Intelligence in War: The Value--And Limitations--Of What the Military Can Learn About the Enemy (14 page)

Despite his inferiority in strength—and despite the day being a Sunday, on which the pious Jackson always sought to avoid fighting—he decided in the early afternoon to attack. The Northerners were deployed on both sides of the Turnpike but in greater strength to the west, where ridges and hillocks gave commanding views. It was there that Jackson made his effort. To assist him in directing the battle he summoned an officer of the 2nd Virginia, Major Frank Jones, “who knew the countryside: he could look across the Pike and see his front porch.”
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Local knowledge would not on this occasion, however, get Jackson out of a spot. He was about to bite off more than he could chew. Worse, his temperamental taciturnity added to the difficulty of the situation. He issued an unclear command and then lost control of events by leaving his central position to gallop about, trying to restore order. His leading brigade lost direction, came under heavy artillery fire, took cover and then fell back. Jackson brought up guns of his own—of which he had nearly as many as the enemy—and infantry reinforcements, but after a final and bitter exchange of volleys at short range, his men were beaten; many had run out of ammunition. Jackson himself wrote a few days later, “I do not recollect of ever having heard such a roar of musketry”; but the Federal fire was the heavier and at about six o’clock in the evening the Valley Army began to slip away and retreat down the Turnpike.
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The Battle of Kernstown was a Confederate defeat. Southern losses were 455 killed and wounded, 263 taken prisoner; Union losses were 568 killed and wounded. Proportionately, the Valley Army had come off much the worse. On the other hand, the strategic effect was to its advantage. Even though the enemy had advanced when attacked, they formed only part of Banks’ army; another division had already left to join McClellan at Richmond, and Banks had gone to Washington. McClellan himself ordered Banks, who returned from Washington posthaste on the Kernstown news, “Push Jackson hard and drive him well beyond Strasburg.” He amplified his instructions on 1 April, emphasising that the Kernstown battle had forced a change of plan, requiring Banks to stay in the Valley instead of leaving it and, once the railroad was repaired, to advance to Staunton, Jackson’s main base, at the bottom of the Valley, so as to force “the rebels to concentrate on you and then [you to] return to me.”
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What he did not do was to offer Banks more troops. Lincoln’s anxiety to protect Washington, the pull on his resources exerted by operations in and west of the Alleghenies, all combined to reduce his striking power against Richmond. Given McClellan’s specific orders to Banks to advance down the Valley Turnpike, west of the dividing barrier of the Massanutten Mountain, he thereby spared Jackson the anxiety that he might have to defend the Luray Valley to the east of the Massanutten also. Indeed, once he became aware of the pattern of Northern deployment, Jackson recognised that the opportunity was opened to use the Luray as an avenue for a counteroffensive of his own. He was to take full advantage. Although he was to spend the rest of March and much of April falling back west of the Massanutten, he was already contemplating countermeasures which would take him up the corridor to the east, where he could reopen attacks towards Harper’s Ferry and Manassas—and so heighten Lincoln and McClellan’s anxieties.

Before he would be free to act in that way, however, there was to be much action at the south of the Valley. Jackson, following his retreat from Kernstown, had brought the Valley Army into defensive positions near Mount Jackson, on the North Fork of the Shenandoah, where he reorganised. Banks, following slowly, occupied Woodstock. The actual outpost line between the two armies, from 3 to 17 April, was along a minor stream called Stony Creek. The two sides skirmished across it during two weeks of inactivity, Jackson content to keep Banks in play, Banks hesitating to advance lest Jackson slip through the Massanutten Gap to Luray and strike at his line of communications higher up the Shenandoah. Eventually, however, Banks perceived—with a rare flash of inspiration—that if Jackson could make geography work his way, it could be made to work for him also. He saw that, given the very small distance involved, he might, by a brisk advance down the Turnpike, drive Jackson past New Market, the entrance to the Massanutten Gap, and harry him on south to Harrisonburg or even Staunton. At dawn on 17 April, Union infantry launched a surprise attack, cavalry following. The Confederate defences were driven in, and when Ashby’s troopers tried to stop the Northern advance by burning the bridge at Rude’s Hill, where the North Fork runs in an impassable trench, the Union cavalry were upon them quickly enough to put the blaze out. The Valley Army, outnumbered nearly two to one, had no option but to leg it south as quick as it could go. Two days of forced marching took it out of reach of the pursuit; but, following Kernstown, Jackson knew that he had suffered a local reverse.

Strategically, however, he was still in the ascendant. Joseph E. Johnston, increasingly hard pressed by McClellan near Richmond, had actually sent orders for him to be ready to leave the Valley; his new quarters, in Swift Run Gap, one of the key passes through the Blue Ridge, positioned him to do so. Jackson, however, became increasingly persuaded as April drew out that he could protect Richmond better by staying where he was and using Swift Run as a secure base—the high ground on two sides protected him against surprise attack—from which to strike at Union forces in the vicinity. He calculated that they numbered 160,000 altogether, spread out across eastern, northern and western Virginia, and that most were successfully pinning down their Confederate opponents: McClellan had Joseph E. Johnston fixed at Richmond, McDowell was facing Anderson on the Rappahannock at Fredericksburg, Frémont, in the Alleghenies, menaced the small force of Edward Johnson. Jackson alone had freedom to manoeuvre, for, though the Federals now appeared to dominate the southern Valley, he was confident that he could outwit them in a mobile campaign. The question was whether Banks presented the most profitable target.

What tipped the decision eventually was growing evidence that Frémont was emerging from the Alleghenies to strike at Edward Johnson’s small and isolated force near Staunton, Jackson’s main base, crammed with war supplies and with produce from the Valley farms. To go to Johnson’s aid would require a march of fifty miles along bad roads and across the front of Banks’ army, still stationed near Harrisonburg, on the Valley Turnpike, after its advance from victory at Kernstown the previous month. The risk was sustainable, however, for Banks lay behind the North River, the bridges over which had been burnt on Jackson’s orders to cover his retreat to Swift Run Gap. Hotchkiss was therefore sent to locate Edward Johnson’s exact position and to reconnoitre a route towards him. On 30 April the Valley Army set out.

It would have reassured Jackson had he known that Banks believed the Valley Army was already leaving Swift Run Gap to go to Richmond. His mind, however, was set on his course, so much so that when torrential rain—“great sluices of water running along the road for hundreds of yards”—blocked the route Hotchkiss had chosen, Jackson turned his column about, marched it back into Brown’s Gap, gave his men a night’s rest and then started them west again along a more southerly route. It had the advantage of running parallel to the Virginian Central Railroad, onto which Jackson loaded his sick and stores. Piecemeal by rail and road the Valley Army concentrated at Staunton on 6 May, left the next day to join forces with Edward Johnson, who was marching to meet it, and then pressed westward towards a tiny place called McDowell (also, confusingly, the name of the Union general commanding on the Rappahannock north of Richmond).

During the afternoon of 8 May skirmishers from the two sides found each other and a battle began to develop. Jackson had reconnoitred the heavily broken ground and formed a plan to fall unawares on the Northern force, a detachment of Frémont’s army commanded by General R. H. Milroy. Milroy, however, had got wind of his approach and, though outnumbered, moved to the attack. In the confused fighting that followed, his men inflicted the heavier toll of casualties. Jackson reported to Lee “God blessed our arms with victory,” and in the sense that Milroy broke off the action, and retreated, the Confederates were the winners.
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It was a costly victory, nonetheless, and Jackson later reproached himself for bad management of the battle. It was the last mistake he would make in the Valley campaign.

Its pace was about to quicken. Lee, in Richmond, was increasingly concerned to keep the Union forces surrounding the Southern capital separated; so was Joseph E. Johnston, and both counted on Jackson to operate in a way that would pin Banks west of the Blue Ridge and keep Frémont in the Alleghenies. After the battle at McDowell, therefore, Jackson decided that he must pursue Milroy, meanwhile taking steps to impede Frémont’s ability to manoeuvre. He sent Hotchkiss, with a scratch force of cavalry, to block the routes from the Alleghenies into the southern Shenandoah, while himself following up Milroy’s retreat. By 12 May he had got as far as the small town of Franklin, deep in the mountains, but had not caught up. He decided accordingly to break off the pursuit and return to the Valley. His purpose as before was to keep Banks from leaving, but he also intended to rejoin his subordinate, Ewell, and combine forces so as to confront the enemy in superior strength.

