopted ammunition that included one bore-sized ball (0.69 caliber) and three buckshot. This made a deadly combination at relatively short range. At the same time, the Army had from its inception included units that used rifled longarms, weapons capable of great accuracy at much longer ranges. During the Mexican War one such unit was a regiment of Mississippi volunteers, led by Colonel Jefferson Davis, which used the “Mississippi rifle.” The problem with the rifle was that it used the same sort of round lead ball the smoothbore did, and to enable rifling to be effective it had to be rammed down with a cloth patch that contained the ball, holding it to the lands and grooves of the bore. This made for a more elaborate loading practice, so the weapons were slower to load, something that in the days of bayonet charges done at close ranges was unacceptable. For reasons of practicality, then, these weapons

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Infantry organization from Regiment to the Army level. The total numbers presented are of course a mean average: the actual number of men available on-strength would have varied widely as battlefield losses, sickness, straggling, and desertion all took their toll. It is for this reason that the number of men per company is not given precisely. Official U.S. Army regulations stated that a company should comprise 3 officers, 13 NCOs, and 97 men, though this was rarely achieved in practice. The main difference between the armies of the North and South at the regimental level was that Southern regiments were kept alive with new recruits, while in the North volunteer regiments were allowed to dwindle away. They were then disbanded and new ones created.

were in the minority and, indeed, some Army officers even objected to the percussion cap because the men

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could lose them and their weapons would then be unusable. The Minié Ball Even so, the percussion cap became standard and, at the same time, so did a conical lead ball, known as the Minié ball after its French inventor, that contained a hollow skirt in the base. As the weapon fired and gases expanded from the explosion inside the weapon, the skirt was blown out to grab the lands and grooves of a rifled barrel. The projectile could be fired with great accuracy, while being no more complicated to load than the old musket. The French were the first to adopt a rifled musket that used this new ammunition, while the British quickly followed. It proved to change the face of war. In the Crimean War of 1854–56, the British Light Division, armed with 0.70-caliber rifles using the Minié ball sighted to 900 yards (822 m), fired into enemy troops posted along the Alma River, doing great damage at 400 yards (365 m), while the Russians, armed with smoothbores, inflicted few if any casualties in return. In 1853 the British Army adopted a 0.577-caliber rifled musket that fired a lead conical ball with a boxwood or clay plug in its rear that would be shoved forward by expanding gases on firing to engage the ball in the lands and grooves. The U.S. Army found this plug unnecessary when it adopted its own rifled musket, a 0.58-caliber model, in 1855. While this was the standard Army infantry weapon at the beginning of the Civil War, there were relatively few of them available, both North and South. The standard weapon actually on hand for most volunteer units was the tried-and-true M1842 percussion cap, 0.69caliber smoothbore musket. However, both sides knew that the range offered by the Minié rifle musket made it the most desirable weapon available and sought to arm their troops with them. The Confederate Army launched a major program to obtain rifled muskets. Agents went to Europe and acquired thousands of the latest models, especially the British Army’s 1853 Pattern and the Austrian Lorenz, an excellent weapon with a slightly smaller bore than either the 1853 Pattern or the U.S. M1855. They set up manufacturing facilities at Southern armories to produce their own longarms. These factories were always short of vital supplies, yet they managed to help arm a good number of Confederate soldiers. Finally, they found that the enemy provided them with vast amounts of munitions, abandoned on lost battlefields. Lieutenant-Colonel A.J.L.Fremantle, Coldstream Guards, who visited the Confederate Army in 1863, noted that on his way to visit Lee’s army, some time after the Battle of Chancellorsville, “Near this place I observed an enormous pile of excellent rifles rotting in the open air. These had been captured at Chancellorsville; but the Confederates have already such superabundant stock of rifles that apparently they can afford to let them spoil.” In fact, at Chancellorsville alone, ordnance officials reported collecting 19,500 infantry longarms left by the enemy, along with 13 cannon, 8,000 cartridge boxes, and 300,000 rounds of rifle musket ammunition. By these In Combat: An Eyewitness Account South Carolinian Barry Benson, a veteran infantryman, described how actual fighting by experienced units was conducted; “For a battlefield is not a drillroom, nor is battle an occasion for drill, and there is the merest semblance of order maintained. I say semblance of order, for there is an under-current of order in tried troops that surpasses that of the drillroom;—it is that order that springs from the confidence comrades have in each other, from the knowledge that these massmates of yours, whether they stand or lie upon the ground, close together or scattered apart, in front of you three paces, or in the rear of you six, in the open or behind a tree or a rock —that these, though they do not ‘touch elbows to the right,’ are nevertheless keeping dressed upon the colors in some rough fashion, and that the line will not move forward and leave them there, nor will they move back and leave the line,

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“A battle is entered into, mostly, in as good order and with as close a drill front as the nature of the ground will permit, but at the first ‘pop! pop!’ of rifles there comes a sudden loosening of the ranks, a freeing of selves from the impediment of contact, and every man goes to fighting on his own hook; firing as, and when he likes, and reloading as fast as he fires. He takes shelter wherever he can find it, so that he does not get too far from his Co,, and his officers will call his attention to this should he move too far. He may stand up, he may kneel down, he may He down, it is all right;—tho’ mostly the men keep standing, except when silent under fire— and then they lie down, “And it is not the officers alone who give orders, the command to charge may come from a private in the line whose quick eye sees the opportunity, and whose order brooks then no delay, Springing forward, he shouts ‘charge, boys, charge!’ The line catches his enthusiasm, answers with yells and follows him in the charge, Generally it is a wild and spontaneous cry from many throats along the line, readily evoked by the least sigh of wavering in the enemy, “A battle is too busy a time, and too absorbing, to admit of a great deal of talk, still you will hear such remarks and questions as ‘How many cartridges have you got?’—‘My gun’s getting might dirty.’—‘What’s become of Jones?’ ‘Looky here, Butler, mind how you shoot; that ball didn’t miss my head two inches,’ ‘Just keep cool, will you; I’ve got better sense than to shoot anybody,’ ‘Well, I don’t like your standing so close behind me nohow.’—‘I say, look at Lieut. Dyson behind that tree.’—‘Purty rough fight; ain’t it Cap’n?’— ‘Cap’n, don’t you think we better move up a little, Just along that knoll?’—all this mixed and mingled with fearful yells, and maybe curses too, at the enemy. “And a charge looks just as disorderly. With a burst of yells, a long, wavering, loose Jointed line sweeps rapidly forward, only now and then one or two stopping to fire, while here and there drop the killed and the wounded; the slightly wounded, some of them, giving no heed but rushing on, while others run hurriedly, half-bent, to the rear, The colors drop, are seized again,—again drop, and are again lifted, no man in reach daring to pass them by on the ground,—colors, not bright and whole and clean as when they came fresh from the white embroidering fingers, but since clutched in the storm of battle with grimy, bloody hands, and torn into shreds by shot and shell.”

means, by mid-1863, most of the Army of Northern Virginia was armed with weapons capable of firing accurately over much longer distances than were usual in prewar battlefields. Tests showed that the M1855 rifled musket could put 10 consecutive shots into a 4-inch (10-cm) bullseye at 100 yards (91 m) and a 100inch (250-cm) bullseye at 333 yards (304 m). Moreover, these weapons were deadly; in prewar tests it was found that a 0.58-caliber ball would penetrate almost six inches (15 cm) of soft pine at 500 yards (457 m). As it turned out, neither officers nor soldiers were generally capable of getting the most out of such weapons. Very few troops received any training on sighting weapons for longrange shooting or target shooting of any kind, although a Confederate manual that did address this problem appeared in 1863. While most of those who became general officers had some sort of military experience, be it an old West Point or Virginia Military Institute education, Mexican War service, or years in the volunteers, it dated from before the Civil War. Few had actually commanded men in battle so most depended on manuals like Gilham’s Tactics to know what was to be done. Confederate infantry trained to fight with strict linear tactics left over from the Napoleonic Wars, each regiment arriving on the field in a column of four men wide that would then move by company into line, two men deep. The company commander stood on the extreme right of the company, next to the first sergeant. The second sergeant was on the extreme left of the company, and company lieutenants and other sergeants stood behind the company to direct its fire and make sure all were participating well. The regiment’s colonel stood in the rear center of the regiment, the major and adjutant behind the right companies, and the lieutenant-colonel and sergeant-major behind the left companies. The color company stood in the center of the line; it was to advance six paces ahead of the line on the command, “Regiment, forward,” and then step

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out with the entire regiment on the following command, “March!” Guides on the left and right were ahead of the regiment, aligned on the color guard. Field Drills From this line, the colonel could stack his companies on any given company in the line to form a new column for assault or march, split his companies to advance around obstacles in the line of march, or split companies to “refuse” his right or left flanks. The orders and movements were all strictly spelled out in Hardee’s Tactics, the most popular of the drill manuals, as well as the obsolete Scott’s Tactics, Gilham’s Tactics, and others available. Generally speaking, colonels did not bother to teach all the variations of tactical moves described in these manuals, since they were so rarely used. As a Prussian Army officer, Captain Justus Scheibert, who visited the Confederate Army in 1863, later wrote, “There was diligent drilling in the camps according to an old French drill manual that had been revised by Hardee, and I observed on the drill field only linear formations, wheeling out into open columns, wheeling in and marching up into a line, marching in line, open column marching, marching by sections, and marching in file (no hollow squares [which would have been used against cavalry charges, though cavalry rarely made Napoleonic-type charges in the civil war]). The march proceeded at a slow stride from eighty to ninety paces a minute, or in the ‘double quick,’ a slow trot.” In other words, a minimum of what was available to be taught in a manual was actually practiced by units in the field. Scheibert also noted that, “The tactical unit in battle seemed to be the brigade. The drilling, according to my observation, seemed to be somewhat awkward.” Each infantry company so drawn up had a front of some 16.5 yards (15 m), so a regiment of 10 companies would have a front of 172 yards (157 m) to cover, when the color guard and left and right guides are included on the front. In action, usually the front would be slightly reduced because each regiment typically threw out two companies to their front as skirmishers; in this case, the front would be 132 yards (120 m) across. Moreover, each regiment generally held a company or two in reserve, some 300 yards (274 m) behind the main body, which would further reduce the regimental front to around 100 yards (91 m). Each regiment was to be placed 20 yards (18 m) from its neighboring regiments, so that a brigade of five regiments—the usual deployment—would cover a front of 960–600 yards (877–548 m) if all regiments were in line, which was not always the case. Brigades were to be 25 yards (22 m) apart, so a typical division would have a front of a little less than a mile, around 1,715 yards (1,568 m). A Union corps of three divisions would have a front of some three miles to cover, 5,254 yards (4,804 m), while a corps in the Army of Northern Virginia, which was approximately half a size larger than the typical enemy corps, had a bigger front. The idea was that lines of drawn-up infantry, supported with artillery at various points and cavalry on the flanks, would open fire on each other to begin the fight. When the enemy’s ranks were demoralized and weakened by the effect of largely volley firing, one side, with fixed bayonets, would charge and drive the other from the field. This is the way Washington fought the Revolution and Napoleon fought his wars. This is how the battles in Mexico were largely decided. This was not, however, to be the way Civil War battles were actually fought. A Virginian who fought for the Union noted in September 1862, “I have observed in this war that the fire of infantry is our main dependence in battle. There has been no bayonet charge from either side that amounted to anything. The opposing forces have never crossed bayonets to my knowledge. The only artillery taken has been such guns and batteries as were abandoned for want of horses to carry them off or deserted prematurely by their supports. The collisions of cavalry with the sabre have been rare and partial. The fire of infantry then has been the main reliance, and its fire has been terribly destructive. At

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A typical regiment in line of battle in open terrain. Six companies are deployed with two more held in reserve about 300 yards (270 m) in the rear. The skirmish line in open order consists of two companies, pushing ahead up to 500 yards (457 m) in order to discover and harass the enemy. They would be recalled if the enemy closed.

To bring the maximum effort against a part of the enemy line, attacks were made in column. In this case a regiment in column of companies with a frontage of some 65 yards (60 m). This was designed to have a shock effect with the mass of men covering up to 110 yards (100 m) in a minute at the double-quick.

short range A typical regiment in line of battle in open terrain. Six companies are deployed with two more held in reserve about 300 yards (270 m) in the rear. The skirmish line in open order consists of two companies, pushing ahead up to 500 yards (457 m) in order to discover and harass the enemy. They would be recalled if the enemy closed. (say two hundred yards) no troops can stand it more than a few minutes. At the attack on our right at Antietam [on September 17], the Rebel division stood under it on even ground. It seemed as if whole regiments were mowed down where they stood. This division with the loss of half of its number of infantry broke and fled in confusion.” Regiments Into Battle While regiments were still in column they made fine artillery targets, and rifled cannon had an effective range of some 2,000 yards (1,828 m), while the maximum potential range of the M1855 rifled musket was

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Brigade attacks could be made in “waves” of regiments, as here, or if the assault was to be made by an entire division, as was Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, PA, then the formation would be made up of lines of brigades. If space and terrain allowed, then the distance between successsive units would be about 300 yards (274 m) allowing enemy fire (in theory) to fall between them and allowing some room for units to maneuver. Casualties from this type of attack could be expected at 1,400 yards (1,280 m) from the enemy if artillery was ranged against it, and from about 500 yards (457 m) when the enemy infantry opened up.

900 yards (822 m). Regiments therefore went into line some distance away before advancing on the enemy front, unless well protected by geography or woods. Skirmishers were sent ahead of the regiment once they had formed into line, unless the unit was ordered to attack directly. Scheibert wrote that at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863 he saw, “At Wilderness Tavern, near Wilderness Run, the line of battle was formed similar to that of Frederick the Great. Two combat ranks, in long lines that maintained alignment by brigades as well as possible in battle, had sharpshooters about 250 paces before the front.” Attacks were generally to be made by waves of infantry, each wave some 250–300 yards (228–274 m) behind the one ahead of it. This was to allow a space for enemy rounds to fall between the waves without hurting anyone. In fact, the infantry tended to bunch up in the attack, each unit wanting to reach its destination as quickly as possible. Attacks also could be made in a column of companies by a regiment or a column of regiments by a brigade. This had the effect of putting a large number of men in a very small area, a number capable of breaking through virtually any enemy line. However, this also subjected the men at the head of the column to a destructive fire from front and the flanks, while only allowing return fire from the head of the column and skirmishers along the flanks. Therefore, such an attack could only be made successfully over relatively short distances, with the attacking column preferably being hidden by woods or Skirmish Drill According to U.S. Army lieutenant William Hardee’s Instruction for Skirmishers, “The intervals between skirmishers depends on the extent of ground to be covered; but, in general, it is not proper that the groups of four men should be removed more than forty paces from each other. The habitual distance between men of the same group in open grounds will be five paces; in no case will they lose sight of each other.” Moreover, Hardee wrote, “Skirmishers should take advantage promptly, and with intelligence, of all shelter, and of all accidents of the ground, to conceal themselves from the view of the enemy, and to protect themselves from his fire. It may often happen, that intervals are momentarily lost when several

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men near each other find a common shelter; but when they quit this position they should immediately resume their intervals and their places in line, so that they may not by crowding, needlessly expose themselves to the fire of the enemy,” Skirmishers generally moved out so that they were some 400–500 yards (365–457 m) in front of the main body.

terrain until close to their objectives. In late March 1865 Brigadier-General John B.Gordon led his troops in such an attack on the Union positions at Fort Stedman from the nearby Confederate lines at Petersburg. The attacking force was launched under cover of darkness, led by axmen whose job it was to clear away obstruction in the column’s front. “Had these faithful Union sentinels been permitted to fire alarm guns, my dense columns, while rushing upon the fort, would have been torn to fragments by the heavy guns,” Gordon admitted. In fact, the advance party silenced the Union pickets, and the column was successful in taking the fort, although Union reinforcements after daybreak caused the attack to eventually fail. John Worsham described how this worked in a fight in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1864: “Our line of battle was formed by regiments as fast as they could enter the cornfield, and each regiment was ordered forward. The skirmishers were near the end of the road before they were observed by the enemy, and they poured a withering fire into them. The enemy attempted to reply; but when some of our regiments came into view, they broke and ran in every direction!” In this case, it took only skirmish company fire and the sight of infantry in line advancing to break enemy resistance. Firing High While infantry could start firing with effect as far away as 500 yards (457 m) from an attacking enemy, such an event rarely happened. Firing at this distance was largely wasted, with the fire tending to be very wild, often high, tearing up trees’ limbs rather than enemy soldiers. South Carolina infantryman Barry Benson noted that in a wooded area near where the Battle of Fredericksburg was fought the trees were “spotted and scarred with the marks of bullets, most of them just overhead, which shows that the average aim is too high. In one tree we found a ramrod which had been shot into it and wonderfully bent and twisted it was.” Not all this faulty aiming was due to a lack of training; black powder when fired makes clouds of dense white smoke that, especially when it is quite humid, hangs low in the air and makes everything any distance away invisible. Officers, therefore, tended to restrain their men from firing until the two sides were at a more traditional 100–200 yards (91–182 m) distance. Indeed, some modern estimates suggest that men actually fought as close as 33 yards (30 m) apart in “decisive” musketry fights. Towards the end of the war, these ranges grew as men declined to spend any time within such short ranges of a determined enemy. Such fights were relatively short, however, as rapid, heavy casualties made either one side or the other generally give way not long after the fight started, the exceptions occurring during fighting on either side of defended entrenchments or in heavy woods as in the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. In theory, the most effective way of firing was by volley, either by alternating company volleys or an entire regimental front firing at once. Colonel Francis Lippitt, 2nd California Volunteers, who lacked experience in large battles such as were fought by the Army of Northern Virginia, mused as late as 1865, in a tactical manual largely based on the history of Napoleonic battles, that “Fire in action is of two kinds: the fire at will, and the fire by volleys; the former kind being the rule, the latter the exception. Although the fire at will is the one principally used, there are very strong objections to it.” Those who fought wars in books may have been strongly in favor of firing by volley, but soldiers who actually engaged in combat did not. In fact, when a regiment drew in line within a reasonable range of the enemy, the command was generally given to

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To reduce the number of casualties suffered in frontal infantry attacks, assault tactics began to change. Greater emphasis was placed on skirmishers and more sophisticated maneuvers were developed. One of these was the “Indian Rush” in which two lines advanced side by side, one providing cover while the other moved forward. This divided enemy fire and allowed at least half the assault force to return fire at any one time. Thus, line A runs forward to position A1 and provides covering fire as line B runs forward to position B1. Line A then advances to position A2 as line B provides covering fire from position B1. Line A provides covering fire from A2 as line B advances to B2.

fire by files, with each file of two men firing one after the other, from the right of the line to the left. Once each man had fired he was free to reload and fire at his own pace. This is not to say that volleys were never fired. Lieutenant-Colonel Jason Perrin, 1st South Carolina Rifles, reported that at the Battle of Antietam, “So soon as we ascended to the crest of the hill in our front, we discovered a regiment of the enemy who had succeeded in turning Col. Hamilton’s right, and were delivering a destructive fire on his flank. Our advance was such as to completely turn the left flank of this regiment. We delivered a destructive volley into it before our presence seemed to be realized. The first volley was followed by a sharp fire from our side, which the enemy at first, attempted to return; but so great was the confusion caused by our fire, this large, well equipped regiment failed to rally, broke and fled from the field in the utmost confusion, leaving their guns, knapsacks, and dead and wounded in large numbers on the field. We succeeded in capturing 11 prisoners, among them Capt. Bowen, of Rhode Island, who had been slightly wounded in the action.” In this case, as with most cases where full volleys were fired, the opening salvo from the infantry was a volley, followed by firing by files and then at will.

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Infantry Volleys A single volley by an entire line was often used to precede a charge. Colonel M.D. Corse reported at the Second Battle of Manassas, “The steady veteran Terry, with the gallant Twenty-fourth, delivered a destructive volley into the enemy’s ranks on our left and packed forward to the charge.” Some soldiers disliked this practice, however, feeling that the smoke produced by a volley hid a charging unit, terrifying with its bayonets fixed and flags flying, robbing the attackers of the psychological advantage. On the other hand, the smoke also tended to hide the attackers and make them harder to aim at. So in practical terms, firing a volley before a charge made real sense. Later on in the war, men learned to dig in the moment they came to a halt. One Union officer noted that, “This war has demonstrated that earth-works can be rendered nearly impregnable against direct assault.” He recalled that a halt would “cause a hasty barricade to be constructed. The front rank take all the guns and remain on the line, while the rear rank goes off in double-quick to collect rails, logs, rocks, any thing that can assist in turning a hostile bullet. These they place on the front of the front rank, and in five minutes there is a hasty barricade, bullet-proof and breast-high, along your whole line; not a mere straight work, but one varied with its salients and re-entering angles, taking every advantage of the ground, and cross-firing on every hollow.” This was done entirely without orders or even issued tools such as shovels and pickaxes. Men would dig in with bayonets, tin cups and plates, halves of tin Union Army issue canteens, and pocket knives. The cavalry’s war was also different from the one the text books called for. “Cavalry is seldom called on to use fire-arms,” wrote Gilham in his chapter on how to fight battles. It was his contention, and the contention of every manual writer before him, that cavalry would be held in reserve until an enemy was broken. It would then be sent to charge them down with swinging sabers. Sabers would also be the main weapon relied upon in fights with other cavalry units. Such could not have been further from the truth. In fact, the nature of war had so changed that the mounted arm became not true cavalry in the European sense, but more like dragoons, men mounted to arrive at the fight who then dismounted and went into action on foot with carbines and pistols. The age of the saber-wielding assault on infantry was gone. Fremantle of the Coldstream Guards, who visited the Confederate Army in 1863, noted the Army of Northern Virginia cavalry with a professional’s eye: “I remarked it would be a good thing for them if on this occasion they had cavalry to follow up the broken infantry in the event of their succeeding in beating them. But to my surprise they all spoke of their cavalry as not efficient for that purpose. In fact, [J.E.B.] Stuart’s men, though excellent at making raids, capturing wagons and stores, and cutting off communications, seem to have no idea of charging infantry under any circumstances. Unlike the cavalry with Bragg’s army [in Tennessee], they wear swords, but seem to have little idea of using them—they hanker after their carbines and revolvers. They constantly ride with their swords between their left leg and saddle, which has a very funny appearance; but their horses are generally good, and they ride well. The infantry and artillery of this army don’t seem to respect the cavalry very much, and often jeer at them.” An Austrian cavalry officer, Captain FitzGerald Ross, saw Lee’s Army in 1863 and agreed: “The cavalry here is very differently organized from the same branch of the service in Europe. They are, in fact, mounted infantry. Every man’s horse is his own property, and that may be one reason why they prefer fighting on foot, as if a man loses his horse, and cannot get another, he has forthwith to join the infantry. Besides, there has been no time to put them through a regular cavalry drill, and teach the efficient use of the saber—the true arm of real cavalry—whilst with the use of the rifle they have been familiar from their earliest youth.”

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Cavalry in Combat Nor did the cavalry fight Union cavalry with sabers very much, although such fighting was seen at Brandy Station in 1863. As Fremantle went on to say: “Cavalry fights are miserable affairs. Neither party has any idea of serious charging with the saber. They approach one another with considerable boldness, until they get to within about forty yards, and then, at the very moment when a dash is necessary, and the sword alone should be used, they hesitate, halt, and commence a desultory fire with carbines and revolvers.” Most carbines had accurate ranges of under 100 yards (91 m), while pistols had even closer ranges. This meant that cavalry fought cavalry at much closer distances than infantry fought infantry. It also meant that cavalry was at a real disadvantage in fighting infantry with their longer range rifled muskets. In consequence cavalry was only used against infantry sparingly, as skirmisher. Cavalry found its greatest potential in the raid. Both sides raided into enemy territory, but J.E.B.Stuart’s Army of Northern Virginia cavalry, starting with its ride clearly around the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, led its commander to concentrate on raids above almost everything else. It can be argued, however, that his love of a raid, bringing back booty to the main army, helped cost the Confederacy the Battle of Gettysburg, since Lee’s main force had few cavalryman with which to reconnoiter Union positions and instead allowed the Army of Northern Virginia to lurch into an unwanted battle on ground not of its choosing. Raids were used to gather intelligence about an enemy force, such as the Peninsula Campaign raid, or destroy enemy equipment and morale, such as raids into Pennsylvania later in the war. Objectives were often railroads, telegraph lines (Stuart’s cavalrymen included trained telegraph operators who could tap into Union telegraph lines both to gain intelligence and send misleading messages), supply bases, wagon trains (which slowed Stuart’s raid during the Gettysburg campaign), garrisons, and towns and cities. They could either serve as an end in themselves or as a diversion that distracted the enemy, while the main army was somewhere else. In either case, the aim of the raid’s commander was to avoid pitched battle and come home with as few casualties as possible, while still securing the raid’s objective. Moreover, to be a success, the results of the raid had to be something beyond simple loot or destruction; it had to contribute to the overall plan of the army. Putting together a raiding party required some thought. The plans had to be detailed, spelling out exactly what was to be accomplished, yet flexible enough to allow for changing developments and targets of opportunity. Maps of the area to be raided had to be accurate, and scouts who actually knew the ground had to accompany the raiding party. The party itself had to be small enough to be able to move quickly but large enough to accomplish what it had to do and be prepared to defend itself if cornered. The commander of the raid had to be clever, cool-headed, and able to meet sudden changes in the situation with flexibility. He had to be able to exercise strict authority over his command, yet at the same time be willing to allow subordinates to exercise independent thought when necessary. Indeed, he needed subordinate officers who were capable of independent thinking, just as he needed enlisted men who were able to spend long hours in the saddle, rough it in all kinds of weather, fight when called on, and use an ax on telegraph poles or railroad ties. All of this would have to be done with the least possible equipment carried, so as not to slow down the raid. And the entire project would have to be put together and launched with the greatest secrecy, something not common in the days of uncensored newspapers and little concept of official secrets. Once underway, the raid was led by scouts, followed by a small group making up an advance guard, about a half mile (800 m) ahead of the main column. Patrols were sent along the flanks, about a mile or less from the main column. Stuart’s cavalry included horse artillery (one battery accompanied the ride around the Army of the Potomac in June 1862) and this, with any wagons, would move in the center of the column. Finally a rear guard followed, rounding up stragglers and doing such things as burning bridges behind them as necessary. The column moved at varying rates of march. Mostly the units moved off at the trot, but from

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The primary unit of the cavalry was the troop or company of some 90–100 officers and men, which would also include wagoners, teamsters, farriers, and saddlers, to keep the unit operational. Troops were organized into regiments, then brigades, and finally divisions. Divisions were assigned to army corps. In Confederate service there were up to six brigades to a division and some two or three divisions to a corps.

time to time they would switch to a canter or even a gallop for short periods to vary the march. The rate of march would be at least a minimum of three miles (5 km) an hour, with a ten-minute break every hour or so, or more in bad weather. At noon, the column would halt for dinner, and again for another meal in the evening. This preceded a typical halt and camp at night, usually after about 20 hours in the saddle, when it became hard to keep a column together.

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A Civil War field howitzer stands today as a memorial on the Confederate gun line at the site of the Battle of First Manassas.

The Artillery War War had also changed for artillery. The Confederate Army began the war armed with mostly iron 6pounders, the main weapon of the Mexican War. The 6pounder was not the artilleryman’s ideal weapon by 1861. Its longest range at five degrees was 1,523 yards (1,392 m) with solid shot and 1,200 yards (1,097 m) with spherical case. Artillerymen wanted a gun that fired a heavier shot a further distance. The 12-pounder howitzer had the projectile weight everyone wanted, but not the range, since it was basically designed for close-in fighting. Moreover, it was relatively heavy, as it was not planned as a mobile piece but was designed to be used for the most part in and around fixed fortifications. Looking for a better cannon, the U.S. Army decided to replicate the French 12-pounder bronze field gun, which they called the “Napoleon,” after France’s Emperor Napoleon III. This had a slightly better range, with solid shot propelled 1,680 yards

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Field artillery of both sides in the war was based upon the section, battery, and battalion. In theory a battery would consist of both guns (in the South usually 6-pounders) and howitzers. However, the types of artillery pieces in Southern armies varied so widely that a battery usually consisted of whatever guns were available, the number of horses alive to pull them, and the amount of ordnance on hand to fire.

(1,536 m) and shell, 13,000 yards (11,887 m) at five degrees. But the projectile was much heavier and in a

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Making gun carriages at the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, VA. It is indicative of the Southern war effort that a contemporary image of one of the Confederacy’s leading arms manufacturing centers shows craftsmen making artillery carriages by hand. The lack of industrialization would be one of the reasons for the South’s failure to win independence.

counter-battery fight, the 6-pounder would always be outgunned by the Napoleon. The Napoleon was adopted in 1857 and as a result not many had been produced or were available to the South. The Confederates found themselves with mostly 6-pounders in the arsenals and local forts they seized, and it was these guns that made up their main field artillery power at first. The number of guns available from the pre-war military forces, both from the Regular U.S. Army whose posts had fallen into Southern hands at the war’s outbreak, and from some artillery volunteer militia batteries, was so small that the Confederacy would have to depend on Southern gunfounders, of which there were only a handful, to provide the artillery pieces they’d need. Only a handful of cannon came from Europe, a battery from Austria, and a variety of cannon from England. However, the Southern foundries that could make guns the army needed had been making 6-pounders before the war and had the technology and expertise to continue so doing, something important in getting a cannon to the troops quickly. With the expense of acquiring artillery overseas and the uncertainty of acquiring extra cannon on the battlefield, Southern foundries, especially during the war’s first years, continued producing 6-pounders. To make matters worse for Confederates in the field, in 1861 the U.S. Army began using brand new rifled cannon, 3-inch Ordnance Rifles and 10-pounder Parrott Rifles. These weapons threw almost as large a round as the Napoleon, but at twice its range. They greatly extended the battlefield and made the 6-pounder even more outgunned in action. Confederates quickly realized that their 6pounders were unable to match enemy artillery in battle. By the second year of war, such weapons were totally obsolete. In December 1862 the Army of Northern Virginia’s commander Robert E. Lee recommended that all his army’s 6-pounders be melted down and made into 12-pounders. Even earlier, in July 1862, the Confederate

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A stylized depiction of the siege of Vicksburg, MS, 1863. Entrenched artillery batteries and soldiers behind earthworks could pour a murderous fire onto an attacker.

Ordnance department ordered the main Southern gun foundry, the Tredegar Works in Richmond, to cease production of 6-pounders and start making 12-pounder Napoleons exclusively. Southern battlefield victories also brought a supply of U.S. Army cannon into the Army of Northern Virginia artillery park, while Southern founders, notably the Tredegar Works, began turning out copies of not just the Napoleon, but also the Parrott Rifle, and the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle. By mid1863 the 6-pounder was effectively out of service in the Army of Northern Virginia. Even so, all Southern-made artillery equipment was inferior to that made in the North, not just the cannon, but the ammunition, fuses, and primers as well. Confederate infantry, distrusting Southern-made fuses that often blew up prematurely, refused to let gunners fire over their heads in supporting fire. Each weapon had its use. Parrotts and Ordnance Rifles could begin firing on enemy forces effectively at longer ranges than the Napoleon. However, there were no long range or indirect fire-control methods at this time, so all firing had to be done with the gunner actually sighting down the tube as if he were firing a big rifle. This limited the use of longer range cannon. For the most part, therefore, the three cannon types were used indiscriminately. On the other hand, the Napoleon was more effective than the rifled cannon in close-in combat, as in the woods where much of the Army of Northern Virginia’s fighting took place. As Austrian FitzGerald Ross reported in July 1863, “Opinions are divided as to the merits of the Napoleo’s, Parrotts, and 3-inch rifled guns; but for general use, almost all consider the Napoleon most serviceable.” Going into battle, the battery would march onto the field in column, then go into line to support infantry. The best position would be where they could sweep an enemy target from the flanks. Confederate artillery commander E.Porter Alexander recalled at Petersburg finding “a beautiful place for a whole battery to give the same sort of flanking fire which had been so effective at Cold Harbor— a random fire, which did not directly see the enemy (& consequently he could not reply to it) but every shot from which would come bouncing & skipping along, exactly paralleled to the front of his brigades, killing bunches when they hit & demoralizing the troops by their very direction even when they went clear.” Once a field commander found a place for his guns, he would order the batteries up. Confederate gunner Robert Stiles remembered going into action during the Peninsula Campaign: “Once across we were ordered, ‘Forward into battery, left oblique, march!’ which elaborate movement was executed by the men A stylized depiction of the siege of Vicksburg, MS, 1863. Entrenched artillery batteries and soldiers behind earthworks could pour a murderous fire onto an attacker. as if on drill. I could not refrain from glancing around, and was amazed to see every piece, limber, caisson, and man in the exact mathematical

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position in which each belonged, and every man seemed to have struck the very attitude required by the drill-book. And there we all stood, raked by a terrible fire, to which we could not reply, being really a second line, the first—consisting of infantry alone …passed into the dense, forbidding forest in front, feeling for the enemy.” Artillery largely fought at fairly short ranges. It might be used against enemy batteries at 2,000 yards (1, 828 m) and infantry at 500 yards (457 m), at which range they could get about 15 rounds off before being overrun. Moreover, much of the land fought over was covered in woods and brush where ranges were naturally reduced. Field Batteries in Action Once a battery was in position, the order would go out to disperse in battery front, to engage the enemy. The battery of four guns, the main battery unit eventually adopted in the Army of Northern Virginia, would then form a front 50 yards (45 m) across. Then the limbers and caissons and their teams of horses took their places in the rear. There was to be a six-yard (5.5-m) gap between the butt of the handspike on the trail of the gun to the nose of the lead horse, but being this close would surely mean the loss of vital horses to enemy fire. “After Gettysburg it was our habit,” wrote Stiles, “when a piece became engaged to send the horses to the rear, to some place of safety, preferring to run the risk of losing a gun occasionally rather than the team that pulled it.” Indeed, horses were so valuable that in the 1864 campaign Stiles reported that when artillery officers met, the first thing they asked each other was, “How many horses did you lose?” According to Gilham’s Tactics, “The distance between the batteries should not be much over 600 paces, so that by their fire they may cover well the ground intervening between them and afford mutual support…” Moreover, “The collection of a large number of pieces in a single battery is a dangerous arrangement, particularly at the outset of an engagement.” In fact, enemy artillery proved, at places such as Malvern Hill in 1862 when Union cannon blew up Confederate infantry, that massing a large number of guns in a single location was the best way of using them. As Porter Alexander noted, “A battery was attached, or supposed to be, to every brigade of infantry. Besides these, a few batteries were held in reserve under old [Major] Gen. [William] Pendleton [chief of artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia]. Naturally our guns & ammunition were far inferior to the enemy’s, & this scattering of the commands made it impossible to mass our guns in effective numbers. For artillery fire loses effect if scattered. “Later we organized our artillery into battalions, of 4 to 6 batteries each, & we put about 5 battalions into each corps of 3 divisions. One battalion would usually march with each division of infantry, to be near it in case of need, & the other two battns. were in reserve, under a chief of arty. for the corps, who had command of it all.” According to most manuals, the battery was to open up on enemy infantry rather than engage in counter-battery fire with his artillery. As the Hand-book of Artillery by Joseph Roberts said, “When the enemy is in line, the fire should be directed over the whole line, and not upon the real points of attack; but when in column, ready to advance, it should be concentrated upon the real points of attack.” Colonel Lippitt of the 2nd California agreed, noting that, “guns in the field should generally play on troops instead of batteries.” In fact, this rarely happened; the battery’s first target was usually an enemy battery.

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How all Confederate soldiers would have ideally gone to war. Private Thomas Taylor of the 8th Louisiana in full kit, decent boots, and a M1842 rifled musket. The bayonet of over 18 in (45 cm) was still seen as a battle-winning weapon in 1861, though in combat men would rarely fight at close enough quarters to use them. Instead bayonets would be used as meat spits, candle holders, and even entrenching tools.

Logistics

For the Army of Northern Virginia, arms, food, and equipment became increasingly scarce. Troops made do with what they could salvage on the battlefield or what the Quartermaster General could produce, and necessity fostered invention in all areas of logistics. The new Confederacy consisted largely of agrarian states with a limited infrastructure, and would have to work twice as hard as the states remaining in the Union if it was to supply its men in the field with vital munitions, food, and clothing. The most immediate need was for weapons. On April 8, 1861, Josiah Gorgas, a West Pointer who had served in the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Department, arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, and took over the position of the Confederate Army’s Chief of Ordnance. His department found that some 159,000 small arms, 429 cannon, 330,000 lb (149,685 kg) of cannon powder, 162,000 lb (73,481 kg) of musket and rifle powder, and 3,200,000 small arms cartridges had been seized from U.S. Army arsenals in the South. Turning the powder into cartridges would give the new army some 4,500,000 rounds of ammunition. The problem was getting all these weapons into the hands of volunteers. Indeed, many new volunteer companies, impatient with waiting for state-issue weapons or unable to get them in the sudden demand, turned to private sources. A Richmond supply house, Mitchell & Tyler, advertised in the Richmond Dispatch of April 17 that it had a supply of “the minnie musket [i.e., the U.S. Army’s M1855 rifled musket firing a Miniè ball], English Enfield rifle, rifled muskets with either angular or sword bayonets. Fine [0.36-caliber] Navy pistols, also French cavalry sabres, a superior article, at a low price.” These weapons were immediately snapped up by the wealthier members of Richmond’s volunteer companies. Other companies had to get what they could from the official Ordnance Department supply. Although the South was not greatly industrialized, there were some Southern manufacturers who could provide weapons, although none in great numbers. Even combining this hodgepodge of manufacturers’ output, the total number of Southern-made weapons in the Army of Northern Virginia was tiny compared to its need. Moreover, most of the manufacturers could not get their first weapons made and delivered very quickly, since they had to go through prototype development stages and then gear up production. On top of that, since it was the policy of the Confederacy to defend every inch of territory, garrisons and field armies out of the Virginia area had to share this meager supply. Gorgas therefore looked elsewhere for weapons. For the South this largely meant importing European weapons, the bulk of which came from Britain. Southern buyers managed to obtain virtually the entire output of the London Armoury Company Ltd., which made fine versions of the 1853 Pattern British Army rifled musket, with interchangeable parts just like the Enfield-made versions. By February 1863 the company had shipped 70,980 of these weapons to the

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Confederacy, along with numbers of rifles and carbines. Given other sources, the Confederacy received 81, 049 Enfield-type weapons by March 1863. The London Armoury also produced an excellent revolver, the 0. 44-caliber, five-shot Kerr, of which the Confederates obtained about 9,000. On top of that, Confederate buyers also obtained some 100,000 0.54-caliber Austrian Lorenz rifled muskets, which were also a firstclass battlefield weapon. Of the 131,129 long arms shipped from Europe by March 1863, 48 percent were from sources other than British. The major problem was getting these weapons to the South. Southern Blockade Runners On October 8, 1861, a Confederate government-owned ship, the Fingal, arrived in Savannah, Georgia with 15,000 long arms, two million cartridges, 241,000 lb (530 tonnes) of powder, two million percussion caps, 3,000 cavalry sabers, 500 revolvers with ammunition, 230 other swords, 2 cannon made by Blakely to the latest designs, 2 smaller cannon, 7 tons (7.1 tonnes) of artillery shells, 400 barrels of gunpowder, and a supply of medical equipment, blankets, army and navy uniforms, and cloth to make uniforms. This was to be the largest shipment to arrive in the South. Steadily the blockade of Southern ports drew tighter. Moreover, Union forces began to capture, and hence close to traffic, various Southern ports, beginning with New Orleans in April 1862. Finally, relatively few blockade runners were owned by either the central or state governments (North Carolina did have its own blockade runner and was therefore well supplied with raw materials). Most blockade runners were owned by private, for-profit enterprises, and better profits were made on civilians goods impossible to find in the South, ranging from simple pins and needles to fancy perfumes, than bulky cannon, uniforms, and rifled muskets. The situation became so grave that in 1864 the Confederate government began to impress space, from a third to a half of all cargo, for cotton on the way out and military supplies on the way in. The government also bought and ran its own blockade runners, but these steps proved too little as the Union blockade grew ever tighter. It is not surprising then that the Army of Northern Virginia’s main supplier of weapons was the U.S. Army Ordnance Department. Between 1861 and 1865 the Richmond Armory shipped 323,231 infantry long arms to the Confederate Army, most of which were “arms from the battle fields repaired.” Confederate Ordnance officials figured at Chancellorsville alone Confederate soldiers picked up and kept, or exchanged for their older arms, some 10,000 weapons from the battlefield. In 1863, Lieutenant-Colonel Fremantle noted that in one infantry brigade he visited, “Most of them were armed with Enfield rifles captured from the enemy.” He also mentioned a discussion with the Army of Northern Virginia’s artillery chief in which the Confederate admitted that, “Nearly all the artillery with this army has been either captured from the enemy or cast from old 6-pounders taken at the early part of the war.” Finding the Ammunition Still, getting first-class arms into the hands of Army of Northern Virginia soldiers took much time. Moreover, throughout the war, ordnance officers had to supply a variety of ammunition types to the army’s units. The chief ordnance officer of Jackson’s Corps in late 1862 requested 40,000 0.58-caliber cartridges, which fitted both Enfields and Northern- and Southern-made M1855 rifled muskets, 20,000 0.69-caliber cartridges for the M1842 smoothbore, and smaller rounds for Burnside, Smith, and Hall carbines. Men in Jackson’s Stonewall Brigade also carried Austrian 0.54 rifled muskets, to further complicate supply matters. While many ordnance officers wished to entirely replace the 0.69-caliber muskets, many officers and soldiers did not, feeling that the larger bore and ball-and-buckshot rounds made for a better weapon at the relatively short ranges of 200 yards (182 m) or less in which battles were fought.

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The Confederate national flag, first pattern, the “Stars and Bars.” Adopted by the Confederate Congress on March 4,1861 and in use until 1863, it was originally designed with seven stars, but as the number of seceded states grew, by the end of 1861 it would bear 13. The “Stars and Bars” was carried as the Confederate battle flag at First Manassas in July 1861 and continued in that role in Virginia until September when the first pattern battle flag was introduced.

Ammunition was also a problem for the artillery, especially since few batteries had all the same type of cannon, and ammunition was not interchangeable. What worked for a 10-pounder Parrott could not be fired in a 12-pounder Napoleon. Therefore, battery ordnance officers had to haul a variety of types of ammunition in their caissons. Unlike small arms ammunition that could be found in abandoned cartridge boxes on most battlefields, artillery ammunition was rarely found for the taking; the enemy either withdrawing his limber chests to safety or blowing the chests up in action before they could be captured. This lack of ready ammunition and the problems of supply meant that Confederate artillery had to bring with it all the ammunition it would need for a campaign. Army of Northern Virginia cavalryman W.W.Blackford noted that, at the start of the war, “We were equipped largely at our own and the community’s expense and were armed with double-barrel shotguns, pistols and sabers. It was supposed the shotgun would be an efficient arm but it was too frail and was soon abandoned. After the first battle of Manassas [July, 1861] we supplied ourselves with the captured arms of the enemy and had good carbines for the rest of the war. We never did secure the Winchesters whose repeating qualities made the enemy’s cavalry so formidable towards the close of the war.” The “Winchesters” Blackford mentioned were predecessors of the Winchester “Henry” rifle made famous in the West after the war. These were not as common as the Spencer which, like the Henry, was a breechloading carbine that used ammunition with a brass cartridge. Confederate manufacturers were unable to duplicate these cartridges in large numbers, both because of a shortage of brass and a lack of proper machinery, and hence were unable to use these weapons with anything but captured ammunition, which grew scarcer as the war went on. Infantry soldiers needed accoutrements as well. These included a leather box slung from a shoulder or worn on a waist belt in which cartridge ammunition was carried; a smaller leather box worn on the waist belt for copper percussion caps; a bayonet and leather scabbard; a canteen; a haversack in which food was carried; and a knapsack. To meet the sudden military supply demand Southern manufacturers switched products at the outbreak of war. On April 22, 1861 James Knotts of the Richmond Trunk Factory advertised in the Richmond Dispatch that he was “prepared to manufacture knapsacks, sword scabbards, and

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As the war went on the amount of personal equipment carried by Confederate infantry on the march became pared down to an absolute minimum. Gear wore out and couldn’t be replaced and men discovered a world of hard marching and the fact that being weighed down with a 25-pound (11-kg) knapsack was more trouble than it was worth. Instead, personal kit and even spare rifle cartridges were kept in a blanket roll. Also note that none of these men is carrying a bayonet. Homegrown Weapons As the number of weapons seized from the Federals were not nearly enough to supply an army, especially since a large number were obsolete flintlock smoothbore muskets, Josiah Gorgas, Chief of Ordnance, had to turn to other sources. Equipment for making the M1855 rifled musket and shorter rifle were captured at Harper’s Ferry and shipped south. Versions of the M1855 were made in the Richmond Armory, while rifles were produced in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The actual number of rifled muskets and carbines produced at the Richmond Armory is unknown, but the Armory did report producing 11,762 rifled muskets there between October 1861 and October 1863 and such a production scale continued to almost the end. A few thousand rifles were made between 1862 and 1865 at the Fayetteville Armory. The other armories in the South—Augusta, Baton Rouge, Charleston, Montgomery, Mount Vernon, Nashville, and Savannah—were not actually capable of manufacturing firearms, but only turned out cartridges and accoutrements as well as undertaking repairs to existing weapons. Gorgas, and state ordnance officials, therefore turned to private companies who promised to produce firearms. These were spread across the South, but many sent their products to the Army of Northern Virginia. These included M.A.Baker of Fayetteville, who converted a few hundred old U.S. Army flintlocks to percussion cap; N.T.Read and John T.Watson of Danville, Virginia, who turned out some 900 rifles and carbines made from old Hall rifle and carbine parts for the State of Virginia; Cook and Brother of Athens, Georgia, who produced about 2,000 copies of the British Enfield; Dickson, Nelson of Dawson, Georgia, which made a small number of Enfield-type rifles and M1842 style carbines; H.C.Lamb & Co., Jamestown, North Carolina, which produced several hundred Enfield-type rifles for the State of North Carolina; Keen, Walker & Co., Danville, Virginia, which made some 280 Maynardtype carbines; Mendenhall, Jones & Gardner of Greensboro, North Carolina, which made a small number of rifles; the South Carolina State Military Works, Greensville, which produced some thousand

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breechloading carbines; George W.Morse of Greenville, South Carolina, which made a small number of a unique smoothbore that did not have a conventional lockplate; J.P.Murray of Columbus, Georgia, which made small numbers of muskets, rifles, and carbines; Bilharz, Hall and Co., Pittsylvania Courthouse, Virginia, which produced around 400 carbines; and J. and F.Barrett Co., Greensboro, North Carolina, which made a couple hundred patented breechloading carbines. Copies of the Sharps carbine were also produced in Richmond, at first by S.C. Robinson Arms Manufactory, which turned out some 1,900 of these weapons, and later by the government, which took over the plant to make another 3,300. Soldiers in the field, however, disliked these as they were not produced as well as Northern-made Sharps carbines: a great deal of fire and gases were pushed out the gap at the breech, often bursting there, making them not wholly safe to fire. Cavalry needed not only carbines but pistols as well. The pistol officially adopted was the Colt 0.36caliber “Navy” model, But as Colt was a Northern company based in Connecticut, well separated by a front line, Southern makers once again attempted to fill the gap. Copies of the Colt revolver were made by the Augusta Machine Works, Augusta, Georgia (some 100 were made); the Columbus Fire Arms Manufacturing Co., Columbus, Georgia (some 100 made); Griswold and Gunnison, Griswoldville, Georgia (some 3,700 made); Leech and Rigdon of Coloumbus, Mississipi, and Greensboro, Georgia (some 2,000 made); and Rigdon, Ansley & Co., Augusta, Georgia (some 1,000 made). Thomas W.Cofer of Portsmouth, Virginia, also made as many as 140 copies of the Whitney Navy revolver, while Spiller and Burr of Atlanta, Georgia, made another 1,450 copies of this weapon. There was one major cannon-founder in the South, J.R.Anderson & Co., Richmond, better known as the Tredegar Works, which had delivered 881 cannon to the U.S. government between 1844 and 1860. During the four years of war it would turn over 1,110 cannon of various types, including heavy siege guns, to the Confederate government. Another pre-war Richmond area cannon-maker was the Bellona Foundry, founded in 1816. It manufactured around 70 cannon during the war, though its production was damaged by a serious fire in 1863. These two concerns supplied the Army of Northern Virginia with all the Southern-made cannon it used.

cartridge boxes.” Such supplies were needed: state supplies were so short that instead of leather belts as the U.S. Army issued, Virginia issued 57,912 yards (52,957 m) of white web belts between 1859 and 1862. Such an alternative appeared nice for parades but lacked the durability for real field use. Indeed, there were so many supply shortages that companies like Brand in Georgia actually made belts, cartridge boxes, and cap boxes from black painted canvas, using leather only where it was needed for durability. The fixtures on cap boxes, cartridge boxes, and bayonet scabbards were to have been brass, as per the U.S. Army’s models, but because of shortages of this material, wood, lead, pewter, and tin were often used instead. One recruit wrote home in 1863 after receiving all the accoutrements that the Army could provide him: “I was issued two haversacks today, miserably weak and sleazy, made of thin cotton cloth.” Otherwise, he was given only a gun, ammunition, and carried a change of underwear and soap and a towel he brought from home. In the opening weeks of the war, by comparison, the first volunteers arrived in their pre-war parade uniforms, often claw-hammer tail coats and leather shakos that were to prove impractical for the field. Other volunteers simply arrived in civilian clothing. Although the Confederate government quickly adopted an official uniform of blue flannel shirt, gray flannel trousers, and a cap, it was unable to get manufacturers to produce enough to supply more than its small regular forces around New Orleans. Therefore, the Confederate Congress passed a commutation act that allowed $21 semi-annually to volunteers providing their own uniforms. Many of these were made at home to general specifications provided by each individual soldier. Others were bought at commercial establishments. One manufacturer, Ira Smith, advertised in the Richmond Dispatch on April 22, 1861 that he needed 300 employees, “to work on Jackets, Pants, Shirts and Overcoats,” adding that, “None need apply except those accustomed to that kind of work.”

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The State Supply Systems Some states, notably North Carolina and, to a lesser extent, Georgia, undertook to provide their own troops with sufficient clothing. It was obvious from the start, however, that eventually the Confederate government would have to take over clothing its soldiers. This responsibility fell to Quartermaster General Abraham C.Myers, who had been a division supply officer in the Mexican War and was chief quartermaster of the U.S. Army’s Southern Department in 1861. He thought to buy uniforms from European suppliers, but, unlike Gorgas who just went ahead and sent agents with purchase orders overseas immediately, waited for permission from the Secretary of War, so his department did not start receiving uniforms made by his major supplier, Peter Tait of Ireland, until 1864. In the meantime he went ahead and set up quartermaster depots at various points in the Confederacy where supplies could be assembled and sent forward to the various field armies. The Army of Northern Virginia drew its supplies from the depots located at Richmond and Lynchburg, and, to a lesser extent, Columbus and Atlanta, Georgia. Getting this system up and running, however, took much time. In the winter of 1861, the central government launched its first “great appeal” for clothing to be sent by states, charitable groups, and families at home to its men at the front. These, of course, were not made to regulation, uniform patterns, but still managed to get the men through the winter. By mid-1862 it was apparent that Myers’ department would have to start supplying uniforms to all Confederate soldiers immediately. This, however, proved impossible. Tally Simpson of the 3rd South Carolina had to write home on September 24, 1862, “Well, as to my clothing, I want two or three pair of pair of woolen socks, a strong pair of boots, a couple of shirts woolen, and a couple pair of woolen drawers, scarf, two handkerchiefs, pair of woolen gloves, sleeping cap.” By the winter of 1862 the government again put out a general appeal for clothing; but a combination of scarcity of materials, rising costs, and general mistrust of the quartermaster corps led to fewer donations being received. Even so, on October 8, 1862 the act that provided money to soldiers to buy their own uniforms was repealed, and Myers’ department took on the whole job. According to Myers’ replacement, A.R. Lawton, on January 27, 1864 the Quartermaster Department was attempting to issue a minimum of a pair of trousers and a jacket every six months; the summer clothes made of “jeans” cloth, a mixture of wool and cotton, while saving the more difficult to obtain all-wool clothing for winter. In the field, in practice, men wore out a pair of trousers in a month and a jacket in three months, and the Quartermaster Department was able to keep up with this demand. By 1862 the Richmond Clothing Bureau was in full swing, employing 58 tailors who cut out uniforms and some 2,700 seamstresses who took the pieces home and sewed up finished uniforms, being paid by the piece. In all, it was said that the Bureau could produce 9,000 garments a month. Hence, the Army of Northern Virginia was largely well clad and the “ragged rebel” image is to an extent a postwar myth, one of many seeking to explain why the South lost. That is, except on campaign, when getting uniforms from depots far in the rear to an army at the front proved impossible. On top of that, both officers and men before leaving for each campaign were ordered to leave personal baggage, including extra clothing, behind in depots spread from Richmond, to Rapidan, Gordonsville, and Charlottesville. Many never saw these items again. The result was that in the field the Army of Northern Virginia, especially in 1862 and 1863, got very ragged. John Worsham recalled on the 21st Virginia’s return from Gettysburg, “At this time our army was in a sad plight as to clothing. Hundreds had no shoes. Thousands were as ragged as they could be—some with the bottoms of their pants in long frazzles; others with their knees out, others out at the elbows, and their hair sticking through holes in their hats. Some of the men patched their clothing, and it was usually done with any material they could get. One man had the seat of his pants patched with bright red, and his knees patched with black. Another used a piece of gray or brown blanket.”

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Taking the wounded from the battlefield of Fair Oaks, VA, May 1862. This is the ideal evacuation system of the period: field ambulance to train, train to hospital. To Confederates this level of logistic support was simply unavailable. After the end of the Seven Days’ battles in late June/July 1862 citizens came out from Richmond in whatever carriages and carts they could find to bring in the thousands of wounded. Men were placed in warehouses, private homes, and tents and it was not until two weeks after the final battle at Malvern Hill on July 1 that some kind of systematic care was organized. By this time many men had already suffered and died.

There were a few exceptions. Vast supplies of Union clothing were captured at Harper’s Ferry by A.P.Hill’s men in the 1862 invasion, and the men replaced their worn-out gray uniforms with new blue ones, despite the possibility of mistakes in combat. Indeed, as the column marched to the relief of Lee’s Army at Antietam, only their red battle flags showed concerned Confederates that the troops were Southerners, not another Union brigade come to assault their lines. Throughout the war, Union Army overcoats were more plentiful than Southernmade ones, even the Confederate quartermaster general admitting in 1864 that his department was not able to supply these garments in any great number. The Problem of Shoes Shoes, however, were a different problem. Long marches wore out shoes very quickly, and these were harder to replace. The Quartermaster Department, facing leather shortages, tried varieties of shoes with wooden soles and canvas uppers, but these were not practical for long marches. Many men took advantage after combat of finding good Northern-made shoes and boots on their dead opponents’ feet or from their dropped baggage. Winter quarters, however, found the soldiers unable to depend on finding shoes on dead Union soldiers. In the winter of 1862 Longstreet’s men, as most of the Army of Northern Virginia, were to a large degree barefoot. Lee reported on November 17 that his army had received 5,000 pairs of shoes, but even after they were issued some 2,000 of his men were totally barefoot and another 3,000 had shoes that wouldn’t last another march. The chaplain of the 4th Texas Regiment wrote a letter to the Richmond Whig asking women there to send shoes and socks to his men, as the regiment was so far away from home that getting these items from there

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Snipers, or sharpshooters, were employed by both sides, individually or in small units. The problem for the Confederate Army in using these marksman, useful as they were, was that their rifles, such as the U.S.-made Sharps and the imported Whitworth from Britain (which had a telescopic sight) needed speciallymade cartridges that were difficult to supply regularly.

would be impossible. Private Val Giles of the 4th Texas recalled that within two weeks the regiment was again fully clad and shod. However, this didn’t work as an army-wide practice, so orders went out for the men to go to the pens where butchers slaughtered beef for the army, to pick up leather there. They were, according to Giles, to “then make moccasins for their feet by taking the green hide, cutting out a piece large enough to cover the foot, then turning the hairy side in. The order said to ‘whang the moccasins on with rawhide thongs,’ let them dry, and by that means secure a comfortable fit.” The few men who tried this found

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themselves the butt of jokes by others, one of the moccasin wearers replying that he “had a slight attack of gout, caused by rich food and riotous living.” Finally, shoemakers were detailed from the ranks to make shoes for the Army. On January 30, 1864 Lee reported to the quartermaster general that he had sent two of his quartermaster officers into the Shenandoah Valley to buy leather, adding, “If I could get leather, I could set 500 shoemakers to work. The scraps would answer for repairs. I have the workmen and tools… The army is in great distress for shoes and clothes. Every inspection report painfully shows it, artillery, cavalry, & infantry. The requisitions sent in are unanswered.” Myers also put out contracts for tents and camp and garrison equipage, and assembled this material as it came into his depots. Few of these tents, however, ever saw use in the Army of Northern Virginia. Richard Taylor, then commanding a brigade of Louisiana troops, wrote that in 1862, “My own kit, consisting of a change of underwear and a tent ‘fly,’ could be carried on my horse. A fly can be put up in a moment, and by stopping the weather end with boughs a comfortable hut is made. The men carried each his blanket, an extra shirt and drawers, two pairs of socks (woolen), and a pair of extra shoes. These, with his arm and ammunition, were a sufficient load for strong marching. Tents, especially in a wooded country, are not only a nuisance, involving much transportation, the bane of armies, but are detrimental to health… The rapidity with which men learn to shelter themselves, and their ingenuity in accomplishing it under unfavorable conditions, are surprising. My people grumbled no little at being ‘stripped,’ but soon admitted that they were better for it, and came to despise useless impedimenta.” Feeding the Army Finally, the soldiers needed to eat. The daily ration as called for in Confederate Army regulations was plentiful. It included “three-fourths of a pound of pork or bacon, or one and a fourth pounds of fresh or salt beef; eighteen ounces of bread or corn meal; and, at the rate, to one hundred rations of eight quarts of peas or beans, or, in lieu thereof, ten pounds of rice; six pounds coffee; twelve pounds sugar; four quarts of vinegar; one and a half pounds of tallow, or one and a fourth pounds admantine, or one pound sperm candles; four pounds of soap, and two quarts of salt.” This was quickly modified so that the regulations in 1863 said that, “the Ration will be a pound of beef or a half pound of Bacon and Pork; and the ration of Flour or Meal will not exceed a pound and a half of either. Commissaries are again instructed to save all the Tallow they can, to be used in place of Lard.” The responsibility for supplying this went to Lucius B.Northrop, Commissary General of Subsistence. A West Pointer and personal friend of Jefferson Davis, Northrop left the Confederate Army due to ill health after which he served as a paymaster for South Carolina’s army. He had no experience in the field. His idea was to immediately stock as much food as possible, especially nonperishable items, but he ran into problems because providers wanted currency rather than treasury notes or bonds, and his department did not receive enough money to satisfy their demands. Moreover, he refused initially to pay the prices demanded by farmers in northeastern Virginia, instead depending on cheaper foodstuffs he could find further south. The result was that food grown near where the Army of Northern Virginia was stationed was actually sent south to Richmond to sell, while food from Southern farmers was sent north to Richmond and then forwarded to the army in the field. Nobody was able to convince Northrop that the higher transportation costs eliminated any savings he made from buying cheaper food. This also meant that food in northern Virginia, if it could not be shipped south, was free for the taking by U.S. Government agents, especially when their troops moved over farms that had not sold the food they produced to the Army of Northern Virginia. Moreover, all this traffic put more wear and tear on the South’s already poor railroad system. With

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An artist’s impression of a valiant stand, site unnamed, by Confederate troops. By spring 1865 the Army of Northern Virginia was fighting with very little but captured Union equipment, its own indomitable spirit, and a refusal to accept that it was beaten. The final campaign from Petersburg to Appomattox that April was partly an attempt by Lee to escape from the Federals gather supplies that he long enough for his army to hoped were coming to him by railroad from the west.

few foundries that could produce new railroad tracks, and those largely turning out military weapons, Southern railroads were forced to tear up less-used lines to replace worn-out tracks as the war went on. The meat ration also eventually presented Northrop with problems. There just weren’t enough animals in the South to feed all the soldiers and civilians. Like the other supply officers, Northrop turned to overseas suppliers. Beginning in May 1863, he began importing meat, starting that month with some 2,988,944 lbs (1, 345 tonnes) of bacon. In the 13 months that ended in December 1864, Northrop’s department imported some 8,632,000 lbs (3,884 tonnes) of meat into ports at Charleston and Wilmington alone. Not all of this meat came from Europe; most of the imported meat issued to the Army of Northern Virginia was actually produced and packed in the Northern states. This was then shipped from its producers in Chicago or Cincinnati to Boston, New York, or Liverpool. From there it went to Bermuda and then, having been resold to Southern buyers, it was shipped through the blockade and into a Southern port. Of course, this would then have to be transported up to the Army of Northern Virginia, as well as to other points inland. Transportation itself fell under control of A.C.Myers as Quartermaster General. He immediately began hiring steamboats to haul men and supplies on the Southern states’ many rivers. However, the rivers in northeastern Virginia ran west to east, for the most part, and were, moreover, too shallow for large boats to use. Therefore, in the area in which the Army of Northern Virginia was to campaign, Myers would have to depend on wagons traveling over dirt or mud roads, and the railroad. Local railroads were all private concerns, and Myers refused to take them over or even regulate them for wartime Trading with the Enemy A letter from Robert E.Lee to James A.Seddon, secretary of war, February 16,1864:

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“The vital importance of the subject of food for the army and my own anxiety induce me to trouble you with a repetition of a suggestion I made some time since, but about which I have not been favored with the views of the Department. I fear that the discipline of the army is suffering from our present scarcity of supplies, and am sure that you will agree with me in the opinion that there is no sacrifice too great to preserve its efficiency. I had the honor to suggest to you that meat and perhaps other articles of necessity could be obtained by offering cotton and tobacco in exchange for them. This is I believe especially true of the border counties of the State. Those people have no currency, and can only supply their necessities by barter. They will not receive Confederate money, because they can do nothing with it, and it is idle to attempt to get their produce from them by impressment. But I feel confident that they would cheerfully bring forward whatever they have in exchange for cotton and tobacco, particularly the former. “They stand in great need of it for making clothing, and it would also serve as a means for buying what they do not make. I do not consider the objection that some of this cotton would find its way to the enemy as worthy of being weighed against the benefits that we would derive from adequate supplies of articles of prime necessity to the army, for it is the latter we should now be satisfied is our only dependence. A letter recently received from a gentleman in the lower Valley, who has our success there much at heart, gives assurance that the experiment will succeed there. He represents the want of cotton yarns as very urgent, and says that if the Government will send 100,000 pounds of those yarns to New Market they can readily be exchanged at the rate of one pound of cotton for two of cured bacon. He says that the supplies of that region are now finding their way to the enemy in exchange for what the people absolutely require and have no other means of purchasing. Interest and their own inclinations will Induce them to trade more readily with us, and he thinks the moral effect would be good. His suggestions do not purport to be theoretical, but to be the result of observation of the wants of his neighbors, who appear to need cotton as much as we do meat. I respectfully ask that the experiment be made to the extent above mentioned, and we will then be able to form a better opinion of the merits of the plan, and can extend it or put an end to it as circumstances may direct. I shall be very glad to have your views on the subject, as something must be done, and I can suggest no better plan.”

needs, even after Commissary officers suggested to him that they set up freight schedules to assure deliveries to the troops. Instead he asked for voluntary agreements with the railroads to guarantee adequate shipping facilities. Paying the Railroads Railroad officials met in Richmond in the spring of 1861 and agreed to carry military supplies at half the local freight rates, as well as transporting soldiers at two cents a mile per man, as compared to the four and a half cents average fare for civilians. They also agreed to accept bonds and treasury notes for payment when currency was not available. This seemed a perfect arrangement to Myers. It wasn’t. None of the arrangements were perfect to soldiers in the field. One colonel reported that his men were, “so illy provided with everything from arms to clothing that they are scarcely efficient to take the field.” The problem was with the transportation system, rather than the quantity of supplies. At the beginning of the war, when the main Confederate Army in northern Virginia was posted near Manassas, it was supplied by a single railroad line that had to bring in reinforcements and their equipment, as well as munitions and food. The line was incapable of handling all this traffic, and food and equipment piled up in depots along the way, often lying unsheltered from the weather in piles beside the tracks. Flour got stopped in Fredericksburg, while meat coming in from Tennessee, where Commissary officials found the cheapest

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bacon available, took weeks to get to the front. Much spoiled in transit. Soldiers, instead of getting a regulation meat ration daily, got it only once or twice a week. Getting food and equipment to an army on the march, as the Army of Northern Virginia was both in late 1862 and mid-1863, was even harder, since wagons rather than trains were required. Wagons also required horses or mules, which needed forage that had to be hauled in other wagons. Lee’s army was unable to sustain all the horses and mules needed for all its artillery, cavalry, and wagons, and on August 6, 1862 Lee took three wagons from each regiment to be used just for subsistence for the entire army. Keeping the Army Moving Horses, needed by cavalry, artillery, wagons, and mounted officers, were always a problem for the army. In October 1862 the Chief of Ordnance reported that Longstreet’s corps reserve train was 55 wagons and horse teams fewer than it should have been, while Jackson’s Corps was low by 41. Eight batteries alone required 128 horses at minimum, and 204 to be at top efficiency. At that time, however, some batteries actually had fewer than 20 horses to pull four guns, four caissons, a battery wagon, and a battery forge, as well as to mount its officers. Unfortunately, to make matters worse, in 1862 many of the army’s horses became ill with “sore tongue” or “greased heel,” also known as “soft hoof.” The army was forced that fall to set up a horse hospital near Culpeper Court House. These problems, a lack of forage generally, and the difficulty in getting replacement horses in the Virginia area, plagued the Army of Northern Virginia to the end. Even with these problems, and as stripped down as the Army of Northern Virginia was, one quartermaster believed the entire army’s wagon train was some 500 to 600 strong, and extended several miles. This tempting target required not only decent roads over which to move, and fodder for its mules and horses, but also soldiers to constantly protect it. Even with these guards, Union cavalry managed to break into Longstreet’s corps reserve ordnance train before Antietam, burning about 45 of the wagons loaded with vital food and ammunition. E. Porter Alexander, Longstreet’s chief of artillery, later said this was “a severe blow at such a distance from our base.” This meant that in this corps, the artillery was limited in action to what it could carry in the limber chest that accompanied each gun, plus the caisson that had two limber chests, but was posted some distance to the rear during action. In action, as the initial limber chest supply dwindled, the caisson was to be brought up and limber chests exchanged. Then the caisson was to return to the reserve ordnance trail to get refilled and then take up its post again behind the gun. This was not always a quick job to do. During the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg at the bombardment prior to Pickett’s Charge, Longstreet directed Alexander to have the infantry halted while the artillery refilled its limber chests. “We can’t do that, sir,” Alexander replied. “The train has but little. It would take an hour to distribute it, and meanwhile the enemy would improve the time.” Infantry ammunition resupply was the responsibility of the brigade ordnance officer who was to have a wagon or two, commanded by a regimental ordnance sergeant, for each regiment. Five men from each regiment were assigned to work refilling these wagons, bringing them to the front, and distributing the ammunition to the troops, under the ordnance sergeant’s direction. A sixth man accompanied the regiment whose duty it was to bring word to the regimental ordnance wagon when the regiment was running low on ammunition. At that point the regimental ordnance wagon would move to the front to distribute ammunition, then return to the brigade ordnance wagon to get a refill. In the confusion of battle this system did not always work smoothly. In September 1864 at the third Battle of Winchester, for example, Union cavalry diverted the wagons sent forward, and troops had to refill their cartridge boxes as well as they could, often scrounging from the cartridge boxes of the dead and

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wounded. At Gettysburg, staff officer Randolph McKim found that ammunition wagons could not reach the front. “I had taken three men, at the crisis of the conflict, when word had come to General Stuart that our ammunition was almost exhausted, and had gone on foot to the ammunition wagons about a mile distant and brought three boxes of ammunition [each box held 1,000 cartridges and weighed 96 lb–43 kg] in blankets swung to rails through the burning sun up Culp’s Hill to our men.” The Commissary Supply officers, especially Commissary officers, rather like the men in the line companies, began to depend on their own local efforts to gather what was needed rather than depend on officials in Richmond. On January 5, 1864, Lee wrote Northrop, by then one of the most hated officials in the Confederate government, “I regret very much to learn that the supply of beef for the Army is so nearly exhausted. I have endeavored since first taking command to collect for its use all the provisions I could, and am still making every effort in my power to gather subsistence in front of our line of operations. No beef has been issued to the Cavalry Corps by the Chief Commissary, that I am aware of, for eighteen months. During that time it has supplied itself, and has now I understand sufficient to last it until the middle of February. “The commissaries of the other corps, under orders of the Chief Commissary of the Army, have purchased all the cattle and provisions within their reach. This is the only relief I can afford to the Subsistence Department in supplying the army.” Such local foraging, of course, put a real strain on the resources of northeastern Virginia. In consequence, Lee wanted to take the war north as much as possible, both to allow Virginia farmers peace to plant and gather crops, and to supply his army from Northern farms. Lee, on September 4, 1862, just prior to launching his first invasion of the North, wrote Jefferson Davis that he was ready to move across the Potomac into Maryland. “The only two subjects that give me any uneasiness are my supplies of ammunition and subsistence. Of the former, I have enough for present use, and must await results before deciding to what point I will have additional supplies forwarded. “Of subsistence, I am taking measures to obtain all that this region will afford, but to be able to collect supplies to advantage in Maryland, I think it important to have the services of some one known to the people and acquainted with the resources of the country.” With the reduction in regimental wagons, whenever large stores of provisions were captured, soldiers ate very well during the short time they remained near where the stores were captured. Then they found that they could take away only what they could carry on their persons. When, for example, Jackson’s troops took the huge Union supply depot at Manassas in the summer of 1862, John Worsham of the 21st Virginia had to decide what to do. “It was hard to decide what to take,” he wrote. “Some filled their haversacks with cakes, some with candy, and others with oranges, lemons, canned goods, etc. I know one man who took nothing but French mustard. He filled his haversack with it and was so greedy that he put one more bottle in his pocket. This was his four days’ rations; but it turned out to be the best thing taken, because he traded it for meat and bread and it lasted him until we reached Frederick.” The result, however, was that soldiers often went hungry during these campaigns. South Carolina Private Barry Benson later wrote, “I remember one day, just before reaching Manassas, we fared particularly ill for food. If I remember rightly, my only food that day was a handful of parched corn and three or four small, green, sour apples. On a forced march like this when the men are obliged to find food for themselves the best way they can, some men must of course fare much worse than others. At the time when a man as strong and active as myself could only provide himself with a handful of corn and a few hard, pinched apples, I think it not altogether unlikely that some men, as was told,

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Many women of the Confederacy volunteered to act as nurses during the war, though the South’s conservative attitudes to the role of women in the conflict meant that their role was largely unofficial. This was in contrast to the North where Dorothea Dix was appointed Superintendent of Women Nurses by the secretary of war in June 1861. There were some notable exceptions, such as Phoebe Pember, who despite initial opposition and disapproval became matron of Richmond’s Chimborazo Hospital.

were reduced to the extremity of picking grains of corn out of the horses’ dung, washing it, and parching it for food.”

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Walking wounded gather outside a makeshift hospital after the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. The vast majority of battlefield wounds (estimated at up to 90 percent) were caused by rifle fire. After treatment the wounded were also under great threat from infection; this was a time before antibiotics, and hygiene in the armies was often poor.

Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia were, therefore, forced to learn to rely on themselves for much of their food, equipment, and clothing that should have come from staff departments in Richmond. As Private Worsham later wrote: “Toward the close of the war, nearly all equipment in the Army of Northern Virginia were articles captured from the Yankees. All the wagons were captured; and to look at them on a march—with many of them having the name of the brigade, division, and corps of the Yankee army branded on them, one would not know that they belonged to the Confederacy. Nearly all the mules and horses had ‘US’ branded on them; our ambulances were from the same generous provider; so were our tents, many of them having the name of the company etc., branded on them. Most of the blankets were those marked ‘US’ and also the rubber blankets or cloths. The very clothing that the men wore was mostly captured for we were allowed to wear their pants, underclothing, and overcoats. As for myself, I purchased only one hat, one pair of shoes, and one jacket after 1861. We captured immense quantities of provisions; nearly all the ‘hard tack’ and pork issued to us was captured.”

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Benson agreed, recalling that during fighting in the Seven Days’, “In this battle knapsacks were captured by thousands, while the whole Confed. army refitted itself with blankets, rubber clothes, tent flies, haversacks, and canteens. So that in the middle of the war and later, to see equipment of Southern make was something of a curiosity.” Soap was almost never supplied by central authorities. Field commanders took the matter of getting some for their men in their own hands. In late 1863 Worsham recalled, “Soon after we returned to Montpelier, a detail of men was assigned to make soap. These men gathered the ashes from our fires, put them into several barrels, and commenced making lye. They also gathered the offal from the slaughter pens and, with the use of several old-fashioned dinner pots (in which the soap was made), they soon had some excellent and pure soap. This was issue at once, and the men of our brigade soon presented a very clean appearance. All the work of these men was done out of doors. They were so successful in their work, that, when we left camp, we carried a large quantity of soap with us.” Treating the Wounded The final area of battlefield logistics was the removal of the wounded. Originally each regiment was to have a surgeon, an assistant surgeon, and a hospital steward. In battle the surgeon and hospital steward would set up a regimental hospital, marked with a large red flag, in a safe place to the rear of the regiment; the assistant surgeon would advance just behind the regiment to offer first-aid with supplies brought in a hospital knapsack filled to the men who would be brought to him and then on to the regimental hospital by bandsmen. As it turned out, few Confederate regiments actually had bands, and in mid-1862 the Army of Northern Virginia organized its own Infirmary Corps, with each regiment contributing two privates. These men, marked with red badges on their hats, carried a litter, water, and some first-aid supplies. It was their job to get the seriously wounded to the assistant surgeon’s field station where they would be stimulated with alcohol, bandaged, and prepared for further transportation. From there, ambulances would take the ones needing more serious attention to the regimental hospital. In major engagements, these regimental hospitals were often gathered together as brigade or even division hospitals. Staff officer Moxley Sorrel was hit by a shell fragment at Antietam and was “immediately carried off on a stretcher to a less exposed place, and on regaining consciousness good old Fairfax was pouring whiskey down my throat [a common first-aid stimulant]… He managed to get an ambulance and sent me off to the army field-infirmary.” The system worked well under normal pressure, although there were times when there were more casualties than the system could handle, especially after a particularly costly engagement, or when a Confederate attack had been met with heavy enemy fire. Even so, discipline was such that only members of the Infirmary Corps were able to go back and forth between the front and the rear. Fremantle described the aftermath of Pickett’s Charge, when he saw a mass of wounded “flocking through the woods in numbers as great as the crowd on Oxford Street in the middle of the day. Some were walking alone on crutches composed of two rifles, others were supported by men less badly wounded than themselves, and others were helped on stretchers by the ambulance corps; but in no case did I see a sound man helping the wounded to the rear, unless he carried the red badge of the ambulance corps.” The Logistics Staff The quartermaster was to provide “quarters and transportation of the army [or his subordinate unit]; storage and transportation for all military supplies; army clothing; camp and garrison equipage; cavalry and artillery horses; fuel; forage; straw and stationery.” Quartermaster officers also were responsible

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for paying the troops, a separate Pay Bureau in the Quartermaster Department having been set up to handle this. The commissary officer was to provide food, soap, candles, and, where possible, luxuries such as tobacco. He had to work with the quartermaster to get transportation for these items. Each command had a medical officer, ranging from the army’s medical director to the regimental surgeon. He was in charge of the soldiers’ health, not only taking care of the sick and wounded, but also making suggestions to the commanding general for improvements in living conditions in camp, diet, and the like, to maintain the health and well-being of the soldiers. The ordnance officer was in charge of making sure the soldiers were armed and had sufficient supplies of ammunition for their weapons. This involved getting enough supplies from the government’s Ordnance Department or from the various armories and arsenals in the rear by turning in the correct requisitions, keeping the items with the units on their own wagons, issuing them as needed, and being sure they were maintained and repaired as necessary. The army and each corps had engineer officers assigned to them who were responsible for preparing maps of any area in which the unit was to operate, either by preparing them himself or obtaining them from the Engineer Bureau in Richmond which had elaborate copying systems set up, including photographic map reproduction processes. They were also responsible for laying out defensive works as needed. The engineer officer was not given any troops to prepare the actual works; this work was done by enlisted men of the infantry or laborers such as local slaves, under engineer officer supervision. Each command down to division level had an officer or NCO from the Signal Corps trained in passing on messages by semaphore flag during the day or torch by night. This officer or NCO also had a small number of the rank and file who helped him with this operation. Signal Corps personnel, who usually had their stations on high ground where they could overlook enemy units and movements, also gathered what would today be called intelligence to pass on to their generals. These men were also trained in using cipher systems and therefore tended to keep away from other soldiers in fear of passing on secrets. Technically they did not operate the telegraph, which was manned by civilian personnel, although some of them certainly did operate telegraph stations from time to time. In 1862 the Confederate Congress assigned lawyers to hold regular military courts, one in each corps, to solve the problem of taking muchneeded line officers away from their regular duties to serve on courts martial. Each court consisted of a captain who was the judge advocate, a captain who was the provost marshal, who acted as a bailiff, a clerk, and three judges chosen from outside the army’s ranks. Captain Charles Blackford, who had been a cavalryman, was assigned to be the judge advocate in Longstreet’s corps at the end of 1862. The members of his court were drawn from far afield, one being a colonel from South Carolina, while the other was a colonel from Mississippi. Blackford wrote home on February 1,1862, “I have sent me a large number of cases, some twenty of which are for capital offenses, so we will, I fear, hold a ‘bloody assize.’” General officers could not be tried by these courts. Despite this innovation, there was always a backlog of cases to be tried, some of which never reached trial by the end of the Confederacy. There were other developments in the military judiciary. Henry E.Young, who had been an assistant adjutant general from July 1863, later became the army’s full-time judge advocate general. His duties were administrative, dealing with the conduct of courts martial and the overall military court system. Chaplains were also assigned to various staffs, although they were never officially authorized by law on anything but a regimental or battalion level. Longstreet did not have a chaplain on his staff, while, expectedly, Jackson did. As unofficial members of the general’s “family,” these men largely made up their own duties, but usually held Sunday services and prayer meetings, visited the sick and wounded, and distributed religious pamphlets and Bibles. Where chaplains were on staffs, they also visited subordinate units that did not have regular chaplains, and that was generally a large number of units. According to army regulations, “When necessary, the General-in-chief or General of Division may appoint a provost marshal to take charge of prisoners with a suitable guard, or other police force.” The main job of this position was to take charge of making sure straggling was kept to a minimum. Brigadier-General Lewis Armistead, for example, was named the army’s provost marshal during the

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1862 Maryland Campaign, and given the job of stopping straggling as well as correcting “irregularities against good order and military discipline, and prevent[ing] depredations upon the community.” The provost marshal was also in charge of prisoners of war, and escorting them to the rear. Permanent provost guards were established at army, corps, division, and brigade level, as well as within the cavalry. The 1st Virginia Battalion had the longest history as the provost guard of the army, and its commander, Major D.B. Bridgford, therefore served as the army’s provost marshal.

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PART II THE YEARS OF ATTACK

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Union cavalry played no significant part in this, the first battle of the Civil War; that honor would go the Jeb Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry, who were to begin their short, but glorious, history with a charge on a regiment of New York Zouaves that effectively broke through the Union right flank.

The First Manassas Campaign

On July 21, 1861, a Union army under Irvin McDowell flanked the Confederate line along Bull Run. Success seemed certain, but Confederate reinforcements from the Valley and the defense of Henry Hill turned Southern defeat into a rout of the Northern army. Private Hunter and his regiment in Alexandria, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where the major Northern army was gathering, soon had to fall back in the face of overwhelming Union numbers. The Confederates in northern Virginia concentrated in two places to defend the state. One body under Beauregard, brought up from his presumed victory in Charleston, concentrated around Manassas Junction, a vital rail link south of Washington on the way to Richmond. General Joseph E.Johnston commanded Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley where they faced a hero of the Mexican War, Union Major-General Robert Patterson. Popular opinion in the North wanted a quick advance to revenge Fort Sumter and put an end to Southern rebellion. Sidney George Fisher, a civilian from Philadelphia, summed up the general feeling of how the war would go in his diary on June 5, 1861: “We have had civil war now for more than two months and yet active operations have scarcely commenced. The country had enjoyed the blessings of peace so long that the use of arms was almost forgotten and when the occasion arose which demanded them, tho men enough to form armies were forthcoming, everything else was deficient—discipline, clothing, weapons, & ammunition. All these had to be provided on short notice, and that they have been furnished so soon is proof not only of the intelligence and energy of the people, but of the enthusiasm by which they are animated. A large force has been assembled, equipped and posted at the strategic points. The interest at the present moment centers in Virginia, which is expected every day to be the scene of the first conflict. The army has already commenced an advancing movement from Washington. The troops of the enemy are concentrating to oppose it, in what strength is not certainly known. They are commanded by good officers, most of them southern men in our army who have resigned their places & joined the South, and their supply of arms is abundant. It is probable they can make a stout resistance at first, that the US forces may meet with checks & reverses, but the ultimate result is certain, for the South is too weak in wealth and numbers to resist the North.” Major-General Irvin McDowell, commander of the Union forces around Washington and Alexandria, had in fact neither begun an advance into Virginia, nor did he want to advance any time soon. He felt strongly that his green troops were simply not prepared for such an offensive against troops, possibly entrenched, fighting a defensive battle on their own soil.

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The parts of Maryland and Virginia that were to be the Army of Northern Virginia’s main area of operations, although the 1863 Pennsylvania campaign would take Lee’s men nearly 50 miles (80 km) north of the Potomac River, to Gettysburg.

However, he was instructed by Winfield Scott—the U.S. Army’s general-inchief—to prepare a plan for operations against the Confederates at Manassas, and on June 24, McDowell submitted it. The plan called for a Union force under the 69-year-old Major-General Robert Patterson to occupy Johnston so that he could not reinforce Beauregard. McDowell reckoned that the Confederates would have about 35,000 men at Manassas, with another 10,000 in the Richmond area that could be called up as reinforcements. Therefore he figured he could move with 30,000 men, given another 10,000 in reserve. “I think it of great consequence that, as for the most part our regiments are exceedingly raw and the best of them, with few exceptions, not over steady in line, they be organized into as many fixed brigades as the number of regular colonels will admit…so that the men may have as fair a chance as the nature of things and comparative inexperience of most will allow,” he reported. In actual fact, Beauregard had some 22,000 men at Manassas, while Johnston had another 9,000 in the Valley, with another brigade available that totaled 1,500 men, giving the Confederates a total of over 32,000. McDowell had some 35,000 men, but 5,000 of them were to be left in the rear guarding the road to Alexandria.

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General Joseph E.Johnston, Virginia-born and a soldier in the Southern cause from April 1861 until April 1865, when he was to surrender his army to General Sherman in North Carolina. At First Manassas Johnston helped win the day for the Confederates by giving Union general Pemberton the slip in the Shenandoah and moving his command by rail, reinforcing Beauregard’s line on Bull Run. After the victory, Johnston continued to fight in Virginia until a wound at Seven Pines in May 1862 put him out of action. With Robert E.Lee’s accession to his Virginia command, Johnston was sent to the western theater.

On July 16 McDowell, under orders from Lincoln (who told the general that he needn’t fear the fact that his troops were inexperienced since the Confederates were equally as green), started his column south. The going was slow for a Moving an Army by Train Joseph E.Johnston, commanding the Confederates in the Valley, figured that the traditional way of moving troops, by hard, long marches, still would not allow his men to reach Manassas Junction in time, so he sent a staff officer to the Piedmont Station of the Manassas Gap Railroad to see if his men could be moved by rail. Officials there assured him that sufficient rail capacity was available and could transport Johnston’s men the 34 miles (54 km) between Piedmont Station and Manassas Junction within 24 hours, As Johnston recalled, “the president of the railroad company had promised that the last regiment should reach Manassas Junction Saturday morning—nine thousand men—before sunrise.” The unmentioned problem was that there was only one locomotive available on the line, so the train had to be loaded up at Piedmont Station, travel to Manassas Junction, be unloaded, and then return, empty. Within hours the first Virginia Brigade, led by Thomas J.Jackson, was on the march and in eight hours was at Piedmont Station being loaded into railroad cars. For the men of the brigade it was a lark;

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John Casler of the 33rd Virginia recalled: “Our brigade was in the advance on the march, and when we arrived at the station the citizens for miles around came flocking in to see us, bringing us eatables of all kinds, and we fared sumptuously, There were not trains enough to transport all at once, and our regiment had to remain there until trains returned, which was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. We had a regular picnic; plenty to eat, lemonade to drink, and beautiful young ladies to chat with. We finally got aboard, bade the ladies a long farewell, and went flying down the road, arriving at the Junction in the night” Jackson’s brigade was followed by Bartow’s brigade, starting with the 7th and 8th Georgia Regiments, The next day another train somehow appeared, but even so, travel was slow, each train traveling fully loaded at some four miles (6 km) an hour, The mounted elements—artillery, cavalry, and supply wagons—went by road to join up later. Some artillery managed to reach the battlefield in time, but others did not Despite a slow movement, and many cavalry men suffering from bad food and sleeplessness, Stuart’s cavalry reached Manassas Junction on the evening of July 20, in time to get some food and rest before the next day’s battle. By this first use of railroads for large troop movements, the Confederates had combined two forces that were individually outnumbered where they were originally stationed, to face one enemy at roughly the same odds, Some 35,000 Confederates faced 37,000 Union troops.

number of reasons. Before the campaign had started, the press had printed a number of stories warning soldiers about the “masked batteries” Confederates would plant along roadsides in ambush, so officers and men were cautious in heading along Virginia’s roads. This turned out to be a myth, soon forgotten after this campaign. The weather was hot. When the Union troops left on the 16th they carried with them three days’ rations in their haversacks, but the undisciplined troops ate this food too quickly and then scrounged for blackberries and other local foods on the way. Some regiments failed to bring even this minimal supply of food, depending on foraging in the countryside. Even officers were seen foraging, such as a captain in the 79th New York “Highland” Regiment chasing after a pig, his kilt flying in the breeze to the delight of all. Most Union troops were fairly hungry by the end of July 17. Those units that did stop to forage along the way were often hurried on the road south when their foraging was done at the double-quick. As they were not in especially good physical condition after their months in camps without much marching experience, this also helped wear them out. Many also left their blankets and rubber ground cloths in the Washington camps, along with tents, and found themselves sleeping in sweaty clothes on damp, cool ground in the evenings for the first time. On July 18 the advance elements of McDowell’s force reached Centreville around 09:00 hours. There they found only abandoned Confederate works and a signal tower. Lacking instruction as what to do next, Brigadier-General Daniel Tyler halted his advance group and sent back to McDowell for further orders. His scouts also talked with local civilians and reported to Tyler that the Confederates had withdrawn the previous night toward Bull Run, a meandering, sluggish creek. They were heading for two crossings: a stone bridge and Blackburn’s Ford, where the creek bent southward in a loop. Tyler sent a brigade under Colonel Israel B.Richardson south toward the ford, accompanying the brigade himself. Union infantry spotted Confederate artillery guarding the ford and brought up some artillery with which to engage them. As an artillery fight developed, Richardson sent forward a skirmish line of two companies to cross the ford and capture the Southern guns. What they ran into, however, was a brigade of Virginia infantry under Brigadier-General James Longstreet which stopped them cold. Initially, however, the fight could have gone either way. The Confederates were just as nervous about the Union troops as the Union troops were about them, and under fire, part of Longstreet’s line began to give way. “To stop the alarm I rode with sabre in hand for the leading files, determined to give them all that was in the sword and my horse’s heels, or stop the break,” Longstreet recalled. “They seemed to see as much danger in their rear as in front, and soon

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The area west of Washington, D.C., which was to be the battleground of the First and Second Manassas, as well as the route Robert E.Lee would take in his invasions of the North in 1862 and 1863.

turned and marched back to their places, to the evident surprise of the enemy. Heavy firing was renewed in ten or fifteen minutes, when the Federals retired.” Tyler, however, wasn’t ready to give up and decided to reinforce the fight, and sent forward more artillery supported by infantry. Confederate infantry fire soon forced one gun to withdraw, while the other had to cease fire, its crew and horses having been shot down. Richardson’s 12th New York now advanced but was driven to the ground by heavy Confederate fire. The Union attack stalled, Longstreet launched a counterattack, which fell apart as his green troops quickly became confused. “After the fourth repulse I ordered the advance, and called for the balance of the reserve brigade,” Longstreet reported. “The Fourth Brigade, in their drills in evolution, had not progressed as far as the passage of defiles. The pass at the ford was narrow, unused, and boggy. The lagoons above and below were deep, so that the crossing was intricate and slow. Colonel Early came in with his other regiments, formed his line behind my front, and was asked to hurry his troops to the front line, lest the next attack should catch him behind us, when his raw men would be sure to fire on the line in front of them. He failed to comprehend, however, and delayed till the next attack, when his men promptly returned fire at anything and everything before them.” With all this confusion going on at the same time as the Union troops had halted and were firing into the attacking Confederates, Longstreet’s attack fell apart. The Confederates fell back to their line along the creek as Richardson’s men hugged their position on the opposite bank. McDowell now arrived to find out what all the firing was about. A battle here and now, before his main force arrived, was not at all what he wanted. Furious, he ordered Tyler to halt where he was, not to attack again, but hold his position. A badly demoralized Tyler, however, withdrew his troops back to Centreville as soon as McDowell rode off to rejoin the rest of his forces. It had not been much of a battle; Confederate losses were

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The attack of J.E.B.Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment on the Union right. Colonel Stuart and his men were to play a vital role in the campaign, screening Johnston’s force from Pemberton in the Shenandoah and then riding 40 miles (64 km) to rejoin the army and immediately launch a charge which cut right through the Union lines.

some 68, while Tyler lost around 83 officers and men. Still, its effect on the opposing forces was critical. The Confederates began to feel less concern about the Union soldiers approaching them, thinking now that they would fight and win here. The effect was the opposite on the Union side. One of McDowell’s staff members, Captain James Fry, recalled that the initial fight at Blackburn’s Ford caused Union forces to lose morale. “The Confederates, feeling that they had repulsed a heavy and real attack, were encouraged by the result,” he later wrote. “The Federal troops, on the other hand, were greatly depressed. The regiment which suffered most was completely demoralized, and McDowell thought that the depression of the repulse was felt throughout his army and produced its effect upon the Pennsylvania regiment and the New York battery which insisted (their terms having expired) upon their discharge, and on the 21st, as he expressed it, ‘marched to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.’ Even Tyler himself felt the depressing effect of his repulse, if we may judge by his cautious and feeble action on the 21st when dash was required.” Johnston is Summoned from the Valley News of the battle was rapidly telegraphed to Richmond where officials reacted quickly Inspector and Adjutant General Samuel Cooper, ranking officer in the Confederate Army, telegraphed Johnston, “General Beauregard is attacked; to strike the enemy a decisive blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If practicable, make the movement, sending your sick and baggage to Culpeper Court-House either by railroad or by Warrenton. In all the arrangement, exercise your discretion.” Beauregard himself telegraphed Johnson to the same effect a half hour later.

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Of course, Johnston would have to first elude Patterson, but he found the old soldier not hard to trick. Confederate cavalry maintained pickets around the Union lines, masking Confederate movements while keeping in touch with Union ones. Indeed, on July 18 Patterson himself was telegraphing Washington to complain that some of his regiments were due to be mustered out of service after their three months’ term. “To attack under such circumstances, against the greatly superior force at Winchester, is most hazardous. My letter of the 16th gives you further information. Shall I attack?” Later that day he telegraphed, “The enemy has stolen no march on me. I have kept him actively employed, and, by threats and reconnaissance in force, caused him to be re-enforced. I have accomplished, in this respect, more than the general-in-chief asked, or could be expected, in the face of an enemy far superior in numbers, with no line of communications to protect.” Seeing that Patterson was making no forward movements, Johnston began the first use of rail lines to move one force to another’s support quickly even as a battle was going on. In an amazingly speedy time for the period, Johnston’s men were on their way to join Beauregard’s forces. Both sides decided to go on the offensive now, and attack in the same place, his enemy’s left flank. McDowell sent a 12,000-man flanking column from Centreville down the Warrenton Pike, where it would be hidden from view by dense woods, around the Confederate left, figuring its center was along the Bull Run at Blackburn’s Ford where his troops had been first bloodied. The Confederate advance around the Union left, however, was marred by poor staff work that produced confused orders. Beauregard’s written orders were vague and confusing and, to make things worse, they were passed on in a series of even more vague, confusing orders. They referred to divisions of two brigades without any clue as to who the division commander was. They provided imprecise instructions. For example, Richard S. Ewell was ordered to have his brigade “march via Union Mills Ford and place itself in position of attack on the enemy It will be held in readiness to support the attack upon Centreville or to move in the direction of Sangster’s Cross-Roads, according to circumstances…The order to advance will be given by the commander-in-chief.” So Ewell was to head to a post and then attack when he got word so to do, apparently from Beauregard, although Johnston was actually commander on the field. Battlefield orders were even worse, largely the result of amateur staff work. For example, J.E.B.Stuart, commanding the 1st Virginia Cavalry, had been told in the initial order, “Colonel Stuart’s regiment of cavalry …will march via Mitchell’s Ford, to be used according to circumstances.” There his men waited until, as the battle raged, he received a vague, hasty order that read: “Colonel Stuart, General Beauregard directs that you bring your command into action at once and that you attack where the firing is hottest.” This certainly gave the regimental commander maximum freedom to pick his point of attack, but abandoned any attempt at higher command or control. Jubal Early, then a brigade commander, was summoned to a council of brigade commanders that Beauregard held on the night of July 19. Here he was told that Johnston’s men were on the way from the Valley and would strike at the Union right flank while Beauregard’s men would attack the left. On hearing firing from the attack on the Union right, Confederate troops were to cross Bull Run and move to the attack. Early went back and informed his regimental commanders of these instructions. This same plan was brought to Johnston. He, however, decided not to follow it, thinking that he would be unlikely to get raw, undisciplined troops so far apart to cooperate on the field. Instead he decided to unite his force with Beauregard’s so they could meet the Federals with relatively equal numbers. News of Johnston’s decision, however, never reached the brigade and regimental commanders, who all assumed that what they’d been told the previous night was the operative plan. Beauregard himself did not know of Johnston’s decision to ignore the original plan until he met Jackson, who had just arrived ahead of the army commander and come directly to Beauregard’s headquarters. There Jackson told Beauregard that Johnston was not coming on the flank, but directly to the main body. Beauregard, however, ignored this information, deciding that Johnston would do

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Joseph E.Johnston’s route from the Shenandoah Valley in support of Beauregard’s force on Bull Run. He was at Winchester facing General Patterson who was defending the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Harper’s Ferry. Johnston received orders from Richmond on July 18 and marched his troops to Piedmont and embarked them on the Manassas Gap Railroad, a line of communication that took them straight through the mountains and delivered them to Manassas Junction, the first units, including Jackson’s brigade, arriving on the afternoon of the 19th.

what was planned. Johnston himself reached Beauregard’s headquarters around noon on the 20th and the two went into conference. Confusion in Command Both Johnston and Beauregard were insistent on following all the Army’s forms to the letter, and Johnston, before arriving, had telegraphed Richmond to make sure he would be ranking officer on the field. Assured this was the case, on July 20, Johnston published the following order: “By direction of the President of the Confederate States Genl. Joseph E.Johnston assumes command of the Army of the Potomac.” It would not be until a year later that the army gained its more famous name, the Army of Northern Virginia. At the meeting Johnston pointed out that Patterson would soon discover that he had been left behind and would soon move his troops to Manassas. Therefore, the Confederates should attack immediately. Beauregard suggested his original plan of a move on the Union left, which Johnston agreed to. Not as familiar with the composition of Beauregard’s forces, Johnston also requested that Beauregard’s staff draw up correct orders of battle for his own staff to copy and distribute. Although full of volunteers of all types, Beauregard’s staff was essentially made up of amateurs and as a result the battle orders were not ready for distribution until the morning of July 21.

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It is noteworthy of Johnston’s character as a stickler for the pre-war kind of army red tape, as well as being a highly political animal, that he noted that the orders he received “were not in the form usual in the United States Army, being written by General Beauregard’s adjutant-general in his name, my sanction to be written on each copy. This was too immaterial to be worth correction,” he admitted. He was obviously irked at this attempt of Beauregard’s to suggest that he was overall commander on the field by issuing orders in his own name rather than in Johnston’s, and the demonstration of the amateur status of Beauregard’s adjutant.

General McDowell’s opening moves at the Battle of First Manassas. Coming out of Washington on July 16, Union regiments under Tyler took Centreville but failed to make a breakthrough at Blackburn’s Ford on the 18th. McDowell ordered a general advance on the Confederate left to begin at 02:00 hours on July 21 with brigades under Hunter and Heintzelman flanking Sudley Springs, allowing Tyler to take the Stone Bridge. They turned the Confederate flank, but at 09:00 hours were met north of the Warrenton Turnpike by a brigade under Nathan Evans.

On July 20, therefore, when some firing was heard, Longstreet ordered Early’s brigade to a new position on the right below Union Mills. On the way, however, Early “was met by a courier with orders to halt where I was, as the alarm, upon which the order to me had been founded, had proved false.” Early’s men rested in place during the day where they had halted. On the 21st Early received at first orders to advance against a Union position, which were changed to simply follow Longstreet’s advance. Before much could happen, however, around noon, he received yet another order, this one calling for a withdrawal across the Bull Run and a general move to the left where heavy firing could be heard. It had a postscript: “Send Early to me.” There were no directions, however, indicating where Beauregard was. This was typical of the comedy of errors and sloppily written orders that marked Confederate staff work that day and helped make Beauregard’s plans irrelevant to the actual battle.

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The firing Early heard and thought marked the opening of his attack was actually not Johnston’s men arriving, but Union artillery which opened up on the north of Bull Run shortly after 05:00 hours. Union infantry demonstrated against the Confederate line, which ran some eight miles (12 km) along the Run. In the meantime, the Union troops attempting McDowell’s flanking movement were having their own troubles, with the usual slow rate of advance: troops once again were cautious about masked Confederate batteries. They reached Sudley Springs and deployed into line about three hours behind schedule. Suddenly there occurred a fortunate development, one that had been put in motion some time earlier and now paid sure dividends. Before the battle, the Confederate Army had created the world’s first specialist corps for battlefield communications, a signal corps, and it now came into real use. E.Porter Alexander, who had been involved in the U.S. Army’s pre-war signal experiments with Major Albert J.Myer, was sent to Beauregard’s command on July 2. Beauregard, a man who was always keen on using the latest technology to defeat an enemy, put Alexander to work right away and told him to set up a system of signals to use in the battle he was sure would soon take place. In fact, Alexander had plenty of time to get organized before McDowell’s troops blundered into them at Manassas. He recruited some men who he thought had above average intelligence and taught them the system of waving flags that had been developed by Myer. As they were practicing, he rode over the local area to see where he could best set signal stations. He was not encouraged. “The topography was far from favorable,” he later wrote. “Our line of battle had been chosen behind the stream of Bull Run, about three miles [4.8 km] north of Manassas, and the course of the stream was generally wooded and bordered with small fields and pastures, giving few open stretches. I was not sanguine of rendering any valuable service, but fortunately had time to examine the country, and, as ill be seen, the line was found which disclosed the enemy’s attack in time to defeat it.” As the battle developed, Beauregard sent Alexander with a courier to one of his signal stations, one on a high, rocky point on a farm that had a good view over the valley to the north and west. Alexander wasn’t happy to go there, feeling that little would happen there, but he was to be proved wrong. As he later recalled, “While watching the flag of this station with a good glass, when I had been there about a half-hour, the sun being low in the east behind me, my eye was caught by a glitter in the narrow band of green. I recognized it at once as the reflection of the morning sun from a brass field-piece. Closer scrutiny soon revealed the glittering of bayonets and musket barrels. “It was about 8.45 a.m., and I had discovered McDowell’s turning column, the head of which, at this hour, was just arriving at Sudley, eight miles away. “I appreciated how much it might mean, and thought it best to give Evans immediate notice, even before sending word to Beauregard. So I signalled Evans quickly, ‘Look out for your left; you are turned,’ Evans afterwards told me that a picket, which had gotten lost at Sudley, being driving in by the enemy’s advance guard, had sent a courier, and the two couriers, one with my signal message and one with the report of the picket, reached him together. The simultaneous reports from different sources impressed him, and he acted at once and with sound judgment.” Evans meets the Federal Attack McDowell’s secret move was discovered and the Confederates now had time to react, thanks in large part to the Army’s use of its new signal corps. The Evans mentioned was Colonel Nathan G.Evans who commanded the brigade on the left, who had sent out pickets who also saw the advancing Union troops. Evans had earlier sent out two companies of the 4th South Carolina as skirmishers while hiding the rest of his small force from the Federals who were demonstrating on his front. Once he received word of the

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Federals on his left, he sent all but the companies of the 4th and a company of Louisiana Zouaves to that point. By 09:00 hours he was in position, ready to attack. Without even knowing the size of his enemy, Evans attacked, sending the Louisiana Zouaves into the Union force. However, the Zouaves were beaten back. Evans’ men were forced to retreat, and the Union troops went on to the attack, scattering the small Confederate brigade. Private J.W.Reid of the 4th South Carolina, posted on the left of Evans’ line, wrote home just after the battle that “the balls and shells poured amongst us like hail. About twelve o’clock two small cannons came to our assistance (we on the [Matthews] hill). They fired a few rounds only, the enemy advancing in such overwhelming numbers that the two cannons ceased firing, and was [sic] compelled to fall back. The two companies above mentioned also fell back a few hundred yards. All this time the battle was raging tremendously higher up the creek. The enemy had crossed the creek by thousands, but our men up there were standing their ground bravely.” The two cannon mentioned withdrew when they ran out of ammunition. Another brigade, this commanded by South Carolinian Bernard Bee, arrived to relieve Evans’ men, having been sent there by Beauregard. The brigade, including the 4th Alabama and 2nd Mississippi, along with two companies of the 11th Mississippi that had just arrived from the Valley, double timed a total of six miles (10 km) in the brutal heat to reach Evans’ position. Water was running out and the men were exhausted when they reached the scene. Still, they formed into line of battle behind Evans’ line and moved forward to the front. Once there, they fell to the ground, to safety, rising only to load and fire, and then drop again. Behind them came the 7th and 8th Georgia from Bartow’s brigade, who went into line on Bee’s right, on the top of Matthews Hill. They, too, were exhausted from their quick-time march into battle. Now the Confederates had reinforced Evans’ line with some 2,800 men, fewer than in a Union brigade facing them, who in all totaled 4,500 men. Even outnumbered, however, the Confederates now went on the attack, something they were to do throughout the war. Their goal was the Union guns near Matthews Hill. The attack was a failure, Evans’ men not getting far at all, while the Georgians got further but took tremendous losses, as did the 2nd Mississippi, while the 4th Alabama got the furthest and held their ground the longest. Eventually, however, under fire on three sides, they all had to give way to superior numbers and fall back from Matthews Hill. Union reinforcements arrived on the scene as the Confederate regiments fell back. The Fight Centers on Henry Hill Hampton’s Legion, a mixed force of infantry, artillery, and cavalry that had been raised and equipped in South Carolina by rich planter Wade Hampton, arrived on the battle scene after a three-hour march. Quickly Hampton found his men at a disadvantage on Henry Hill, being fired on from three sides, and after holding his position an hour or so, fell back. “My men retired in good order to the hill just in our rear, bearing off our wounded, and formed near a battery (Imboden’s and Walton’s), which was just then put in position,” Hampton, himself wounded in the fighting and taken from the field, later reported. The new Confederate line was behind the Robinson house, south of the Warrenton road, just up the slope from Young’s Branch. The Hampton Legion fell in on the left of the survivors of the other regiments. Beauregard, in the meantime, was seeing his plans fall apart. Finally, following Johnston’s cue, he rode to the left to see for himself what was going on. Earlier he had sent a courier to Jackson to have his brigade march to the threatened left flank, and then he sent to Longstreet, Jones, and Ewell to fall back to Bull Run to hold that position, giving up his attack, while brigades of Holmes, Early, and Bonham were to move to reinforce the left.

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The situation at about 16:00 hours. By early afternoon Evans’ troops and those brigades sent to reinforce him had been forced from Matthews Hill south of the turnpike and had taken up positions overlooking the road on Henry Hill. From this point on, the Confederates were staunch in defense and brought up reinforcements in a steady stream, including Kirby Smith’s brigade straight from the Valley. The Federals, in contrast, lost heart, throwing regiments away in piecemeal attacks. Pressed by fresh Confederate units and seeing the road open before them, some time after 16:00 hours McDowell’s army broke and ran for home.

Casler of Jackson’s 33rd Virginia recalled that they double-quick marched to the sound of the guns, forming up in a line of battle behind a small hill. Then, “Our regiment marched up the hill and formed ‘left in front,’ on the left of the brigade, and on the entire left of the army. As we passed by the other regiments the shells were bursting and cutting down the pines all around us, and we were shaking hands and bidding farewell to those we were acquainted with, knowing that in a few moments many of us would be stretched lifeless on the field.” Jackson’s brigade arrived to see the Confederates falling back, but in surprisingly good order. On the other side of the field, Union troops and their leaders saw victory only minutes away. They continued to press forward, although by now many of their own men were both exhausted and, in many cases, as demoralized as the seemingly beaten Confederates. Jackson had his men lie down behind the crest of a hill as the rest of the Confederates passed through their line. “I knew they were South Carolinians by the ‘Palmetto tree’ on their caps,” Casler recalled. One of the sergeants of the 33rd walked up to the top of the hill, calling back, “Boys, there is the prettiest sight from the top of the hill you ever saw; they are coming up on the other side in four ranks, and all dressed in red.” Some Union regiments from New York had red trousers on that day. Bee, almost overcome with excitement, himself rode up to Jackson, who always was astonishingly calm under pressure. “General, they are beating us back,” he said to Jackson. “Sir, we’ll give them the bayonet,” Jackson replied.

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With that Bee rode back to the survivors of his brigade, calling out, “Look yonder. There is Jackson and his brigade standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here and we will conquer. Rally behind them.” At least, that’s one version. Another period version has Bee in disgust exclaiming that Jackson was standing like a stone wall, rather than advancing against the enemy to save the South Carolinians, Georgians, Lousianians, and Alabamans. Bee thereby baptized Jackson and his brigade, but did not live to explain his meaning as, on his return, he got the 4th Alabama to attack again, and was mortally wounded in the charge. At this critical point Johnston and Beauregard arrived and began to ride about to rally their troops. Beauregard told Johnston that he felt that he should take personal command of the fight on the left, while Johnston retained overall command of the entire field. Johnston then delegated the Louisiana soldier to do just this, recalling later, however, that, “I gave every order of importance.” The Confederate Signal Corps When the new Confederate government was just getting set up in Richmond, President Davis, as forward-thinking in his new job as he had been as U.S. secretary of war, spotted a familiar name among the list of newly commissioned engineer officers: Captain E. Porter Alexander. As Alexander later wrote, “Engineer officers were in demand, but President Davis remembered my appearing with Maj. Myer before the Military Committee of the Senate, in connection with the system of signals, and I was first ordered to start in Richmond a little factory of signal apparatus, such as torches, poles, and flags. I was told that I would soon be sent to install the system in some one of the small armies being collected at several points.” Alexander had been the right-hand man to a U.S. Army surgeon before the war, Albert J.Myer, who on duty in the southwest found that the clear air and long distances would allow men to see each other at great distances. Always interested in signals used by the deaf, on which he wrote a graduate thesis in medical school, he devised a system of sending signals by waving flags during the day or torches at night, with different movements representing different letters. In 1858 a U.S. Army board studied his suggestion to use this system and in 1860, Myer was named the army’s signal officer with the rank of major. Myer, however, had not been able to organize a field signal unit to send with McDowell, although one of his officers did report to McDowell on the afternoon of the July 21, in time to help organize the army’s retreat. According to Confederate veteran signalman Charles Taylor, “The Signal Corps was composed of one Major, ten Captains, twenty Lieutenants, twenty Sergeants, and about fifteen hundred men detailed from the ranks of many regiments. These men, though privates, were, for the most part, well educated and of high social standing. And the fact is noteworthy that, while they were often employed in independent service and were trusted with important secrets, no case has ever been reported of a betrayal of trust by any one of them. All were experts in signaling and in the use of cipher. They were, of course, entrusted with the key-word… “To every division of infantry and brigade of cavalry was assigned a squad of from three to five men, all mounted. These were commanded by a lieutenant or sergeant. Each of these men was provided with signal flags for sending messages by day, and torches, filled with spirits of turpentine, for use at night. The flags were about four feet by two and a half feet [1.2 m by 750 cm] in size and contained in their centers squares of another color than that of the body of the flag. For use against a dark background like a forest or hillside, the white flag was used; against the sky, a dark blue flag; and against a field of snow a scarlet flag.” Although it would never perform as dramatically as it did at the First Manassas, Austrian observer FitzGerald Ross noted in 1863 that, “This signal corps is an institution peculiar to the American armies. On marches and during battles, high and commanding positions are occupied by squadrons of this corps, who communicate with each other by flags, on the old semaphore system, and

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report all important communications to their generals. The corps was found very useful, and has been very much increased since.”

Johnston then left the scene, going to a post a mile (1.6 km) southeast of the Henry house where he could see much of the field as well as the Union line along the Stone Bridge, and also have good lines of contact with all his brigades. Beauregard rode into the Georgia troops, rallying a group of the 8th, and sending it to Jackson’s left along with the 7th. Smith’s brigade of some 450 men now arrived and went into line on the left of the 7th. Behind him the 8th Virginia arrived and was sent to join Hampton’s Legion as a reserve between Jackson and survivors of Evans’ brigade. Still more Confederates, the 2nd Mississippi, 49th Virginia, and 6th North Carolina, poured onto the field. Within an hour after noon, Beauregard had a stabilized line of at least 6,500 men and 13 cannon. McDowell still thought he had the battle in his grasp, and sent forward two Regular U.S. Army batteries, Griffin’s and Rickett’s, to the top of Henry Hill, with a promise of the New York “Fire” Zouaves for support. The idea was traditional Napoleonic. The batteries would soften the Confederate line, then the Union infantry would attack for the finish. As the guns went into battery front, the Zouaves, the famed 11th New York, arrived, splendid in short blue jackets and baggy red trousers. Their line was only a short distance from Jackson’s and, unknown to them, Stuart’s 1st Virginia Cavalry, which had just arrived with the directions to go to where firing was heaviest. “Colonel Stuart and myself were riding at the head of the column as the grand panorama opened before us, and there right in front, about seventy yards [64 m] distant, and in strong relief against the smoke beyond, stretched a brilliant line of scarlet—a regiment of New York Zouaves in column of fours, marching out of the Sudley road to attack the flank of our line of battle,” later wrote Stuart’s adjutant, W.W.Blackford. “Waving his sabre, Stuart ordered a charge, but instantly pulled up and called a halt and turning to me said, ‘Blackford, are those our men or the enemy?’ I said I could not tell, but I had heard that Beauregard had a regiment of Zouaves from New Orleans, dressed, I had been told, like these men. Just then, however, all doubt was removed by the appearance of their colors, emerging from the road— the Stars and Stripes. “As we were in column of fours it was necessary to deploy, and our gallant Colonel waved his sabre for the rear to oblique to the left, ‘on right into line,’ so as to strike the enemy ‘en echelon’ and this they did.” The Charge of Stuart’s Virginians “Half the distance was passed before they saw the avalanche coming upon them, but then they came to a ‘front face’—a long line of bright muskets was leveled— a sheet of red flame gleamed, and we could see no more. The smoke which wrapped them from our sight also hid us from them, and thinking perhaps that we had been swept away by the volley, they, instead of coming to a ‘charge bayonet,’ lowered their pieces to load, and in this position we struck them. The tremendous impetus of horses at full speed broke through and scattered their line like chaff before the wind.” Stuart’s men rode through the Union lines, then back behind the Confederate infantry line. Now the Union artillery was exposed and without support, the other infantry regiment, the 14th New York, having also fallen back behind the guns. Survivors of the 11th re-formed and headed back toward their original position. But before this could happen, the colonel of the 33rd Virginia ordered, “Attention! Forward march! Charge bayonets! Double quick!” recalled Casler, “and away we went, sweeping everything before us; but the enemy broke and fled. “We were soon in position of the guns, killed nearly all of the horses, and a great portion of the men were killed and wounded.” Union officers had mistaken the advancing Confederates, under a red, white, and blue

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The first pattern Confederate battle flag, Virginia, September 1861. The need for a distictive Confederate Army flag was voiced after First Manassas, and it was General Beauregard who introduced the idea of a St Andrew’s cross with stars (though his original design had a blue ground and red cross). In September 1861 a standard battle flag was produced for units in Virginia of similar design featuring a red ground, blue cross, and 12 stars. The flag was made of silk which was expensive, damaged easily, and was prone to fade from red to a light pink.

flag and in blue uniform, for the returning 14th New York and had allowed them to approach too close to get any shots off before realizing their mistake. Jackson ordered the rest of the brigade to reinforce the successful attack, but before his orders could be obeyed, the 33rd was forced, by heavy enemy fire, to fall back to its original position. Beauregard, however, saw a chance and now ordered Hampton’s Legion, supported by the 8th and 18th Virginia Regiments, to attack Henry Hill. “The day is ours,” Beauregard shouted to them as they took the vital position. McDowell launched counterattacks, but they were piecemeal, regiment after regiment, and failed as Jackson finally got his charge launched. “The charge of Jackson’s men was terrific,” Casler wrote. “The enemy were swept before them like chaff before a whirlwind. Nothing could resist their impetuosity. The men seemed to have caught the dauntless spirit and determined will of their heroic commander, and nothing could stay them. ” Still more Union troops came on, and again halted their attack. The battle now ebbed and flowed back and forth for two hours, with Union regiments again attacking one at a time. As each Union regiment was beaten back, it became disorganized, the men all mixing together as a mob rather than an army. Confederate reinforcements, too, came onto the field by regiments and were put into line, but their line was holding and, in fact, had driven the enemy from their right. Fresh troops continued to arrive on the field from the Valley. To the rear, however, a pillar of smoke indicated that a large force was headed to the field, and Beauregard feared that it would be Patterson coming to McDowell’s side, having finally realized that he

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was alone in the Valley. The stiff breeze quickly revealed that the flag at the head of the column was a Confederate stars-and-bars, a color of one of Jubal Early’s regiments. “Hail, Elzy,” Beauregard called to him as he rode up, “The Blucher of the day.” Smith’s brigade also arrived, coming from the Valley around 12:00 hours and going into action around 16:00 hours, moving off to the left where it crumpled up the Union right, though Smith himself was wounded shortly after arriving on the field. Jubal Early had been heading somewhat blindly toward Beauregard since 12:00 hours, having been instructed earlier to report with his brigade, and it was at about 15:00 hours when he came into sight of battle. There he found Johnston, who “directed me to move to our own extreme left and attack the enemy on his right, stating that by directing my march along the rear of our line, by the sound of the firing in front, there could be no mistake; and he cautioned me to take especial care to clear our whole line before advancing to the front, and be particular and not fire on any of our troops, which he was sorry to say had been done in some instances.” Early’s men did as ordered, though on the left they found nothing but debris of an abandoned field. The Union line had been rolled up on all sides, and their men were in full retreat on the Warrenton Turnpike. As the Union troops fled, Beauregard ordered a general advance, driving off those few enemy formations who remained in good order, in particular the Regular Army regiments. A final, last-ditch Union counterattack failed. Confederate attempts to catch up with McDowell’s force and finally destroy it also failed, as darkness and disorganization among the Confederate ranks set in. The Union Army’s first attempt on Richmond had been turned back, a total failure. Panic had stricken its ranks, and many of the men threw away arms, accoutrements, and knapsacks in a rush to get back to Washington. Confederate troops found after the battle some 4,000 muskets, 500,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition, nine 10-pounder rifled Parrott cannon and a 30-pounder Parrott, nine James rifled cannon, five 12-pounder howitzers, and a wealth of hospital equipment, engineer equipment, clothing, coffee-mills, commissary stores, saddles and bridles, and even some handcuffs. After the battle, Union government officials looked for the reason for the total defeat, and assigned the task of reporting on it to the newly formed U.S. Sanitary Commission. “Our troops,” reported the Commission, “ignorant of the fact that they had been contending against and repulsing the combined forces of Beauregard and Johnston; and believing that this inconsiderable remnant of Johnston’s forces, which they now saw approaching, to be his entire column; and feeling their inability, without rest or refreshment, to engage an additional force of fresh troops nearly equal in number to those with whom they had been contending during the day,—commenced a retreat, not very orderly, but quite as much so, as first, as had been the advance in which they had driven back the forces of the enemy. Their (nominal) leaders, who too often had forced them in battle, were, in many cases, not behind them on retreat.” The Confederates had won the battle, and they had done so through the use of modern technology in the railroad and the signal corps, psychological warfare in scaring the Union troops about Confederate cavalry and artillery, and their superior generalship at the brigade level, if not higher, especially in the part played by the now-named “Stonewall” Jackson.

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An idealized view of Jackson’s brigade chasing the routed Federals from Henry Hill; Stuart’s cavalry appears to be on his left.

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After his success at the First Manassas in July, Jackson was sent to the Shenandoah and was promoted to majorgeneral when he took command of the Shenandoah Valley District on October 22, 1861, reporting to the Department of Virginia under General Joseph E. Johnston.

Jackson’s Valley Campaign

The Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1862 was a cornerstone of the Stonewall Jackson legend. From March to June he led a small force in a series of engagements that defeated four Union armies. uch of the food needed in Virginia came from the Shenandoah Valley, the Valley of Virginia. While the Valley ran from north to south (going “up” the Valley was going south, while going “down” the Valley was going north), it also ran from the southwest towards the northeast, terminating at Harper’s Ferry, almost a pistol pointed at Washington, D.C. The Valley Turnpike, started in 1830 and made of crushed limestone over a cement bed, ran up the middle of the Valley. A much more dependable road than the old dirt sideroads, this would be the object on which all movement up or down the Valley would have to center. Whenever Confederate troops occupied the Valley, they would be a threat to Washington, and Lincoln was very concerned about threats to the city. In the winter of 1861, the Confederate commander there was no aging Robert Patterson—whose troops had been withdrawn back to Washington to help rebuild the Union forces after Manassas and help defend the city—but was one of the bright lights of that battle, Thomas J., now “Stonewall,” Jackson. He wasn’t one to sit still, even in the cold of winter when reasonable 19th-century soldiers went into winter quarters. He had his eye on Romney, in western Virginia, a town that sat poised like an arrow aimed at the Confederate garrison at Winchester and in which was a Union force commanded by a native Virginian, BrigadierGeneral Benjamin Kelley. While the official policy of the Confederacy under Davis was to be strictly defensive and only fight back attempts to invade the country, Jackson was not fit for that role. He believed in a strong and constant attack wherever and whenever possible on any enemy that threatened him before the enemy could act on that threat. But he did not have enough troops to move directly, so he persuaded the secretary of war to assign him a brigade under Brigadier-General William W.Loring. As it took time to arrive, he began to look for targets he could hit in the meantime. On December 17 he sent his men out to skirmish along the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal. His goal was Dam No. 5. This largely unsuccessful mission only slightly interrupted supplies to Washington, and the Confederate troops withdrew, Jackson claiming success because his men had made a breach in the dam. In fact, damages were repaired quickly and no significant time was lost in bringing in supplies over the canal. On January 3, with all of Loring’s brigade now present, Jackson took his men out of their quarters in Winchester into western Virginia, with the idea of first breaking up the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which brought men and supplies to Washington from the west, with the ultimate objective of capturing Romney. One of Jackson’s staff officers, Henry Kyd Douglas, recalled that “The day on which the expedition started was a beautiful one, bright and unusually mild for the time of year. As evening came on it began to

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The Shenandoah Valley , one of the crucibles of the Civil War. Strategically vital to the control of northern Virginia and the security of Washington, D.C., the Valley also supplied much of Virginia’s food. Fighting here began in June 1861 and would continue almost without interruption until late April 1865.

grow much colder. It was the most dismal and trying night of this terrible expedition. It had been and was still snowing lightly, and the small army was in uncomfortable bivouac.” The relatively untrained Confederates were as yet unused to sleeping without tents, and the wagons with their tents, rations, and baggage could not get to them over the roads, described by one of Jackson’s soldiers as “a glare of ice.” The next morning Douglas arose and found some five inches (12 cm) of snow covering all the sleeping troops. “Great logs of men were lying in all directions, covered over with snow and quiet as graves. Now and then one would break out and look about him with amazement.” On January 4 they occupied Bath, in western Virginia, and the next day they moved to the Potomac River, opposite Hancock, Maryland, where they bombarded the town. The weather still hampered the campaign. Casler recalled that while opposite Hancock the weather was “very bad all the time—snowing, sleeting, raining and freezing. We would lie

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The Federal Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in 1861. One of the United States’ major arms manufacturing centers and a communications hub that controlled access to the North, Harper’s Ferry was an important Confederate objective in the opening days of the war, being abandoned by its Federal garrison on April 18, and occupied by Virginia troops the following day. On May 1 Colonel Thomas Jackson arrived to take command of the new Confederate volunteers gathering here.

down at nights without tents, rolled up head and heels in our blankets, and in the morning would be covered with snow.” The bombardment lasted two days to no practical effect, and Jackson’s men were unable to cross there. On January 7, Jackson took his men away from Hancock, towards Romney, fighting at Hanging Rock Pass or Blue’s Gap. The next day they skirmished at the Dry Fork of Cheat River. Union troops evacuated Romney so that Jackson’s men entered the town unopposed, but still without comfort. Casler described the men as “all covered over with sleet, and as it would freeze fast to us as it fell we presented an icyappearance.” After occupying Romney for several days, Jackson was forced to return a brigade to Winchester, leaving another under Brigadier-General Loring at the South Branch Valley, while other troops went to Bath, Martinsburg, and the northern frontier. “Loring’s army is very much dissatisfied with being left at Romney and I cannot blame them,” wrote a 4th Virginia soldier home, “as of all the miserable holes in creation, Romney takes the lead.” Once in Winchester, a third of the men who had reenlisted received furloughs of 10 days. The campaign was cheap in terms of life but it cost much in terms of Jackson’s reputation. As Captain James Wood of the 37th Virginia, later wrote, “The weather was extreme, rain, sleet, snow and intense cold caused great suffering and the actual illness of many.” The result was men who were miserable, and long lists of them appeared in hospitals as a result of their exposure. Light Marching Order Jackson had his men strip to the lightest marching order possible to obtain maximum marching speed. William Casler, 33rd Virginia, recalled, “We had heretofore always had a large wagon train to haul our cooking utensils, mess chests, tents and blankets, but were here ordered to reduce the train, use fewer cooking utensils, and dispense with the mess chests and tents, and every man to carry his knapsack and blankets. If found in the wagons they were to be thrown away. So we started on the march up the

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Shenandoah river under the new tactics, through the rain and mud; and, as we had a good many blankets and an overcoat apiece, it was a hard task, and a great many blankets were thrown away.” John Worsham, 21st Virginia, rued that day as well, writing: “General Jackson ordered all the wagons containing tents and extra baggage to the rear—so far to the rear that we never saw them again! This was a hard blow to us, since we had gotten in the habit of smuggling many articles into our tents to avoid carrying them. When our tents left, they had in them dress coats, underclothing, etc. ‘Old Jack’ flanked us that time.”

“Winchester was full of soldiers sick with the pneumonia, and they died by hundreds,” Casler wrote. Kyd Douglas recalled that the campaign “seemed for a while to confirm the impression that General Jackson was crazy. At the time he was greatly blamed by officers, people, and the press.” Captain Wood expressed the opinion of the army over this campaign: that it was made “without apparent results, and it was regarded by his officers and men as unwise. From this a distrust in his ability as a leader arose.” The controversy soon spread outside the army, another indication of the problems that lack of discipline of all ranks would cause the Confederates. The colonel of the 37th Virginia Regiment, Samuel Fulkerson, wrote his congressman, Waller R.Staples, on January 23 telling him that the site Jackson picked for his winter quarters was “as uncomfortable a place since we entered the service.” It suffered, he said, because it was “of no importance in a strategical point of view; the country around it has been exhausted by the enemy, and its proximity to the enemy and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad will wear us away (already greatly reduced) by heavy picket and guard duty. Besides this, there is no suitable ground and not sufficient wood here upon and by which men can be made comfortable.” The debate didn’t end with this letter. Brigadier-General Loring’s regimental officers submitted a petition to him asking to be moved out of the Romney area, citing the same problems as Colonel Fulkerson, and Loring, whose command had lost 1,150 men to sickness during the campaign. He forwarded it to Jackson, who sent it on, disapproved, to the secretary of war, Judah P.Benjamin, who then sent it on to Jefferson Davis. On January 30, 1862 the Secretary of War ordered Jackson to have Loring return to Winchester, citing intelligence that “a movement is being made to cut off General Loring’s command.” Jackson reacted quickly to this perceived criticism of his command, ordering Loring to Winchester and, at the same time, requesting the authorities in Richmond to give him a transfer out of the field back to the Virginia Military Institute as superintendent or he would resign his commission. The reaction to the possibility of losing a soldier who had shown such merit at Manassas was equally quick. Johnston wrote begging him to reconsider. Johnston, no slouch on reacting in a prickly manner to any supposed insult to his rank, added, “Under ordinary circumstances a due sense of one’s own dignity, as well as a care for professional character and official rights, would demand such a course as yours, but the character of this war, the great energy exhibited by the Government of the United States, the danger in which our very existence as an independent people lies, requires sacrifices from us all who have been educated as soldiers.” Virginia’s governor John Letcher also wrote to mollify Jackson, saying his resignation would have a ruinous effect on the Southern cause. With these responses, Jackson did reconsider and authorized Governor Letcher to withdraw his resignation. But this incident was typical of how Confederate officers of high rank often went over the heads of their superiors to political officials, the press, and anyone else they felt could help their cause, rather than attempt to work through the system. It is also indicative of their reaction within the framework of Southern culture, quitting if they felt their honor had been affected rather than swallowing their pride and getting on with the job.

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The Battle of Kernstown, March 23, 1862, was the beginning of Jackson’s Shenandoah campaign. Ordered by General Johnston to hold down as many Federals as possible in the Valley, Jackson went on the offensive, taking on what he believed to be a smaller Union force than his own army of 3,500 men. Facing him, however, were over 6,000 Federals under James Shields. The battle was a defeat for Jackson who lost over 700 men—dead, wounded, or missing.

It would be a curse that affected not just the upper echelon, as difficult as that would make pursuing a war. All ranks were aware of these problems. Ted Barclay confided to his sister on February 1 that “Gen. Jackson has resigned and his men swear that they will not serve under Loring. “What the consequence will be I cannot tell. But if the orders of such a man as Jackson are to be disregarded by such trifling people as Loring and seconded by Benjamin, I think the Southern Confederacy is in a bad fix. I never saw a more unsatisfied set of men than the Stonewall [Brigade] just now. I hear that

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The Army of Northern Virginia’s first issue silk battle flag was superseded in September 1861 by a First Bunting issue made of wool. At the same time a smaller cotton issue battle flag (illustrated) was adopted in limited numbers. Featuring 12 stars, the cotton issue was 41 square inches (264 square cm) as compared to the 51 square inches (328 square cm) of the wool flag. The cotton battle flag is known to have been carried by regiments from Texas and Georgia.

Loring’s men are just as much attached to their general as we are to ours, so would not be surprised to hear of a bust up soon.” The incident did not end with the withdrawal of Jackson’s resignation and approving letters from outside supporters. Jackson went on to take his revenge, filing charges against Loring on February 7 saying that he was not with his command and seeing it properly encamped on January 1; that he did not attack an enemy force “with requisite promptness” on January 3; that his frequent stops prevented the army taking Bath when it was supposed to; that he allowed his force at Romney to become so demoralized it couldn’t move against the enemy; that he let his commanders petition not to camp near Romney; that he told a staff officer that one of Jackson’s orders was “the damnedest outrage perpetrated in the annals of history, keeping my men out here in the cold without food;” and that he sent his petition to Richmond. He also filed charges against Colonel William Gilham, author of the book of tactics many of Jackson’s officers used, for failing to capture a small Union force during the same campaign. The War Department simply solved this problem by sending Loring out west, away from Jackson’s grasp, where Loring was promoted major-general and served until the surrender of the Army of Tennessee in 1865. Gilham avoided Jackson’s wrath by not being reelected colonel of his regiment in the 1862 reorganization, resigning his commission then, and returning to teaching at the VMI. For several months Jackson let his men rest while the army reorganized: new officers were elected, and some of Loring’s regiments were sent to other theaters while new ones arrived. By March 3, 1862 he had a

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The Battle of McDowell, Jackson’s first major victory in the campaign, was fought on May 8. In a remarkable forced march, Jackson moved his reinforced command of 10,000 over 120 miles (192 km) in five days, driving the Federals away from Staunton and then turning on the 6,000 men defending McDowell. The battle on the 8th pushed the Federals back to Franklin. Jackson’s losses at McDowell were 75 dead and some 420 wounded.

division of three brigades consisting of ten infantry regiments, a five-company infantry battalion, a cavalry regiment, and five batteries with 21 cannon. The force, some 4,500 strong, was made up entirely of Virginia units. Jackson’s main problem was that the force had declined due to desertion and sickness, and continued to do so. Finally, on March 5 campaigning for the year got underway as a significantly larger Union force under Major-General Nathaniel P.Banks—a Republican politician commissioned to prove nonpartisan support for the war in the North —started moving south in the Valley from Harper’s Ferry toward Winchester. Banks had his own division and two brigades of another division, making a total of some 30,000 men. He had a good idea of the weakness of his opponent from information taken from deserters and captives and was therefore unimpressed with Jackson’s force. His advance troops clashed with Confederate cavalry on March 7 at Bunker Hill, north of Winchester, as Union troops moved south along the Martinsburg Pike. Although the outnumbered Union troops were driven back, Banks pressed on, and by March 10 controlled the four roads that led into Winchester from the north and east. As Union troops moved toward Winchester, Jackson had government stores sent south and his troops packed all their equipment and rations. From there they moved out, south, to the dismay of many Winchester civilians and the soldiers themselves. But Jackson’s men did not go far before halting for the night. The general himself gathered his subordinates to propose a night attack on the Union troops as they

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approached Winchester, something rarely done in an era when keeping troops in sight was vital for command control. Some of Jackson’s plan was based on faulty information which reported his supplies to be at nearby Kernstown, when in fact his quartermaster had sent them on further south to Newtown, with his infantry spread out between Newtown and Bartonsville. The result would be that the men would have to turn around and make a forced march of at least 10 miles (16 km) before attacking, and Jackson’s officers all agreed the plan would fail. Jackson saw that without their full support he could do nothing, and ordered the brigades to continue south, giving up Winchester without a fight. The next morning, as he stood with his staff surgeon, he exclaimed, “That is the last council of war I will ever hold.” And never again did he share his plans with his subordinates. Banks takes Winchester On March 12, brushing through the thin line of Confederate cavalry north of Winchester, Banks’ forces entered the city, accepting the mayor’s surrender. On the southern side, John Worsham of the 21st Virginia reported that, “we continued our march slowly up the Valley until, on March 18, we reached Mt. Jackson. The Second Brigade went into camp about one mile [1.6 km] below Mt. Jackson; the balance of the army marched to Rude’s Hill, about two miles [3.2 km] above the village and camped. We sent a picket down the Valley pike and, on the 20th, marched to Rude’s Hill and joined the balance of our little army. The enemy had followed us slowly, but they stopped at Mt. Jackson and retired down the Valley” There was a strong reason for Banks to stop and even fall back. The main Union thrust would not be in the Valley during early 1862, but against Richmond. The overall Union commander Major-General George B. McClellan —who had taken over from Winfield Scott as general-in-chief in November 1861 —persuaded Lincoln to allow him to board his army on ships and transport them down the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, land on the peninsula that jutted southeast from Richmond to move inland, and capture the Confederate capital from the east. Lincoln gave his approval, but with apprehension about the safety of Washington. To assuage his fears, most of Banks’ men were withdrawn to Manassas, leaving some 11,000 men under Brigadier-General James Shields as an independent command in the Valley. After all, they should be more than enough to hold the Valley since Jackson’s small force, McClellan believed, had withdrawn south to unite with Johnston’s force in Gordonsville. Jackson, however, had not retreated. He sent out his cavalry under Colonel Turner Ashby, a great leader but poor disciplinarian who was sloppy with details such as drill, discipline, and logistics, to discover the enemy’s positions. (Later William Poague, commander of the Rockbridge Artillery, would complain of Ashby: “His cavalry were looting wagons and capturing horses, utterly undisciplined. This was Ashby’s weak point.”) Attempts by Shields’ troops as they advanced towards Mount Jackson to destroy this force failed and the cavalrymen slowed their progress down. With thousands of Union troops still in the Valley, Johnston let Jackson know that he would like to see action to prevent Union reinforcements from reaching McClellan’s Richmond offensive. Therefore, on March 21, the day after his 4,000-man force was united at Rude’s Hill, Jackson started them off in an inauspicious snowstorm, this time headed north down the Valley to be joined by a local militia force. Ashby’s intelligence led him to believe that the Union side had some 10,000 men around Strasburg, leaving only a small force behind in Winchester. Ashby’s word was wrong. Shields, the Union commander, had decided he had gone far enough south and, in a driving rain, forced his men back the 22 miles (35 km) through Winchester to their old camp north of town. Ashby had already scouted the Union troops and taken his message south to Jackson.

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The Confederate infantry charge was one of the battle-winning tactics of the early war years. The spirit, audacity, and courage of the Confederate rank and file was used to excellent effect by Jackson in the Shenandoah, while in the western theater that spring, on April 6 a Confederate charge at Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh), Tennessee, almost threw the army of Grant and Sherman into the Tennessee.

Word of Shields’s retreat reached Jackson, who was under orders to keep Union troops from leaving the Valley, and he now thought this indicated a full Union retreat. He decided to change his line of march to intercept these retreating troops, sending Ashby forward for further intelligence. Ashby reached Winchester, where he was told that the Federals had fallen back through and given up the town, leaving only a rear guard to the north. On hearing this Jackson sent his men forward toward the small town of Kernstown, just south of Winchester on the Valley Pike, arriving there on the afternoon of March 23. He brought some 3,300 men into action against what he thought would be a token force, but in actuality numbered about 6,000, strongly posted on two ridges just beyond the town. Improvising as he went, Jackson first sent his lead regiments forward against the Union left.

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Stonewall Jackson represents the very image of a Virginian cavalier in this print made in England just after the First Manassas— proof of how far and how fast his fame spread. In fact this most practically minded of soldiers favored plain uniforms, leaving the feather plumes and gold braid to the likes of Jeb Stuart.

Union artillery broke up the attacking lines, and the commander of the Stonewall Brigade, BrigadierGeneral Richard B.Garnett, ordered his men off to the left, where they would find protection from the guns. To the left a stone wall ran parallel between the two battle lines, and both sides dashed forward to take it. William Casler of the 33rd Virginia wrote that regiments on opposing sides started for the wall: “both regiments charged for the fence about the same time, and it was ‘nip and tuck’ which would reach it first, but the 37th Virginia got there, and, kneeling down, poured a deadly volley into the other at close quarters, and nearly annihilated it.” Once there, wrote the 21st Virginia’s John Worsham, “Some of F Company were kneeling down, firing from behind the fence; some were standing straight up. Soon all were standing, and

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taking deadly aim as they fired. As the excitement increased, many men in F Company mounted the fence and sat on it, loading and firing until every cartridge was shot away.” Worsham claimed that they remained there until they ran out of ammunition and had to withdraw. It may equally have been overwhelming Federal numbers, as a charge drove the Confederates off the wall. Union Brigadier-General Nathan Kimball remembered that, “Our line now had the wall so long held by Jackson. But soon the sturdy foe, reinforced, advanced again to retake the position; they were met by men as gallant and determined as themselves, and in answer to their wild ‘rebel yell’ loud cheers were given from our line as it dashed forward. With Tyler’s gallant brigade and our fearless little band of cavalry rounding his flank, the enemy was forced back across the field to the woods, where he once more attempted to advance our advancing lines. With cheers from right to left, our gallant soldiers pushed forward, and as the sun went down, the stubbornly yielding foe, who had thrice advanced to the attack, gave way, and Jackson’s army was badly beaten—his shattered brigades in full retreat from the field over which they had so gallantly fought.” Jackson’s Reputation Damaged This fight further damaged Jackson’s reputation. Casler wrote that “it was a mystery to us why General Jackson would evacuate Winchester and fall back fifty miles [80 km], and then turn around with a smaller force than he left Winchester with and go back and attack such a large force, with no chance of success.” James Wood of the 37th Virginia said the battle “again brought in question his capacity for leadership of a separate army, and but for his courage, sincerity and willingness to share hardships and dangers with his men he would have been held by them in much lower esteem as a commander.” Jackson reacted in what was becoming a typical fashion, relieving BrigadierGeneral Garnett from command and placing him under arrest for ordering the brigade to retire when out of ammunition. According to Garnett’s official report, “After sustaining our position for over an hour, in the face of a much superior force, which were being constantly reinforced: our ammunition in many instances being entirely exhausted: officers & men rapidly falling. A Cavalry demonstration also being made on our left, I gave the order for the troops to fall back.” This may have been an unforgivable sin for Jackson, but not for his grateful troops. “It may be said that, for once, the officers and the men of General Jackson’s old brigade almost unanimously differed with him,” Kyd Douglas wrote. “Their regret at the loss of General Garnett was so great and their anger at his removal so intense and universal that their conduct amounted almost to insubordination.” Garnett demanded an immediate trial and Jackson learned from the regimental commanders that they would all testify on Garnett’s behalf. An eventual court-martial was started but interrupted by the Union advance under MajorGeneral John Pope later that summer and never reconvened; Garnett was finally restored to duty later that year, although not in command of the Stonewall Brigade. It was just as well for Jackson, as after a trial that ended in Garnett’s vindication he was sure to have been seen as the single individual responsible for the disaster at Kernstown. After the battle Jackson withdrew up the Valley while a force of some 15,000 Federals followed slowly, occupying New Market by April 17. By the end of April Jackson and his small army—having received much-needed reinforcements which brought its total to 17,000—were at Elk Run, near Swift Run Gap. On April 30 he finally started north again toward Staunton to turn the tide of his so-far unsuccessful Valley campaign. This would be a different look to the Confederates, as the men were ordered to strip to the lightest marching order possible. He also pushed his men to march quickly over long distances. The first march

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Richard Taylor’s Louisiana Brigade took under his command was 26 miles (41 km) in a day, and after they finally halted, Jackson came up to Taylor and said, “You seem to have no stragglers.” “Never allow straggling.” “You must teach my people; they straggle badly,” Jackson said, adding, as the Louisiana band started up a waltz, “Thoughtless fellows for serious work.” Taylor said he hoped that “the work would not be less well done because of the gaiety,” and retired from the general’s presence. The lightened troops arrived in Staunton on May 6, alarming the Federals, who fell back to New Market, and then advanced on to Strasburg, where they arrived on May 13. Jackson then turned west toward McDowell in order to drive the Union troops away from his flank. The Union troops there numbered some 20,000, under the famed western explorer Major-General John C.Frémont, and were advancing on Staunton from the west. Jackson now pushed his men 97 miles (155 km) in four marching days, through driving rain, to Staunton where they boarded trains to go another 25 miles (40 km) to West View. There Jackson pushed the 10,000 men with him onto McDowell, arriving in the late afternoon May 7. There were some 6,000 Union troops there, and they deployed in defensive lines. Jackson’s men took Setlinger’s Hill east of town, which dominated the Union lines, and the Federal commander decided to withdraw before he was captured. To cover this retreat, the Union troops attacked the advancing Confederates, hoping to buy time to allow a safe withdrawal. For four hours fighting went on and the Confederates turned back all Union attacks, at the end of daylight commanding the field. Although Jackson pursued the retreating Federals the next day, he could not catch up with them, although his forces did capture a number of wagons with muchneeded ammunition and unwanted tents. Jackson gave up the chase at Franklin on May 12 and instead turned back east toward the Valley. With this maneuver, the action in the Valley changed its character. Jackson found that he could drive his men—who called themselves “Stonewall’s foot cavalry”—great distances in bad conditions, and assault enemy forces separated from each other before they could unite. The smaller amount of camp equipage the Confederates carried as opposed to the Federals, along with help from friendly locals who would warn them of enemy forces, in contrast to the Federals who had to advance blindly and hence slowly, gave the Confederates a great advantage, one they would use throughout the rest of the campaign. On May 18, a Sunday when, as a habit, Jackson did not like to fight and indeed made sure there were religious services held, the troops were on the road north from Mount Solon. Major-General Banks, unsure of Jackson’s next move, prepared himself as best he could to react. On May 20 Jackson’s troops reached New Market where he suddenly turned and crossed Massanutten Mountain to Luray, which sat in the eastern part of the Valley in a smaller area called Luray Valley. Then the troops headed north again, and were joined by reinforcements under Richard Ewell that brought the total Confederate forces up to 16,000 men with 48 cannon. Jackson’s plan was now to pass north of Banks’ force and cut his line of retreat, forcing a fight and capturing the entire Union Army. Banks wasn’t waiting, however. Still unsure of Jackson’s plans, he began heading north along the Valley Pike on May 21, as Jackson’s men continued toward Front Royal. On May 23 in the late afternoon Jackson’s men arrived at Front Royal, defended by a small group of some 800 men under Marylander Colonel John Kenly, and captured many of them. “The enemy were found drawn up in line of battle in a strong position on the opposite side of the Shenandoah River,” Worsham recalled. “Jackson personally formed a line of skirmishers, gave them the command to move forward, and pushed them and some advance cavalry toward the Federals. The Yanks, finding things getting so hot, set fire to two bridges. Our cavalry and skirmishers immediately charged them and saved the damaged bridges. Our men crossed over and were right in the midst of the enemy, Jackson along with them. The enemy made a bold stand and fought well, but they could not withstand Jackson’s mode of warfare and retreated to a farm orchard and buildings. Here

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A lithograph of one of the battles for Winchester, VA. Winchester was among the most contested towns in the South and suffered innumerable skirmishes, as well as three major battles, of which Jackson’s of May 1862 was only the first. A Confederate corps under Richard Ewell drove out a Federal garrison with heavy loss in June 1863, while in September 1864 Phil Sheridan and 40,000 Federals attacked and defeated 12,000 Confederates under Jubal Early.

they made a gallant stand. Yet our two regiments of cavalry from Ewell’s command came up, formed under Jackson’s eye, and charged the protected enemy The cavalry swept everything before them, and soon the entire enemy force was killed and captured.” Jackson’s troops had also captured a Union supply train, two locomotives, and $300,000 worth of stores in the brief action. But Jackson wasn’t stopping there. He next sent cavalry to Newton, northwest of them, to block the Valley Pike, while more cavalry with supporting artillery were sent to Middletown to stop Banks from trying to retreat to the south to join Frémont’s beaten forces. One regiment was left at Front Royal in case Banks made an attempt to head east and join McDowell’s force near Manassas, while Jackson’s main force headed north toward Winchester. Banks, in the meantime, began burning stores and heading north down the Valley Pike toward Winchester. His retreating force was shadowed by Ashby’s cavalry and artillery Battery commander William Poague fired his guns into wagon trains that were abandoned as their teamsters fled. “Occasionally they checked us a bit but they would soon be on the run,” he recalled. Jackson himself described the turnpike, under Confederate fire, as “a most appalling spectacle of carnage and destruction. The road was literally obstructed with the mingled and confused mass of struggling and dying horses and riders.” At night on the 24th Banks telegraphed Washington, “I was satisfied by the affair at Front Royal yesterday that I could not hold Strasburg with my force against Jackson’s and Ewell’s armies, who I believed intended immediate attack. Though I might have saved my command, it would have been impossible to secure the vast stores and extensive trains accumulated there, and, learning from a variety of sources entitled to the belief that Ewell intended to put his force between Strasbourg and Winchester to cut off

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The Battle of First Winchester, May 25. Banks thought he was safe occupying Winchester on the 24th, but was attacked the following day by Jackson with Ewell in support on his right. After taking the high ground to the southwest of Winchester, Jackson’s men charged and routed the Federal line which retreated in haste north toward Harper’s Ferry. Jackson’s losses were 68 killed with 326 wounded or missing.

retreat and prevent reenforcements, I concluded that the safest course for my command was to anticipate the enemy in the occupation of Winchester. My advance entered this town at 5 this evening, with all our trains and stores in safety.” Jackson’s men were right behind, reaching the town around dawn on the 25th. Again, Jackson didn’t wait to attack. He immediately ordered the Stonewall Brigade to take the hill to the southwest that overlooked the town, which they did easily enough, only to find themselves under fire from artillery above them on the central heights. The Confederates fell back toward the woodline. The Rockbridge Artillery came up and fired in counter-battery fire, suffering greatly in the process. Jackson turned to Richard Taylor, pointed to the enemy position and said, “You must carry it.” Taylor reconnoitered as his brigade deployed into line and sent them forward. A Michigan cavalry regiment assaulted the left of this line, but the 8th Louisiana refused its left with two companies which fired a single volley that drove the attackers off. Then, “Closing the many gaps made by the fierce fire, [that] steadied the [men] rather by it, and preserving an alignment that would have been creditable on parade, the brigade, with cadenced step and eyes on the foe, swept grandly over copse and ledge and fence, to crown the heights from which the enemy had melted away,” Taylor recalled.

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With this Jackson ordered the entire line forward. “At the order to charge our whole line leaped forward with a terrifying Confederate yell, rushed onto and over the stone wall,” wrote Wood of the 37th Virginia. “The loss of the fleeing enemy was heavy. The simultaneous attack by Ewell on the right caused the entire Federal line to give way and the Confederates swept forward in such force and swiftness, dealing such havoc to the Federals, that they were thrown into confusion, panic and rout, and utterly unable to offer resistance to our onward sweep. The pursuit was continued for some miles until forced from exhaustion to halt. Many prisoners were captured and the artillery, small arms and military stores captured were very large. The volume of this captured gave to Banks the sobriquet of ‘Jackson’s commissary’ The following day pursuit was resumed by way of Charleston to Harper’s Ferry. Here the Federals made their escape across the Potomac into Maryland.” Federals Escape Winchester As the victorious Confederates pressed on, some Federals stopped to set fire to warehouses in Winchester before fleeing. Civilians, who had been hiding for safety in their houses during the battle, started coming out of their houses to help extinguish the flames as well as cheer their men through the streets. Ted Barclay wrote home that “before leaving town the enemy set fire to Market Street and burnt down one or two houses; they were endeavoring to fire the whole town but they were so closely pushed they could not.” Banks managed to get most of his forces north to Williamsport, Maryland, on the north bank of the Potomac River, the last time he would see the Shenandoah. Jackson’s men followed north to Harper’s Ferry. This was, however, not a safe place to be. Even as Johnston wrote to suggest “If you can threaten Baltimore and Washington, do so,” Jackson was alert to his danger. Banks was being reinforced, while Shields, on the eastern side of the Valley, was again advancing on Front Royal. In the meantime Frémont from the west had recovered from his beating at McDowell and was aiming towards Wardensville. In all, some 50,000 to 60,000 Union troops were in a position, if united, to trap Jackson’s small force. Through a driving rain on May 30 Jackson pulled back to Winchester, arriving there throughout the night. The next day, to the amazement of Winchester’s civilians, the Confederate forces abandoned the city once again, heading south to Strasburg. There they learned that Shields had captured Front Royal, while Frémont had passed Wardensville and was moving to unite with Shields. Jackson drove his men south. “On this strenuous march our strength and endurance were put to a severe test,” Wood wrote. The Rebel Yell Men on both sides noted the famed “rebel yell” Southern troops usually engaged in during battle. This was unique to Southern forces, a high-pitched shriek, that reassured attacking Confederates while raising some alarm among their enemies. Federal troops often shouted, usually under orders, something that came out like “hurrah” or “huzza.” The rebel yell was quite different It came naturally, not by design, first making its appearance at the Battle of First Manassas. One Confederate private wrote after a fight in 1864, “I always said if I ever went into a charge, I wouldn’t holler! But the very first time I fired off my gun I hollered as loud as 1 could, and I hollered every breath till we stopped.” The yell itself was apparently a combination of yips and shrieks; a high-pitched scream that Confederate generals soon learned to encourage and take advantage of. During fighting in May 1864 Jubal Early came up to a unit and shouted, “Well, men, we must charge them once more and then we’ll be through.” “General, we are all out of ammunition,” a reply came from the ranks. “Damn it, holler them across,” he replied. And that is exactly what they did.

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On June 8 Jackson sent Ewell’s brigade to Cross Keys to halt Frémont’s move to join Shields, while he sent the rest of his troops to Port Republic where Shields was headed. Ewell’s men at Cross Keys were well posted, on a ridge that protected their flanks with open fields in front of them. One regiment was sent out as a skirmish line. Frémont’s men attacked, pushing back the Confederate skirmishers, against the Confederate right. The troops there waited until the Federals were rather close, then got off three quick and deadly volleys. The Federals fell back. After some lull in the battle, where most firing was by artillery, the Federals again moved against a battery which limbered up and got away in time. Confederate reinforcements under Richard Taylor arrived and, in the afternoon, the whole line advanced, “by which Frémont was driven back with loss of prisoners,” Taylor reported. “We did not persist far, as Shields’s force was near us,” he added. Veterans in Port Republic could tell from the sounds of gunfire that the Federals had been defeated there. Shields might have reinforced Frémont at Cross Keys, but the spring rains had turned the Shenandoah River into a deep, raging affair, and Jackson had burned all the bridges north and south except at Port Republic, making it a most important objective. He made a feeble attack on it while fighting was going on at Cross Keys, but was easily driven back. According to William Poague, “Our firing that day along with other batteries upon Shields’ columns of infantry as they marched up from the river road to Port Republic was unusually accurate and destructive. Without a shot from Jackson’s infantry, Shields’ brigade were broken up by artillery alone and driven back down the river in considerable confusion.” That night, leaving only a handful of infantry to guard against Frémont’s possible return to battle, Jackson brought his men back to Port Republic to deal with Shields. Jackson now used the Port Republic bridge to turn on Shields, leading his assault with the Stonewall Brigade, with the Louisiana Brigade under Taylor sent against the Federal left. “The opposing force” defending the Lewis farm, wrote James Wood, “with marked gallantry resisted this attack, and being now reinforced, repulsed the Confederates. Our brigade was hurried to their assistance, but before we reached that part of the field Jackson himself, as was then said, rode into the thick of the battle and called to his men that the Stonewall brigade never retreats.” Taylor’s men arrived and went into action, capturing a battery in their front, which changed hands several times until finally held by the Confederates who turned it on their retreating enemy. The Federal gunners fought extremely well, using rammers against bayonets, but could not hold against such an aggressive assault. Ewell himself helped serve a gun. “Thus pressed in front and flank, the Federals gave way and broke into a precipitous rout,” Wood remembered. “Many prisoners were taken and the remaining force pursued by the infantry, until exhaustion put an end to further pursuit by them, but was taken up by the cavalry.” Losses were great, Taylor wrote of the field: “I have never seen so many dead and wounded in the same limited space.” But the fighting in the Valley was over. On June 12 Jackson headed back down the Valley and the fighting in the 1862 Valley Campaign was done. As Kyd Douglas was to sum up: “The battle of McDowell was fought on the 8th of May, the battle of Port Republic on the 9th of June. In this one month Jackson and his little army became immortal in military history. In that time he had defeated four separate armies. He relieved Staunton of Milroy and Schenck, had driven Banks beyond the borders of Virginia, had held McDowell with 35,000 troops from going to join McClellan, had defeated Banks, Fremont, and Shields in turn, had broken into pieces their triple combination, and had driven the Federal Administration in Washington to the verge of nervous prostration. In 30 days his army had marched nearly 400 miles [640 km], skirmishing almost daily, fought five battles, defeated four armies, two of which were completely routed, captured about 20 pieces of artillery, some 4,000 prisoners, and immense quantity of stores…and had done all this with a loss of less than one thousand killed, wounded, and missing.”

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The Virginian battlegrounds of Cross Keys and Port Republic at which Jackson’s army faced two Federal columns marching south. Cross Keys was fought on June 8, mainly by a brigade under Ewell which held Frémont’s advance west of the South Fork of the Shenandoah. The following day the bulk of Ewell’s force crossed the South Fork and reinforced Jackson’s main body near Port Republic. These reinforcements were enough to flank the second Federal column under Shields. Confederate losses were just over 800.

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Union field gun batteries in emplacements around Fair Oaks, VA, during McClellan’s failed bid to take Richmond from the east. These Federals stood only 5 miles (8 km) from the Confederate capital. Their commander’s timidity would rob them of a victory, which would take another three years of bloodshed to finally achieve.

The Peninsula Campaign

Lincoln’s call for a Union advance in the spring of 1862 led General George B.McClellan to suggest a war-winning campaign for his Army of the Potomac. However, events on the Virginia Peninsula proved McClellan to be anything but a war-winning general. Before Jackson had begun his attempt to take western Virginia in the spring of 1862, much of it had already fallen into Union hands. The Union general who got the credit for this was a well-known soldier, George B.McClellan, who had been an excellent student at West Point, served as an observer in the Crimean War in Russia, and wrote texts on military work. In the late 1850s he had resigned his commission to go into railroads, the hottest new commercial field of the time. When war broke out, however, he was quickly commissioned a brigadier-general of volunteers and, in June and July 1861, led forces into western Virginia. With his successes there—the one bright spot in an otherwise fairly dismal war effort—he was soon called to Washington, D.C., promoted to major-general, and given command of all Union forces. McClellan proved to be a fine organizer, giving some dispirited unit members furloughs, getting new uniforms and equipment, and having the men out drilling all hours. His love of dress parades and full reviews bonded the men together, and after some months he’d built an army that had largely recovered its pride after the defeat at Manassas the previous July. McClellan had some real problems with command, however, which would soon make themselves known. He was terribly vain, with his success and position going to his head to the point where he was often politically unwise. He once ignored President Lincoln during an unexpected visit, going upstairs to bed instead. He was, in a modern phrase, soft on the Southern rebels and slavery, instead being as conservative as they were, although, Northern-born, staying in the U.S. Army. He was slow beyond belief. Apparently not terribly brave personally, he seemed to fear committing his forces to action where they, too, would have to be brave. Finally, he was terrified of an enemy that he consistently overestimated, both in terms of numbers and ability. He surrounded himself with people who acted the same way, such as railroad detective Alan Pinkerton, whom he appointed his chief of intelligence. McClellan insisted Pinkerton gather numbers of enemy units that he would believe in, and these were always higher than his own. Lincoln consistently ordered McClellan to take his army out of their camps around Washington and into action against the waiting Confederates at Richmond. Consistently pleading unreadiness and an unwillingness to make the same errors as McDowell, McClellan refused. The Northern press grew louder in its condemnation of inaction. “I do not believe McClellan’s heart is in the right place,” read one 1862 newspaper editorial. Finally Lincoln ordered an across-theboards advance by all Federal armies on George Washington’s birthday, February 22. Nothing happened as far as McClellan’s army was concerned. The president was almost ready to get rid of McClellan when, some seven and a half months after receiving his

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appointment, the general, known to many as “The Little Napoleon,” came up with his idea of taking Richmond. McClellan’s Grand Plan He would take advantage of Union naval power, loading his army on ships, heading south to the peninsula that jutted southeast from Richmond into the Chesapeake Bay, and then driving up the peninsula to capture the city before the Confederates could react and unite their forces. When it landed, the army would only have to march 50 miles (80 km) to be in Richmond, as opposed to the hundreds of miles it would have to travel overland. It was a good plan. Lincoln, however, was very concerned that stripping Washington’s defenses would leave the city vulnerable to Confederate attack, not understanding wholly the idea that such pressure against the Confederates from the peninsula would not allow them to be riding north, as their center of industry and government would be under such threat. Still, Lincoln demanded that a large force be held back from McClellan’s campaign in order to guard Washington. Moreover, he said that the move must begin by March 18, only 10 days from when he was given the entire plan. With those asides, Lincoln approved McClellan’s scheme, and the Peninsula Campaign was under way. In Virginia, General Joseph E.Johnston, who in January 1862 had been given command of all Confederate forces in the state, did not expect McClellan’s attack to come on “Prince” John B.Magruder’s small force on the peninsula. He was certain it would fall on his army at Manassas. He was not happy at the prospect. Johnston told Jefferson Davis that he had some 42,200 troops, way too few to oppose the newly raised Army of the Potomac that McClellan had been training all winter, and that he would have to fall back south to a defensive line along the Rappahannock River. His main problem was the winter, and the thick, red Virginia mud clogging all the roads that would slow his withdrawal. Davis did not approve of such a move, still insisting on defending every inch of Confederate soil. Nevertheless, Johnston had made up his mind, and started preparing. It would be a major effort. The Commissary Department, for example, had some 3,240,000 lb (1,458 tonnes) of food stockpiled at Manassas, while a governmentrun meat-curing plant had another two million pounds (900 tonnes) of bacon and salted meat only 15 miles (24 km) behind Johnston’s current lines. All this, plus the huge pile of soldiers’ baggage, tents, and heavy guns, would have to be withdrawn or risk being captured. Before that could happen, hearing of a Union advance through Harper’s Ferry, Johnston gave the word to pull back on the weekend of March 8–9. Many heavy guns would be abandoned. The meat-curing plant was burned, and most of its inventory lost. Soldiers were marched past the depots and told to fill up their haversacks and knapsacks with food, some lucky ones finding barrels of whiskey to fill their canteens. Many of the men started carrying barrels of food or liquor back with them, only to find them far too heavy and so had to abandon them on a littered route of march back to Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock. Augustus Dickert of Kershaw’s Brigade recalled: “One stalwart man of my company shouldered a ten gallon keg, and proposed to hold on to it as long as possible, and it is a fact that a few men carried this keg by reliefs all night and the next day. This was the case in other companies. When we got out of the town and on the railroad, the men were completely overloaded.” But McClellan was also on the move. On March 17 his Army of the Potomac began loading onto boats and transports to head down the Potomac River to the tip of the peninsula. Ten days later Johnston received orders to reinforce Magruder’s Confederates on the peninsula, the obvious place for McClellan’s advance. Magruder was to receive what would amount to aid from an unexpected quarter when, on March 31, Lincoln, alarmed by Stonewall Jackson’s offensive in the Valley, which could expose Washington, pulled a division out of McClellan’s army and sent it to join Frémont, telling McClellan that he did so “with great pain,

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As the Union invasion began on April 1, “Prince” John Magruder’s command of just 17,000 Confederates was all that stood between General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac and Richmond. Magruder, however, fooled McClellan into beginning an unnecessary siege around Yorktown. Later in the campaign, on July 1, Magruder was to blight his career at Malvern Hill and was transferred to the western theater. He was to survive the war.

understanding that you would wish it otherwise.” Several days later, Lincoln also detained McDowell’s Corps, due to join the Army of the Potomac on the peninsula, so that it could aid the defense of Washington. Despite having over 105,000 men available to him, McClellan now had his first excuse for failure. The Advance Stops at Yorktown There was great concern in Richmond, nevertheless. The congregation of the Second Baptist Church there both contributed their bell to be cast into a cannon, and bought enough additional bronze to make what

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The strategic position in northern Virginia in early April 1862. With McClellan on the Peninsula, Confederate defenses were pulled completely out of shape and Richmond was in imminent danger of capture. However, the Federals threw their opportunity away, unnecessarily diverting divisions to the defense of Washington while failing to advance on Richmond with sufficient speed. The Confederates for their part played their hand brilliantly. Jackson and Magruder held the flanks while Johnston used the available time to order his own army from its positions on the Rappahannock River.

would be nicknamed the “Second Baptist Church Battery.” On April 4 McClellan began his advance,

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moving slowly toward positions Magruder had prepared near Yorktown. The Confederates had only a small force of some 17,000—Magruder’s Army of the Peninsula—to oppose him. Magruder was not a brilliant soldier, but he was a solid veteran of many years’ service in the U.S. Army, and put on a staunch defense. Moreover, he was not, like McClellan, terrified of overwhelming numbers. His engineers laid out an excellent line of defense across the peninsula, around Yorktown, not far from the old British works of the American Revolution. It took advantage of natural waterworks and the geography, so it would be hard even for a large force to assault. McClellan did not attempt to force Magruder’s line, but instead skirmished at selected points to feel out its weaknesses. In the meantime, Magruder, a theatrical showman at heart, made a spirited display of activity, dashing regiments on trains to his rear, making sure whistles blew continuously, and then reloading them to arrive at his front again and again. He had other regiments march in circles around wooded areas and into open ground within view of Federal scouts to make sure McClellan believed he was being strongly reinforced. As Johnston’s regiments arrived, he continued the charade. McClellan was fooled, and halted his advance. McClellan had been an observer during the British Army’s siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, and knew how to attack defensive works, something that would display activity but still avoid serious loss of life in his army. He had heavy artillery sent up and emplaced for a formal siege, which started on April 5. His army faced a force, however, that never was even half as strong as the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was not happy, telegraphing, “I think you better break the enemies’ line from York-town to Warwick River, at once. They will probably use time, as advantageously as you can.” Several days later he insisted that, “you must act.” Instead of following this good advice, McClellan continued preparations for a siege as Johnston’s men began to arrive and fall into Magruder’s line, giving them, by April 12, 30,000 men against McClellan’s 105,000. Johnston didn’t like the place Magruder had picked to hold the lines. As he later reported to Davis, “its length was too great for our force; that it prevented offensive movements except at great disadvantage, and that it was untenable after the guns of Yorktown were silenced—a result admitted by our officers to be inevitable from the enemy’s great superiority in artillery. York River being thus opened, a large fleet of transports and 500 or 600 bateaux [river boats] would enable him to turn us in a few hours. It seemed to me there were but two objects in remaining on the Peninsula: The possibility of an advance upon us by the enemy, and gaining time in which arms might be received and troops organized. I determined, therefore, to hold the position as long as it could be done without exposing our troops to the fire of the powerful artillery, which I doubted not would be brought to bear upon us. I believed that after silencing our batteries on York River the enemy would attempt to turn us by moving up to West Point by water.” He would never have a chance to discover what McClellan’s plans actually were. When all McClellan’s preparations for a traditional siege were complete, and the guns were ready to open fire, Johnston ordered his men to fall back toward Williamsburg on May 3. By noon the next day all the men were assembled in Williamsburg and marched from there northwest toward Richmond. Magruder’s division got off first, followed by Smith’s division, which headed off the next morning, despite heavy rain and deep mud. In spite of these problems, Smith’s division marched some 18 miles (28 km) to Barhamsville that day, while Magruder’s division reached the Diascund Bridge on the Chickahominy road. Advancing Federal infantry pushed aside the Confederate cavalry rearguard and Johnston sent McLaws back toward Williamsburg with Kershaw’s and Semmes’ brigades to support the cavalry. The battle turned into a stiff little fight, as Longstreet requested part of Hill’s brigade to come up to their aid. Johnston rode to the field in person, later reporting that he found himself “compelled to be a mere spectator, for General Longstreet’s clear head and brave heart left me no apology for interference.” Here, as at most battles of the

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The Battle of Williamsburg, May 5. During the Confederate retreat from Yorktown toward Richmond, McClellan’s forward divisions, led by Hooker, Kearny, and Hancock, fought for possession of Magruder’s abandoned redoubts with a rearguard commanded by Longstreet and D.H.Hill. The Confederates fell back after taking over 1,700 casualties.

Army of Northern Virginia, the Federals failed to put in enough of their men to overwhelm the Confederates. At Williamsburg the Union force equaled some 40,000, opposed by 31,000 Confederates. Total Union casualties were 2,239, with 1,703 Confederate casualties. After turning back the Federals, Longstreet and Hill gave up Williamsburg, marching some 12 miles (19. 3 km) on May 6 to join the rest of the army. The retreat was a tough one. Tally Simpson of the 3rd South Carolina wrote home, “I never saw men suffer so much in all my life. They were half fed & marched almost to death. Some regiments actually received corn on the cob for their rations. You can guess by that how scarce provisions were.” Now Johnston concentrated his forces near Barhamsville, south of Richmond. However, the Commissary Department was having problems getting food to the troops, and this compelled Johnston to fall further back toward Richmond, where transportation would be easier. On the evening of May 9 the army halted with its left near the crossroads on the New Kent Court House Road and its right near the long bridges. There, food could be brought by the York River Railroad. On May 9 the Confederates, outflanked by McClellan’s army, abandoned the Norfolk Navy Yard, burning much-needed supplies and withdrawing the heavilyarmed ironclad CSS Virginia (also known as the Merrimack) toward Richmond. However, her draft was too deep to allow her to reach the city’s port, and on May 11 she was scuttled, a disappointing end to her career. This gave the U.S. Navy an advantage, as their river boats were unable to fight with her and so were prevented from moving close to Richmond’s defenses. President Lincoln, who had been visiting the area himself, joyfully telegraphed the War Department in Washington, “Norfolk in our possession, Merrimack blown up, & Monitor & other boats going up James River to Richmond.”

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Robert E.Lee took command of the campaign on June 1 and subsequently ordered Brigadier-General J.E.B.Stuart’s cavalry to launch a reconnaissance inforce around McClellan’s right flank. Stuart began the operation from Richmond in the early hours of June 12 with 2,500 men and two field guns. He reported back to Lee personally on June 15, having ridden around McClellan’s entire army.

The Monitor on the James River Indeed, five Union Navy boats—including the ironclad USS Monitor, coming up the James River— bombarded Confederate heavy artillery positions at Drewry’s Bluff on May 15. A stand-off of five hours again proved that boats couldn’t sink land fortifications, especially when their guns could not be elevated high enough to do serious harm. However, this worried Johnston, who fell back to the other side of the Chickahominy, some 6–7 miles (9–11 km) below Richmond. From there he could cover a Union advance either up the river, or on the south side, as well as from West Point. Later he felt that that position was not perfect either, and fell back even closer to Richmond itself. McClellan followed slowly, sending a small expedition up the Pamunkey River on May 17, but essentially digging in along the Chickahominy in front of Johnston’s retreating army. Lincoln began to totally lose patience. He wrote McClellan on May 25, “I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defense of Washington.” But Johnston, though equally as slow, nevertheless came up with a plan to attack the Army of the Potomac before McClellan could follow Lincoln’s orders. In Johnston’s eyes McClellan had made a mistake in placing his forces. He had divided his army, putting three corps on the northeast side of the Chickahominy, with the other two corps on the south side. Johnston decided to hit the Union forces in detail, taking out the corps commanded by Erasmus Keyes and S.P. Heintzelman in an attack that would become the Battle of Fair Oaks or Seven Pines.

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Prussian officer Heros von Borcke, serving as a staff officer with J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, described the area chosen for the attack: “The battlefield itself, a broad, wooded plain intersected variously by open spaces and marshes, was unfavorable. The roads were poor beyond description, having been soaked by recent cloudbursts.” Confederate staff work was, as would too often be the case, poor. On May 31 Johnston’s troops did not move in time and it was 13:00 hours before his uncoordinated units attacked. McClellan brought Edwin V.Sumner’s corps— which actually began moving on hearing the firing—across the Chickahominy on bridges that his superior Corps of Engineers devised across the many swamps and creeks in the area, in order to reinforce his isolated corps north of the river. The Confederate attack, although successful in points, failed. G.Moxley Sorrel, then one of Longstreet’s staff officers, felt that “Seven Pines should under all circumstances have been a magnificent victory for us. It was really far from that, and while encouraging the soldiers in fighting and the belief in their ability to beat the enemy, it was [a] waste of life and a great disappointment.” Johnston himself, too often unlucky in battle, recalled, “About seven o’clock I received a slight wound in the right shoulder from a musket-shot, and, a few moments after, was unhorsed by a heavy fragment of shell which struck my breast.” He was removed from the field and command fell to G.W.Smith who, according to staff officer John Haskell, “had a second stroke of paralysis the night after the battle.” Command then went to Richmond-based Robert E.Lee. Lee had spent most of the war working on sea-coast defenses and advising President Davis in Richmond. His one active field command in western Virginia in late summer 1861 had proved a failure, and he was not thought well of by his new command. “He did not come with any prestige of a great victory to recommend him to the troops,” South Carolinian Augustus Dickert wrote, “but his bold face, manly features, distinguished bearing, soon inspired a considerable degree of confidence and esteem, to be soon permanently welded by the glorious victories won from the Chickahominy to the James.” “Granny Lee,” he was called, as well as “The King of Spades” for his insistence that the army dig in across their lines. This would change, however. Lee called off the attack on the afternoon of June 1, as further assaults were as little use as the previous day’s had been. Losses had been high, some 6,134 casualties for the Confederates and 5,031 for the Federals. Instead, Lee used the time that McClellan, surprised and unnerved by the Confederate attack, had inadvertently given him, to get to know his new command, which since April had been officially known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Heavy rains also figured in McClellan’s decision to halt outside Richmond. Lee’s soldiers only knew, however, that they had a chance to rest, clean up, catch up on eating and sleep, and drill again. “On June 3d the army fell back to its works near Richmond, and the usual routine of camp life began, which soldiers so much disliked; but to the above duties were added the additional one of dodging bullets, which was to me very distasteful, to say the least,” recalled Second Lieutenant John Lewis of the 9th Virginia. “For nearly a month the army, then commanded by Gen. Robert E.Lee, enjoyed this life of care and watchfulness. But the time was very near when they would assist in making more history and graves.” As the men rested, Lee, in his first act as army commander, called all his generals together and each reported on the condition of his brigade and the enemy in front of it. Lee himself gave no opinions as to what he would do and, Longstreet later wrote, the generals “found General Lee’s object was to learn of the temper of those of his officers whom he did not know, and of the condition and tone among their troops. He ordered his engineers over the line occupied by the army, to arrange its defensive construction, and to put working parties on all points needing reinforcing.” As to himself, Longstreet reported, “General Lee was seen almost daily riding over his lines, making suggestions to working parties and encouraging their efforts to put sand-bags between their persons and the enemy’s batteries, and they were beginning to appreciate the value of such adjuncts. Above all, they soon began to look eagerly for his daily rides, his

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The Peninsula Campaign from the Yorktown lines to Harrison’s Landing, April to August, 1862. McClellan’s advance from Williamsburg was supported to the north by a division under William B. Franklin which landed from the Pamunkey River on May 7. The Federals were stopped east of Richmond at the Battle of Seven Pines or Fair Oaks on May 31. For the next four weeks the Confederates, now commanded by Robert E. Lee, would drive them south toward the James in a rapid series of engagements, including the Seven Days’.

pleasing yet commanding presence, and the energy he displayed in speeding their labors.” In other words, Lee played the politician, making himself seen by all his new command as an active, hands-on leader, not just on dress reviews, but also in front of the enemy. Lee’s First Decisions Many individual soldiers, however, were not happy about this lull in action. Private J.W.Reid of the 4th South Carolina wrote home on June 15, “All cry and no wool, all talk and no fight. It really seems to me that McClelland [sic] as well as some of our generals had better handle the spade than the sword. Both sides are ditching every day. I think if we had fewer ditches and more Stonewalls it would be better for us, though I’d rather dig ditches than to fight in them. I don’t see the sense of piling up earth to keep us apart. If we don’t get at each other sometime, when will the war end? My plan would be to quit ditching and go fighting.” That was Lee’s plan as well. Lee was, in fact, not the slow-moving general McClellan was, nor the conservative general that Johnston had proven himself to be. Lee always looked for a place and way to strike and hopefully destroy his enemy. This was his thought in front of Richmond. On June 12 he sent troops under Brigadier-General J.E.B.Stuart to reconnoiter the Union right. Staff officer von Borcke wrote,

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After the battle of Williamsburg on May 5 General James Longstreet would see action with his division at Fair Oaks on June 1, Mechanicsville on June 26, and White Oak Swamp on June 30.

“Our command was composed of parts of different regiments of the brigade, and consisted of about 2,500 cavalry and two pieces of horse artillery.” Stuart’s orders stated that if it were unable to return the way it came, then the cavalry was authorized to continue its march clear around the entire Army of the Potomac, returning on the Confederate right. This was indeed what happened. Federal cavalry started after Stuart’s men on their right, blocking the return route, so Stuart headed north, then back east. On the way they captured and destroyed stores, including a Union supply boat, and discovered the enemy’s positions. The end of the first day found the Confederate horsemen 22 miles (35 km) from Richmond near the South Anna River, and by the second day they had reached Old Church, where Stuart had to decide whether to fight his way back the way he had come, or go ahead and ride to the other side of the Union lines. He made what he figured to be his only choice, leading his

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men north. Riding took place day and night and on June 14 the cavalry found itself cut off by a rain-swollen Chickahominy at a bridge that had previously been destroyed. The Confederates worked desperately to repair the bridge as slow-moving Union cavalry followed their trail, finally closing in on them. In the nick of time, Stuart’s men finished the bridge, crossed it, and destroyed it behind them as Union scouts appeared within sight. On June 16 the column, with the loss of one man and an artillery piece, reached Richmond. Stuart had arrived the day before to report his success, and the weak Union positions, to Lee. Lee now decided that Jackson and his men, having cleared the Valley of Federals, could be of more use in the defenses of Richmond itself than in the Shenandoah. On June 17 Jackson’s men began moving out of the Valley toward Richmond, fooling the Union forces by pretending to actually be reinforced there (McClellan telegraphed Lincoln on June 18 that “ten or fifteen thousand men have left Richmond to reinforce Jackson…”). Jackson, apparently exhausted by his Valley campaign, attended a conference at the Dabb’s House north of Richmond with Lee, his immediate subordinates, and President Davis. Lee told a supportive audience that, being unable to withstand McClellan’s force when the Federal attack finally came, the Army of Northern Virginia had to strike quickly to turn McClellan’s line. Lee then left the group to decide what to do. As it turned out, there was general agreement with Lee’s thinking, and June 26—time enough for all of Jackson’s three divisions to be in place—was picked as the day the Confederate attack would be launched. Jackson then left to return west and hurry his men on to Richmond. The Battle of Mechanicsville McClellan was to move first, however, sending Heintzelman’s Corps on the left to skirmish against the Confederate lines on June 25, the same day he telegraphed Washington that Jackson was in the area and, “I incline to think that Jackson will attack my right & rear.” He had indeed anticipated Lee’s plan, and shared his belief with his corps commander on the right, Fitz John Porter. The next day Jackson’s men had yet to arrive, but Lee, certain that he would be in position in time, decided to send A.P.Hill across the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge, evicting Federals from Mechanicsville so that Longstreet and D.H.Hill could advance. Jackson’s men would then strike on the left so the combined force would overwhelm Porter’s corps which was on the northern side of the Chickahominy. According to Lee’s orders, A.P.Hill was not to advance until he saw Jackson’s lead brigade cross the Chickahominy and head towards Mechanicsville. A.P.Hill, always impulsive and often acting without adequate reconnaissance, waited for this to happen. It did not, and he fretted at not hearing of Jackson’s division being in position. Finally, around 03:30 hours, Hill launched his unsupported attack. It fell upon a Union corps that was already in the process of transferring to the other side of the Chickahominy, and therefore offered no great resistance around Mechanicsville. Instead the Federals fell back to positions already prepared on Beaver Dam Creek and Ellerson’s Mill, part of a plan McClellan had created to transfer his base of supply from the York to the James River, where his main base would be set up at Harrison’s Landing. Hill, not stopping for further preparations, hit these new positions with a costly frontal assault thath failed. Indeed, Porter Alexander felt it was doomed to failure, describing the area over which the attack was to take place as lacking “cover in front within musket range, say 400 yards, & the enemy’s line could not be reached by an assaulting force, & his men were quite well sheltered from fire.” In the meantime, Jackson and his men were mysteriously missing. According to Porter Alexander they “went quietly into camp before sundown at Pole Green Church with the noise of the Musketry & artillery at Beaver Dam only 3 miles away ringing in his ears. He had marched only 14 miles over good roads & had no opposition except that a single squadron of Federal cavalry had opposed his crossing of Totopotomoy Creek

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General Ambrose P.Hill launched the Confederate assault at Mechanicsville on June 26, the first major battle of the Seven Days’. Attacking in the afternoon without the expected support from Jackson, Hill and his men nevertheless drove the Federals back to positions at Beaver Dam Creek where, despite repeated charges, the Union army held, forcing Lee to maneuver and renew the attack at Gaines’ Mill the following day.

for a little while & then made their escape without loss. A further advance that afternoon of 3 1/2 miles would have completely cut off the retreat of Fitz John Porter’s whole corps.” Moxley Sorrel agreed, “Had Jackson been in position the enemy would have melted before us.” Despite the failure of attacks on Porter’s second position, the day looked successful to the Confederate high command, in that they had taken Mechanicsville and Porter’s corps had pulled back. Success Went to Stuart’s Head The entire ride J.E.B.Stuart and his cavalry made around McClellan’s slow-reacting army took four days and electrified a Southern population that had begun to despair. As volunteer staff officer Heros

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von Borcke wrote, “Everywhere we were seen, we were greeted with enthusiasm; General Stuart’s name was praised and celebrated in every manner.” It solidified Stuart’s fame, already celebrated from his attack on the New York Fire Zouaves at Manassas, in a single stroke. Unfortunately, as a result it was something he would thereafter try, unsuccessfully, to duplicate. This would prove a fatal weakness during the Gettysburg Campaign the following summer where he attempted to duplicate the peninsula ride, leaving Lee without adequate intelligence of the Union Army. The reverse side of the coin was that in 1862 Stuart’s aggressive maneuver alerted McClellan to his flanks’ weaknesses, and in response he actually started contracting his lines, falling back, before Lee had a chance to attack. This, however, did not make the newspapers, Stuart’s exploits alone being known to the public on either sides of the lines.

That night, Porter abandoned his positions and fell back to Gaines’ Mill, behind Boatswain Swamp, where engineers had prepared another defensive line. Lee was elated at the success he felt his men had obtained, even without Jackson in the fray. He decided to push on, attacking the Porter’s corps at Gaines’ Mill the next morning. Jackson was still missing, inexplicably, and most of the attacks, which were poorly coordinated, failed. Porter Alexander believed, “Had Jackson attacked when he first arrived, or during A.P.Hill’s attack, we would have had an easy victory—comparatively, & would have captured most of Porter’s command.” Jackson’s ordnance officer, William Allen, again blamed “the obstructions offered by the enemy, but still more the want of familiarity with this difficult country. For whatever reason, Jackson’s men did not attack, and instead regiments were thrown in one by one. A member of the 4th Texas recalled seeing evidence of the attacks’ failures before even getting into battle: “We were but three miles [5 km] on our way to it [the front lines] when evidence of its severity presented themselves in the persons of wounded men, these increasing in numbers as we went nearer and nearer to the firing line. When close in rear of A.P.Hill’s command, we not only saw individual stragglers by the score, but regiments of them that were seemingly beyond the control of their officers. Still further on, the signs of battle, and of failure and perhaps defeat, became more numerous, and more than one of the boys expressed the opinion that we had come too late to do any good.” Pickett’s Virginia and Hood’s Texas Brigades did make minor breakthroughs against the Federal positions, but they could not be fully exploited due to the poor staff work which did not have reinforcements available. On the other side of the river, Magruder, with much smaller numbers, kept the Union forces from reinforcing Porter who, nonetheless, succeeded in maintaining his positions. That evening, abandoning a large hospital and many wounded at Gaines’ Mill, Porter withdrew his men across the Chickahominy and rejoined the main Army of the Potomac. Porter had lost some 6,837 men, the Confederates 8,750. Lee finally realized that McClellan was pulling back to reorganize his forces based on the James River, and took June 28 to reorganize his own forces in order to renew assaults in an attempt to destroy the Federal forces. Lee was aware that around Washington a new general, Major-General John Pope, had been brought from the west to organize forces there for an overland drive on Richmond, and he knew that he had to deal with the Army of the Potomac quickly. On the morning of June 29 most Confederates north of the Chickahominy crossed the river and linked up with Magruder’s troops on the south bank, heading after McClellan’s forces. Jackson continued to act strangely lethargic, something Allen blamed on “the necessity of reconstructing the bridge by which he was to cross to the south side of the Chickahominy.” According to Private Alexander Hunter of the 17th Virginia, however, Jackson’s men “crossed the Chickahominy by the pontoons known as New Bridge, which the enemy had built and only half burned,” indicating that it did not take long to restore and cross. The day, however, was also a Sunday, and Jackson had fought early in his career, at Dam No. 5, on a Sunday, something that he felt caused God to withhold his blessing and therefore doom the attacks. The

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One of the charges by A.P. Hill’s division on Union positions at Beaver Dam Creek, June 26. Though the Federals were being pushed back, the absence of Jackson and his men on the field at this critical time made these victories bloodier and more hard-won than they need have been.

Union rearguard fought well, however, and once again uncoordinated attacks failed in succession, allowing the Federals to withdraw, although having to leave another large group of wounded and ill at Savage’s Station on the Richmond and York River Railroad east of Richmond. Lee decided to attack McClellan’s forces from the north over wild, swampy land, striking on June 30 in a battle variously known as White Oak Swamp, Frayser’s Farm, Glendale, Nelson’s Crossroads, Charles City Crossroads, New Market Road, Willis’ Church, and Turkey Bridge. Again, Lee’s attacks were in vain. Longstreet’s men attacked but in another series of uncoordinated assaults could not force the Union troops. Kyd Douglas felt the battle plan was “as brilliant as ever.” But, he went on to say, “Perhaps it took too great chances and expected too much clock-like precision from too many generals. One thing is certain, General Lee was not supported by the action of his subordinates, as his strategy demanded. General Jackson has not escaped criticism, and he does not seem to have been his very self. There were things, it is true, he could not overcome. He was in the saddle continuously and seemed never to let up. Tired out with work he certainly was and so were his troops. But no one who rode with him on the 29th and 30th can recall a moment when he rested.” Private Hunter did not rest either. “No halt at all was allowed, not even to give us time to eat or drink. Toward the afternoon the gait became almost a run, and with scattered ranks we went at a sling trot, almost blinded with the dust, which lay nearly ten inches deep, and had been so trodden and ground down by the wheels of the artillery and the feet of thousands that it was ready now to fly out at the slightest breath of air… Every now and then the men spread out like an opened fan into a field to get fresh, unburdened air… To add to our troubles we were tortured with thirst.”

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Jackson Finally Arrives Regardless, even with this, Jackson’s men did not finally get across the river and join the other Southern forces in strength until around noon on the 30th. Even when they got there he was unable to contribute much. His assignment was to strike in the Federal rear, splitting their force in half and overwhelming the rear part of it. However, Allen recalled, “the admirable cover afforded by the White Oak swamp to the retreating army, and the skillful way in which Franklin [the commander of the Union rearguard] availed himself of it, baffled Jackson, and defeated the execution of this part of Lee’s plan.” However, Allen had to conclude, “It is impossible to deny that General Lee was very poorly served on this occasion by his subordinates.” By nightfall on June 30, McClellan easily withdrew his men to a line of defenses based on Malvern Hill just north of the James River. In reality, a now badly battered McClellan presented no further immediate threat to Richmond, done in as he was by the heavy fighting which shook his always tender feelings. At the same time, Lee failed in his real objective: to destroy the Army of the Potomac. McClellan had safely managed to draw his army back to defensive lines around a supply base that the Confederates could not take. Even so, Lee was up for one more shot. As William Allen later said, Lee always aimed to totally destroy his enemy and until both sides reached Malvern Hill was “baffled by the intricate and marshy country which concealed the enemy’s movements and impaired his own, that he had never been able to do so. Now his army was concentrated, and though greatly exhausted by marching and fighting, was in splendid spirits. The Federal army was making for the James River and the protection of its gunboats. A united and determined attack with his whole force on the enemy before they were out of reach seemed to promise the overthrow in parts, if not in whole, of the Federal army. The attacks seem to us to have been wise, and the expectations based on it not unreasonable.” On July 1 Lee hurled his army forward in a series of attacks—as always uncoordinated and disjointed— against Union artillery—as always well manned and dangerous—lining the slopes of Malvern Hill. The attacks failed with great cost, with Lee’s army suffering 5,500 casualties, one of his worst defeats of the war, and one which allowed McClellan to slip the Confederacy’s grasp and to continue his retreat to Harrison’s Landing on the James. Kyd Douglas thought What Happened to Jackson? Everyone at high levels in the Confederate Army was all too aware of Jackson’s poor performance on the peninsula, certainly surprising after his magnificent Valley Campaign. Why was he so sluggish in the Seven Days’ battles? He never said, and his lack of action, especially after his energetic Valley Campaign, confused all and led to arguments for years thereafter. “We of Gen. Lee’s staff knew at the time that he [Lee] was deeply, bitterly disappointed [in Jackson’s lack of action], but he made no official report of it & glossed all over as much as possible in his own reports,” Porter Alexander wrote. “And I see in Gen. Jackson’s whole conduct during the Seven Days’ a sort of faith that he had God on his side & could trust to Him for victory without overexerting himself & his men.” Major Dabney of Jackson’s staff and an early biographer said that, “This temporary eclipse of Jackson’s genius was probably to be explained by physical causes. The labor of the previous days, the sleeplessness, the wear of gigantic cares with the drenching of the comfortless night, had sunk the elasticity of his will, and the quickness of his invention for the nonce below their wonted tension.” Moxley Sorrel heard this excuse, admitting that “It is possible that he was overdone with work and fatigue, but his men should have been there as planned.” Moreover, he added, “I was with him on the 28th, and he seemed brisk enough.”

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Artillery Colonel John Haskell wrote afterwards, “No excuse has ever been made which can justify him on the 26th of June, 1862, when he lay in comparatively easy striking distance of Beaver Dam Creek. There thousands of our men were killed and wounded in an attack which General Lee made in the confident expectation that Jackson would simultaneously attack in the flank and rear of the enemy. When he did move the next morning, the enemy retreated precipitately without resistance; but until he did make such a move, they could have repulsed General Lee’s whole army indefinitely. Nor can one overlook the fact that, according to General Lee’s report of the next day’s fight (Cold Harbor or Gaines’s Mill, as it is known), Jackson failed to make the attack, as ordered, and Longstreet, who expected to make a heavy demonstration only, changed it to a resolute attack which gained the day. “Many said that Jackson thought it was time for his troops, in view of the heavy service they had done, to have a rest and let others do the principal fighting, and he has been charged repeatedly with being responsible for McClellan’s escape two days after Gaines’s Mill, when he was resting his men and McClellan passed by across a little creek and exposing his flank for hours, only a mile away.” D.H. Hill apparently agreed, noting, “I think that an important factor in this inaction was Jackson’s pity for his own corps, worn out by long and exhausting marches, and reduced in numbers by its numerous sanguinary battles. He thought that the garrison of Richmond ought now to bear the brunt of the fighting.” Kyd Douglas, of Jackson’s staff, defended his chief. “In the first place General Jackson should not have been assigned to that extremely hazardous and pivotal duty that day. He knew nothing about the country—with which every other General of high rank was doubtless familiar—and had not time to take his bearings and learn the topography, so entirely different from that of the Valley—in fact he must have entirely underestimated the difficulties of the country before him… The fact is, he was moving in the dark. Then, too, the Army of the Valley had been marching and fighting since early spring and was worn out, and there was come complaint that their supplies in this movement were not promptly furnished… The General’s Chief of Staff, Major Dabney, an excellent officer in camp, was not equal to this occasion in the field. With no previous training, he had not been in the army more than three months and had no experience to fit him for the demands of his position. While he did his duty faithfully, he could not be of any service to the General in such an emergency; and as for training a staff to its duties, he knew nothing about it. He resigned within two weeks because of ill health… One thing is certain, no one on the march that day with Jackson saw any letup in his unceasing push,” Jackson’s ordnance officer, William Allen, also said the march to his new position, “though vigorously pressed, had been impeded to some extent by the enemy’s scouting parties, but far more by the unknown character of the country, which was all new to him.”

the “battle was fought by detachments against an enemy well-posted and ready for the fight. On the part of the Confederate commanders, it was not a wellfought battle… The troops fought well as ever, gallantly, but they were uselessly sacrificed.” Porter Alexander always maintained that had Lee won there, the war would have been over. “The Confederacy at this moment was about in its prime & had more men available than ever before or after and think of the moral shock to the North of the destruction & capture of McClellan’s entire army & the immense material gain to us in guns, muskets, stores, &c.” Indeed, Lee’s entire Seven Days’ Campaign, while successful in defending Richmond, came at great cost in terms of manpower, something the South could ill afford. Casualties in fighting from June 29 to July 1 alone ran to some 9,477 out of 86,500 engaged, compared to Union casualties for the same days of 8,036 out of 83,000 engaged. There would be no more fighting in the area until 1864, Davis and Lee agreeing that the Confederate forces there were so “battle thinned” that they would be unable to attack McClellan further.

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The battles of the Seven Days’ Campaign and the final Union positions at Harrison’s Landing, also showing the route Stuart’s ride, June 12–15. This Union campaign had the air of strategic brilliance about it and, if managed properly, could have ended the war in 1862. The fact that it began and ended in siege lines reflects the degree to which a lack of imagination and aggression at the highest levels of the Army was hampering the Union war effort in these early years of the war.

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General McClellan’s Excuses McClellan, at the same time, was “battle thinned” himself and would not try to take Richmond again, although his force would present a potential danger until it left the James, abandoning its lines at Harrison’s Landing and taking ship between August 12–14 bound for Alexandria, in response to Lee’s move north toward Manassas. “A simple summary is that this Army has fought every day for a week against superior numbers, holding its own, at least, often repulsing the enemy by day, then retiring at night,” a mentally beaten McClellan telegraphed Washington on July 3. “Our light & heavy guns are saved, with the exception of one; all the wagons are now within the line of pickets—& I hope all will be saved. The Army is thoroughly worn out & requires rest & very heavy reinforcements.” His front line troops, however, do not appear to have felt themselves quite as beaten as McClellan did. Leo Faller of the 36th Pennsylvania wrote home July 12, “You people at Home have not the least Idea of what the soldiers of this Army think of McClellan. Whenever they see him it matters nought what they are doing, whether fighting eating or doing anything else, they jump up and cheer him and cheer as long as he is in sight.” This hardly sounds like a thoroughly beaten army. “We of the Confederate army had victory and the spoils of war to cheer us,” Second Lieutenant Lewis wrote, “but we also had to mourn the loss of many loved officers and comrades. In fact there was few companies in the vast army but what had lost some loved friend.” As far as the Army of Northern Virginia was concerned, the Peninsula Campaign proved that it was hard-fighting. Its men would do what was asked of them on the field, charging positions as at Malvern Hill that they knew would at best be difficult to take. It came away with a feeling of total victory. “Each soldier thought that the great defeat of the army of the Potomac would end the matter,” Lewis said. Even though it did not, the increase in the morale gained by seeing a constant Federal retreat carried them well into the future. There were also negative lessons learned. Too often the fighting men were badly served by sloppy, amateurish staff work starting at the very top. Lee did not give specific and demanding orders, and he did not relieve generals—in particular Jackson—who failed in their part of the operation. As Longstreet was later to write, Lee felt he should have bagged the entire Army of the Potomac “but some of his leaders were working at cross-purposes, and did not have that close attention that the times called for.” Aware of many of these problems, Lee took advantage after the campaign to relieve many of his generals, sending them west to what he considered less important posts. Magruder, who on the whole actually performed well in the Seven Days’, though not as well as Lee wanted, went to command the District of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. He would later distinguish himself by capturing Galveston, Texas on January 1, 1863. Brigadier-General Theophilus Holmes found himself in the Trans-Mississippi Department. Benjamin Huger, a division commander, was censured and investigated by Congress, ending up as an inspector of artillery and ordnance. Jackson, a Southern hero after the Valley Campaign, retained his rank and post.

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On the morning of August 29 the Battle of Second Manassas began as General Pope launched a series of attacks on Jackson’s Corps entrenched along a railway cut in front of Sudley Mountain. The assaults continued off and on for the next two days, becoming so intense that at one point men of Jackson’s old division—by then commanded by BrigadierGeneral William E.Starke— ran out of ammunition and had to throw rocks at the Federals to beat them back.

The Second Manassas Campaign

General John Pope made the Union’s next attempt to take the war to Virginia. In late August 1862, Lee responded by dividing his army, sending Jackson in a march around Pope’s flank and setting the scene for another Confederate victory along Bull Run Creek. On June 27, 1862 Lincoln, despairing that McClellan had the spirit to force his way into Richmond, brought a winning general, MajorGeneral John Pope, from the Mississippi to take command of a new formation called the Army of Virginia. This included troops in the Valley, from the Mountain Department and the Department of the Shenandoah, and the troops in front of Washington, known as the Department of the Rappahannock. In all, Pope had about 45,000 men under his command. He was ordered to move overland toward Richmond to take pressure off the Army of the Potomac on the Virginia peninsula. Pope later said he wasn’t happy with the assignment, realizing that it “naturally occasioned dissatisfaction among a number of officers of high rank and no doubt a good deal of severe comment was indulged on.” Frémont, now assigned to serve under an officer junior in rank to him, asked to be, and was, relieved. The other generals remained and largely performed to Pope’s satisfaction. McClellan, however, was furious, feeling that he was being abandoned by Washington and seeing his grasp of fame—and a future presidential bid—slip away. Pope promptly went about using his pen to get himself into hot water. He issued an order, from his “headquarters in the saddle” (which prompted wags on both side of the lines to wonder about a “general who doesn’t know his The Confederate Way of Marching The marching during the Manassas Campaign of 1862 was marred by a great deal of straggling, at first the sick, and then bare-footed men, of whom one correspondent estimated there were some 20,000, As many as one-third of Jackson’s regiments lacked shoes, while others had shoes held together by strips of rawhide laced around them. Jackson didn’t make any serious efforts to keep the men in ranks, allowing each man to march along at his own pace. Staff officer W.W.Blackford was sent with dispatches to Jackson, and he described the way his men marched, “The men were given plenty of room to march rapidly and regularly at the paces which suited them best, without wearing out by the fatiguing and vexatious alternations of halts and double-quicks so frequent on marches. It was like each man was walking the distance alone, stopping to rest a moment or drink, within certain wide limits. The pace, kept up for twelve hours, averaged three miles per hour, The spirit of the men, their unbounded confidence in their leader, and their perfect faith in the success of the expedition, whatever that might be, was abundantly evidenced by their talk on the march. The feeling seemed to be a dread with each one that he would give out and not be there to see the fun. Towards the latter part of the day the troops began to

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show the effects of the severe labor, and of the heat to which they were exposed. Many fainted, and great numbers became footsore, and some, taking off their shoes, limped along barefooted carrying them in their hands. The rear guards exercised a great deal of discretion and allowed the disabled to lag behind, enjoining upon them to make up for it after night, which they promised to do, and no doubt did. Still the bulk of the command reached its destination in time to accomplish the purpose Jackson desired.” Many of the men also fell out to find food in the cornfields and orchards that lined their line of march, As of yet, both corn and apples were green and the men had no time to prepare them safety, nor even salt, so they ate them raw. The result was that many of Jackson’s men suffered from violent attacks of diarrhea that further depleted his ranks.

headquarters from his hindquarters”), that was a direct slap at the Union army in Virginia. He announced that he had “come to you from the west where we have always seen the backs of our enemies.” He told the proud eastern troops that they had been too timid and in the future they should stop worrying about “taking strong positions,” or their “lines of retreat,” or guarding their “bases of supplies.” This order alienated him to a large degree from his own troops. Then at the end of July he went about really irritating Lee by ordering Union troops to “subsist upon the country,” by taking foodstuffs from Virginia farmers in exchange for vouchers that would be paid off at the end of the war, provided the holder could prove he had been a loyal citizen since the voucher was issued. He announced that civilians would be held responsible for damage done by Confederate guerrillas to Union supply trains, straggling soldiers, roads, bridges, or telegraph lines within a 5-mile (8-km) radius of their homes. They would be forced to repair any damage and assessed for such depredations. “If a soldier or legitimate follower of the army be fired upon from any house the house shall be razed to the ground, and the inhabitants sent prisoners to the headquarters of this army,” Pope ordered. “Any persons detected in such outrages, either during the act or at any time afterward, shall be shot, without awaiting civil process.” Civilians could also be executed if they remained inside Union lines with their property and refused to take the oath of allegiance and leave. Any individual so sent out of the lines who returned would be executed as a spy. By this point in the war, soldiers still conducted themselves on a “civilized” basis, although what Pope ordered eventually became standard practice. As a result, however, Lee was perhaps more anxious to rid Virginia of Pope and his army than he ever had been or would be again. Lee’s own spies gave Pope’s forces as some 35,000 men. This was 10,000 fewer than its actual number, so he was not wholly aware of what he faced to his north. On July 27 he wrote Jackson, back in command of the Valley District, “I want Pope to be suppressed. The course indicated in his orders if the newspapers report them correctly cannot be permitted and will lead to retaliation on our part. You had better notify him the first opportunity. The order of [General Adolph von] Steinwehr must be disavowed or you must hold the first captains from his army [who had been captured] for retaliation. They will not be exchanged.” Lee and Jackson had time to make preparations. Pope’s new command was spread out from the Shenandoah Valley to the Rappahannock River and he first had to concentrate its various components. On July 14, he ordered Banks to push through Culpeper Court House to Gordonsville where he could destroy the railroad lines and bridges for 10–15 miles (16–24 km) around. On July 29 Pope himself left Washington to join his new command, while the following day McClellan received orders to start moving sick and wounded back to Washington with an idea that his entire army would abandon the peninsula to join Pope’s advance. Indeed, on August 3, McClellan finally received the orders he dreaded: to move north to Aquia Landing near Fredericksburg both to help threaten Confederates opposing Pope and to defend Washington. McClellan protestedloudly, saying it would be much better for his army to stay where it was. But Lincoln insisted, seeing no advantage in such a passive role for so many troops. He also brought up General

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The road toward Henry Hill on the National Battlefield site at Manassas. During the Second Manassas, Henry Hill stood behind the Union left flank and, by the end of August 30, became the focus of the Federals’ desperate attempts to hold their line against the attack of Longstreet’s Corps.

Ambrose E. Burnside from North Carolina, where he had been so successful making captures along the coast, to Aquia, giving him command of IX Corps. On August 9 Banks’ 8,000 troops ran into Jackson’s force which was posted south of Culpeper, north of the Rapidan River, awaiting a chance to strike the Federals. But Banks struck first, in the battle variously known as Cedar Mountain, Slaughter Mountain, Cedar Run, Cedar Run Mountain, and Southwest Mountain. Jackson attacked the moment he realized that Banks was in his front, but his attacks were pressed without sufficient reconnaissance. His left flank ran through dense woods where his troops were surprised by heavy enemy fire. The famed Stonewall Brigade actually broke and ran. The two divisions he had attacked with were driven back, and finally A.P. Hill’s Division came up and counterattacked on the Union left. “Our whole line now advanced,” Worsham wrote, “the enemy were in full retreat. We could plainly see Ewell with a part of his division on Slaughter Mountain, way off to the right of our line, advancing too.” With this addition of fresh troops, Banks’ men fled in some disorder as night fell, preventing a Confederate pursuit. Neither side had fought a very good battle, and the main outcome for the Confederates was to learn that Pope was moving aggressively south. Moreover, they learned that McClellan had been ordered north and now could be a threat as well. Banks had lost some 2,381 men, while Jackson had some 16,800 engaged in all and lost 1,341 as casualties. “Compared with the battles of Richmond this whole affair was a skirmish,” Virginia artillery officer Ham Chamberlayne wrote home afterwards. “Several of Jackson’s Regiments behaved very badly, yielding to a mere panic. The Irish [1st Virginia] Battalion broke disgracefully & could not be rallied, to the untold humiliation of its officers; I, among many others tried my best to rally them but our efforts were for the most part unavailing. The 18th [Virginia] Regt. too wh. is praised in the papers, even left its arms on the field.” On July 11 Jackson fell back to Gordonsville, while Lee began moving the Army of Northern Virginia, no longer fearful of McClellan’s force, to concentrate with him there on August 13. By August 16 all of the Army of the Potomac had evacuated the peninsula, and was heading toward Aquia Landing and Alexandria, right across the Potomac from Washington. Pope, anticipating these reinforcements, fell back on August 18 to the north bank of the Rappahannock to await them. In the meantime, Confederates kept up the pressure

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on him, skirmishing with his forces at spots along the Rappahannock, at Raccoon, Freeman’s, Beverly, and Kelly’s Ford, Brandy and Rappahannock Stations, and Stevensburg. The Capture of Pope’s Headquarters Stuart, now actually in command of all the Army of Northern Virginia cavalry, having been so commissioned August 17, struck Pope’s supply train at Catlett’s Station on August 22. There he captured all of Pope’s personal baggage, including his dress coat and papers. “The capture of Pope’s headquarters had given us possession of all his papers and among them the morning reports of his army up to the day before, by which we learned as much about his force as he knew himself, there was the report of the ‘present for duty’ of every command he had,” Stuart’s engineer officer, W.W.Blackford recalled. “We also secured his army treasure chest which I afterwards discovered contained $500,000 in greenbacks [U.S. government currency] and $20,000 in gold. From Pope’s private baggage a full dress uniform coat and hat was taken to General Stuart as a trophy, in compensation for his loss at Verdiersville [a skirmish on August 18 during which he lost his hat], The General sent them to a friend in Richmond, who placed them on exhibition in the window of a bookstore on the Main Street with a card labeled ‘Headquarters in the saddle’ and ‘the rear taking care of itself.’ It attracted much attention from the crowds of amused spectators, as an evidence of the puncture of the inflated and brutal man who had given so much uneasiness to noncombatants, and who by now was so easily circumvented when brought in contact with their defenders.” On August 26 another cavalry leader, Fitzhugh Lee, captured the vital supply railroad depot at Manassas Junction, seizing several hundred prisoners and mountains of supplies of all sorts. Jackson’s infantry was not far behind, having moved off on the morning of August 25, haversacks filled with three days’ rations and, as usual with Jackson, leaving behind knapsacks and extra equipment in wagons that remained in the rear. The march, one of the war’s great ones, was a 50-mile (80-km) flank march around Pope’s right, driving towards Manassas Junction in the rear of Pope’s line on the Rappahannock. The men were said to have been in the best of spirits, coming straight from their believed victories in the Seven Days’ and on the road north again. With Ewell’s division in the lead, followed by A.P.Hill’s division and William B. Taliaferro, as senior brigade commander of Jackson’s old division, they pushed through the Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run mountains and reached Bristoe Station by the end of the 26th. Bristoe Station was important to both sides as it was Pope’s only rail link to his important supply depot at Manassas Junction to the north. There were only a handful of guards at Bristoe Station, and the Confederates rapidly overwhelmed them. That evening Jackson ordered a brigade commanded by Isaac Trimble to continue on to Manassas Junction. Trimble’s men, supported by Stuart’s cavalry, ran into a thin line of defenders there. This group they quickly overwhelmed, capturing some 300 infantrymen, 2 artillery batteries, and 200 African-American workers, as well as the stores held there. Word went back to Jackson, who then ordered the rest of his forces to follow Trimble. August 27 saw the bulk of Jackson’s Corps arrive at Manassas Junction where they had what was probably the greatest feast they would have in four years of war. “Now here were vast storehouses filled with everything to eat, and sutlers’ stores filled with all the delicacies,” Worsham remembered, “potted ham, lobster, tongue, candy, cakes, nuts, oranges, lemons, pickles, catsup, mustard, etc. It makes an old soldier’s mouth water now to think of the good things captured Fighting Ranges Confederates in this campaign mention specific ranges at which they began firing on their opponents, and for weapons that were accurate up to 500 yards (457 m) and could kill at 900 yards (822 m), they are

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surprisingly short, John Worsham, 21st Virginia, said the first wave of Federals was 100 yards (91 m) away when the Confederates opened fire. John Dooley, 1st Virginia, said they waited until the advancing Federals were 50–80 yards (45–73 m) away before firing their first volley. Evidence is that at Groveton, where the Confederates had some refuge behind wooden fences, firing between two stationary lines was as close as 70 yards (64 m).

The beginning of the Second Manassas Campaign, August 25–26. While Pope remained on the defensive, Lee took the advantage, divided his army and, with Jackson’s march around the northern flank, moved to cut Pope’s lines with Washington. The capture of Manassas Junction on August 26 forced Pope into a battle on ground of Lee’s choosing, while drawing his attention away from Longstreet’s Corps, which did not hold the Rappahannock line but advanced on Pope’s left.

there. In the early part of the day a guard was placed over everything. Rations were issued to the men, not by weight and measure to each man. A package or two of each article was given to each company. The first thing brought to F Company was a barrel of cakes; next came a bag of hams. We secured a camp kettle, made a fire, and put on a ham to boil. We had hardly gotten it underway before a barrel of sugar and coffee (the Yanks had it mixed) and a bag of beans were sent to us. After a consultation we decided to empty the ham out of the kettle, as we could take that along raw. In its place we put the beans on the fire, as they were something we were fond of and had not had for a long time. About the time the beans commenced to get warm, a bag of potatoes was brought to us. Over the kettle goes, and the potatoes take the place of the beans. As

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potatoes cook in a short time, we now think our kettle is all right. But here comes a packages of desiccated vegetables [a type of “instant” vegetables the Union army issued that came compressed in blocks and was then placed into water to expand, heat, and eat]. The kettle is again emptied and the vegetables are placed on the fire, as soup is so good. We were also given a barrel of syrup. This was a liberal and varied fare for our company, which was small then.” Pope Moves Back to Manassas Pope now was fully aware that Jackson was on the move and abandoned his outflanked lines on the Rappahannock, pulling his troops back to concentrate at Manassas. He was confused as to what the Confederates were actually doing. He was unaware that Longstreet’s Corps, accompanied by Lee and the army headquarters, was also on the march from the Rappahannock. The Federals did not have accurate information about Jackson’s position, and were feeling their way blindly. A New Jersey brigade advanced to within 300 yards (274 m) of the Confederate position before its officers noticed that Confederates were moving to cut off their line of retreat. William Poague, then a battery commander under Jackson, recalled this strange event: “While we were all sprawled out on the grass, resting and sleeping, a Yankee infantry brigade under a General Taylor marched up along the railroad from Bull Run, passed the artillery without firing a shot, although within a hundred yards of us, but did not quite reach the station before they were discovered by our infantry and by then driven back across Bull Run. I did not fully understand the situation at first and did not open fire on them until they had passed in their attack upon the Junction. The artillery peppered them with canister in their retreat and followed them to Bull Run. ‘Old Jack’ [Jackson] kept along with our guns and repeatedly waved his handkerchief calling on them to surrender. But they did not hear him, nor did they stop to fire on us. The whole brigade ought to have been bagged, but managed to get away without serious loss.” Private Edward Moore, a cannoneer whose Rockbridge Artillery was part of the attempt to capture this New Jersey brigade, recalled seeing an individual Union soldier aim at Jackson and then hearing the bullet as it whistled by him. Jackson’s life was to be spared one more time. A second Union brigade came up to support Taylor’s command, but was soon driven off by Hill’s me. aided by the Stonewall Brigade. Both Union brigades, having lost 500 men, retreated north toward Alexandria. The Confederates then burned the railroad bridge over Bull Run. Jackson, knowing Taylor’s advance would only be the vanguard of a much larger force aimed directly at him, withdrew from Manassas Junction rather than be cut off there. If he were to move south, he would be separated by Pope from Longstreet’s up-coming corps, so he instead headed north, his forces using three separate routes, to strong positions along the Warrenton Turnpike west of the old Manassas battlefield of the previous year. Pope was aware that his position along the Rappahannock, to the south of Manassas Junction, was unsafe with large bodies of Confederates moving about in his rear, as Jackson had essentially turned his right flank. On August 28 Pope ordered his troops to withdraw north of Manassas Junction and Bull Run and concentrate at Centreville, both to preserve his army and with the hope of destroying Jackson’s force while it was still isolated from the rest of the ANV, though he was unaware that Jackson had moved off already. His main line of defense would be between Warrenton (east of Bristoe Station) and Gainesville. Pope’s men had some of the same problems Jackson’s had had before they captured Manassas Junction. Many were hungry, rations not having reached them in some days. They had been marching back and forth for some time, and now were exhausted. Pope’s men straggled as badly as Jackson’s.

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The remains of the Stone Bridge across Bull Run Creek, early 1862. The Warrenton Turnpike snakes off southwest through the battlefield toward Gainesville. The ground climbs gently toward Henry House Hill on the left. This one-track river crossing would be the line of retreat for two Union armies in the space of 13 months.

Before leaving Manassas Junction, the Confederates were given free range to loot whatever they wanted, and ordered to burn the rest. Even the officers loaded up. Chamberlayne wrote home, “Twas a curious sight to see our ragged & famished men helping themselves to every imaginable article of luxury of necessity whether of clothing, food or what not; for my part I got a tooth brush, a box of candles, a quantity of lobster salad, a barrel of coffee & other things.” Private Casler of the 33rd Virginia, always on the lookout for plunder, went through box cars until he found one loaded with medical supplies. “We soon commenced tearing them to pieces, throwing the medicine around in every direction in search of bottles. I squeezed into a car among a number of others and got a box opened and found eight bottles of brandy in it. I then told a comrade at the car door that as I got them I would pass the bottles to him and he should hide them away and we would divide.” Just then the regimental surgeon arrived, pleading for the men to take care of chloroform and morphine, things especially scarce in the South. “But we paid no heed to their entreaties, telling them that we had no use for medicines.” The surgeon went back to get provost marshal troops to secure the car but before they came out, Casler had gotten away with four bottles, one of which broke on the escape. He gave two to his captain for use in his company, and stuffed the last one in his haversack. Private Moore saw infantry at an overturned wagon with, “a barrel of molasses with the head knocked out. Surging around it was a swarm of men with canteens, tin cups, and frying-pans—anything that would hold molasses. As each vessel was filled by a dip into the barrel it was held aloft, to prevent its being knocked from the owner’s grasp as he made his way out through the struggling mass; and woe to him that was hatless! as the stream that trickled from above, over head and clothes, left him in a sorry plight.” The one thing Jackson’s men could have used was new shoes. While there were some there, they were quickly taken by the first to arrive, and they were too few to really solve Jackson’s footwear problems. Union uniforms, save for caps and sky-blue trousers and overcoats, were not acceptable for field wear, because of the problem of battlefield confusion between enemies clad the same way.

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The situation on the afternoon of August 30. Jackson’s divisions had held out for over a day against repeated Union attacks on the railway cut, but Pope had lost touch with the situation on his left. Longstreet’s Corps had begun to arrive on the afternoon of the 29th, when Hood’s division first made contact with the Federals around Groveton. Pope chose to ignore the implications of this and ordered another full-scale assault on Jackson’s right.

When Pope’s troops arrived at Manassas on the 28th, they found only the ruins of looted railroad cars. Scouts reported Jackson to be then at Centreville, so Pope ordered them to press on after Jackson. On the same day, one division, led by Major-General Rufus King, ran into Jackson’s men in their concealed lines along the Warrenton Turnpike near Groveton in a fight also known as Brawner’s Farm. Jackson decided to strike the unaware Federals who were marching on in such a way that it was obvious they were unaware of a nearby enemy. Jackson opened the fight with a barrage from artillery. The first brigade of King’s division, later to be known as the Iron Brigade, deployed into line, and a Union battery was brought up. Jackson sent a full division forward, supported by two brigades of a neighboring division at the Federals, who stood their ground, firing volley after volley. For two hours, at distances as close as 70 yards (112 m), the two sides blasted each other. “My brigade was behind an old fence, and would lie down, load and fire, and it seemed that every one who would raise up was shot,” Private Casler of the Stonewall Brigade recalled. The Fight at Groveton The fight at Groveton was as fierce a one as ever was fought during the war. It baptized one of the Army of the Potomac’s best-known units, the Iron Brigade, made up of troops from the mid-west, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. The brigade lost a third of its men in this, its first fight. Casualties on both sides

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were heavy; the Stonewall Brigade, which went into the fight with only 635 effectives, lost a third of its men, including three regimental commanders. Stonewall division commander William Taliaferro was shot in the foot, arm, and neck, while Richard Ewell left his leg on the field, many feeling he was never the same man afterward. The Confederates, who ended the battle holding the ground, later pulled back. Pope was convinced that he had Jackson on the run and ordered all his units to advance after what he believed to be retreating Confederates. He called for McClellan’s troops to join him. Meanwhile, General Henry Halleck, who had been made Union general-in-chief on July 11, telegraphed one of McClellan’s corps commanders on August 28 that “it was understood that you were to move with your corps to-day towards Manassas Junction, to drive the enemy from the railroad. I have just learned that the General [McClellan] has not yet returned to Alexandria. If you have not received his orders, act on this.” McClellan, however, came up with dozens of excuses why this was impossible. He had no cavalry. Franklin’s corps artillery lacked horses. He couldn’t provide ammunition to Pope’s guns because he said that he didn’t know their caliber, despite the fact that all Union field artillery came in only two different 10inch and a single 12-pounder size. Instead McClellan continually suggested to the War Department that Pope should fall back to his position, at the same time having Burnside evacuate Falmouth and Aquia. In the late afternoon of August 28 he telegraphed Halleck: “Pope must cut through to-day, or adopt the plan I suggested;” that is, to retreat to join McClellan’s forces around Washington. Beyond that, on the 29th he telegraphed Lincoln that there were only two things to do, either “concentrate all our available forces to open communications with Pope; second to leave Pope to get out of his scrape and at once use all our means to make the Capitol perfectly safe. No middle course will answer.” It was clear that he favored the second move. But Pope actually wasn’t in such bad shape as McClellan painted him. Jackson was exposed, although on the afternoon of the 28th Longstreet’s Corps brushed aside Union troops and pushed toward the Thoroughfare Gap, just to the west of Jackson’s position. There he sent a line of skirmishers straight ahead, while sending Hood’s Texans around the flank. When the Federals saw Confederates take a commanding position, they fell back and allowed Longstreet’s men to get through the Gap. On August 29, Pope’s forces struck Jackson, who was well entrenched along an unfinished railroad cut near Sudley Springs north of Groveton and the Warrenton Turnpike. Worsham described his unit’s position: “In our front was a narrow neck of open land about 300 yards wide. On the west the woods ran along this field about 300 yards to a point where the field joined a larger field. A short distance around the angle of the wood was the hill which we occupied early in the morning. Jackson now had several batteries of artillery on it. On the east the woods ran along the field for 600 yards to a point where the field joined a large field. This large field ran east and west; at its far side was the Warrenton pike. About 200 yards in our front was a part of the abandoned railroad, running across the open neck from the woods on the east to near those of the west. The eastern end of the railroad was in a valley (where there was a fill for about 100 yards), then extended to a hill through which a cut ran out on the level ground just before it reached the west wood. The reader will notice now that in front of the railroad there was a short strip of woods on the west side and a long strip on the east. Our skirmishers were stationed at the railroad. We were ordered to lie down in line, guns in hand, and directed to rush for the railroad as soon as the order forward was given.” The six Union attacks on Jackson’s front on the Confederate left were fierce, but the Confederates held on, often by the thinnest of margins. “Many Confederates, getting out of ammunition, pick up great stones, and throw them into the faces of the foe with deadly effect,” recalled Washington Artillery adjutant William Owen. “After a short halt,” Worsham wrote, “the announcement, ‘Here they come!’ was heard. A line of battle marched out of the far end of the east woods into the field, halted, dressed the line, and moved forward. We allowed them to come within about 100 yards of us before we opened fire. We could see them

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Porter’s Union division attacked Jackson’s right on the afternoon of the 30th. Neither Porter nor Pope were aware of the strength of Longstreet’s position on their left. Longstreet responded to the Federal attack by ordering forward his gun batteries, which immediately opened up a devastating enfilade along Porter’s lines.

stagger, halt, stand a short time, then break and run. At this time another line made its appearance, coming from the same point. It came a little nearer. They too broke and ran. Still another line came nearer, broke and ran. The whole field seemed full of Yankees, and some of them advanced nearly to the railroad.” Pope, who believed that Fitz John Porter’s corps of the Army of the Potomac was only two and a half miles (4 km) from Warrenton, ordered him on August 27 to, “come forward with your whole corps” to join in the attack. Again on August 29 he sent orders for Porter to “move upon Centreville at the first dawn of day with your whole command, leaving your trains to follow…” Pope’s orders continued. At 16:30 hours on the 29th he wrote Porter, “Your line of march brings you on the enemy’s right flank. I desire you to push forward into action at once on the enemy’s flank, and, if possible, on his rear, keeping your right in communication with General Reynolds. The enemy is massed in the woods in front of us, but can be shelled out as soon as you engage their flank.” Porter, a personal friend of McClellan, did not move. He obviously had a deep animosity against Pope, writing to a friend on July 17, “I regret to see that General Pope has not improved since his youth and has now written himself down as the military world has long known, an ass. His address to his troops will make him ridiculous in the eyes of military men abroad as well as at home.” His claim after the battle was that he was aware of Longstreet’s presence on the Confederate right, and felt such attacks would fail. On August 28 he wrote Burnside back at Falmouth that “All that talk about bagging Jackson, etc was bosh. That enormous Gap (Manassas) was left open and the enemy jumped through, and the story of McDowell having cut off Longstreet had no foundation. The enemy have destroyed all our bridges, burnt trains, etc., and made this army rush back to look after its line of communication and find our base of subsistence… There is a report that Jackson is at Centreville, which you can believe or not. The enemy destroyed an immense amount of property at Manassas—cars and supplies. I expect the next thing will be a raid on our rear by way of Warrenton by Longstreet, who was cut-off.”

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At about 16:00 hours, Longstreet ordered his infantry divisions forward. Only now did Pope realize the fix he was in. Trying to rescue a situation that had been building for over a day, he rushed brigades and divisions south to form a defensive line in front of Henry Hill. This line saved his army, and under cover of night, Pope disengaged and retreated east over Bull Run toward Washington.

Pope picked Porter as an easy target to explain his failure. McClellan was still just too popular to go after, especially within the ranks of the Army of the Potomac. In his support, Lincoln’s administration approved of Pope’s course of action, sending a message to the Union army that Democratic politics would not be tolerated. Porter would later be court-martialed and never hold a Union command again in this war. Indeed, Longstreet did march to the front rather than being cut off by McDowell’s force to the west, arriving on the field on Jackson’s right, undiscovered by the Federals, at about noon on the 29th. There he was met by Lee, who, he said, “was inclined to engage as soon as practicable, but did not order.” Longstreet, instead of dashing forward, spent an hour personally reconnoitering the lines, then convinced Lee to reconnoiter the lines that evening to see if a spot for an attack would show itself. The reports from the scouts, received about midnight, were against making an attack there yet. Pope continued to send piecemeal attacks against Jackson, but each attack was beaten off with heavy casualties. John Dooley, 1st Virginia, saw the final Federal assault of August 29: “On they come over dead and dying right at the copse of woods. The order is given, ‘Charge!’, and at a double quick the foremost lines charge against the woods. They are scarcely 50 or 80 yds. distant when a volume of smoke almost obscures the woods from our sight and volley after volley thunders against those ill fated columns. In vain does line after line advance at a run. Torn and bleeding they are hurled back, scattered, routed in confusion over the plain (blue with their slain.) In vain do their officers dash in the midst of this storm of shell and bullets. The fugitives will not be rallied, but, broken and dismayed, are pursued by our victorious troops until darkness closes around.”

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The Second Bunting issue flag of early 1862. This battle flag featured 13 stars and was bordered on its fly, lower, and upper sides with yellow or orange material. The infantry version was 51 square inches (328 square cm). The Second Bunting flag was in use with ANV regiments for some six months before the arrival of the widely adopted Third Bunting issue.

Pope Renews his Attack By nightfall, when the last attack had taken place, the Confederate line was in the same place it had started that morning. That night Pope decided to turn Jackson’s right, not aware that Longstreet was in the way. The next morning, August 30, he moved forward, but Longstreet was ready. The heavy-set general watched a Federal attack, “piling up against Jackson’s right, centre, and left…” The Federals, he saw, were, “in almost direct line from the point at which I stood, and in enfilade fire. It was evident that they could not stand fifteen minutes under the fire of batteries planted at that point… I called on my nearest batteries. Ready, anticipating call, they sprang to their places and drive at speed, saw the opportunity before it could be pointed out, and went into action. The first fire was by Chapman’s battery, followed in rolling practice by Boyce’s and Reilly’s. Almost immediately the wounded began to drop off from Porter’s ranks. The number seemed to increase with every shot; the masses began to waver, swinging back and forth, showing signs of discomfiture along the left and left center. In ten or fifteen minutes it crumbled into disorder and turned towards the rear.” Then Longstreet ordered his infantry up, advancing on a line more than 1 mile (1.6 km) wide, capturing Bald Hill and attacking Henry House Hill from where they could cut off Pope’s line of retreat. Stubborn, reinforced Union troops held on to Henry House Hill, however, and Longstreet’s men were unable to take it. On the left, Jackson repulsed more of Pope’s attacks. By nightfall, as rain began to come down, it became

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too dark for troops to move without danger of facing friendly fire. The fighting was over and Pope knew he had been beaten. It had been a close-run thing. Lee came closer to totally destroying a Union army than he had before or ever would again. It had been his best-fought single campaign. Although it cost relatively little in the way of lives, it was an exhausting campaign and some of the Army of Northern Virginia never became engaged in it. R.H.Anderson’s division arrived on the field when everything was almost over, and the troops of D.H.Hill and Lafayette McLaws never got there at all. Again, however, the Federal army had been beaten but not destroyed. Its line of retreat to Centreville was open, Union troops covering their line of retreat by the turnpike and bridge at Young’s Branch. They fell back in good order, with losses of 16,064 compared to 9,197 Confederate casualties. Reinforcements arrived in the way of Porter’s and Franklin’s Corps of the Army of the Potomac the next day, too late to be of any real service. On Sunday August 31 the Union forces gathered on the northern side of the Bull Run near Centreville, where it was finally reinforced by two Army of the Potomac corps. It was too late to do much. Lee considered trying to turn the Union right and sent Stuart’s cavalry to scout the position; at the same time Jackson followed up, catching a Union rearguard in the rain just west of Chantilly. On September 1 Jackson struck, hitting two Union corps. The Federal troops withstood Jackson’s attacks, although at the loss of their two corps commanders, Philip Kearny and Isaac I.Stevens. Kearny in particular, an old professional soldier who had served in the French Army and lost an arm in the Mexican War, was much mourned, the Confederates sending his body through the lines for proper burial with reverence on its discovery. The Federals then continued their retreat toward Washington. Although Lee kept up his pressure to the line of forts that surrounded the city, the fortifications there were too strong to take and he knew it. The Union army had escaped once again, although Richmond was saved and much of Virginia retaken. A Judgment on Victory Indeed, the campaign revitalized Jackson’s reputation. He had attacked, impulsively and without adequate reconnaissance at Cedar Mountain to be sure, but had also acted according to Lee’s wishes and prevented a large force under Pope from uniting with McClellan and taking Richmond. His rapid marching and sure grasp of where to go next were as much in evidence here as anywhere; however, his lethargy in battle again was evident, especially when he failed to overwhelm King’s division at Groveton. The Confederate army had succeeded by means of rapid marching, with Longstreet reaching Jackson’s side before Pope was aware of it. Indeed, Longstreet never acted better, as usual with care in reconnoitering his positions before taking action, but once in action, acting decisively. His assault on the Union left was remarkably quick and accurate, although it cost some 4,000 men, which was more than Jackson had lost in three days of fighting. The cavalry had acted well at fighting at Thoroughfare Gap and on the flanks during fighting at Manassas, even capturing papers that revealed Pope’s orders and plans, although in fact, they were of little actual use (see below). In addition, the artillery under S.D.Lee had served with massed guns at the Second Manassas to give the Federals a bit of their own medicine from positions on Malvern Hill. Lee had made use of the best qualities of some of the army’s senior commanders: Jackson, in his ability to move rapidly and without Union discovery; Longstreet, who would get into a position from which he could not be budged; and Stuart, who would ride circles around any Union force in the field. Junior generals, in particular A.P.Hill, Richard Ewell, Jubal Early, and Montgomery Corse, produced outstanding performances and would win promotions based in large part on their actions here. Yet, it must be admitted that the Federals lost the campaign as much as the Confederates won it. Discord between McClellan and his supporters and Pope meant that Union movements were not coordinated and there was no spirit of support

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between the commanding generals. In fact, many orders that may have had a real bearing on success during the campaign were simply ignored. Union cavalry, which should have had a major impact on the campaign, was badly used, sent out in penny packets as the odd scout but mostly employed as headquarters’ guards and messengers. They did not confound Stuart’s men. On the whole, the campaign left the Union forces disorganized and squabbling among one another, while Lee’s command was united, in fine spirits, and looking at an open way north if they chose to take it. As Lee summed up the campaign, “The great advantage of the advance of the army is the withdrawal of the enemy from our territory, & and the hurling back upon their capital their two great armies from the banks of the James & Rappahannock Rivers.” Such a move could well lead to victory. The Confederacy was never to be in such an overall successful position again. The campaign also saw the real emergence of Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia in its final shape. This was his first campaign in command from the beginning, whereas he had inherited the situation and his army just before the Seven Days’ and had not made his full imprint upon it. The generals who lost his favor during that earlier campaign were gone. He had organized the army into the corps he wanted and appointed the generals he thought best to command them. The true character of these men had been made apparent, as Jackson was dashing and daring, quick to take the initiative, while Longstreet was slower but steady and dependable. In this campaign, and no other, would these qualities complement each other. This campaign was novel, too, in that Lee fought it for territory, rather than the destruction of an enemy army. Therefore, he was content to let the enemy come to him, and was totally successful in so doing. Indeed, he allowed the whole picture to unfold, rather than leap at a rash action, something he was otherwise prone to do. And yet his behavoir was not totally risk-free. His decision to unleash Jackson on the flank was a gamble, although tempered with his knowledge that he retained constant contact with Jackson’s Corps and that Longstreet was coming right behind. On the other hand, the downside of the campaign was the loss of some 9,000 men at Manassas and Chantilly, with almost as many missing. These were losses Lee could illafford. The Army of Northern Virginia had been bled to the point where an offensive move against an Army of the Potomac as numerous as that force would be a real gamble.

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Once again a beaten Union army takes to the Warrenton Turnpike in full retreat. Manassas had witnessed another Confederate victory, but Lee’s strategy, though brilliantly effective, proved costly in the men it lost— Virginia could ill afford to men the Army of Northern lose if the war was to be taken north.

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Generals Lee and D.H.Hill at the center of the Confederate line north of Sharpsburg, September 17. Hill’s men would see some of the hardest fighting anywhere on the field as they defended Bloody Lane.

The 1862 Maryland Campaign

Lee made the decision to invade the North in September 1862. The campaign was not two weeks old before overambitious plans and a lost set of orders forced a tired and outnumbered Army of Northern Virginia to fight for its very existence along Antietam Creek. Within days of Lee’s triumph at the Second Manassas on August 30, he had worked out a way to capitalize on his success. He would take the Army of Northern Virginia north, through Maryland, picking up supplies and recruits on the way, into Pennsylvania. This would have the result of encouraging pro-Southern Marylanders, while attracting the Union forces away from Virginia. Farmers in the state would have time to work their fields free from marauding soldiers, while Lee’s army made Northern farmers take some of the brunt of the war. Indeed, food was now a major concern, whether he stayed in Virginia waiting to react to another Union blow against Richmond, which was sure to come, or if he moved north to subsist off the land there. Moreover, once on Northern soil, he could maneuver on open ground, something his army excelled at, rather than be held to defensive lines. There was also another consideration, and that was political. If Union forces were defeated decisively on Northern soil, European powers, especially Britain and France, could well be persuaded to recognize the South’s independence. With that kind of international recognition as its base, the South might well be able to negotiate a peace. It was a gamble that Lee felt was worth taking. On September 4 he started his force of some 55,000 across the Potomac River at White’s Ford just above Leesburg, Virginia. The army was not in the best of shape. Its staff functions, especially commissary, ordnance, and quartermaster, had just about fallen apart during the quickly moving campaign to Manassas. Weapons lost by Federals lay uncollected on the various fields, while Confederate soldiers had but meager rations and little fresh clothing. The soldiers had done some hard fighting in the peninsula and then dashed right up to the Second Manassas. The shoe situation affected its numbers and straggling was not markedly better by early September. Casler of the 33rd Virginia admitted later, “After this severe campaign and the battles of Manassas I found myself completely used up. I had slept but little for six days and nights, and was suffering with sore feet and hemorrhoids. I had been worrying night and day with my Lieutenant, who died, and could go no further. I, therefore, reported to our surgeon, as the army started on the march again, and he sent me to the field hospital near the battle ground.” Casler didn’t like what he saw there, and decided just to go on home instead, which he did, not returning to his regiment until it returned from the Maryland Campaign at the end of September. And Casler wasn’t the only one doing this sort of thing. In fact, many never came back, especially troops from western North Carolina, where loyalty to the Confederacy was lukewarm at best.

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The Condition of the Men On top of that, the weather was dry and hot for the 12 days before the Battle of Sharpsburg, making roads hard and dusty, tough to march over for ill-shod men. As E.Porter Alexander recalled, “The different divisions were still only associated, not formed, into corps, and in the matter of shoes, clothing, and food the army was, upon the whole, probably worse off during this brief campaign than it had ever been before or ever was again. About one-half of the small-arms were still the old smooth-bore muskets of short range, and our rifled cannon ammunition was always inferior in quality. The lack of shoes was deplorable, and barefooted men with bleeding feet were no uncommon sight. Of clothing, our supply was so poor that it seemed no wonder the Marylanders held aloof from our shabby ranks. For rations, we were indebted mostly to the fields of roasting ears, and to the apple orchards. Such diet does not compare with bacon and hardtack for long marches, and, before the campaign was over, the straggling from all causes assumed great proportions. Brigades were often reduced nearly to the size of regiments, and regiments to the size of companies.”

As the battle opened on the morning of September 17, the Dunker Church became the focus of Union attacks on Lee’s left as divisions of Williams’ Corps attempted to push the Confederates out of the West Woods and cut the Hagerstown Turnpike. They were met initially by Texans of Hood’s division.

One Maryland woman, Mary B.Mitchell, later recalled, “I saw the troops march past us every summer for four years, and I know something of the appearance of a marching army, both Union and Southern. There are always stragglers, of course, but never before or after did I see anything comparable to the demoralized state of the Confederates at this time. Never were want and exhaustion more visibly put before my eyes, and that they could march or fight at all seemed incredible.” Lee’s ranks were way lower in the field than they were on paper, the lowest, indeed, that they ever were to be. On the Northern side, Pope was relieved of his command and the Union forces around Washington (including the Army of Virginia) once again placed under McClellan’s control as the Army of the Potomac. Acting very rapidly (for McClellan), he had gotten the veterans and newly arriving units organized and within four days had them on the road heading west after Lee. McClellan was aware, however, that he did not have

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the full confidence of Lincoln and his government and that he was a candidate of last resort for this command. Were he to fail now, there would be no third chance. Bands played “The Girl I Left Behind Me” as Confederate soldiers splashed across the Potomac River into the state of Maryland. There they struck up “Maryland, my Maryland” in honor of the thousands of recruits they surely expected. On September 8 Lee issued a proclamation to Marylanders assuring them that citizens need not fear any intimidation from the victorious Confederate Army Instead, he welcomed recruits to join the army and announced that his men were there to help restore Maryland to her proper place among her fellow Southern states. However, the western part of the state, which they entered, was not a strong pro-slavery area, unlike the eastern areas such as Baltimore, Prince George’s, and Montgomery Counties. Its citizens were not terribly proConfederate. The Lincoln administration had gathered up many of the more ardent pro-Southern sympathizers and imprisoned them, leaving only those with lukewarm belief in the cause. Moreover, the Army of Northern Virginia, as shabbily dressed as it was, did not inspire confidence. Citizens reported smelling the victorious, but soapless, Confederates before they saw them. Compared to the well-equipped Northern ranks, among whom barefooted soldiers were virtually unknown, the Confederates did not present a picture of a force one wanted to join. Very few Marylanders joined Lee’s army, much to the disappointment of the Southern high command. Moreover, many farmers hid their crops, declining to take the worthless Southern paper money for which Confederate commissary officers Lee’s Thinking On September 3 Robert E.Lee wrote Jefferson Davis: “The present seems to be the most propitious time since the commencement of the war for the Confederate Army to enter Maryland. The two grand armies of the United States that have been operating in Virginia, though now united, are much weakened and demoralized, Their new levies, of which I understand sixty thousand men have already been posted in Washington, are not yet organized, and will take some time to prepare for the field. If it is ever desired to give material aid to Maryland and afford her an opportunity of throwing off the oppression to which she is now subject, this would seem the most favorable. After the enemy had disappeared from the vicinity of Fairfax Court House and taken the road to Alexandria & Washington, I did not think it would be advantageous to follow him farther. I had no intention of attacking him in his fortifications, and am not prepared to invest them. If I possessed the necessary munitions, I should be unable to supply provisions for the troops. I therefore determined while threatening the approaches to Washington, to draw the troops into Loudoun [County], where forage and some provisions can be obtained, menace their possession of the Shenandoah Valley, and if found practicable, to cross into Maryland. “The purpose, If discovered, will have the effect of carrying the enemy north of the Potomac, and if prevented, will not result in much evil. The army is not property equipped for an invasion of an enemy’s territory. It lacks much of the material of war, is feeble in transportation, the animals being much reduced, and the men are poorly provided with clothes, and in thousands of instances are destitute of shoes. Still we cannot afford to be idle, and though much weaker than our opponents in men and military equipments, must endeavor to harass, if we cannot destroy them, I am aware that the movement is attended with much risk, yet I do not consider success impossible, and shall endeavor to guard it from loss, As long as the army of the enemy are employed on this frontier I have no fears for the safety of Richmond.” The following day, he added: “Since my last communications to you with reference to the movements I propose to make with this army, I am more fully persuaded of the benefits that will result from an expedition into Maryland, and I shall proceed to make the movement at once, unless you should signify your disapprobation. The only two subjects that give me any uneasiness are my supplies of ammunition

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and subsistence. Of the former, I have enough for present use, and must await results before deciding to what point 1 will have additional supplies forwarded. “Of subsistence, I am taking measures to obtain all that this region will afford, but to be able to collect supplies to advantage in Maryland, I think it important to have the services of some one known to the people and acquainted with the resources of the country, “I wish therefore that if ex-Governor [Enoch L] Lowe can make it convenient, he would come to me at once, as I have already requested by telegram. As I contemplate entering a part of the State with which Governor Lowe is well acquainted, I think he could be of much service to me in many ways, “Should the results of the expedition justify it, I propose to enter Pennsylvania, unless you should deem it unadvisable upon political or other grounds.”

offered to pay for provisions and goods. Lee saw quickly that it was of little value to spend much time in Maryland, and decided to press on to Pennsylvania. There, at least, were a number of shoe factories, and he could get that muchneeded item for his men. Moreover, scouts brought word that McClellan’s force was coming his way and moving more rapidly than he expected. By this time Lee and his immediate subordinates were suffering physical injuries, something that always makes the mind unfocused on the task at hand. On August 31, Lee’s horse reared up as he was standing next to it holding the reins in his hands. The reins twisted and badly wrenched Lee’s hands and he was unable to hold reins to ride for days afterwards. On September 6 Jackson, mounting a “strong-sinewed, powerful” horse presented to him by a Marylander, was thrown as the horse reared. He was stunned in the fall and in pain for at least a day. Longstreet’s heel was chafed by a boot, and did not heal, leaving him to wear a “wobbly carpet slipper” during the campaign. None of these were lifethreatening injuries, to be sure, but they had to take the generals’ minds off their business, at least in part. Lee decided to concentrate his army west of the mountains near Hagerstown where he could advance up the Cumberland Valley that sweeps northeastward from the Shenandoah Valley to Pennsylvania. Using that route, he could swing east toward Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, destroying the Pennsylvania Railroad bridge there. From that post, too, he would live off the land while threatening New York to the north, Baltimore to the east, and Washington to the south. First, however, he needed to handle a threat that would be in his rear, the Union garrison at Harper’s Ferry, at the point where Maryland and Virginia came together at the base of the Shenandoah Valley. Another Union garrison at Martinsburg would also threaten his rear when he was in Pennsylvania and would also have to be eliminated. Lee Divides the Army Relying on McClellan’s habitual slowness, Lee took the bold move of dividing his army into four parts. Longstreet and D.H.Hill would cross South Mountain toward Hagerstown and Boonsboro. Jackson would concentrate his troops on Harper’s Ferry and capture it. Major-General Lafayette McLaws would move from the northeast to a post overlooking Harper’s Ferry and assist Jackson, also capturing any retreating Federals from the garrison. Walker would also come from the east to join the force around Harper’s Ferry. Finally, Stuart’s cavalry would screen these movements east of South Mountain from McClellan’s prying eyes. No infantry were left to defend the gaps through South Mountain, so confident was Lee that McClellan would not move through them any time soon. By September 12, Harper’s Ferry and Martinsburg would be in Southern hands, and the Army of Northern Virginia could begin its rapid march up the Cumberland Valley into Pennsylvania. The specifics of this move were spelled out in his army’s Special Orders 191, a copy of which went out to each commander involved in the plan. What followed is one of those strange events, totally unforeseen, that change courses of empires. D.H.Hill had been under Jackson’s command until only

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Over 2 miles (3 km) south of the fighting for the West Woods, General Ambrose E. Burnside attempted to turn the Confederate right by an assault across Antietam Creek, at what was then known as the Rohrbach Bridge. The fighting here was completely unnecessary as there were fords within easy reach, but the heroism of Burnside’s men that day would ensure that ever after, the crossing would be known as the Burnside Bridge.

a few days before. Lee’s adjutant general sent a copy of the order directly to Hill. However, Jackson’s adjutant general, still thinking of Hill’s command as subordinate, also copied the orders for Hill. Hill kept this copy of the order and the other was improperly disposed of. In fact, it was wrapped around three cigars, which were lost as the command broke camp in Frederick and moved out. On September 13 McClellan’s army entered Frederick, and the packet of cigars was opened. The Union soldiers who found them immediately recognized the importance of the wrapping paper, as did their company officers, and it was passed quickly up the chain of command to McClellan’s headquarters. There an officer who had known Lee’s adjutant general in the prewar army recognized the signature as authentic. McClellan now had in his hands his enemy’s full plans about a risky separation. If he dashed through the South Mountain gaps and got in position between Longstreet’s force near Hagerstown and the Confederates in Harper’s Ferry, he could destroy them in detail. Quickly he gave the orders to move, though it was still the following morning, September 14, before his heavier columns got underway, and quickly Stuart’s scouts reported that the blue columns were moving faster than they’d ever seen them move. By chance, a proSouthern civilian in Frederick was at McClellan’s headquarters the afternoon of September 13 and learned that the Federals had the orders. He got word of this misfortune immediately to Lee. Reacting quickly, Lee ordered all available forces to defend the line along the passes through South Mountain, the watershed between the Middletown and Cumberland Valleys. The road from Frederick to Hagerstown, on which McClellan was advancing, goes through Middletown and over South Mountain at Turner’s Gap. The old road to Sharpsburg turns east from the main road and passes through Fox’s Gap, 1

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mile (1.6 km) south of Turner’s Gap. A final pass is Crampton’s Gap, some 4 miles (6 km) south of Fox’s Gap, through which another road from Middletown passes. D.H.Hill was first on the scene, covering Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps. Longstreet was soon on the march to join him. McLaws detached some of his troops from Maryland Heights to Crampton’s Gap. On September 14 Major-General Ambrose Burnside, in command of the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, struck Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps, while Major-General William Franklin’s left wing struck Crampton’s Gap. The Confederates fought bravely, but were badly outnumbered. Colonel Cullen Battle, commanding the 3rd Alabama, sent forward a company to hold an important position along the Confederate line. “The firing now became general. In and around the house, the struggle was terrific. The gorge had become another Thermopylae, and [company commander Captain E.S.] Ready was its Leonidas. The pass had been held long enough for the other regiments to escape—but Ready and his men were among the ‘Killed, Wounded, or Captured.’ “The fight went on, nearer, deadlier than before. A ball struck me on my sword-belt buckle, and knocked me down. A soldier bent over me and the following brief conversation passed between us: ‘Colonel, have they shot you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Where did they hit you?’ ‘Shot through the body’ ‘You are not going to die, are you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, Colonel, you have got one consultation; blamed if you haven’t had a good time in your life.’ The good brave man assisted me to my feet, and in ten minutes I was in command again.” By nightfall Southern forces had been forced back at Crampton’s Gap and were only just hanging on at the northern gaps. That night, their job of protecting Lee’s rear done, the Confederates retreated. Private John Dooley recalled, “About 11 p.m. the remnant of our little army began its retreat in silence, so silently that according to their own account the enemy knew nothing of it until the next morning (the 15th) when even our rear guard was out of danger. All talk in a low tone of voice and the movement of their canteens as they knock against their legs and hips are the only sounds to be distinguished. Our turn [the turn of the 1st Virginia] comes soon and we, probably about two hundred, move quietly and wearily along. We had been marching and fighting all day and must now march and probably fight all night, Captain Norton’s company is reduced to two members, an officer and a private; that is, himself and myself.” The Union army was free to pass directly on toward Lee’s strung-out forces. Consolidation and Retreat That night Lee also decided to call off the attack on Harper’s Ferry and concentrate on saving his army. Any thought of further invasion had gone out the window. He decided to return to Virginia through Sharpsburg, a small town on the Potomac, and at 20:00 hours ordered Jackson to “take position at Shepherdstown” to cover the crossing into Virginia, while McLaws was to abandon his position and get back to Virginia using any ford available but the one at Shepherdstown, which the main army would be using. Jackson, however, replied that Harper’s Ferry was just about to fall. If Lee could hold on for another day, Harper’s Ferry would be in Confederate hands, then the army could reunite at Sharpsburg where the ground was good for defense, and McClellan could be beaten as he had been outside Richmond. The army would have its back to the Potomac, it was true, but the Shepherdstown Ford there would allow an escape if disaster struck. If not, this could be a decisive fight on Maryland, rather than Virginia, soil that would still redeem the campaign. Lee countermanded his previous orders at 23:15 hours to allow the attack against Harper’s Ferry to continue while Longstreet was to march to Sharpsburg that night. Harper’s Ferry, surrounded on all sides by towering hills, was not easily defended. The 12,000-man garrison there, commanded by Colonel D.S.Miles, knew it had little chance once Confederate guns opened

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The Sharpsburg battlefield at about 09:00 hours. McClellan’s army advanced from Keedysville on the 16th and by the end of the day Hooker was putting in probing attacks on the Confederate far right. These continued at dawn on the 17th but by 09:00 hours they had been repulsed. McClellan continued his push on this wing of Lee’s army by attacking through the East Woods toward Dunker Church. Meanwhile, at the other end of Lee’s extended 4-mile (6-km) front, Burnside was getting into position to attack the Confederate right across Antietam Creek.

up on them at daybreak on September 15. While some Union cavalry rode out through a gap in Confederate lines and got away, the bulk of his troops surrendered at 08:00 hours, though not until Miles himself was killed in the last moments of the siege. Jackson notified Lee of the victory immediately, and ordered A.P.Hill to dispose of prisoners and captured supplies with his division, and then turned the rest of his men toward Sharpsburg. As Jackson started, Longstreet’s men began to fall into line around the gentle rolling hills just above Sharpsburg itself. Knowing Jackson was on his way, and the speed with which he pushed his men compared to the speed with which McClellan moved, Lee decided to make a fight at Sharpsburg. It was quite likely his worst decision of the war; he had little to gain in reality and there was a very good chance he would be defeated decisively,

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leaving the door so wide open to Richmond that even a general of McClellan’s abilities could not be prevented from entering it. Even in the unlikely event that he decisively defeated McClellan, he had too few troops and too few supplies to capitalize on the victory. As E.Porter Alexander later wrote, “It had been easily within Lee’s power, all day on the 15th, to cross the river into Virginia, without loss, and to reunite his scattered divisions and collect his multitude of stragglers behind the Potomac. The more that one studies the situation, the more amazed he must be at the audacity which deliberately sought a pitched battle in the open field, without a yard of earthworks, against a better-equipped army of double his force, and with a river close behind him, to be crossed by a single ford, peculiarly bad and exposed, in case he had to retreat. A defeat would certainly involve the utter destruction of his army.” In other words, “Briefly, Lee took a great risk for no chance of gain except the killing of some thousands of his enemy with the loss of, perhaps, two-thirds as many of his own men. That was a losing game for the Confederacy.” The Battlefield Longstreet described the field on which Lee picked to fight: “The Antietam, hardly worthy of the name river, is a sluggish stream coming down from Pennsylvania heights in a flow a little west of south ‘til it nears the Potomac, where it bends westward to its confluence. It is spanned by four stone bridges, at the Williamsport turnpike, the Boonsborough-Sharpsburg turnpike, the Rohrersville turnpike, and another near its mouth. From the north suburbs of Sharpsburg the Hagerstown turnpike leads north a little west two miles, when it turns east of north to the vanishing point of operations. A mile and a half from Sharpsburg on the west of this road is the Dunker chapel, near the southern border of a woodland, which spreads northward half a mile, then a quarter or mile westward. East of the pike were open fields of corn and fruit, with occasional woodlands of ten or twenty acres, as far as the stream, where some heavier forests cumbered the river banks. General Lee’s line stood on the Sharpsburg Heights, his right a mile southeast of the village, the line extending parallel with the Hagerstown turnpike, three miles from his right, the left curved backward towards the rear, and towards the great eastern bend of the Potomac, near which were the cavalry and horse artillery. Along the broken line were occasional ridges of limestone cropping out in such shape as to give partial cover to infantry lying under them. Single batteries were posted along the line, or under the crest of the heights, and the battalions of the Washington Artillery, Cutts’s, and S.D.Lee’s [artillery].” Besides the bridges there were a number of fords, such as Pry’s Mill Ford, a half mile (800 m) south of the upper Bridge, at Snaveley’s Ford, almost 1 mile (1.6 km) south of the Lower Bridge, and any number of just shallow spots in the Antietam itself. Lee posted Stuart’s cavalry on the left flank, with Hood’s two brigades on the fringe of the West Woods from the Dunker Church northwest to Nicodemus Hill near the Potomac. D.H.Hill’s five brigades were next in line along the Hagerstown Pike. Brigadier-General Nathan Evan’s brigade held the center of the line in front of Sharpsburg across the Boonsboro Pike. D.R.Jones placed his six brigades southeast on a mile-long front to the Lower Bridge across the Antietam. Colonel Thomas Munford’s cavalry brigade held the right flank. In all, Lee had some 18,000 men on his front at Sharpsburg. Unit for unit, he was weaker than McClellan, with only 166 men in the average Confederate regiment, compared to 346 in the average Union regiment. By noon on Tuesday, September 16 McClellan had brought his 75,000 troops into line facing Lee, but he reconnoitered that afternoon and early evening rather than instantly begin an assault. He decided to attack on the morning of the 17th, by which time his heavier guns would be in position on a high bank across the Antietam Creek. The next morning broke with heavy fog, through which the Union guns began to fire. McClellan saw that Lee did not withdraw, and ordered that his infantry were to attack by mid-afternoon.

