Terrible Swift Sword (45 page)
But the real effect was felt in
Washington, where the gathering fog became absolute. Nothing was clear except
that the Federal force which had been holding the Shenandoah Valley had been
knocked off the board, and that a Confederate Army of unknown size but
aggressive intent had reached the Potomac. The counter-stroke aimed at
Washington had been anticipated for months: this, possibly, was it, taking form
in the wake of Banks's desperate flight. McDowell was ordered to suspend his
movement on Richmond and to get at least 20,000 men over to the valley as
rapidly as possible. Lincoln notified McClellan that "the enemy are making
a desperate push against Harper's Ferry and we are trying to throw Fremont's
force and part of McDowell's in their rear." Fremont was ordered to move
east to Harrisonburg and get into Jackson's rear. McDowell ordered Shields to
head back to the valley, notifying Mr. Lincoln that he was doing what he had
been told to do but that the move was a bad one and that "I shall gain
nothing for you there and I shall lose much for you here." Mr. Lincoln
sent a slightly amplified report to General McClellan, saying that he believed
the enemy thrust at the Potomac "is a general and concerted one, such as
could not be made if he was acting upon the purpose of a very desperate defence
of Richmond." He added: "I think the time is near when you must
either attack Richmond or give up the job and come to the defence of
Washington."
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Shields's men began
their countermarch, beset by rumors that Jackson with twenty, thirty, or even
forty thousand men was about to attack Washington. They had made a hard march
to reach McDowell, and now they were retracing their steps with even greater
speed, they understood perfectly well that somebody was panicky, and as before
they swore vigorously. One of their number wrote: "I trust that the
Recording Angel was too much occupied to make a note of the language used in
Shields's division when we learned, with mingled feelings of rage and
mortification, that we were to return to the valley by forced marches."
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3.
The Last Struggle
The panic which Stonewall Jackson
inflicted on Washington was really rather brief, and not all of its effects
were bad.
To
be sure, it killed the prospect that McDowell's troops would reinforce
McClellan, and it led Secretary Stanton to send a tense message to the
governors of the Northern states, urging them to send forward all available
volunteers and militia as rapidly as possible. But it also led the War
Department to correct an earlier error. The recruiting stations which had been
closed so fatuously at the beginning of April were reopened, and steps were
taken to round up the vast number of absentee soldiers and get them back to
their regiments.
1
In addition, Mr. