House Divided (108 page)

“Invade the North?” He reflected. “Draw them to battle on ground of our choosing? Fight another Fredericksburg, but this time on terrain where we can follow up a victory?” He said with a deep certainty: “Give me a position where they must attack, and I will give you another Fredericksburg.”

“We can't march away and leave those people here with the road to Richmond open,” Lee reminded him. “But if General Hooker waits to see what we will do, he leaves the initiative to us. We will use it.”

 

So once more they would invade the North; and there was a challenging promise in the thought. But when Longstreet was alone, he remembered an army of barefoot men hurrying into Maryland last September; an army from which sheer exhaustion stole hundreds day by day; an army whose thinned ranks faced twice or thrice its numbers on the hills at Sharpsburg, and which held its ground there only
because not to do so was to die. If they were to thrust north again, then let there be no haste, keep the men unwearied, maneuver the enemy into a position where he must attack, and where when he faltered there would be room to drive and scatter him.

Longstreet was sure General Lee agreed with this design; but Lee had an eager heart for battle, and that fighting heart might betray him. So before any move was made, they must talk a while. They must talk here in Virginia, calmly and thoughtfully. They must make their decisions here while the blood still ran slowly and the mind was clear. Then, their tactics predetermined, they would be safe against betrayal by the hot lust for battle. When they moved, their heads must all be cool, their plans already formed, their design to seek another Fredericksburg and then a chase and a great shattering.

But first there was much to do. Jackson was dead; Jackson and his cool head and his hot heart were gone. That meant reorganization. General Lee shaped the army into three corps instead of two. Ewell would have one of them; it was his due. When Lee spoke of Powell Hill, Longstreet urged that as surely as Ewell deserved the Second Corps, so did Harvey Hill, rather than Powell Hill, deserve the Third.

“He's never gone wrong, General,” he urged. “He began well at Bethel, Seven Pines was his battle, he held off half McClellan's army at South Mountain, he had the hardest contention at Sharpsburg.” He added in a lighter tone: “He's General Jackson's brother-in-law, and he has some of Jackson's fighting qualities.”

But Harvey Hill was in North Carolina with hard work to do there, so Powell Hill was the choice. Well, General Lee had the right to choose his tools; but Powell Hill would need watching. Longstreet remembered the episode after Seven Pines when he and Hill came near the absurdity of a duel; but this memory did not influence him now. Hill had always been a good fighting man, a good leader for brigade or division; but Longstreet did not consider him fit for corps command. He lacked the quality of patience, the ability to wait before he struck. That June day when he crossed the Meadow Bridges to march against Mechanicsville, if he had waited for Jackson how much more might have been accomplished! Hill was likely to act before he thought, as for instance when he sent that ridiculous challenge after the Seven Days; but once in a fight, no one fought his men harder or
better. The Seven Days had established his reputation, Second Manassas and then Sharpsburg enhanced it. All the same, that impatience of his might one day embroil them all in battle not of Lee's choosing. Longstreet was uneasy about Powell Hill.

The commanding general must choose his tools; but Longstreet watched for opportunities to clarify in both their minds the calm decision that when they invaded the North, their tactics must be defensive. There was time enough before the army moved. He and General Lee discussed the preliminary maneuvers, the problem of slipping away from Hooker's front without leaving open the road to Richmond.

General Lee's plan was designed to play on Hooker's fears and on the timidity of Lincoln; for above all, the North must hold Washington. Already there was good ground for hoping England would recognize the Confederacy. She was sending a dozen or fifteen new regiments to Canada, and some Confederate Congressmen believed that a promise by the South to emancipate the slaves would remove the last bar to English recognition. Certainly the capture of Washington would swing the balance, so Lincoln would never risk losing Washington; and even a distant threat would lead him to call Hooker back to a defensive position.

So Lee's first move would be to shift one corps, or perhaps two, westward as far as Culpeper. If the weakening of the force in front of him tempted Hooker to try an advance, he would need two or three days to bridge the Rappahannock. That would give them time enough to march back from Culpeper and meet him. If he stayed passive where he was, then a movement toward Warrenton, threatening his flank and rear, would force him to withdraw; and each mile he withdrew would give them that much more freedom. One day Lee showed Longstreet a map, drawn in the utmost detail and with the name of every farmer marked beside his homestead, of the Pennsylvania region far north of Washington and east of the mountains. General Jackson, Lee explained, had had that map prepared; and he said that if Hooker fell back toward the Potomac they could cross into the Valley and let one corps mask Winchester and push on toward Chambersburg. The rest of the army would follow and reduce Winchester, and behind the screen of the Blue Ridge, with cavalry to hold the Gaps, race northward and pour out into these Pennsylvania farm lands toward the
Susquehanna. Somewhere on enemy soil in that York-Harrisburg-Chambersburg triangle, the armies would meet in the battle that might isolate Washington or lead to its capture. To do this would bring England to recognize the Confederacy. That would end the war.

They came to details. Which corps would lead the way? “Let Ewell lead,” Longstreet advised. “Leave Powell Hill at Fredericksburg. If he were in the van he would attack the first enemy he met, involve us all.”

So Ewell was sent for, and in that conference Longstreet found the opportunity to emphasize the point which he considered so important: the folly of offensive battle on enemy soil. “For if we propose to make offensive battle, we can cross the Rappahannock and make it here,” he pointed out. “There is no need to make a wearying march into Pennsylvania in order to attack General Hooker, when we might as readily hit him where he stands.”

Before they parted, he was satisfied that both Lee and Ewell agreed. When Lee rose to bid them good day, Longstreet saw him wince, and asked a question; and Lee said almost brusquely: “Nothing! Nothing! A little pleurisy, a touch of rheumatism. It will be gone with the first hot days.”

Longstreet nodded. “Summer will march northward with us.” Outside, he and General Ewell separated, each to set in motion the first detachments of his command.

 

To withdraw from Hooker's front was a gingerly procedure. Longstreet told Moxley Sorrel, as they sat their horses watching McLaws's division prepare to move: “It's like trying to get out of the room where a baby is sleeping. We'll go tiptoe, very carefully, ready to hurry back if the sleeper wakes.” His own words made him think of Louisa; for sometimes when he was with her she fell lightly asleep, and he took care not to wake her when he slipped away. “A ticklish business,” he repeated. “The Yankee cavalry is better than it was. Hooker knows more about what we're doing than we know about him.”

For a day or two the Yankees seemed unsuspecting. Then a demonstration opposite Fredericksburg—a pontoon bridge thrown across the river and the seizing of a bridgehead—made the Confederates wait a day to see whether this was serious; but Hooker did no more than
feint, and the cautious sidling was resumed. Stuart's headquarters were at Culpeper; Ewell's corps and Longstreet's would join him there. They marched westerly along the Rappahannock, and crossed the Rapidan and made bivouac on the rolling plain south of Culpeper toward Pony Mountain.

June was not yet settled into summer heat and the meadows were still green and there was bloom in every garden. West and north the Blue Ridge received the morning sun, and on its flanks all day as the sun marched the shadow patterns changed. What seemed to be a flat wall acquired depth and perspective; long slopes and ridges, dark ravines, deep valleys took shape and form and then receded into invisibility again as easily as a wild animal, by becoming motionless, loses itself against the forest tapestry. As the sun drew westward all the eastern slopes acquired a deep and deeper blue, till purple pools of night lay along the lower ranges. At sunset the summit ridges drew a knife line against the pearly iridescence of the deep caverns of the sky beyond, and night came down with stars to match the little bivouac fires that dotted all the plain.

Off to the eastward an uneasy Hooker drew back a little from Fredericksburg. General Lee, when he was sure of the other's inactivity, left Hamilton's Crossing and came to establish his headquarters near Longstreet's. He was in good spirits. While they waited for Hooker to withdraw a little farther, he would review the cavalry. “Stuart invited me for a grand spectacle on Friday,” he explained. “I could not go; but we'll ride over and see them tomorrow. It will please him.”