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The initial attack would see two corps hit Lee’s left and, as they rolled up the line, Burnside’s IX Corps would hit the Confederate right. Then the entire Union line would advance to drive up the Boonsboro Pike and smash the Confederate center. The plan was basically sound, but it was poorly executed with uncoordinated attacks. Major-General Joseph Hooker’s Union Corps struck first at dusk on the 16th with probing assaults on the Confederate right. But Lee had added the first of Jackson’s troops to his defenses, as Major-General John Walker’s division arrived by noon and been posted south of Sharpsburg. Jackson took command of the Confederate left as Longstreet was able to extend his line 1 mile (1.6 km) south. Hooker’s troops met stiff opposition, and Lee was alerted as to where a Union attack would likely come in greater force next time. Hooker’s troops withdrew, and both sides, their picket lines within shouting distances, tried to prepare for what they knew would be a bloody business the next day. A drizzling rain falling that night made them even more uncomfortable. The rain ended by morning, which broke on the 17th gray and misty, though the skies soon cleared off. Federal artillery opened up on the heights overlooking the Confederate lines in many places. The 21st Virginia’s John Worsham wrote, “His artillery on our front was on higher ground, and on the right his guns on high hills beyond the Antietam could enfilade us. Farther up the mountain side we saw his signal flags at work. They seemed to overlook our entire line. We were not allowed to make much of an observation before the enemy’s shells dropped in our midst from batteries in front and flank, and this soon became the fiercest artillery fire of the war. It seemed that the air was alive with shells! The fire continued a short time, and then their infantry in dense masses attacked us.” Major-General Joseph Hooker’s 10 brigades struck the Confederate left. Federals stormed along the Hagerstown Pike, down the Smoketown road toward the Dunker Church, and from the East Woods to the fringe of West Woods. Jackson’s line was spread thin and D.H.Hill sent two brigades from his position in the Sunken Road to reinforce them. The Federal assault sent Confederates flying back to the West Woods, clambering over the picket-and-rail fence edging the Hagerstown Pike, where many were shot in the attempt. The Federals thought that they had the day won as they pushed their lines from the open fields of the Mumma farm northwest through the cornfield to the West Woods, deep into the Confederate lines. Suddenly Jackson launched a counterattack with Hood’s and Hill’s brigades that drove the Federals back to the cornfield, one that was halted only by Union artillery in the East Woods. Sergeant W.H.Andrews, 1st Georgia, was there when, “After the second volley our men fired, they charged. The enemy’s line giving away, it then became almost a tree-to-tree fight. In passing over where the line of battle was, the ground was covered in blue. Gen. Anderson remarked afterwards he believed every man in his brigade killed a yankee on the first shot. Let that be as it may, I have never seen as many dead men on one piece of ground. As we advanced, numbers of the enemy would throw down their guns, and hold up their hands. The boys would tell them to run through our line to the rear, and they certainly lost no time in getting in the rear of us.” Hood’s Texans had been preparing to eat for the first time in some hours, at the edge of the East Woods and adjacent fields, when they were sent into action to support the Georgians. Private John Stevens, 5th Texas, who the day before had eaten only some pickles and apple butter he found in a deserted building, recalled that on the morning of the 17th his unit “had some meat and flour issued to us with orders to cook it at once. No such order was necessary, as we had been practically without rations for three days; hence the starting of the fires and wetting up of the flour in any way we could was started at once…But daylight came too soon, the smoke of our fires proving a good mark to indicate to the Federals where our lines were. They began to shell us with their canister shot and at the same time to advance their lines. The falling shot raked our bread pans, skillets and fires right and left, putting a complete check to all preparations for the much needed breakfast. Simultaneously with this our commanders came dashing down the line ordering us to fall in, load

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The Sunken Road, later known as Bloody Lane, formed the center of Lee’s line, just north of the Boonsboro Turnpike into Sharpsburg. Unlike his flanks, which had the defensive benefits of woods and creek, this position over 500 yards (457 m) east of the Hagerstown Pike was exposed with little cover except fence rails. Union divisions under French and Richardson would attack here at midday.

and prepare for action, and in less time than it takes to pen these lines we were in line and moving out in battle array to play our part in what is said to be the hardest fought battle of the war.” The Attack on the West Woods The Texans held, pushing the enemy back. That point on the line was now stabilized. But now the Union XII Corps, on the left of Hooker’s corps, came up to the attack, bearing down on the Hagerstown Pike toward the Confederates in the West Woods. Their attack was disjointed, however, and the Confederates were able to hang on. To the left, however, the Federals forced Hood’s men back to the Dunker Church, opening a gap in the Confederate line. Desperate Confederates just managed to hold the line at the Church, and stop the attack. Cannoneer James Reed of the Bedford Light Artillery told a story that proved how hungry these soldiers were: “When we were ordered to retire from that position, Sergeant Stone had to leave his gun until he

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By early afternoon Union attacks had switched to the Confederate center and D.H. Hill’s position along the Sunken Road. It was now that Lee was forced to commit his last reserves as his position here faced collapse. With Union Corps still uncommitted and Burnside beginning his attack on the right, it looked as if McClellan had victory within his grasp.

could go back to the Caisson to get the extra wheel always carried, and rolling it by hand to the front, put the wheel on and brought off his gun before the enemy could capture it. After he had gotten his gun in position, I saw him riding in the grove of the old Dunkard church. The battle was then raging, and shell, shrapnel were filling the air. ‘Stone,’ I cried, ‘what are you doing there, what are you looking for?’ For he was scanning the ground carefully. ‘I’m looking for my haversack;’ he answered, ‘I had a small piece of bread in it.’ Don’t you know you are likely to be killed: I cried. ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘a man had just as well be killed as to starve to death.’ It had been a week or more since any regular rations had been issued…” By 09:00 hours, fighting had gone on three hours and Lee’s line was hanging on, but barely. But the Federal forces were equally battered, and stopped their attacks to await reserves. As the fresh Union II Corps moved forward to the attack, Jackson gathered as many units as he could from other points, as well as troops still arriving from Harper’s Ferry, and deployed them on the western edge of the West Woods,

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Despite being reinforced, the Confederate position along the Sunken Road gave way at about 15:00 hours. D.H. Hill was forced to retreat, but held his line at the Hagerstown Turnpike. McClellan should have thrown his reserves in now, but cautious to the last, refused the chance. The center consolidated, but on the right Burnside’s Corps had finally crossed the Creek in strength and by 16:00 was threatening to roll up Lee’s entire army. Only the late arrival of A.P.Hill’s division from Harper’s Ferry prevented a disaster.

protected by the rocks and ridges found there. The Confederate line formed a semi-circle into which II Corps now charged. Moreover, II Corps was now missing a division that had drifted to the south and lost contact with the lead elements of the attack. Caught in a pocket of almost encircling fire, the Federals were unable to move forward, or many of them to safely retreat, and in less than 20 minutes, nearly half of the 5,000man attacking force were casualties. Some elements of II Corps, however, found an escape route to their right, and pulled back to the northeast where Union artillery in the cornfield protected them. Jackson now sent his men forward to finish the job, but they ran into Federal guns in front of the East Woods that smashed their lines and sent them reeling back to the West Woods. “About 11 a.m. General Lee with some of his staff rode up to the battery

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and called for the commanding officer,” William Poague of the Rockbridge Artillery recalled. “We were in position on a slight eminence in the rear of the south end of Dunker Church woods. He wished to know the condition of the battery and its supply of ammunition. I replied that we could make out to use all three guns from our present position, but for any rapid movement only one piece was equipped, as our teams had suffered severely The Lost Orders Head-Quarters Army of Northern Virginia, September 9,1862 Special Orders, No. 191 The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagerstown road. General Jackson’s command will form the advance, and, after passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select, take the route towards Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and, by Friday night, take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, capture such of the enemy as may be at Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harper’s Ferry. General Longstreet’s command will pursue the same road as far as Boonsborough, where it will halt with the reserve, supply, and baggage trains of the army. General McLaws, with his own division and that of General R.H. Anderson, will follow General Longstreet. On reaching Middletown he will take the route to Harper’s Ferry, and by Friday morning possess himself of the Maryland Heights, and endeavor to capture the enemy at Harper’s Ferry and vicinity, General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek’s Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning, Key’s Ford on his left, and the road between the end of the mountain and the Potomac on his right He will, as far as practicable, co-operate with General McLaws and General Jackson in intercepting the retreat of the enemy. General D.H.Hill’s division will form the rear-guard of the army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve artillery, ordnance, supply-trains, etc., will precede General Hill. General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany the commands of Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws, and with the main body of the cavalry will cover the route of the army and bring up all stragglers that may have been left behind. The commands of General Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will join the main body of the army at Boonsborough or Hagerstown. Each regiment on the march will habitually carry its axes in the regimental ordnance wagons, for the use of the men at their encampments to procure wood, etc. By command of General R.E.Lee. R.H.Chilton Assistant Adjutant-General.

in the morning fights. About this time [Lee’s son] Private Bob Lee came up and spoke to his father, and said, ‘You are not going to put us in the fight again in our crippled condition, are you?’ ‘Yes, my son, I may need you to help drive those people away,’ he replied as he pointed towards the enemy’s lines. After a few pleasant words with his son, General Lee rode away as quietly and composedly as if nothing special was going on. His equanimity and self possession under the awful stress of that fearful day were marvelous.” While none of the Union attacks had managed to totally break through the Confederate lines on the left, Lee had been forced to weaken his line elsewhere to the point where fully three-quarters of the Confederate army on the field was now north of Sharpsburg. At this point, the division of the Union II Corps that had become separated from the lead element hit the Confederate position held along the Sunken Road. This was

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a dirt road that was a natural trench, formed by years of heavy farm traffic and the wash of heavy rains. It ran from the Hagerstown Pike some 500 yards (457 m) south of the Dunker Church east for about 1,000 yards (900 m), then angling south toward the Boonsboro Pike. The road was occupied by D.H. Hill’s five brigades, the three sent to the Dunker Church having been forced back to the Sunken Road. There they piled fence rails to strengthen their position. For three hours the II Corps division, led by French, attacked the position time and again, each time to be driven back. Another Federal division arrived on the left of French and also attacked Hill’s line. The 3rd Alabama was in the center of the line, and its commander later recalled, Three successive times the battle-flag of the regiment was cut down, but, in a moment it rose again in proud defiance. Sharpsburg was an open field, without entrenchments. Men of the North and men of the South stood up and looked into each others’ eyes, and delivered their fire with coolness and precision. Not a shrub obscured the vision or offered shelter to the faint and the dying.” “Our line was throbbing at every point,” Longstreet wrote, “so that I dared not call on General Lee for help. Sergeant Ellis thought that he could bring up ammunition if he was authorized to order it. He was authorized, and rode for and brought it. I held the horses of some of my staff who helped to man the guns as cannoneers.” Moxley Sorrel, one of his staff officers, remembered the event: “The gunners had fallen by their places, which were temporarily without cannoneers. Longstreet was with us. Fairfax, Gore-Manning, Walton, myself, and perhaps some others took our horses’ bridles as we leaped from them to the guns. The position was the most important and it would never do for those ‘barkers’ to be dumb, even for a minute; so at it we went, the improvised gunners, and were afterwards cheered by being told we did it well and could always get a gunner’s berth when we might want it. I had the rammer, No. 1, I think it is in the drill. Our fire was really strong and effective, until some reliefs from the Washington Artillery came up ‘ventre a terre,’ and with hearty shouts took their guns in hand. The enemy opened a severe fire on us, but fortunately none of our party was hurt. We mounted again with cheerful grins at our sudden adventure, and Longstreet, much pleased, turned his attention to other imperiled points.” When a general in command abdicates his responsibility for overseeing his line by holding horses for a gun crew, the troops at the front are in serious trouble. Lee Reinforces the Sunken Road If that post along the Confederate center fell, the battle would be over, and Lee quickly sent in five brigades of Major-General R.H.Anderson’s division, the last reserves Lee had available. At the same time, Robert Rodes’ brigade counterattacked to hold the line until Anderson could deploy. But Anderson fell wounded and, through a mistaken order, Rodes’ men in the Sunken Road near the Roulette Lane fell back, opening a gap in the line. A young Union colonel, Francis Barlow, grasped the situation, sending in two regiments that turned left and right and raked the road, now known as the Bloody Lane. The Confederates fled south toward Sharpsburg and only a determined stand by D.H.Hill’s men, coupled with a lack of Union reinforcements, prevented the Army of the Potomac from taking Sharpsburg. McClellan certainly had those reinforcements available. The Union VI Corps, for example, was ready to go in, but McClellan held it back, declaring it would not be prudent to make the attack and instead that it should go on the defensive, supporting the Union right, while V Corps, commanded by Fitz John Porter, would defend the Union center against any possible attack there that could take the Federal supply train on the Boonsboro Pike. To support this, the reserve artillery and cavalry would be held in readiness and not committed. Lee had no such luxury, but he was still the more aggressive commander. He considered a move to attack the Federal line on the North and East Woods, enveloping them, and relieving the pressure on D.H.Hill. A

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Burnside’s troops carrying the bridge over Antietam Creek and storming the Confederate positions, September 17, 1862. This sketch is a rather romanticized view of the fighting at Sharpsburg.

careful examination of the line indicated that the Union artillery was too strong to go against, however, and Lee withheld the attack. In the meantime, trouble was developing on the Confederate far right. Burnside’s IX Corps moved forward to the attack, driving to cross the Antietam Creek at the Rohrersville turnpike bridge, ever-after to be known as Burnside’s Bridge. Although there were a number of spots along the creek he could have crossed easily and in great numbers, he had not reconnoitered the line well at all, and could only see the bridge. Across it were several Georgia brigades, posted along a height that overlooked the bridge. Soon after 09:00 hours Burnside sent his first troops to cross the bridge and, caught in a funnel-like depression between the opposing bluffs of the creek, they were easily driven back. Time and again Union troops went forward, each time to be stopped cold. However, at the same moment, a Union division moving downstream found Snaveley’s Ford and began to cross there, driving out the Georgia troops guarding the bridge. Other Union troops found a ford above the bridge, and also began crossing. Artillery was brought up at the bridge, and a final assault was made around 13:00 hours. The Confederates, hit by artillery and infantry in their front and more infantry on either flank, had to fall back. Still, they had bought time, and Burnside gave them more time, taking a couple of hours to reorganize his troops before pressing on. It was close to 15:00 hours when Burnside’s men moved toward Sharpsburg. They first hit D.R.Jones’ four brigades southeast of Sharpsburg, who were overwhelmed and had to fall back toward the town. John Dooley reported that his 1st Virginia was down to “but 17 men rank and file, 8 officers and 9 men. With this brigade of about 200 men we covered a space of as nearly as many yards, not presenting a skirmish line.” The 17th Virginia, all 46 men available, were in the defending lines on the right where they were rolled up. “I can never forget that moment,” Private Alexander Hunter remembered, “it was photographed indelibly on my mind; the sun glanced and gleamed on the leveled barrels, and the black tubes of the muzzles, not over twenty feet away, turned on us with deadly meaning. I crouched to the ground, and

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fortunately I was behind a post instead of a rail; I shut my eyes; a second of silence, then a stunning volley, the crash of the splintered wood, a purpose smoke, a smell of sulphur, the spat and spud of the bullet, and the Seventeenth Virginia, or the remnant of it, was wiped out.” Lee moved all available artillery to that front, but by 16:00 hours the Union forces were just outside Sharpsburg and the end of Lee’s army appeared inevitable. The Arrival of A.P.Hill Suddenly, however, on the far right, more dark-blue uniforms could be seen in columns moving to the front. It looked as if it really was the end when puffs of wind blew their battle flags into the air; they were the red battle flags with the dark-blue St Andrew’s Cross of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was A.P.Hill’s division, many wearing blue Union uniforms taken at Harper’s Ferry, that had made the long, desperate march to reach Lee’s battered army. They had covered the 17 miles (27 km) from Harper’s Ferry to the Potomac in only seven hours, losing hundreds of stragglers on the way, but still bringing up a solid force. Hill’s first five brigades on the field hit the Union flank. The Federals, not expecting this sudden counterattack, fell back in disarray. The tide had turned, and Burnside’s IX Corps fell back to the banks of the Antietam to hold there. The battle was over. Both sides were exhausted, and by sunset firing mostly ceased along the line. That night Lee called a meeting of his subordinates to see if they could counterattack the next morning. Even Jackson, usually ready to attack at the slightest chance, said the men were too beat to do much more than continue holding their lines. The Army of Northern Virginia, at the unit and soldier level, had fought brilliantly, probably their hardest fight, to obtain a tactical draw. Losses were tremendous. Some 5,800 were casualties at South Mountain, with another 1,500 taken prisoner, and out of a total of some 40,000, 35,000 fighting at Sharpsburg, 14,000 were casualties. These, too, were Lee’s most dedicated soldiers, the ones who had kept up with the rapid, hard marching the army had endured. What was left to rebuild the army included many of those who had not kept up, the second-best Confederate soldiers. The army would never be as ragged, hungry, and exhausted as it was in the Maryland campaign, but it would never be as good again, either. The battle’s outcome had wider consequences. Lee had failed in his stated intention to reach Pennsylvania. Lincoln, meanwhile, exploited the propaganda value of the battle’s outcome as a springboard for his Emancipation Proclamation, issued five days later. However, to the Army of North Virginia’s soldiers, they had won a victory. They went into Maryland, were hit there by everything the Union forces had to give, and came away bloody but apparently successful. They captured Harper’s Ferry and all the materiel therein. The average soldier of the Army of Northern Virginia by now was convinced that he was unbeatable. Indeed, the next morning McClellan declined to attack again, shocked at the day’s carnage. Lee looked again at his left to see if an attack there would work, but again decided against it. He decided instead to withdraw across the Potomac, and told his commanders so that afternoon. At midnight of the 18th, the first Confederates, men of Longstreet’s command, began to cross the river, and the last of the troops were back in Virginia by the next day. McClellan did not pursue them, indeed did not move even, though spoken to directly by Lincoln. The president finally gave up on “the Young Napoleon,” and relieved him from command on November 7.

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At dawn on December 11, 1862 General Burnside began his attack across the Rappahannock, the opening moves in what would become the Battle of Fredericksburg. The Union engineers building the pontoon bridges toward the town were targeted throughout the morning by sharpshooters of Barksdale’s Mississippi brigade, part of McLaw’s division. They were to harass the bridge-laying until driven out of the town by Federal artillery ranged along the Stafford Heights.

Fredericksburg

After Antietam, the Army of the Potomac was given a new commander, Ambrose Burnside. Decisive in action but tactically inept, Burnside would offer Lee’s army its most one-sided victory: at Fredericksburg. On October 6, dismayed by McClellan’s failure to follow Lee’s army across the Potomac into Virginia, Lincoln had orders issued that directed him to “cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south.” Lincoln insisted, “Your army must move now while the roads are good.” Instead, McClellan sat back and watched as Stuart, following a suggestion from Lee, again encircled the motionless Army of the Potomac. On October 10, some 1,800 Confederate cavalry crossed the Potomac near Black Creek and moved on to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. There Federal and state officials fled as the Confederates cut telegraph wires, seized horses, and destroyed any military equipment they couldn’t carry away with them. They wrecked railroad equipment, including machine shops, depots, and several trains. Then they moved east through Emmitsburg, Maryland, on their way back to the Potomac, which they crossed on the 12th after a short skirmish near the mouth of the Monocacy in Maryland. They actually crossed at Poolesville, having pulled off another headlinegrabbing raid. In real military terms, however, the raid did little to the Union army, save again damage its pride. Finally on October 16 the Union army probed Lee’s forces, then in the Shenandoah Valley, with reconnaissances to Smithfield and Charles Town, in western Virginia. The bulk of the Army of the Potomac finally followed its reconnoitering cavalry, crossing the Potomac into Virginia on October 26, 20 days after Lincoln ordered the move. McClellan’s troops marched east of the Blue Ridge, toward Warrenton. Lee, fearing that the Union commander could place his forces between him and Richmond, began moving to the south on October 28. On November 7, Lee wrote the secretary of war: “The enemy today occupied Warrenton, and his cavalry have reached the Rappahannock. The latter is reported to be at Rappahannock Station, White Sulphur Springs Ford, & Hart’s Ford. Two brigades of infantry reached Orleans yesterday. The last reports from our cavalry scouts indicated an intention on the part of their cavalry to cross the Rappahannock, though I have not heard whether it was accomplished. They are apparently advancing on the general route pursued by this army last summer, holding the gaps through the Blue Ridge as they progress. If they advance tomorrow with the same speed, they will reach Hazel River, about 10 miles [16 km] from this point. I have ordered back all surplus articles from Culpeper Court House and shall be prepared to move towards Madison Court House tomorrow if circumstances require it. I yesterday directed Genl. Jackson to ascent the Shenandoah Valley in order to make a junction with Genl. Longstreet. He will probably cross the Blue Ridge at Swift Run Gap should the enemy press forward, as I shall not resist his occupation of

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Thornton’s Gap, where his army would have a great advantage, as the country there is flat and open. The enemy apparently is in very strong force, especially in cavalry, in which we are greatly outnumbered.” Lincoln Sacks McClellan By then, however, McClellan was no longer the enemy. On November 5 Lincoln, despairing of ever getting him to move, replaced him with one of his corps commanders, Major-General Ambrose Burnside. Burnside was in fact also slow, as his movements at Sharpsburg proved, but he was at least competent. He did not want command of the army and, in fact, tried to turn it down, only to be talked out of it by the president. At the same time, Fitz John Porter was also relieved and replaced by Major-General Joseph Hooker. McClellan was, amazingly enough, stunned to learn of his replacement, lacking the political skills to sense the thin ice he was skating on. Nor was the Army of the Potomac as a whole expecting such news, as the majority of its soldiers felt deep respect for McClellan. On November 10 the “Little Napoleon” held his last review and bade farewell to his men, to the accompaniment of both cheers and tears, and then he was gone, never to hold a command again. Now Burnside had to come up with a plan; and it was to be a simple one: a drive directly through Virginia to Richmond. He reorganized his army into three “grand divisions,” one on the right, one on the left, and one in the center. Lincoln approved this plan on November 14 and the following day the army set off toward Fredericksburg, where Union cavalry had been only days before in a successful raid. Lee’s scouts followed closely as on November 17 the Right Grand Division arrived on Falmouth, on heights that overlooked Fredericksburg across the Rappahannock. There it halted, allowing Longstreet’s Corps time to get into position on the other side of the river, on heights above Fredericksburg, by November 19. Lee himself arrived there the next day, as Jackson’s troops, still in Winchester, began their rapid march to join him. Burnside also arrived across the river from Fredericksburg and called for the city to surrender on November 21, threatening that his artillery would bombard the town if it did not. His request was refused and the mayor was given 16 hours to remove the city’s women, children, aged, and infirm. The mayor asked for more time, and the Union grand division commander promised not to bombard the town as long as “no hostile demonstration is made from the town.” In the meantime, the Union forces also made no hostile moves. Lincoln, breathing down Burnside’s neck, arrived at his headquarters on November 26 to see what was going on. In meetings with the president, Burnside proposed a direct assault on Lee’s troops at Fredericksburg, believing if he could break through and split the Confederate forces, he could then destroy them and drive straight on to Richmond. Lincoln thought the plan was risky, and instead suggested a three-pronged attack, one at Fredericksburg, with another south of the town on the Rappahannock, and the third on the Pamunkey. Burnside felt this plan was too involved and rejected it. Finally Lincoln agreed to let him try the Fredericksburg assault. This would entail using pontoon bridges, however, and while these had been ordered from the Engineer Depot in Washington, sloppy staff work and a lack of insistence on their quick shipment meant they weren’t on hand. As the Confederates consolidated their positions facing the Federals across the river, the bridges slowly arrived. Even after he had all the parts, Burnside allowed precious time to slip away before finally authorizing five of them to be put down, both directly across from Fredericksburg and slightly downstream. On December 11 his engineers went into action. As a brigade of Mississippi infantry under William Barksdale in Fredericksburg kept up a steady fire, the Federal engineers began laying down their bridges. Union artillery joined the action, battering the brick houses in Fredericksburg but not driving out the sharpshooters. Finally Union infantry got into pontoon barges, rowed across the river, and in sharp fighting drove the Confederates back to their main lines. A

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The situation in northern Virginia prior to the Army of the Potomac’s advance on Falmouth and the Stafford Heights, November 17–19. Burnside’s plan to drive his Grand Divisions straight across the Rappahannock toward Richmond was compromised by the delay in the arrival of the pontoons.

member of Barksdale’s brigade, James Dinkins, recalled as the Union attackers “attempted to climb over our little temporary ditch, which was a breast-work in name only, but we clubbed them with our guns, and drove them back. They were re-inforced and re-formed. The Washington artillery poured shell right into their ranks. They opened but closed up again. We saw them move forward the second time under the fire of our batteries, as well as our infantry fire. They reached our lines again.” This time the stalwarts were successful and cleared the way for the bridges to be completed. Lee had earlier told residents in Fredericksburg to flee, as a battle would likely be fought over their homes. Some had gone, but others had stayed, and now the remainder headed toward the rear of the Confederate lines. Augustus Dickert of Kershaw’s Brigade recalled seeing “groups of women and children and a few old men in the glim twilight of the morning rushing along the roads out from the city as fast as

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Having spent December 12 consolidating his positions in and around Fredericksburg and further downriver, on the morning of Saturday December 13, Burnside began his attack on Longstreet’s divisions posted along Marye’s Heights dominating the river. Sending in divisions a brigade at a time, the result was slaughter. Some 14 charges were made throughout the day at a cost of over 12,000 casualties.

their feeble limbs and tender feet could carry them, hunting a safe retreat in the backwoods until the cloud of war broke or passed over. Some were carrying babes in their arms, others dragging little children along by the hands, with a few articles of bedding or wearing apparel under their arms or thrown over their shoulders. The old men tottered along in the rear, giving words of comfort and cheer to the excited women and little ones. It was a sickening sight to see these helpless and inoffensive people hurrying away from the dangers of battle.” Not all the civilians managed to escape; some were left behind. Cannoneer Robert Stiles had a friend among the Mississippi soldiers in the town, Buck Denman, who was one of the last to leave. Taking aim for a last shot he suddenly saw “a three-year-old, fair-haired, baby girl tottle out of an alley, accompanied by a Newfoundland dog, and gave chase to a big shell that was rolling lazily along the pavement, she clapping her little hands and the dog snapping and barking furiously at the shell. Buck’s hand dropped from the trigger. He dashed it across his eyes to dispel the mist and make sure he hadn’t passed over the river and wasn’t seeing his own baby girl in a vision. No, there is the baby, amid the hell of shot and shell, and here come the enemy. A moment and he has grounded his gun, dashed out into the storm, swept his…right arm around the baby, gained cover again, and, baby clasped to his breast and musket trailed in his left hand, is trotting after the boys up to Marye’s Heights.” Marye’s Heights were the heights above the town along which Longstreet’s men waited. William Owen of the Washington Artillery described the position: U.S. Army engineers begin laying down the pontoon bridges toward Fredericksburg. Over 140 cannon supported the crossing from the northern bank, their fire doing tremendous damage to the town and forcing its civilian inhabitants to flee to the safety of Confederate lines. “At the foot of Marye’s Hill the telegraph road runs, and then turns abruptly at right angles and branches off into the town. In front of Marye’s Hill it is a sunken road, and on the side towards the town is a stone wall about breast high. The field beyond is flush with the top of the wall. Before

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As the Union attacks on Marye’s Heights ground on, 5 miles (8 km) away on the Confederate right, Jubal A. Early was leading his division in a spirited defense of Prospect Hill, an action that ensured that Franklin’s Left Grand Division would make little progress turning Lee’s flank.

Marye’s Hill is an open plain, with a few cottages and market-gardens, and divided up into lots by board fences until the outskirts are reached.” With the Confederates driven from the town and the pontoon bridges laid, during the afternoon of December 11 Federal troops began crossing the river on the left, while a division of Federals crossed over and occupied Fredericksburg by nightfall. “It was impossible to successfully resist a crossing,” Jubal Early later wrote, “as the river is only between two and three hundred yards wide, and the banks are so deep, and the river so accessible, on the northern bank by means of ravines running into it, that our artillery, posted on the hills occupied by our troops, could not play upon the bridges either during the progress of the construction or afterwards, while the enemy’s batteries were able, by a concentrated fire, to drive off the

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U.S. Army engineers begin laying down the pontoon bridges toward Fredericksburg. Over 140 cannon supported the crossing from the northern bank, their fire doing tremendous damage to the town and forcing its civilian inhabitants to flee to the safety of Confederate lines.

small bodies watching the river, or prevent any aid being sent to them over the wide open plains formed by the bottoms.” Jackson Moves on the Union Left While this was all going on, Jackson was at Guiney’s Station several miles back, while his men were at Yerby’s Station and some of the lower Rappahannock crossings, ready to move wherever needed. The river crossings of Burnside’s divisions continued, while Lee considered striking before they could fully assemble. Jackson ordered Early and D.H.Hill to move up on the Confederate right flank along the ridge overlooking Fredericksburg which Longstreet’s men occupied. However, the obvious strength of the Confederate position, coupled with the fact that it was clear that the Federals were going to try to attack such a position—with greater potential losses than the Confederates had suffered in July at Malvern Hill in a similar situation—gave Lee pause. Let the Yanks come on. That night was bitter cold. A couple of days earlier snow had fallen, and a driving wind piled it up in drifts that lay unmelted in shaded corners. Most of the Federals around Fredericksburg could not light fires for fear of drawing Confederate fire, although behind their works the Confederates could at least have small fires made from corn stalks. The pickets between the lines, generally badly provided with overcoats in the Confederate service, suffered greatly. The morning of December 13, a Saturday, was a foggy one as the Federals began their attack. Before daybreak Longstreet was up and riding along his line. “The voices of the Union officers as they gave their commands were carried to us with almost startling clearness by the heavy fog that covered the field and surroundings,” he later wrote. “So heavy was this fog that nothing could be seen at a distance of ten or

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twelve rods [55–60 yards, or 50–54 m], and yet so distinctly were the voices of the officers brought to us that they seemed near at hand…” Longstreet figured that the Federals would not be so foolish as to attack his men, who were on high ground and well protected by a stone wall on the northern side of a slightly sunken road. Instead he believed the main attack would be on the Confederate right, against Jackson. If this were to appear likely to succeed, he told Hood, the troops on his right should swing around and attack the assaulting forces on the flank and rear. On the left, Pickett was told the same should an attack succeed to his left. Finally, around 10:00 hours, the fog burned off to reveal solid ranks of advancing Federals. Union siege artillery, 30-pounder Parrott rifles, sent round after round into Confederate Fraternization During the lull in action, as Burnside figured out what to do and the two armies sat along the Rappahannock, men from both sides began fraternizing, much to the dismay of their officers, Such fraternization often leads to lowered morale, as the opposing sides discover their enemies are human and not monsters. But it was impossible to stop the practice. Mississippian James Dinkins of Barksdale’s brigade recalled how along the river, “The Confederates would send tobacco in little bark boats over to the ‘Yanks,’ and the latter would send us back coffee and other articles. It finally got so that the pickets would not shoot at each other. The men became very expert in setting the sails on the bark, which they could land at almost the very place they assigned for the exchange of commodities. it was a strange sight to watch the men of opposing armies playing and trafficking as if there was no war.” This was a widespread practice, John Worsham of the 21st Virginia wrote that after they had settled in winter quarters after the battle, “Occasionally some of the men went down to the river’s edge and had a talk with the Yanks on the other side. Sometimes a little boat was made of bark or a piece of rail. With the assistance of the wind and tide, it now and then crossed to the other shore. In this manner papers and tobacco were exchanged,” Many of these river-side ship designers made more elaborate craft than pieces of rail or strips of bark. Artillery Lieutenant Robert Stiles recalled that “Among matters worthy of note occurring prior to Chancellorsville, it may not be out of place to mention the very active commerce or interchange of commodities, carried on by tiny sailing vessels, between the north and south banks of the Rappahannock River, at and below Fredericksburg, both before and after that battle. The communication was almost constant and the vessels many of them really beautiful little craft, with shapely hulls, nicely painted; elaborate rigging, trim sales, closed decks, and perfect working steering apparatus. The cargoes, besides the newspapers of the two sides, usually consisted on our side of tobacco and on the Federal side of coffee and sugar, yet the trade was by no means confined to these articles, and on a sunny, pleasant day the waters were fairly dotted with the fairy fleet Many a weary hour of picket duty was thus relieved and lightened, and most of the officers seemed to wink at the infraction of military law, if such it was. A few rigidly interdicted it, but it never really ceased.” Union memories of the period were much the same. A member of the 19th Massachusetts later wrote, “The men kept on the best of terms with their gray ‘friends’ across the river and often conversed with them. Some trading was done among them by means of pieces of boards, cut boat shape and provided with a sail, usually a newspaper, which could be exchanged on reaching the opposite shore. In this way each side learned the news. The chief commodities exchanged were tobacco from the South and coffee from the North, although other articles were sometimes sent over. When the shad began to run, large details of ‘Johnnies’ [from the Union nickname, ‘Johnny Reb’] came down to the river to fish for them. Large seines were used and the men, wading up to their chins in the cold water, would carry them around the fish. They had one boat in use and sometimes rowed so near the northern shore that the Union pickets could throw a stone into the boat. The rebels watched the pickets sharply at these times but were never molested farther than to be invited to ‘come over and give us a shad.’” During this time

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one Federal picket called over, “You rebels are mighty ragged and dirty, but you fight well.” A Confederate replied, “By next winter we will be naked and then we will give you thunder!”

positions. One of their shells hit just under the parapet over which Lee watched, but it dug itself into the ground without bursting. On the other hand, a southern-made copy of the Parrott rifle, replying to the Federal guns, exploded, sending fragments all around Lee and his staff. Luckily nobody was hurt. Then the Federal infantry appeared, dressed its lines, and advanced, color companies and left and right guides ahead of the solid lines of infantry. Lee himself, watching as the ranks of blue-clad soldiers came on time and again, at one point put his hand on Longstreet’s arm and said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.” On the left, Pickett watched what he felt to have been a missed opportunity as the Federals hit the line. “A little after ten,” he wrote home, “when the fog had lifted and Stuart’s cannon front the plain of Massaponax were turned upon Meade and when Franklin’s advance left the enemy’s flank open, I went up to Hood and urged him to seize the opportunity; but he was afraid to assume so great a responsibility and sent for permission to Old Peter [James Longstreet], who was with Marse Robert [Lee] in a different part of the field. Before his assent and approval were received, the opportunity, alas, was lost!” On the right, Federals hit Jackson’s front, the place where they had their best chance of success. As Early later recalled, “The weak point in our position was on our right, as there was the wide open plain in front of it extending to the river and perfectly covered and swept by the enemy’s heavy batteries on the opposite heights, and to the right, extending around to our rear, were the open flats of the Massaponix, here quite wide and incapable of being covered by any position we could take. There was a very great danger of our right being turned by the enemy’s pushing a heavy column down the river across the Massaponix. The plains on that flank were being watched by Stuart with two brigades of cavalry and his horse artillery.” The Federals Attack Jackson The strong attacks there pushed Jackson’s line back at points, but he soon regained the ground. At times the Federal assaults would succeed, only to be quickly driven back. A Federal division under George Meade hit a gap between two Confederate brigades of A.P.Hill’s division. Finally protected by the wooded area from the Confederate artillery that tore great holes in their ranks on the plain approaching the Confederate line, they were able to split the two brigades. They turned the flank of the brigade commanded by BrigadierGeneral James Archer, hitting the 19th Georgia and 14th Tennessee in the rear, which fell back, along with many men from the 7th Tennessee. The 1st Tennessee and the remainder of the 7th held fast and, with the battalion of the 5th Alabama, actually charged the Federals when their ammunition ran out. On the other side of the breakthrough, another Union brigade came to the aid of the frontline unit, and held the line. Coming up through the gap, the swarming Federals ran into Maxcy Gregg’s South Carolina brigade, which was simply not ready for them. Many of the men had stacked their arms and were unable to get into combat ranks before their position was overrun. Gregg himself thought at first the Federals were men of Archer’s brigade, falling back, and stopped his men from firing into these ranks. Then Gregg was hit, mortally wounded, his spine shattered. Before he died he dictated a note to his state’s governor: “If I am to die now, I give my life cheerfully for the independence of South Carolina, and I trust you will live to see our cause triumph completely” Hill, who had made an error in allowing a gap between brigades of his division to have opened in the first place and then not having alerted Gregg to the potential problem, now rushed Samuel McGowan’s brigade forward. The Federals fell back; the Confederates counterattacked along their front, then returned to their

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Like Early, Major-General Daniel H.Hill was one of the divisional commanders in Jackson’s Corps sent to hold the Confederate right. Hill had been the colonel of the Southern troops engaged in the war’s very first land engagement, at Big Bethel, Virginia on June 10, 1861. In February 1863 he was transferred from the Army of Northern Virginia to North Carolina, and took command of the Department North Carolina on April 1.

original position to be relieved and sent into the reserve. Hill’s “Light Division” had lost 1,976 enlisted men and 146 officers, not the first nor the last time Hill’s poor planning would cause excessive casualties among the troops he commanded. At the center of the Confederate line on Marye’s Heights the Federals sent in wave after wave, only to fall back, leaving the ground strewn with blue-clad bodies. By the end of the day, the Federals had suffered 12,653 casualties, compared to 5,309 Confederate casualties. “A series of braver, more desperate charges than those; hurled against the troops in the sunken road was never known,” Longstreet recalled, “and the piles and cross-piles of dead marked a field such as I never saw before or since.” Everyone of every rank and grade in the Confederate army was deeply impressed, especially with the attack of the Union Irish Brigade against the stone wall. “The brigade came on a run,” Alexander Hunter of the 17th Virginia, remembered, “and bent as it moved until it was the shape of a half moon with the concave towards the town. Batteries opened upon them; and then broke out the murderous musketry. Men staggered, reeled and fell, but the others pushed on. From wall and road came a living sheet of fire, still the Irish rushed forward; but at every foot they dropped by scores; some almost reached the wall and then fell dead with their feet to the foe; human nature could stand no more, for the number of killed was fast counting up by

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thousands, and half of them were down; the ranks broke and each man sought safety in flight.” The closest man to the wall, a member of the valiant Irish Brigade, was still 25 feet (7 m) from his goal, that stone wall. Confederate fire was so heavy and constant that partway through the battle the guns of the Washington Artillery had to be withdrawn, their limber chests empty. It was immediately replaced by Alexander’s Battalion, without missing a beat in keeping up the fire. On the right, Jackson prepared to counterattack, even though he saw that Union artillery commanded the plain over which his troops would have to go. For any chance of success he felt that he would need cavalry to move first, and the attack would have to be done late in the day, so if it was unsuccessful the men could escape under cover of darkness. Finally he was ready and advanced a single artillery piece to begin fire. “The first gun hardly moved forward from the wood a hundred yards, when the enemy’s artillery reopened, and so completely swept our front as to satisfy me that the proposed movement should be abandoned.” The day had been one of the most astoundingly easy total successes the army had or would ever fight. Where usually thousands of men would be caught behind the lines straggling, escaping the danger of the front, this time Chief ProvostMarshal D.B.Bridgeford, whose 1st (Irish) Virginia Battalion served as the provost guard for Jackson’s corps, reported that his men lined up about a half mile (.8 km) behind the battle line to make sure that any person leaving the front had permission to do so, only stopped and returned 526 men on both December 13 and 14. “I am most happy to state,” he reported, “I had no occasion to carry into effect the order to shoot all stragglers who refused to go forward, or, if caught a second time, upon the evidence of two witnesses to shoot them. Had I occasion to carry it into effect, it certainly should have been executed to the very letter.” John Bell Hood, whose division was one of many that had a relatively easy fight, stopped by Lee’s headquarters around ten that night. “He [Lee] immediately asked me what I thought of the attack by the enemy during the day. I expressed my opinion that Burnside was whipped; that no good general would ever make an assault similar to that upon my right and left, without intending it as his main effort, and that the heavy roll of musketry I had heard clearly convinced me that the hardest part of the battle had been fought. He then remarked that he did not think Burnside had made his principal attempt, but would attack again the next day, and that we would drive him back and follow him up to the river. After conversing a few moments longer, during which time he was in the highest spirits, I returned to my line, where I continued the remainder of the night.” The Fate of the Wounded That night the wounded lay on the freezing ground, in some cases their bleeding so slowed by the cold that they survived through the night where in warmer weather they might have died. Under cover of darkness, Union ambulance corpsmen moved across the field, finding and bringing back wounded. Confederate infantrymen fired at any movement they saw, making such actions very dangerous. Other Confederates risked their lives to help those who had been enemies only hours before. Augustus Dickert recalled a Georgian who heard a Federal calling, “Oh, somebody bring me a drink of water!” The Georgian, Dickert said, “leaped the walls, rushed to the wounded soldier, and raising his head in his arms, gave him a drink of water, then made his way back and over the wall amid a hair of bullets knocking the dirt all around him.” John Dooley of the 1st Virginia also expressed an amused compassion for his late enemies. “The nearest fallen of the Yankees were not over thirty-five yds. from us, and we could distinctly hear their cries for help, their curses, groans and prayers, all of them mingling in mournful discord; and the ambulances of the Yankees moved so close to us that we thought sometimes they were coming among us. Several parties did ride in among us during the night, and were very much surprised to learn from us how they had done it. We

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however could not let such opportunities slip by without extending to them our hospitality altho’ our bitterest enemies, and we got them to stay with us all night and how much longer I don’t know.” Those who looked up that night noticed the aurora borealis, said by Robert Stiles to have, “surpassed in splendor any like exhibition I ever saw.” Burnside himself, oblivious to the splendors of the heavens, gathered his commanders and tried to talk them into making another assault the next day, offering his own corps which he would lead personally as the lead element. They finally talked him out of it, much to the disappointment of the Confederates, who spent the night strenghtening their defenses even better than before. “We were so well prepared that we became anxious before the night of the 14th lest General Burnside would not come again,” Longstreet wrote. E. Porter Alexander felt that “Among the Confederates, no one conceived that the battle was over, for less than half our army had been engaged, only four out of nine divisions. It was not thought possible that Burnside would confess defeat by retreating.” One reason, besides the numbers involved, is that the Union commander initially issued orders calling for another attack the next morning and a courier carrying these orders blundered into Confederate lines in the dark and the orders were captured. As a result the word went out along the line to prepare for another attack. But Burnside had issued later verbal orders countermanding his first. The battle was over, and during the night of December 14 the Federals in Fredericksburg began withdrawing to the northern banks of the river. “It was a glorious victory for the Confederacy,” Tally Simpson, 3rd South Carolina wrote home, expressing the overall view of the army. “The enemy has fallen back across the river completely thrashed.” Burnside Retreats Across the River The Confederates let them go, save for some long range artillery that could reach their bridges. “One Whitworth gun I had in a good position,” artillery commander Pendleton wrote home, “and able to shoot four or five miles, was the only one with which they could be reached; this fired a number of times at their receding masses, wagon-trains, etc., with what effect we could not see. Some of their long-range guns replied and sent thirty-pound shells furiously about us, and, serious as the risk was, you would have laughed to see generals, colonels, majors, and all squatting under the breastwork every time the flash of one of those large guns appeared.” On December 17, a truce was agreed to, and the Federals sent men to bury their dead. Some 1,800 were laid in long trenches under a shallow covering of dirt, without any attempts to identify the grave sites. Other bodies were left in an ice house on the side of town, and other men were simply placed on the ground in rows and covered with dirt. Later pickets used these new works as defensive positions. Many Confederate soldiers turned their attention to the civilians from Fredericksburg whom the war had made homeless. Despite getting poor salaries, and those paid only rarely, they donated large sums of money for the citizens’ relief. The Washington Artillery, from faraway Louisiana, alone contributed $1,391 toward the relief of Fredericksburg citizens. After the Fredericksburg defeat, Burnside sent a letter to Lincoln saying that the men of his command lacked faith in the secretary of war, the general-in-chief, and Burnside himself, and all should go. In fact, although Henry Halleck, the Union general-in-chief, did offer to resign, Lincoln talked both of them out of such an action. In the meantime the Union army reorganized and prepared for its next campaign. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have begun building winter quarters, small log cabins, as the Confederates on their side of the Rappahannock were already doing. Instead, Burnside decided to march up the river to the north, then cross at the fords there, and turn Lee’s left flank. On January 20, 1863 he started his army on the move.

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The situation at Fredericksburg at about 13:00 hours on December 13. Having occupied the town during the night of the 12th, Burnside began his attacks toward the Confederate positions at dawn. He specified to the Grand Division commanders involved, Sumner and Franklin, that they should attack with only one division each. Against this woefully inadequate assault Lee fielded an army of 90,000, some units of which had been in position since November 19.

This time it was weather than turned against him. Heavy winter rains turned Virginia dirt into heavy mud that made marching virtually impossible. Tales were told of mules sinking so deep that only their ears showed. Artillery had to be manhandled through the mud, moving only hundreds of yards a day. By January 23 Burnside had to give up. Hundreds of horses and mules were dead, and his men were thoroughly soaked, hungry, and weary. Private Warren Lee Goss later described the scene: “The men, staggering under the weight of rations, blankets, and equipments, formed a funeral-like procession over which a winding-sheet of mud was spread in thick and sticky perversity. The rain poured down capriciously in dreary drizzle, or in

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Longstreet’s position on the left ran along Marye’s Heights, the strongest point of which was a stone wall that was manned by men of McLaws’ and Ransom’s divisions. The first Union attack here came at about 12:00 hours when French’s division came out of the town and began the 1,000yard (900-m) march toward the Heights. They were shot to pieces by artillery and rifle fire before they got to within 200 feet (60 m) of the wall.

sheets like water-falls. Over all the sounds might be heard the dauntless laughter of brave men, who summon humor as a reinforcement to their aid, and as a brace to their energies, and not the unmeaning laugh of senseless men who do not understand the situation. Hour after hour the rain continued and the difficulties and mud grew thicker and deeper. Twelve horses attached to a light cannon extricated it with difficulty from the mud, only for it to sink deeper at every halt, until nothing but the muzzle pointed in a defiant angle from the mud. Finally logs and rails were put under the wheels at every rest, to prevent their being engulfed. Ropes were attached to cannon, wagon, and pontoon, and in the rain hundreds of men worked to extricate and pull them through the mud, which clutched and held, and drew to its depths everything which came in contact with it, like the suction power attributed by Victor Hugo to the devil fish.” Confederate patrols, lightly armed and equipped, traced the route of the march. Goss recalled how “The rebels on the opposite banks caught the humor of the situation and shouted out offers to come over and lay the bridges if we would get up the boats, laughing, and performing various extravagant antics to express their satisfaction.” They could go no further. Burnside ordered the army to retreat to its original position across from Fredericksburg, and the men began building their winter quarters. On January 25 Lincoln replaced Burnside as army commander with one of his corps commanders, Joseph Hooker. The Confederate army also went into winter quarters. At first, figuring there were only two months left before the spring campaign opened, the men resisted building the usual wood cabins for themselves. But the weather was quite cold and raw, and soon small groups began their construction jobs. In the Texas Brigade the men, wrote brigade historian and member J.B.Polley, “contributed liberally in labor and funds toward the erection of a single story, log theater, in which they might listen to concerts, and see plays given and performed by the members of Collins’ Band, assisted by such other talent as was to be found in the army. The weather was cold and dry, although snow lay on the ground for days at a time; fuel was abundant, guard and fatigue duty light, and drilling not required, and with little else for the men to do, the theater had a large patronage—General Hood

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The battlefield at the close of day. After the destruction of French’s division, and with his attack on the Confederate right stalled at Prospect Hill, Burnside did nothing to revise his plan of battle. Instead throughout the afternoon he persisted in sending his divisions in piecemeal in an attempt to break through Marye’s Heights. It was a recipe for utter disaster which left over 6,000 of his men dead before the Confederate guns.

being a frequent attendant, and even General Lee being, on one occasion, an auditor. The favorite amusement in the day-time, when snow lay on the ground, was snowballing. This began with battles between individuals, but soon extended to companies, regiments and brigades. On one occasion, there was a battle royal between brigades of Hood’s division in which generals, colonels and many other subordinate officers participated—the alignments and movements of the opposing brigades being conducted in regular military style, with regiments carrying their flags, and drums and fifes in full blast. Indeed, such a racket was made that day by the Confederate army—for the sport was not confined to one division alone—that the

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Federals on the other side of the Rappahannock took alarm, and at least one of their cavalry regiments saddled its horses in readiness to meet the expected attack.” But forage in the area was scarce and Union troops in other theaters were active. Even with such a large enemy army facing the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee decided to send part of his force away. On February 18, 1863 Lee wrote Longstreet, “The transfer of a portion of the Federal Army of the Potomac to Hampton Roads has rendered it necessary to move two divisions of your corps towards James River. I desire you to join them and to place them in position where their comfort will be secured and whence they can be readily moved to resist an advance upon Richmond by the enemy from his new base. It is reported that he has been largely reinforced at Suffolk. It will therefore be prudent for you to change the present order for General Pickett to halt on the Chickahominy, and let him proceed to Falling Creek on the south side of James River, or to some better point from which you can readily defend Petersburg, &c. Should the movement of the enemy from the Potomac render it expedient, your other divisions will be ordered to join you.” On March 27 Lee summed up the purpose of this operation to the secretary of war: “Genl. Longstreet has been directed to employ the troops south of James River, when not required for military operations, to collect supplies in that quarter, and penetrate, if practicable, the district held by the enemy.” Why Didn’t Lee Follow Up? After the failure of Burnside’s attack on December 13 and his slow withdrawal on the 14th, Lee came under some fire for not pursuing the beaten Federals and destroying them on the northern side of the Rappahannock before they could escape. Cavalry company commander Charles M. Blackford wrote home about such an attack, “Of all this I know nothing, but I take it General Lee knows better what should have been done than do I, or than the newspapers who criticize him for not attacking. A night attack would have been a very severe undertaking, and of very doubtful result” “But why did we not to attack on the 14th in daylight? Not my part to attempt this explanation,” Sorrell wrote, “but it looks much as if we were ‘building a bridge of gold for the flying enemy,’” Private Alexander Hunter of the 17th Virginia, agreed, thinking that “Like Napoleon at Leipsic [sic], Lee let a golden chance slip by,” Jubal Early, a strong Lee supporter after the war, felt this opinion was misplaced, pointing out that Federal artillery across the river had all exposed areas well covered and that “General Lee’s army was not half as large as Burnside’s and if he had at any time made an attempt to advance, any force that he could have massed for that purpose without abandoning his line of defence entirely would in all likelihood have still encountered a superior force of infantry behind a strong line of defence, in addition to artillery,” Jackson’s chief ordnance officer, William Allen, agreed: “It is probably that Lee did not recognize the extent of the damage he had inflicted upon the Federal army, so great was the ease and so little the loss with which its attacks had been repulsed. And he could not, of course, know the extent of the distrust in Burnside. He therefore undoubtedly expected further offensive efforts on his adversary’s part. At the same time it is certain that had he known that Burnside would not attack again, in, Lee would not have made a counter attack upon the Federal army under the guns on the Stafford heights [on the northern side of the river], He believed that such art assault would have been a very costly one to his army, and of very doubtful success. Surely one of the boldest soldiers of modern times, whose genius was aggressive; who was ready and willing to take immense risks in attacks, as on the Chickahominy, at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, should not be considered over-cautious because he hesitated to throw his army into an open plain against 100,000 splendidly equipped and veteran soldiers, whose position was at the same time covered by 150 guns that he could neither reach nor neutralize…must be remembered that the question was not one of following up a repulsed and broken enemy by a prompt counter charge. The Federals kept up their assaults on Marye’s hill until dark, and by the next morning would have been

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glad to have received a counter attack. Opposite Jackson’s line, Franklin was so well prepared to receive an attack two hours after the repulse of Meade and Gibbon that Jackson desisted from the attempt” Moxley Sorrell, one of Longstreet’s staff officers, later wrote that a nighttime attack right after the last of the Federal assaults would have been impossible to keep organized and therefore was doomed to failure.

John Bell Hood of Kentucky was one of the hardestfighting generals in the Confederacy, though at Fredericksburg he was to have a relatively quiet time, his division holding the Confederate center around Howinson. The following year Hood would lose an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at the Battle of Chickamauga in Georgia. Despite all his serious wounds he would continue to hold a field command until the end of the war.

Longstreet’s Corps, consisting of Pickett’s and Hood’s divisions, first settled near Petersburg, but was then sent to set up a base for foraging expeditions into North Carolina. Lee watched these movements with a critical eye. On March 21 he wrote that “the enemy between the Roanoke and Tar is feeble. I still think if you can retain them in reserve, to be thrown on any point attacked, or where a blow can be struck, it will be the best disposition of them. If however you see an opportunity of dealing a damaging blow, or of driving him from any important positions, do not be idle, but act promptly.”

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Throughout 1862, Stonewall Jackson had been at General Lee’s right hand, confounding the Yankees at every turn and helping to build the legend of an invincible Confederacy. But 1863 would prove at what cost that invincibility was bought. Jackson himself would be a casualty and would not live to see Lee victorious over Joe Hooker at Chancellorsville, VA.

Hood, however, summed up Longstreet’s first attempt at independent command: “Nothing was achieved against the enemy on the expedition to Suffolk, at which point he possessed a safe place of refuge within his strong fortifications, protected by an impenetrable abatis.” At the same time, the revitalized Union army was beginning to move, and a nervous Lee called Longstreet and his divisions back in April, writing on the 17th, “I am glad to learn by your letter received yesterday by special courier that you are getting everything out of North Carolina as rapidly as possible. Can you give me any idea when your operations will be completed and whether any of the troops you have in Carolina can be spared from there?” On April 29 Lee telegraphed Davis: “Longstreet’s division, if available, had better come back to me, and the troops for

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Gordonsville and protection of the railroad from Richmond and North Carolina.” General Longstreet was on his way back to join Lee, but he would arrive too late.

Chancellorsville

In January 1863 Joseph Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac. By late April he had divided his army in front of Fredericksburg and begun a flanking march that would stretch Lee’s generalship—and Confederate manpower—to its limits. Imagine a weight scale of the type the figure of Justice is often seen holding. If this were morale among the military in the eastern theater in the Civil War, the scale holding the Army of Northern Virginia would just about be at the floor, while the totally empty scale holding the Army of the Potomac would be as high up as the scale would allow. As both sides largely saw it, 1862 had been the year of Lee and his army. They had driven back McClellan from the outskirts of Richmond, totally baffled Pope and almost destroyed his army, driven back an attack they should have lost at Sharpsburg, and stopped Burnside’s attack at Fredericksburg as easily as a pit bull can defeat a mouse. Lee’s soldiers thought that they were, when led by the master, totally invincible; the blue-clad men of the Army of the Potomac largely agreed with them. Joseph Hooker, their new commander, understood this, and he asked Lincoln to agree to allow the army to rebuild some of its lost confidence. He did the little things that got soldiers feeling better. He improved rations; he granted furloughs so many of the men could go home for the first time in a while. He got rid of Burnside’s cumbersome “grand division” arrangement, and organized the cavalry into a single corps. He even designed special badges for each of the divisions of his corps so a man would feel pride in belonging to a unique organization. He also indulged in many of the displays McClellan had so loved: holding drills, reviews, and parades so the men would see themselves on the field, with burnished weapons and flying flags, as a body of men at war. Back in Washington, on March 3 the government passed “An Act for enrolling and calling out the National Forces, and for other purposes”—a draft for additional manpower. All male citizens between 20 and 45, save for those physically or mentally unfit, with certain types of dependents, and those convicted of a felony or holding state or federal office (often the same thing), could now be called on to fill the ranks of the Union armed forces. This happened a year after the Confederate draft, but the Union side had not needed to rely on it, because of the differences in manpower base, until now. Hooker, unlike McClellan, knew that eventually he’d have to attack Lee, and he intended to live up to his nickname, “Fighting Joe,” far more than the “Little Napoleon” ever had. Hooker prepared a plan to move up the Rappahannock, much as Burnside had tried in his unsuccessful “Mud March” the previous winter. Moving out before Lee could realize that the Union lines at Fredericksburg had been abandoned, he would then send his troops across the river at the many fords in the area, and roll up Lee’s left flank. He started sending cavalry forces to reconnoiter these fords. On March 17 Union cavalry under William Averell crossed the Rappahannock at Kelly’s Ford, there to be met by Confederates who were sent to meet

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General John F.Reynolds’ Union I Corps would be present at both battlefields of the short, but bloody, Chancellorsville Campaign. Posted on the left of General Sedgwick south of Fredericksburg on May 1, Reynolds received orders on the evening of May 2 to reinforce Hooker at Chancellorsville an hour after Jackson’s surprise attack. Reynolds got his 17,000 men on the march overnight and was in position on Hooker’s right flank by morning.

them. On the Wheatley Farm and in overgrown areas around it the two sides fought a sharp little action, resulting in Averell’s withdrawal late in the afternoon. The Federals lost 78 men, while the Confederates lost 133, among whom was a marked, brilliant artilleryman, John Pelham, known as “The Gallant Pelham,” who had commanded Jeb Stuart’s horse artillery. Ironically, Pelham was not in command at the fight, but was there only as an observer. Pelham and Stuart had been at Culpeper Court House when they heard of the fight and went over to see what was going on. Stuart, seeing that the commander on the field had the situation well in hand, stayed behind to observe. Pelham, however, dashed to the front of the 3rd Virginia Cavalry as it charged a Union position and was hit in the head by a piece of shell just as the column passed the Wheatley House. Stuart telegraphed his young subordinate’s family back in Alabama the next morning: “The noble, the chivalric, the gallant Pelham is no more. He was killed in action yesterday. His remains will be sent to you today. How much he was beloved, appreciated and admired, let the tears of agony we have shed, and the gloom of mourning throughout my command, bear witness. His loss is irreparable.” Pelham’s friend W.W.Blackford recalled that the two of them, “had been reading aloud to each other Napier’s ‘Peninsula War,’ and the day he left us to go to Orange C.H. on a little pleasure trip I marked the place we stopped and I have had never had the heart to read more of it since.” Pelham’s body was first sent to Richmond to lie in state in the capitol building at the foot of the statue of George Washington before going on to Alabama. A number of Richmond citizens did not visit the deceased hero’s body, as they were more concerned with daily living, which had grown harder and harder as the

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Union blockade was growing tighter and as much of the local farmers’ produce was going to the army. Prices were getting higher and higher, while salaries remained flat and paper Confederate money depreciated. Hardship in Richmond J.B.Jones, a clerk in the War Department, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day, 1862, that “turkeys are selling at $11 each. Shoes for $25 per pair.” In the meantime, an infantry private made only $ 11 a month, although this would grow to $18 in June 1864, and the money was rarely paid. Jones continued: “A silver (lever) watch, which had been lying in my trunk for two years, and which cost me $25, sold at auction yesterday for $75. This sufficed for fuel for a month, and a Christmas dinner. At the end of another month, my poor family must be scattered again, as this house will be occupied by its owner. I have advertised for boarding in the country, but get no response. It would required $300 a per month to board my family here, and that is more than my income.” Finally, on April 2, feelings in the city burst, and J.B.Jones, described what happened: “This morning early a few hundred women and boys met as by concert in the Capitol Square, saying they were hungry, and must have food. The number continued to swell until there were more than a thousand. But few men were among them, and these were mostly foreign residents, with exemptions [from military service] in their pockets. About nine a.m. the mob emerged from the western gates of the square, and proceeded down Ninth Street, passing the War Department, and crossing Main Street, increasing in magnitude at every step, but preserving silence and (so far) good order. Not knowing the meaning of such a procession, I asked a pale boy where they were going. A young woman, seemingly emaciated, but yet with a smile, answered that they were going to find something to eat. I could not, for the life of me, refrain from expressing the hope that they might be successful; and I remarked they were going in the right direction to find plenty in the hands of the extortioners. I did not follow, to see what they did; but I learned an hour after that they marched through Cary Street, and entered diverse stores of the speculators, which they proceeded to empty of their contents. They impressed all the carts and drays in the street, which were speedily laden with meal, flour, shoes, etc. An eyewitness says he saw a boy come out of a store with a hat full of money (notes); and I learned that when the mob turned up into Main Street, when all the shops were by this time closed, they broke in the plate-glass windows, demanding silks, jewelry, etc…” Eventually soldiers appeared on the scene, the city’s mayor read the riot act and demanded them to disperse, and Davis himself appeared to speak to the crowd, which then did disperse. Newspapers did their part by not printing news of the event, but soldiers in the city returning to the ranks as well as family writing about it to their men in the army soon passed word on. The morale based on military achievement was now hit by concern about the families at home. As things would never actually get better, and more area was conquered by Federal troops, putting families behind enemy lines, this sort of concern would eventually undermine the highest morale and lead to a major reason the army eventually caved in. At the moment the average soldier had little time to worry about his homefolk because the enemy army was on the move. Hooker, leaving behind some 40,000 men under John Sedgwick at Fredericksburg, had got the bulk of the Army of the Potomac underway, and by April 30 had actually maneuvered some 75,000 men across the river beyond Lee’s left. By the evening of April 30 Hooker’s troops had penetrated 10 miles (16 km) into the tangled mess known as the Wilderness, broken by roads and small farms. To oppose this move, Lee, still missing Longstreet’s two divisions on their way back from North Carolina, had only 60,000 men.

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The opening maneuvers of the Army of the Potomac in the Chancellorsville Campaign, late April, 1863. Hooker divided the army on April 27, marching most of his men east from Falmouth to cross the Rappahannock at the U.S. and Kelly’s Fords. This attempt to outflank Lee would be screened by the dense vegetation of The Wilderness, while to Lee’s front, Sedgwick would maintain a strong presence opposite Fredericksburg. This part of Hooker’s plan succeeded perfectly, and by April 30, 75,000 Union troops were encamped around Chancellorsville.

He had to decide quickly to either retreat, allowing the two widely separated wings of the Federal army to join up as they followed him, or give battle there and then. At the same time Hooker made a major error by sending his new cavalry corps on a long-ranging raid against Lee’s line of communications, partially hoping to interdict reinforcements coming to Lee’s aid. As it turned out, the cavalry was delayed two weeks by rain-swollen rivers before getting underway, and then they did little damage. Moreover, their unavailability meant that Hooker’s main force lacked a good scouting force to keep tracks on an ever-aggressive and on-the-move Lee. Moreover, cavalry was generally used to scout around the flanks and prevent an army from being surprised by a flank attack; this cavalry was missing and Hooker was to pay the price for it. Lee decided to leave some 10,000 men under Jubal Early on the old defenses of Fredericksburg, while he sent the rest of the army moving to the west by May 1. Before going he told Early that he was to “watch the enemy and try to hold him; to conceal the weakness of my force, and if compelled to yield before overpowering numbers, to fall back towards Guiney’s depot where our supplies were, protecting them and the railroad; and I was further instructed to join the main body of the army in the event that the enemy disappeared from my front, or so diminished his force as to render it prudent to do so, leaving at Fredericksburg only such force as might be necessary to protect the town against any force the enemy might leave behind.”

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Jackson took the whole of May 2 to march his Corps up the Brock Road to the Orange Turnpike and make his attack on Hooker’s exposed right. It was a maneuver that would have been impossible had the Union cavalry under Pleasonton and Averell not been in position watching the roads on Hooker’s flanks.

Lee Advances to Contact Then Lee and the main bulk of his army were off. By the time they reached the Federals, however, the Army of the Potomac was out of the Wilderness and into open ground where their numbers would be sure to tell. However, unperturbed, Jackson’s men formed battle lines and Hooker, later admitting that he lost faith in himself, decided to pull back to a defensive position inside the Wilderness area and let Lee come to him. When he learned this, General Darius Couch, commander of II Corps, decided that Hooker was already a beaten general. To an army in the field, morale at the levels to be found in the Army of Northern Virginia, as opposed to that in the Army of the Potomac, is worth perhaps two corps of infantry.

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The Federals fell back into the tangled woods, forming a semi-circle with a wide bend of the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers at their back, their center at the Chancellor’s House in a clearing known as Chancellorsville. E.Porter Alexander described the area that they would defend: “The original forest had been cut for charcoal many years before, and were replaced by thick and tangled growth. A few clearings were scattered at intervals, and a few small creeks drained it. Chancellorsville was merely a brick residence at an important junction of roads, with a considerable clearing on the west. Three roads ran toward Fredericksburg: the old Turnpike most directly; the Plank road to its right, but uniting with the Turnpike at Tabernacle Church—about halfway; the River road to the left, by a roundabout course passing near Banks Ford of the Rappahannock.” The Federal lines were good, but the dense woods, which masked any troop movements, nullified their advantage in numbers. On the other hand, as Porter Alexander pointed out, it was a great area to defend: “A wide belt of dense small growth could soon be felled in front of shallow ditches, with earth and log breast works. Any charging line is brought to halt by the entanglement, and held under close fire of musketry and canister, while the surrounding forest prevents the enemy from finding positions to use his own artillery.” Lee moved cautiously forward, at the same time sending Stuart and the cavalry to scout the Union right. Stuart returned with word that Hooker’s right was still in the air, unsupported, and not at all dug in. Lee decided to attack. He met with Jackson and the two decided to risk all on a single throw of the dice. Lee would split his army once again, sending Jackson’s 26,000 men on a long march around the Union right, while the remaining 20,000 Confederates would simply demonstrate on the Union front. Jackson’s topographical engineer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, noted in his diary of May 2: “The Generals were up at an early hour and had a consultation, in the pines on the top of the hill where the Catherine Furnace road turns from the Plank Road, sitting on Yankee Cracker boxes which the enemy had left there. I went down to Mr Welford’s where General Stuart had his quarters, and ascertained the roads that led around to the enemy’s rear and came back and reported to Generals Lee and Jackson, who consulted and examined the map and then started the second Corps down by the furnace, Rodes’ division in front, and went on to the Brock road, and then up it a piece and into a private road, and so on to the Plank Road and across both Plank Roads to the Old Turnpike.” As so often happened with Civil War units on both sides, Jackson’s men did not get underway when they were supposed to. Jackson lost three hours as he waited for Major Pegram’s artillery to engage the Federals, while at the same time the infantry had to prepare rations for the day’s march, ammunition had to be distributed, and the other small tasks of regimental quartermasters and commissaries had to be done. Moreover one brigade commander later reported that, “a delay was caused by an endeavor on our part to entrap some Federal cavalry,” something that surely should have been ignored, given the importance of this march. As a result, almost all of May 2 was spent by Jackson’s men in this round-about way, hidden from Union view. Luckily rain showers the day before softened the earth, making marching with thin-soled shoes or even bare feet easier, while at the same time eliminating those clouds of dust that, in this war, often gave away advancing columns on the march. Finally the men were under way. Rodes’s division led the advance, followed by its artillery, ambulances, and ammunition trains. Colston’s division followed, and Hill’s “Light Division” brought up the rear, each with their impedimenta following behind. The column was some 10 miles (16 km) long. Corps supply trains left the Plank Road at the Aldrich farm, following the Catherine Road toward Todd’s Tavern on the Brock Road, protected from Union capture by Jackson’s infantry marching to the north. Each regiment had been ordered to have a provost guard at its rear to sweep up stragglers, the traditional Confederate habit in this case being strictly forbidden. The men were given only three breaks, each one of some 20 minutes, during the entire march.

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The beginning of the Battle of Chancellorsville, May 1. Learning that a Union army was now in his rear, Lee divided his own army and, leaving 10,000 men under Early to hold Fredericksburg, marched quickly to block the exit routes from The Wilderness. Hooker’s resolve began to waver. Having outmaneuvered Lee completely, by the end of the day he suddenly went on the was to let Lee attack him. defensive. His strategy now Hooker would not have long to wait.

The move was an extremely risky one. Were Hooker to retain his fortitude and advance, he would run into a paper-thin Confederate front line, one easily overrun by the Federals’ 70,000 infantry. At the same time, if Jackson’s march was discovered while still strung out for miles in column, even Federal cavalry could smash into it at one of many points and destroy his corps in detail. It was vital that the march around the Union flank not be discovered. The march, however, was discovered that morning as Federal scouts reported a Confederate column moving to the south on a country road three-quarters of a mile (1200 m) at Hazel Grove, southwest of Chancellorsville, at 08:00 hours. Union artillery opened up on where the column was seen, causing some confusion among the Confederate train. Unfortunately for the Federals this sighting was misinterpreted. Major-General Daniel Sickles, a Union corps commander, rode to Hazel Grove and was convinced he was seeing a Confederate retreat. He informed the commander on the Union right, Major-General O.O.Howard, commanding XI Corps—a unit made up of men largely of German ancestry—and to the corps commander on his left, asking for their support if he were permitted to follow up this retreat. He then went to Hooker to ask him to allow this advance. Hooker gave permission, insisting that Sickles advance only cautiously. Hooker himself saw the Confederate column as it headed toward the Wellford furnace, and he suddenly wondered if instead of a retreat he was watching the beginning of an attack on his right. At 09:30 hours he wrote Howard at XI Corps that he was concerned about an attack this way and that Howard should

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By the end of May 1, Lee’s situation could have been desperate. Lee now knew he faced the bulk of Hooker’s army: Sedgwick was beginning to move on Early, and Longstreet’s Corp was still miles to the south. But Lee kept his nerve and the initiative. Learning from Stuart’s cavalry that the Union right was weak, he divided his army yet again and, in the early hours of May 2, sent Jackson and the bulk of the army on a flanking march toward the Orange Turnpike. Jackson was in position along the Pike at 18:00 hours and began his attack toward Chancellorsville.

“examine the ground, and determine upon the position you will take in that event, in order that you may be prepared for him in whatever direction he advances.” In the meantime, Sickles’ advanced troops, headed by men of the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, especially picked for their markmanship and clad in green, ran into Confederate troops who had been left to defend the supply train. The Confederates fought bravely, although outnumbered, and once they were convinced the trains had passed safely, and concerned that their flanks were about to be turned, fell back with the loss of only one caisson, the result of a broken axle. As fighting was going on, Howard sent his 2nd Brigade, his reserve, to support Sickles’ advance, moving southward toward Catherine Furnace. The remainder of his troops rested easily, many even stacking their arms as they cooked, wrote letters, and chatted. Finally at the Lucket’s House, Jackson’s men began deploying into line of battle. It was already late in the afternoon, and Porter Alexander later asked, “whether or not time had been anywhere lost unnecessarily. It would seem that 12 hours should not be needed to march 14 miles and form 20,000 men in line of battle. Briefly, it may be said, that with good broad roads, or with troops formed, ready to march at the word, and disciplined to take mud holes and obstructions without loss of distance, two hours could have been saved. But none of these conditions existed. Especially was time lost in the morning in getting the column formed.” Still, despite delays, they were in place now.

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Men of Hays’ brigade of Jackson’s Corps at Hamilton’s Crossing, south of Fredericksburg. The Confederates were in position east and south of the town on April 29 when Anderson’s division discovered Hooker’s army marching out of The Wilderness. Lee immediately gave orders for all units, save Jubal Early’s, to converge north and west toward the Plank Road.

“Are you ready?” Jackson asked Rodes, the lead divisional commander. “Yes,” was the reply. “You can go forward then,” Jackson said, launching the attack. At twilight, 6 p.m. by Jedadiah Hotchkiss’s watch, Jackson’s men struck. As rabbits and deer suddenly darted out of the woods into the Union picket lines just ahead of the charging Confederate ranks, the Federal line collapsed. “It was about six o’clock when the bugles of Rodes—Blackford in charge of them—sounded the advance, while the [Union] Eleventh Corps was preparing its evening meal with the sound of whistling and song. Following the bugles were a few scattering shots, then from the opening in the road the whiz of a shell, and, following after the wild game escaping from the wood, ‘Jackson’s Foot Cavalry’ were upon them. The grey line moved on regularly with whoop and yell and the rattle of musketry. There was, there could be, no effective attempt at resistance,” Henry Kyd Douglas, Jackson’s inspector general wrote. “The Stonewall Brigade was not engaged. It was enjoying The Improvement of Confederate Artillery After Chancellorsville, Virginia artillery officer Ham Chamberlayne wrote home, “The most noteworthy feature of the Battle was the efficiency of our Artillery; owing to the issue of good guns replacing bad & to the organization into Battalions we massed it & produced effects unknown unhoped before.” In the first case, most of the 6-pounders that had still been in use as late as Sharpsburg the previous September had been replaced by either 12-pounder smoothbore Napoleons or 10-pounder Parrott and Ordnance Rifles. Many of these came from captures of Union ordnance from the Peninsula Campaign through to the Second Manassas. In other cases, Southern industry, especially the Tredegar Works in

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Richmond, were now producing the heavier, more modern weapons, Between the two, Lee’s artillery was now largely equal to that of the Federals, Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Fremantle, Coldstream Guards, visiting the army not long after Chancellorsville, spoke with Lee’s chief of artillery, BrigadierGeneral William Pendleton, who told the Englishman that “the universal opinion is in favor of the 12pounder Napoleon guns as the best and simplest sort of ordnance for field pur poses. Ne arly a ll the artillery with this army has been either captured from the enemy or cast from old 6-pounders taken at the early part of the war.” As to the new organization, “During the month of February the light batteries of the artillery of the army were organized into battalions, each commanded by field-officers, and reporting direct to the chiefs of artillery of the army corps,” wrote Adjutant William Owen of the Washington Artillery, “The assignment of single batteries to brigades, as was the case during the summer campaign [of 1862] is done away with; for it is considered that a brigadier-general has about all he can attend to in fighting his infantry.” This reorganization, suggested by Pendleton, also gave artillery officers, who rarely had a chance to rise above the rank of captain, a chance of promotion as it opened up new field ranks in the new battalions. The reorganization was authorized in a congressional act of January 22,1862 that authorized a colonel for every 40 guns, a lieutenant-colonel for every 24 guns, and a major for every 16 guns. Based on the army’s 264 cannon, Lee’s artillery was authorized 6 colonels, 11 lieutenant-colonels, and 16 majors, all of whom would come from from the ranks of the better battery commanders, Austrian Army observer FitzGerald Ross described how the new organization worked shortly after Chancellorsville: “The artillery is organised into battalions; five battalions in a corps of three divisions, one to each division, and two in reserve. They always mass the artillery now, and commanders of battalions say that they lose no more men in a battalion than they formerly did in a single battery. Each battalion is complete in itself, with quartermaster, adjutant, ordnance officer, surgeon, &c. The whole is under the control of the chief of artillery of the army, but assigned at convenience to the corps commanders, one of whose staff-officers is chief of artillery to the corps, and another chief of ordnance. “The duty of the chief of ordnance is to supply the guns and everything for their equipment, with ammunition and stores of every description, excepting horses and provisions. “The chief of artillery places them in action, and commands them there. The chief of ordnance to an army is usually a lieutenantcolonel, and has two captains as assistants; to a corps, a major, with a lieutenant as assistant; and the divisional ordnance officer is a captain. The ordnance officers of brigades and artillery battalions are generally majors, but some are lieutenant-colonels. The chief of artillery to an army is a brigadier-general; to a corps, a colonel; and to a division, a major.”

the novel sensation of watching a running fight without taking part in it.” Federals soldiers of all ranks broke and fled up to 2 miles (3 km) to the rear. Others, however, turned and fought well, buying additional time for Hooker’s left wing to get organized. One brigade, four regiments with some 1,400 men, formed with half facing south and the other, west. They fired three volleys before seeing that they were surrounded on three sides and then taking to their heels. The next Union brigade attempted to change its front, but again the Confederates, mostly moving at the doublequick, were too fast, and they had to run too. “But that they had fought well is shown by their losses,” admitted Porter Alexander, “which were 692 out of 2500. The division commander and four out of five regimental commanders were killed or wounded.” The fight took only 32 minutes by Hotchkiss’s watch. “Much undeserved obloquy was heaped upon the 11th corps for their enforced retreat,” Porter Alexander wrote. “No troops could have acted differently. All their fighting was of one brigade at a time against six.” Hooker himself, leaning against a pillar at the Chancellor’s House, was stunned when a cannon shot hit the pillar, and was unable to continue in command. Couch quickly organized resistance, and nighttime put an

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The campaign developed into two battles on May 3. Hooker’s line had collapsed under Jackson’s assault on May 2, but the Confederate attack had stalled with nightfall and Jackson’s tragic wounding. At dawn on May 3, Sedgwick finally attacked Jubal Early and only gained Marye’s Heights after Early withdrew his outnumbered force at about 11:00 hours. With Hooker contained, Lee then turned on Sedgwick and, at Salem Church, stopped the Union advance, and had forced Sedgwick back toward the river by the end of the day.

end to the Confederate advance. Not that it could have continued much further as by then, as the frontline Confederates were exhausted by the marching, running, and fighting, and were hungry. Whole brigades and regiments became mixed up in the rapid dash after the fleeing Federals. Although a huge success, the Army of the Potomac —once again—had not been destroyed, and that was always the aim of Lee’s manuevers. As Porter Alexander later pointed out there were two factors that limited its success: “1st. Two brigades were some hours behind, for Archer, without orders had taken them to protect the rear. 2d. There were now but two hours of daylight left, and only in daylight can the fruits of victories be gathered.” That evening Jackson and his staff rode along the front, studying the situation. At one point in their lines, men of a North Carolina brigade, seeing a number of dark-clad horsemen (Jackson was wearing a black rain coat) coming upon them and reasonably assuming that they were Union cavalry, fired. As Hotchkiss wrote, “General Jackson was wounded, having three balls through his left arm and one through his right hand, having held up both hands to urge our men to desist. The enemy had but a moment before breaking our advance and throwing it into confusion but General J. had rallied it by telling the flying men ‘Jackson himself calls on you to halt.’ The enemy took advantage of our mistake and opened a terrific volley of musketry and artillery, sweeping the roads in which our forces had become massed by the dense growth on either side and the swampy nature of the ground. Disorder reigned supreme for a few moments, the ‘Great Chief’ being struck down; but General A.P.Hill, who had rushed to the General’s side saying, ‘I have been trying to make the men cease firing,’ himself met the advance of the Yankee skirmishers then formed a line

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Brigadier-General William N. Pendleton, the chief of Lee’s artillery during the Chancellorsville Campaign. It was the swift and efficient movement of gun batteries between Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg—in support of the rapidly marching infantry—that was one of the key elements of the Confederate victory.

of men and repulsed them, so saving General J. from capture and he was born off in a litter by Smith and [Richard E.] Welbourn [Jackson’s chief signal officer].” Jackson’s staff engineer, Boswell, was killed, taking two bullets in the heart and one in the leg. Jackson himself was badly wounded. He was carried on a litter, being dropped heavily and painfully twice, to an ambulance and from there taken first to a field hospital and then to Guinea Station. His left arm was amputated and at first he seemed well on the road to recovery. But he developed pneumonia, and he lingered for several days, in time for his wife and young daughter to be present at his bedside before he died on Sunday, May 10. His death, resulting from friendly fire, was a loss from which the Confederacy never recovered. On May 3 Stuart took over command of Jackson’s infantry and at daybreak returned to the attack. His troops were still weary, having managed only two to three hours of sleep the previous night. Before they went into action, at least, Commissary Officers managed to get food brought up to feed them.

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By May 4, the Army of the Potomac was a beaten force and was retreating across the Rappahannock once again. Hooker failed to come to Sedgwick’s help on May 3 and during the following day ordered his own portion of the army to begin a withdrawal across the U.S. Ford, covered by a rearguard commanded by George G. Meade. Lee’s army was once again in control of the south bank of the Rappahannock, Fredericksburg, and Marye’s Heights, but the cost had been frightful: over 12,700 casualties, including Stonewall Jackson.

The Federals were forced to give up Hazel Grove around 06:30 hours, and Stuart moved some 40–50 cannon from five artillery battalions onto the commanding hill. “Thus, so easily that we did not at once realized its great value, we gained space for our batteries, where we soon found that we could enfilade the enemy’s adjacent lines,” Porter Alexander recalled. Under heavy artillery fire, around 09:00 hours the Union forces fell back to a new line around the Chancellor’s House, but this was a poor position. According to Porter Alexander, “There were no breastworks here to give shelter, and their positions was now so contracted that our guns from three directions crossed their fire upon it.” The Federals, pressed also by Stuart’s and Lee’s infantry, abandoned Chancellorsville crossroads around 10:00 hours, withdrawing to a new line. This position had flanks secured by the bend of the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers. Lee considered continuing the attack, ordering up fresh ammunition, but he now faced five Federal corps well dug in on his front, while he also received disturbing news about the situation in his rear west of Fredericksburg That came from Jubal Early, left behind at Fredericksburg to cover the rear of Lee’s army. On May 2, too, Early received word to abandon his thin 6-mile- (9km-) long lines at Fredericksburg. Lee’s chief-of-staff, Colonel R.H.Chilton, arrived at Early’s headquarters, “with a verbal order to move up immediately towards Chancellorsville with my whole force, except a brigade of infantry and Pendleton’s reserve artillery, and to leave at Fredericksburg the brigade of infantry and a part of the reserve artillery to be selected by General Pendleton, with instructions to the commander of this force to watch the enemy’s movements, and keep him

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The Third Bunting issue battle flag was first introduced into the Army of Northern Virginia in the summer of 1862. It was large at 51 square inches (328 square cm) and kept the compressed 13-star pattern of the Second issue, but saw the return of the white border as featured on the First issue. Carried throughout 1863, this was the pattern of battle flag seen at Gettysburg.

in check if possible, but if he advanced with too heavy a force to retired on the road to Spotsylvania CourtHouse—General Pendleton being required to send the greater part of the reserve artillery to the rear at once.” Early moved his troops out as masked as possible so General Sedgwick on the northern side of the river would not learn of his retreat, and had one scary moment when a Union observation balloon rose and all were sure the Federals had spotted the retreating column. It turned out they had not. Then the Confederates headed off, only to run into a courier from Lee with a message saying that he was not to withdraw from above the town unless he could safely do so, and that it would be better, actually, for him to remain and neutralize Sedgwick’s forces. By now it was dark, and Early turned his column around and got his men back into position undetected. The morning light of May 3 revealed that during the night all of Sedgwick’s troops had crossed the river and were now on the plain before Fredericksburg. The Federals then attacked. At first Early’s men held, but finally their line was broken, in an action known to the Confederates as the Second Battle of Fredericksburg. The Federals finally took the heights for which so many had died the previous December. Early fell back west to Salem Church, where he was in a position to contest Sedgwick’s advance toward Lee’s rear at Chancellorsville by hitting the Union rear and flank, and Sedgwick stayed in position until nightfall, threatened at front, flank, and rear. Lee made plans to turn on Sedgwick, then return to finish off Hooker’s army. The troops around Chancellorsville started back toward Fredericksburg around 06:00 hours on May 4. Although the men

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The final phase of the Battle of Chancellorsville took place during the evening of May 4. Hooker’s Corps had taken up defensive positions against a bend of the Rappahannock and were beginning a retreat across U.S. Ford. The Confederates meanwhile had taken a line along the Orange Turnpike and River Road and, in a series of actions, continued to keep pressure on the Federal perimeter.

moved quickly, it was dark before they arrived near Sedgwick’s position and in the darkness two of Early’s brigades fired into each other by mistake, causing some confusion. As the Confederates tried to sort this out, Sedgwick stole a march on them and withdrew across the Rappahannock at Banks Ford. Hooker, recovered from his shock, withdrew his army across the Rapidan and Rappahannock during the night of May 5/6. The Chancellorsville Campaign was over. The Union army had lost 1,606 killed, 9,762 wounded, and 5,919 missing. Lee’s losses, however, were less affordable and even greater, at 2,018 missing, 9,081 wounded, and 1,665 killed, including Stonewall Jackson. The Death of Jackson Ten years after the war, Jackson’s chief signal officer, Richard E.Welbourn, one of the general’s staff who was present when he was mortally wounded, described what happened: General Jackson thought, while awaiting Hill’s movements, that he would ride to the front, as far as the skirmish line, or pickets, and ascertain what could be seen or heard of the enemy and his movements, —supposing there was certainly a line in skirmishers in front, as his orders were always very imperative to keep a skirmish line in front of the line of battle. When we had ridden only a few rods and reached a point nearly opposite an old dismantled house in the woods (near the road on our right) [between the skirmish line of the 33rd North Carolina and the front of the 18th North Carolina] and while I was delivering to him General Hill’s reply to his order—given a few moments before,—to our great surprise our little party was fired upon by about a battalion or probably less of our troops [skirmishers of the 33rd North Carolina], a little to our right and to the right of the pike [the Mountain Road], the balls passing diagonally across the pike and apparently aimed at us. There seemed to be one gun discharged [fired by Sergeant Thomas A.Cowan, 33rd North Carolina, evidently at Federal scouts], followed almost instantly by this volley. The single gun may have been discharged accidentally, but seemed to have been taken as a signal by the troops, to announce the approach of the enemy. I hardly think the troops saw us, though they could hear our horses’ feet on the pike and probably fired at ra ndom i n the supposed

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direction of the enemy. At the firing our hor ses wh eeled s uddenly to the left and General Jackson, at whose side I rode, galloped away—followed by the few who were not dismounted by the first firing,— into the woods to get out of range of the bullets, and approached our line a little obliquely, but had not gone over 20 steps beyond the edge of the pike, into the thicket, ere the brigade [the 18th and 37th North Carolina Regiments] just to the left of the turnpike (on our right as we approached from the direction of the enemy), drawn up within 30 yards [27 m] of us, fired a volley in their turn, kneeling on the right knee, as shown by the flash of their guns, as though prepared to guard against cavalry. By this fire General Jackson was wounded. These troops evidently took us for the enemy’s cavalry. We could distinctly hear General Hill calling, at the top of his voice, to his troops to make them cease firing. I was alongside of Jackson, and saw his arm fall at his side, loosing the rein, when the volley came from the left. His horse wheeled suddenly and ran through the bushes toward the enemy. The limb of a tree took off his cap and threw him flat on the back of his horse. I rode after him, passing under the same limb, which took off my hat also, but Jackson soon regained his seat, caught the bridle in his right hand, and turning his horse towards the pike and our men, somewhat checked his speed. As he turned to the pike, it gave me the inside track, and I caught his horse just as he reached the pike, which he was approaching at an acute angle. Just as I caught the reins, Captain [W.T.] Wynn [of the Signal Corps] rode up on the opposite of him and caught hold of the reins on that side, almost simultaneously. By this time the confusion was over and all was quiet, and looking up and down the pike in every direction, no living creature could be seen save us three. As soon as I could check Jackson’s horse, I dismounted, and seeing that he was faint, I asked him what I could do for him, or if he felt able to ride as far as into our lines. He answered, “You had best take me down,” leaning, as he spoke, toward me and then falling, partially fainting from loss of blood, I was on the side of the broken arm, while his horse had his head turned towards the enemy and about where we were when first fired upon, and would not be kept still, as he was frightened and suffering from his own wounds. As General Jackson fell over on me, I caught him in my arms, and held him until Captain Wynn could get his feet out of the stirrups, then we carried him in our arms some 10 or 15 steps north of the pike, where he was laid on the ground, resting his head in my lap, while I proceeded to dress his wounds, cutting off his coat sleeves, and binding a handkerchief tightly above and below his wound and putting his arm in a sling. Wynn went for Dr McGuire and an ambulance, and I was left alone with him until General Hill came up. Just before Hill reached us, Jackson revived a little and asked me to have a skilful surgeon attend him. When I told him what had been done he said “very good.” The enemy evidently thought the firing had thrown our men into confusion and resolved to take advantage of it by making a determined attack at this time, so in a few minutes, it was announced by Lieutenant [Joseph E.] Morrison [an aide-de-camp], who had joined Jackson while he was lying on the ground, and now ran up in a very excited manner, crying out, “The enemy is within 50 yards and advancing. Let us take the General away.” Jackson was still lying with his head in my lap, I had finished tying up his arm where it was broken, and asked him where his other wound was, and what I should do for that, when he replied, “In my right hand, but never mind that, it is a mere trifle.” He said nothing about the wound in his left wrist, and did not seem aware of it, doubtless owning to the fact that the arm was broken above. Upon hearing Morrison’s warning,! sprang up, and said, “Let us take the General in our arms, and carry him back,” to which he replied, “No, if you can help me up, I can walk.” He had only gone a few steps, when we met a litter and placed him on it. He was being borne off on foot, supported by Captain Lee and one or two others, I walking between them and the pike, and leading three horses, trying to keep the troops, then moving down the pike, from seeing who it was, but found this impossible, and we met some men with this litter before we had gone 10 steps. While placing Jackson on it, the enemy opened fire upon us at short range, from a battery planted on the pike and with infantry; a terrific fire of grape, shell, minie balls, etc., and advancing at a rapid rate. Everything seemed to be seized with a panic, and taken by surprise, our line was thrown into confusion. It recoiled and for awhile continued to give way, and the enemy pressed forward. Such was the disorder that I thought General

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Jackson and party would certainly fall into the hands of the enemy. The horses jerked loose, and ran in every direction, and before we proceeded far one of the litter bearers [Private John J.Johnson, Co. H, 22nd Virginia Battalion] was shot, having both of his arms broken, and General Jackson fell to the ground. As he lay there he grew faint from loss of blood, having fallen [about three feet] on his wounded side, and his arm began to bleed afresh. I rode away to try to get some whiskey for the purpose of reviving him, and at a short distance met Dr [Major Hunter] McGuire and Colonel [Sandie] Pendleton, to whom I told what had happened, as we rode to the place where I left Jackson. The ambulance came up; we hurried to the front, and, reaching Jackson, placed him in it. Before they reached the ambulance, however, Jackson’s litter was dropped a second time when one of the soldiers tripped over a grape vine. Jackson fell again on his damaged left side, further injuring his broken arm. McGuire took charge of his patient, finding that he had been hit by a smoothbore ball that “entered the outside of the forearm, an inch below the elbow [and] came out upon the opposite side, just above the wrist.” Another ball hit Jackson’s upper left arm “about three inches below the shoulder-joint, the ball dividing the main artery, and fracturing the bone.” In fact, the relatively little bleeding suggests the doctor was in error, and the main artery was not cut at all. However, he had lost enough blood to make McGuire apply a tourniquet. He recorded that Jackson’s pulse was faint for some two hours. “I am dying,” Jackson told McGuire, as shock set in. McGuire noted that his patient’s skin was clammy, “his face pale, and his lips compressed and bloodless.” McGuire amputated Jackson’s left arm and for a time he seemed to improve. Henry Kyd Douglas, Jackson’s inspector general, visited the wounded leader after the fighting on May 3 had died down. He later wrote, “I went to see General Jackson and was with him for an hour. I found him not only cheerful but talkative—in fact, inquisitive. He seemed to be in excellent condition.” Douglas described the fight, mentioning the death of several officers they knew and how Stuart had renewed the attack. “For a moment his face flushed with excitement and pride and lighted up with the fire of battle.” Pneumonia, however, set in, and this was what eventually killed the general. On May 10 Douglas wrote that everyone hoped that Jackson was getting better, “but private information gave no hope.” Indeed, on that day he died. Until then, the Army of Northern Virginia’s morale had been sky high. But with Jackson’s death, especially when coupled with the bad situation on the home front which soldiers were becoming aware of, it began a steady decline, starting with the lowest ranks and working up. Joshua Howell of the 47th Alabama wrote home that Jackson had been killed in battle and “I think this will have a gradeal [great deal] to due [do] with this war. I think the north will whip us soon.” Captain John Dooley, whose 1st Virginia marched through Richmond to a silent crowd, wrote, “It may be that the sad loss of our trustinspiring general, whose funeral cortege has so lately moved through the streets we are so enlivening with our parade, has sobered the public mind, and their most engrossing thought may be, Who will ever fill great Stonewall’s place, who indeed can ever replace our noble hero, so pure, so truly great? Oh, words fail when the soldier would utter Jackson’s praises!” After the war, Ross M.Gaston of the 28th North Carolina said he believed that “We never got over Jackson’s death, for all the men lost all hopes of success after he was gone.” “To General Lee and his soldiers his loss was irreparable; there was no man to take his place, while the vital blows his corps always struck were never made again,” wrote Alexander Hunter of the 17th Virginia. “Perhaps it is not extravagant to say that as the tidings reached the people all over the South that their idol was dead, more sorrow was expressed in tears than was ever known in the history of the world at the loss of one man,” wrote Luther Hopkins, 6th Virginia Cavalry, after the war. “The South felt that in the loss of Stonewall Jackson they were parting with the ‘better half’ of their army.” Shortly after Jackson’s death artillery subaltern Ham Chamberlayne wrote home that “Jackson’s death was a great blow to us but we can better spare him now than we could have done before the battle of Kernstown.” It would only, however, be a couple of months, at Gettysburg, before everyone felt Jackson’s loss keenly.

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The circumstances of Jackson’s death call into question the effectiveness of his army’s communications. The following account by James Power Smith, an aide-de-camp who arrived at the scene shortly after the fateful shooting and gathered eyewitness reports, indicates that Jackson exposed himself and his small party to fire from troops who were unaware of their general’s actions. “Regretting the necessity of relieving the troops in front, General Jackson had ordered A.P. Hill’s division, his third and reserve line, to be placed in front. While this change was being effected, impatient and anxious, the general rode forward on the turnpike, followed by two or three of his staff and a number of couriers and signal sergeants. He passed the swampy depression and began the ascent of the hill toward Chancellorsville, when he came upon a line of the Federal infantry lying on their arms. Fired at by one or two muskets…he turned and came back toward his line, upon the side of the road to his left. As he rode near to the Confederate troops, just placed in position and ignorant that he was in front, the left company began firing to the front.” It was this volley that led to Jackson’s death.

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Lee’s offensive into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg, which began on July 1. The battle has the reputation of being “the high watermark of the Confederacy,” though in fact Lee had to march his army south to fight to it. His offensive strategy proved such a success that at the end of June, Confederate divisions were 30 miles (48 km) north of the town and advancing on the Susquehanna River.

Gettysburg

Lee’s army had proven itself victorious in northern Virginia, but elsewhere in mid-1863, the Confederacy was under pressure. To take the war to the Union, General Lee urged a counteroffensive into Pennsylvania, an attack that would end at the town of Gettysburg. While Lee’s victory at Chancellorsville diminished yet again the threat on the east coast, things were not going nearly as well in the west. Persistent Union troops worked their way down the Mississippi and were now besieging the last two Confederate centers on that vital river, Vicksburg and Port Hudson. Jefferson Davis knew that he could not let the river fall, and summoned Lee to Richmond to discuss options for relieving the besieged points. One obvious possibility would be to shift some of the Army of Northern Virginia west under Joseph Johnston, now commanding the forces east of the Mississippi, whose job it would be to relieve Vicksburg. Lee vigorously resisted this suggestion, instead proposing a major counteroffensive north with the ever-victorious Army of Northern Virginia. This could not only cause the Federal high command to divert troops from the west to the east, but could also take the war away from Virginia to allow the farmers to get their crops secured. Lee was so certain of his ability to win the civilian government officials over to his side in this discussion that as early as February 1863 he had a map of Pennsylvania as far north as Harrisburg and as far east as Philadelphia drawn up for reference. After several meetings, Confederate President Jefferson Davis decided to allow Lee to make his northern invasion and hope for the best on the Mississippi. The Army of Northern Virginia, although depressed by Jackson’s death, was in the highest of spirits. They felt themselves quite unbeatable, as did Lee and his generals. There was the question, however, of how to best fill the gap Jackson left. On May 6, Lee named A.P.Hill as temporary commander of II Corps, one of the two the army had. However, Lee felt that his corps were too large for a single general to oversee in action, and therefore at the end of May he reorganized the army into three corps. Longstreet retained command of I Corps, while Richard S. Ewell, newly promoted to lieutenant-general though handicapped by his wound, took over II Corps. Hill was given control of the new III Corps. The newest corps comprised one division from each of the older corps, plus a new division formed especially for the command. Hill and Ewell had never commanded anything larger than a division, so the 1863 campaign would serve as a testing ground. Lee also oversaw the refitting of the army’s artillery, adding 14 Union cannon captured at Chancellorsville, while scouring the countryside for horses and refitting leather harness and equipment. Although Southern-made fuses and primers were still inferior to Northern-made ones, and ordnance officers still had to provide a mix of ammunition in single batteries, Lee’s artillery was now gunfor-gun equal to Union artillery. New horses were also acquired for the cavalry, although the policy that each cavalryman

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The strategic situation in the southeastern states prior to Lee’s invasion, June 1863. The Confederacy was under pressure on all fronts: Grant was attacking Vicksburg; Nashville had fallen; and Rosecrans was threatening central Tennessee. On the coast the Union had established garrisons at New Orleans, Charleston, South Carolina, and Norfolk, Virginia. The need for the Army of Northern Virginia— the nation’s finest fighting force—to make an attack on the North was clear.

had to supply his own horse, being allowed to return home after losing a horse in service to acquire a new mount, meant that many cavalry units were always at short strength. Fitz Lee’s brigade at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford on March 17, 1863, included 2,500 men on paper, but only had 1,500 men in the field in action as a result. The cavalry would see the first action of the 1863 campaign in this condition. Joseph Hooker, still in command of the Army of the Potomac, grew concerned that his right flank could be turned by Lee’s troops crossing the Rappahannock west of Fredericksburg to repeat the 1862 success at Second Manassas. He therefore ordered his cavalry commander to send some scouts that way, who reported that Lee had about three brigades near Culpeper Court House. Hooker send his cavalry commander with his troops, reinforced by 3,000 infantry to destroy this force, crossing the Rappahannock near Brandy Station. In the meantime, at Brandy Station, Jeb Stuart, whose troops had been spotted, arranged a grand review of his five brigades for Lee’s honor on Saturday June 6, and then afterward sent them down toward the Rappahannock with orders to start their march north to screen Lee’s troops moving up the Shenandoah Valley first thing next morning. Instead, on June 9 the Confederates were struck by the Union force in a move that totally surprised them. The result was the first true cavalry battle of the war, with both sides fighting mounted and using sabers in a free-wheeling mêlée that went back and forth for hours. Finally Stuart managed to regroup his command and concentrate on Fleetwood Hill, a position slow-moving Federal

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forces had failed to capture in early fighting. The Federals, who did not have enough men to overwhelm the Confederates, began a withdrawal as Lee arrived in time to see his wounded son taken off the field. The Battle of Brandy Station was a blow to Stuart’s pride, as many soldiers and civilians alike laughed at the cavalry that had just been showing off in a grand review being man-handled by Union cavalry that had been long dismissed as useless. The Federals had not managed to do what they came to do—destroy Stuart’s brigades—but they had fought better than ever and had come away inspired. They were aggressive and well trained and, from that point on, an equal to Confederate cavalry; indeed, as the war continued they would be superior, due to their better supply of horses and weapons. Stuart smarted under the constant calls that he had allowed his men to be surprised, something that hurt a prideful man, as Stuart most certainly was. Lee Goes North Lee’s main concern after the Federal incursion at Brandy Station was that his northern invasion could go on while being sure Richmond would remain adequately defended. In fact, nobody was able to say what an adequate defense would require, but Lee made plans to move north anyway. On June 10 Ewell’s II Corps headed north, and reached almost to Winchester three days later. Hill’s III Corps followed on June 14, while Longstreet’s I Corps headed to the mountains and the cavalry moved north to cover the infantry’s right flank. Hooker was forced to abandon his position at Fredericksburg and follow, keeping his army between Lee’s army and Washington. Federal cavalry ran into Stuart’s troops on June 17 at Aldie in a surprise engagement. Outnumbered Confederates fought well, but after a couple of hours were forced to withdraw to Middleburg. Hooker ordered his cavalry to continue striking the Confederates, adding infantry to the attacking force. Although the Federals were unable to destroy Stuart’s troopers, they still slowed down a now-concerned Lee’s move north, while pushing the Confederates farther west toward Lee’s marching lines. In the meantime, Lee got within striking distance of a Union division at Winchester and captured most of them as they attempted to escape on June 14. Along with the men, the Confederates took some 200,000 rounds of small-arms ammunition; 17 3-inch rifled cannon; 4 20-pounder heavy Parrott rifles, and a couple of 24-pounder howitzers. Ewell, who had led the attacking force, had shown himself to be an able replacement for Jackson. Union survivors fled to Harper’s Ferry where they joined the garrison in preparing a defense on Maryland Heights outside the town, a natural defense line that would not allow the city to fall as it had the year before. In fact, this time Lee would not even attempt to capture the town. Still, everything as of June 17 was going Lee’s way, with his troops crossing the Potomac on June 15, while cavalry reached Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, the same day, where they caused a great deal of panic among the citizenry. Union intelligence could not manage to figure out what Lee was doing. Now that they were taking the war north, the army marched better than before, with fewer cases of straggling and Lee even joking with one of his division commanders, Dorsey Pender, that he was “going to shoot us if we did not keep our men from straggling.” By June 23 Ewell’s Corps had accumulated enough food to feed all his men, plus it was able to provide some 1,700 barrels of flour for the rest of the army. Paying with Confederate money that was entirely worthless in the North, they bought salt—which was very scarce in the South beef, and flour from merchants in Maryland and Pennsylvania. As the Federals fell back, Stuart was ordered to march three brigades on the right of Ewell’s troops across the Potomac to guard the flank, take supplies as available, and watch the enemy’s movements. This would have taken him north through the Shenandoah and Cumberland Valleys. Stuart, however, consulted an officer whom he’d known from his 1862 Peninsula Campaign days, Major John S.Mosby, who was leading a guerrilla band behind enemy lines in Virginia. Mosby suggested that Stuart could move via Hopewell Gap,

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Richard S.Ewell had fought with Jackson during the Valley Campaign of 1862. He was promoted to lieutenantgeneral in May 1863 and would fight in the Shenandoah again in June, on his way north into Pennsylvania, as commander of Lee’s lead corps.

head northeast, and cross the Potomac at Seneca Ford some 20 miles (32 km) from Washington, slipping between Union units that Mosby had located. This would both divert Hooker’s attention from Lee’s drive north, and also allow Confederate cavalry to disrupt Union communications and capture supplies. It could very well encourage Hooker to concentrate his men back toward Washington for the city’s defense. Such a move appealed to a Stuart who was still smarting from his bad press received after Brandy Station. Discussing the move with Lee, he finally convinced his commander to let the cavalry find its own route, while being sure the commander of the two cavalry brigades not going on this raid would have to watch the rear and flank of the army, then follow their route north. On June 25 Stuart started off, leaving General Robertson, a not terribly aggressive but nonetheless conscientious leader, in overall command of his brigade and that of General Grumble Jones as the army’s rearguard cavalry. The two, unfortunately, did not get along. On the evening of June 27, Stuart crossed the Potomac at Rowser’s Ford where he found the river several feet higher than usual and, as a result, had problems getting his artillery and wagons across safely. The next morning, after a brief rest, he started north to join Ewell.

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The invasion route of the Army of Northern Virginia, June, 1863. Ewell secured Winchester on June 15 and Lee began crossing the Potomac into the Cumberland Valley the same day, completely bypassing Hooker who had concentrated his army between Washington and Manassas Gap. By June 16 Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital, was in a panic and civilians were fleeing the advancing Confederates.

Hill’s men crossed the Potomac on June 22, while Longstreet’s Corps crossed later, reaching Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, on June 27. In the meantime, Hooker’s Army of the Potomac, still unaware of Lee’s plans, made no moves until June 24, save for sending out scouting parties. By June 24, however, Hooker finally accepted the fact that Lee had stolen a march on him, and the next day he issued orders for the army to move. The Federals had to make grueling forced marches in hot, muggy weather in an attempt to catch up with the more leisurely moving Confederates. Many Union soldiers, hungry and exhausted in the march, fell out of the ranks and followed their units only after a day or two’s rest. By June 26, however, most of the Union Army was across the Potomac, with the final troops arriving in Maryland west of Frederick on the evening of June 27. Both armies were now north of the Potomac, and a showdown battle could not be far off. Before Hooker could fight this battle, however, on June 27 he offered his resignation to Lincoln, who accepted it and replaced him with George G.Meade. In the meantime, Lee’s troops were moving easily through a Pennsylvania defended only by some emergency militia units and home guards. Chambersburg, Mercersburg, Greencastle, Waynesboro, Welsh Run, Fairfield, Cove Mountain, and McConnnellsburg all provided supplies to their rebel captors. Supplies valued at as much as $250,000 were taken by one cavalry brigade alone. The Confederates requisitioned huge amounts of Neat’s foot oil, grain, clothing, bread, harness, horseshoes (always in short supply in the South), molasses, salt, four, sauerkraut (which they imagined the Pennsylvania German farmers always kept

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The situation in northern Maryland and Pennsylvania, June 28–30. Confederates were closing on the Susquehanna River, and by June 28 divisions of Ewell’s Corps were in Carlisle and York. Lee’s army was now extended over a 60-mile (96-km) front. It had, however, lost contact with the advancing Union army under George C.Meade and seemed more concerned with relieving Pennsylvanians of their property than keeping guard to the rear.

large supplies of), leather, rope, lead, sugar, coffee, and potatoes. As many as 26,000 head of cattle and 22, 000 head of sheep were gathered at this time and sent south for Confederate Army use. The Confederates expected to obtain large quantities of shoes and boots as well, but were generally disappointed in this. They were also disappointed in the lack of horses they found, many of the Pennsylvanians sending their mounts east of the Susquehanna River or hiding them in woods or, even in one case, a basement before the foraging bands in gray turned up. The Raid of Pennsylvania Ewell meanwhile sent Early’s division from Chambersburg through Gettysburg and York to a point on the Susquehanna River where Wrightsville was on the western side of the river and Columbia was on the east.

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On the way, Confederate supply wagons were again filled with supplies taken from the businesses of these towns. However, when they reached Wrightsville, local militia slowed them down enough to allow the locals to burn down the wooden bridge across the Susquehanna and prevent the Confederates from pushing on to Lancaster. The rest of Ewell’s Corps headed north to Carlisle, on the Susquehanna, just outside the state capital of Harrisburg. On June 27 they were in the town, home of the U.S. Army’s cavalry training school. Although they did not destroy the army’s buildings there, they did destroy bridges and railroads as they went. On June 26 Hill’s Corps was south of Greencastle, marching to Chambersburg the next day, as Longstreet’s Corps went to Greenwood on June 29. But they had lost touch with the Federal army, Stuart’s cavalry having disappeared and Lee’s only word of the enemy’s movement across the Potomac having come from a Richmond actor turned spy in Longstreet’s employ. “It was expected that as soon as the Federal Army should cross the Potomac, General Stuart would give notice of its movement, and nothing having been heard from him since our entrance into Maryland, it was inferred that the enemy had not left Virginia,” Lee later wrote. Since Lee gave Stuart his choice of routes north, it should not have been terribly surprising that Stuart was now out of touch; moreover, Lee learned of the first Union pontoon bridge being laid at Edwards Ferry on June 23, which gave him an idea that a crossing would happen shortly. There was, it must be added, a failure on the part of the two brigades of Stuart’s cavalry, under Robertson, which had been left behind with orders to get word to Lee if the enemy moved north. This order was never carried out, although it could have been as early as June 25. At any rate, Lee now realized that the Union army—some 85,500-effectives-strong, but which he believed to be twice the size of the Army of Northern Virginia—was on the move and concentrating toward his direction. He therefore ordered his 75,000 men to gather near Cashtown, on the east flank of the South Mountain, to prevent the Federals from cutting his communications south. On June 28 Ewell’s men were in Carlisle skirmishing with local militia when he received word from Lee to rejoin the rest of the army. Ewell was ordered to move to Heidlersburg, 10 miles (16 km) north of Gettysburg, from where he could move to Gettysburg or head off to Cashtown, 8 miles (12 km) from Gettysburg, where A.P.Hill’s Corps was located. Ewell’s troops started off on the afternoon of June 29, getting involved in a traffic jam with Longstreet’s Corps near Greenwood that held both units up. The rest of Ewell’s men in Carlisle started to move on the 30th, going to Heidlersburg over muddy roads in a rain storm. Jubal Early, in York with his division, began marching to Heidlersburg on late June 29. Now II Corps was heading toward Gettysburg, where Lee figured there might be an engagement, since he knew the Federals were marching north from Frederick which would naturally take them to Gettysburg, from two directions. Longstreet’s Corps was camped along the Gettysburg Pike east of Chambersburg. By the evening of June 30 Lee had four infantry divisions in a position to march quickly on Gettysburg, with another five not that far behind. Stuart was also on his way. He’d learned that the Union army had moved into Maryland on June 28, and he knew he had to unite with Lee. However, he gave way to temptation, capturing a large Union supply train of 125 wagons, and decided to bring it along with him. The wagons slowed down his advance; it took time to burn wrecked wagons and paroling prisoners, as well as to bring them along with the faster-moving mounted troops. They also provided an excuse for his delay since he had been ordered to “move on and feel the right of Ewell’s troops, collecting information, provisions, etc,” and the train fit into this order in the letter, if not the spirit. On June 30 Stuart’s column hit the end of a Federal cavalry division, at first driving it out of Hanover before the Federals rallied and drove the Confederates back out. Stuart managed to save his wagons and prisoners, but he was forced to detour around Hanover to the east, and lost a day’s march. By July 1 his men were in Dover, but Confederate infantry at Gettysburg had already run into both Union cavalry and infantry, and a major engagement was developing without the help of three brigades of Stuart’s cavalry. Moreover, Stuart failed to follow Early’s route to Gettysburg, instead going to Carlisle, which he

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found to be filled with Union troops. There Stuart burned the gas works and a lumber yard, shelling the town, and as he waited for the Federals to surrender or retreat, he received word from Lee to retire back to Gettysburg and take a position there on the left of the Confederate infantry. It would be July 2 before Stuart finally joined Lee’s main forces, which were already heavily engaged in battle. Had Stuart been with Lee on June 30, he could have scouted out Gettysburg, and discovered that only a cavalry force held the town, and Confederate infantry could have pushed through the town before Union infantry had a chance to come up. Even so, Lee still had important advantages. The Union Army was just as ignorant of the Confederate Army’s presence as Lee was of the Federals, and Lee had already made arrangements to concentrate in the Gettysburg area ahead of Meade’s orders to concentrate in the same area; so Lee’s troops were in better positions. Now the armies would run into each other. The Two Armies Meet On the morning of July 1 Henry Heth, a division commander of A.P.Hill’s III Corps, ordered Pettigrew’s brigade to Gettysburg to find shoes, although Early’s previous visit would have rendered that a lost cause. Instead of shoes, however, the Confederates ran into two brigades of Union cavalry under John Buford, a hard fighting man, who had strung his men along McPherson’s Ridge northwest of town. It was a good defensive position. Originally these cavalrymen were thought to be just militia, since Hill believed that there were no Army of the Potomac troops nearby and had agreed to the Gettysburg foray However, the infantrymen were quickly stopped by the cavalrymen and their short-range carbines, supported by artillery, and Confederate commanders soon had to admit that these were veterans on their front. As they fought, Federal infantry of the rugged I Corps, under John Reynolds, rushed to their position. Messages began to go back to Lee and Meade and their corps commanders, telling them that the battle had begun right here. Heth pushed his lead two brigades forward, still convinced that only a thin line of cavalry barred the way to Gettysburg and confident in his men’s ability to crush any Union force in front of them. But in reality by 10:45 hours, Federal infantry and more artillery were in line and blasting away at the advancing Confederates. Federal infantry swept around the Confederate left, capturing many of the men there, including Brigadier-General James Archer, the first general of the Army of Northern Virginia to be captured since Lee had assumed command. Even so Hill, who was ill that day, and Heth continued to thrust fresh units into the fight, which was rapidly getting out of control. Heth later blamed Stuart for not being available to scout out who was actually in his front. Superior Union tactical leadership on the field, however, was the main problem for Heth. He faced an enemy that used interior lines to shift strengths to the most threatened points as needed. Hill seems largely at fault here. Knowing that Lee wanted to avoid a general engagement until his forces were concentrated, he nevertheless continued feeding two more brigades into the fight, while at the same time apparently not sending Lee reconnaissance reports before making these actions. Lee, however, had already notified Ewell that he should move to Gettysburg that morning. Ewell, too, was ignorant of the fact that Federals were in the town, something he would only discover when he first heard artillery fire as he drew nearer. At about 14:30 hours, Rodes’ 8,000-strong division struck the Federal line, which by that time contained elements of two entire Union corps, the I and the unlucky XI. Rodes’ five brigades were led by BrigadierGenerals Junius Daniel, George Doles, Alfred Iverson, Jr., and Stephen Ramseur and Colonel Edward O’Neal, veterans all, although neither O’Neal nor Iverson would actually lead their brigades into combat. As it turned out, however, O’Neal made a mistake in sending only three of his four regiments forward, hitting the wrong spot in the Union line and attacking on too narrow a front. His attack was quickly

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The attack of Hood’s division on Little Round Top, July 2. Typical of the haphazard way in which the armies met at Gettysburg, the battlefield was not fully reconnoitered. It was not until the second day that the Federals realized that enemy guns on this rocky outcrop could enfilade their entire position along Cemetery Ridge. Brigades were rushed to defend it shortly before Hood made his first assault.

repulsed, exposing Iverson’s flank. As that brigade advanced, it became confused, bearing toward a stone wall that was lined with Federal infantry, who promptly fired a volley that stopped the Confederates, turning many of them back on their heels. Others, too numb to run, were quickly captured by advancing Federals. Iverson himself, watching this disaster, became mentally unhinged and never held command again. Heth, who saw Rodes’ division becoming heavily engaged, went to see Lee, who had arrived on the field around 14:00 hours, and asked to move to Rodes’ support. Saying that Longstreet was not yet on the field, Lee did not issue such orders but when Heth returned a second time, agreed to allow the reinforced attack. Rodes had essentially lost two brigades, while Doles’ brigade was only moving to the attack on the right. Early now arrived, and also sent in a brigade under Brigadier-General John Gordon to the support of Doles’ attack. Gordon’s men rolled up the Union flank as all the Confederates advanced along the line, pushing everything out of their way. Hill sent in Pender’s division now, and the Federals fell back. Elements of the Union I Corps made a stand on Seminary Ridge immediately west of, but closer to, the town, but were finally pushed back. Union troops fled through the streets of Gettysburg pursued by tired but happy Confederates. Unlike the rout at Chancellorsville, however, most Union units fell back in good order, stubbornly. There was no total collapse of the Union forces. Both sides lost time in the town itself, getting lost in its maze of streets and dead-end alleys. Confederates took almost entire regiments prisoner, while other Federals hid in basements and managed to evade capture for the next two days. Federals who had escaped now drew up in new battlelines on the rock-strewn Cemetery Ridge to the southeast of the town. Hill believed that they were “entirely routed,” but Lee, watching from Seminary Hill, saw that they were just preparing for yet another stand. However, he was not clear as to what to do next. He was unaware of the size of the force in front of him and knew many of his own divisions were not yet available. While he realized that it would be best to carry Cemetery Hill, he still wanted to avoid a general

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The opening engagement of the battle began on the morning of July 1 with a brigade-sized skirmish against Union cavalry commanded by John Buford, who held Heth’s advance along the Chambersburg Pike. At this point in the campaign, both army commanders were beginning to concentrate their forces and were looking to engage the enemy. Buford’s action northwest of Gettysburg signaled to both sides that contact had been made.

engagement. He therefore suggested, rather than ordered, that Ewell should take the Union position. Ewell felt such an attack was not “practicable,” and the first day’s fighting ended. In later years this halt would prove a major controversy, as old Confederates, so sure that they could never have been beaten by the Army of the Potomac,

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By the early afternoon of July 1, Lee had four divisions converging on Gettysburg from the north and west while units of the Union I and XI Corps tried in vain to defend their positions on the outskirts of the town. As the Federals fell back into Gettysburg, it was now a question of which side could reinforce the fastest. The Case of the Missing Cavalry After the battle, refusing to believe that a Yankee army could have bested the Army of Northern Virginia, Confederates began looking for scapegoats among their own. Jeb Stuart, whose cavalry was missing for all the important early hours in the Gettysburg battle, came in for the first and harshest criticism. Lee himself was quoted as saying to Major-General Richard Anderson during the early moments of the battle, “I cannot think what has become of Stuart; I ought to have heard from him long before now. He may have met with disaster, but I hope not. In the absence of reports from him, I am in ignorance as to what we have in front of us here. It may be the whole Federal army, or it may be only a detachment.” As E.Porter Alexander later wrote, “Hooker’s Chancellorsville campaign had been lost by the absence of his cavalry, and Lee’s Gettysburg campaign was similarly compromised.” Moreover, Porter Alexander went on, “Had he wasted no time paroling prisoners and saving wagons, his raid might have been successful, as raids go, for his whole casualties were but 89 killed, wounded, and missing. But the venture was a strategic mistake, for it resulted in the battle’s being one of chance collision, with the Confederates taking the offensive, whereas the plan of the campaign had been to fight a defensive battle.” Stuart’s official after-action report accepted no blame for his part in the failure of the Gettysburg campaign, suggesting that he was forced to do what he did because of military necessity. In it he wrote, “In the exercise of the discretion vested in me by the commanding general, it was deemed practicable to move entirely in the enemy’s rear, intercepting his communications with his base (Washington), and,

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inflicting damage upon his rear, to rejoin the army in Pennsylvania in time to participate in its actual conflicts. “The result abundantly confirms my judgment as to the practicability as well as utility of the move. The main army, I was advised by the commanding general, would move in two columns for the Susquehanna. Early commanded the advance of that one of these columns to the eastward, and I was directed to communicate with him as early as practicable after crossing the Potomac, and place my command on his right flank. It was expected I would find him in York. The newspapers of the enemy, my only source of information [an odd admission for a commander of a scouting force], chronicled his arrival there and at Wrightsville, on the Susquehanna, with great particularity. I therefore moved to join him in that vicinity. The enemy’s army was moving in a direction parallel with me. I was apprised of its arrival at Taneytown when I was near Hanover, Pa; but believing, from the lapse of time, that our army was already in York or at Harrisburg, where it could choose its battle-ground with the enemy, I hastened to place my command with it. It is believed that, had the corps of Hill and Longstreet moved on instead of halting near Chambersburg, York could have been the place of concentration instead of Gettysburg [i.e. it was Hill’s and Longstreet’s faults]. “Our trains in transit were thus not only secured, but it was done in a way that at the same time seriously injured the enemy. “It is not to be supposed such delay in his operations could have been so effectually caused by any other disposition of the cavalry [as the one I made]. Moreover, considering York as the point of junction, as I had every reason to believe it would be, the route I took was quite as direct and more expeditious than the alternate one proposed, and there is reason to believe on that route that my command would have been divided up in the different gaps of South Mountain, covering our flank, while the enemy, by concentration upon any one, could have greatly endangered our baggage and ordnance trains without exposing his own. “It was thought by many that my command could have rendered more service had it been in advance of the army the first day at Gettysburg, and the commanding general complains of a want of cavalry on the occasion; but it must be remembered that the cavalry (Jenkins’ brigade) specially selected for advance guard to the army by the commanding general on account of its geographical location at the time, was available for this purpose, and had two batteries of horse artillery serving with it [it was Lee’s fault for picking the wrong troops]. If, therefore, the peculiar functions of cavalry with the army were not satisfactorily performed in the absence of my command, it should rather be attributed to the fact that Jenkins’ brigade was not as efficient as it ought to have been, and as its numbers (3800) on leaving Virginia warranted us in expecting. Even at that time, by its reduction incident to campaign, it numbered far more than the cavalry which successfully covered Jackson’s flank movement at Chancellorsville, turned back Stoneman from the James, and drove 3500 cavalry under Averell across the Rappahannock. Properly handled, such a command should have done everything requisite, and left nothing to detract by the remotest implication from the brilliant exploits of their comrades, achieved under circumstances of great hardship and danger. [I.e., it was Jenkins’ fault] “Arriving at York, I found that Gen. Early had gone, and it is to be regretted that this officer failed to take any measures by leaving an intelligent scout to watch for my coming or a patrol to meet me, to acquaint me with his destination. He had reason to expect me, and had been directed to look out for me. He heard my guns at Hanover, and correctly conjectured whose they were, but left me no clew to his destination on leaving York, which would have saved me a long and tedious march to Carlisle and thence back to Gettysburg. [No, it was Early’s fault, although Early after the war denied having received instructions to cooperate with Stuart or watch out for him.] I was informed by citizens that he was going to Shippensburg. I still believed that most of our army was before Harrisburg, and justly regarded a march to Carlisle as the most likely to place me in communication with the main army. Besides, as a place for rationing my command, now entirely out, I believed it desirable. The cavalry suffered much in

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this march, day and night, from loss of sleep, and the horses from fatigue, and, while in Fairfax, for want of forage, not even grass being attainable.”

By 18:00 hours on July 1 Lee had taken Gettysburg and secured the roads running into the town from north, east, and west. To the south, however, Federal units of Howard’s XI Corps had consolidated their positions on Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill, while reinforcements were arriving along the Taneytown Road and were taking up positions along Cemetery Ridge. Lee had the town but was now faced with a Union defense line that was growing stronger by the hour.

looked for causes for the loss at Gettysburg from among their own ranks. Ewell was blamed for not taking Cemetery Ridge at the end of the first day, especially by his own subordinates, Jubal Early, Isaac R.Trimble, and John Gordon. Writing years after the war, they all said that Ewell should have pressed on, but they all overlooked the fact that at the time the Confederates were in disarray as they passed through the town. In the meantime, Federal units had drawn up new, good defensive lines on Cemetery Ridge, so that even had the Confederates reorganized before nightfall, they would have had more hard fighting to carry the ridge. Moreover, Early had received word of approaching enemy troops on the York Pike and had sent Gordon’s brigade to defend that point. Richard Anderson, whose division had arrived on the field between

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The Confederate lines of attack, July 2. Meade had found the strongest defensive position available and Lee would spend the next two days trying to push him off it. The fighting on the second day took place on the Union flanks at Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill. The position on the Union left was almost put in jeopardy by the advance of Sickles’ Corps toward the Emmitsburg Road, though on the right the Federal line on Cemetery and Culp’s Hills held against Confederate attacks that went on until 20:00 hours.

16:00 and 17:00 hours, was blamed for not rushing forward with fresh men to take the ridge. After the war Anderson claimed that he had not entered the fray because Lee specifically ordered him not to, keeping his troops as a reserve in case of disaster. Indeed, if one individual is to be held responsible for not continuing the advance, it would have to be Lee, who did not order such an attack and kept his freshest troops in reserve instead of sending them forward. That evening Lee still didn’t know what he was facing at Gettysburg. Even so, he was optimistic after the day’s success. Around 17:00 hours he watched the Federals falling back to Cemetery Ridge from his position on Seminary Ridge where he was joined by Longstreet. There Longstreet told Lee he did not like the look of the Union lines and suggested moving southward to the right and getting into position between the Union forces and Washington. There the Federals would have to attack, much as they had done at

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Fredericksburg. Lee, however, was of another mind, saying, “If the enemy is there tomorrow, we must attack him.” Had Lee decided to move on to the defensive, he would still have done so blind, Stuart being absent. Moreover, the Federals might not have obliged him as they did at Fredericksburg, but instead might have maneuvered around his flank to place themselves between him and Virginia. Moreover, the Army of Northern Virginia had always been successful in the past, even against superior odds, and was on a victorious streak now. Lee hated to suddenly change his course and become defensive, and feared that such a move would affect his troops’ morale. Lee then went off to Ewell’s headquarters where he said that he wanted to attack the Federal position as soon as possible the following day and asked for II Corps to storm Cemetery Hill at daybreak. Ewell and his generals felt an attack toward the right would be a better move, and Lee, seeing an objection to his plan, then asked if the corps would be better moving itself to the right. Ewell was against giving up the ground they had fought for that day, pointing out that it was good defensive ground and insisting they should stay there. Agreeing, Lee rode off, only later to send an order for II Corps to pull back toward the right. Upset, Ewell went to Lee’s headquarters with a revised plan to take Culp’s Hill on the left, to which Lee agreed. The result, however, was that the Confederate line was spread along exterior lines making reinforcements from point to point—as they’d done so well at Sharpsburg—very difficult, and making it even more impossible for artillery from different corps to support each other. Ewell returned to his headquarters and ordered General Johnson to take Culp’s Hill, but Johnson had already moved from that area, finding Federals in force. Moreover, his troops had captured Union papers that indicated that he had the Union XII Corps on the hill while V Corps was coming in on the Confederate left. Ewell learned these facts around dawn on July 2 when he also received orders to attack as soon as he heard the cannon announcing Longstreet’s assault on the Union left. Later orders directed Ewell to “make a simultaneous demonstration upon the enemy’s right, to be converted into a real attack should opportunity offer.” Ewell, then, was not required to make a full assault unless the situation looked favorable; his was only a feint to keep the Federals occupied while the main attack would be on the Confederate right. The Arrival of Longstreet’s Corps Again, in years after the war, another controversy arose about the attack on the right. Many said that it was designed to be an assault at daybreak, and by failing to attack then, Longstreet cost the Confederates victory. In fact, most of Longstreet’s Corps marched toward Gettysburg that night, arriving at around 08:30 hours on July 2. Moreover, Longstreet, up since 03:30 hours, had joined Lee, Hill, Hood, and Heth on Seminary Ridge around 05:00 hours, when he was told by Lee that the plan was to hit the Union left with two divisions of I Corps. Lee also sent several staff officers to reconnoiter that area, and they didn’t return until around 09:00 hours. At that point, Lee told Longstreet to get his corps ready to attack. Longstreet told Porter Alexander to get his three artillery battalions in position at around 10:00 hours while Longstreet was still with Lee on Seminary Ridge. Then Lee went back to Ewell’s headquarters, while Longstreet rode off to the right. Lee, seeing that conditions were not good for a major attack on Ewell’s front on the right, then went off after Longstreet, joining him around 11:00 hours. In the meantime, Longstreet’s divisions were making their way to their positions, a march that took longer than it should have done due to poor staff work, which guided units up wrong roads and forced them to countermarch. John Bell Hood, whose troops were to hit on the right, disliked the rocky, heavily cut-up ground over which he was to attack. His Texas scouts found that the Union left further around the heights known as Big Round Top was open, and he sent messages back to Longstreet to have his orders changed to allow him to use

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The situation at Gettysburg on the evening of July 2. By the end of the second day, Meade had beaten off Lee’s flank attacks and had five corps in strong defensive positions on high ground with a secure line of communication between them along them Taneytown Road. Lee meanwhile was no nearer to breaking the Union line than he had been at the end of the first day.

that area for his assault. Longstreet told him that Lee himself had set up these objectives and assigned the units for the attack and that the orders stood. The final corps, Hill’s, was ordered to demonstrate along the center and be ready to join the final assault when Longstreet’s men rolled up the Union line. Around 16:00 hours, all was finally ready for the attack. Porter Alexander’s 54 guns opened fire on two enemy batteries, and the Confederate infantry dashed forward. Originally the attack was to fall on the Emmitsburg Road, which should have been devoid of Federal troops, had Meade’s orders been followed. Instead, however, the Union III Corps was advanced by its politician-turned-general Daniel Sickles out of the line between the heights of Big and Little Round Tops and Cemetery Ridge, and into the very area that the Confederates would strike. On the the Confederate right, Little Round Top was held by only a handful of men, while even fewer were on Big Round Top. A lucky Union staff officer, however, saw the potential if those hills fell, and rounded up Federal infantry to line the hillcrest virtually moments before Hood’s men crashed through the Devil’s Den and up the slopes.

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The Confederates launched assault after assault, but the men who were going up the hills were weary from the day’s marching and in many cases short of water. The Federal line held. To their left, more Confederate infantry crashed into Sickles’ III Corps which they drove back only after bloody fighting. Federal reinforcements stiffened the Union line where Meade had originally posted it, and the day’s fighting was over for the Confederates there. On the Union right, Federals outfought Anderson’s division, which struck in one thin line with no support, and defended both Cemetery Ridge and Culp’s Hill successfully. The Federal line had held all along the front. The Northern soldiers fought as equals to the Southern ones, while Federal generalship and staff work proved superior to that of the Confederates. Lee, however, saw the day’s battle as a series of “partial successes,” that could still be followed up by essentially a repeat of the second day’s operations on the third day. The plan for July 3 was for Ewell on the left to outflank the Federals who were dug in on Culp’s Hill and capture the crest of the hill. Ewell thought this attack would be made at daybreak in conjunction with Longstreet’s attack on the Federal center, but in fact, Longstreet’s final division, a Virginia one led by George Pickett, had not yet moved into position, nor were the artillery in place. Therefore, when Ewell began the attack around 04:30 hours, it was the only action on the line. In any case, Ewell’s assault failed. On the morning of the 3rd, Longstreet had begun moving his men toward the Union far right to turn that flank, when Lee joined him and countermanded the orders, calling instead for an attack on the Union center. Longstreet disagreed with the plan, saying that he didn’t believe that any 15,000 soldiers in the world, even those of the Army of Northern Virginia, could carry such a position as the Union troops held along Cemetery Ridge. Lee disagreed, but allowed Longstreet to keep in reserve the two divisions that had been so bloodied the day before, in order to follow up the attack he was sure would succeed. To bolster the attack, he gave Longstreet several brigades from Hill’s Corps, which would also include Pickett’s division of Longstreet’s Corps, for a total of about 13,500 men. To Jeb Stuart, whose cavalry had at last arrived, Lee gave the order to attack the Union rear from the east. All the artillery available, 170 guns, would first soften up the enemy. Just past 13:00 hours on July 3, two signal guns fired, and all the rest of the Confederate artillery opened up. The bombardment was the greatest heard in the country to that point. In Baltimore, miles away in Maryland, windows rattled. Much of it was wasted, however, as the guns tended to fire high, clearing the ridge and the frontline infantrymen and instead blowing up horses and staff officers in the rear. Union counter-battery fire, however, which was also high, struck among the waiting Confederate infantrymen in the rear of their guns, causing heavy casualties before the charge even began. The Union chief of artillery had orders Lee’s Gettysburg Report I have the honor to submit the following outline of the recent operations of this army, for the information of the Department: The march toward Gettysburg was conducted more slowly than it would have been had the movements of the Federal Army been known, The leading division of Hill met the enemy in advance of Gettysburg on the morning of July 1. Driving back these troops to within a short distance of the town, he there encountered a larger force, with which two of his divisions became engaged. Ewell, coming up with two of his divisions by the Heidlersburg road, joined in the engagement, The enemy was driven through Gettysburg with heavy loss, including about 5000 prisoners and several pieces of artillery. He retired to a high range of hills south and east of the town. The attack was not pressed that afternoon, the enemy’s force being unknown, and it being considered advisable to await the arrival of the rest of our troops. Orders were sent back to hasten their march, and, in the meantime, every effort was made to ascertain the numbers and position of the enemy,

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and find the most favorable point of attack. It had not been intended to fight a general battle at such a distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy, but, finding ourselves unexpectedly confronted by the Federal Army, it became a matter of difficulty to withdraw through the mountains with our large trains. At the same time, the country was unfavorable for collecting supplies while in the presence of the enemy’s main body, as he was enabled to restrain our foraging parties by occupying the passes of the mountains with regular and local troops. A battle thus became, in a measure, unavoidable. Encouraged by the successful issue of the engagement of the first day, and in view of the valuable results that would ensue from from the defeat of the army of Gen. Meade, it was thought advisable to renew the attack. The remainder of Ewell’s and Hill’s Corps having arrived, and two divisions of Longstreet’s, our preparations were made accordingly. During the afternoon, intelligence was received of the arrival of Gen. Stuart at Carlisle, and he was ordered to march to Gettysburg and take position on our left, The preparations for attack were not completed until the afternoon of the 2nd, The enemy held a high and commanding ridge, along which he had massed a large amount of artillery. Gen. Ewell occupied the left of our line, Gen, Hill the center, and Gen. Longstreet the right In front of Gen. Longstreet the enemy held a position from which, If he could be driven, it was thought our artillery could be used to advantage in assailing the more elevated ground beyond, and thus enable us to reach the crest of the ridge. That officer was directed to endeavor to carry this position, white Gen, Ewell attacked directly the high ground on the enemy’s right, which had already been partially fortified. Gen. Hill was instructed to threaten the center of the Federal line, in order to prevent re-enforcements being sent to either wing, and to avail himself of any opportunity that might present itself to attack. After a severe struggle, Longstreet succeeded in getting possession of and holding the desired ground. Ewell also carried some of the strong positions which he assailed, and the result was such as to lead to the belief that he would ultimately be able to dislodge the enemy. The battle ceased at dark. These partial successes determined me to continue the assault next day. Pickett, with three of his brigades, joined Longstreet the following morning, and our batteries were moved forward to the positions gained by him the day before. The general plan of attack was unchanged, excepting that one division and two brigades of Hill’s Corps were ordered to support Longstreet. The enemy, in the meantime, had strengthened his lines with earthworks. The morning was occupied in necessary preparations, and the battle recommenced in the afternoon of the 3rd, and raged with great violence until sunset Our troops succeeded in entering the advanced works of the enemy, and getting possession of some of his batteries, but our artillery having nearly expended its ammunition, the attacking columns became exposed to the heavy fire of the numerous batteries near the summit of the ridge, and, after a most determined and gallant struggle, were compelled to relinquish their advantage, and fall back to their original positions with severe loss. The conduct of the troops was all that I could desire or expect, and they deserve success so far as it can be deserved by heroic valor and fortitude, More may have been required of them than they were able to perform, but my admiration of their noble qualities and confidence in their ability to cope successfully with the enemy has suffered no abatement from the issue of this protracted and sanguinary conflict.

issued limiting counter-battery fire and, after a short time, began withdrawing his guns from Confederate view. Seeing this, some 40 minutes into the cannonade, Porter Alexander, knowing his guns were running short of ammunition, sent word for the charge to begin and Longstreet nodded his assent to General Pickett. The infantry formed up and marched out across that open plain and into history. They didn’t have a chance. Union artillery got back into line and crashed huge holes in their ranks. Federal infantry units on the right and left of the advancing Confederate lines also advanced, facing to their right and left, and fired into the sides of the Confederate lines. Many Confederates stopped in the Emmitsburg Road, halfway across the field, and went no further. Those who did managed to get into the small clump of trees that was their target, but were surrounded there and either killed or surrendered. For

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On the afternoon of July 3 Lee attacked the Union center with a mass charge of over 13,500 infantry. For over 1 mile (1.6 km) up a long, steep slope the South’s finest charged under a hail of artillery and rifle fire. Barely 200 men reached their objective: a stone wall and copse of trees defended by the men of the Union I and II Corps. Among those who reached the Union line was General Lewis Armistead, killed as he led his men from the front.

some reason, Pendleton, Lee’s artillery chief, withdrew a number of 12-pounder howitzers that were to have accompanied the charge, and there was no artillery support. Defeated troops fled back to their original positions as Longstreet organized a defense. Lee went out to meet them and admit that the charge had been all his fault, that he had expected too much of his men. The next day—July 4—it rained, and Lee remained in his lines, but Meade, feeling his army was still too exhausted by the fighting and disorganized, did not attack. Lee sent word to Meade to suggest a prisoner exchange, which Meade refused. Then Lee began to withdraw to Virginia, on muddy roads, through Fairfield. Meade followed on July 7, but rain slowed down both armies. On July 13 Lee was at Falling Waters and well dug in. Meade scouted his position, but decided it was too well defended and declined to attack. Given this respite, Lee began to cross back into Virginia, getting most of his troops there by July 14. Although Lee had succeeded in keeping Union troops out of Virginia, he had not caused the enemy to call off the Vicksburg siege, and that city fell on July 4. He had captured large amounts of supplies, but paid heavily in casualties. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, his men had been beaten and their morale fell, while that of the Federals rose.

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The final Confederate attack at Gettysburg was made on the Union center on the afternoon of July 3 and was a disaster. Whether Lee was overconfident, had run out of ideas, or simply underestimated Meade, the fact remains that the general whose men had shot the Union Grand Divisions to pieces from Marye’s Heights at Fredericksburg barely seven months before now attacked in the same way as Burnside had done, and suffered the same fate. After July 3, the only road for the Army of Northern Virginia would be south. Like the sharpshooter shown on page 228, many men of Lee’s army had died in vain.

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PART III THE NATURE OF THE ARMY

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Despite his excellent prewar military career, for the first year of the Civil War, General Robert E.Lee’s service to the Confederacy was largely a disappointment. It was not until he took command of the Army of Northern Virginia on June 1, 1862 that he began to build a reputation as one of the world’s greatest army commanders.

Robert E.Lee

If the Army of Northern Virginia is identified with any one man, it is Robert E.Lee. He was its commander, inspiration, and the architect of its victories. Its defeat in 1865, however, opened up his reputation to criticism. Regarded almost universally as one of America’s greatest generals for a good century after the Civil War, Robert Edward Lee has now become one of America’s most controversial. There are certain things that are still above debate. Lee’s soldiers loved him and many of them stayed to the end, not even believing the surrender at Appomattox at first, because they were convinced that Lee could do anything with them and would end up victorious, despite any odds. As George Washington had been the glue that held the Continental Army together during the American Revolution, Lee was the glue that bound the Army of Northern Virginia together. Had Joseph E. Johnston remained in command of the army defending Richmond in 1862, chances are the war would have ended that year or the next, even with McClellan in command of the opposing army. Lee was not bombastic. He was modest in demeanor, pleasant with all ranks and stations in life, controlling the temper he sometimes displayed in private. He fully cooperated with civilian authorities, especially Jefferson Davis who was not an easy man to get along with and who maintained feuds with other leading Confederate generals throughout the war. He was also devout. The outline of Lee’s life is a simple one. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on January 19, 1807, the fourth child of a hero of the American Revolution, General Harry Lee. “Light Horse Harry” squandered his money, being at one time imprisoned for debt. Once released, he participated in putting down a riot in Baltimore where he was badly injured. He left for an island off Georgia to regain his health, and died there. His widow raised the children in Alexandria, Virginia. While Robert’s older brother Samuel went off to join the U.S. Navy, Robert Lee received an education at schools in Alexandria, and gained an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1825. Lee had one of the most brilliant careers in Academy history. He served as the adjutant of the corps, the chief post of honor to a cadet at the time, and was graduated without a single demerit on his record. He was number two in his class, and therefore could select the most favored branch of service, which was, at the time, the Corps of Engineers. Cadets were named brevet second lieutenant and could languish for years before slots opened up for promotion. Lee, however, became a first lieutenant by 1836 and was a captain only two years later. Most of his assignments were along the Atlantic coast, working on the preparation of sea-coast fortifications. Lee had married Mary Custis, the daughter of Martha Washington’s grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, who was George Washington’s adopted son. It was apparently a love match, although she soon

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became an invalid, and he spent much time away from home on military assignments. The two had three sons, George Washington Custis, Robert Edward, Jr., and William Henry Fitzhugh (“Rooney”), all of whom would serve in various ranks in the Confederate Army, and four daughters, Agnes, Annie, Mary, and Mildred, none of whom would ever marry. Mary Custis inherited several estates, and the couple made their main home on the beautiful Arlington estate that overlooked the Potomac River across from Washington City, the nation’s capital.

A prewar portrait of Robert E.Lee from the 1850s. Lee was a graduate of the West Point class of 1829 and a career soldier who had served in the Mexican War. He was one of the foremost officers of his generation and in 1861 politicians both North and South recognized that he could be a great potential asset to their sections’ cause.

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Service in Mexico On the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, Lee was named to the staff of the Army’s General-in-Chief, Winfield Scott. Scott was a hero of the War of 1812, but was at odds politically with the current administration in Washington, and President James Polk did not want to send him to Mexico, afraid Scott would gain a hero’s reputation there. Eventually, however, the president did send Scott to take command of an army that would land at Vera Cruz and push its way up the National Road to Mexico City. In part Polk based this decision on Scott’s professionalism as a soldier; but he also feared that if he allowed MajorGeneral Zachary Taylor, who had commanded in victorious battles along the Texas border before Scott’s being sent to Mexico, to continue his ways, Taylor would become a great potential political rival. Lee was of great help to Scott, serving to reconnoiter Mexican positions at Vera Cruz, where the army landed outside the city and had to set siege to it to win a home base. Then, before the yellow fever season could strike, the army headed up to Pueblo and on to Mexico City. The Mexican Army attempted to stop them at several points along the way, and Lee was one of the scouts who found ways to turn their flanks and beat them, even though the Americans were fewer in number than their opponents. Finally, outside Mexico City, Scott’s army, having been told that the Mexicans were casting cannon in the castle of Chapultepec, decided to assault the strongpoint. In the attack, Lee was wounded. Shortly after the fall of the castle, Scott attacked the walled city of Mexico, and captured it. After a brief occupation of the city, a time when Lee met a young officer of the 4th Infantry, Lieutenant Sam Grant, Mexico and the United States signed a treaty of peace, and the Americans returned home. Lee was breveted colonel for his heroism. From September 1, 1852 to March 31, 1855 Lee returned to West Point as superintendent of the Military Academy. There he revitalized the curriculum. Another personality trait of his appears to have fully developed here, and that was his ability to bond with and inspire his subordinates. He became quite close with many of them, forming lasting mentorships with a number of the young cadets then and during their careers. The senator from Mississippi, Jefferson Davis, was by then Secretary of War, and he tapped Lee as second in command of the new 2nd Cavalry Regiment, then being formed in Texas under Albert Sydney Johnston. Lee served in this post from 1856 to 1857, but was forced to return on leave to Arlington to attend to his ailing wife and bring more personal management to her estates. While on leave, John Brown attacked Harper’s Ferry, and Lee was called by his old boss, Winfield Scott, to command the U.S. Marines sent to capture him there. He was accompanied by another young officer, J.E.B.Stuart. In February 1861 Lee left a U.S. Army post for the last time, going on leave to Virginia to discover if the state would leave the Union to join the young Confederacy. As his writings indicate, he was committed to joining his native Robert E.Lee, Commander of the Union Army On February 25, 1868 Lee wrote Senator Reverty Johnson describing the situation in which the question of his commanding the U.S. Army in the Civil War came about and how and why he decided to join the seceding Southern states instead: “I never intimated to any one that I desired the command of the United States Army; nor did I ever have a conversation with but one gentleman, Mr Francis Preston Blair, on the subject, which was at his invitation, and, as I understood, at the instance of President Lincoln. After listening to his remarks, I declined the offer he made to me, to take command of the army that was to be brought into the field; stating, as candidly and as courteously as I could, that, though opposed to secession and deprecating war, I could take no part in an invasion of the Southern States. I went directly from the interview with Mr Blair to the office of General Scott; told him of the proposition that had been made to me, and my decision. Upon reflection after returning to my home, I concluded

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that I ought no longer to retain the commission I held in the United States Army, and on the second morning thereafter I forwarded my resignation to General Scott. At the time, I hoped that peace would have been preserved; that some way would have been found to save the country from the calamities of war; and I then had no other intention than to pass the remainder of my life as a private citizen. Two days afterward, upon the invitation of the Governor of Virginia, I repaired to Richmond; found that the Convention then in session had passed the ordinance withdrawing the State from the Union; and accepted the commission of commander of its forces, which was tendered me.”

state if it left the Union, and even if the Union were simply dissolved, since as early as December 1860, he planned to return there to live. Once at home, however, he was commissioned a full colonel in the U.S. Army on March 16, 1861, a commission he accepted, being named on the official rolls in his new rank on March 30, an odd and ambiguous move for someone who had apparently had already made up his mind to quit the Army. Informally offered field command of the U.S. Army to put down the Southern rebellion, he declined and offered his resignation on April 20, after meeting with U.S. Government officials and while Virginia’s secession convention was still in session. “Save in defense of my native State,” he wrote in his letter of resignation, “I never desire again to draw my sword.” However, it was obvious that his sword was far from sheathed. His resignation was accepted on April 25, but in the meantime, on April 22, Lee had accepted a commission as major-general in Virginia’s forces. Then on May 14 he accepted a brigadier-general’s commission in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States of America. Why would he throw away a promising career in which he would have most certainly been a hero in the United States, possibly even president after the war? He does not appear to have been in favor of secession. On January 22, 1861 he wrote his wife’s cousin, Martha Custis Williams, “God alone can save us from our folly, selfishness & short sightedness. The last accounts seem to shew that we have barely escaped anarchy to be plunged into civil war. What will be the result I cannot conjecture. I only see that a fearful calamity is upon us, & fear that the country will have to pass through for its sins a fiery ordeal. I am unable to realize that our people will destroy a government inaugurated [sic] by the blood & wisdom of our patriot fathers, that has given us peace & prosperity at home, power & security abroad, & under which we have acquired a colossal strength unequalled in the history of mankind. I wish to live under no other government, & there is no sacrifice I am not ready to make for the preservation of the union save that of honour.” Although Lee’s family owned slaves, and he in fact dealt in their management and even sale before the war, he was not terribly pro-slavery. On December 27, 1856 he wrote his wife that, “In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. I think it however a greater evil to the white than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former…” Moreover there are suggestions that he did not believe the Confederacy would ever actually win its independence. John S.Wise, son of the former Virginia governor, recalled that Lee told him in April 1865, just before Appomattox, “A few more Sailors’ Creeks and it will all be over—ended— just as I have expected it would end from the first.” William N.Pendleton, both his chief of artillery and afterwards his parish priest, said that just before the surrender Lee said, “I have never believed we could, against the gigantic combination for our subjugation, make good in the long run our independence unless foreign powers should, directly or indirectly, assist us.” However, in spring 1861, as with many men in the ranks of his new army, he was primarily concerned with the defense of his native state. As he told a U.S. Congressional subcommittee in 1866, it was his

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opinion “that the act of Virginia, in withdrawing herself from the United States, carried me along as a citizen of Virginia, and that her laws and her acts were binding on me.” A Soldier’s Honor Lee seems to have considered every one of his moves, from joining the Confederacy to prolonging the fighting past the point when he is said to have known it was no longer worth the lives spent, to have been done in the name of honor. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, in a book published in 1982 called Southern Honor, pointed out that the concept of honor to the Southern mind of the time was based on three aspects: an inner conviction of self-worth, a claim of that selfassessment to the public, and reputation, which is an assessment of the claim by the public when considering the individual’s behavior. It was this sense of honor that prompted Lee to continue the fight with an Army of Northern Virginia he knew could not win its war, even after abandoning Petersburg in the final campaign of April 1865. “The warmest instincts of every man’s soul declare the glory of the soldier’s death,” Lee wrote in a collection of proverbs and maxims he maintained during the war. “It is more appropriate to the Christian than the Greek to sing: ‘Glorious his fate, and envied his lot, who for his country fights and for it dies.’” As stated above, Lee was named a major-general in command of Virginia’s military forces before his U.S. Army resignation had been accepted. His brother Samuel also resigned from the U.S. Navy and joined Virginia’s navy. All Virginia’s forces were absorbed into the Confederate military when the state joined the new nation and its government moved to Richmond. Lee was named a full general in the Confederate Army as of June 14 and was also appointed Confederate President Davis’s special military adviser. In July, one of Lee’s first duties was to go to western Virginia where quarreling Confederate generals and an outnumbered army were losing that part of the state. He was unsuccessful there, and in November returned to Richmond to be sent down to oversee coastal defenses in South Carolina and Georgia. On completion of this posting, he returned to Richmond in March 1862, to Davis’s side. It was there, following the wounding of Joseph E.Johnston on May 31, that he was given command of the Army of Northern Virginia. After the war, Lee survived with a hero’s reputation in the South. He received a number of offers to become involved in questionable enterprises, such as lotteries and insurance companies. As in all his actions, he chose not to sully his reputation, and instead took a position as president of the struggling Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, a post that could pay him no more than $1,500 a year. As he had done as West Point, at Washington College Lee revitalized the curriculum and created the nation’s first department of journalism and commerce, feeling that in a South badly battered by war, it was vital to get young Southerners trained and ready for business rather than indulge in purely academic subjects. Lee planned to write his memoirs and began to gather material to do so after the war. He edited his father’s memoirs of the American Revolution in the South, a project that brought him much needed revenue. However, he was not a quick or easy writer, and the project was never completed. He appears to have had a minor heart attack in 1863 and his condition was never very good again. This is what finally killed him on October 12, 1870, at the age of 63. He was entombed, under Confederate Army regimental colors, on the campus of the college that was, in his honor, renamed Washington & Lee College. His soldiers loved him, both during the war and long afterward. John Worsham of the 21 st Virginia recalled seeing him first in western Virginia in that abortive campaign of 1861: “He soon won the affection of all by his politeness and notice of the soldiers. He very often had something to say to the men; and it soon became known that when some of the people in the neighborhood sent him something good to eat, the articles were sent to some sick soldier as soon as the messenger got out of sight. This affection increased as

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A great deal of the Army of Northern Virginia’s success has been put down to the complete trust it placed in its commander. Lee, with his patrician bearing, was instantly recognizable to his men in the field, not least because of his trusted warhorse, Traveller.

the years rolled on, and I suppose no body of men under his command had more love and respect for our great leader than those men who first served under him!” John Dooley, 1st Virginia, remembered how Lee praised his unit’s actions from Mechanicsville to Sharpsburg in an order that “without the slightest exaggeration made every man of us a hero, adorned us with the laurels of victory and filled our hearts with exuberant joy to think and to know that we have fulfilled the highest expectations and met with the highest approbation of our Beloved Leader. For who does not love Gen. Lee, who would not barter life for his smile? And now that he speaks in words of love and admiration to his wearied troops, who does not feel every syllable burning in his very heart’s core?” Southern Strategy This reputation was made among his troops, although he killed them by the thousands in an effort to win the war by a method based on faulty strategy. There was a way for the South to win the Civil War. It depended on several things, the most important of which was to make the cost of victory so painful for the North that its people would turn against their government and force it, through elections or other outside pressure, to abandon the attempt. Essentially this is what the much smaller and more poorly equipped People’s Army of

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Vietnam (PAVN) did in their mid-20th century conflict against a much larger and better equipped U.S. Army. The Vietnamese lost their individual battles, but the Americans won at such a cost, and the government was so unable to explain the benefits of victory, that public opinion turned against the war and governments of both Democrats and Republicans were unable to continue it. The South, with its huge geographic area, divided up with impressive defensive features along rivers and mountain ranges, was in much the same position as that of the PAVN. There were, of course, several advantages the U.S. Government had in 1860 that it did not have in 1964. One was distance from the front and the other was a shared history from colonial days that bonded the two sections together. However, these are somewhat misleading. Modern technology and transportation made getting troops from America to Vietnam, and once there to anywhere in that country, actually easier than getting to the heart of the 1860s South with its poor road and railroad systems. Moreover, a continuous history of cold war from the end of World War II until 1964, with an actual shooting war in Korea in the 1950s, gave the American people a natural predisposition to support an Asian conflict in Vietnam against a force that could be painted as a Communist oppressor. All the South, which ultimately realized it could not successfully attack the North, had to do, therefore, was to fend off attacks long enough and at a small enough cost, and the war would be theirs. Of course, the Confederates could not simply line up along its borders and defend every inch of space. It would have to take the offense against Union attacks when and where it would be able to inflict more casualties on the enemy than it accepted itself. At no point, however, did any high official in the Confederacy ever spell this out in a well-considered national military strategy. Davis did not; the various secretaries of war did not; the highest ranking officer in the Confederate Army, Adjutant & Inspector General Samuel Cooper, did not; and Lee, advisor to Davis in the war’s early days and officially chief general in the army toward the war’s end, did not. After the war, George A.Bruce, who had been a Union staff officer and then wrote about the war’s history, noted of Lee that “Though twice appointed commander-in-chief of the Confederate armies, his fame will ever rest upon what he did as the leader of the Army of Northern Virginia. He can never be placed in the ranks of those great captains who have affected the fortunes of nations, for good or ill, as commander of the national forces. In this respect he falls far below Washington and Grant.” As Bruce pointed out, “One may search the records, with greatest care, read all of Lee’s reports, his voluminous correspondence with the President, the Secretary of War, Adjutant-General, governors of states and many officers, and he will find little, if anything, to disprove, and much to confirm the opinion of one of Virginia’s brilliant writers, that, outside the limits of the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee’s influence with reference to the general affairs of the Confederacy was negative and accomplished absolutely nothing.” Becoming Commander-in-Chief This is somewhat exaggerated. True, until February 1865—far too late to greatly affect the war’s course—Lee did not actually command all the Confederacy’s various forces. Jefferson Davis guarded his constitutional title of Commander-inChief of the Confederacy’s armed forces very dearly, allowing no man to replace him. Indeed, Davis once wrote Lee, “I have neither the [constitutional] power nor the will to delegate” the position of commander-in-chief of the South’s forces to anybody else. As Joseph E.Johnston, who did not get along with Davis at all, wrote when he heard about Lee’s new position, “Do not expect much of Lee in this capacity. He cannot give up the command of the Army of Northern Virginia without becoming merely a minor official.”

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However, Davis did take Lee’s advice consistently and, indeed, gave Lee quite a free hand in running the operational plans of the Army of Northern Virginia. He often had to be talked into Lee’s way of doing things, as in the discussions about the 1863 Gettysburg Campaign, but he always ended up giving Lee his way. Moreover, Davis often consulted with Lee on matters of strategy in other theaters than just the eastern one from the summer of 1862 until the war’s end. Indeed, after the war, Davis told veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia that in terms of strategy and tactics, “We never disagreed.” One thing that they agreed on was in not following the strategy of defense, with only an occasional defensive offensive when possible. Lee, with Davis’s permission, continuously struck for the enemy’s jugular and in the process bled his own army to death. He believed in the offensive as the South’s best strategic option, constantly planning for it within his own army and constantly advising Davis to have his other generals pursue the same course.

Lee was only 54 years old when the Civil War began. As the war ground on, even by the standards of the time, he came to look older than his years. The great burden of responsibility he placed on himself was made worse by the ill health that dogged him after 1863.

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The results were disastrous. His first operations with the army, the Seven Days’ Battles of June-July 1862, cost the Union 14,800 men, while the Army of Northern Virginia lost some 20,000. At Cedar Mountain that August the Union lost some 2,200, compared to 1,338 dead, wounded, and missing Confederates. At the Second Manassas, where Lee did employ a defensive offense, letting Pope come to him, the results were a more in his favor, with 9,200 Confederate casualties compared to 16,000 Union troops. But then he turned right around and fought a totally unnecessary battle at Sharpsburg that cost 13,000 Confederates against an attacking Union Army which lost 12,000, and even at the end of that battle he hung around another day looking for a chance to attack. And it continued. At Gettysburg, Union losses were around 22,300 as opposed to 28,000 Confederates. Finally, in the Appomattox Campaign, the Union had two combined armies with some 107,391 men, while Lee had only 51,390. It was not just the loss of fighting men that sapped the army’s strength in these battles; it was the loss of good officers, from general grade down to junior officers, who were the best and therefore leading in the field and more apt to become casualties, that hampered the army toward the end. Lee’s constant use of the offensive killed the Confederate’s chance of wearing the North out physically. Lee was not unaware of this, although he declined to admit that his tactics were the cause of his army’s sapped strength. He wrote Jefferson Davis on June 10, 1863, just before taking to the offensive in Pennsylvania in a battle in which he would disregard his own sage advice, “While making the most we can of the means of resistance we possess…it is nevertheless the part of wisdom to carefully measure and husband our strength, and not to expect from it more than in the ordinary course of affairs it is capable of accomplishing. We should not therefore conceal from ourselves that our resources in men are constantly

Lee’s Health At the time Lee accepted his Confederate commission he was 54 years old, a senior citizen for his times. Others of similar age gave way to the stress of campaign life and had to resign their commissions for reasons of health. Bad health can affect one’s Judgment and certainly will wear on the best of characters. Lee was certainly not immune to either his age or to health problems in general. The Revd Gordon spoke to him after the war when, as Gordon recalled, “He was evidently labouring under great depression of spirits, as it always the case with him, when sick.” Lee was generally in good health until April 1863 when he caught a serious cold, one that was complicated with what is now believed to be an attack of acute pericarditis. Thereafter he was to be affected with health concerns at many important times, especially at Gettysburg and in the 1864 campaign to Petersburg. The first of these incidents came during the Second Manassas Campaign. As described by Longstreet, on August 31, 1861, “After giving orders for the day, General Lee rode out towards Centreville for personal observation, halted, and dismounted at a point which seemed safe from danger or observation. Suddenly alarm was given of ‘The enemy’s cavalry!’ The group dispersed in hot haste to have the heels of their animals under them. The rush and confusion frightened the general’s horse, so that he pulled him violently to the ground, severely spraining his right wrist, besides breaking some of the bones of the hand,” In fact, a bone was broken in one hand and the other hand was badly sprained. He was unable to ride and had to direct the army’s movements from an ambulance, and for some weeks thereafter was unable to ride or write. On April 3, 1863 he wrote his wife, “I have taken a violent cold, either from going in or coming out of a warm house, perhaps both, which is very difficult to get rid of & very distressing to have.” On April 11, he wrote his daughter Agnes, “I am much better. I am able to ride out every day, & now that the weather has become good, I hope I shall recover my strength. My pulse is still about 90 the doctors say, too quick for an old man, but I hope the fresh air & exercise will reduce it

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soon.” In September 1863 he took ill again, suffering from acute rheumatic pains and other pains that are now believed to be symptoms of angina pectoris. He was probably also suffering from hypertension, the rosy glow in his cheeks being one symptom of this, On September 4 he wrote his wife, “I have been suffering ever since my last visit to Richmond from a heavy cold taken in the hot & badly ventilated rooms in the various departments which resulted in an attack of rheumatism in my back, which has given me a great pain & anxiety, for if I cannot get relief I do not see what is to become of me. I had at one time to go about a great deal & the motion of my horse was extremely painful, so much so that I took a spring wagon, but the stony roads I had to traverse made the motion of the wagon almost as bad. I think today I am better. I rode to church this morning on horse back & was surprized to experience so little pain & mounted & dismounted with comparative ease. The doctor gave me some lotion, which I applied faithfully a week to the almost excoriation of the back without apparent benefit. I hope though it is passing away.” And his heart problems continued. On October 28, 1863 he wrote his wife, “But I have felt very differently since my attack of last spring, from which I have never recovered...my rheumatism is better, though I still suffer. I hope in time it will pass away.” On May 24,1864, as Lee was preparing an attack on a Union corps on the North Anna River, he fell sick with an acute intestinal disorder and was out of action for more than a week. In his absence, the attacks failed. His adjutant general, Walter H. Taylor, wrote home May 30, 1864, “The Genl has been somewhat indisposed and cd attend to nothing except what was absolutely necessary for him to know & act upon & during the past week my cares have been thereby increased. He is now improving.” Indeed, his staff was more concerned about this illness than his earlier heart attack. “The indisposition of General Lee,” wrote Taylor, “was more serious than was generally supposed. Those near him were very apprehensive lest he should be compelled to give up.” Indeed even after he was better, the illness affected Lee for some time. “Since the General’s indisposition,” wrote Taylor on June 1,1864, “he has remained more quiet & directs movements from a distance.” It would have taken a lot to force Lee to give up. Even with these ailments, especially the heart condition, he felt in point of honor obliged to continue his command of the army, fighting until the last possible chance. On September 18,1864 he wrote his wife, “I am as sensible as you & Fitzhugh can be of my failing strength & approaching infirmities & am as careful to shield myself from exciting cause as I can be. But what care can a man give to himself in a time of war?”

diminishing, and the disproportion in this respect between us and our enemies, if they continue united in their effort to subjugate us, is steadily augmenting. The decrease of the aggregate of this army as disclosed by returns affords an illustration of this fact. Its effective strength varies from time to time, but the falling off in its aggregate shows that its ranks are growing weaker and that its losses are not supplied by recruits.” On August 23, 1864 Lee wrote the secretary of war, “Without some increase of strength, I cannot see how we are to escape the natural military consequences of the enemy’s numerical superiority.” By then, of course, his army was pinned down in the trenches of Petersburg where it was unable to maneuver to attack any more, although he was to try yet another attack at Fort Stedman very late in the campaign. Even so, he continued to hold to an offensive strategy until the casualties it caused created a situation where a siege, which the Army of Northern Virginia could not possibly win, became inevitable in the 1864 campaign. And his soldiers went along with him. Of course, they did not know actual casualty numbers on either side of the lines and a military force always tends to overestimate enemy casualties while underestimating its own. Moreover, to the eyes of his soldiers, Lee’s attacks always brought victory Captain James R.Hutter of the 11 th Virginia Infantry was with a group of troops sent to reconnoiter the Union front at Gettysburg before the famous charge on the third day He recalled the soldiers looking out over the fields at the Union line, then shaking hands with the resigned goodbye of veterans, one of them saying, “Boys, many of us will bite the

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dust here today, but we will say to General Lee if he wants them driven out, we will do it.” They believed in the man. Why the Cost in Lives? Yet in attack after attack he continued to spend their lives while inflicting fewer losses on the Union enemy Why did he do so? Partly because he flatly hated the forces of the Union. He called Federals “vandals” who caused the “ruin & pillage” of Virginia with their “pillaging,” “burning,” “robbing,” “marauding,” and “alarming women & children.” “Your old home, if not destroyed by our enemies, has been so desecrated that I cannot bear to think of it,” Lee wrote a daughter on December 25, 1861 about their Arlington estate. “I should have preferred it to have been wiped from the earth, its beautiful hill sunk, and its sacred trees buried, rather than to have it been degraded by the presence of those who revel in the ill they do for their own selfish purposes.” Partly it seems to have simply been in his character to attack whenever possible. Longstreet wrote that at Gettysburg, after the first day’s success, “He seemed under subdued excitement, which occasionally took possession of him when ‘the hunt was up,’ and threatened his superb equipoise.” This appears to have been the case not only at Gettysburg, but at Malvern Hill when McClellan was clearly withdrawing to choice defensive ground, and even at Sharpsburg when the day after avoiding serious defeat only by being handed the stalemate by his opponent, Lee looked for a chance to attack. He was, unlike McClellan, a natural born fighter. At the same time, his experience was that the constant offense paid off. Winfield Scott, on whose staff Lee served, took a small U.S. Army into Mexico City against a much larger Mexican Army and totally defeated that country after a series of offensive battles. This certainly affected Lee’s perception of how to fight a victorious war. Finally his soldiers and the rest of the country were of a like mind and wanted him to attack whenever possible. The thought of simply digging in all the time and waiting to be attacked went against the Southern mentality. When Lee was given command of the army outside Richmond in 1862 the Richmond Enquirer complained that “you have only to go into the army, amongst the men in the ranks, to hear curses heaped upon West Point and the spade.” E.Porter Alexander recalled that at this time as the men discussed Lee’s failed campaign in western Virginia in which “no battles having been fought, an idea arose that Lee would not be an aggressive commander. This was strengthened when Lee’s first care was to select a line of battle and began to fortify it. To some of the amateur critics, who wrote for the public press, this seemed little better than a confession of cowardice.” A general who was not aggressive would have pleased no Southern public, military or civilian. Lee also made personnel errors. He placed both Richard S.Ewell and A.P. Hill in corps command, where neither exactly covered themselves with glory, and allowed them to remain in those posts until they could no longer, rather than reducing them to a lower command. He gave Longstreet—who always sought independent command, although his record indicated he was not particularly good at it—his way, allowing him to waste time in the spring of 1863 at Suffolk, instead of returning to Lee’s side at Fredericksburg, and again to waste time the following winter in a siege of Knoxville that was fairly doomed to failure. Although his actions in getting rid of Magruder and others after the Seven Days’ showed he was willing to send failing subordinates to other theaters (an interesting indication of how little importance he placed on those theaters), Walter H.Taylor, his adjutant general, felt he held on to too many of these officers because of his character. Lee was, Taylor wrote, “too careful of the personal feelings of his subordinate commanders, too fearful of wounding their pride, and too solicitous for their reputation. Perhaps it was this that caused him sometimes to continue in command those of whose fitness for their position he was not convinced, and often led him, either avowedly or tacitly, to assume responsibility for mishaps clearly attributable to the

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inefficiency, neglect, or carelessness, of others. I have heard him express the wish that General A had the command of a certain division instead of General B, when General A was a brigadier in Major-General B’s division, and a recommendation from the general to the department would doubtless have procured the change.” Lee’s Style of Command He rarely gave direct orders, making suggestions instead, as when he suggested to Ewell to take Cemetery Ridge the first evening of Gettysburg. Indeed, he rarely directed his units on the battlefield itself. As Arthur Fremantle, a professional British soldier, wrote at Gettysburg, “As soon as the firing began, General Lee joined Hill just below our tree, and he remained there nearly all the time, looking through his field glass— sometimes talking to Hill and sometimes to Colonel Long of his staff. But generally he sat quite alone the whole time the firing continued, he only sent one message, and only received one report. It is evidently his system to arrange the plan thoroughly with the three corps commanders, and then leave to them the duty of modifying and carrying it out to the best of their abilities.” As the war progressed, and more and more of his best generals were lost, Lee did begin taking charge of battlefield tactics himself. Even so, he felt he was forced to keep them simple for, as he once told A.P.Hill, he did not believe his brigade commanders could execute more elaborate tactical methods. He maintained a staff that was too small for his actual needs, insisting on the benefits of small staffs. His staff was largely made up of amateurs and it often showed, as it did in the Seven Days’ Campaign. And, perhaps a mixed blessing, he was constantly overconfident in the ability of his men and the lack of ability of the Federal fighting men, as during the entire Seven Days’, the long Second Manassas Campaign, and the third day of Gettysburg. Although Lee was unfailingly gracious to visitors and those who only saw him occasionally, he did have a temper and was not always easy to work with. Walter H. Taylor wrote home on August 15, 1864, “The General and I lost temper with each other yesterday, and of course, I was afterwards disgusted at my allowing myself to be placed in a position where I appear to such disadvantage. I couldn’t help however; he is so unreasonable and provoking at times. I might serve under him for ten years to come and couldn’t love him at the end of that period.” After the war, Taylor became one of Lee’s biggest supporters and later wrote that “He was not one of those invariably amiable men whose temper is never ruffled; but when we consider the immense burden which rested upon him, and the numberless causes for annoyance with which he had to contend, the occasional cropping-out of temper which we, who were constantly near him, witnessed, only showed how great was his habitual self-command.” All this being said, it must also be acknowledged that Robert E.Lee was the heart and soul of the Army of Northern Virginia. If the armies of the Confederacy held their country together on the points of their bayonets, Lee held his army together on the point of his sword. They were as much his children as were the men of Napoleon’s Old Guard. At one point in The Wilderness, recalled a member of the 4th Texas, Lee arrived at a threatened point where the famed Texas brigade was in line of battle. “Having given General Gregg an order to advance at once and check the on-coming enemy, he added: ‘The Texas brigade always has driven the enemy, and I want them to do it now. And tell them, General, that they will fight to-day under my eye— I will watch their conduct. I want every man of them to know I am here with them!’ Gregg rode out in front of us, and told us what General Lee had said, and then gave the command, ‘Forward!’ The word had barely passed his lips when General Lee himself came in front of us, as if intending to lead us. The men shouted to him to come back, that they would not budge an inch unless he did so, and to emphasize the demand, twenty of more of them sprang forward and made an effort to lead or push his horse to the rear. I was too far from

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On April 9, 1865 Robert E. Lee, accompanied by a single aide, rode out of Confederate lines toward Appomattox Court House and a meeting with General Ulysses S.Grant. His task was to negotiate as honorable a surrender as he could for the Army of Northern Virginia. By 16:30 hours the terms had been signed and Lee was riding back to an army that had fought its last battle and was now consigned to history.

him to join in this attempt, or, like any other man in the brigade I would have done so. Exactly what occurred, not even those nearest Lee can tell, but just as they got ‘Traveler’ [Lee’s horse] headed to the rear, General Longstreet rode up and said something, whereupon General Lee rode silently back through our ranks.”

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Lieutenant-General James Longstreet was a corps commander and General Lee’s senior subordinate officer from 1862 onward. He was a loyal officer who served Lee right the way through to Appomattox, surviving the war to become involved in national Republican politics, a move that drew criticism from many unreconstructed Confederates.

The Senior Command Structure

The command structure of the Army of Northern Virginia was a blend of quarrelsome senior officers and a largely amateur staff. This unpromising group, however, built an army from scratch and held off the Army of the Potomac during four years of campaigning. The men who ran the Army of Northern Virginia were all young and, for the most part, lacked first-hand military experience when war broke out. None of them, from the most junior aide-de-camp to a lieutenant general, had a knowledge of command before being thrust into running one of the largest armies ever raised on the American continent. Lee had been at various times a staff engineer, superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy, and second in command of a cavalry regiment. Longstreet was a paymaster. Jackson taught artillery tactics at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). Hill worked in the U.S. Coast Survey. True, the senior Confederate officers tended to be graduates of some military school, ranging from the U.S. Military Academy, to the VMI, to one of the state military schools such as those in South Carolina and Georgia. True, they had largely seen combat as junior grade officers in the 1840s in the Mexican War and in campaigns against the Creeks and Seminoles in Florida. But to the business of high command they were all novices. At the top were Lee’s immediate subordinates, his corps commanders. I Corps was commanded by James Longstreet, known by old friends as “Pete,” a childhood nickname. He was rapidly taken into Lee’s confidence, the commanding general writing Richmond only four days after meeting him for the first time, “Longstreet is a Capital soldier. His recommendations hitherto have been good, & I have Duties of the Staff There were to be several basic posts for staff officers, according to the Manual of Instruction for the Volunteers and Militia, by William Gilham, a commonly used Confederate manual of 1861. These included an assistant adjutant general. “Assistant adjutant-generals, in addition to the duties already specified in general terms, attend to the formation of their divisions or brigades [or regiments], publish all orders received at division or brigade headquarters; issue all orders proceeding from the general commanding the division or brigade; preserve the records of the division or brigade; inspect and form division or brigade guards; prepare and keep the necessary rosters of the duties of the officers of the division or brigade; and regulate all details for duty depending on the rosters.” A quartermaster whose department “has to provide quarters and transportation for the troops; storage and transportation for all supplies; clothing; camp and garrison equippage; cavalry and artillery horses; fuel; forage; straw, and stationery. Its duties, when troops are in actual service, are very important, and embrace such a wide range of subjects, that a large number of agents, and thorough organization, are indispensable.”

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A commissary or assistant commissary who “must, however, so regulate his own requisitions upon purchasing or depot commissaries, as to keep on hand a sufficient supply to meet the wants of the troops.” Finally, Gilham said each command needed a medical officer and a paymaster, although the Confederate Army never created a Pay Department and instead depended on paying its troops and handling accounts through the Pay Bureau of the Quartermaster Department.

confidence in him.” As a result, in September 1862 when the rank of lieutenantgeneral and the army corps were created, Longstreet became the senior subordinate commander under Lee, with rank dating from October 9, while Stonewall Jackson’s rank dated to October 10. Longstreet was born on January 8, 1821, in South Carolina to the owner of a cotton plantation along the South Carolina/Georgia border, in an area that became Gainesville, Georgia. When he was nine years old he was sent away to school at the Richmond County Academy, the leading preparatory school in Georgia, with an eventual idea of attending the U.S. Military Academy. Although not a scholar by inclination, preferring the outdoor life, Longstreet was admitted to the Academy in 1838 as a member of the Class of 1842. There he continued his tradition of lackluster academic work, finally graduating 54th in a class of 56. During the time at the Academy he became close with a number of fellow cadets who would also rise to fame in the war between the states, among them Confederates Daniel Harvey Hill and Lafayette McLaws and Union generals George Thomas, U.S. Grant, William Rosecrans, and John Pope. As a low-ranking Academy graduate, Longstreet ended up a brevet second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry Regiment on the western frontier, seeing action in the Mexican War, where he was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec in September 1847. After recovering, and when the war was ended, he returned with his regiment to the United States and married Louise Garland in March, 1848. He was then posted to Texas where he served as a regimental adjutant and departmental chief of commissary, and where he picked up valuable knowledge of military administration. In 1858 he was appointed a major and paymaster and assigned to duty in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and from there to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Longstreets had 10 children, but they would not all be lucky in life. His third son, William, died in 1854 when only a year old. A daughter, Harriet Margaret, died in infancy in 1856. He was in New Mexico when the war broke out and wrote the governor of Alabama, “I desire, therefore to tender through you my services to her [Alabama], should she need a soldier who has seen hard service. I am the senior officer of the Army, from Alabama [his West Point appointment was from Alabama], and should be the first to offer her such assistance in my profession as I may be able to render.” On May 9, 1861 he resigned his U.S. Army commission, although in fact he had received a Confederate commission on March 16, 1861, which he accepted on May 1, before he had actually resigned from Federal service. For several months, therefore, he was on the rolls of both sides at the same time. However, once he picked his side, he traveled to Virginia and the Confederacy’s capital where, on June 17, he was named a brigadier-general and given command of a brigade, which he led with distinction at the First Manassas. He continued in his old West Point ways, known for dinners with fellow officers at which serious drinking and gambling went on, often to the disgust of more righteous officers, including some on his own staff. This would not last, however. In January 1862 scarlet fever spread through Richmond, where his family was staying, and within days three of his children had died of it. A fourth, 13-year-old Garland, almost died as well, but managed to recover. Heartsick, Longstreet gave up gambling and never socialized with his fellow officers in the same way again. An Episcopalian, as were so many of the South’s social leaders, he turned to the church for solace.

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Stonewall’s Career Lee’s II Corps commander was Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who was born in the western part of Virginia on January 21, 1824. Uneducated, he nonetheless received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy where he struggled at first, but by dint of hard work managed to overcome his lack of preparation to graduate 17th in the Class of 1846. He saw service in the Mexican War where his actions brought him brevets of captain and major. In 1852 he resigned from the U.S. Army to take a post as instructor at VMI, where he taught artillery tactics. He also served in the Virginia Militia, given the job as a colonel there, to command at Harper’s Ferry. Jackson was commissioned a brigadier-general in the Confederate Army on June 17, 1861 and was given command of the state’s 1st Brigade, whose brave stand opposite Henry House Hill at the First Manassas brought both the general and his brigade the nickname “Stonewall.” A Federal bullet broke one of his fingers in the battle, something he just ignored until the battle was done. Jackson, known to his men as “Old Blue Light” and “Old Jack,” was a singular individual at best. An extremely devout Presbyterian, he taught Sunday School to local African-American children while he was at VMI. He, himself, however, was noted for dozing during sermons at Sunday services. E.Porter Alexander found his beliefs to be a flaw: “For myself I think that the one defect in Gen. Jackson’s character as a soldier was his religious belief. He believed, with absolute faith, in a personal God, watching all human events with a jealous eye to His own glory—ready to reward those people who made it their chief care, & to punish those who forgot about it.” Jackson often rode around with his left arm in the air, claiming that this aided his circulation. He was also often seen sucking on lemons, it being a question among his staff where he managed to get them in a South cut off from much of the world by a blockade. He was not a social individual at all, extremely uncommunicative with even his immediate subordinates. He was extremely impatient, snapping at those who did not do what he wanted immediately. At the same time, probably unknown by these same subordinates, he learned Spanish in Mexico and used it with his wife, thinking it a language of love. After Jackson’s death, Lee reorganized the army, and gave a corps to command to Ambrose Powell Hill and another to Richard Ewell. A.P.Hill was another Virginian, born in Culpeper on November 9, 1825. He was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. Hill was noted there as an extroverted Virginia cavalier type, fast with the ladies. While there he knew Jackson, but the two were not close at all; Hill’s friends were quite different from the hard-working, awkward Jackson. His group were higherliving cadets such as George McClellan, Ambrose Burnside, and Henry Heth. Ambrose Powell Hill Hill did well enough as a plebe, but had to drop out after that year because of an illness of the type known then as “biliousness.” He returned to the Academy however, and was graduated with the Class of 1847. After graduation Hill was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 1st U.S. Artillery Regiment. He saw a little service in Mexico at the end of that war, missing any action, and in Florida in the Seminole Wars, where he did see action. Afterward he spent some time in Texas before being assigned to the U.S. Coast Service. While on duty with that service in Washington, D.C., he met Nellie Marcy, daughter of noted western explorer and soldier Randolph B.Marcy. Marcy discouraged Hill’s suit, due in good part to his reputation at the Academy and later, and Nellie subsequently married another soldier, George B.McClellan. A year later, however, Hill married Katherine Morgan, and the two had a daughter, Henrietta, in 1860. Never blessed with the best of health, Hill appears to have contracted some form of venereal disease when visiting New York after having just graduated from the Academy. He also contracted yellow fever when in the Everglades of Florida. He may also have contracted a viral infection of the liver, known today

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J.E.B.Stuart was the epitome of the Virginia cavalier and, as commander of Lee’s cavalry, outfought the Yankees for three years, until his death at the Battle of Yellow Tavern on May 11, 1864. Though Stuart took command of army corps on occasion, this most senior of Virginia cavalrymen never rose above the rank of major-general.

as a form of hepatitis. One disease or another affected him from time to time, and he was often not in good enough health for active service. At the outbreak of war, he resigned from the U.S. Army on March 1, 1861, forming the 13th Virginia Infantry as its colonel. He was appointed a brigadier-general on February 26, 1862, under Longstreet, and drew notice for his fine performance at Williamsburg and in the Peninsula Campaign. In command of II Corps after Jackson was shot at Chancellorsville, he was wounded there shortly after Jackson, struck in the legs by a projectile that did not break the skin but partially paralyzed them. He turned over command to Jeb Stuart. Recovering, he received the rank of major-general on May 26, 1862. Hill had been an excellent brigade and division commander, but turned out to be less competent as a corps commander. He was impatient and rarely reconnoitered enemy positions or considered alternative plans closely enough before going ahead. Such actions cost the army dearly in battles from the Seven Days’

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to the Mine Run Campaign of November 1863. Hill was named a lieutenant-general on May 24, 1863 with the army’s reorganization. However, he never seemed to have the fire he had before being wounded at Chancellorsville. 111 at Gettysburg, he played little active part in that campaign. Hill took time away from the army in the winter of 1863–64, worn by disease and the stress of field campaigning, to stay with his wife and children. Worn and weary, he was worried that he would have to resign his commission. However, he determined that he would return to his post in time for the spring campaign. He did, and was killed the following year on April 2, when, along with a staff sergeant on the siege of the Petersburg lines, he confronted two Union infantrymen. Richard Stoddert Ewell Richard Stoddert Ewell was born in Georgetown, now part of Washington, D.C., on February 8, 1817. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in 1840, he served in the southwest and was breveted for bravery in the Mexican War. He resigned from the U.S. Army on May 7, 1861, and accepted a Confederate commission as a brigadier-general in the Provisional Army on June 17, 1861. He was made a major-general on January 24, 1862. On May 23, 1863 he was named a lieutenant-general and given command of II Corps. 111 health forced Ewell to quit active field duty after the Battle of Spotsylvania in May 1864 and he never returned to the Army of Northern Virginia thereafter, serving instead as commander of the defenses of Richmond. “Bald as an eagle, he looked like one; had a piercing eye and a lisping speech,” Longstreet’s adjutant general Moxley Sorrel wrote of Ewell. “To uncommon courage and activity he added a fine military instinct, which could make him a good second in command in any army.” Jubal Anderson Early replaced him. Early, a native of Franklin County, Virginia, was born in 1816 and was graduated from West Point in 1837. He saw service in the war against the Seminoles in the early 1840s, but then resigned his Lee’s ideal Staff Lee revealed how he thought the staff should be organized in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs dated March 20, 1863: “First. I highly approve of the assignment of a general officer to duty as chief of staff to a general commanding a separate army. The grade of colonel I should think sufficient for the inspector-general, quartermaster-general, chief commissary, chief of ordnance, and medical director. Two, or at most three, aides-de-camp, one of the grade of lieutenantcolonel, the other of major of cavalry, I should think sufficient. On the field all the members of the staff departments can perform the duties of aides. Off the field the aides have less duty than officers of the staff departments. If it is intended to dispense with all the assistant adjutantsgeneral now allowed there will have to be an assistant to the chief of staff and to the inspector-general of a grade lower to each to attend to the duties of the office, &c. “Second. I would suggest that the assistant adjutant-general, inspector-general, chief quartermaster, chief commissary, and chief of ordnance to lieutenant-generals [corps commanders] in the field should all be placed on an equal footing and have the grade of lieutenant-colonels of cavalry. I think, too, that the adjutant-general and inspector-general should each have an assistant with the rank of major; otherwise they will be unable to perform the necessary office and outdoor work. He should also be allowed a surgeon of the grade of major and two aides-de-camp, one with the rank of major and one captain of cavalry. It is better, I think, to give more strength to the adjutant and inspector generals’ departments and to diminish the aides. “Third. To a major-general commanding a division, I would recommend that one assistant adjutantgeneral, one assistant inspectorgeneral, one chief quartermaster, one chief commissary, and one chief of ordnance be allowed of the grade of major of cavalry; also one surgeon of the same grade and two aidesde-camp, one of the grade of captain and one of first lieutenant of cavalry.