The Valley Army was now adapting to the extraordinary exertions Jackson expected of it. On 8 May, the day of the Battle of McDowell, the Stonewall Brigade had marched, from breaking camp to contact with the enemy, and then from leaving the battlefield to regaining camp, thirty-five miles. Such marches would, in the month that was to follow, become normal practice. Despite dreadful roads, shortage of food and deficient footwear—marching barefoot, often for dozens of miles, became a common experience—the Valley Army would rise to the challenge. Though Jackson concealed his intentions from even his closest subordinates, the Army came to understand during the month of May 1862 that his strategy was to mystify and mislead the enemy by achieving speeds over distance quite outside the capacities of normal infantry. They came to call themselves “Jackson’s foot cavalry” and, on many days, justified the title by marching for as long as horsemen could ride.

On 17 May, after a hard trek out of the Alleghenies, Jackson’s men re-entered the Valley near Harrisonburg, west of the Massanutten. Banks had been there the previous month, his army facing southwards along the North River, but had since departed to Strasburg at the northern end of the Valley, in preparation to move to Fredericksburg. He had already sent ahead Shields’ division. It remained, as before, Jackson’s duty to hold him where he was. In his favour was a shift in the balance of forces; the departure of Shields had left Banks with only 12,000 men; Jackson now had, either directly under command or readily to hand, about 16,000 if the division of Ewell, in the Luray Valley, was included. Also in his favour was the deteriorating quality of Northern intelligence—Banks was unsure of the Valley Army’s dispositions, and his information would get worse. By 21 May he was placing Jackson eight miles west of Harrisonburg, Ewell in the Swift Run Gap, forty miles apart, with the gap widening. In fact, by then, Jackson had transferred to the Luray Valley, via the Massanutten Gap, Ewell had joined him and the combined army was pressing northwards against a weak detachment of Union troops at Front Royal, guarding the Manassas Gap railroad bridges east of Strasburg.

The realignment had not been achieved without difficulty, even creative disobedience. Mid-May was an awful time for the Confederacy. During March and April, defeat had followed defeat all around its frontiers, in the far west, on the Atlantic coast. By early May the defensive line across the Peninsula had been abandoned, the Battle of Williamsburg outside Richmond had been lost and McClellan was laying siege to the defences of the city itself. Between 15 and 18 May, Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston, both a hundred miles away from the Valley in Richmond, and in touch at a delay of only two to three days, despite having the telegraph and a relay of fast despatch riders at their disposal, had sent a variety of conflicting orders, the impact of which was, nevertheless, to separate Ewell from Jackson and send him to watch McDowell at Fredericksburg. Neither Jackson nor Ewell wished to conform, since to do so would be to rob the Valley Army of its temporarily decisive superiority over Banks, without any guarantee that success could be won elsewhere by the separation. Covertly, they agreed to play on the ambiguity of the orders they were receiving and to use the delay in their transmission to stay together and march on Banks.

Jackson moved on 19 May. His bridge-burning at Harrisonburg, which had protected his sortie into the Alleghenies, now ought to have blocked his own recrossing of the North River into the Shenandoah Valley proper but Hotchkiss, effectively operating as his intelligence officer, discovered a number of large wagons that, positioned to straddle a ford, allowed passage even though the river was in flood. By 20 May, Jackson had reached New Market at the western end of the Massanutten Gap, by the 21st he had passed through the mountain to join Ewell at Luray and by the 23rd his vanguards were on the outskirts of Front Royal. By a forced march of seventy miles in three days, he had arrived in Banks’ rear and was ready to strike a decisive blow.

He then had a stroke of pure luck, though brought by the circumstance of fighting in friendly territory. Advancing to contact, but unaware of the strength of the Union defence at the Front Royal bridges, one of his officers was met by a breathless girl, Belle Boyd, a pretty eighteen-year-old who had just walked through the enemy camp, charmed an officer and discovered that only one Northern regiment was present. “Tell him [Stonewall],” she urged, “to charge right down and he will get them all.”
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In the confused fighting that followed, most of the Northern infantry got away but the Confederate cavalry saved the bridges, which Jackson needed for the next stage of the operation against Banks at Strasburg, and destroyed the telegraph lines which would have warned Banks of the defeat.