“It won't please the men,” Longstreet remarked. “And it will take pounds off the horses. The Friday affair was full panoply. The squadrons did the march-past at a walk, and then at a trot, gallop, charge. The ladies were delighted, and Stuart, too. He plays war like a game for boys. But for the horses and the men, that Friday affair was as much work as a skirmish.”

General Lee smiled. “We'll keep them at a foot pace this time,” he said. “But I'll be glad to see what force I have in hand.”

The review was a splendid pageant, eight or ten thousand men and horses ranked across the plain in a double line a fair three miles long. Lee led a score or so of officers at a canter along the front; then he
halted his horse while the squadrons marched past at a sober walk, the horses proud with tossing heads. Longstreet's own pulse quickened as he watched. It was true, as he had said, that Stuart played war like a game; but he played it well. He could be forgiven a fine pride in these men. When the review was over, Longstreet sent Trav with a message of congratulation.

“And ask General Stuart to give me someone competent to act as a guide through the Yankee lines,” he directed. “I want to send a scout toward Washington.”

When Trav returned from that mission, he brought Burr and Faunt. “You remember these gentlemen, General,” he said. “My brother Faunt, and my nephew Burr, Cinda's son. He's one of Stuart's men, in Fitz Lee's brigade.”

Longstreet thought he would not have recognized Faunt, drawn and thin, with a spot of color on the high cheekbones above his beard, and burning eyes shadowed as though by persisting pain. It was hard to believe that Faunt and Trav were brothers, the one so obviously consumed by an inner flame, the other except under the spur of hot contention so completely phlegmatic. How often brothers were thus different! And Burr, their nephew, was unlike either of them; a lean young fellow, easy in his saddle and lithe as a whip stock, yet with a laughing gentleness in him. He was the sort of gallant youngster whom the wrong kind of wife would easily rule. The General greeted them, asked Burr: “Where's your father?”

“The Howitzers are camped half a mile north of Culpeper on the Fauquier road,” Burr explained. “I'm riding over to see him.”

Longstreet chuckled. “The Howitzers? The little guns with the big noise?”

“They keep hoping for bigger guns, sir.”

Trav said: “General, I gave your request to General Stuart. He referred me to Major Mosby, and the Major says my brother here is the man you want.”

Longstreet looked at Faunt, and as though the look were a question, Faunt answered: “Most of my work is done behind the Yankee lines, General.”

Longstreet nodded, and he thought any Yankee who met Faunt might regret it. “I've a scout,” he explained. “A man named Harrison.
Secretary Seddon sent him to me at Suffolk, and he was useful there. He knows Washington and the country north of the Potomac, but he's not familiar with northern Virginia. Will you see him across the Potomac?”

“Yes sir.”

Longstreet hesitated. Faunt looked like a man who might forget other business if he saw a chance to hit the enemy. “Keep him out of trouble,” he suggested. “See him safe and secretly across the river.”

“Yes sir,” Faunt repeated.

Longstreet asked Trav to summon Harrison. The scout was in civilian dress—a mild, bearded, inconspicuous man. Longstreet had already supplied him with gold and given him instructions. “Harrison, this is Mr. Currain,” he said. “He will put you across the Potomac. When you've anything to report, come to me.”

“Where will I find you, General?”

“At headquarters of the First Corps, Mr. Harrison. You'll find me there.” It was best to trust no one more than you must. He saw Faunt watching the spy, and he asked Harrison: “Have you a horse?”

“A mule.”

Faunt said quietly: “We can start when you're ready, Mr. Harrison.”

When they were gone, Longstreet invited Burr to stay and mess with them, and he spoke of the fine display the cavalry had made that morning. Burr said proudly: “We did it better three days ago. Much more of a spectacle. General Stuart enjoys such things.”

“The rest of you?”

“Well, we like to please the General.”

“There's a fine spirit in the cavalry,” Longstreet agreed; and when they dined he led Burr into easy talk of the jollity with which Stuart liked to surround himself.

“It's not all laughing and dancing and singing, sir,” Burr reminded him. “General Stuart is a fighter too. We think he deserved more credit than he will ever get for Chancellorsville. General Jackson started it, but most of the fighting was done under Stuart after he had to take over the command.”