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“Fourth. To a brigadier-general commanding a brigade I would suggest that two assistant adjutant and inspectors general be allowed of the grade of captain of cavalry for the indoor and outdoor work, a surgeon of the grade of major, [and] one aide-de-camp of the grade of first lieutenant of cavalry. A regiment should have a regimental adjutant and quartermaster. I consider a regimental commissary unnecessary.”

commission to practice law in Rocky Mount, Virginia. During the Mexican War he returned to active duty as a major in the Virginia Regiment, which saw service in northern Mexico. He was active in Virginia’s political life, being against secession and voting for its rejection, but staying with the state and indeed forming and being first commander of the 24th Virginia Infantry. Early was made a brigadier-general, in part due to his abilities shown at the First Manassas, on July 21, 1861. He was badly wounded at the Second Manassas where he lost a leg, but served on and was promoted to major-general from January 17, 1863. He served at a temporary commander of Hill’s corps when Hill was unavailable, and was promoted lieutenant-general from May 31, 1864. As commander of II Corps, Early was sent to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 to raid toward Washington, D.C. and relieve pressure on Lee’s lines at Petersburg. He actually reached the ring of the city’s defenses, but the Union VI Corps came up in time to make the city impregnable, and he retired back through the Valley. Sheridan and a larger Union force followed him, beating him badly at Winchester and Fisher’s Hill in September. He counterattacked Sheridan at Cedar Creek on October 19 where he was initially successful, but failed to follow up as Jackson would have, allowing the Federals to rally and sweep the Confederates from the field. The survivors of his force were dispersed at Waynesboro, Virginia, in March 1865. E.Porter Alexander felt that “Early proved himself a remarkable corps commander. His greatest quality perhaps was the fearlessness with which he fought against all odds & discouragements.” “Intellectually he was perhaps the peer of the best of strategic combinations,” Moxley Sorrel wrote of Early, “but he lacked ability to handle troops effectively in the field; that is, he was deficient in tactical skill. His irritable disposition and biting tongue made him anything but popular, but he was a very brave and able commander. His appearance was quite striking, having a dark, handsome face, regular features, and deep piercing eyes. He was the victim of rheumatism, and although not old was bent almost double, like an aged man. Of high scholarly and fine political attainments, he never married, but led the life of a recluse in Virginia, entirely apart from social and public affairs.” J.E.B. (Jeb) Stuart Lee’s cavalry commander was James Ewell Brown (Jeb) Stuart, born in Patrick County, Virginia on February 6, 1833. He was graduated from West Point in 1854, going to the 1st Cavalry Regiment on the Kansas frontier. He was almost killed there when chasing a Native American who turned and shot him in the chest with an arrow. Stuart was in Washington when John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry, and joined Lee there as the senior officer’s aide. When Virginia seceded, he resigned his U.S. Army commission as captain to become colonel of the 1st Virginia Cavalry Regiment, with which he gained fame for charging at an important moment at the First Manassas. He was promoted a brigadier-general on September 24, 1861 and a major-general in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia’s Cavalry Brigade (later Corps) on July 25, 1862. “Of all our officers who did not rise to command independent armies,” Porter Alexander noted, “I have always believed that Stuart & Gen. [Wade] Hampton were the finest.” Stuart was a mass of contradictions. He was known as a very social individual who even kept one person on his personal staff because of his excellence in playing the banjo. At the same time he was a devout

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Episcopalian who had attended one of the church’s national conventions. He had also promised his mother he would never drink liquor and, while most of his staff indulged and he encouraged that, he kept his promise. Even on his deathbed he refused a drink of whiskey that the doctor prescribed. As a corps commander he felt that he deserved the rank of lieutenant-general to be equal with the infantry corps commanders, although he never received the rank. Lee’s artillery commander was William Nelson Pendleton, the oldest of the group and one who was sometimes mistaken for Lee by outsiders. He had been born in Richmond in 1809 and attended a private school there. He was appointed to West Point and was graduated fifth in the Class of 1830. However, he spent little time in the Army, instead resigning to teach and then entering the Episcopal priesthood. He was ordained in 1838 and became a full-time priest in 1847. He was appointed rector of Grace Church, Lexington, Virginia, in 1853 and held that post, with time off for wartime duty, until his death in 1883. Pendleton helped organize the Rockbridge Artillery in 1860 and became its captain; he named the four guns Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Joseph E. Johnston plucked him from the ranks of battery commanders to become chief of artillery, appointing him a brigadier-general on March 26, 1862. He held that post until the surrender at Appomattox. Pendleton was, in the view of most of his subordinates, too old and slow for the job. He rarely exercised actual command, being more involved in administrative duties. Indeed, that was all he did for the last two years of the war. Others were less than respectful of his habit of wearing a surplice over his uniform on Sundays and regularly holding services among his fellow soldiers. In an ideal world in an ideal army these generals would have meshed like a close team and put aside personal considerations for the good of the cause. It was not an ideal world, and the type of individual with enough audacity to become a general has a great deal of personal pride. This was especially so among the always-touchy Southerners. Longstreet and Hill clashed shortly after Lee took command in June 1862. The affair started with the editor of the Richmond Examiner, John Daniel, who was also a volunteer aide on Hill’s staff. During the Peninsula Campaign he praised the actions of Hill’s troops at Gaines’ Mill on June 27, at the same time disparaging other commands, including Longstreet’s. In fact, Daniel published accounts that indicated that Hill commanded not only his own division but “one of Longstreet’s two divisions,” and suggesting that Longstreet had not even been present at the start of the battle, which is why Hill had to take over. Longstreet Against Hill Longstreet had Moxley Sorrel rebut this in an article published in the Richmond Whig, which went too far the other way for Hill’s liking. Hill then wrote Lee on July 21, 1862 asking to be relieved from having to serve under Longstreet. Lee sat on the request, but just as he was hoping the problem would go away, Longstreet —through Sorrel—sent a request for a report to Hill. Hill wrote back that he “declined to hold further communication with Major Sorrel.” This was a clear violation of military discipline, and Longstreet had Sorrel place Hill under arrest. Now confined to the cantonment area, Hill wrote a blistering letter to Longstreet that agreed with the original newspaper article. Longstreet replied in kind, and Hill acted as a period Virginia gentleman was bound to do: he challenged Longstreet to a duel. Longstreet accepted, but as arrangements were being made, Lee found out about the childishness of his senior generals and forbade such foolishness. Moreover, he transferred Hill’s division to Jackson’s command, taking him out of arrest so he could command the division. Although the affair was never spoken of again, the two generals were never to be on friendly terms.

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Hill, however, soon discovered he was not to enjoy serving under Jackson either. When he arrived at his new command he found that one of his best brigadier-generals, Richard Garnett, was being court-martialed by Jackson. Again, this problem was solved by reorganizing the chain of command and moving Garnett’s brigade from Jackson’s corps to Longstreet’s. Soon thereafter Hill was to run afoul of Jackson himself, as so many of Stonewall’s subordinates did. On a march where Hill’s men were to follow Ewell’s, Jackson, without telling Hill, changed the order of march so Jackson’s division actually led off. As Hill waited, Jackson rode up and demanded to know why Hill’s men were just standing around and not marching. Hill snapped back that he was waiting for Jackson’s division to pass. An angry Jackson then called for what appeared to be the next brigade to move on quickly. Unfortunately, it was the wagon trains of the previous division, so Hill now had to wait for the slowmoving wagons to pass, therefore arriving too late for Jackson to hit Pope’s troops on August 7, 1862, something for which Jackson blamed Hill. Later Jackson arrested one of Hill’s popular brigadier-generals, Maxcy Gregg, and his five regimental commanders for violating standing orders against the destruction of private property (their men burned some fence rails). Although the case was dropped, Hill’s antipathy toward Jackson continued to grow. Gregg was to run into trouble again when on the 1862 Maryland Campaign Jackson thought he was too soft in allowing his men to fill their canteens before getting their march north started. Jackson also felt no trust for Hill, and checked up on his division’s march going into Harper’s Ferry. Deciding Hill was moving at too brisk a pace, he ordered a rest break without telling Hill, who stormed up to Jackson and yelled that Stonewall was not “fit to be a general.” Jackson placed Hill under arrest. Although Hill was released to command his own dramatic arrival on the field at Sharpsburg on September 17, once the battle was over he demanded a court of inquiry from Lee. Lee again tried to sit on the demand, but Hill was not to be satisfied. Eventually Jackson was forced to file formal charges, in all seven alleged incidents of neglect of duty. Lee filed these away, too. He managed to please both feuding generals by having Jackson promoted and, at the same time, officially writing to the War Department that “Next to these two officers, I consider A.P.Hill the best commander with me. He fights his troops well and takes good care of them.” This placated Hill for a time, but in January 1863 he again filed a request for a court of inquiry. Jackson again filed charges. Before this court could be formed, however, Jackson was killed at Chancellorsville in May, and the whole affair became moot. As relations were not always smooth among the high command generals, lower ranks also had their disagreements that naturally affected the army’s efficiency. The other important element that affected the army’s efficiency at the headquarters level was each general’s individual staff, the group of men who passed on the plans and orders and made sure operations ran smoothly. Each general was provided with a staff to administer his command. There were no professional staff officers in the prewar U.S. Army, and the Confederates followed this tradition. There were no schools for staff officers, all of whom had been seconded from line units. There was no official chief-of-staff to oversee staff operations. All in all this was a most unsatisfactory state of affairs, and led to many problems. Lee’s adjutant-general, Walter Taylor, for example, wrote home in February 1864 about a problem that arose in Lee’s absence. “Gen’l Ewell who is supposed to be in command doesn’t relieve me at all, nor does my friend Chilton who terms himself ‘Chief of Staff.’ Neither has volunteered one single suggestion or in any way divided the responsibility.”

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A patriotic keepsake of the senior generals of the Confederacy. It shows General Lee and his subordinates, including Jackson (sixth from right). The portrait also shows many commanders who would fight their war in the western theater, including Braxton Bragg (third left).

The Chief-of-Staff Not only did Robert Chilton style himself chief-of-staff; this position was announced on him in orders dated June 1862. This was not a position created by War Department regulation, until it was made official in June 1864 for the army headquarters, although not for subordinate commands. However, most divisionsized commands had one person who worked as, and was often called, the unit’s chief-of-staff. Often it was a position filled by the adjutant, as it usually involved handling paperwork, assigning duties to subordinate staff officers, and generally handling all administrative duties, which was something the adjutant general tended to do anyway. Officially designated an assistant adjutant general, as the adjutant general was headquartered in Richmond, adjutants handled the command’s paperwork, and did some administrative duties such as inspect the headquarters or command guards, form units for parades, and keep the various record books required by regulation. At a high headquarters level they also handled officer examination boards, while at lower headquarters levels they managed mail and wrote casualty lists to local newspapers, something that was done by tradition rather than regulation. The Confederate Army’s chief paper pusher was called the Adjutant & Inspector General, with both functions combined in one. However, armies in the field and subordinate units separated the two functions. The assistant inspector generals reported on “the discipline of the troops; their instruction in all military exercises and duties; the state of their arms, clothing, equipment, and accoutrements of all kinds; of their kitchens and messes;…of the stables and horses;…the zeal and ability of the officers in command of troops; the capacity of the officers conducting the administrative and staff services; the fidelity and economy of their disbursements; the condition of all public property…and any information whatsoever, concerning the service in any manner or particular that may merit notice, or aid to correct defects or introduce improvements.” The staff position with the least firmly regulated duties was that of aide-decamp. Each general, depending on his rank, was authorized a number of these officers, usually junior grade officers and, early in the war, often civilian volunteers such as Hill’s newspaper editor friend John Daniel. They took care of the personal needs of the general, making sure his tent was set up when arriving at the end of a march, for example, and, in action, delivering messages to subordinate and higher commands as the general directed. Generals often had them trained to assist other staff officers, especially when duties were heavy. Generally, however, when

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not in action and riding about delivering messages, aides-de-camp could get away with doing relatively little. Richard Corbin, born in France to Virginia expatriates, came to Virginia toward the end of the war and found a position as aide-de-camp on the staff of Major-General Charles Field, a division commander. He wrote home on July 5, 1864, “I am at present the General’s only aide, the other two officers serving in that capacity being away; my position therefore is not a sinecure, for since my arrival here I have carried about a great many orders.” Each general got to pick his own aides-de-camp by regulation, and often picked individuals whom they thought could be of political benefit or benefit some other way, as by appeasing a family member. For example, leading South Carolina politician James Chestnut was recommended to Beauregard as someone who “may be able to help you.” Chestnut was taken on. By tradition, a general could pick his other staff members, although certain departments could assign officers as they felt best. For example, the Engineer Bureau in Richmond could assign engineer officers to specific staffs. If the staff officer and general did not get along, however, such an assigned officer could quickly be replaced. In late 1861, for example, Longstreet wrote the War Department about an individual who “has served on my Staff as Volunteer officer since the 18th of July; the principal part of the time as ordnance officer of the Brigade. He is an industrious, intelligent officer, and well worthy of a position in the Confederate Service. I hope he may receive the position he so well deserves. I would like to have Capt. G. appointed to some position in the Ordnance Department, and remain with me in the position he now occupies.” In fact, the Chief of Ordnance was by regulations from Richmond free to place whom he wished with Longstreet’s staff, but in fact, most bowed to the desires of the specific generals. Many officers picked relatives, often their own sons, although Lee wrote his wife in February 1864, about the possibility of transferring his son Robert Jr. from the Rockbridge Artillery to army headquarters, “I am opposed to officers surrounding themselves with their sons & relatives. It is wrong in principle & in that case the selection for offices would be made from private & social relations, rather than for the public good.” According to Sorrel, Longstreet’s adjutant general, Lee’s “staff was small and efficient. I suppose that at this date there are hundreds of men in the South who call themselves members of Lee’s staff, and so they were if teamsters, sentry men, detailed quartermasters (commissary men), couriers and orderlies, and all the rest of the following of general headquarters of a great army are to be so considered. But by staff we usually confine ourselves to those responsible officers immediately about a general, and Lee had selected carefully. Four majors (afterwards lieutenant-colonels and colonels) did his principal work.” Sorrel was also careful to distinguish Lee’s personal staff with officers in charge of various staffdepartments, adding, “There were possibly one or two young lieutenants for personal aides, but this was Lee’s staff, although perhaps I have made some omissions. Of course it does not include the important administrative officers like Cole, chief commissary; Corley, chief quartermaster; Doctor Guild, medical director, and his chiefs of ordnance and other organizations.” While Sorrel did not recognize these latter men as members of Lee’s staff, since they did not serve directly under him, Lee and the other generals, who often praised them as staff members in their official reports, did. For a short time the Army of Northern Virginia seems to have lumped these men, from teamsters to commissary clerks, into a type of headquarters battalion. This came to a large number of people. According to Porter Alexander, only 15 headquarters personnel, including Lee, were paroled at Appomattox, but in fact a total of 80 staff officers who worked for the army headquarters were actually paroled, while another 212 enlisted men served the army’s headquarters in some capacity or another at the time. When operational, the headquarters battalion reported from 9 to 12 officers, with another 114 to 228 enlisted men in it.

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Lewis A.Armistead was a major in the U.S. Army serving in California when the war broke out in 1861. Resigning his commission Armistead went east, joined the Confederacy, and rose to the rank of brigadier-general in the Army of Northern Virginia. Typical of the bravery under fire of senior Confederate officers, Armistead would die leading his brigade of Virginians during the final day of Gettysburg.

The stress of such a large amount of paperwork on such small staffs was certainly felt. Lee’s adjutant general, Walter Taylor, wrote home in August 1863, “A poor Adjutant General can claim no privileges. If anybody is to be waked at night, to receive the innumerable dispatches, to remain in camp, where all else are away, it is the A.A.G… Whereas Joe Johnston and Beauregard and others have ten, twenty, and thirty Ajt Generals, this army has only one and I assure you at times I can hardly stand up under the pressure of work.”

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The traditional culture and social order Confederate officers were fighting to maintain influenced not only how they ran their armies, but also how they worked together with fellow officers. Personal feuds and duels over points of personal honor were not uncommon, even among the most senior of army commanders.

The Problems of a Small Staff In action the members of these small staffs, save for someone left at headquarters to handle dispatches, covered the field, making sure their generals’ orders were followed. Too small a staff, however, meant that often things were done that the commanding general was unaware of. E.Porter Alexander felt that “Scarcely any of our generals had half of what they needed to keep a constant & close supervision on the execution of important orders. And that ought always to be done. An army is like a great machine, and in putting it into battle it is not enough for its commander to merely issue the necessary orders. He should have a staff ample to supervise the execution of each step, & to promptly report any difficulty or misunderstanding.” Porter Alexander also felt that each staff officer should be trained to know his duties, not just as detailed in the book, but in actual practice. For example, he should know how long it would take for each of his general’s subordinate units to pass a single point in a line of march. On one typical march Porter Alexander noted that “orders came that Ewell’s corps should march at 4 a.m., Hill’s at 6 a.m., & Longstreet’s at 8 a.m. So, at 8 a.m., I had hitched up & had my battalion moved out to the pike by which we all were to travel. But each corps with all its trains would occupy about 12 miles [19 km] of road, & it took nearly four hours to stretch out. Consequently, Hill could not march until about 8, nor our corps until near 12. I mention it only to illustrate how important in a big army is the detail, which only a large & well trained staff can supply.” There was, however, no mechanism to provide such training, only on-the-job experience with the men picking up their duties as they went along, which cost the Confederate Army dearly at times. For all that, Longstreet, in common with many Confederate generals, failed to use the departmental staffs to their best advantage. For example, before Longstreet’s corps headed off toward the siege of Knoxville in late 1863, he apparently failed to consult with his staff department heads to make sure his force’s demands could be met. Francis Dawson, an Englishman who was assigned to his staff as an officer, later recalled,

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A detail of the bronze figures on the Virginia state memorial, Gettysburg battlefield. Virginia was one of the last Southern states to secede, only voting to hold a referendum on April 17, 1861. However, the mobilization of volunteers in the North after Sumter was seen as a threat and led the state legislature to call its citizens to arms to defend its borders before the state officially became part of the Confederacy.

“One of General Longstreet’s most serious faults as a military commander was shown at this time. To his knowledge we were to cut loose from our communications, with no certainty that we should soon be able to re-establish them. It would be easy enough to live upon the country, but we could not hope to find in the fields or the corn-crib either small-arm or artillery ammunition. Nevertheless, he gave me no notice whatever that any extended movement was to be made, nor did he warn me that I must be prepared to supply the army with ammunition for the campaign.” It is, in the final analysis, important to consider all these problems with more than a grain of salt. No matter how quarreling the generals, or small or untrained the staffs, they did manage to keep a larger army than themselves at bay for four years, which was no small feat.

The Rank and File

The Confederacy may have relied on the skill of its officers, but it depended completely on the will and loyalty of the soldiers in the ranks. Often ill-disciplined, these men were the heart and soul of the Southern cause. The average Confederate soldier was rather more like the average Union soldier than he ever would have admitted. He came from a rural, middleclass background, was young, usually unmarried, with some formal education to a point, but strongly versed in his society’s values. He was a Christian, but prejudiced against others not like him. He gambled and swore, but his religious beliefs generally kept these habits from overwhelming him. He drank when liquor was available, though it was mostly out of the reach of the rank and file. He griped all the time, about the lack of rations, the stupidity of officers, the weather, and long marches. But these gripes merely filled the time and did not reflect a deep-seated animosity against his situation; he was simply acting as soldiers have from the time of the armies of the Pharaohs. He went into the army sure of victory, an attitude that was reinforced in the early years when indeed it seemed every battle ended in Confederate success. Yet there were also real differences between soldiers on the opposing sides. Kevin Ruffner’s study of Marylanders who became junior grade officers in both armies demonstrates how the sides differed. He found that Marylanders who became Confederate officers were generally well-educated, from families that traced their roots to the colony’s founding. They rarely had a working background, either skilled or unskilled. Marylanders who became junior officers in the Union Army tended to earn their livings as farmers or laborers, skilled or unskilled, with a lower educational standard. Many were not born in Maryland, a slave state, but rather came originally from neighboring Northern states. It was a war, in Maryland at least, of aristocrats against the working and middle classes. Once at war, Union Marylanders stuck with the job, even though they found it boring at times. Confederate Marylanders, on the other hand, having gone South with dreams of Sir Walter Scott’s tales of glory, found infantry life a drudgery and many exchanged it for more exciting jobs on the staff or in the cavalry. Randolph McKim even left the Maryland infantry battalion to take up holy orders as an Episcopal priest and never returned to his old regiment, instead becoming a Virginia cavalry regiment chaplain. Maryland, in this way, reflected well the differences between the Southern and Northern armies. Most (though not all) Confederate soldiers were Southern-born and had not traveled far from the place of their birth prior to the outbreak of the war. Many were not natives to the state in which they enlisted. Bell Irvin Wiley, the pioneer social historian of the Confederate Army, surveyed descriptive rolls from 21 Confederate regiments drawn from six Southern states. In all, he found 86 privates had been born in Northern states, the most from New York (37), while 10 came from Illinois, 9 from Pennsylvania, and 7

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The harshness of the winter weather in the eastern theater usually put a stop to campaigning between December and March, leaving the armies to reorganize, for sacked generals to ship-out west, and for the men to indulge in some seasonal sports, including snowball fights.

each from Indiana, Massachusetts, and Ohio. The rest came from Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey,Vermont and Michigan. Mid-19th century Americans, both North and South, he proved, were mobile. Many came from further afield, mostly from Europe, especially in units drawn from metropolitan areas. Louisiana’s population was 10 percent foreignborn, and contributed large numbers of Irish and French, and indeed men from no less than 37 countries in the 1st Louisiana Regiment alone. The Irish formed their own companies in Virginia, Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina, while Texas also sent a number of largely German companies to the front. Even North Carolina, which had the most homogeneously Anglo population of all the Southern states, had companies made up largely of Irish or Germans. These men sometimes faced fierce prejudices because of their nationalities: Private Henry Brandes of Hampton’s Legion was court-martialed for calling a sentinel an “Irish son of a bitch.” Wiley also looked at prewar occupations in a study of 107 company rolls drawn from the archives of 28 regiments from 7 states, for a total of 9,000 Confederate soldiers. As with the Union armed forces, most were in agriculture. Wiley found that 61.5 percent hailed from some sort of agricultural background. James McPherson broke this category into two subcategories: planters, who ran larger estates with slaves under them and were more involved in management than actually working in the fields; and farmers, who worked their own fields, although some also owned slaves. Of these two, he found that 26.9 percent were planters, while 34.9 percent were farmers. However, breaking it down further, he saw that 31.5 percent of all officers were planters, while only 10.5 percent were farmers. It was the opposite for enlisted men, of whom over half (56 percent) were farmers, while slighter fewer than a quarter (23 percent) were planters. McPherson also found other occupational differences between officers and their men. Of officers 35.9 percent came from professional backgrounds such as the law or medicine. Only 3.8 percent of enlisted men came from these backgrounds. White-collar workers, such as office clerks or telegraph operators, made up 21 percent of the officer ranks, while only 13.9 percent of enlisted men had such backgrounds. Finally, 3.3 percent of enlisted men had backgrounds as skilled laborers, such as glass blower or blacksmith, while only 1.1 percent of officers had these backgrounds.

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For all that, there was still a sprinkling of individuals whose backgrounds defy easy categorization. For example, a number of recruits described themselves simply as “gentlemen,” while one recruit was described as a convict, one as a gambler, another as a rogue, and one as a speculator. Student Enlistment A number were students, and they tended to form their own companies on their college campuses. Company E, 11th Virginia, was made up of students from Lynchburg College, with a professor as the first captain. The First Company of Rockbridge Artillery drew a number of men from Washington College and the University of Virginia, while other well-educated individuals went into the Richmond Howitzers, Georgia’s Oglethorpe Light Infantry, Louisiana’s Washington Artillery, Company F of the 21st Virginia, South Carolina’s Hampton’s Legion, the 3rd Alabama, the 1st Virginia, and the 1st, later 2nd, Maryland. However, by late 1862 and thereafter, many well-educated men gained commissions and moved to other units. Others on the other hand were totally illiterate. Over a quarter (27 percent) of Company A, 11th North Carolina made their marks, rather than signed their names, on the company’s descriptive roll. Wiley found an average in 143 companies in 13 different Confederate infantry regiments of 40 percent that were unable to write their names. Wiley looked at ages of some 11,000 infantry privates who largely enlisted between 1861 and 1862 and found that they ranged from a boy of 13 to an old man of 73. One Floridian wrote to the Confederate veteran that he surrendered at Appomattox at the age of 14 and he had joined the army in 1861, which would just about make him the youngest serving Confederate. The largest group was 18 years old, with over a third ranging in age from 18 to 25. About 20 percent were under 18, while some 15 percent were in their 30s. Around a 25th of the sample were in their 40s as well. One of the hardest things the average Southerners had to learn once in the army was military discipline. This was especially hard for those who considered themselves from families of high social standing when dealing with ranking superiors of lower social status. After his first brush with military discipline, one “‘high private in the rear rank’ actually wrote and sent in to the captain an elegant note resigning his ‘position,’ “recalled Robert Stiles. A private from a high social background forced a public apology from his lieutenant, whose background was less distinguished, for putting him on double duty for missing roll call, recalled George Cary Eggleston. Eggleston also wrote of any number of cases in which privates “declined dinner and other invitations from officers who had presumed upon their shoulder straps in asking the company of their social superiors.” At the same time, even the poorest dirt farmer considered himself the equal of any of his peers, regardless of rank or class. A North Carolina cannoneer from a less distinguished, and educated, family wrote, “I valenteared in this bloddy ware for to fight for my cuntery [and] for my rights…and I am determind to have my rights in the company or I will fight every bloddy officer in the company.” And it was clear to most of these individuals that the way their society was set up favored the more socially élite. Richmond Introduces Conscription The 1862 Conscription Act, for example, allowed planters who owned 20 or more slaves, as well as a wide variety of professional men, even newspaper editors, to avoid being drafted into the army. “I do not think it is right for me to go through the hardships of camp life and the danger of Battle and others living at home enjoying life because they have a few negroes,” James Skelton wrote home. As well as these occupational let-outs, anyone could hire a substitute to take his place, another aspect that favored the well-to-do. The

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1864 Conscription Act reformation extended exemptions to smaller planters and eliminated a number of exemptions, but this was too little, too late to make a real impression. “A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” was a common expression among the soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia.

The Confederate volunteers of 1861 were young, idealistic, and ready to fight the tyranny of the North, a place most of them had never been anywhere near.

Any new Southerner officer had first to win over his men before he could enforce any form of discipline. “After a while these things ceased to worry as I became more and more assured of the respect and confidence of a large majority of the men,” Poague wrote. Another Virginian, artillery sergeant John Esten Cooke, found that he had to “appeal rather to their sense of propriety than the fear of military punishment,” to get his orders obeyed. Officers who imposed old Regular U.S. Army discipline found that it often had the opposite effect on the soldiers they were trying to control. A Stonewall Brigade commander ordered a number of men in the brigade who had been straggling to be bucked and gagged. One of them was Private John Casler, 33rd Virginia, who described the punishment: “Now, bucking a soldier is tying his hands together at the wrists and slipping them down over his knees and then running a stick through under the knees and over the arms. Gagging is placing a bayonet in the mouth and tying it with a string around his neck. It was a tiresome and painful situation, as we had to sit cramped up all day in one position, and if a fellow happened to fall over one of the guards would have to sit him up. “We were all mad as fury about it, for it was a punishment that had never been inflicted in our brigade before. That night, after we were released, about one-half of the number deserted. “We marched the next day a short distance, but I would not ‘fall in ranks.’ I told my Captain I did not intend to answer to roll call that evening, and if I was bucked again for straggling it would be the last time; that I would never shoulder my musket again for a cause that would treat soldiers in that manner.” The punishment was not practiced again in the Stonewall Brigade.

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The message from the troops was clear, however, that Regular Army discipline would just not be accepted by Southern soldiers. The more successful officers learned to accept, even believe, in this as a good thing. A lieutenant in the 43rd North Carolina wrote in 1863, “Napoleon the first said ‘a man to be a good Soldier must first be converted into a machine,’ & I am inclined after some experience to concur with him. I do think however that there is a degree of manly, personal independence which, if properly restrained & properly respected, adds greatly to the virtues & essentials of a Soldier. For if this be destroyed, & ignored, & we can come to the servile belief that we are slaves, then our duties would have to be dragged out of us.” In fact, to the end, the Army of Northern Virginia was never as well disciplined a unit as its opponent, the Army of the Potomac or, indeed, other military organizations the world over. Nor were the average Confederate foot soldiers impressed with those who held officer ranks, even toward the war’s end. Richard Corbin, who had lived his life in France before coming to Virginia to serve as a staff officer in 1864, for example, wrote home that July, describing how the men in the ranks treated him: “When they are marching by they sometimes will say, jocularly, ‘Come out of them boots, I say Mister; I see your head a-peeping out,’ or else, ‘Get a corkscrew for the gentleman, he wants to get out of his boots.’ In the Confederate army officers of all ranks, whose faces are not known by the men, are equally exposed to a volley of chaff, for the Southern soldier is an inveterate farceur—he even chaffed his idol, Stonewall Jackson, for his ungainly seat on horseback. And yet if you speak to them civilly they will always give you an intelligent and ready reply; provided you are not arrogant or overbearing they will invariably try to oblige you with alacrity.” Revivals sweep the Army Although religion was temporarily ignored at the war’s beginning, as novel scenes and events took the mens’ attention, this changed as time went on, In order to keep on the right with God, waves of religious revivals, like the tent meetings that were so familiar in rural Southern communities, swept the Army of Northern Virginia, beginning in the spring of 1863, “It was my privilege on last Tuesday to visit Fredericksburg and participate in the exercises of the glorious revival they have been having there for the past month,” wrote Chaplain J. William Jones in March 1863. ‘I have never preached under more impressive circumstances. The Episcopal church— capable of seating about twelve hundred—was well filled with attentive listeners; and! felt while speaking that it was, perhaps, the last message of salvation that some of the poor fellows would ever receive. When, at the close of the sermon, Brother Owen, chaplain of the Seventeenth Mississippi, made a few earnest remarks and Invited inquirers to come forward, there was a simultaneous move of about seventy-five deeply penitent men,” In all, Jones’s figures indicated that “there were at least 1500 professions of conversion in Lee’s army,” during this revival. But it wasn’t enough. That July, Vicksburg fell and Lee was turned back at Gettysburg almost simultaneously. God was obviously displeased with His people. In consequence, revivals continued through the winter of 1863–64, as soldiers believed that their repentance would turn God from punishing a South that did not give enough thanks and praise to one that would reward their cause. The Confederate Congress called for days of humiliation, fasting, and prayer, Lee, a pious Episcopalian, issued general orders on March 30, 1864 calling for compliance with such a congressional order, adding, “Soldiers, let us humble ourselves before the Lord our God, asking through Christ the forgiveness of our sins, beseeching the aid of the God of our forefathers in the defense of our homes and our liberties, thanking him for his past blessings and imploring their continuance upon our cause and our people.”

There were other points of dissension. Soldiers in units drawn from rural areas tended to look down on those from towns and cities as “parlor soldiers” and “kid glove soldiers,” while city dwellers called rural

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Georgians “goober grabbers” and South Carolinians “sand lappers.” Other branches of service from all areas agreed that the cavalry was worthless. “Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?” was a common phrase. Because of their chances to forage far afield, as well as their lack of dangerous duties, cavalryman were called “buttermilk cavalry.” “I do wish that the Yankees would capture all of the Cavalry,” one infantryman wrote after the 1864 Shenandoah Valley campaign. “They never fight So I think it is useless to have them in the Army Eating rations.” Of course there was some envy in this, one soldier writing home to advise his younger brother to “by all means to Join the Cavalry—and bear in mind that a private in the infantry is the worse place he can possibly be put into in this war—so if he wants to have a good time Join the Cavalry.” Lee’s soldiers also had little use for either conscripts or local militia or reservists. Most considered them cowards who did not deserve the name of Confederate soldier. John Worsham of the 21st Virginia recalled one battle in which “We had fifty-two men present in our company, and nearly all of them were substitutes and conscripts. One of them fainted when he saw the enemy; another got a terrible ache and had to lie down on the ground. We could hear him groaning after the firing commenced.” Their own first combat experiences long forgotten, and certainly never admitted to to these new additions to their ranks, Confederate veterans had no use for any of this class of soldier. Conscription had another negative effect on Confederate morale; it encouraged disobedience of the law. Some states, especially North Carolina and Georgia, encouraged their white males to avoid conscription through any number of loopholes the states themselves created. Local justices of the peace were exempted from the draft in North Carolina, while Georgia set up its own military force ostensibly for local defense, but just as importantly keeping thousands of Georgians away from the front. When the soldier in the ranks saw how his own local government—the state for which he had gone to war and whose seal adorned his buttons—encouraged men who were just as able to be in the field as him not to be, it inevitably began to give each soldier ideas of his own personal well-being above that of the state. But for all that the Confederate soldier found that displeased him about the army and his situation, he was still a fierce fighter, making charges across open plains at well-defended enemies and standing his ground against much larger attacking forces through until the end. He did this for a number of reasons that made him an exceptional soldier. The Loyalty of the Rank and File The Confederate soldier was, above all, loyal. He was loyal to his white race against what he saw as a conspiracy to make blacks equal, especially after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1862/63. The fact that the Federals would use blacks in uniform to prosecute the war against the Confederacy only confirmed his fears and made him fight with even greater desperation. John Haskell, a South Carolina artillery officer, was present at the battle known as the Crater on July 30, 1864. At this battle, Union forces, including many black units, were sent into a gap in the Southern lines at Petersburg, made by the detonation of a pile of explosives hidden in a mine under their works. “Our men, who were always made wild by having negroes sent against them,” he wrote, “remembering that hundreds of their fellows were perhaps only then smothering under the piled-up dirt, were utterly frenzied with rage. Nothing in the war could have exceeded the horrors that followed. No quarter was given, and for what seemed like a long time, fearful butchery was carried on. There was little firing, them being too crowded together, but they stabbed with their bayonets and clubbed with their muskets until utterly exhausted, with fresh men coming in at every moment. Some of the white men were spared but very few negroes.” Knowing the reaction against black soldiers and their associates, Haskell wrote, their white officers disguised themselves in action. “I never saw one of them with any in a fight; they had learned that our men

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did not readily give quarter to officers of negro regiments, so they preferred, when caught, to pass themselves as privates of white regiments.” The Confederate soldier was loyal to the South. A 9th Alabama corporal wrote in his diary in 1862, “I am engaged in the glorious cause of liberty and justice, fighting for all that we of the South hold dear.” Even in September 1864 when a sergeant in the 27th North Carolina wrote that everyone he knew was keen for the war to end, he added that it could not end on any but honorable terms, because “The south has lost too many of its noble sons to ever submit to A black republican form of government & be striped [sic] of its property & rights.” One’s own state claimed an even higher level of loyalty. A local Georgia officer, after the fall of Nashville, Tennessee in December 1864, said to a Savannah native, “Why should we imagine such things should happen on Georgia soil? We are not Tennesseans but Georgians, and because they are defeated is no reason that we should be.” The Confederate soldier was loyal because he saw the Union forces coming south as a foreign invader, and feared for his home and family. John Worsham described the scenery on his line of march when the 21st Virginia followed Jubal Early down the Shenandoah Valley in 1864: “On our march from Lynchburg, we passed many private places that had been pillaged or destroyed by Hunter’s army. At Lexington we passed the ruins of the Virginia Military Institute, which Hunter burned while he was on his way to Lynchburg.” Such sights convinced the average soldier that it was a fight to the death, and that if his community were to survive, his cause had to prevail. The Desire for Vengeance Beyond simply defending their homes, many of them became obsessed with the notion of vengeance for the damage wrought on the South in general. One 8th Georgia sergeant wrote home when heading to Pennsylvania in 1863 that he hoped his army would “take horses; burn houses; and commit every depredation possible upon the men of the North,” adding, “I certainly love to live to kill the base usurping vandals.” A 3rd South Carolina soldier in the same campaign felt that “most of the soldiers seem to harbor a terrific spirit of revenge and steal and pillage.” This spirit would even go beyond simple robbing, and could involve such acts as making rings of bones of dead Federal soldiers found on ancient battlefields. He was loyal to his fellows in the ranks, usually from the same town, who were acquaintances, if not friends, before the war. His officers were often local civic leaders he had known and respected from prewar days. Many times one hears of an individual in a company offered a higher rank and better position with another command, who declined to accept the offer in order to remain with his comrades. To abandon these comrades would be unpardonable in his eyes. The Confederate soldier was loyal simply because it was part of his culture. Americans then believed; they had not yet become cynical about their leaders, their politics, and their religions. In fact, this loyalty was part of their Christian faith, which was largely Protestant, based on a personal morality and relationship with his Savior. Moreover, fighting for the Confederacy, he was constantly assured, was fighting for God, as God was surely on the side of the South. “Not only has it been chanted in the sanctuaries of Christianity, but our civil rulers have recognized it in their papers of State, and our great Captains have proclaimed it from the head of their armies in victory as well as under defeat. The soldier and the statesman, the man of the sword and the man of the gown, has each borne it upon his escutcheon, and our supreme Legislative assembly has engraven it upon our national seal,” the Rt Revd Stephen Elliott, Bishop of Georgia and senior bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Confederate States, preached on August 21, 1863. “All our official documents will go forth in the future, with the sacred inscription ‘Deo Vindige,’ and announce to the world our trust and our strength.”

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The men of Lee’s army wore out a lot of shoe leather after the summer of 1862. The war in Virginia was fought mostly south to north, but the few existing railroads ran east to west, as did the rivers. That meant a lot of hard marching, for which many of the men were not fit enough, leading their officers to accuse them of straggling.

Elliott went on to say, “We believed, when we began this conflict, that the hand of God was with us, because we had the right and the true upon our side under every aspect in which we could view the case between us and our adversaries. We could not think, and we cannot yet think, that He who rules in righteousness would permit the injured and the oppressed to be overwhelmed by the tyranny of brute force, and consigned to degration and infamy. He might try severely our fortitude—He might chasten heavily our sins—He might keep us long in the furnace of affliction, but in the end, He would deliver us and justify our trust to Him.” As the war dragged on, however, to the common soldier there was an obvious link between the abandonment of God of his Southern people and the ever- growing number of Federal victories. “We believe this war which is now desolating our land,” announced the Christian Association of the 1st Virginia Artillery, “is a righteous judgment and chastisement from the hand of a just God for those various sins of which we have been and are still guilty.” For many, especially for religious Southerners, one of these sins was, frankly, the institution of slavery itself, the very thing cited by Confederate Vice President Alexander H.Stephens as the cornerstone of their cause. Mary Chesnut, wife of a Confederate general and socially prominent South Carolinian whose family owned slaves, recorded a conversation of hers with a friend in March 1864. Her friend, coming in with a story of a black woman who had murdered her child, added, “You and the Prestons abhor slavery. I read my Bible, and I know it is sanctioned there.” Mrs Chesnut replied, in part, that “Christ’s gospel of love and love eliminates slavery” She was far from the only Southerner who felt this way, and numbers grew as Southern Christians looked for the cause of God’s abandoning of their nation. Even many of those who felt that the basic institution of slavery itself, being mentioned in the Bible, was not wrong, felt that the way that slavery was practiced in the South was wrong. Marriages between slaves

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were not recognized, and families could be broken up and sold to various masters at the whim of the owner. Slaves were not protected from owner or overseer brutality; everyone was familiar with slaves being whipped. Adequate provision for the good of the slave’s soul through the true religion was not made. Finally, the greatest sin of all was that of which few spoke but all knew, that committed by white male owners with the black females they owned. In March 1861 Mary Chesnut recorded in her diary, “Like patriarchs of old our men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household, but those in her Desertion hits High Levels Desertion levels throughout the army rose to epic proportions as Confederate victories grew scarcer. Lee first drew attention to the problem in a letter to Jefferson Davis dated August 17, 1863, after returning to Virginia from Gettysburg: “The number of desertions from this army is so great and still continues to such an extent, that unless some cessation of them can be caused, I fear success in the field will be seriously endangered.” And again, “Desertion is increasing,” he wrote on November 18, “not withstanding all my efforts to stop it.” On January 27, 1865 Lee wrote the secretary of war, “I have the honor to call your attention to the alarming frequency of desertions from this army. You will perceive, from the accompanying papers, that fifty-six deserted from Hill’s corps in three days. I have endeavored to ascertain the causes, and think that the insufficiency of food and non-payment of the troops have more to do with the dissatisfaction among the troops than anything else.” Lee’s army simply began to slip away. On February 24 he wrote the secretary, “I regret to be obliged to call your attention to the alarming number of desertions that are now occurring in the army. Since the 12th instant they amount in two divisions of Hill’s corps, those of Wilcox and Heth, to about four hundred. There are a good many from other commands. The desertions are chiefly from the North Carolina regiments, and especially those from the western part of that State. It seems that the men are influenced very much by the representations of their friends at home, who appear to have become very despondent as to our success. They think the cause desperate and write to the soldiers, advising them to take care of themselves, assuring them that if they will return home the bands of deserters so far outnumber the home guards that they will be in no danger of arrest.” These deserters were no longer the useless shirkers who had deserted in the early days of the war. Union colonel Charles Wainwright noted in his diary on October 9,1864 that “There are, however, certain indications of the commencement of the end of the rebellion in the character, numbers, and reports of the deserters who come in. Every morning more or less who have crossed the lines the preceding night are marched up to headquarters. Nor are they all of that wretched, ragged class of stragglers and shirks who have come in previously, but a number of real men, soldiers, are mixed in, who say that their cause is played out; that they have no more hopes of success, and give up. This feeling they report as prevalent throughout Lee’s army.” Lee’s answer was first to offer a full pardon on February 14, 1865 to everyone who would return to the colors. This failed to attract any significant numbers back into the ranks. His second move was to have the 23rd Article of War read to every company daily for three days in a row, starting March 27, and to every regiment on dress parade weekly for a month. This article called for the death penalty for desertion. Indeed, while many deserters until 1864 were let off to return to the ranks after being caught, Lee felt such a policy was a false one that only encouraged desertion. “I am convinced that the only way to prevent them is to visit the offence when committed with the sternest punishment,” he wrote in late 1863, “and leave the offender without hope of escape by making the penalty inevitable.” So through 1864 the army did have a policy of strict severity of punishment, although as the numbers grew too great since the policy failed, it was eventually abandoned.

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Any soldier in the ranks could have told Lee that it would do no good anyway. John Casler described a mass execution of some 10 soldiers from the 1st and 3rd North Carolina Regiments who deserted as a body, heading back to North Carolina. They had tried to fight their way with provost marshal troops across the James River, and were captured in the fight there. Then the 10 were tried, found guilty, and sent back to the army to be shot as an example to the others. The execution was held in public, as was the tradition, with their division witnessing them as they were shot to death, tied to posts. “It cast a gloom over the entire army,” Casler recalled, “for we had never seen so many executed at one time before. But we knew it would never stop desertion in the army, for I believe the more they shot the more deserted, and when they did desert they would go to the enemy, where they knew they would not be found.” Casler was right; executing deserters did little good in stopping the flow. Lee’s army, as with the other Confederate armies, continued to evaporate through until Appomattox, By April 1865 in all Confederate forces some 160,000 men were accounted for, with only 120,000 actually present for duty, out of a muster roll of 359,000. And, since soldiers began to see desertion as an acceptable thing to do, military discipline was further broken down. Second Lieutenant Luther R.Mills of the 26th Virginia, wrote home, “The men seem to think desertion no crime & hence never shoot a deserter when he goes over. They always shoot but never hit.”

own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.” Certainly this was a sin of slavery any Christian could recognize. If Southern slavery were a sin, it would be against God’s will, which would explain why He had turned His back on the South. It is but a short step for anyone who wishes to follow God’s will, simply to give up fighting against what had to be seen as His wish, and therefore lose the will to fight any longer. The Confederate soldier was, finally, loyal to himself and his immediate family. This started out as a positive boost to the Confederate soldiers’ morale. The daughter of Edgeworth Bird of the 3rd South Carolina wrote him on August 4, 1861, “Tomorrow there is a meeting at Mrs Turner’s for the purpose of rolling bandages for the Soldiers. Mama and Cousin Sallie are going if nothing prevents. Mama has cut a good many things out of the papers to send you and among them is a peice [sic] that I sent you, a letter to the Louisville Journal in poetry.” This kind of support from home, letters filled with news and civilian groups dedicated to aid the war effort, kept Confederate morale at a high level. Abandoning the Cause Eventually, however this loyalty became an important reason for his eventual abandonment of the cause. As time went on, and the tide turned against Southern independence, his family often ending up behind enemy lines while he himself often went hungry and poorly supplied, he began to sour of the struggle. His morale was not helped by a Confederate government that made problems for his family. Government impressing agents traveled to farms throughout the South taking livestock and produce that the families needed themselves to survive, leaving in their place undervalued currency and bank drafts for considerably lower than market values. The soldier at the front found his family robbed by his own government as much, if not more than, the agents of his enemy. Moreover, the Union blockade kept the small things that make life livable for civilians as well as soldiers out of the hands of most. There were few medicines for illnesses. Women did not get new dresses; they could not even get pins to sew repairs on their old ones. Even those who had access to such products could not afford them with their worthless Confederate paper money, which was, on top of that, rarely paid on time to Lee’s soldiers. There was also a constant fear of slaves rebelling and killing all the defenseless white

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women and children in their areas, especially as so many white males were at the front. Letters poured into camps imploring husbands to return home to solve all these problems. Private Edward Cooper produced such a letter from his wife at his trial for desertion: “My dear Edward:— I have always been proud of you, and since your connection with the Confederate army, I have been prouder of you than ever before. I would not have you do anything wrong for the world, but before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die. Last night I was aroused by little Eddie’s crying. I called and said ‘What is the matter, Eddie?’ And he said, ‘O Mamma! I am so hungry.’ And Lucy, Edward, your darling Lucy; she never complains, but she is growing thinner and thinner every day. And before God, Edward, unless you come home, we must die. Your Mary.” On top of these worries from home, the Confederacy was losing its battles. By 1864 the Federal army was better led, by this point, with generals such as U.S. Grant and William Sherman, who were largely superior on a number of levels to those Confederate generals who had survived to the late war, after the loss of men such as Jackson, Stuart, and Ewell. The Union Army was better fed and supplied, due to a superior Northern governmental administration, greater industrial might, and the availability of more hard money. Finally, it was considerably more numerous and was winning at most places it fought. Even if the Army of Northern Virginia held its own, its men learned of Federal successes in the west and along the ocean coastlines. The Confederacy was shrinking, and the morale of its men in Lee’s army was shrinking with it. “Everything has changed so in the last month that I have no heart for anything,” a 21st Virginia soldier wrote on July 18, 1863. “This army is in no condition for active service. The men seem more depressed than I ever saw them & are in a bad way…All things together have brought me to such a state that I feel more like cutting out my brains than I ever did before.” A North Carolina private wrote that “The soldiers are all discouraged and they dread the thoughts of meeting the yankees again & loosing thier [sic] lives in a cause they consider to be nearly hopeless.” Edgeworth Bird, a junior officer in the 3rd Georgia on July 19, 1863 wrote home, “A few short weeks ago we were confident and jubilant, but Vicksburg, Port Hudson, and the unfortunate victory at Gettysburg have changed greatly the fall of our futures. Charleston, too, is in a terrible straight. I fear it will go—the proud old city—I hope its people may prefer to lay it in ruins. Lee’s army is now the great hope of the South. There is a terrible band of veterans here yet. There is a very current rumour here among the troops that we are to goback and try our fortunes north of the Potomac once again. I don’t know…it seems a desperate yet probably a prudent move. “We can whip Meade’s army if they don’t have all the position, and badly, too. We did whip them at Gettysburg, but at awful loss, and the heavy ordnance was all exhausted… They finally had to retreat, but Lee had to do so at the same time.” This slide in morale continued until the end. “I am so low spirited about this war that I can’t write a letter,” Private Abel Crawford, 61st Alabama wrote home. In desperation, and after heated debate, the Confederate Congress passed the Negro Soldier Bill on March 13, 1865, a measure that allowed blacks to serve as fighting soldiers in the ranks of its army This was a shock and blow to morale among many of the men who had been fighting for a continuation of slavery. As a South Carolina planter’s son wrote from Petersburg, this “throw[s] away what we have toiled so hard to maintain.” A 17th North Carolina sergeant wrote home that many of his comrades had deserted because of this bill, adding, “I did not volunteer my services for a free negroes country but to fight for a free white mans country & I do not think I love my country well enough to fight with black soldiers.” At the same time, men weakened by lack of decent diet and by the physical labors of war, combined with poor sanitation, insects, impure water, boredom and depression, poor shelter and exposure, and a host of infections, were prone to disease. It was soon seen that this was even more prevalent in units raised in rural areas where many men entered the army with some sort of parasitic infections to begin with, then took ill from diseases to which they had not been exposed earlier. Between September 1862 and August 1864, 412,

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A somewhat idealized view of Confederate soldiers fording a stream. The reality for many troops of the Army of Northern Virginia was a general scarcity of footwear as the war progressed.

958 sick and wounded soldiers were admitted to general hospitals in the Department of Virginia alone. The largest hospital in Richmond, the Chimborazo, admitted 77,889 soldiers during the war. Insanitary Hospitals Moreover, many soldiers who were sent to one hospital or another never checked in, or if they did, never returned. A badly fatigued and ill John Casler reported to his regimental surgeon after the Second Manassas, and was sent on to the field hospital. “When I got there, I found a great many tents filled with sick and wounded,” he wrote, “more than the surgeons and nurses could attend to. I thought it was a poor place to recruit [i.e., regain one’s strength]; but upon looking around I found a great many farmers there with their wagons… As one of them, a fatherly-looking old man, was about starting home I went to him and told him my condition and asked him if he would not take me home with him and take care of me until I got well.” The farmer did, and Casler disappeared from the army. He was not the only one. Between September 1862 and July 1864, 5,895 soldiers deserted from Department of Virginia hospitals. Even those who returned to the front and stayed to the end were worn to the point of breaking by years of war. The hard marching and fighting of the 1862 Valley Campaign “has broken me down completely,” wrote an officer of the 27th Virginia in the Stonewall Brigade. “I never saw the Brigade so completely broken down and unfitted for service.” After the Seven Days’ a soldier in the 12th Georgia wrote home that he was “worn out in mind there is so much loss of sleep & excitement in every way. I never craved rest more in my life.” This condition became worse as the war went on, especially after Grant’s 1864 campaign to Petersburg. Even though soldiers were in fixed positions around Petersburg, constant shelling and tension caused by enemy sharpshooters took their toll. A 34th Virginia soldier wrote home then that he was “nearly broken down” from “fighting, working, day and night.” A Union lieutenant described Confederates entrenched at Spotsylvania, where “one Rebel sat up praying at the top of his voice and others were

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Joseph Emerson Brown, governor of Georgia from 1857 to 1864 and staunch advocate of states’ rights. Brown was extremely critical of attempts by the government in Richmond to centralize control of the Southern war effort.

jabbering in insanity.” The soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1865 was not the motivated, alert, fresh soldier of 1861. “None of our troops are in high spirits & it is said that they do not fight with the same resolution as they did the first year of the war,” wrote Private James Jones, 1st Battalion, North Carolina Sharpshooters in early 1865. In the end the Confederacy was held together by its soldiers’ will. Once its armies surrendered, its people surrendered, too. The high morale from 1861 through 1863, combined with Union incompetence, gave the South two solid years of independence. But when the Union Army finally started winning, Southern morale started sliding, then tobogganed to the very bottom. When that happened, Lee’s soldiers lost the will to fight, and the war’s ending was inevitable.

The Army and the State Authorities

In trying to build an independent nation, the Confederate government had to cope not only with the Federals, but with Southern state legislatures as well. Many Southerners saw the war as a defense of states’ rights and were not convinced that these were served by Richmond. Most Southerners went to war to defend states’ rights, and for them the state was the most important governmental organization, the one to which the individual’s primary allegiance was given. This philosophy affected the entire cause, but it first affected the efficiency of the Confederate Army in northern Virginia in a negative way. In the fall of 1861, army commander General Joseph E. Johnston recalled, “The President’s visit to the army seems to have suggested to him its reorganization in such a manner, as far as practicable, as to put regiments of each State into the same brigades and divisions. The organization then existing had been made by General Beauregard and myself, necessarily without reference to States. The four or five regiments arriving first formed the first brigade, the next four or five the second, and so on. As the regiments united in this manner soon became attached to each other and to their commanders, it had been thought impolitic, generally, to disturb this arrangement. Soon after the President’s return to Richmond, orders were issued directing me to organize the troops anew, so that each brigade should be formed of regiments belonging to the same State.” Johnston, on October 11, protested this arrangement, which made no military sense, to the secretary of war: “In reference to the changes recommended by the President in uniting the troops from each State, as far as possible, into the same Defending the states The question of sea-coast defense was a major one for most of the Southern states, and the Confederate government was clearly not able to defend every inch of coastline. Traditionally, however, Americans had always had several levels of military forces. There would be a national army that handled overall defense. At the same time, each state, in the North as well as the South, had its own militia or volunteers who were not in nationalized service, but served under command of the state governor as its commander-in-chief. Governor Brown created his 1st Division, Georgia Volunteers in September 1861 after an inspection tour of the coast convinced him that the state was threatened by seaborne invasion. Most of these troops, however, who never saw action even though Fort Pulaski outside Savannah fell while their unit was in existence, were eventually conscripted Into Confederate service. When Unton raiders, however, burned several northern Georgia railroad bridges, Brown organized the Railroad Bridge Guard in May 1862, This force was expanded in the winter of 1862–63 to a two-

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regiment-strong Georgia State Line, It was authorized, according to the legislature, “to be employed in the military service of the State for the protection of her people against invading forces of the enemy, and for internal police duty.” Officially, this force was still considered state militia. in fact, the creation of this force did not seriously affect the number of men Georgia sent into the Confederate military (some 120,000), since Its volunteers seem to have been discharged veterans and individuals whose occupations legally exempted them from Confederate duty but who still wanted to be of some service. Even so, Confederate enrolling officers saw Georgia’s State Line as a threat to potential manpower and discouraged its formation every way they could, Indeed, they saw every state militia unit as a threat to Confederate enlistment. Even so, by February 1863 Georgia’s State Line was fully formed. At the same time, some more knowledgeable Southerners felt that state governments were actually damaging chances for local defense by insisting on their rights. Mary Chesnut noted in her diary in November 1864, as Sherman’s men were marching north from Georgia in their direction, “Red-hot resolutions [made in the state legislature] by Trescot and the Rhetts—the temper of the House roused, states rights rampant—we are about to secede again from the Confederacy.” Their resolutions were in answer to a request from Davis to the Confederate Congress earlier that 40,000 slaves should be bought by the central government and then used in noncombatant military roles. They would be emancipated after “service faithfully rendered.” She added in December 1864, “Our legislature is debating states rights and the encroachments of the Confederate government—with an occasional flight backward at the governor and council—the much-abused council who wanted to train the militia, fortify Columbia, and did put negroes to work on fortifications,” Summing up, Mary Chesnut asked the final question about dissolving a country to favor smaller sections: “The Yankees were right in one thing—how [does one] stay disintegration when it once begins?”

brigade and divisions, I respectfully suggested to the President at the time that it is scarcely practicable to make such change now. It would be dangerous, I think, to make such a rearrangement in the presence of the enemy, while we are liable to attack at any moment. I beg you and the President to consider this, and to permit the postponement of the reorganization of our troops until a time when we may have better opportunity to make it.” Davis, however, was impatient to get all the regiments from his home state of Mississippi together under a commander from the state. In December he ordered all these regiments to be assigned immediately to brigades commanded by brigadier-generals Richard Griffith and W.H.C.Whiting, both Mississippi natives. Johnston again protested, and Whiting himself wrote the War Department that he did not want an allMississippi brigade, saying that arranging brigades by states was “a policy as suicidal as foolish.” He preferred commanding his old regiments, the 3rd Alabama, 6th North Carolina, and 2nd and 11th Mississippi Regiments, because “They are used to me and I to them, and accustomed to act together.” Davis was enraged at this general’s non-cooperation. He had the secretary of war write him that as he declined command of this Mississippi brigade, there would be no command for him, the only slot available then being as a major of engineers in the Valley District. Moreover, Johnston was chided for forwarding Whiting’s letter “having so obvious a tendency to excite a mutinous and disorganizing spirit in the Army.” Whiting himself survived the president’s wrath, in fact being promoted to major-general on April 22, 1863. The Mississippi brigade command went to the president’s nephew and aide, Joseph R.Davis, whose promotion brought a great deal of criticism in the army itself, since he had no prior military experience. On December 5, 1861 War Department clerk John B.Jones noted in his diary, “The President has appointed his nephew, J.R.Davis, a brigadier-general. I suppose no president could escape denunciation, nevertheless, it is to be regretted that men of mind, men who wrought up the Southern people, with their pens, to the point of

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striking for national independence, are hurled into the background by the men who arranged the programme of our government.” Indeed, the origin of a potential brigade commander was, with the arrangement of brigades by state origins, as important if not more so than his military abilities. Command of the Texas regiments, for example, first went to Louis Wigfall, a state politician with no military background at all. Political Appointments Davis pressed on with this policy, appointing generals, including his own nephew, whom the army’s rank and file did not consider qualified but who came from the state represented by the brigade’s regiments. On October 18, 1861, Captain Thomas Goree, one of Longstreet’s staff officers, wrote home, “I am sorry to see that a good deal of dissatisfaction is being manifested in the army with President Davis on account of some of his appointments. In consequence of one of his appointments, one of the best generals in the army has resigned and gone home. This is Brig. Genl W.H.T.Walker of Georgia. He was an old army officer, has been in service for more than 20 years, and carries more lead than any man in the army, having been shot in nine different engagements, the most of the times through the body. “The cause of his resignation was this. Mr. Davis appointed his brother-inlaw, Dick Taylor (who is nothing of a military man) a Brig. Genl. This was not so very bad, but to gratify Taylor [a Louisiana native] he gives to him Genl Walker’s L[ouisian]a. Brigade (which was a very fine one) and places Genl Walker in command of a very inferior brigade. Great indignation is felt at it.” Although the Army of Northern Virginia adjusted to this policy, considerations of the tensions between the state and national governments affected the army in ways of which many serving in it were unaware. Indeed, in July 1865 Robert Garlick Hill Kean, who had served as head of the Bureau of War in the Confederate government, summed up the reasons for defeat. Number six on his list were the causes: “Difficulties of supply and recruiting aggravated by faction— Stephens, Toombs, J.E.Brown, Vance.” In the case of Stephens and Toombs, these were Georgia politicians who loudly opposed Jefferson Davis and his government, even though Stephens was officially part of that government, as vice president. In the case of Brown and Vance, however, the problems were different. These individuals, Joseph E.Brown of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina, were the chief executives, the governors, of states who bitterly fought every attempt to centralize the Confederate war effort and tried throughout the war to keep control of their own citizens and every aspect of their states. When Southerners decided to reject the results of the 1860 election by taking their states out of the United States, they did so on a state-by-state basis, rather than as a national group. Each state became its own little country, the Republic of Texas, the Republic of South Carolina, and so on. Each took over all the functions of the national government, as well as the property of the United States. State constitutions were changed to reflect this. South Carolina’s governor, for example, was suddenly given the authority to receive ambassadors, ministers, consuls, and agents from foreign powers, and to appoint agents and ambassadors, with the consent of the senate, to those powers, and to make treaties with the consent of the senate. Texas authorized its governor to seize U.S. government property in the name of the state. No wonder an individual could write his state’s governor that while before 1861 the position had been “simply nominal,” now “we may exclaim to be the Governor of the Commonwealth at this time means something.” State versus Confederacy Even the most die-hard fan of the independent state had to admit that no individual Southern state could stand against the power of the United States and maintain its independence. Therefore the seceding states quickly formed their own union, for mutual defense as much as anything else. The new Confederate

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government, largely made up of individuals who saw themselves as fighting a conservative war, in defense of principals dating back to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, essentially adopted the U.S. Constitution for their new nation with only minor changes, such as the length of and number of terms of the president. A handful of Southerners felt that they were united as a unique nationality, different from those who lived in the North, but similar to those throughout the South. “Unity of sentiment, of institutions, and of interests, are our chief characteristics,” editorialized the Richmond Daily Dispatch on February 3, 1862. Therefore, they felt a strong national effort was the key to gaining independence. The Richmond Daily Examiner editorialized on May 8, 1861 in favor of national conscription, adding “We need a Dictator.” Alabama Congressman J.L.M.Curry called for a ban by the national government of cotton planting, so that farmers would plant more needed food. But such men were rare. State governors often saw their states as the single building blocks of the Confederacy, essentially independent nations banded together under a government with little more real power than the national government under the Articles of Confederation had. Their model for the new country was based more on the German Confederation, in which the states were actually independent with their own forms of government, laws, and even money. The leading proponent of this state sovereignty was Joseph E. Brown, governor of Georgia. Brown was from the Georgia hill country, a politician in the mold of President Andrew Jackson, the fighter for the common man against vested interests. He was elected governor in 1857, during a financial crisis in the United States. The state General Assembly then answered cries for help from the state banking industry, passing a bill that allowed the banks to suspend specie payments. Brown, like Andrew Jackson in an earlier bank war, vetoed the bank relief act, arguing that the legislature would create a “privileged” class by this bill. “Corporate power rules the state, and is constantly on the increase,” Brown wrote. “Unless the masses of people can be aroused upon this subject, and induced to take the power into their own hands by hurling corporate tools from place and power there is no remedy.” Brown’s words struck a chord with Georgia’s middle-class farm owners, the majority sector of the state’s population. Brown wasted no time taking on the Confederate central government, especially the War Department, on Georgia’s entry into the Confederacy. On March 12, 1861 he replied to a request for 2,000 troops for the national defense, offering two regiments that the state had already begun recruiting, but only if “they are received with the officers which I have appointed, as the recruits have nearly all been obtained by the officers appointed from civil life, with the understanding that they are to go under them.” This question of who would appoint officers for the state units was a very pressing one at first. Virginia’s governor John Letcher replied to a request made by the Secretary of War for 3,000 men made on June 30, 1861, “I regret that I cannot concur in the principle asserted in the latter part of your communication, that ‘the President shall organize these companies into battalions or regiments, as he may prefer, and appoint the field officers and the staff.’ On reference to the Constitution I find that the right of appointing the officers of the militia is reserved ‘to the States respectively’” Considering that the troops Virginia was to supply for the mutual defense were militia troops, therefore liable to state, rather than national control, Letcher concluded that he had to “protest against the exercise of this power.” In much the same way, Brown wrote on July 6 that he had to “protest against the right of the President under the Constitution of the Confederate States to appoint the field and staff officers for the 3000 volunteers called for by you and claim that the State of Georgia has this right.” There were considerably more than military concerns in placement of the power to appoint officers. These were political appointments, and like those of postmasters for the Federal government, they were aids to party unity and loyalty. On July 13, 1861 Tennessee’s Governor Isham Harris telegraphed Jefferson Davis, “I approve the appointments of Pillow, Anderson, and Donelson, but they are all democrats. Though not consulted, I shall be held responsible here for your appointments in the

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A Confederate blockaderunner tries to outrun a Union cruiser. Running the blockade would often entail transporting goods from Europe to offshore havens such as Bermuda by steam ship. The last leg of the trip would then be undertaken by faster, shallower draft vessels that could sail inshore of Union warships.

State. I therefore venture to express the hope you will appoint the other general heretofore appointed by me: F.K.Zollicoffer, William R.Caswell, B.F. Cheatham, Robert C.Foster, third, and John L.T.Sneed, all good and competent men, and all Whigs except Cheatham. It is a political necessity, as well as strict justice, that the Whig element be fully recognized.” Zollicoffer received his appointment from Davis on July 9, and turned out to be a military mistake. Although told not to by his theater commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, he brought his troops into Kentucky, forcing an attack at Mill Springs on January 19, 1862, in which he was killed. Caswell, Foster, and Sneed were never commissioned Confederate generals, despite Harris’s plea. The Confederate Congress authorized its War Department to permit the Confederate president to accept into national service entire companies, battalions, and regiments without having to work through the state governors. Brown, Harris, and Letcher were only several who were upset at that legislation. Florida’s legislature passed a resolution that condemned the act as a “dangerous infraction of the rights of the sovereign states.” North Carolina’s legislature allowed troops to pass directly into Confederate control, but required officers of these units to report the number of men and kind of unit they were in so that the units could be accurately counted against the state’s quota. To return to Brown’s original concerns about the two regiments his state was raising, on March 15, 1861 the secretary of war replied to Brown that accepting already appointed officers for already raised regiments would be granted, but the units themselves were not, given the three-year service terms Georgia was recruiting under. He suggested that a new 12-month regiment of volunteers be recruited. Moreover any Georgia regiments would end up in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States under a general officer appointed by the government. Brown wrote back on the 18th that he “must, however, insist that the regiments be received before the volunteers enter the service.” Then the Congress switched its position as it became clear that having men enlisted for only a year would leave the Confederacy defenseless in 1862. In May

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When volunteer units were first mustered in Virginia in 1861, they did so under the authority of the state, not the Confederate national government. For this reason many of the Virginia regiments who fought in the first engagements of the war went into action under the flag of the “Old Dominion.”

1861 the War Department, it legislated, would only accept men enlisted for the war. Since by now the states were recruiting 12-month units, this came as a shock. Then Brown and L.P.Walker, Confederate secretary of war, began to cross swords about arming the Georgia volunteers. On May 17 Walker wrote Brown, “I understand you have issued proclamation that no company so tendering for service out of the State must carry their arms with them. Now, I propose, if you will recall this order and permit the companies to take their arms, to supply you from the arsenal the number so taken.” Arms became a major concern, Brown closely hoarding the arms in state arsenals, including those seized from Federal authorities, for the state’s local defense. He insisted that the Confederacy arm Georgia’s troops serving outside the state under Confederate command. This was something a hard-pressed Confederacy was simply unable to do. Walker wrote Brown on May 22, 1861, “The determination of this Department finally reached, in view of the whole question in its multiplied relations, is that troops armed and equipped by the Government must serve for the war, but volunteer corps may be received to serve for twelve months who present themselves ready armed and equipped. It is properly the policy of the Government to arm those troops that are willing to serve for the war in preference to those who offer only for twelve months. The supply of arms is not superabundant, and from present indications it is believed that the number offering for the war will be more than sufficient to exhaust our supply of arms.” The Need for Arms Even Robert E.Lee had to step in, writing directly to Brown on May 26, “I deem it proper to call your attention to the fact that many of the volunteer companies from your State have arrived at Richmond without arms. The demand upon Virginia has been so great that all arms have been exhausted, except the old flintlock muskets. It is apprehended that the troops thus provided will not do themselves justice, opposed to an enemy whose arms are so much superior.” Jefferson Davis himself telegraphed Brown on May 29,

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“Troops, armed and equipped, ammunition included, are much needed. Please urge such forward with all practicable dispatch.” Brown finally gave up on this point, telegraphing back the same day to Davis, “Will hasten through the two regiments on hand, armed with muskets of 1842, with all possible dispatch. Will order to you, by express from Milledgeville [the state capital], 10,000 ball and 10,000 buck-and-ball cartridges.” However, he flat out lied in saying he was sending his regiments north; indeed, he wasn’t through making demands yet. He then insisted that his two regiments formed a brigade and he had the right to appoint its brigadiergeneral. A desperate Walker telegraphed on July 12, four months after first calling for Georgia’s contribution to the national defense in the form of these two regiments, “The two regiments you have organized are indispensable to success. For the sake of our cause and the country I beseech you to send them without standing upon the point of the brigade organization. The President has no power to accept a brigade. If you refuse you will regret it.” The soldiers in these two regiments were wholly unaware of this political bickering that so hindered the Confederate war effort in Virginia. First Sergeant W.H.Andrews, Company M, 1st Georgia Regulars, later recalled that “In February, Capt. F.T.Cullens of the 1st Regiment of Georgia Regulars opened a recruiting office at the fort [Gaines] for the purpose of enlisting men to serve for three years, unless sooner discharged by competent authority.” Andrews enlisted and was sent to Savannah where the regiment drilled and guarded against an unlikely Federal invasion. All the time they wanted “to be sent to the front, preferring an active campaign to remaining here doing coast duty and being ate up by the mosquitoes and sand flies.” Finally on July 20 Brown allowed the 1st Regiment to board a train headed to the front in Virginia. But in fact, Brown was still not on board as a team player. On June 26, 1861 Captain W.G.Gill, a Confederate ordnance officer in Savannah, telegraphed to the chief of ordnance, “Governor Brown just ordered the arsenal-keeper not to issue anything to the order of a Confederate officer for the present. This locks up half a million [percussion] caps and stops cartridge-making.” And in November 1862 John B.Jones noted in his diary, “Gov. Brown, of Georgia, seized liquor in his State, in transitu over the railroad, belonging to the government.” This type of action was not unique to Georgia. Although all arms taken when the states seceded were to be turned over to the central government, in fact most governors put at least a part of the caches aside for their own state defenses, either refusing them to be taken out of the state or giving them up reluctantly. Clothing the Army The Confederate War Department needed not only weapons, but uniforms for the horde of troops it called up. It was totally unable to provide for them all, even the simple dark blue overshirt and gray trousers uniform it first ordered. Therefore the men turned to their own state governments as the clothes they first wore to war began to fray. “I am constantly in receipt of communication from members of several of our regiments complaining of the want of clothing, shoes, &c.,” Louisiana’s Governor Thomas Moore wrote the War Department July 23, 1861. “Have just been informed that the Third Regiment Louisiana Volunteers, that was at Fort Smith, are without shoes, or at least a good number of them, and without means of purchase. Will you be good enough to inform me in what manner and at what time our troops are to be supplied with those necessaries by the Confederate Government.” The answer was, not for some time. “The war existing between this Government and that at Washington will probably be prolonged during the coming winter, and in view of the rigor of the climate at that season on the line of the seat of war it is desired that our soldiers shall be well supplied with clothing,” the secretary of war wrote in a circular to all the different state governors. “You are therefore requested to cause the quartermaster’s department to have made up at an

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early day, to the extent of your ability, woolen clothing to supply the needs of the Army, to be charged to this Government.” The central government paid for this by a system of commutation. The secretary of war explained the system to Governor Brown on October 25, 1861: “Commutation is allowed for clothing furnished at the rate of $25 for six months, payable to the captains of companies (or commanding officers) upon vouchers rendered to the Quartermaster-General’s Department that their men are furnished with clothing according to regulation for the time period specified.” The money could go directly to each man who then had to buy his own clothes or to a central depot or supplier. Most went to the men, and (inevitably) complaints quickly arose about them gambling or wasting their money without actually buying the required clothes. The different state governments acted quickly to fill the need and indeed many continued to supply their troops even after 1862, by which time the Confederate War Department had set up a uniform supply and manufacturing depot system that was actually able to equip all its troops in the field pretty well. In 1863 the South Carolina legislature authorized $171,000 to buy shoes for its troops, while Alabama bought and made 50,000 pair of shoes for its troops in Caring for their Soldiers States not only sent military supplies and clothing to Lee’s army, they also often stepped in to care for their wounded and ill soldiers by setting up hospitals open only to soldiers from their particular state, thus competing for rare medicines and medical supplies with each other and limiting the army surgeon general’s ability to rationalize resources such as bed space more efficiently. The Confederate Army’s surgeon general Samuel P.Moore objected to these. Chimborazo Hospital division matron Pheobe Yates Pember wrote, “He was averse to any arrangement of this kind, not from prejudice, but a conviction of the expense and trouble of small establishments of this nature.” Still, he was unable to prevent such hospitals from being set up, The Georgia Hospital and Relief Association had its headquarters in Richmond on Main Street, between 14th and 15th Streets, and oversaw operations at four hospitals Just for that state’s troops, The Georgia state legislature granted the organization $200,000 in 1861 and another $500,000 in 1863 to forward its work. The Alabama Aid Association, partially supported by a $1, 000 grant by the state government in 1861, maintained three separate hospitals for its soldiers in the city, the first irst one of which was full ull before it had admitted 100 men. However, the state legislature, which had previously funded this operation, repealed all laws for the relief of Alabamians in Virginia in December 1863. Louisiana and South Carolina each had one hospital in the city. In September 1861 C.J.Clark, surgeon of the 10th Alabama, wrote that “The State of Mississippi has, I am informed, appropriated $50,000 to this purpose, and has sent out an agent, who has secured buildings at Warrenton [Virginia], and is rapidly preparing a hospital there for the troops from that State.” North Carolina gave $300,000 for agents and surgeons to care for its wounded and ill in Virginia, further authorizing, in 1864, the state’s surgeon general to arrange for bringing those soldiers home to local hospitals. Florida also provided money to aid those in Richmond hospitals and wayside homes. Many soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia, however, came from rom states that were unable to supply their soldiers’ needs, largely because they were cut off from them by Union forces. Matron Pember wrote to a friend in Georgia in February 1864, “We are now a Maryland hospital at my particular request The Virginians are not so kind in feeling and act to their sister state (like the Georgians to So, Ca.) and so my love of equity and justice was aroused and I have taken them all (I suppose I must not say to my bosom) under my protective wing.” Indeed, even the Confederate Army sent its soldiers to hospitals according to states, with Chimborazo, the largest hospital center in its system, receiving sick and wounded from states largely behind enemy lines, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee, as well as Virginia itself. Those needing hospitalization from other states were sent elsewhere.

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The problem with the policy of having hospitals and medical aid societies for unique states was that not acting through the central government’s Army Medical Department certainly forced up prices and made some medicines scarce in some state hospitals while they were plentiful in others.

1862. On August 1, 1862 Alabama’s governor John Shorter wrote the secretary of war that he wanted to be sure Alabama troops would be well supplied in the upcoming fall and winter and would do it through state resources if the central government could not. But he would have to do so by sending purchasing agents into other states, competing with those states for precious resources, and that would not produce certain results. “The little wool we have in the State is bearing an enormous price,” he wrote, “and the condition of the Mississippi presents serious obstacles in obtaining supplies from Texas. Shoes are also difficult to contract for in large quantities at any price.” In December 1862 the Confederate Quartermaster Department offered to pay $7 a pair for every pair of shoes the state would supply its troops. Competition from various agents for scarce supplies was not appreciated by states in which supplies could be found. On November 17, 1862 North Carolina’s governor Zebulon Vance reported to his General Assembly in his annual message, “As if we were not sufficiently afflicted with the base and avaricious in our own midst, speculators from distant States swarm in the land, offering fabulous prices for everything they can buy, and, in many instances taking advantage of the patriotism of our people, they represent themselves as agents of the Government purchasing for the Army, thus obtaining what they could not otherwise do. I recommend that your honorable body shall take immediate steps to prevent the exportation from the State of salt, leather, shoes, woolen goods, cotton cloth, yarn, pork and bacon, flour, and potatoes, except for the Army and by regular agents of the Government, and except when purchased by any county and corporate authorities of our sister States under such regulations as will amount to satisfactory proof that such articles are for private use for charitable distribution to the poor of such counties, towns, &c., and not for speculation; not, however, in violation of any existing contracts made by our citizens with citizens of other States.”

The Confederate national flag, second pattern, the “Stainless Banner.” This flag was authorized by the Confederate Congress in May 1863 and first saw official use in Richmond during the funeral of Stonewall Jackson. It continued to be flown throughout the Confederacyx until March 1865.

But these supply efforts essentially were one-shot events. To maintain a continuing flow of goods to the front, women in most states set up aid societies, where they knit socks and sewed shirts and other uniform parts for their men at the front. Other states supplied their troops constantly throughout the war. North

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Carolina, which already had a large cloth-manufacturing industry, began to fully supply its own men immediately and continued doing so until 1865. The state legislature requested what amounted essentially to each man’s commutation money be sent directly from the Confederate Treasury to the state, in exchange for which it would equip its troops. Reported Vance to his General Assembly in 1862, “During the administration of my predecessor an arrangement was entered into (according to a resolution of the General Assembly) with the Quartermaster’s Department of the Confederate States by which North Carolina was to receive the commutation clothing money of the troops, and clothe and shoe them herself. And on our agreeing to sell the Confederate authorities all the surplus supplies that could be procured in the state they agreed to withdraw their agents from our markets, and leave the State agents the whole field without competition. This would have enabled the State to clothe and shoe her troops comfortably, and could have furnished to the Confederate States all that was to be had anyhow at reasonable rates, but it was immediately violated. The country was soon, and is still, swarming with agents of the Confederate Government, stripping bare our markets and putting enormous prices upon our agents. This is especially the case in regard to shoes and leather. The consequence has been our troops could get only half supplies from home, and nothing at all from the Confederate Government, because of our agreement to furnish them ourselves. When a large portion of our army this fall, by the accidents of battle and other causes, lost their baggage, it was found impossible at once to replace it. Sorely pressed as to the best course to be pursued, I published an appeal to our people in behalf of their brothers in the field, and employed the militia officers for the collection of articles donated or sold; and though the response has been at once gratifying and patriotic, yet is is necessarily slow and uncertain, and I regret to say that the heroes of Boonsborough, Sharpsburg, and other glorious fields have suffered, and are still suffering, greatly for the want of shoes and clothing.” Blockade Runners As there was not enough raw material on hand in the state to turn into uniforms, the state sent agents both to other states and to Europe to find what they needed, along with leather, cotton, and wool thread. North Carolina’s adjutant general James G. Martin suggested to Governor Henry T.Clark that the state should buy its own blockade runner to bring in these materials from Europe. Clark passed on the idea, deciding he lacked authority for such an act. In September 1862, however, Clark was replaced in office by Zebulon Vance, who had commanded the 26th North Carolina in the Seven Days’ Campaign. Vance leaped on the idea, and sent 1.5 million dollars’ worth of cotton bonds to England to buy material, especially shoes and blankets, and a blockade runner to bring it all home in. The money bought an ironhulled sidewheeler, the Lord Clyde, which arrived in North Carolina on June 28, 1863 with a load of dry goods, shoes, and cotton cards. The last had become quite rare in the South, being sought after by Army of Northern Virginia troops on each of their two invasions of the North. The state government distributed these cotton cards to housewives for them to turn cotton into thread that was to be used by their families, the surplus going back to the state to use for uniforms. Conflicts arose about the state use of blockade runners, however. Bureau of War chief Robert Kean noted in his diary in March 1864, “There is a row between [Major-General W.H.C.] Whiting and [Captain W.F.] Lynch [Confederate Navy] at Wilmington about certain steamers in whose freightage the War Department relinquished its rights to the states of North Carolina and South Carolina. The Navy forthwith seized the space relinquished by the War Department. The states say it is in bad faith in the Government. Lynch lays a gunboat alongside and tell them to move at their peril.”

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Even so, North Carolina’s blockade runner, renamed the Advance, was a success, until Vance recognized that the writing was on the wall and closed down the state’s blockade-running activities after the fall of the last open port, Wilmington. He ordered all accounts settled then, preparing for the Confederacy’s eventual and obvious collapse. Before that had happened, however, the state had imported enough material to uniform at least 125,000 men, making as many as 342,000 uniforms; importing some 36,000 to 50,000 blankets, and 45,000 pairs of shoes, as well as leather for shoes and harnesses. Thousands of uniforms remained at the war’s end in North Carolina warehouses. But again North Carolina’s actions caused competition between state agents and central government agents for such things as coal mined in the state, dock space in Bermuda and Wilmington, cotton to sell in England, and military supplies to buy in England. North Carolina cotton bonds even competed with Confederate Treasury bonds for the attention of European financiers. Georgia authorized spending 2.5 million dollars in 1863 on caps, hats, clothing, and shoes for its men, and continued raising the levels it spent until 1865 when it had authorized five million dollars for the task. While it did not buy a blockade runner like North Carolina’s, it did charter a private blockaderunning company and received priority to carry state cotton and goods on its vessels, with unused space reserved for whatever the company wished to ship. Their first venture was a failure, as just as the ship was ready to sail, the Confederate War Department stepped in, demanding half the ship’s space for its own cotton. Governor Brown refused, but the War Department actually sent artillery to keep the ship from leaving the Santee River in Georgia until state cotton was replaced by national cotton. As it turned out, the ship was to remain in port until late May when Brown capitulated and the state cotton was replaced by bales from the War Department. The state was more successful in later ventures with the private company, though, continuing to ship out local cotton and bringing in material for its troops until the ports on its shores were finally closed in 1864. The venture had been a success. In 1864 alone Georgia supplied its troops with 26,700 jackets, 28,000 pairs of pants, 37,000 pairs of shoes, 7,500 blankets, 24,000 shirts, 24,000 pairs of drawers, and 23,000 pairs of socks. Again, many of these were purchased in competition with central government purchasing agents. The clothing and shoes thus acquired were forwarded generally to Richmond where they went into separate depots maintained by each state for the use of its troops only. Mississippi’s main depot was on Main Street between 8th and 7th, near those maintained by Alabama and North Carolina. South Carolina’s depot was on Main between 14th and 15th Streets, while two Texas infantry regiments in the Army of Northern Virginia, the 4th and 5th, also maintained their own depots in Richmond. What this meant in practical terms was that purchasing agents from the national and various state governments competed for clothing from the same manufacturers, importers, and blockade runners, forcing up prices that could have been kept lower had all been working through a single agency. Avoiding the Draft In early 1862 the Confederate Congress passed a Conscription Act that allowed the national government to directly impress men while ignoring state authorities altogether. True, there were exemptions authorized, but the original ones were, state authorities felt, vague. Florida’s attorney general ruled that individuals in offices created by a state constitution or having a duty that resulted from some function outlined in such a constitution would be exempted. This exempted virtually anyone who did any sort of public-related job, even part time. In South Carolina, James Chesnut of the state’s Executive Council felt that state certificates of exemption would render the holder not liable for conscription. The legislature of North Carolina, which had a large number of small farmers within its borders, passed a resolution opposing the act’s 20-Negro exemption. In 1864 the Confederate Congress extended the act to include men from 17 through 50 years of

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age. This really brought a negative reaction. The legislatures of North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia passed laws that forbade any officer of a sovereign state from being conscripted into military service without his consent. Georgia’s legislature passed a resolution calling for the repeal of the Conscription Act coupled with a return to an all-volunteer service. Such defiance from legislatures did not go unnoticed among citizens of the state, many of whom took advantage of every loophole in the law and official encouragement to do so to avoid military service. Although an astonishingly high proportion of able-bodied Southern males did see Confederate service, the tension between the national and state governments over conscription led to fewer seeing service than might have done. In the final analysis, state’s rights, the very thing that created the Confederacy, was certainly a factor in its ultimate destruction.

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Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg, which began on July 4, could have turned into a rout had Meade attacked the Confederates on the march. But he delayed moving from the battlefield and lost contact with the bulk of Lee’s army, allowing the Confederates time to cross the Potomac.

The Winter of 1863–64

Lee’s retreat from Gettysburg was a lost opportunity for General Meade and his army. Having failed to destroy the Confederates north of the Potomac in July 1863, Meade maintained the momentum and attacked south in September. President Lincoln watched in dismay as Lee retreated away from Gettysburg, back into Virginia. “Every day he has watched the progress of the Army with agonizing impatience, hope struggling with fear,” his secretary John Hay recorded in his diary on July 14. “About noon came the despatch stating that our worst fears were true. The enemy had gotten away unhurt. The Prest was deeply grieved. ‘We had them within our grasp,’ he said. ‘We had only to stretch forth our hands & they were ours. And nothing I could say or do could make the Army move.’” The Army of Northern Virginia finally felt safe, and Lee wrote to Jefferson Davis on July 16 from Bunker Hill, “The army is encamped around this place, where we shall rest today. The men are in good health and spirits, but want shoes and clothing badly. I have sent back to endeavor to procure a supply of both, and also horseshoes, for want of which nearly half our cavalry is unserviceable. As soon as these necessary articles are obtained we shall be prepared to resume operations.” Resupply arrived, and Lee started further south, writing from Culpeper on July 24 that he planned to halt there and rest for a few days. In the meantime, General Meade had been spurred on to continue his pursuit of Lee by Lincoln’s constant requests. “I learn that the enemy is massing a large army between Centreville and Manassas Junction,” Lee wrote Davis. “A portion of General Meade’s army crossed the Potomac as low down as the Chain Bridge [upriver from Washington], and I understand embraces the commands of Generals Dix and Foster. It would seem to have been the intention of the enemy to penetrate the Shenandoah Valley above Winchester, for in addition to these preparations I am informed that last evening he advanced three corps into Manassas Gap.” As Meade was maneuvering to discover a weak point in Lee’s lines, Lee just couldn’t figure out what Meade was doing. On August 4 Lee wrote army headquarters in Richmond, “The movements of the enemy north of the Rappahannock, rendering it difficult for me to ascertain whether he intended to advance through Culpeper or fall down the river to Fredericksburg, determined me to unite the army south of the Rapidan. Genl Ewell’s corps, which after crossing the Blue Ridge had been posted in Madison, had been previously ordered to Orange Court House. Longstreet’s & Hill’s corps were yesterday ordered to the Rapidan. I could find no field in Culpeper offering advantages for battle, and any taken could be so easily avoided should the enemy wish to reach the south bank of the Rapidan, that I thought it advisable at once to

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The Confederate retreat from Gettysburg to the Potomac River, July 4–7. Lee divided his army for the march back through the Cumberland Valley, the wagon train and the wounded taking a northerly route toward Chambersburg, while the effectives took a more direct line for Hagerstown. Meade did not close in pursuit until July 11. The delay may have been due to the exhaustion of his men, the fact that he was still short of cavalry for reconnaissance, or the need to reorganize his corps and get them off their positions on Cemetery Ridge.

retire to that bank. Should he advance by this route I shall endeavour to resist him and if he falls down to Fredericksburg, will oppose him on that line.” In the meantime, Lee had to rebuild his army’s morale, and one sure way to do that was to allow some time home for as many of his men as possible. On August 9, 1863 Tally Simpson, 3rd South Carolina, wrote home, “Genl Lee has seen fit to begin the furloughing system again. Two of every hundred are furloughed. They are chosen from those who have never been home since their enlistment. I having had one, it will be a long time before I even get the privilege of drawing… The furloughs are only twenty-one days long for South Carolinians. That will give them about twelve days at home, a very short time. Would you like to see me for that short a time? Would not the parting, after so short a time, destroy all the pleasure occasioned by my presence for a few short days! Oh that this unholy war would be ended, and we be permitted to return to the loved ones at home!” Tally Simpson would, in fact, never return, dying in action on September 20, 1863. Those who could not get a furlough were resupplied and cleaned up for one of the biggest reviews ever held in the Army of Northern Virginia. John Worsham, of the 21st Virginia, was one of those who

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The position of the armies north of the Potomac, July 7–15. Even after Meade began his pursuit of Lee, contact was delayed because the Federals did not follow down the Cumberland Valley but marched in a circuitous route east of it. By July 12, however, Meade’s corps had concentrated onf Lee’s right flank and were in a position to stop his retreat to Falling Waters. The attack was a day too late, and by July 13 the Confederates were safe across the river.

participated in the review held on September 4, noting that the three lines of men involved was each about a half-mile long. Lee and his staff, along with his corps and division commanders and their staffs, rode along the lines as drums beat and the few bands still in the Army of Northern Virginia played. “The men presented arms, flags were lowered, the officers saluted with their swords, and all the pomp of war that could be shown by these old Confederates was brought into view,” Worsham wrote. After reviewing the three lines, the mounted officers returned to a reviewing stand. “The three lines now marched forward several hundred yards while the bands played. Then we left-wheeled into column of regiments, the regiment at the head guiding us to a line with the flag, where the corps marched past the stand in column of regiments. As each regiment arrived in front of General Lee, the men came to shoulder arms, the flags dipped, the officers saluted, and the bands played. General Lee raised his hat in recognition; the ladies waved their handkerchiefs and clapped their hands and cheered us. We answered with a Confederate yell. After passing some distance beyond the reviewing stand, the regiments filed to the right, again formed a line, and waited until the review

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The fighting around Warrenton Junction, midOctober. As the year closed, the focus of both armies settled once again south of the Potomac. It was to be an inconclusive end to the year, with Meade attempting to cross the Rapidan while Lee maneuvered to place his army between the Federals and Washington.

ended… This was said to be the grandest review of our troops during the war. The movements of the men were excellent, and our marching was splendid.” Such pageantry always boosted morale. The army was also treated to several public executions of deserters, to try to stop the flight of men that had come to seriously affect the army’s operating efficiency. They did little good. Lee took advantage of the breathing time to reorganize his cavalry, badly depleted by the Gettysburg campaign. Accepting Jeb Stuart’s word that the present brigades were too large to be easily handled, Lee wrote Davis on August 1 that he wanted a new arrangement. This would consist of seven brigades divided into two divisions. Wade Hampton would command one division, while the other would be under the command of Fitzhugh Lee. “I would admire both more if they were more rigid in their discipline,” Lee wrote, “but I know how difficult it is to establish discipline in our armies and therefore make allowances.” New brigadiers would include Calbraith Butler to take over Hampton’s brigade, Williams Wickham to have Fitzhugh Lee’s brigade, while the other two reorganized brigades would be commanded by Lawrence Baker and Lunsford Lomax. Brigadier-General Jerome B.Robertson of Hood’s division, who had not performed well during the Gettysburg Campaign, would lose his brigade command. This period of reorganization, however, did not lead to a general advance. Lee informed Davis that the hot weather and lack of forage caused fears among his officers that any major move would result in the loss of many important animals. Toward the end of August, Lee himself became ill, with a bad cold and rheumatism that made it difficult for him to ride. This further eliminated the army’s usual offensive fire. “While the army was lying idle on the south bank of the Rapidan,” Longstreet later recalled, “my mind reverted to affairs in the West, and especially to the progressive work of the Union army in Tennessee towards the northern borders of Georgia… To me the emergency seemed so grave that I decided to write the Honorable Secretary of War (excusing the informality under the privilege given in his request in May) expressing my opinion of affairs in that military zone… A few days after the letter was despatched the subject happened up while discussing affairs with general Lee, when I felt warranted in expressing my views and relieving my mind of the serious apprehensions that haunted me. He inquired if I was willing to go West and take charge there. To that I consented, provided the change could be so arranged as to give me

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the opportunity, by careful handling of the troops before accepting battle, to gain their confidence; providing at the same time, that means could be arranged for further aggressive march in case of success.” On August 31 Lee visited Richmond, and on September 1 brought up Longstreet’s proposal with Davis. There was a natural question of how long it would take to transport an entire corps, complete with its artillery, west. Longstreet’s staff figured it would take two days and, this being acceptable, the move was approved. On September 9 the first trains arrived to begin the move and Longstreet finally got his wish to take his corps west. His command began to mount railroad cars for the ride that would take it south to the Carolinas, then through Georgia, to arrive finally in Tennessee. Longstreet recalled his parting from Lee: “As I left General Lee’s tent, after bidding him goodby, he walked out with me to my horse. As my foot was in the stirrup he said again, ‘Now, general, you must beat those people out in the West.’ Withdrawing my foot to respectful position I promised, ‘If I live; but I would not give a single man of my command for a fruitless victory’” With that he was gone and the Army of Northern Virginia was down to two corps. Meade Crosses the Rapidan Lee’s scouts reported that Meade’s cavalry had crossed the Rapidan, scouting Confederate positions on September 14, while Meade’s main force continued to grow in northern Virginia, although two of his corps were also sent west to the war in Tennessee. Federal cavalry began scouting Lee’s left. Luckily a local resident brought word of this advance to Stuart’s headquarters in time to allow the Confederates to move their wagons and disabled horses out of the way, at the same time advancing their own troops to block the reconnaissance. Stuart’s cavalry stopped further Union incursions, driving the Federals back to Culpeper Court House. Meade reported later, however, that “An examination of the enemy’s position proved it entirely out of the question to attempt to force the passage of the river in his immediate front. The command of all fords was on the south bank, and this obstacle was greatly increased by numerous earth-works and rifle-pits, with batteries in position.” Meade then considered a flank attack, but being short of two corps convinced him that he would be unable to do this. Lee, however, was convinced that Meade would attack. As usual, the Confederate was determined to make the first move. As Lee reported to Davis on October 17, “with the view of bringing on an engagement with the army of Genl Meade, which lay around Culpeper Court House, extending thence to the Rapidan, this army marched on the 9th instant by way of Madison Court House and arrived near Culpeper on the 11th.” The idea was to turn the Union right flank, placing the Confederate Army between Meade’s army and Washington. Lee’s plan was simply to move around the Union flank, and then, when Meade fell back as he would have to to protect his lines of communications, strike him as his army was strung out. Lincoln telegraphed Meade that he thought Lee would head into the Valley, but Meade replied that “The enemy are either moving to my right and rear or moving down on my flank.” Meade didn’t like his position there, and, as Lee thought he would, fell back toward the Rappahannock, as detachments skirmished with Lee’s lead units. On October 10 Lee started Stuart towards James City, in an attempt to divert Union attention from the advancing Confederate infantry. Stuart’s cavalry crossed at Russell’s Ford where it drove off Union skirmishers. “While engaging the attention of the enemy in front with Gordon’s brigade,” Stuart’s adjutant H.B.McClellan later wrote, “Stuart led Young’s command through the woods to their right and rear, and routed the whole line by one charge of the 1st South Carolina Cavalry. The rough and wooded character of the ground favored the escape of those who were disposed to run, but Young’s brigade alone captured eighty-seven prisoners.” Continuing on toward Culpeper on the 11 th, Stuart found the Federals had evacuated the town and had cavalry, supported with artillery, now well positioned in strength on his front. He decided to turn the Union

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The Fourth Bunting issue battleflag was introduced into the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1864 and was in widespread use until the end of the war. It was similar in size to the Third issue, and featured the distinctive white border but differed in having larger stars. This flag became known as the representative Confederate battleflag due to its role in the surrenders of 1865 and the fact that it was adopted as the symbol of the United Confederate Veterans in 1906.

flank, coming into their rear on the old Brandy Station battleground. There Stuart’s men would join forces with Confederate infantry, occupy Fleetwood Hill, and cut off the Union cavalry’s line of retreat. Federal scouts quickly brought back information of this move, and the Federals fell back toward Brandy Station. Stuart, at the head of his column, saw that the Federals were moving in dense columns toward Fleetwood Hill and decided to charge and take that position before they could consolidate there. As Stuart’s men charged forward using sabers, which was an unusual move, Fitzhugh Lee’s troops emerged from the woods where they were moving in a flank attack and, not knowing Stuart was advancing so quickly in their front, took the Confederates for Federals. Lee’s men began firing on Stuart’s main column. There being no quick way to get word of his mistake to Lee, Stuart pressed his charge on, but as it went forward, wrote Stuart, “Regiment after regiment broke and dispersed.” Only the 12th Virginia dashed forward, with support from two North Carolina regiments. A Union cavalry battalion suddenly hit the flank of the North Carolina regiments, and the charge was broken up enough to allow the Federals to secure Fleetwood Hill and plant their artillery there. Stuart tried to get around them again, but the Federals had already begun to pull back toward the Rappahannock. On the 12th Stuart continued moving ahead to shield the infantry’s movements. His cavalry crossed the Rappahannock with Fitzhugh Lee at Foxville and the main body at Warrenton Springs. They brushed by Federals along the river and, near Catlett’s Station, spotted what appeared to be most

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of Meade’s army retreating toward Manassas, with a huge line of wagons between Catlett’s Station and Warrenton Junction. The Federals Turn on Stuart Lee needed to be advised, but soon Stuart’s scouts reported that the Federals were on the move past Auburn and had cut his column off from the main army, indeed almost surrounding his troops. Stuart found an area in which his troops were hidden from enemy scouts and considered his plans. Spending the night with the men and animals as quiet as they could be, he found that fog hid their position the next morning. Then suddenly he heard firing and, as help arrived, managed to get his guns and wagons out of danger. After getting them safely away Stuart returned to follow the Federals, but did not reach Bristoe until after the infantry battle had been fought there. As for the infantry, Lee sent Ewell’s Corps via Jeffersonton and Sulphur Springs toward Warrenton; Hill’s III Corps had a wider, circuitous advance in the direction of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Hill’s men met no resistance, arriving near Warrenton on October 13 at the same time as Ewell’s Corps. The next day Hill’s troops started out again, in high spirits. Both Hill’s and Ewell’s men were ordered toward Greenwich, with Hill going through New Baltimore while Ewell went past Auburn. “I determined to make another effort to reach him,” Lee reported, “and moved through Warrenton towards the railroad north of the Rappahannock. The enemy had several direct roads by which he retired, while we were compelled to march by a more circuitous route. We only succeeded in coming up with a portion of his rear guard at this place [Bristoe Station] on the 15th [actually the 14th] instant, with which a severe skirmish ensued, but without any decisive or satisfactory result.” Actually there had been at least one decisive result, and that went against the Confederates. A.P.Hill, who had just returned to the army after some much needed rest at home, received word that a Federal column was headed toward the Warrenton Turnpike, past Greenwich, parallel to his own line of march. Hill then drove his troops forward against these Federals, sending one division toward Buckland to intercept this column while the rest headed to Greenwich, which they reached around 10:00 hours. Evidence suggested that the Federals were fleeing. Hill saw a chance to strike them, and dashed his men forward toward Bristoe Station. Lacking cavalry to scout ahead, his march, which one veteran recalled was “almost like boys chasing a hare,” was made without adequate reconnaissance. As the column came to high ground in full view of Bristoe Station, Hill himself was at its head to witness thousands of retreating Federals crossing the fords of Broad Run. Hill then sent back to hurry his lead unit, Heth’s division, forward to cross the run in pursuit. Hill ordered Heth to form his three brigades into a line of battle the instant he was within striking distance, keeping a fourth brigade in column as his reserve. In fact, Heth could not comply quickly enough for Hill, who sent him another courier urging him to hurry forward as quickly as possible with whichever units he had available. This turned out to be two brigades, with a third one struggling to catch up in the rear, while Poague’s artillery battalion deployed to cover them. Hill watched as the Confederates crossed the rise there, when suddenly he noticed skirmishers on the southern side of the run, spreading southward near the railroad and parallel to the Confederate right. Hill thought all the Union troops were well across the run, but, suddenly uncertain, he sent back for an additional artillery battalion, McIntosh’s, and word that Anderson’s division, in the rear of Heth, should hurry forward to cover Heth’s right flank. He also sent word to the brigade on the right of the attack to watch the flank, and its commander reacted promptly, refusing his right with one regiment that drove off the Federal skirmishers.

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The Federals at Bristoe Station If he was to halt the attack it would have to be now, and Hill considered it, but seeing Anderson’s troops coming up, decided to allow it to press on. Hill then ordered the run crossed without making any effort to reconnoiter the railroad cut on his right. As the Confederates advanced, suddenly thousands of Union troops emerged from behind the railroad embankment, catching the Confederates in fire from several angles. Wellplaced Federal artillery added their support. Randolph Barton, of the Stonewall Brigade, wrote home about the battle: “Heth’s (the unlucky) Division attacked the enemy strongly posted behind the railroad and on the hill around, with two Brigades in line with a very weak support. The two front Brigades (Cooks and Kirklands) advanced gallantly within 30 yards of the railroad, when the enemy poured a destructive fire into our men. Cooks brigade, on the right broke, leaving Kirklands exposed to a terrible flank fire which also broke running back in great confusion, passing a battery of five guns, which having its horses killed was unable to get back, the enemy advancing his skirmishes rapidly actually took the battery pulling of the pieces ‘by hand.’” Hill rushed up two artillery battalions to cover his infantry and, as one of the artillery battalion commanders, William Poague, later recalled, “to shell them out of cover, but they didn’t budge. On the contrary McIntosh was charged and some of his guns captured, but were only held a short time, their captors being driven back and the guns recovered by one of Hill’s brigades. The enemy soon moved on and got away with comparatively small loss.” Hill’s losses were considerable. In all, over 1,381 dead, wounded, and captured were left. Cooke’s brigade lost 700 men killed, wounded, or captured. Kirkland lost 602 men, almost half of whom were captured on reaching the railroad cut and seeing they could not escape except back across that field swept by Union fire. The 27th North Carolina alone lost 323 out of the 416 troops it brought into the attack. “I am convinced that I made the attack too hastily,” Hill had to report, “and at the same time that a delay of half an hour, and there would have been no enemy to attack. In that event I believe I should equally have blamed myself for not attacking at once.” Lee had to report to Richmond that A Union Surprise at Mine Run “Our division was camped near, and guarding Germanna Ford, on the Rapidan,” remembered John Casler of the 33rd Virginia Regiment. “On the 27th of November General Meade crossed the river and undertook a flank movement around our army; but our division was marched out to intercept him, and as we were marching along the road near Wine Run, we were suddenly attacked. The divi-sion [Johnson’s division, Ewell’s Corps] was thrown into confusion for a few moments, but General [Edward] Johnson soon faced them in line towards the enemy, and charged them so vigorously that they were soon repulsed, and by the time the other division arrived the battle was over, “We were marching in front of the division as usual [Casler was a pioneer, and they marched at the head of a column to clear away obstacles on the road], when all at once we heard firing in our rear on the road that we had just passed along. The attack was so sudden and unlooked for that if it had not been for the presence of mind and indomitable courage of General Johnson, the other officers and the men, the whole division might have been routed and the flank of our whole army turned, our strong position taken and a repetition of the affair of Brandy Station and Kelley’s Ford enacted, But as it was, General Lee formed his line that night on the south bank of Mine Run, on a commanding position, and fortified.” Worsham was there when the unexpected Union attack hit. “We were quietly marching a road that ran through a wood,”, he wrote, “we were listening to the distant cannon in our front and speculating as to the location of the expected battle, Suddenly a part of our column was assailed on the flank by a Yankee skirmish line. It was a complete surprise to us, since no one thought the enemy was in the

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vicinity. Regimental officers cut off companies from their regiments, formed them as skirmishers right in the road, and ordered them forward, I must say this was the promptest movement I ever saw during the war. “Our skirmishers drove the enemy back on their line of battle. By this time General Edward Johnson had formed our division in line of battle, and we were moving forward. The left of our line became swung around until we came to a field where we could see the enemy behind rail fence on the edge of a wood at the far side of this field. Continuing our wheeling, we soon came to a swampy bottom, the most miry place I ever entered. How the men crossed it, I do not know, Many left one or both shoes in the mud; as the horses could not cross the officers were compelled to dismount and also to take the mud. However, we crossed, halted a few moments under a hill, reformed our line, and went forward. As soon as we advanced up the hill sufficientfy for the enemy to see us, the action became general and heavy, We fought until night put an end to the battle. “This action was known as the battle of Payne’s Farm, or Mine Run, It was fought by Johnson’s division alone, and against one of the wings of the Army of the Potomac that had crossed the Rappahannock at a small ford to make a flank attack on Lee’s army, But for the promptness with which the attack was met, it might have been very disastrous to Lee’s army, Our division suffered greatly.”

Hill’s losses were “quite severe,” including five of Hill’s cannon, captured in the Federal counterattack. Afterward Lee rode the field with Hill, finally turning in sorrow and saying, “Well, General, bury your dead and let us say no more about it.” The rumor in the army, which turned out to be false, was that Hill had been placed under arrest for the attack. Davis himself was unhappy with Hill, noting on Lee’s report that “There was a want of vigilance,” but nothing actually happened to Hill as a result of Bristoe Station. Meade continued to fall back, then had his men dig-in at Centreville, where Lee realized that Meade’s position was too tough to overrun and that there was no easy way of supplying his troops if they besieged the Federal lines. Lee then fell back to the Rappahannock, bringing off some 1,600 prisoners but doing no great damage to Meade’s army. In attempt to stem the flow of deserters, Lee detached one regiment from each corps and sent them to North Carolina to bring the men back. Recalled J.F.K. Caldwell of the 1st South Carolina, one of the regiments involved, “These two regiments took nearly a hundred each, and brought back eighty or ninety each — some being released on account of youth, ill health, and other things, which were most piteously pleaded by mothers, sisters, wives, sweethearts, etc. They had no fighting to do: the only difficulty was to come up with deserters, who inhabited almost inaccessible cliffs and hollows in the mountains, and fled at the first approach of organized troops. It was quite a holiday for the two regiments.” Continuing their probing of Confederate defenses, on November 7 Federal troops reconnoitered at Kelly’s Ford, pushing their infantry across the ford and overrunning Confederate rifle pits there. The Union attack was rapid, wellsupported with artillery, and well-organized. Their losses were minimal. On the other hand, fewer than 600 men escaped from two entire Confederate brigades stationed there, with total losses of 1,674 killed, wounded, and missing. The Confederates had to retreat, first to a line between Culpeper and Brandy and then, finding that not as defensible as desired, back across the Rapidan. Meade Advances Again On December 2, 1863, Lee reported to Davis that on November 26 his scouts had discovered the Army of the Potomac moving toward Germanna and Ely’s Fords on the Rapidan, “and, supposing that his design was either to draw us from our position by a flank movement or to advance to Fredericksburg, the army was withdrawn from the line of the Upper Rapidan the same night and marched eastward to strike the enemy while

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moving, or accept battle if offered.” On November 27, while General Edward Johnson’s division made its determined stand on the Confederate left against a surprise Union assault, Hampton’s cavalry division ran into Union forces near New Hope Church on the Plank Road. The cavalrymen dismounted and slowed down the advancing Union troops as Hill’s Corps came up and formed a strong defensive position in line with Ewell’s men.

Brigadier-General Thomas Rosser, leader of the cavalry charge on a Federal column on the Brock Road, November 27. Of the attack Rosser later wrote: “Upon my appearance there was a general stampede among the mules and the teamsters, every teamster whipping his mules into a run. Many teamsters, seeing their escape was impossible, abandoned their teams and saved themselves by running into the woods; but the road was blocked for miles and many wagons were upset and broken… I secured and sent to the rear all the wagons that I could extricate…and was burning the remainder when a Federal brigade of infantry hurried to the spot at a double-quick and, deploying in the dense woods, drove me off. I withdrew as I had gone in, via Todd’s Tavern.”

The all-Virginia “Laurel Brigade” of cavalry under Brigadier-General Thomas Rosser had been posted to guard the roads leading from Germanna and Ely’s Fords toward Fredericksburg. His pickets first discovered that Meade’s main force was coming across there, on the plant road from Fredericksburg to Orange Court House. Rosser immediately sent word back to Lee, then moved his troops to Todd’s Tavern where he could

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both observe the Federals and assist in any attack Lee might make. Rosser’s scouts soon reported that the Federals had forgotten to post pickets on the Brock Road leading to Todd’s Tavern, leaving their line of march wide open. Rosser decided to take advantage and strike the Federal line on the 27th, largely at the point composed of the Union wagon train. All told Rosser’s command brought off 18 wagons, with 280 mules and 150 prisoners. Lee thought this would stir up the hornet’s nest, and prepared for a general Union attack. None came, however, and he then pulled the army back to a better defensive line on the west side of Mine Run. Meade followed. Both sides threw up earthworks and waited. “While lying here in line of battle, I saw a good deal of General Lee and other officers, and was much impressed with their eagerness for a fight,” artilleryman Poague wrote. “When I asked General A.P.Hill what they thought the enemy would do, he said: ‘I don’t know, but I wish they would show their hand, and give us a chance at them.’ I thought he was hoping to get even with them on the Bristoe affair. General Lee looked more martial and imposing than ever I saw him. As for his subordinates in the lower grades, they were not spoiling for a fight.” Both sides dug ever more impressive works. Recalled John Worsham of the 21st Virginia, “When we arose the next morning, we saw that the hills in our front had a line of fortifications from one end to the other of the enemy’s line. They were more formidable than our own. The skirmishing was as on the day before, and at one time we endured heavy cannonading from the enemy. Night put an end to the firing. In the morning we saw that Meade had strengthened his works and had brought up additional cannon.” The men were miserable in the trenches, in their thin uniforms, lacking overcoats. “The men suffered a great deal at Mine Run from the cold winds,” Worsham recalled. “We were on a high hill, were kept in the breastworks all the time, and were not allowed to make fires.” On November 28 Lee sent Stuart’s cavalry to get into Meade’s rear and find out what the enemy planned. The mounted troops got as far as Parker’s Shop, where they ran into Federal cavalry. Captured Union troopers told Stuart that Meade was planning an “imminent” attack on Lee’s lines, and Stuart returned to guard Lee’s right and bring back this information. Lee and his generals ached for just such a Union attack, but the Federals just would not make that move. During the night of the second day in these lines, Lee sent Wilcox’s and Anderson’s divisions of Hill’s Corps out of their works on the front and to a point that threatened Meade’s flank and rear, with orders to strike at dawn. To do this, he stretched the remaining corps so thin that only a skirmish line, one man deep, held the main Confederate works. But the move was in vain, for Meade had pulled his own troops back that night, and Hill’s men fell upon empty entrenchments. As Lee explained the reason his men were unaware of the Union retreat, “The dense forest which covers the scene of Planning the Strategy for 1864 On February 3, 1864 Lee wrote Davis on the strategic options for the coming year: “The approach of spring causes me to consider with anxiety the probable action of the enemy and the possible operations of ours in the ensuing campaign. If we could take the initiative & fall upon them unexpectedly we might derange their plans & embarrass them the whole summer, There are only two points east of the Mississippi where it now appears this could be done. If Longstreet could be strengthened or given greater mobility than he now possesses he might penetrate into Kentucky, where he could support himself, cut Grant’s communicates so as to compel him at feast to detach from Johnston’s front, & enable him to take the offensive & retain the ground we have lost. I need not dwell upon the advantages of success in that quarter. The whole is apparent to you. Longstreet can be given greater mobility by supplying him with horses & mules to mount his infantry. He can only be strengthened by detaching from Beauregard’s, Johnston’s, or this army. If I could draw Longstreet secretly & rapidly to me I might succeed in forcing Genl Meade back to Washington, & exciting sufficient apprehension, at least for their own position, to weaken any movement against ours, All the cavalry would have to be left

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in Longstreet’s present front & [General Samuel] Jones would have to be strengthened, If the first plan it adopted, supplies will have at once to be accumulated at Bristol or along the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, ostensibly for Longstreet’s present use. If the latter, provision must be made at Gordonsville & Richmond for this army, We are not in a condition, & never have been, in my opinion, to invade the enemy’s country with a prospect of permanent benefit, But we can alarm & embarrass him to some extend & thus prevent his undertaking anything of magnitude against us, I have ventured to suggest these ideas to Your Excellency for consideration, that, viewing the whole subject with your knowledge of the state of things East & West, you may know whether either is feasible, or what else can better be done, Time is an important element to our success.” On March 25, 1864 he wrote Davis again: “I have read the speculations of the Northern papers on the subject, and the order of Genl Grant published in our papers yesterday, but I am not disposed to believe from what I now know, that the first important effort will be directed against Richmond. “There is to my mind an appearance of design about the order which makes it of a piece with the publications in the paper, intended to mislead us as to the enemy’s intention, and if possible, induce corresponding preparation on our part… From present indications, I am inclined to believe the first efforts of the enemy will be directed against Genl Johnston or Genl Longstreet, most probably the former, If it succeeds, Richmond will no doubt be attacked… I would advise that we make the best preparations in our power to meet an advance in any quarter, but be careful not to suffer ourselves to be misled by feigned movements into strengthening one point at the expense of others, equally exposed and equally Important We should hold ourselves in constant readiness to concentrate as rapidly as possible wherever it may be necessary, but do nothing without reasonably certain information except prepare.” Lee changed his mind in his letter to Davis of March 30: “Since my former letter on the subject the indications that operations in Virginia will be vigorously prosecuted by the enemy are stronger than they were… If aggressive movement can be made in the West it will disconcert their plans & oblige them to conform to ours, But if it cannot, Longstreet should be held in readiness to be thrown rapidly in the Valley if necessary to counteract any movement in that quarter, in accomplishing which I could unite with him, or he unite with me, should circumstances require it on the Rapidan.” He pressed this point on April 5: “All the Information I receive tends to show that the great effort of the enemy in this campaign will be made in Virginia… I infer from the information I receive that Longstreet’s Corps is in the vicinity of Abingdon & Bristol. It is therefore in position to be thrown west or east Unless it is certain that it can be advantageously employed west for a speedy blow, I would recommend that it be returned to this army,” On April 15 he wrote Davis; “If Richmond could be held secure against the attack from the east, I would propose that I draw Longstreet to me & move right against the enemy on the Rappahannock. Should God give us a crowning victory there, all their plans would be dissipated, & their troops now collecting on the waters of the Chesapeake will be recalled to the defenses of Washington. But to make this move I must have provisions & forage. I am not yet able to call to me the cavalry or artillery. If I am obliged to retire from this line, either by a flank movement of the enemy or the want of supplies, great injury will befall us… Should you determine it is better to divide this army & fall back towards Richmond I am ready to do so. I however see no better plan for the defence of Richmond than that I have proposed.” However, as May began, chances for planning strategic moves passed, The Army of the Potomac, IX Corps attached, was on the move. Lee wrote Davis on May 4, “You will already have learned that the army of Genl Meade is in motion, and is crossing the Rapidan on our right, whether with the intention of attacking, or moving towards Fredericksburg, I am not able to say. But it is apparent that the long threatened effort to take Richmond has begun, and that the enemy has collected all his available force to accomplish it” From now on, Lee would never undertake a major strategic move again, but would largely react to those of his enemy.

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operations prevented our discovering his withdrawal until he was beyond pursuit.” Lee put his men on the move after Meade, but the Union general skillfully escaped to his old line across the Rapidan, and Lee finally halted his useless pursuit. Some 500 Union stragglers picked up in Meade’s wake was largely all the Confederates had to show for the campaign. “One of the Better Winters” There was nothing left to do but go into winter quarters. H.C.Wall, a member of Company D, 23rd North Carolina, the “Pee Dee Guards,” later wrote that the winter of 1863–64 was one of the better winters of the war. “In the barracks at Hanover [Virginia], during the winter of 1863 and 1864, the P.Ds may be said to have had a really good time, as did the entire Brigade to which they belonged,” he wrote. “Here the ‘soldierlaying’ days that reminded them so much of the jolly days of yore, had returned to them. The winter was passed in the indolent, easy way of soldiers who are permanently quartered and who have extraordinary privileges within reach of enjoyment. There were really no yankees anywhere near; and, basking thus in the sun-shine of a comparative holiday, they seem changed to be very tidy soldiers, and even sent home for new uniforms, and to get their ‘biled’ shirts, and some of them went so far as to secure their board out of camp.” Boxes of Christmas goods from home made many soldiers’ winter a more pleasant one. Lee even began to allow men to go on furlough again. Those who remained in camp largely had it easy, although at times they were put to work. “We had little to do. The weather did not admit of much drilling, nor of regular guard-duty, so that picket was the only military exercise constantly required of us. There were, generally, two roll-calls a day, at revelle and tattoo, but this was next to nothing,” Caldwell of the 1st South Carolina wrote. Lee, however, was keeping an eye on Union preparations around Washington. And they were many General Ulysses S.Grant came east, was commissioned a lieutenant-general, and given command of all the Union’s armies. He announced that he would accompany the Army of the Potomac in the upcoming 1864 campaign, and began adding numbers to its strength. The IX Corps, which had been stationed along the Atlantic Coast, joined the army, although directly under Grant’s command rather than Meade’s, and heavy artillery regiments which had been garrisoning the capitol’s forts, were brought into the field as infantry. Lee, who had originally considered the South’s best plan for the 1864 campaign an advance by Longstreet, then outside Knoxville, Tennessee, asked that his corps be restored to the Army of Northern Virginia. It was so directed, and it would be a close call. On April 16, 1864 he wrote General Braxton Bragg, a disgraced general in the western theater but a friend of Davis and now commanding general of the Confederate armies, “I learn from Genl Longstreet that all of his troops will not reach Charlottesville before the 21st, the railroad not being able to transport over l,500 a day.” At the beginning of May the Army of the Potomac was on the move south. The two armies would meet soon, in The Wilderness, and when they did the fighting would be essentially non-stop until the war ended. And the way the two sides regarded each other had changed. Indeed, Lee’s men now respected Meade more than any previous Army of the Potomac commander. He had fallen back and avoided Lee’s trap at Bristoe Station, then advanced, but then declined to send his army forward in a suicide charge. Instead, he managed to retire in good order. This was a vastly more skilled commander than any previous opponent had been.

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Confederates took Union breastworks along the Brock Road during the second day of the Battle of The Wilderness, May 6. Due to the almost impenetrable nature of the country, the battle developed into a struggle for the available roads through it. Lee used the Orange Turnpike and the Orange Plank Road in a series of attempts to flank Grant’s right as he marched south from the Rapidan.

The Wilderness to Cold Harbor

The beginning of the Richmond Campaign of 1864 saw General Ulysses S.Grant in command of Union armies. From now on there would be no withdrawals. Grant aimed to keep Lee fighting until the Confederacy either surrendered or bled to death. Lee would never have a chance to put his offensive plans into operation. On May 4, 1864 he telegraphed the War Department in Richmond: “Enemy has struck his tents. Infantry, artillery, and cavalry are moving toward Germanna and Ely’s Fords. This army in motion toward Mine Run.” This Federal army, although still commanded by George Meade, was being supervised by the North’s leading general, Ulysses S.Grant. Grant was now a lieutenantgeneral, the first since George Washington in the Revolution, and in March had been given overall command of all U.S. armies. He had chosen not to work from Washington, D.C. but to follow Meade’s army and give it his personal attention. Immediately on taking charge Grant also ordered William T.Sherman against Johnston’s Army of Tennessee guarding the approaches to Atlanta in the west, a far-western army to move into Texas, an army under political general Benjamin Butler to land at City Point, Virginia and operate against Richmond from the south, and another force to move down the Shenandoah Valley. Grant was a different type of general than those seen before. He did not strike out, find difficulties, and then withdraw to regroup. He pushed on regardless, ending only when his forces had been successful. Grant’s orders to Meade and the Army of the Potomac were simple: “Lee’s army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will be also.” Meade’s army headed south, crossing the Rappahannock where Hooker’s army had crossed on its way to Chancellorsville the year before. The area there was known locally as The Wilderness, a swampy, dense growth of trees and brush, in which a man could be lost after stepping a yard off a road or trail. Grant’s army was supported by wagon trains that ran 65 miles (104 km) long, trains that included herds of cattle, portable telegraph systems, forges, and enough pontoons to bridge all the rivers between Washington and Richmond. It would be slowmoving through such a dense woods, but Grant did not figure that Lee would choose to fight in such terrain. Indeed, had Grant rushed his combat troops through The Wilderness quickly, before Lee could get organized, his total force of some 100,000 troops could overwhelm Lee’s much smaller force of around 63,000 fairly easily. Lee knew that if Grant got through The Wilderness and confronted his troops in the open field, his army would be forced on the defensive, and that would inevitably lead to disaster. Lee, however, figured that Grant would be rather overly confident, and that his combat units’ march would be slowed by the need to protect the baggage train. Lee was right. Acting on these assumptions, Ewell’s Corps was sent to intercept the head of Meade’s column, followed up by Hill’s and Longstreet’s Corps. Lee himself rode at the head of Hill’s troops, which were marching

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General Grant’s plan for the Union’s 1864 campaign. His main objective was to target the two biggest Confederate armies in the field: Lee’s in northern Virginia and Joseph E.Johnston’s around Atlanta, Georgia, while putting pressure on the Shenandoah Valley and Mobile. As he wrote in his orders to Sherman at Chattanooga on April 4: “It is my design, if the enemy keep quiet and allow me to take the initiative… to work all parts of the army together, and somewhat towards a common center.”

parallel toward the east. On the evening of May 4, Hill’s column halted at New Verdiersville, in The Wilderness, as scouts brought back word that Grant’s army had also camped well within the confines of that rugged terrain. On the morning of May 5 Lee sent two of Hill’s divisions toward the enemy, while telling Ewell’s courier that he wanted that corps to regulate its march to that of Hill. He added that he “preferred not to bring on a general engagement before General Longstreet came up.” Ewell, as he told a fellow officer, took his orders to mean he should, as he said, “go right down the road and strike the enemy wherever I find him.” Ewell’s men, by then in the thickest part of The Wilderness, ran across Federals moving south on the road from Germanna Ford. Ewell deployed them into battle line, sending back word to Lee of his discovery. Lee responded again that he preferred to avoid battle, and Ewell, whose skirmish lines were already tangling with Union skirmishers, sent a message to his brigade commander at the front, BrigadierGeneral John Jones, “not to allow themselves to become involved, but to fall back slowly if pressed.” In the meantime, he ordered up his rear brigades. Jones deployed across the pike, mostly on the south side, in woods so dense men couldn’t see yards to their front. The following brigade came up and extended the line to the north, toward the river. Suddenly a full division of the Union V Corps struck Ewell’s line, which Meade believed simply to be a delaying force. In the battle, Jones was killed as his regiments were routed, falling back on a second brigade commanded by Brigadier-General Cullen Battle. Major-General Robert Rodes, the division commander, hurried two more brigades on the right of Battle’s brigade, and the lines were stabilized for the moment. In the meantime, Ewell rode back to MajorGeneral Jubal Early’s division and ordered them forward, adding, “The day depends on you, sir.” Early hurled a brigade, commanded by John B. Gordon, toward the right of Rodes’ three brigades.

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Struggle Through The Wilderness Finally the Confederates began to push forward, hitting a Union division whose commander had apparently become disoriented on the flank, before driving it toward the Brock Road. That retreat started a general Union withdrawal with severe losses. Ewell’s men consolidated their position on the turnpike and waited for Lee’s orders. Ewell had handled his men well, while the Union attacks were uncoordinated and badly supported. But at this point, Ewell was content to simply dig-in and wait, asking Lee if he wanted an attack on his front the next day. Lee’s reply was that Ewell could attack the enemy’s right near The Wilderness Tavern ridge, cutting the Federals from the river. If, however, that would require “too great a sacrifice,” then Ewell must prepare to reinforce the Confederate right. In fact, Ewell made preparations for neither option, instead spending the evening preparing his defenses further. Indeed the right was threatened. As Ewell was stabilizing his lines, around 05:00 hours on the 5th, Hill’s III Corps arrived, and became heavily engaged on the Orange Plank Road to Ewell’s right, with a dangerous gap opening between these two corps. Hill started the day at the head of his column, but soon after became ill and withdrew, and Lee took direct control of the corps. His troops first ran into Federal cavalry near Parker’s Store, pushing them aside after an unusually strong defense by the cavalrymen. Moving ahead under fire, Hill’s men came upon one of the rare clearings in The Wilderness, a subsistence farm owned by a widow named Tapp. Lee had Hill deploy Major-General Henry Heth’s division there, and was able to bring up artillery to cover the Tapp fields. Lee could hear the fighting on Ewell’s front, but assumed that it was going well, since he had no word to the contrary. Lee knew, however, that the fight he had wanted to avoid had been brought on with Longstreet not yet on the field. Moreover, it was a divided battle, with no way to control both wings. Therefore, Lee, still without Longstreet and with Hill out of the fight, was cautious. Cadmus Wilcox’s division arrived on the field behind Heth’s and deployed into line as Hill’s men disappeared into the green woods. As they moved forward, a line of Union skirmishers suddenly arrived out of the woods onto the plain directly in front of Lee, Hill and Stuart. Both the Confederate generals and their potential captors were equally startled and the Federals turned around and headed back the way they had come without firing a shot. Lee was startled, too, and called for troops to the left of the road to skirmish toward Ewell’s right, cutting off any more Federal stragglers lost between the lines. He then sent a message asking Heth if he could attack without bringing on a general engagement; Heth’s reply was that he couldn’t tell, but would attack if it was desired. Before that could happen, however, another Federal corps hit Heth’s line. The Confederates had taken time to build breastworks on their front and were able to inflict terrible casualties. Undeterred, the Federals fed new units into the action, finding an open spot on the extreme right of Heth’s line. Lee sent back word to Wilcox, who hurled his men forward. They ran into a Union line that had dispersed many of Heth’s troops, but were totally disorganized themselves by the dense woods and heavy fighting. The Federals fell back toward the Brock Road as the action dissolved into individual and small unit fights. Heth’s troops counterattacked, some of them actually reaching the Brock Road. There they ran into breastworks prepared by the Federals before their attack, and were stopped. As the Confederates fell back, the Federals followed. The Confederate line had been badly broken. Hill, recovered for the moment, gathered his provost guard, the 5th Alabama Battalion, as a skirmish line and sent the 125-strong unit forward yelling as loudly as they could, as if they were the lead group in a new brigade. It was enough to do the job. The Federals, alarmed, halted, and night thankfully hid the scene. Hill then set up his headquarters near the Tapp farm, where he received word that his front lines were “very irregular and much broken.” Hill himself, looking very ill according to Heth, told his subordinate that “Longstreet will be up in a few hours. He will form in your front. I don’t propose that you shall do any fighting tomorrow; the men have been marching and fighting all day and are tired. I don’t wish them disturbed.” This was apparently at the wish of Lee who wanted to let the men rest rather than try to

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The Battle of The Wilderness, May 5–6, and Lee’s position at the beginning of the Battle of Spotsylvania, May 10. From the moment Grant and Meade crossed the Rapidan on May 4, Lee was on the defensive. It was only the late arrival of Longstreet’s Corps along the Orange Plank Road on May 6 that saved the situation in The Wilderness. It was not, however, enough to wrest the initiative from Grant, who continued his march south on May 7.

reestablish lines and shift units around in the woods at night. However, Longstreet’s men, camped 10 miles (16 km) away, were under orders to begin their march to the field at 01:00 hours that morning but would not be available until after daybreak, something Lee only found out by 22:00 hours on the 5th. Still, Lee decided to keep the initiative and strike the long Federal column at his front. Hill’s divisions would move between his present front and Ewell’s right, as Longstreet with Richard Anderson’s division would wheel from the Plank Road to the south, rolling up Meade’s flank. The enemy would be forced to retreat across the Rapidan. At the same time, Ewell, if possible, would swing past the Union right, which was believed to have been weakened to support the attack on Hill’s front, and cut them off from Germanna Ford. Lee’s orders to Ewell were to attack if the Federals withdrew troops from their front or otherwise support the attack on the right. Longstreet was to come up on the Catharpin Road, which ran parallel to the Plank Road to the south, although Lee later switched his route to the Plank Road itself. Concerned about the attack’s timing, Lee sent a courier to Longstreet’s lead division, commanded by Charles Field. Field, not wanting to violate Longstreet’s orders, told the courier that he would not start his troops before 01:00 hours. The situation in the early hours of May 6 was that Hill’s battered lines were not being restored; Longstreet would not be up before dawn; and Ewell was given an option of attacking in the morning. Moreover, not one of the top commanders saw this entire picture. Longstreet’s Corps started promptly at 01:00 hours, heading toward the main army along trails in the darkness. Men in the lead continually got lost, and it was not until 05:00 hours that the lead regiments

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After the battle in The Wilderness, the campaign developed into a race, the armies moving south to Spotsylvania to fight again between May 8 and 21. Lee disengaged next, moving to a position on the North Anna River on May 22/23. Here he held Grant in another action until the 26th when the Federals disengaged and crossed the Pamunkey River. Barely three weeks into the campaign Grant had Meade’s army only 15 miles (24 km) from Richmond.

reached a point 2 miles (3.2 km) behind Hill’s rear lines. Longstreet’s artillery and wagons were still far in the rear The Declining Confederate Cavalry After Brandy Station the Federal cavalry’s star seemed to be on the rise, as the Confederate cavalry star sunk, The Confederate system called for each cavalryman to provide his own horse, for which he was recompensed. If the horse was killed or died in service, he was given time to return home and obtain a new one; this became increasingly difficult as horses dwindled in number in the South and their cost became prohibitive. This system also meant that a high proportion of Confederate cavalrymen were away from their unit at any given time finding new horses, items that the Unton Army supplied to all its cavalrymen at the front Moreover, the Confederate commissary had problems in supplying enough forage, especially in the winter, to keep cavalry horses healthy. Then there were weapon problems. Unton cavalrymen were increasingly armed with breech-loading, magazine-fed carbines like the Spencer which held seven shots that could be fired before being reloaded. They received well-made revolvers and sabers. The Confederate government acquired a factory in Richmond that made copies of the breechloading Sharps carbine, but never made these in enough numbers or with high enough quality to comfortably supply Lee’s horsemen. Finally, the Confederate Army picked as its standard carbine a copy of an already obsolete British Army muzzle-loading, single-shot carbine, but even these were never

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produced in sufficient numbers. Nor could the South produce or buy enough revolvers, and many soldiers went without. On July 5, 1864, Lee wrote Davis about his problems with the cavalry: “The subject of recruiting and keeping up our cavalry force, has occupied much of my thoughts, especially since the opening of the present campaign, The enemy is numerically superior to us in this arm, and possesses greater facilities for recruiting his horses and keeping them in serviceable condition. In the several engagements that have taken place between the cavalry of the two armies, I think great loss has been inflicted upon him, but it has been attended with a diminuation of our force which we were less able to bear. Could I sweep his cavalry from the field, or preserve a fair proportion between its numbers and our own, I should feel that our present situation was in a measure secure, But in view of the disparity that exists, and the difficulty of increasing or even maintaining our force, I cannot but entertain serious apprehensions about the safety of our southern communications… I think that horses might be obtained from Texas, as we now have access to the Mississippi at various points. Those horses would make very serviceable animals for cavalry, and could be brought across the river by swimming, as cattle are higher up the stream, and on the Missouri. Even if only a few can be obtained in this way it would be of great assistance.” If Lee was so desperate that he seriously felt that bringing horses all the way from Texas to Virginia would help his cavalry, it was a sign of how serious things had gotten. in fact, the cavalry problem was never solved.

of them. It was now that Federal regiments attacked on a narrow front across both sides of the road. Startled Confederates fell back toward the Tapp farm. It was a soldier’s fight, as individuals fought from tree to tree, the heavy undergrowth as much as Confederate fire slowing the Union attack. But the jubilant Federals were pushing ahead as the Confederates fell back. It was at this moment that Longstreet’s first troops arrived, just as Hill’s men finally broke and ran to the rear. “Fugitives from the broken lines of the Third Corps were pouring back in disorder and it looked as if things were past mending,” Moxley Sorrell of Longstreet’s staff recalled, adding that Longstreet “instantly took charge of the battle and threw his two divisions across the Plank Road, Kershaw on the right, Field on the left. None but seasoned soldiers like the First Corps could have done even that much. I have always thought that in its entire splendid history the simple act of forming line in that dense undergrowth, under heavy fire and with the Third Corps men pushing to the rear through the ranks, was perhaps its greatest performance for steadiness and inflexible courage and discipline. Hill’s men were prompt to collect and reform in our rear and soon were ready for better work.” On the scene, Lee personally urged the Texas Brigade forward, then a staff officer pointed out Longstreet and Lee rode over to join him. Meanwhile the Texans dashed forward, but no thousand men alive could halt the momentum of 30,000-odd Union troops. However, William Poague’s artillery battalion held in the center, while on the right, Kershaw’s brigade filled the gap. Fresh Union units were hurled into the fray. The Federals, however, had lost their momentum, and Kershaw’s brigade had hit the Federal left, which was somewhat disorganized already. The Federals began to fall back, on the left at first but then slowly across the entire front. Hill’s men finally closed the gap between his front and Ewell’s, which had been relatively inactive. Now Longstreet took over command on the Plank Road and sent out scouts to find a place to turn the Union left. Discovering a suitable railroad cut, he sent through four brigades under the command of staff officer Moxley Sorrel. “The word was given, and then with heavy firing and ringing yells we were upon Hancock’s exposed left, the brigades being ably commanded by their respective officers. It was rolled back line after line,” Sorrel recalled. “A stand was attempted by a reserve line of Hancock’s, but it was swept off its feet in the tumultuous rush of our troops, and finally we struck the Plank Road lower down.”

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Longstreet is Shot Seeing an opportunity, Sorrel found Longstreet and told him there was a real chance for total victory. Longstreet agreed, ordering Kershaw to drive through the woods on the right of the road, while Jenkins’ brigade would move by the flank down the Plank Road. The combined force would clear the enemy off the Brock Road and back to Fredericksburg. “We shall smash them now,” Jenkins said, throwing his arm around Sorrel. Then suddenly, in a scene reminiscent of events only a year before, Confederate troops fired on the mounted party. “The Lieutenant-General was struck,” Sorrel wrote. “He was a heavy man, with a very firm seat in the saddle, but he was actually lifted straight up and came down hard. Then the lead-torn coat, the orifice close to the right shoulder pointed to the passage of the heavy bullet of those days. His staff immediately dismounted him, at foot of a branching tree, bleeding profusely.” It turned out he had been shot through the throat, but he managed to get out a message to Lee urging him to press forward, and another for his own men to go on. Then he was taken from the field, not to return to active duty until October. The shooting put an end to the aggressive battle Longstreet had planned. Several hours were lost realigning brigades which had become totally confused in the underbrush. Meantime, the Federals took the opportunity to realign and rally their units, so little further was accomplished in driving the Federals back. As Longstreet’s line stabilized, Lee rode over to Ewell to see why his corps had been so lacking in aggression during the fight on the right. There he learned that Ewell had taken the advice of Jubal Early, one of his division commanders, to stay put. However, one of his brigadiers, John B.Gordon, had suggested an attack, and now, although late in the day, Lee ordered it made. Gordon moved his troops forward, and, as he later wrote, “As the sun went down these troops were ordered forward. In less than ten minutes they struck the Union flank and with thrilling yells rushed upon it and along the Union works, shattering regiments and brigades, and throwing them into wildest confusion and panic. There was practically no resistance.” The attack was a total success, but came too late to really affect the battle. In the end, Confederate losses were around 7,750, compared to Federal losses of some 17,600. The Federal march through The Wilderness had been stopped. But if the Confederates expected Grant to allow Meade to retreat, to regroup as Hooker, Pope, McDowell, and the other Army of the Potomac commanders had done in previous engagements, they would be wrong. The next morning Grant ordered Meade, “Make all preparations during the day for a night march to take position at Spottsylvania C.H. with one army corps, at Todd’s Tavern with one, and another near the intersection of the Piney Branch and Spottsylvania road, with the road from Alsop’s to Old Court House.” The Army of the Potomac was not going to turn back, and the Confederates would not see a calm day again. Ewell’s scouts soon found that the enemy had moved off from Germanna Ford and Lee realized that Grant was moving on another route toward Richmond. Cavalry reported Union horses near Todd’s Tavern, on the way to Spotsylvania Court House, so Lee knew that that must be the Federal objective. After appointing Major-General Richard Anderson as commander of Longstreet’s Corps, Lee then sent him toward Spotsylvania Court House. Anderson’s men, hungry and tired, marched slowly. But ahead of them, Stuart’s cavalry corps of five brigades slowed down the Federal advance and set up defensive works around the Court House, little more than a crossroads junction on a map. The Fighting at Spotsylvania Federal cavalry hit Stuart’s men, dismounted and well hidden in the heavy underbrush, but could not drive them out. Meanwhile, Anderson’s two lead brigades joined their line. The Confederates held as the sun set. The rest of Anderson’s troops came up, and Meade’s new route to Richmond was blocked. Hill, in the

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meantime, reported being too ill to maintain command; Lee named Early to take over. Lee’s corps were now being led by inexperienced men. The rest of Lee’s army moved to Anderson’s position on May 8 and all entrenched to await a Federal assault. His lines, however, were not especially well laid out, but simply built on the ground held as the battle first began. One area in particular, the so-called Mule Shoe, jutted out from the front so that it was under fire from three sides. But the Confederate entrenchments were well dug. A local assault on the western side of the Mule Shoe late on May 10 suggested that the entire position could be overrun, and Grant ordered a major effort right away. However, Lee had received word that Grant was instead moving to his right again, and that evening began withdrawing artillery from the Mule Shoe to oppose him. In the thick morning fog of May 12, Grant’s men struck, dashing out of woods and easily overrunning the Confederate front lines. Artillery could not come to their support. “The result was they got possession of that part of the works held by our division,” John Casler of the Stonewall Brigade wrote. “All that escaped had to ‘run for it’ some distance, but were soon rallied by General Gordon, who took command and formed into line. The troops from the right and left of our line closed in and checked the enemy until Hill’s and Longstreet’s corps came up…and part of the works regained, but the battle raged with great fury at that point from daylight until dark; bullets rained and shells shrieked, but we never did recover all our lines, nor our artillery.” It had been a very close-run thing; in fact the Federals actually cut the Confederate Army in half until Lee personally rallied troops to counterattack and close the gap. Toward twilight Grant reinforced the attack on the Confederate right with his IX Corps, but the fighting was largely done. Federal losses were some 6,800, while the Confederates lost 9,000, of whom 4,000 were prisoners captured in the initial minutes of the battle. As the fighting continued, Confederate pioneers built a new line across the base of the Mule Shoe, and that evening the exhausted soldiers were brought back to this new line. The Federals also fell back, and the works of the Mule Shoe became a no-man’s-land. “Lee to the rear” Lee tried to become a frontline commander several times during the close fighting in the 1864 campaign. The first time was in The Wilderness when Longstreet’s men arrived just as Hill’s Corps broke under a tremendous Federal attack. One of Longstreet’s first regiments was the 4th Texas, and a member of this regiment later recalled, “At this juncture, General Lee rode up near our line. Mounted on the handsome dapple gray horse he bestrode at Fredericksburg in 1862, and which he always rode on the battlefield, he was a picture of noble grace that I can never hope to see again. Having given General Gregg an order to advance at once and check the on-coming enemy, he added: ‘The Texas brigade always has driven the enemy, and I want them to do it now. And tell them, General, that they will fight to-day under my eye—I will watch their conduct!’ Gregg rode out in front of us, and told us what General Lee had said, and then gave the command, ‘Forward!’ The word had barely passed his lips when General Lee himself came in front of us, as if intending to lead us. The men shouted to him to come back, that they would not budge an inch unless he did so, and to emphasize the demand, twenty or more of them sprang forward and made an effort to lead or push his horse to the rear. I was too far from him to join in this attempt, or, like any other man in the brigade! would have done so. Exactly what occurred, not even those nearest Lee can tell, but just as they got ‘Traveler’ headed to the rear, General Longstreet rode up and said something, whereupon General Lee rode silently back through our ranks.”

Then the rains came. The Confederate forces were exhausted, with huge losses dictating a reorganization of the army. Luckily, Grant did not press his forces on for some eight days while he awaited the result of a landing of another Federal Army on the Bermuda Hundred below Richmond. This attack, made by the

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newly created Army of the James under Major-General Benjamin Butler, drew off five infantry brigades and a number of batteries from Lee’s army, which could ill afford such losses on top of the ones taken in battle. Moreover, on May 11 the army suffered another major blow when, in a cavalry fight around Yellow Tavern, just above Richmond, Jeb Stuart was shot in the chest and mortally wounded. Taken to Richmond, Stuart died soon after.

The third day of the Battle of Spotsylvania, May 12, was one of the bloodiest of the war. Twenty-four Union brigades were thrown at the Confederate lines in attempts to take the Mule Shoe salient. The 6,800 casualties the Federals left behind bore stark witness to the position’s new moniker, “the Bloody Angle.”

Grant now determined to try Lee’s right, and Lee shifted Anderson’s Corps from the left to the right to form a new front there. Thinking that Lee’s left was now weak, Grant ordered another assault around Spotsylvania Court House on May 18. The Union attack didn’t get under way until well after daylight, and Confederate artillery alone repulsed it with heavy losses. Lee figured that this failure would convince Grant to move again to the south, and on May 19 he ordered Ewell to reconnoiter toward the right. Ewell handled this mission badly, getting a division so deeply engaged that it required horse artillery and other infantry to extricate his troops as darkness fell. Ewell, clearly no longer fit for high command, lost several hundred men. Ewell’s action had delayed Grant’s move to his right a day, however, and did indicate to Lee that that was Grant’s next point of attack. Lee therefore ordered Ewell to be on the march south at daybreak on the 21st. Lee also expected that Grant would pull troops from Butler’s army, which had become bottled up below Richmond, as indeed he did. To meet this, Pickett’s division and Hoke’s brigade were sent to join the Army of Northern Virginia, along with a number of other regiments. All told, this brought Lee’s army up to 40 percent of what it had been at the beginning of the campaign in early May, while the Army of the Potomac received reinforcements that brought it up to 85 percent of full strength. On May 21 Lee began to withdraw from his fortifications around Spotsylvania Court House as Grant also moved to his left, with the aim of heading further south around Lee’s positions. Lee had to fall back to place his force between the enemy and Richmond. Lee had figured out that Grant, who would give up a base of supply at Belle Plain on

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the Potomac to head south, would have to go toward Milford and Bowling Green so that he would be in touch with the next supply base, at Port Royal. Lee’s goal was Hanover Junction, and Ewell’s Corps led at noon, with Hill following around 21:00 hours. Although the enemy had a 12-hour start, the Confederates would have to travel a shorter distance over better roads. Lee picked a defensive position along the North Anna River. Ewell’s Corps was posted to the east of the bridges with Anderson’s Corps facing the river crossing. Hill’s Corps, save a regiment on picket duty on the left, was camped 1 mile (1.6 km) behind the river in reserve. Lee then looked for an offensive opportunity, thinking that the Federals would not attempt to cross the river under his guns. On May 23, however, the Union V Corps did start crossing the river, which was low enough to wade across. As opposing units came in contact, Hill ordered Wilcox’s division forward, followed later by Heth’s. Wilcox ran into the entire V Corps and was forced back before Heth’s division could come up. Losses on both sides were about equal, and Heth relieved Wilcox and dug in, while V Corps, surprised by the attack, halted and dug in to face Hill’s Corps. Lee, who had been taken ill with an intestinal inflammation that confined him to his tent, learned of the attack made by only one unsupported division and so demanded of Hill, “Why did you not do as Jackson would have done— thrown your whole force upon those people and driven them back?” It was a good question. Indeed, there was plenty of blame to go around. Confederate cavalry did not report the strength of the approaching enemy. Hill did not supervise the attack personally. Heth was slow to come up in support of Wilcox. Wilcox began late, when a start two hours earlier would have seen only half the enemy in position. On May 24 the rest of the Federals moved to force the Confederate position, their II Corps hitting the Chesterfield Ford, near the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Petersburg Railroad bridge, while IX Corps struck Ox Ford to the west, and V Corps was across the river and well dug in to the west of Jericho Mills. VI Corps followed V Corps. The weakest Federal force was IX Corps, but it was not expected to meet serious opposition, while the strongest force was II Corps. Lee was ready. His plan was to let the Federals cross on the east, while defending the Ox Ford in the center where IX Corps would try to cross. Ewell’s men fell back to form an almost straight line with Anderson’s men in the center and during the night of May 23–24 the two corps dug works almost as strong as those at Spotsylvania. Hill’s men formed a line at a right angle to Anderson’s, and also dug in. Now Lee would be in a position not unlike that of Meade at Gettysburg, perhaps even in a better situation since the Federal attacking corps would have a river that prevented them from reinforcing one another. The Union II Corps crossed easily, as Lee planned, and in the process of reconnoitering its front had become strung out from the river to a point several miles to the southeast. It was in a dangerous position, but Lee was too sick to personally direct an attack on it, while Hill had just returned from sick leave and was not yet wholly recovered and Ewell’s health was quickly fading forcing him into sick leave within a week. Before the Confederates could organize an attack, II Corps’ commander realized his precarious situation, and first dug in and then fell back. Grant Flanks Lee Again The Army of the Potomac did not attack Lee’s lines, instead digging in and probing the Confederate positions for two days before pulling out and recrossing the North Anna for yet another swing to the Confederate left. Between May 27 and 28 Grant moved his army along the Pamunkey River towards Hanovertown, only 15 miles (24 km) from Richmond. With Lee and his subordinates at considerably less than 100 percent, Grant was able to steal a march, reaching Hanovertown—from where he had a number of options—to head toward Richmond, with three infantry corps in position by the afternoon of May 28. No

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Confederate infantry was there to oppose him. Lee’s men started moving south on the 27th, but Lee was still too sick to ride a horse and instead traveled in a carriage. Ewell was also too sick to ride a horse, and went on sick leave, never to return to the army. Jubal Early took over his corps command. That evening they camped near Atlee, a station only 9 miles (14 km) from Richmond along the Virginia Central Railroad. The rest of the army gathered there on the 28th, a spot that was 10 miles (16 km) west from the Federals at Hanovertown. From there Lee prepared to move left to protect the railroad or right to intercept Meade. Lee now put together a cavalry force with Fitzhugh Lee’s two brigades on one wing and Wade Hampton’s on the other. He then sent this reconstructed force to Haw’s Shop to probe the enemy. There they ran into Union cavalry which, on seeing the Confederates, organized a charge. The Confederates dismounted and formed a battle line on either side of a road at a clearing around the Enon Church. There, from behind fence rails piled up as a defensive work, they drove back the Federal charges again and again. The Union cavalry was reinforced by another division, and its Michigan Brigade was sent in with a dismounted charge that finally overran the Confederate lines. The Confederates made their way back to their horses and dashed off while the exhausted Federals watched them go and made no attempt to pursue. The Confederates brought away prisoners from the Union V and VI Corps, giving Lee intelligence on where Grant’s troops were. So ill by now that for the first time in the war he took refuge in a private house, Lee sent Early’s II Corps east to Pole Green Presbyterian Church, some 3 miles (5 km) southwest of Haw’s Shop. The ground between the two sites was swampy, providing the Confederates with a natural defense against Union

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By May 28 Lee was in position ahead of Grant across the Virginia Central Railroad. It was to the east of here that the armies clashed again at the Battle of Cold Harbor on June 1–3. Despite appalling casualties Grant exploited Lee’s need to defend Richmond and just pressed on, crossing the James River on June 14 to attack Petersburg and take Richmond from the south. The lead corps of Meade’s army now linked up with Butler’s Army of the James that had been facing General Beauregard since May 9.

cavalry. Lee’s III Corps remained within 5 miles (8 km) of the railroad and the Telegraph Road, with Anderson’s I Corps between them and somewhat toward the rear, in a position to be able to provide support to either when needed. Grant’s reconnaissance of the new Confederate positions began on May 29 and continued the next day when the Union V Corps crossed the Totopotomoi to the east, a main highway to Richmond that led to Mechanicsville. Early saw an opportunity in this move to turn that corps’ flank and received permission from Lee to try it. Anderson was shifted to man the works Early’s men had built, while most of Early’s men moved to around Bethesda Church on the Old Church Road, parallel to the road. Then they attacked, brushing through skirmishers in their drive to roll up the Union flank. Federal infantry and artillery quickly came to the assistance of the threatened post. As Early, who had not committed his entire corps to the attack, later described it, “Pegram’s brigade, under the command of Colonel Edward Willis of the 12th Georgia Regiment, was sent forward with one of Rodes’ brigades on its right, to feel the enemy, and ascertain his strength; but meeting with a heavy force behind breastworks, it was compelled to retire, with the loss of some valuable officers and men, and among them were Colonel Willis, mortally wounded, and Colonel Terrill of the 13th Virginia Regiment, killed.” Lee’s army did not appear able to make a successful attack as it used to. Not that it would have a chance to try very often, as Lee learned that day that the Union XVII Corps had been shifted from the army deadlocked at the Bermuda Hundred to Grant’s main force. He did get a division from the troops bottlingin the Army of the James, but this still could not balance the scales. It would be all Lee could do to defend Richmond.

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In the meantime Union cavalry reached a crossroads named Old Cold Harbor named for an old inn (a “harbor”) that sold no food (hence, “cold”). Lee, by now feeling well enough to leave the refuge of a house for his usual tent, decided to use the reinforcing division he had received to hit the Union column of infantry approaching Cold Harbor, then roll it up before the units could deploy into line or dig entrenchments. On May 31 he sent Anderson’s Corps east for a daylight attack on the Union troops to the left of the crossroads at Cold Harbor. The other divisions would deploy to the right, linking with Early’s right. As in the old days, the Confederate troops got to their assigned positions before the Federals did. Instead of dashing forward on the morning of June 1, Anderson sent forward a reconnaissance in force, led by a regiment that was newly arrived from the placid garrison duties of Charleston, South Carolina. It was woefully short of the standards of veteran units. At the first volley from Union cavalrymen, the South Carolinians fled in abject terror. Attack at Cold Harbor In the meantime, Union commanders were alerted to the threat at Cold Harbor and deployed to face the situation. Another Confederate attack then also failed, as did one that came late in the day in a weak point in Union lines. Every Confederate offensive, and corps commander, failed. Anderson dug in. Now Meade decided to attack, late in the afternoon, on the Confederate flank. One Confederate brigade broke under the pressure, but Anderson rushed troops into the now open spot in the line and dug in again, keeping the Federals from exploiting their momentary success. Lee himself now arrived on the scene, still weak from his illness. He set up his headquarters 1.5 miles (2 km) from the tavern at Cold Harbor where he faced an enemy whose front was 6 miles (10 km) long, unusually long for a Civil War army. He suggested that Early watch for a chance to make a spoiling attack on his front and right if possible as he oversaw defensive preparations. Hill’s Corps was on the extreme left, to the north, while Ewell was next to him, and Anderson below him. A two-brigade division under James Breckinridge, newly arrived to the army and not in any corps, was to the right of Anderson, while Wilcox’s division of Hill’s Corps was on the extreme right. The line itself extended from the Grapevine Bridge on the Chickahominy on the right, up past Syndor’s Sawmill, the center between New Cold Harbor and Old Cold Harbor. There were virtually no reserves available. Grant decided to force the right of Lee’s lines, starting at dawn on June 3. The field they crossed was wide open and the Confederates held a strong series of lines. Most Federals were able to get into the front line of trenches, but no further. Only on Breckinridge’s front, where a ravine afforded some cover, was there any sort of minor Union success. By 07:30 hours the fighting was over, and Grant’s losses in killed and wounded were about 12,000. “This assault cost us heavily and probably without benefit to compensate,” Grant later wrote. With the repulse at Cold Harbor, Grant’s campaign to take Richmond was over. Lee had saved Richmond, and Grant would have to plan a different approach. But the reasons for Lee’s success also became the reasons for his later failure. Lee had succeeded by maneuvering in front of his enemy and then digging in where the advanced defensive weapons of the day— the rifled musket and cannon —could break up any offensive that could be launched against him. But in so doing he had also moved into positions where he could not maneuver either, and most major Confederate successes, such as Chancellorsville, had come about because of superior maneuverability. Once the Army of Northern Virginia lost this and became immobilized, numbers became the all-important factor, and the number game was one that the Confederates could never win.

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The cavalier swagger that Lee’s army had brought to the battlefield in the early years of war would count for nothing in 1864. The implacable generalship of Grant and the power of the Northern war effort would ensure that the dream of Southern independence was to die in the trenches defending Petersburg.

Cold Harbor to Petersburg

By June 1864, the war in Virginia had concentrated south of the James around Petersburg. Meanwhile, Jubal Early was to make a last attack through Maryland toward Washington before Phil Sheridan swept the Confederacy out of the Valley forever. Lee and his troops didn’t realize it, but for most units by the first weeks of June the mobile campaign was almost over for the year. Time dragged on as Lee and Grant exchanged messages about the removal of the dead from in front of the Confederate trenches. Meanwhile the men relaxed for the first time in months. This close to Richmond, it was easier for the commissary to get both food for the men and forage for the horses, and both ate well for the first time in a while. The situation in front of Richmond may have stabilized, but the news from the Shenandoah Valley was not good. A Federal force under Major-General David Hunter now occupied Staunton, western terminus of the Virginia Central Railroad, and Grant had sent his cavalry commander Major-General Philip Sheridan with two divisions to join him. To meet this threat, Lee sent two brigades west under Breckinridge, as well as most of his cavalry under Wade Hampton. Hampton’s cavalry headed off on a route parallel to Sheridan’s, reaching Louisa Court House on June 10, before sending a part of his force on to Trevilian’s Station, 28 miles (45 km) west of Charlottesville, where he planned to meet Sheridan’s troops. Hampton’s plan was to have Fitzhugh Lee attack Sheridan’s men from the east. As Lee was on the move, however, he was hit by a Union cavalry division, led by a brigade commanded by a young brigadier-general, George A. Custer, that drove his brigades back, and captured a number of wagons. Hampton was outnumbered and fell back, to be joined by Fitzhugh Lee on the 11th. Both sides prepared to renew the fight the next day. The Federals attacked, the Confederates held, and at the end of the day, Sheridan fell back to Grant, his mission of joining Hunter foiled. Casualties for the Confederates were heavy, with some 800 lost from Hampton’s division alone. But the railroad was safe and Hunter’s forces unreinforced. Hunter, however, was still active. On June 11 his troops reached Lexington, where they burned the Virginia Military Institute as well as the home of John Letcher, who had been governor of Virginia when the state seceded. Now that Grant’s army appeared exhausted, Lee took the opportunity to detach Early’s II Corps, amounting to a quarter of the entire Army of Northern Virginia, to move into the Valley and confront Hunter. His orders went beyond that, however. Lee wanted another Jacksonian assault up the Valley, into Maryland if possible, to so terrify the authorities in Washington that, as they had done in years past, they would weaken Grant’s army significantly to shore up Washington’s defenses.

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The initial Federal attacks on Petersburg between June 14 and 18 could have seen the city taken and its small garrison routed, leaving Lee’s flank exposed. Despite appeals from Beauregard for reinforcements, Lee continued to believe that Grant was staying north of the James River, although Hancock’s II Corps had crossed on the 14th. Realizing the danger, Beauregard disengaged from Butler and conducted his own defense, holding off three Union corps until Lee finally had his army move south on June 18.

Early’s men headed toward Lynchburg, as Hunter’s troops were marching to the same place. Before getting there, Hunter discovered Early’s advance and, on June 17, withdrew, not down the Valley as previous Union generals had done, but into the Alleghenies, keeping his army intact. On June 23 Early headed into the Valley, turned north, and quickly reoccupied Winchester on July 2. Early then Life in the Trenches Once in the lines around Petersburg, the older war of maneuver that marked previous Civil War actions ended, and the fighting began to resemble that of Europe in 1914–18. J.B.Polley, of the 4th Texas, described how miserable life in these trenches was in the summer of 1864, “under a hot, almost blistering sun, and with only the shade made by blankets and tent-cloths, stretched across such rails and planks as

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could be brought long distances on the shoulders of its men through an incessant storm of bullets, to protect them from its heat and glare. There was little breeze, scant rain, and much dust. The opposing lines too close together to permit either side to send pickets to the front, the watching of each other and the guarding against surprise was done in and from the main lines, and lest the vigilance exercised there prove insufficient, each side maintained a rifle fire, which, although in the daytime somewhat scattering and perfunctory, was at night an unceasing volley. Through this storm of bullets had to come on the shoulders of commissary sergeants and such men as were detailed to assist them, the rations on which soul and body were barely kept together. The cornbread, a pound a day to the man, was cooked by details far in the rear; the bacon, a scant fourth of a pound per diem to the man, or the same quantity of tough, lean beef, was brought, uncooked, on the same shoulders, as were also, but only at long intervals, the small supplies of beans, peas, rice and sugar then procurable. Coffee—not more than thirty beans to the man—was a rarity. “The water that satisfied thirst, and in which such provisions as the men dared waste by cooking, were boiled, had to be brought in canteens from a spring on the far side of the branch which made a gap in the breastworks, and to cross that branch, by night or by day, was to risk life and limb—the Federals guarding the gap as they did at no other point on the line, and keeping it hot and sizzling with deathdealing bullets. After one man was mortally wounded, and two or three others, seriously, the risk was minimized, and at the same time equitably distributed, by sending, in regular turn, two men of a company, with all its canteens, after water. One of these, carrying all the canteens, would spring across the gap, and if he arrived safe, toss them as they were filled, back across it to his comrade.” “To stay in the trenches alive, was to suffer with heat, smother with dust, keep heads below the top of the breast-works, and halfstarved, long the more for a ‘square meal’ because there was little else to occupy one’s mind. Thoroughly inured to danger as were the Texans and Arkansans, they accepted its presence as inevitable, and now that it stayed by them so constantly, it grew monotonous and ceased to be worthy of more attention than could be given mechanically and subconsciously. Their experiences of hardship and peril were neither singular nor uncommon.” The main problem, however, both in the trenches and behind the lines, was hunger. The area was swept clean of almost anything to eat, and the beleaguered Confederate supply system was simply unable to keep up with demand. “There is nothing within reach of this army to be impressed,” Lee telegraphed the secretary of war on January 11, 1865. “The country is swept clear. Our only reliance is upon the railroads. We have but two days’ supplies.”

sent part of his army to Harper’s Ferry, while the rest headed toward Martinsburg, West Virginia. Then, he united his command in Maryland, just across the Potomac River. There Early received new orders from Lee authorizing him to drive towards Washington. Early sent one cavalry brigade to Baltimore to try to free some 18,000 Confederates held prisoner at Point Lookout, while the rest marched on Washington. He stopped in Hagerstown long enough to receive $20,000 in ransom, then went to Frederick where his troops took another $200,000. But Early did not move with the speed of Stonewall Jackson. Federals largely drawn from the Baltimore garrison under regional commander MajorGeneral Lew Wallace rushed to get between Early and Washington. At the Monocacy River southeast of Frederick, Wallace drew up his battle lines, and on July 9 clashed with Early’s men. Wallace’s makeshift force, which included some nine-months regiments from Ohio, fought surprisingly well. They fell back across the river after some hard fighting, and the Confederates managed to cross the river after them. But John Gordon, who commanded on Early’s right, described the area over which they had to cross to come to grips with the Federals as dotted with “strong farm fences, which my men must climb while under fire. Worse still, those fields were thickly studded with huge grain-stacks which the harvesters had recently piled. They were so broad and high and close together that no line of battle could possibly be maintained while

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After Federal actions at The Crater on July 30 the Petersburg lines remained relatively quiet until August 18, when Warren’s V Corps attacked west extending the Union positions and cutting the Weldon Railroad south. On the 19th, A.P.Hill’s corps attempted a counterattack, but only managed to advance as far as Globe Tavern. The battle continued until August 21 when the Confederates accepted defeat. Their losses were some 1,600 against Warren’s losses of over 4,400.

advancing through them.” Finally, Gordon’s men swept the Union troops aside and took the field. However, it was too late to continue forward; Wallace had bought a full day for Washington to prepare its defenses. Within the city, there was serious concern, but not the same level of panic as there had been in 1862 and 1863. Veteran Reserve Corps units made up of men physically unable to survive campaign life but still able to do duty, manned the forts as Grant detached his VI Corps and sent it north. On the afternoon of July 11, Early’s men reached the city limits and scouted the Federal positions. They could tell it was too strong to take, especially as the veteran troops of VI Corps filed into position among the earthworks. As word came that the attempt to free the Point Lookout prisoners had failed, Early withdrew slowly back into the Valley and easily repulsed a feeble attempt at pursuit. The move on Washington had, however, been a success. Grant’s forces had been reduced in number and, with attention drawn back north, had been stalemated. The

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The attack of the Union IX Corps on the Crater, July 30. Corps commander General Burnside had a regiment of Pennsylvanian coal miners digging for over a month to lay a huge mine under the eastern edge of the Petersburg defenses. Its detonation blasted a great hole in the line and stunned the defenders, but the Federal attack was slow and disorganized and the Confederates rallied, turning the Crater into a killing ground for the assaulting Union regiments.

Valley was in Confederate hands once again. Moreover, Grant had decided that he was unable to destroy Lee’s army in the field north of Richmond; instead he would head south, link up with the Army of the James and capture Petersburg, south of Richmond, forcing Lee to fight there. On the evening of June 12, Confederate cavalry discovered Grant moving south. His troops crossed the Chickahominy on pontoons and arrived at the James River on June 14. This he crossed at Wilcox’s Landing, a point that was out of sight of Confederate Signal Corps stations, on a huge pontoon bridge that ran to Windmill Point, 16 miles (25 km) from Petersburg. From there they headed toward their destination, II Corps approaching that city on the afternoon of the 15th. The Confederate force blocking their way was well posted in fortifications built up some time before Grant’s troops arrived. But they numbered only a single infantry brigade with some light batteries and fixed heavy artillery. The overall commander of Confederate troops south of Richmond was General Pierre G.T.Beauregard, who was well known for sending messages pleading emergencies and was, therefore, discounted to some extent by both Davis and Lee. Beauregard, whose forces had been gradually stripped by demands from Lee’s army, peppered Richmond with requests to have the units returned, as well as ideas for grand moves that would combine his force and Lee’s into one army that would smash Grant and then turn on Butler and his Army of the James. Davis disliked Beauregard personally, as did his top military advisor, Braxton Bragg, and Beauregard’s stream of messages went largely unanswered. Lee meanwhile was unaware of Grant’s strategy. Around noon of June 14 he wrote Davis, “I think the enemy must be preparing to move south of James River. Our scouts and pickets yesterday stated that Genl Grant’s whole army was in motion for the fords of the Chickahominy from Long Bridge down, from which I inferred that he was making his way to the James River as his new base.” From there he expected Grant to set up a new staging area in the same spot as McClellan had done during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862. Scouts, however, continued to bring in intelligence. Mid-afternoon Lee wrote Davis that Grant’s army was now near Westover with part of it at Wilcox’s Landing, and that his plan was probably to take Petersburg. However, Lee did not move immediately. On the 14th he ordered some of Hill’s infantry to scout enemy positions, closing with skirmishers from the Union V Corps who fell back slowly.

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While the siege developed around Petersburg, over 125 miles (200 km) north in the Shenandoah Valley, another element of Grant’s strategy was put into operation. On August 1 General Sheridan was reassigned from his raiding operations south of the James and given command of the Army of the Shenandoah. His orders were to rid the Valley of Confederates once and for all. Sheridan began moving on Jubal Early’s force on August 9. On the 19th he drove Early from Winchester for the last time, and on September 22 engaged him at the Battle of Fisher’s Hill outside Strasburg.

Figuring Grant was moving to the right again, Lee began sending his two remaining corps toward Riddell’s Shop, located on the southern side of the White Oak Swamp at the intersection of Charles City Road and Long Bridge Road. Meanwhile, Beauregard grew desperate as Union numbers continued to grow on his front. In the morning hours of June 14 he telegraphed Richmond, “Movement of Grant across Chickahominy and increase of Butler’s force render my position here critical. With my present force I cannot answer for consequences. Cannot my troops sent to General Lee be returned at once?” In fact, Lee did release Major-General R.F.Hoke’s division, sending it to Drewry’s Bluff where it would be free to reinforce Beauregard as needed, and Beauregard was so advised. Beauregard had Hoke join him at Petersburg, leaving a brigade at Walthall Junction. At noon of June 15 Lee notified Davis that he planned to stay where he was until enemy plans “appear to be settled.” That same day, a prisoner from Grant’s IX Corps was captured in front of Petersburg, strong proof that Grant’s army had successfully eluded Lee and was opposite the town. This was the Union’s best chance in the campaign for taking Richmond. Butler now sent a whole corps commanded by Major-General W.F.Smith forward toward Petersburg, but Smith behaved with extreme caution. Before dawn on the 15th, when he should have been shoving everyone possible into Petersburg itself, he telegraphed Butler, “The fight at Baylor’s house broke up my arrangements, so that I have not been able to straighten my line; but this, however, will be done at once.”

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Butler, seeing his one chance to grasp the prize before Grant himself arrived and took over, depriving the Massachusetts politician of his chance for glory, replied, “I grieve for the delays. Time is of the essence of this movement.” But Smith just didn’t get it. As Grant later recalled, “Smith arrived in front of the enemy’s lines early in the forenoon of the 15th, and spent the day until after seven o’clock in the evening in reconnoitering what appeared to be empty works. The enemy’s line consisted of redans occupying commanding positions, with rifle-pits connecting them. The east side of Petersburg, from the Appomattox back, there were thirteen of these redans extending a distance of several miles, probably three. If they had been properly manned they could have held out against any force that could have attacked them, at least until reinforcements could have got up from the north of Richmond. “Smith assaulted with the colored troops, and with success. By nine o’clock at night he was in possession of five of these redans and, of course, of the connecting lines of rifle-pits. All of them contained artillery, which fell into our hands. [Major-General Winfield S.]. Hancock [commander of the Army of the Potomac’s II Corps] came up… Next morning, the 16th, Hancock himself was in command, and captured another redan. Meade came up in the afternoon and succeeded Hancock… During the day Meade assaulted and carried one more redan to his right and two to his left. In all this we lost very heavily. The works were not strongly manned, but they all had guns in them which fell into our hands, together with the men who were handling them in the effort to repel these assaults.” Even Federals in the ranks, however, realized their generals had failed in these attacks. Lee Marches to Petersburg At the same time Beauregard’s outnumbered men fought bravely as the Federals proceeded far too slowly to guarantee success. As Lee’s scouts reported nothing in their front, it became increasingly obvious that all Union forces were now concentrated south of Richmond, near Petersburg. Lee set his army in motion. His headquarters was at Drewry’s Bluff by the morning of June 16, and his men filing into the lines around Bermuda Hundred, which had previously been abandoned by Beauregard when he concentrated his forces to defend Petersburg. Lee’s troops had to fight to regain the position, but by that evening they held the line from Howlett’s to Dunn’s Hill. The next morning Lee ordered Hill, “As soon as you can ascertain that Grant has crossed James River move up to Chaffin’s Bluff and be prepared to cross,” adding later, “Move your command promptly at 3 a.m. to-morrow for Chaffin’s Bluff. Cross the river and move to the Petersburg turnpike; there await further orders.” Lee was now in full motion. “Grant’s army is chiefly on the south side of James River,” he warned Hampton, ordering his other cavalry commander, Fitzhugh Lee, “Push after the enemy and endeavor to ascertain what has become of Grant’s army. Inform General Hill.” Still, he warned Beauregard, “Until I can get more definite information of Grant’s movements I do not think it prudent to draw more troops to this side of the river.” The Federals continued their push on the 17th, Beauregard advising Richmond early that afternoon, “Enemy in large force, reported to be three corps — Second [of the Army of the Potomac], Ninth [directly under Grant], and Eighteenth [of Butler’s Army of the James]—attacked heavily our lines at 6.30 p.m. Affair lasted until 11:30 p.m. Enemy was finally repulsed at all points. Some 300 prisoners and two stand of colors were taken.” Beauregard’s men were, however, forced to fall back and dig new lines of trenches that could have been easily overrun by the larger numbers of Federals on the field had they moved more aggressively. They did not, however, and at the same time Lee was finally convinced that the whole of Grant’s force was facing Petersburg. Lee’s I Corps started toward Petersburg at 03:00 hours, June 18, with Hill’s Corps following that afternoon. Civilians cheered and waved as their worn veterans trudged through the streets south.

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Men of Kershaw’s brigade deployed into the lines just as another Federal attack hit, but they held on with determination as the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia came up. “The battle raged furiously until nightfall,” Dickert wrote, “but with no better results on the enemy’s side than had attended him for the last three days—a total repulse at every point. By noon the next day Lee’s whole force south of the James was within the entrenched lines of the city, and all felt perfectly safe and secure.” It was a reply of virtually every action from Spotsylvania Court House through Cold Harbor. Grant aimed at an objective, but Lee got his men there first, digging in so that it could not be taken. Now, as before, both sides began to digin seriously. Lee, however, was stuck. His line was stretched too thin, defending Richmond from the east and south, to attack any weak point in the Union line. He could not abandon his line, as it was vital to defend the railroads that passed through Petersburg to and from Richmond. He was forced to allow the Federals to dictate the action that would follow. The Federals also dug in, but took advantage of their larger numbers of cavalry to begin a series of raids to the Confederate right. The first was sent off on June 21, and did little; indeed, the Confederates capturing some 1,600 prisoners, 4 cannon, and 7 colors. Another attack on the Confederate right fell on June 24, but was driven off. Both sides settled down, the Confederate I Corps diary noting July 8, “We make in the afternoon something of a Chinese demonstration in the way of shooting and artillery firing to ascertain the enemy’s strength.” The Crater Word reached the Confederates that the Federals had began digging a mine under their ever-more complex lines on July 1, and countermining begun. By July 21, Confederate engineers could hear the Federals digging, but were unable to pinpoint their shaft. Finally, in the early morning of July 30 the Federals set off their mine directly under Confederate lines. Recalled Colonel Fitzhugh McMaster, commanding one of the South Carolina regiments just over the mine, “The explosion took place at 4.45 a.m. The ‘Crater’ made by eight thousand pounds [3,600 kg] of gun powder was one hundred and thirty-five feet [41 m] long, ninety-seven feet [29 m] broad and thirty feet [9m] deep. Two hundred and seventy-eight men were buried in the debris— Eighteenth [South Carolina] Regiment, eighty-two; Twenty-second [South Carolina], one hundred and seventy, and Pegram’s battery, twenty-two men. “To add to the terror of the scene the enemy with one hundred and sixty-four cannon and mortars began a bombardment much greater than Fort Sumter or battery were ever subjected to. Elliott’s Brigade near the ‘Crater’ was panic stricken, and more than one hundred men of the Eighteenth Regiment covered with dirt rushed down. Two of three noble soldiers asked me for muskets. Some climbed the counterscarpe and made their way for Petersburg. Numbers of the Seventeenth joined the procession. I saw one soldier scratching at the counterscarpe of the ditch like a scared cat.” Luckily for Lee, the Union attack that followed the mine’s explosion was totally mishandled. The commander on the scene was drunk in a bombproof shelter far behind the front line, while the forward troops mulled around in the crater itself once they’d reached Confederate lines. Among the Confederates, Brigadier-General William Mahone, commander of the division affected, quickly organized a defense, sending his brigade forward to ring the crater while bringing up artillery, especially mortars, to fire into it. As Colonel John Haskell, the artillery commander on the scene, recalled, “Mahone ordered his final charge, which took the entire line. I was still in the trench when the rush was made, and was carried, although without intending it, right into the Crater, which was packed full of yankees, largely negroes. Our men, who were always made wild by having negroes sent against them, remembering that hundreds of their fellows were perhaps only then smothering under the piled-up dirt, were utterly frenzied with rage. Nothing in the

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Early was badly beaten at Fisher’s Hill on September 22 and, despite the promise of help from Lee, was forced to retreat once again, heading for New Market. Sheridan began a slow pursuit, taking time to destroy farms and railroads as he did so. Though badly outnumbered, Early attacked Sheridan again on October 19, at Cedar Creek north of Strasburg. His defeat there and the severe winter that followed finally put an end to Confederate operations in the Valley.

war could have exceeded the horrors that followed. No quarter was given, and for what seemed a long time, fearful butchery was carried on.” The result was a total Union failure, at the cost of some 3,500 Federals killed and another 1,500 taken prisoner along with 20 colors lost, compared to 1,500 Confederate casualties. The line held. Both sides prepared for a long siege. Grant, however, wanted more than just to wear Lee down: he wanted to strike the Confederates so they would have to abandon their strong Petersburg defenses. He figured the place to do that was the Confederate right, and struck near Globe Tavern on August 15 in an attempt to take the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad. Lee sent troops to drive him off, but several assaults on the Union troops there, over several days, failed. On August 24, spotting a weak point on the Union II Corps front, Heth and Wilcox attacked at Reams’ Station, routing II Corps and taking 2,100 prisoners. Although a success, the battle did not regain the railroad. In the meantime, Early had returned to the Valley from his Maryland raid. Confederates moving against a Federal force north of Winchester on July 20 were badly bloodied, the Federals capturing four cannon in the sharp action. The forces tangled again on July 24 near Kernstown, the Confederates this time coming out the winners. Early then sent a raiding party to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, offering to ransom the town for $100,000 in gold, or $500,000 in U.S. currency. Not getting the money, the Confederates burned much of the town. The Union VI Corps, detached from the Army of the Potomac to defend Washington against the earlier raid, had remained with the new army under Sheridan sent against Early, and in consequence Lee decided to reinforce his troops in the Valley. Sending Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry was an easy decision, since

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A variant of the first pattern Confederate national flag, the “Stars and Bars.” The large central star often links this variant with Texas, although the type is known to have been flown on naval vessels, forts and government buildings elsewhere in the Confederacy until early 1863.

forage was scarce around Petersburg, but he also sent Kershaw’s division. In early August Early was at Newtown, where his scouts reported the Federals were moving up the Shenandoah, apparently toward Front Royal, where they could strike his rear. Early decided on a Jackson-like campaign of marches and demonstrations. This appeared to work so well that Lee recalled Kershaw’s troops. However, the Federals were not scared of Early’s force. On September 19 Sheridan’s troops were across the Opequon River and heading toward Winchester. Early led his men to defend along a marshy ground, in places so swampy that infantry could not pass it. Sheridan’s troops pushed Early’s men back, as Early’s attempt to turn the Federal left failed and his brigade commander there, Robert Rodes, was killed during the attack. The Confederates streamed south through Winchester for the last time, leaving behind almost 40 percent of their force, some 3,611 infantry and artillery and another 1,000 cavalrymen. Early chose to make a stand at Fisher’s Hill, a spot that he called “the only place where a stand could be made,” some 20 miles (32 km) south of Winchester. At Fisher’s Hill he lost a brigade that was ordered to the Department of Southwest Virginia, but was promised reinforcements. Early decided to stay there while reorganizing his army. On September 22, however, Sheridan struck his vulnerable left, forcing him to abandon this position and costing his army another 1,225 men. Early fell back to Waynesboro, where he was reinforced by Kershaw’s troops and Rosser’s cavalry brigade. Lee, unaware of how badly battered Early’s forces really were, sent him word from Petersburg on September 23 that Kershaw’s troops were on the way. “Encourage your troops,” Lee telegraphed, “and do not bring on battle until Kershaw joins you and your troops are rallied.” It was clear, however, that Lee did expect Early to return to the offensive, and Early made his plans to do just that. Noting that Sheridan had pulled back to Harrisonburg, Early advanced and found the Federals camped quietly along Cedar Creek. Reconnaissance first convinced Early that Sheridan was too strong to be attacked there, but Jed Hotchkiss and John B.Gordon, who climbed the Massanutton Mountain from where they could observe the entire Federal camp, convinced him that a predawn strike could succeed. Early agreed, sending his forces to attack in a thick fog on the morning of October 19.

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The Battle of Cedar Creek “The surprise was complete. The victory won in a space of time inconceivably short, and with a loss to the Confederates incredibly small,” Gordon later wrote. “A little after sunrise we had captured nearly all the Union artillery; we had scattered in veriest rout two thirds of the Union army; while less than one third of the Confederate forces had been under fire, and that third intact and jubilant. Only the Sixth Corps of Sheridan’s entire force held its ground.” That was enough for Sheridan, who had been away and rode back to the field to rally his men. They regrouped and returned to the attack in the late afternoon as VI Corps led the way into a Confederate force that had been disorganized as hundreds of weary, hungry infantrymen stopped to loot Federal tents. Early’s army totally fell apart. “Could 500 men have been rallied,” Early later lamented, “who would have stood by me, I am satisfied that all my artillery and wagons, and the greater part of the captured artillery could have been saved, as the enemy’s pursuit was very feeble.” The Confederates who escaped fled back to New Market. Early had had some 1,860 killed and wounded, but another 1,050 were missing, mostly captured or escaped to desert. His 23 cannon were also captured. That was, for all practical purposes, the end of fighting in the Valley Lee recalled Kershaw, while Grant recalled VI Corps in December. The Union XIX Corps set up their winter camp at Winchester, while Early’s survivors went into winter quarters around Staunton. Forage being scarce, Early sent his cavalry and much of his artillery off. Then the Federals moved on Staunton on March 1, 1865, stampeding the last of Early’s men there. Early himself escaped through a nearby woods, but never again commanded Confederates in the Valley. Back in the trenches of Petersburg, Grant struck Lee’s lines on September 29 with a two-pronged attack. The Army of the James’ X and XVIII Corps were sent directly against Richmond’s defenses north of the James. While the Confederates held Fort Gilmer on the New Market Road, the Federals took Battery Harrison and immediately began strengthening its defenses facing the Confederate lines. The fall of this position was a major blow to Lee. As J.B.Polley of the 4th Texas explained, “Their capture on the 29th of September, of Fort Harrison, was a distinct gain to the Federals. Holding it, General Lee had been able to confine the enemy on the north side to the valley of the James, below Drury’s [sic] Buff; losing it, he was [compelled] to withdraw his forces from the heights north of the James, and place them within a line of entrenchments encircling Richmond, and, at various points, not over three miles [5 km] from the city. This gave the Federals outlet into the country north of Richmond.” Lee sent in counterattacks on September 30, but the Federals had done their work too well in Battery Harrison, and the attacks failed. Lee had to telegraph Richmond, “An attempt was made this afternoon to retake Battery Harrison which, though partly successful, failed.” The Confederates quickly built new works between Battery Harrison and Richmond. These appeared so strong that this attack was the last Federal effort to capture Richmond from the east. Lee was not to know this; as Longstreet later reported: “After the loss of Fort Harrison, General Lee became more anxious for his line on the north side, and rode out to witness the operations on that front, under the threatening of Butler’s forces; and as our cavalry had made no report of the enemy crossing the swamp, he was not quite satisfied to have the troops moved over to the Williamsburg road, but did not order them retained. His idea was that the north side was the easier route of Grant’s triumphal march into Richmond, and that sooner or later he would make his effort there in great force.” The other Union attack of the 29th hit Lee’s right, extending the lines west and driving toward the South Side Railroad and the Appomattox River. The Union V Corps, followed by IX Corps, struck southwest of Petersburg at Peebles’ Farm, toward Poplar Spring Church. The Federals were initially successful, but Hill counterattacked, forcing a Union division back and opening a gap between the two corps. The Federals dug

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On October 27 Grant’s army launched its last major attack of the year. The target once again was the Confederate right with the aim of cutting the Southside Railroad and severing one of Lee’s last open lines of resupply. Over 17,000 men of 3 Union corps struck 12 miles (19 km) south of Petersburg, but were held by Hill’s divisions and Hampton’s cavalry around Burgess Mill. The Federals retreated, leaving 2,000 dead and wounded on the field.

in on Squirrel Level Road and near Peebles’ Farm, in effect extending the Union siege lines and again stretching the resources of the Confederate defenders. Their lines were now dangerously thin. Thereafter there were no major battles, only the daily sniping that cost lives on both sides to no gain. On October 27 Federals struck at both Confederate flanks simultaneously, but were easily beaten off. Both sides dug in for a long winter, the Confederates praying to hold long enough for peace candidate— Countermining at Petersburg The explosion of the huge mine prior to the fight at the The Crater, while it failed to produce the success looked for among Union leaders, did demoralize Confederates in the trenches, who were constantly wary about such future explosions, Lieutenant-Colonel W.W. Blackford of the Engineers described how these fears were put to rest with a simple device that he said was “an inspiration of some obscure individual, who ought to be immortalized, a simple device…which set every man at his ease. I never even heard the name of the man, nor do I believe it was ever known outside of his company or regiment. It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention.

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“The contrivance did not really render the position more secure, but it gave hope and satisfied the men, and this at that moment was all-important; for it would be weeks before we of the Engineers could get the countermines in working order, Some man in a battery who was a blacksmith, I heard, conceived the idea of making a simple boring tool by which holes could be bored with great rapidity to any depth along the trenches. These holes, kept full of water, would of course indicate with certainty whether the enemy was underneath, for 11 he tapped the hole with his mine the water would run out and as long as the hole remained full of water the men knew there was no danger.” “The contrivance took like wildfire, Men sat up all night working at these holes. Every blacksmith’s shop in the army was busy making the augers, and orders were sent to Richmond for hundreds of them. In a few days, all along the trenches for miles you could see the poles bobbing up and down and the foolish fellows were as happy and merry as ever… The men seemed never to tire of sinking holes; at first they were sunk at wide intervals, twenty-five or thirty feet [9 m], then one would be put between these, then again and again the space would be halved until they were scarce two feet [600 cm] apart,”

former general—George B.McClellan, to win the U.S. presidential election against Lincoln. Election day was the first Tuesday in November. Had the election been confined to those actually at home, as had been always the case in the past, McClellan might well have won. As it was, many northern states made arrangements to let their soldiers in the field vote. Lincoln won the election with over 55 percent of the popular vote, while Republican candidates also triumphed in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which meant effectively that the war would go on to the bitter end. As Confederate War Department clerk J.B.Jones noted in his diary, “Lincoln is reelected, and has called for a million of men! This makes many of our croaking people despondent; others think it only a game of brag.” There had in fact been no such call for Union reinforcements, but this was typical of the rumors spread after the election and further demoralized Lee’s soldiers. “For news to tell you, one might as well look for ice in June,” Ham Chamberlayne wrote a friend. “The lines are as quiet as the grave, an occasional shelling indeed and a continuous sharp crack crack of the skirmishers’ rifles but these are so invariable that we call them quietness. I & my command have been occupied in digging and building earthworks & winter huts for the men, & beyond the shelling & the musketry have not been in action since July. It is a life of sameness & vacancy—Living cannot be called a fever here but rather a long catalepsy.” Every day, however, Lee lost men to wounds, disease, and desertion. “Grant will get every man he can,” he wrote Davis on November 2, “& 150,000 men is the number generally assumed by Northern papers & reports. Unless we can obtain a reasonable approximation to his force I fear a great calamity will befall us. On last Thursday at Burgess’ Mill we had three brigades to oppose six divisions. On our left two divisions to oppose two corps. The inequality is too great. Our cavalry at Burgess’ Mill I think saved the day. I came along our whole line yesterday from Chaffin’s Bluff to this place. Today I shall visit the lines here & tomorrow go down to the right. I always find something to correct on the lines, but the great necessity I observed yesterday, was the want of men.”

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Lee’s Petersburg defenses finally fell on the morning of April 2, 1865. An attack on the Confederate right at Five Forks the previous day proved so successful that Grant felt confident enough to order an advance all along the lines. At dawn on the 2nd, the Union attacks began and by mid-afternoon Lee had ordered his army out of Petersburg and Richmond and then on a general retreat to the west.

The Final Campaign

By the spring of 1865 Lee and his army had lost the initiative to Grant. The only options left open were a push west and south for a possible link with Joe Johnston’s army in the Carolinas. Grant, however, meant to finish the war at Petersburg and made the first moves. Throughout the winter of 1864 Grant continued to probe Lee’s exposed right flank. On December 9 he ordered a reconnaissance there toward Hatcher’s Run that lasted two days. Reinforcements for Lee’s army arrived in late December from the survivors of Early’s army in the Valley, but they were matched by Union reinforcements from the same area. Generally, however, cold and bad winter weather kept both armies in their trenches at the front and the bombproof shelters in the rear. Elsewhere, however, the situation was deteriorating. Fort Fisher, defending Wilmington, North Carolina, the last port open to blockade runners, fell to Federal assault on January 15, 1865. This meant that no longer would imported food, munitions, and clothing be available to Lee’s men. In the west, a huge Federal Army —General Sherman’s Army of the Tennessee—marched through Georgia virtually unopposed from Atlanta to Savannah, then in January turned and headed north toward Richmond through the Carolinas. The main Confederate Army to oppose Sherman had been destroyed by Union MajorGeneral George Thomas at Nashville during the battle of December 16–17, with a great deal of help from the poor strategy and tactics practiced by its commander, General John Bell Hood. All of this further affected morale in the trenches of Petersburg, as more and more men became convinced that their cause was already lost. Grant, always impatient to be on the move, launched another probe on the Confederate right at Hatcher’s Run on February 5. Two corps with cavalry support pushed the Federal line further west, while Lee’s army was becoming increasingly hard-pressed to cover its entire front. Lee began to look to the end, writing Longstreet on February 22, “Our line is so long, extending nearly from the Chickahominy to the Nottoway, and the enemy is so close upon us that if we are obliged to withdraw, we cannot concentrate our troops nearer than some point on the line of the railroad between Richmond and Danville. Should a necessity therefore arise, I propose to concentrate at or near Burkeville. The route for the troops north of James River would have to be through Richmond, on the road to Amelia Court House, the cavalry passing up the north branch of the river and crossing at some point above Richmond. Pickett’s division would take the route through Chesterfield Court House, crossing the Appomattox at Goode’s Bridge. With the army concentrated at or near Burkeville, our communications north and south would be by that railroad and west by the South Side Railroad. We might also seize the opportunity of striking at Grant, should he pursue us rapidly, or at Sherman, before they could unite.” Such maneuvers were in fact a very long shot. Lee’s horses were too weak from a lack of forage to pull the army’s guns and wagons as quickly as could those wellfed animals of the Army of the Potomac. Indeed,

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Lee’s men were considerably worse off in terms of diet than their enemies, and feeding the Confederates on a march, considering the supply problems, would be problematic. New shoes, which wore out rapidly on forced marches, could not be supplied to Lee’s army once it moved away from the depots of Richmond. Once separated from Richmond, ammunition resupply would also be extremely difficult. Finally, it was difficult enough to keep his troops doing their duty in the trenches: on the march where possibilities for desertion would be even greater, it would be almost impossible and the desertion rate would be bound to jump tremendously. The First Approach to Peace Meanwhile, on February 20, Longstreet had an informal meeting with the new commander of the Federals’ Army of the James, Major-General Edward O.Ord, during which Ord suggested that Lee and Grant should meet and discuss how the military could stop the war. Longstreet passed this information on to Lee. Lee then wrote Grant on March 2, proposing “to meet you at such convenient time and place as you may designate, with the hope that upon an interchange of views it may be found practicable to submit the subjects of controversy between the belligerents to a convention.” On March 3 Lincoln ordered that Grant could “have no conference with General Lee unless it be for the capitulation of Genl. Lee’s army.” Grant replied to Lee the following day that he had “no authority to accede to your proposition for a convention on the subject proposed.” The war would drag on to an almost certain conclusion, as in the Carolinas the Confederates had some 13,500 men under Joseph E.Johnston to oppose 80,000 Union troops only 120 miles (192 km) south of the Petersburg siege. Lee had, as of March 1, 56,000 men against Grant’s nearly 100,000. Lee began to grasp at straws more slender than a link-up with the Confederate Army in the Carolinas. Earlier Lee had instructed Major-General John B. Gordon to study the Federal lines and come up with a plan to save the army. Gordon found a spot, called Fort Stedman, which was relatively close to the Confederate trenches, that he thought could be overwhelmed in a night attack, after which his troops could then spread out to take the flanking works. On the evening of March 24 Gordon began to assemble the troops needed to take Fort Stedman. Pickett’s division was to come up to support the attack and Gordon sent for them at 02:30 hours. The attack was due to be launched at 04:00 hours. In fact, just before the attack, Lee sent a note to Gordon that Pickett’s division would probably not be up in time, but he could call on Heth’s men for support instead. A Federal “No alarm” was raised as the first wave of Confederates safely climbed out of the trenches and cut away the abatis in front of the Union lines. Supporting troops followed them and Fort Stedman was rapidly taken. Gordon notified Lee that Stedman was taken. Within the fort, Confederate units moved out toward City Point and the Federal supply railroad, as well as to other objectives. However, reports soon reached him that the primary objectives, three forts supposedly to the rear of Fort Stedman, could not be found. Confederate units milled around looking for them as the sun began to rise. At the same time Federal defenders began to rally. A full Union division moved forward and formed a crescent around the Confederates now trapped in Fort Stedman. The area between the lines was covered with Union fire, so escape was difficult at best. No Confederate reinforcements were available, due in part to train breakdowns. By 07:30 hours the battle was over, and those Confederates who could escape the Federals had done so. Lee’s report on the attack was not wholly truthful: “It was found that the enclosed works in the rear, commanding enemy’s main line, could only be taken at great sacrifice, & troops were withdrawn to original position. It being impracticable to bring off captured guns, owing to the nature of ground, they were disabled and left. Our loss reported is not heavy.” In fact, it was quite heavy, totaling 10 percent of Lee’s entire army, some 4,000 men, mostly trapped in the fort and forced to surrender. Moreover, Union troops

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The Confederate national flag, third pattern. This was the last flag officially adopted by the South and was issued in limited numbers on March 4, 1865, barely a month before the end of the war. It was a variation of the second pattern flag, and its distinctive red band was introduced to prevent the “Stainless Banner” from being mistaken for a white flag of surrender.

had counterattacked, capturing a long section of the Confederate picket posts, putting Lee’s lines in even greater danger. Union casualties were fewer than 1,500 officers and men. The Fort Stedman assault would be the last attack of the Army of Northern Virginia. The next day Sheridan’s troops, fresh from clearing the Valley of the remnants of Early’s forces, crossed the James and headed toward the Army of the Potomac. These additional numbers would make a successful Confederate defense even less likely. Lee began to prepare to abandon Petersburg and, with it, Richmond. On March 29 he sent Pickett’s infantry and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry toward Five Forks, with orders to hold that junction against the Union advance, which he felt was sure to come shortly. “Hold Five Forks at all hazards,” Lee told Pickett as he saw him off. Pickett’s men dug in there, a place whose loss would threaten the only possible line of retreat for Lee’s army from Petersburg. Federals were that day already skirmishing at Lewis’s Farm near Gravelly Run, at the junction of the Quaker and Boydton Roads (the scene of the sharpest fighting) and on the Vaughan Road near Hatcher’s Run. Further west, Sheridan’s cavalry headed toward Dinwiddie Court House south of Five Forks, to be joined by two full Union corps. Rain, more than Confederate defenders, slowed the Union advance. On March 30 the Union II Corps pressed closer to the Confederate line at Hatcher’s Run, while V Corps took a line toward Gravelly Run. Cavalry struck Fitzhugh Lee’s troops at Five Forks, but the Confederate defenders held their line. Elsewhere, Union reconnaissance suggested to Grant that Lee had so weakened his position to save his right that a general advance on the Confederate line was now possible. In fact, Lee had only 1,000 men per mile (1.6 km) to defend 11 miles (17 km) of trenches. The Battle of Five Forks The heavy rains ended the morning of March 31 as Sheridan’s men coming from Dinwiddie Court House took on the Confederate line. The Union II Corps was sent to reinforce the attacks. Pickett could see his 10, 000 men in the area were far weaker than the enemy forces, and pulled back that night toward tighter positions near Five Forks. He placed Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry on the right and then his two brigades in line

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between the cavalry and two weak regiments on the left, with six rifled cannon at wide intervals. As the men waited for a Federal advance in the late morning of April 1, Pickett and Fitzhugh Lee joined MajorGeneral Thomas Rosser for a lunch of fresh shad which the cavalry general had just brought back from the Nottoway River. Rosser later described the scene: “While we were at lunch couriers came in from the officers commanding the pickets on the White Oak and other parallel roads, reporting the advance of the enemy. Some time was spent over lunch, during which no firing was heard, and we concluded that the enemy was not in much of a hurry to find us at Five Forks. A courier sent by General Pickett from my position to Five Forks was fired on just over the creek, and came galloping back and reported the enemy in the road in front of us and just in the rear of our position at Five Forks! General Pickett ordered me to push a line of skirmishers over the creek and ascertain the truth of the matter. About this time the battle broke out along all the line at Five Forks. My skirmishers were driven back and the enemy appeared in large force in my front. General Pickett made an effort to join his command, which was then fighting in front of him, but failed, the enemy being between him and his command… The Battle of Five Forks was of short duration, but quite used up that portion of our army which was engaged in it.” The Federals had struck with V Corps, three cavalry divisions, and a brigade from the Army of the James, in all some 30,000 men attacking a leaderless 10,000. The left flank was held by the 24th North Carolina which was hit on the flank, front, and rear, and broke quickly, most surrendering, save for a handful who managed to flee through the woods. The Union attack could not be resisted, and as their line rolled up, most of the Confederates were taken prisoner rather than being killed or wounded. Fitzhugh Lee’s troopers managed to withdraw in relatively good order. Indeed, toward evening, reported staff officer Francis Dawson, they made “a desperate charge…in which we lost heavily.” Federal cavalry captured some 2,000, while V Corps reported taking 3,244 men with 1 cannon and 11 colors, while losing only 634 men themselves. One of the dead was William Pegram, one of the Confederacy’s best artillery commanders. Losses were heavier than had been taken at Fort Stedman, and represented an even higher percentage of Lee’s army than losses there. To make matters worse, the Federals were close to the South Side Railroad, almost encircling Petersburg south of the Appomattox River. The next day (April 2) Lee advised the War Department, “I see no prospect of doing more than holding our position here till night. I am not certain that I can do that. If I can I shall withdraw tonight north of the Appomattox, and if possible it will be better to withdraw the whole line tonight from James River… I advise that all preparation be made for leaving Richmond tonight.” Four years of defending Richmond were coming to an end. Indeed, the early morning of April 2 the Federals struck all along the lines. A.P.Hill heard the artillery fire and rode off for Lee’s headquarters, accompanied by Sergeant G.W.Tucker, to see what was going on. There he heard that Southern lines had been penetrated, and headed back to his command. Riding through open fields they suddenly came upon two Union skirmishers, who promptly surrendered to the mounted men. Then they saw another small group and rode by them. Finally, not far from Heth’s headquarters, they saw two more and tried to ride them down. The Union soldiers fired at almost point blank range, killing Hill. Tucker escaped back to Lee’s headquarters to report the general’s death. Meanwhile, on the frontlines the Federals were everywhere. They overran the rifle pits in front of Fort Mahone, but Confederates reinforced the position, trapping the Federals in the rifle pits, and successfully defended the post. However, VI Corps, which struck at 04:30 hours, smashed through Heth’s and Wilcox ‘s divisions right in front of Lee’s headquarters. As Longstreet later wrote, “The divisions of Heth and Wilcox moved to the right and left to collect their broken files. [Union] General Wright wheeled to the right and massed the Sixth Corps for its march to Petersburg, and was joined by [Union] General Gibbon.” Many of Hill’s men rallied at Forts Gregg and Whitworth, some 300 yards (274 m) apart and around 1,000 yards (900 m)

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As 1865 began, Grant continued his strategy of pressurizing Lee’s extended lines to the south and west. Without waiting for better spring weather, he ordered an attack on Hatcher’s Run on February 5, and on March 31 ordered Sheridan to cut the Boydton Plank Road at Dinwiddie Court House. The Union victory here and a day later at Five Forks convinced Lee that he would have to evacuate Petersburg before the South Side Railroad and his last line of retreat to the west was also cut.

behind the main line of entrenchments. A partially finished trench ran between the two, and Federals poured into this trench. An attack took Fort Whitworth easily, as Wilcox, feeling it could not be held, pulled most of his men out before the attack hit. Most of those still in the fort were soon taken prisoner. The Confederates had to hold Fort Gregg at least until Longstreet could put his men into a line from Battery 45 to the Appomattox River. Only 500 men were there to hold the position. The Federals then attacked Fort Gregg, but the defenders held against attack after attack, wounded men loading rifles and passing them to men behind the fort’s walls. One soldier recalled firing 80 rounds of ammunition during the fight, more than his cartridge box actually held. Finally, Lee ordered Fort Gregg abandoned, just as the Federals were preparing for their last assault on it. The Confederates left 57 dead, 129 wounded, and 30 prisoners compared to Federal losses of 714. The defenders had gained enough time for Longstreet to stabilize his line on Indian Town Creek. Elsewhere on the line Gordon held his second line of defense, although his first had fallen and his units were so undermanned that one infantryman was available for every 8 feet (2.5 m) of front. On the extreme right Anderson and Bushrod Johnson had reached Church Crossing on Ford Road. It was obvious to all that Petersburg could no longer be held and that Richmond would also have to be abandoned. After night fell, Lee sent orders to all his commanders to pull out and head west, ordering, “The movement of all troops will commence at 8 p.m., the artillery moving out quietly first, infantry following except the pickets, who will be withdrawn at 3 a.m.… Every officer is expected to give his unremittent attention to cause these movements to be made successfully.” He then telegraphed Richmond, “It is absolutely necessary that we should abandon our position tonight, or run the risk of being cut off in the morning. I have given all the orders to

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The last units of Ewell’s command surrendered to the Union VI Corps, April 6. In these final days, many proud Confederate regiments, though forced to capitulate, refused to hand over their battle flags, preferring instead to burn or bury them. One color sergeant of the 44th North Carolina on the march out of Petersburg weighted his flag with a stone and committed it to the Appomattox River rather than see it in the hands of Yankees.

officers on both sides of the river, & have taken every precaution that I can to make the movement successful. It will be a difficult operation, but I hope not impracticable. Please give all orders that you find necessary in & about Richmond. The troops will all be directed to Amelia Court House.” Anderson received the job of moving his men to Bevill’s Bridge, across the Appomattox, where he would halt and defend the crossing from the western side of the river. Federal cavalry pursued, skirmishing with Anderson’s men along the way. Many of the men in the ranks, especially those on either ends of the lines who were unaware of the breakthrough in the center, had no idea that they were part of a general retreat. H.C.Wall, 23rd North Carolina, recalled afterward that “such was the general confidence in the skill of our leaders and the prowess of the troops, that the quiet withdrawal by night from the trenches around Petersburg aroused little suspicion that all was not well, and it was not until the march had taken direction to and through the halfdeserted streets, and noble women were observed weeping as in the agony of despair, that the realization came forcibly to mind that the once lovely ‘Cockade City’ was being abandoned to the ruthless invader.” Not all women were in such despair; one soldier heard them yell at the passing troops, “Goodbye, boys. We’ll drink pure coffee with sugar tomorrow. Hard times come again no more.” Lieutenant-Colonel W.W.Blackford, 1st Regiment of Engineer Troops, was in camp near the army’s pontoon bridges on the James River on April 2. Suddenly he received “an order in hot haste from General Lee for us to burn the pontoon bridges and all the other bridges below, opposite the town, as quickly as possible. The enemy had broken our lines and was marching into the town. As soon as the bridges were destroyed we were to march westward parallel with the railroad.” The regiment went right to work and then, its work done, started west. Abandoning the Petersburg Line Some men got away on railroad trains from Richmond rather than on foot. Captain W.T.Hill of the Texas Brigade recalled that “On Saturday night, April 2d, 1865, the brigade received orders to be in readiness to march at daylight next morning. Starting at the appointed hour, it marched into Richmond, there boarded

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On leaving Petersburg and Richmond on April 2, Lee ordered the army to concentrate at Amelia Court House. This was gained on April 5, but Grant was in hot pursuit with overwhelming numbers. Lee was forced north of the Appomattox and fought rearguard actions at Sayler’s Creek on the 6th and Farmville on the 7th. By now, however, Sheridan had raced ahead. On April 8 he was across the railroad at Appomattox Station. With the enemy to his front and rear, and with his route south blocked by the river and his men starving, Lee was compelled to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia.

cars, and about noon reached the north side of the Appomattox, opposite Petersburg… Our orders were to take position at the fords and crossings of the Appomattox, and prevent the passage of the enemy to its north bank. That our army on the south side of the stream had abandoned its intrenchments, and was now in full retreat, was evident, for we could see long lines of Federals marching westward from Petersburg. They made no effort to cross the Appomattox, though, and we had little to do. About 11 o’clock that night the brigade commenced its march westward, bringing up the rear of Lee’s army. Fires lighted up the heavens in every direction, the Confederates seeming determined to destroy everything that would be of service to the enemy.” The 1st Regiment of Engineers found itself in an unusual parade, one that included the Richmond garrison as well as sailors from the James River Squadron. “I remember the naval brigade particularly,” wrote Blackford. “The sailors did well enough on the march, but there were the fat old captains and commodores, who had never marched anywhere but on a quarter-deck before in their lives, limping along puffing and blowing, and cursing everything black and blue. Then came a perfect army of bureau clerks, quartermasters, commissaries, and ordnance officers dressed in fine clothes and uniforms, with white faces, scared half to death, fellows who had for the most part been in those bomb-proof offices ever since the war began and who did not relish the prospect of smelling powder now, nor of having to rough it a bit like ordinary mortals in the field.” The engineers were assigned to the rear of Lee’s army. “During the retreat our regiment formed the rear guard on the road we traveled, breaking up the bridges as we passed and constructing new ones as much as possible in the advance. The enemy, however, did not annoy our rear much; he was striking for the head of the retreating columns,” Blackford wrote. The army, joined by survivors of Pickett’s division from Five Forks, marched all day toward Amelia Court House, while the Federals followed, not in the rear as Blackford noted, but essentially along a parallel

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road to Burkeville. Grant’s idea was to intercept Lee to keep him from turning the army south and heading for Johnston’s army, which had not long before been defeated by the Federals at Bentonville. Other Union troops, from the Army of the James, occupied Richmond and Petersburg as senior Confederate government officials—including Jefferson Davis—fled to Danville by train on April 2. It was obvious that, as one of Lee’s staff officers noticed, “A sense of relief seemed to pervade the ranks at their release from the lines where they had watched and worked for more than nine weary months. Once more in the open field, they were invigorated with hope, and felt better able to cope with their powerful adversary.” But the Army of Northern Virginia was no longer well organized. Sergeant Benson recalled marching on April 4: “I do not remember seeing anywhere an organized body. Each man seemed to be for himself, getting along as fast or as slow as he was able.” Those long months of short rations and little exercise once their trenches were dug left the men weak, unable to march as rapidly as they had in previous years. Lieutenant J.F.J.Caldwell of McGowan’s brigade thought that “the whole left of the army was so crushed by the defeats of the last few days, that it straggled along without strength, and almost without thought. So we moved on in disorder, keeping no regular column, no regular pace. When a soldier became weary, he fell out, ate his scanty rations—if, indeed, he had any to eat—rested, rose and resumed the march when his inclination dictated. There were not many words spoken. An indescribable sadness weighed upon us.” There were skirmishes with Federals at Tabernacle Church or Beaver Pond Creek and at Amelia Court House on April 4, but they were not serious fights. By April 5 the survivors of the Army of Northern Virginia, as well as the accompanying garrison troops from Richmond, were around Amelia Court The Retreat from Richmond Staff officer McHenry Howard, part of Custis Lee’s Richmond garrison, described how the troops filed out of the defenses and started off west: “Generally the companies were marched by the right or left of companies to the rear, and there converging to form their respective battalions, these in turn concentrated still further to the rear into brigades, which finally formed the division line of march. The pickets were left out with orders to withdraw just before day and rapidly overtake the main body. To the relief of all, no notice seemed to be taken of our movement by the enemy; it would have produced a fearful scene of confusion had his batteries been opened on us at such a time. The different columns united with tolerable regularity and the division followed the route in rear of Kershaw’s across Wilton Bridge. The wagon train meanwhile had gone through Richmond to cross the James at one of the upper fords and meet the troops somewhere towards Farmville—we never saw it again.” E, Porter Alexander’s troops on the far left of the Confederate line were some of the last to escape, “The explosions of our little fleet of gunboats under Admiral Semmes at Drury’s Bluff were plainly heard and the terrific explosion of the arsenal in Richmond,” he recalled. “About sunrise, my last battalion passed and I followed, taking a farewell took at the city from the Manchester side, The whole river front appeared to be in flames.” By the end of April 2 the Confederate capital had been abandoned by its army and government and left as an open city for the looters and fire razers. The first Federal units arrived on the morning of Monday, April 3 and the United States flag was raised over the former capitol building. The city surrendered, order was restored, and on April 4, Abraham Lincoln made an official visit

House where Lee expected to find a train full of rations. Unfortunately, disrupted communications and bad rail lines prevented the arrival of the expected ration train. Lee was forced to spend the day sending troops out under the gray spring rain to find food from local farmers for his hungry men. He issued a proclamation: “The Army of Northern Virginia arrived here today, expecting to find plenty of provisions, which had been ordered to be placed here by the railroad several days since, but to my surprise and regret I find not a pound

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of subsistence for man or horse. I must therefore appeal to your generosity and charity to supply as far as each one is able the wants of the brave soldiers who battled for your liberty for four years…” In the meantime, artillerymen put guns they no longer had horses to pull on railroad cars that would go to Danville, while destroying ammunition that had been earlier sent to Amelia Court House. “This delay was fatal,” Lee later said, “and could not be retrieved.” In the meantime, scouts reported that Federal cavalry had taken Jetersville on the Danville Railroad southwest of Amelia Court House, blocking any way toward North Carolina. Lee considered trying to break through but, after reconnoitering the position himself, decided that the Federals were too strong to be forced. After spending the day at Amelia Court House, the army started further west toward Farmville, where rations had been ordered to be sent from Lynchburg. From Farmville, too, the army could turn south to Roanoke. Many didn’t make the march; during the early morning hours of April 5 almost an entire company of the 9th Virginia Cavalry slipped away, and they were far from being alone. The march west from Amelia Court House was the hardest the troops had ever experienced. John Haskell later recalled, “Day and night we were attacked by Sheridan’s men. Whenever we halted to drive off our assailants, they were quickly and heavily reinforced, so we would have hard fighting, often getting the worst of it, losing men as prisoners besides the killed and wounded. In addition, men began to get hopeless as we left their homes behind and dropped out in great numbers. Those who stayed showed great pluck. For days they were without rest or food, except for the scant supplies that we could get on Dispersing the Army A number of Lee’s senior officers suggested not surrendering the army, but ordering it dispersed, with the men making their way individually either to Johnston’s army in North Carolina, back to their home states to continue fighting there, or heading into the hills to fight a prolonged guerrilla war. Lee rejected all these suggestions. Shortly before the surrender, Lee held a council of war with senior officers and three possibilities were discussed. One was to surrender immediately; the second was to abandon all baggage and cut through Grant’s lines quickly and make a way to Johnston’s army. The second idea was discarded because the army could not fight long without the ammunition in its wagons. The third, Gordon later wrote, was, “to disband and allow the troops to get away as best they could, and reform at some designated point.” This was rejected, “because a dispersion over the country would be a dreadful infliction upon our impoverished people, and because it was most improbable that all the men would reach the rallying-point.” E.Porter Alexander was one of those who suggested taking to the woods or at least letting the men try to get back to their homes to report to the governors there, and he recorded Lee’s response: “There are here only about 15,000 men with muskets. Suppose two thirds, say 10,000 got away. Divided among the states their numbers would be too insignificant to accomplish the least good. Yes! The surrender of this army is the end of the Confederacy. As for foreign help I’ve never believed we could gain our independence except by our own arms. If I ordered the men to go to Gen. Johnston few would go. Their homes have been overrun by the enemy & their families need them badly, We have now simply to look the fact in the face that the Confederacy has failed. “As Christian men, Gen, Alexander, you & I have no right to think for one moment of our personal feelings or affairs, We must consider only the effect which our action will have upon the country at large. “Suppose I should take your suggestion & order the army to disperse to make their way to their homes. The men would have no rations & they would be under no discipline. They are already demoralized by four years of war. They would have to plunder & rob to procure subsistence. The country would be full of lawless bands in every part, & a state of society would ensue from which it

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would take the country years to recover. Then the enemy’s cavalry would pursue in the hopes of catching the principal officers, & wherever they went there would be fresh rapine & destruction, “But it is still early in the spring, & if the men can be quietly & quickly returned to their homes there is time to plant crops & begin to repair the ravages of the war, That is what I must now try to bring about.”

the road.” Benson agreed. “I do not remember that we had rations issued at any time, but must shift for ourselves as best we could. The march was kept up day and night. We rested at odd and uncertain intervals, sleeping as we lay down with gun in hand, bundled up with whatever baggage we carried, which was rarely more than blanket, haversack, canteen, and cartridge box. As we marched along in column, many short halts occurred, caused by some obstacle in front. At first I would stand waiting, as did nearly all, expecting every moment to go on. But soon, along with many others, I fell into the practice of lying down whenever there was a halt, and so got many a good little rest, for in our exhausted state it took but a moment to drop off to sleep.”

General Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia to General Grant, Sunday, April 9, 1865. Lee had ridden to the McLean house accompanied by only one staff officer, Colonel Charles Marshall, and an escorting member of Grant’s staff, Colonel Orville Babcock. The surrender negotiations were completed by a formal exchange of letters. Lee informed Davis of his surrender in a letter written from Richmond on April 20.

On the morning of April 6 Lee’s army neared Farmville and the High Bridge crossings of the Appomattox River. Longstreet’s wagons were in the rear of I and III Corps with Anderson and Ewell following. Gordon’s Corps brought up the rear. When they reached the two forks of Sayler’s Creek, a tributary of the Appomattox River, that afternoon, they became split, Gordon’s troops taking a road across Little Sayler’s Creek to the north, while the rest headed on Rice’s Station Road to the south. Ewell now was in the rear and closing up on Anderson. At that moment the Federals struck both separated columns. To the north the Union VI Corps struck Ewell’s 3,000 troops, while Federal cavalry struck the exposed wagon train to the south, burning a number of wagons. This pincer movement was designed to cut off the rear portion of Lee’s retreating army. As Gordon later wrote, “The advance of Grant’s army struck Ewell upon one road and my command upon another almost simultaneously. Rushing through the broad gap between Ewell and

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myself, the heavy Federal force soon surrounded the command of that brave old one-legged hero, and forced him to surrender. Another Union column struck my command while we were endeavoring to push the ponderous wagon-trains through the bog, out of which the starved teams were unable to drag them. Many of these wagons, loaded with ammunition, mired so deep in the mud that they had to be abandoned. It was necessary to charge and force back the Union lines in order to rescue my men from this precarious position.” Ewell had placed local defense troops and Richmond garrison artillery fighting as infantry on the left, with the naval troops formed into a battalion to the right rear. Older infantry brigades formed on the right. Ewell, unfortunately, lacked artillery, while Federal guns took up positions on the Hillsman farm where they covered the field. Their bombardment tore holes in the thin Confederate ranks and then the Federal infantry advanced. Most of Ewell’s units broke and fled, only the naval battalion standing and making a fight of it. Ewell himself was captured, along with other senior officers and Lee’s son Custis. On the other flank, Anderson attempted to fight his way through the enemy force that had deployed on the road in his front while holding off the Federals on his flank. It was a helpless situation. Anderson’s Corps of Pickett’s and Johnson’s divisions was essentially destroyed, with all but Wise’s brigade being captured, along with 15 guns. In this brief action the Confederates lost some 8,000 men, about a quarter of Lee’s army. Lee, toward the head of the army, knew nothing about the fierce action at Sayler’s Creek. General William Mahone was with him and described how one of Lee’s staff members brought him word of the capture of the wagon train. “General Lee exclaimed, ‘Where is Anderson? Where is Ewell? It is strange I can’t hear from them.’ Then turning to me, he said, ‘General Mahone, I have no other troops, will you take your division to Sailor’s Creek?’ and I promptly gave the order by the left flank, and off we were for Sailor’s Creek, where the disaster had occurred. General Lee rode with me, Colonel Venable a little in the rear. On reaching the south crest of the high ground at the crossing of the river road overlooking Sailor’s Creek, the disaster which had overtaken our army was in full view, and the scene beggars description,— hurrying teamsters with their teams and dangling traces (no wagons), retreating infantry without guns, many without hats, a harmless mob, with the massive columns of the enemy moving orderly on. At this spectacle General Lee straightened himself in his saddle, and, looking more the soldier than ever, exclaimed, as if talking to himself, ‘My God! has the army dissolved?’ As quickly as I could control my own voice, I replied, ‘No, general, here are troops ready to do their duty;’ when in a mellowed voice, he replied, ‘Yes, general, there are some true men. Will you please keep those people back?’ Mahone’s men held their position until 21:00 hours that night, as the Federals were content with their success and did not attack further. Then Mahone pulled back and crossed the High Bridge, ordering it burned after the last of his troops had passed. Unfortunately the Federals moved too quickly and captured the bridge intact. They crossed the bridge and ran into Confederate resistance north of the Appomattox, where they were stopped. Terms of Surrender On April 7 Grant sent a message through the lines to Lee asking for his army’s surrender. Lee replied that he did not think the cause was yet hopeless, but asked for terms. In the meantime Confederate troops, constantly under pressure from their pursuers, turned back an attack at Farmville where rations had finally been delivered. This, and fighting north of the Appomattox, delayed Lee’s retreat, while Sheridan with a combined force of cavalry and infantry was able to move ahead west and north to positions at Appomattox Station and Court House, blocking Lee’s line of retreat to Lynchburg and effectively trapping the army.

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Grant replied to Lee’s message on April 8, stating that he had only one condition, “namely that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified from taking up arms again against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged.” He also offered to meet with Lee to discuss a possible surrender. Lee’s senior officers were divided on the subject. Pendleton told Lee that his subordinates had met and that in their opinion surrender was the proper thing to do. Lee was reported as having replied, “General, we have yet too many bold men to think of laying down our arms. The enemy do not fight with spirit, while our boys still do.” However, Lee met with his senior officers that night near Appomattox. The only real chance of a breakout would be if Federal cavalry alone were in front of them on the road to Lynchburg; with infantry as well it would be unlikely, but still the move had to be attempted. At dawn on April 9, Palm Sunday, Gordon’s infantry and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry attacked, with Longstreet following in support. Gordon’s men hit the breastworks the Federals had hurriedly prepared and overran them with two pieces of artillery. Then, as Gordon described, “The Confederate battle-lines were still advancing when I discovered a heavy column of Union infantry coming from the right and upon my rear.” Gordon fought hard to hold them back as yet another force of Union cavalry arrived, heading for a gap between him and Longstreet. He sent word back to Lee that he had been fought “to a frazzle” and needed support immediately. When he received word of this, Lee, knowing that Longstreet’s men were too few to do the job, said, “There is nothing left me but to go and see General Grant, and I had rather die a thousand deaths.” Lee then ordered white flags of truce raised all along the line as he sent word to Grant: “I ask a suspension of hostilities pending the adjustment of the terms of the surrender of this army.” The two generals met at the farmhouse of Wilmer McLean at Appomattox Court House in a scene that would enter history: Lee in the full dress uniform saved from his baggage and Grant in the undress blouse he wore in the field. Grant confirmed his terms: officers and men were paroled until exchanged and Confederate military property was to be given up. Officers’ side arms and horses were to be retained and both officers and men could go home until exchanged. Lee made the point that in the Confederate Army the men owned their own horses which would be now needed for spring planting. Grant, somewhat surprised, agreed to let the men take their horses and mules with them. He also offered to provide rations which Lee’s men desperately needed. Lee then agreed, and accepted the document from Grant outlining the terms, while giving Grant one accepting those terms. He then left the building, Grant following and the Union officers saluting Lee as he mounted his horse and rode off. “Our brigade surrendered its arms on the morning of the 12th of April,” Lieutenant Caldwell wrote. “A line of Federal soldiers was drawn up on each side of the road between us and Appomattox Court House. Immediately in front of one or the other of these, a Confederate command would perform the last humiliating task. We marched through the mud and rain, and did as the rest—stacked arms and colors, and then returned to make ready for our departure. “There was not great effort made at preserving discipline in the army, nor was it necessary; all that remained to do was a mere matter of business. We did not often see the chief officers of the army. I only saw Gen. Lee on the evening after the surrender. He had been to the front, probably making the final arrangements. As he passed along the main road, the soldiers from both sides of the road thronged out to see him and give him what proved to be, for many of us, the last greeting. I was not near enough to see his face or hear his voice; but I was told that he returned them his thanks, expressed the hope that he might again lead them to battle, and wept. I do not know how many of his hearers shed tears; but I remember that most of those who described the scene to me spoke with trembling lips and moist eyes.”

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The formal surrender of the of the arms and colors of the Army of Northern Virginia took place at Appomattox Court House on April 12. Neither Lee nor Grant were present. The surrender was led by General John B. Gordon and accepted by General Joshua Chamberlain. In a later report to Grant detailing the surrender, the size of Lee’s army was given as 30,000 men and 71 colors; 147 artillery pieces and 10,000 items of small arms.

Order of Battle Petersburg: April 2, 1865

Army of Northern Virginia (General Robert E.Lee) Artillery (Brigadier-General William N.Pendleton) Engineers (Brigadier-General Walter B.Stevens) 1st Regiment of Engineer Troops 2nd Regiment of Engineer Troops, Co’s C, G. H, K Provost Guard 5th Alabama Battalion 48th Georgia (one company) I Corps (Lt-Gen James Longstreet) Pickett’s Division (Maj-Gen George E.Pickett) Steuart’s Brigade (Brig-Gen George H.Steuart) 9th, 14th, 38th, 53rd, 57th Virginia Corse’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Montgomery D.Corse) 15th, 17th, 29th, 30th, 32nd Virginia Hunton’s Brigade 8th, 18th, 19th, 28th, 56th Virginia Terry’s Brigade (Brig-Gen William R.Terry) 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th, 24th Virginia Field’s Division (Maj-Gen Charles W.Field) Anderson’s Brigade 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th, 59th Georgia Law’s Brigade 4th, 15th, 47th, 48th Alabama Bratton’s Brigade 1st South Carolina Volunteers 1st South Carolina Rifles 5th South Carolina 6th South Carolina Palmetto Sharpshooter Battalion Benning’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Henry L.Benning) 2nd, 15th, 17th, 20th Georgia Gregg’s Brigade (Colonel Robert M.Powell) 3rd Arkansas

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ORDER OF BATTLE: PETERSBURG, APRIL 2, 1865

1 st Texas 4th Texas 5th Texas Kershaw’s Division (Maj-Gen Joseph B.Kershaw) Wofford’s Brigade 16th Georgia 18th Georgia 24th Georgia Cobb’s Legion Infantry Phillip’s Legion Infantry 3rd Georgia Sharpshooter Battalion Bryan’s Brigade 10th, 50th, 51st, 53rd Georgia Humphrey’s Brigade 13th, 17th, 18th, 21st Mississippi Corps Artillery Reserve (Brig-Gen E.Porter Alexander) Huger’s Artillery Battalion Madison Light Artillery Brooks Artillery Ashland Artillery Bedford Artillery Parker Light Artillery 12th Virginia Artillery Battalion, Co. C Haskell’s Artillery Battalion 10th North Carolina Artillery, Co D 13th North Carolina Artillery Battalion, Co. F 2nd Palmetto Light Battery Nelson Light Artillery Cabell’s Artillery Battalion Pulaski Artillery Troup Artillery 10th North Carolina Artillery Battalion, Co. A Richmond Howitzers, 1st Company Hardaway’s Artillery Battalion Richmond Howitzers, 3rd Company 1st Rockbridge Artillery Powhatan Artillery Salem Flying Artillery Stark’s Artillery Battalion La Guard Artillery McComas Light Artillery Matthews Light Artillery Johnson’s Artillery Battalion (Lt-Col Marmaduke Johnson) Fredericksburg Artillery

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Johnson’s/Clutter’s Battery II Corps (Maj-Gen John B.Gordon) Grimes’ Division (Maj-Gen Bryan Grimes) Battle’s Brigade 3rd, 5th, 6th, 12th, 61st Alabama Cox’s Brigade (Brig-Gen William R.Cox) lst/3rd North Carolina State Troops 2nd North Carolina State Troops 4th North Carolina State Troops 14th North Carolina 30th North Carolina Grimes’ Brigade (Colonel David G.Cowand) 32nd North Carolina Regiment/2nd North Carolina Battalion 43rd North Carolina 45th North Carolina 53nd North Carolina Cook’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Philip Cook) 4th, 12th, 21st, 44th Georgia Ramseur’s Division (Brig-Gen James A.Walker) Pegram’s Brigade 13th, 31st, 49th, 51st, 52nd, 58th Virginia Lewis’ Brigade 6th North Carolina State Troops 21st North Carolina 54th North Carolina 57th North Carolina Johnston’s Brigade (Colonel John W.Lea) 5th North Carolina State Troops 12th North Carolina 20th North Carolina 23rd North Carolina 1st North Carolina Sharpshooter Battalion Gordon’s Division Evans’ Brigade 13th, 26th, 31st, 38th, 60th, 61st Georgia 12th Georgia Artillery Battalion Stonewall Brigade 4th/5th/27th/33rd Virginia 21 st/25th/42nd/44th/48th Virginia 10th/23rd/37th Virginia York’s Brigade 5th/6th/7th/8th/9th Louisiana 1st Louisiana Volunteers/2nd/1 0th/14th/15th Louisiana Corps Artillery (Brig-Gen Armistead L.Long) III Corps (Lt-Gen A.P.Hill)

333

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ORDER OF BATTLE: PETERSBURG, APRIL 2, 1865

Heth’s Division (Maj-Gen Henry Heth) Davis’s Brigade 2nd, 11th, 26th, 42nd Mississippi 1st Confederate Battalion Cooke’s Brigade (Brig-Gen John R.Cooke) 15th, 46th, 55th North Carolina MacRae’s Brigade (Brig-Gen William MacRae) 11th, 26th, 44th, 47th, 52nd North Carolina McComb’s Brigade 1st Tennessee, Provisional Army 7th Tennessee 14th Tennessee 17th/23rd Tennessee 25th/44th Tennessee 63rd Tennessee 2nd Maryland Battalion Wilcox’s Division (Maj-Gen Cadmus M.Wilcox) Thomas’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Edward L.Thomas) 14th, 35th, 45th, 49th Georgia Lane’s Brigade (Brig-Gen James H.Lane) 18th, 28th, 33rd, 37th North Carolina McGowan’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Samuel McGowan) 1st South Carolina, Provisional Army 1st South Carolina Rifles 12th South Carolina 13th South Carolina 14th South Carolina Scales’ Brigade (Colonel Joseph H.Hyman) 13th, 16th, 22nd, 34th, 38th North Carolina Mahone’s Division Weisiger’s Brigade 6th, 12th, 16th, 4lst, 61st Virginia Harris’ Brigade (Brig-Gen Nathaniel H.Harris) 12th/16th Mississippi 19th Mississippi 48th Mississippi Sorrel’s Brigade 3rd Georgia 22nd Georgia 48th Georgia 64th Georgia 2nd Georgia Battalion 10th Georgia Battalion Finegan’s Brigade 2nd, 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th Florida

THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

11th Florida/Bonaud’s Battalion Forney’s Brigade 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th Alabama Corps Artillery (Brig-Gen R.Lindsay Walker) Poague’s Artillery Battalion (Lt-Col William T.Poague) Madison Light Artillery l0th North Carolina, Co. C Albemarle Everett Artillery Brooke Artillery Lewis Artillery McIntosh’s Artillery Battalion Hardaway Artillery Danville Artillery 2nd Rockbridge Artillery Walker’s Battery Sumter Artillery Battalion, (Lt-Col John Lane) Co’s A, B, and E Pegram’s Artillery Battalion (Lt-Col William J.Pegram) 18th South Carolina Heavy Artillery Battalion, Co. C Crenshaw Battery Letcher Artillery Purcell Artillery Richardson’s Artillery Battalion Donaldsonville Artillery Huger Artillery Norfolk Light Artillery Blues Washington Artillery Battalion, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Companies IV Corps (Lt-Gen Richard H.Anderson) Johnson’s Division (Brig-Gen Bushrod R.Johnson) Gracie’s Bri 41st, 43rd, 59th, 60th Alabama 23rd Alabama Sharpshooter Battalion Ransom,s Brigade (Brigadier General Matt W.Ransom) 24th, 25th, 35th, 49th, 56th North Carolina Wallace’s Brigade (Brig-Gen William H.Wallace) 17th, 18th, 22nd, 23rd, 26th South Carolina Wise’s Brigade 26th, 34th, 46th, 59th Virginia Corps Artillery (Colonel Hilary P.Jones) 38th Virginia Artillery Battalion Fauquier Artillery (Co. A) Richmond Fayette Artillery (Co. B) Hampden Artillery (Co. C) 38th Battalion, Co. D

335

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ORDER OF BATTLE: PETERSBURG, APRIL 2, 1865

Blount’s Artillery Battalion Macon Light Artillery 10th North Carolina Artillery, Co. E 13th North Carolina Artillery, Co. C Mount Vernon Guards 12th Virginia Artillery Battalion, Co’s B and C Coit’s Artillery Battalion Confederate Guards Artillery Chesterfield Artillery Branch’s Battery Wright’s Battery Cavalry Corps (Maj-Gen Fitzhugh Lee) Rooney Lee’s Division (Maj-Gen William H.E Lee) Barringer’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Rufus Barringer) 1st North Carolina Cavalry 2d North Carolina Cavalry 3d North Carolina Cavalry 5th North Carolina Cavalry Roberts’ Brigade (Brig-Gen William P.Roberts) 8th Georgia Cavalry 4th North Carolina Cavalry 16th North Carolina Cavalry Battalion Beale’s Brigade 9th Virginia Cavalry 10th Virginia Cavalry 13th Virginia Cavalry 14th Virginia Cavalry Fitzhugh Lee’s Division (Colonel Thomas T.Munford) Wickham’s Brigade (Colonel William B.Woodridge) 1st Virginia Cavalry 2nd Virginia Cavalry 3rd Virginia Cavalry 4th Virginia Cavalry Detachment, dismounted cavalry Payne’s Brigade 5th Virginia Cavalry 6th Virginia Cavalry 8th Virginia Cavalry 36th Virginia Cavalry Battalion Gary’s Brigade (Brig-Gen Martin W.Gary) 7th Georgia Cavalry 7th South Carolina Cavalry Hampton’s Legion Cavalry 24th Virginia Cavalry Detachment, dismounted cavalry

THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA

James City Artillery Rosser’s Division (Maj-Gen Thomas L.Rosser) Rosser’s Brigade 7th Virginia Cavalry 11th Virginia Cavalry 12th Virginia Cavalry 35th Virginia Cavalry Battalion McCausland’s Brigade l6th Virginia Cavalry 17th Virginia Cavalry 21st Virginia Cavalry 22nd Virginia Cavalry Artillery (Lt-Col R.Preston Chew) McGregor’s Artillery Battalion (Major William M.McGregor) McClanahan’s Battery McGregor’s Battery Breathed’s Artillery Battalion (Major James Breathed) 2nd Baltimore Light Artillery Lynchburg Beauregard’s Artillery Johnson’s Artillery Battalion Charlottesville Artillery 1st Stuart Horse Artillery Thomson’s Artillery Battalion Ashby Artillery Lurty’s Horse Artillery Department of Richmond (Lt-Gen Richard S.Ewell) Lee’s Division (Maj-Gen George W.C.Lee) Barton’s Brigade 40th Virginia 47th Virginia 55th Virginia 22nd Virginia Battalion Richmond City Battalion, Local Defense Troops Moore’s Brigade 3rd Local Defense Troops 1st and 2nd Virginia Reserves 1st and 2nd Virginia Reserve Battalions VMI Cadet Battalion Lee’s Command 2nd Local Defense Troops Armory Battalion, Local Defense Troops Naval Battalion, Local Defense Troops Arsenal Battalion, Local Defense Troops 1st Virginia Reserve Brigade President’s Guard

337

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ORDER OF BATTLE: PETERSBURG, APRIL 2, 1865

Provost Guard C.S.Barracks 1st Invalid Battalion Artillery Heavy Artillery Brigade 10th, 18th, 19th, 20th, Virginia Heavy Artillery Battalions Chaffin’s Bluff Garrison Goochland Light Artillery Luneburg Artillery Notfolk Harbor Guard and Marine Artillery Pamunkey Artillery Braxton’s Artillery Battalion Alleghany Artillery Lynchburg, Lee’s Artillery Stafford Light Artillery King’s Artillery Battalion Botetourt Artillery 12th Virginia Artillery Battalion, Co. B Ringgold Bty 9th Georgia Artillery Battalion, Co’s A, B, C, D, E Lightfoot’s Artillery Battalion Caroline Artillery 2nd Nelson Artillery First Military District, Dept of North Carolina and Southern Virginia Walker’s Brigade 3rd Virginia Reserves 5th Virginia Reserve Battalion Virginia Reserve Battalion Attached artillery At Hickford Confederate States Zouave Battalion 4th Virginia Reserve Battalion Confederate Guards Artillery 8th Georgia Cavalry, Co. H At Petersburg Holcombe Legion 44th Virginia Battalion 3rd Virginia Reserve Battalion Hood’s Virginia Reserve Battalion Independent Signal Corps Hobson’s Company, Second Class Militia At Fort Clifton 34th Virginia, detachment 10th North Carolina Artillery, detachment At Drewry’s Bluff

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339

Confederate Marine Battalion, Companies A through C Neblett Heavy Artillery Battery At High Bridge 6th Virginia Reserve Battalion At Mattoax Bridge 18th Georgia Battalion 7th Virginia Reserve Battalion At Staunton River Bridge 8th Virginia Reserve Battalion At Danville 4th, 9th, 10th, 11th Virginia Reserve Battalions Artillery Cutshaw’s Artillery Battalion Richmond Howitzers, 2nd Company Orange Artillery Staunton Artillery McLaughlin’s Artillery Battalion Bryan Artillery Monroe Artillery Wise Legion Artillery, Co. C Smith’s Artillery Battalion Johnston Artillery (Battery Dantzier) Southside Artillery (Battery Garland) United Artillery (Battery Wood) Navy James River Squadron (Rear-Admiral Raphael Semmes) Tucker’s Naval Battalion (Source: Scott, Robert N., ed, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1880)

The Final Orders

General Order No. 9, April 10, 1865: After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the brave survivors of so many hard fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to the result from no distrust of them. But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that would compensate for the loss that must have attended the continuance of the contest, I determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of the agreement officers and men can return to their homes and remain until exchanged. You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed, and I earnestly pray that a Merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and with a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous considerations for myself, I bid you all an affectionate farewell. R.E.Lee, Genl

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations 1860 election 15, 16–19, 17 1864 election 327 abolitionism 12–14, 16 Advance 283 4th Alabama 93–4, 95 Alexander, Captain E. Porter 60, 75, 241, 256–7 Chancellorsville 196, 200–1 Gettysburg 223 Manassas 92–3, 96 Maryland campaign 156, 162–3 Peninsula campaign 130–2, 136 retreat 337, 338 Allen, William 132–3, 134, 189 ammunition 65–8 Anderson, Robert 21, 151, 169 Andrews, Sargeant W.H. 165, 279 Antietam Creek 52, 155, 160, 163 Appomattox 231, 238–9, 243, 336–41, 336, 339, 341 Appomattox River 326, 330, 333, 334–5 3rd Arkansas State Infantry 26 Armistead, Brigadier-General Lewis A. 225, 255 Army of Northern Virginia command structure 244–57, 253 flag 106 Order of Battle, April 2, 1865 342–3 rank and file 258–71 artillery 42, 57, 58–61, 100, 118 ammunition 65–8 field howitzer 56 manufacture 59 training 34 Ashby, Colonel Turner 108 Averell, William 192

Banks, Major-General Nathaniel P. 107, 108–11, 115, 141–2 Barclay, Ted 30, 105–6 Barksdale, William 173, 176 battalions 15 batteries 57, 61 Battle, Colonel Cullen 160 Beauregard, General P.G.T. 21, 25, 316, 319–22 Manassas 89–93, 94–9 Beaver Dam Creek 130, 131, 132–3 Bee, Bernard 93, 94, 95 Bell, John 16 Benjamin, Judah P. 37–8 Benson, Barry 46, 51, 77–8, 79 Bird, Edgeworth 270 Blackford, W.W. 14, 65–6, 97, 140, 142, 193, 335 blockade runners 64–5, 277, 283–4 Bloody Angle see Mule Shoe Bloody Lane 154, 164, 165, 169–71 Brandes, Henry 260 Brandy Station 210–11, 292 Brawner’s Farm see Groveton Breckinridge, John C. 16 Bridgeford, Chief Provost-Marshal D.B. 183 brigades, tactics 50 Bristoe Station 143, 293–6, 299 British Army 45 Brock Road 296, 297, 300, 303 Brown, Governor Joseph Emerson 272, 276–80, 284 Brown, John 13–14, 34 Bruce, George A. 237–8 Buford, John 218 Bull Run 83, 86, 89, 90, 92, 139, 144–5, 145 Bunker Hill 287 Burkeville 330 Burnside Bridge 160

Bald Hill 151 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad 102 345

346

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Burnside, General Ambrose E. 141, 147, 160, 163, 170, 172–89, 319 C&O Canal see Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Caldwell, Lieutenant J.F.K. 295, 299, 336, 341 camps see training camps Cashtown 215 Casler, John O. 31–3, 268, 271, 295, 308 Casler, William 94–5, 97, 103–4, 110, 111, 146, 156 cavalry 43, 53–6, 55, 306 Manassas 82, 88, 90, 96–7 Cedar Creek 325–7 Centreville 145, 149, 150, 295 Chaffin’s Bluff 321 Chamberlain, General Joshua 341 Chamberlayne, Ham 142, 146, 201, 207, 327 Chambersburg 214–15 Chancellorsville 78, 190–207, 195, 199, 205 maps 194, 197, 198, 200, 203 Charleston Zouave Cadets 38 Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal 102 Chesnut, Mary 267–8, 274 Chestnut, James 254, Chickahominy River 129, 130, 132–3, 319 Chilton, Robert 254 Clark, C.J. 281 Clay, Henry 16 Cold Harbor 312, 313, 315 command structure 244–57, 253 Commissary 76–9, 80 Company F 30, 111, 144 Confederate Army Regulations, 1863 32 Confederate battle flags 98, 150, 204, 292 Confederate national flags 65, 282, 324, 331 Confederate signal corps 96 conscription 38–40, 262–5, 284 Constitutional Union Party 16 Cooper, Edward 269 Cooper, General Samuel 37–8 Corps of Engineers 29 Corse, Montgomery 152 countermining 322–3, 327 Crampton’s Gap 160–1 Crater, The 318, 319, 322–3, 327 Crawford, Abel 270 crops 10, 11, 19, 24 Cross Keys 116, 117 CSS Virginia 23, 126 Culpeper 291–2

Custer, Brigadier-General George A. 315 Dabney, Major 136 Davis, Brigadier-General Joseph R. 275 Davis, President Jefferson 15, 18–21, 22, 76, 238, 274 Gettysburg 209 Maryland campaign 158 Peninsula campaign 120 Democratic Party 16 Denman, Buck 177–8 desertion 268, 270–1 Dickert, Augustus 121, 127, 176 Dimmock, Colonel Charles 29 Dinkins, James 180 Dooley, John 144, 151, 161, 170, 183, 207, 237 Douglas, Henry Kyd 14, 36, 207 Peninsula campaign 133, 134, 136 Shenandoah Valley 102–3, 104, 111, 117 Douglas, Stephen A. 16 Dunker Church 157, 163, 164, 165 Duplin Grays 28 Early, Lieutenant-General Jubal 177, 249–51 Chancellorsville 196, 199, 200, 204–5 Fredericksburg 178, 189 Manassas 88, 90, 98, 152 Petersburg 315, 316, 320, 323–5 Shenandoah Valley 116 Wilderness, The 303, 311, 312 Eggleston, George Cary 262 Elk Run 112 Elliott, Rt Revd Stephen 266 Emancipation Proclamation 171, 265 Evans, Colonel Nathan G. 93–4, 163 Everett, Edward 16 Ewell, Lieutenant-General Richard S. 212, 249, 334 Gettysburg 210, 211–15, 219, 221–3, 242 Manassas 89–90, 141, 143, 147, 152 Shenandoah Valley 112–14, 116–17 Wilderness, The 302–5, 309–11 F Company see Company F Fair Oaks 69, 118, 126, 127 Faller, Leo 137 Falling Waters 289 Federal Militia Act, 1792 14 field drills 47–50, 48–9, 50 field manuals 46–7 fighting ranges 144

INDEX

Fisher, Sidney George 83–4 Fisher’s Hill 320, 323, 323, 324 fitness 40–1 Five Forks 329, 331–3, 333 flags Army of Northern Virginia 106 Confederate battle 98, 150, 204, 292 Confederate national 65, 282, 324, 331 Fourth Bunting 292 Old Dominion 275 Second Bunting 150 Stainless Banner 282, 331 Stars and Bars 65, 324 Third Bunting 204 food 72–4 Fort Stedman 330–1 Fort Sumter 20, 21–3 Fourth Bunting flag 292 Franklin, Major-General William B. 127, 160 fraternization 180 Fredericksburg 141, 192, 195, 288, 298 Battle of 51, 172–89, 172, 175, 176, 185, 187 Fremantle, Lieutenant-Colonel A.J.L. 45, 53 Frémont, Major-General John C. 112, 115–16, 139 Front Royal 113, 115 Fulkerson, Samuel 104 Garnett, Brigadier-General Richard B. 110, 111, 252 General Order No.9 344 Gettysburg 54, 75, 208–27, 208, 217, 225 Confederate retreat 286–99, 286, 288, 289 maps 210, 213, 214, 218, 219, 221, 222, 224, 227 memorial 258 Gilham, Colonel William 33–4, 106, 246 Gilham’s Tactics 46, 47, 61 Gill, Captain W.G. 280 Gordon, General John B. 307, 319, 325, 330–1, 334, 341 Goree, Captain Thomas 275 Gorgas, Josiah 63 Grant, General Ulysses S. Appomattox 243, 336–41, 339 Petersburg 315, 318–21, 323, 326, 328–36 Wilderness, The 300–13 Grant, Lieutenant Sam 232 Gregg, Brigadier-General Maxcy 81, 252, 309 Groveton 146, 147–8, 148, 149 Hagerstown 157, 158–9, 164–7 Halleck, General Henry 147 Hamilton’s Crossing 199

347

Hamlin, Hannibal 16 Hampton, Wade 290, 315, 326 Hancock, Major-General Winfield S. 321 Hanger, George 43 Hardee, William 33, 51 Hardee’s Tactics 33–4, 47 Harper’s Ferry 13–14, 23–5, 28, 34, 317 Federal Arsenal 103 Maryland campaign 159, 161, 171 Union retreat to 115, 211 Harrison’s Landing 127, 130, 137 Haskell, Colonel John 127, 136, 265, 323, 337 Hatcher’s Run 329, 333, 333 Heintzelman, S.P. 126, 130 Henry Hill 94–9, 95, 141, 149 Henry House Hill 151 Heth, Major-General Henry 216–18, 294, 303, 304 Hill, Major-General Ambrose Powell 23, 242, 248, 252–3 Chancellorsville 203 Fredericksburg 181 Gettysburg 209, 216–18 retreat from 293–5 Manassas 143, 152 Maryland campaign 161, 167, 171 Peninsula campaign 130, 131, 132–3 Petersburg 318, 326–7, 333 Wilderness, The 302–5 Hill, Major-General Daniel H. 125, 130, 151, 182 Maryland campaign 154, 159, 163, 165, 168–9 Holmes, Brigadier-General Theophilus 137 Hood, General John Bell 183, 187, 188, 189, 223, 329 Hooker, Major-General Joseph 164–5, 186, 190–207, 210, 213, 214 Hopkins, Luther 21 horses 75–6 hospitals see infirmaries Hotchkiss, Jebediah 197, 201 Howard, McHenry 35, 36 Howard, Major-General O.O. 198 Huger, Benjamin 137 Hunter, Alexander 29, 133, 134, 170 Hunter, Major-General David 315–16 Indian Rush 52 infantry 43 field drills 47–50, 48–9, 50 organization 44 volleys 52, 53–4 infirmaries 78, 79, 271

348

INDEX

instruction camps see training camps Irish Brigade 181–2 Iron Brigade 147 Jackson, Lieutenant-General Thomas J. 23, 100, 110, 136, 190, 247–8, 252–3 Chancellorsville 197–200, 202, 205–7 death 205–7, 282 Fredericksburg 178–83 Manassas, First campaign 86, 95, 97, 99 Manassas, Second campaign 141, 142, 144–7; 148–52 Maryland campaign 158, 161, 165 Peninsula campaign 130, 134–7 reputation 104–6, 111–15 Shenandoah Valley 101–17 Jefferson, Thomas 17 Johnson, Herschel 16 Johnston, General Joseph E. 23–4, 85, 273–4 Gettysburg 209 Manassas 83, 85–6, 89–91, 95–6 Peninsula campaign 120–1, 123–7 Petersburg 329 Stonewall Jackson 104 Wilderness, The 302 Jones, Brigadier-General John 303 Jones, James 271 Jones, J.B. 193 Kelly’s Ford 296 Kenly, Major John 113 Kernstown 105, 109–10 Keyes, Erasmus 126 Kimball, Brigadier-General Nathan 111 King, Major-General Rufus 147 Lane, Joseph 16 Lee, Bob 168 Lee, Fitzhugh 142, 210, 290, 293, 315, 331–2 Lee, General Harry 231 Lee, General Robert E. 13, 23, 28–9, 190, 230–43, 230, 233, 236, 279 Appomattox 231, 238–9, 243, 336–41, 339 Chancellorsville 192, 194–7, 204 Cold Harbor 313, 315 Fredericksburg 173–4, 187, 188–9 Gettysburg 208–27 retreat from 286–99 health 236, 239, 240, 290, 311 logistics 74, 76

Manassas 141, 153, 240 Maryland campaign 154–71, 154 Mexican War 232–5 Peninsula campaign 125, 127–30, 132–7 Petersburg 314–27, 328–36 slavery 234–5 Spotsylvania 308–11 West Point 231–3 Wilderness, The 300–7 Letcher, Governor John 21–2, 31, 105, 277 Lewis, Second Lieutenant John 128–9, 137 Liberty Hall Volunteers 30 Light Horse Harry see Lee, General Harry Lincoln, Abraham 1860 election 15, 16–21 1864 election 327 Fredericksburg 173, 174–5, 184 Manassas 150 Peninsula campaign 119–20, 123, 126 Richmond 139 Lippitt, Colonel Francis 52 Little Round Top 217, 222, 224 logistics 63–80, 77, 78, 271, 280–3 Longstreet, Lieutenant- General James 244, 245–7, 252–3 Fredericksburg 178, 186, 188–9, 242 Gettysburg 215, 223–5 retreat from 291 Manassas 87–8, 148, 150–1, 152, 240 Maryland campaign 159, 161, 163 Peninsula campaign 125, 128, 130, 133–4 Petersburg 333–4 Wilderness, The 302, 305–7 Lord Clyde 283 Loring, Brigadier-General William W. 101, 103, 104 lost orders 168 Louisiana 260 Louisiana Zouaves 93 M1855 rifled musket 18 McClellan, Major-General George B. 1864 election 327 Fredericksburg 173–4 Manassas 139, 142, 147–8 Maryland campaign 156, 159–60, 162, 167, 169 Peninsula campaign 118–37 Shenandoah Valley 108 McDowell, Battle of 107, 112, 117 McDowell, Major-General Irvin 83, 84–9, 92–9 McGowan, Samuel 181 McKim, Randolph 76, 260 McLaws, Major-General Lafayette 151, 159, 173

INDEX

McPherson, James 261 Magruder, John B. Peninsula campaign 120, 121, 123–5, 132–3, 137 Mahan, D.H. 35 Mahone, General William 323, 339 Main Street, Richmond 31 Malvern Hill 134 Manassas First campaign 66, 82–99, 87, 90, 92, 95 Second campaign 53, 138–53, 135, 141, 143 Marcy, Nellie 248 marching 140 Martinsburg 317 Marye’s Heights 176, 178, 181, 186 Maryland campaign 154–71, 162, 165, 167, 252 Maryland (map) 84 Marylanders 259–60 Massaponix 180–1 Meade, General George Fredericksburg 181 Gettysburg 214, 222, 224, 226–7 retreat from 286–99 Wilderness, The 301, 305, 307–8 Mechanicsville 127, 130–4 Merrimack see CSS Virginia Miles, Colonel D.S. 161 militia system 14–15, 27 Mine Run 295–7 Minié balls 45–7 2nd and 11th Mississippi 93–4 Mississippi rifles 44 Mitchell, Mary B. 156 Model 1857 12-pounder Napoleon 42, 58–60 Moore, Edward 145, 146 Moore, Governor Thomas 280 Mosby, Major John S. 212–13 Mule Shoe 308, 310 Munford, Colonel Thomas 163 Myer, Major Albert J. 92, 96 Myers, Abraham C. 68 Napoleons see Model 1857 12-pounder Napoleon National Battlefield site 141 Negro Soldier Bill, 1865 270 New York Zouaves 83, 96–7 23rd North Carolina 36 Northrop, Lucius B. 72 Old Dominion flag 278 Orange Plank Road 301, 304–7 Orange Turnpike 195, 198, 205, 301

349

Ord, Major-General O. 330 Order of Battle, April 2, 1865 342–3 Ordnance Department 63, 64 Owen, William 149 Patterson, Major-General Robert 83, 85, 89 Pelham, John 193 Pember, Phoebe Yates 281 Pendleton, Brigadier-General William N. 202, 251 Peninsula campaign 118–37, 122 Fair Oaks 69, 118, 126, 127 Mechanicsville 127, 130–4 Seven Days’ Battle 127, 131, 134–7, 135, 242 Williamsburg 124–5, 124 Pennsylvania 208–27 Perrin, Lieutenant-Colonel Jason 52 Petersburg 314–27, 314, 316, 318, 319, 326, 328–36, 325 Order of Battle, April 2, 1865 342–3 physical examinations 37 Pickett, Major-General George E. 330–3 Pickett’s Charge 50, 75, 79 Pinkerton, Alan 120 Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh) 109 Plank Road 301, 304–7 Poague, William 39, 108, 114, 116, 144, 167, 294, 296 Polk, James 232 Polley, J.B. 317, 325 Pope, Major-General John 111, 132, 138–53, 156 Port Republic 117 Porter, Fitz John 131–2, 148–50, 174 Potomac River 286–99 Puritans 11 Quakers 11 Quartermasters 68–71, 80 raids 53, 54, 56–8 railroads 20, 72–5 strategic attacks 102 troop movement 85, 86, 89 rank and file 258–71 Rapidan River 290, 291, 296 Rappahannock River 176, 179 Chancellorsville 192, 196, 203 Fredericksburg 172–89 Gettysburg 210–11 retreat from 292–3 Manassas 141, 143–5 rebel yell 116

350

INDEX

recruitment 27–31 conscription 38–40, 262–5, 284 regulations 32 volunteers 15, 27–31, 28, 38–9, 263 regiments 15, 48–9, 50–1 Reid, J.W. 40, 93, 129 religious revivals 264 Republican Party 15, 16–19 Reynolds, General John F. 192 Rhett, Robert Barnwell 16–17 Richardson, Colonel Israel B. 86–8 Richardson, State Adjutant General William H. 15 Richmond 31, 35–6, 298, 302 Chancellorsville 193–4 Fredericksburg 174 Peninsula campaign 120, 122, 124–6, 127–8, 134–7, 135 retreat from 315, 336–7 Wilderness, The 300–13 Richmond Howitzers 14 Richmond Light Infantry Blues 14, 30 rifled muskets 18, 45–7, 63–4 Romney 101, 103 Rosser, Brigadier-General Thomas 296, 297 Rude’s Hill 108 Ruffner, Kevin 259 Scheibert, Justus 47 Scott, Winfield 33, 232, 241 Scott’s Tactics 33, 34, 47 secession 16–18, 17, 259 Second Bunting flag 150 Sedgwick, John 194,200, 204–5 Seven Days’ Battle 127, 131, 134–7, 135, 242 Seven Pines see Fair Oaks Sharpsburg 154, 161–2, 162 sharpshooters 70 Shenandoah Valley 101–17, 102, 320, 320 Kernstown 105, 109–10 McDowell, Battle of 107, 112, 117 Winchester 75–6, 101, 103–4, 107–11, 113, 114–16, 114 Sheridan, General Phil 315, 320, 323, 324–5, 336–7 Sherman, General William 269, 301, 329 Shields, Brigadier-General James 105, 108–9, 115–16 Shields, John C. 33 shoes 71–2, 146–7, 267 Shorter, Governor John 281 Sickles, Major-General Daniel 198–9, 222, 224

Simpson, Tally 35–6, 68, 125, 288–9 Skirmish Drill 50 skirmishers 51, 52 slavery crops 10, 11, 19, 24 introduction 11–12 Lee, General Robert E. 234–5 ownership 12–13, 13 secession 16–18, 17 Smith, G.W. 127 Snaveley’s Ford 163 snipers 70 soap 79 Sorrel, G. Moxley 35, 79, 252, 256 Fredericksburg 189 Maryland campaign 169 Peninsula campaign 126, 131 Wilderness, The 307 4th South Carolina 93 Southern Democratic Party 16 Spotsylvania 305, 305, 308–11, 310 Stainless Banner 282, 331 Starke, Brigadier-General William E. 139 Stars and Bars flags 65, 324 state authorities 272–85 state supply systems 68–71 Stephens, Alexander 18 Stevens, John 166 Stevens, Jonathan 35, 36–7 Stiles, Robert 60, 177 Stone Bridge 145, 145 Stonewall Jackson see Jackson, Lieutenant-General Thomas J. Stuart, Major-General J.E.B. 13, 23, 54, 249 Chancellorsville 193, 203, 204 Gettysburg 211, 216, 220, 225 retreat from 292–3 Manassas, First campaign 88, 90, 96–7 Manassas, Second campaign 142, 143 Peninsula campaign 125, 126, 129–30, 132, 135 West Point 233 Wilderness, The 309 Sunken Road see Bloody Lane Susquehanna River 209, 215 Taliaferro, William B. 15, 143, 147 Taylor, General Walter H. 144–5, 242, 257 Taylor, Major-General Zachary 232 Taylor, Richard 72, 112, 115–17 Taylor, Thomas 62

INDEX

Terrett, George Hunter 29 Texas Brigade 36 5th Texas Infantry 35 Third Bunting flag 204 Thornwell, James 12 Todd’s Tavern 296, 297 Totopotomoy Creek 131 training camps 27, 30–4, 40–1, 47 regulations 32 trains 86 Traveler 236, 243 trenches 316 Trimble, Isaac 143 Tucker, Sargeant G.W. 333 Tyler, Brigadier-General Daniel 86–8 uniforms 26, 28, 38, 66–72, 146–7, 280–3 USS Merrimack see CSS Virginia USS Monitor 126 Valley Turnpike see Shenandoah Valley Vance, Governor Zebulon 281–2, 283 Veteran Reserve Corps 318 Vicksburg 60–1, 209, 227 1 st Virginia Cavalry 83, 88, 90, 96–7 3rd Virginia Infantry Regiment 30 Virginia 24, 84 Virginia Military Institute (VMI) 23, 33, 245 4th Virginia Regiment 30 volleys 52, 53–4 volunteers 15, 27–31, 28, 38–9, 263 von Borcke, Heros 126 voting for officers 39–40 Walker, Brigadier-General W.H.T. 275 Walker, Leroy P. 21, 278 Walker, Major-General John 164 Wall, H.C. 36, 299, 335 Wallace, Major-General Lew 317 Warrenton Junction 290, 293 Warrenton Turnpike 145, 147–8, 153, 293 Washington, D.C. 101, 123, 290, 291 Washington Mounted Rifles 14 weapons, homegrown 67 Welbourn, Richard E. 206 West Point 35 West Woods 166–9 Whiting, Brigadier-General W.H.C. 274–5 Wilcox, Cadmus 303, 304

Wilderness, The 194–6, 299, 300–7, 300, 304 Wiley, Bell Irvin 260, 261 Williamsburg 124–5, 124 Winchester 101, 103–4, 107–11 First Battle 113, 114–15, 114 Third Battle 75–6 Union seizure 108–11 Union withdrawal 115–16 Winchester rifles 66 winter quarters 41 women, logistics 77 Wood, Captain James 103, 115–17 Worsham, John H. 30, 51, 236–7, 265–6 Gettysburg, retreat from 289–90, 296–7 logistics 76–7, 78 Manassas 141, 143–4 Maryland campaign 164 Shenandoah Valley 104, 108, 110–11, 113 Wyatt-Brown, Bertram 235 Yorktown 121, 123–6 Zollicoffer, F.K. 277–8

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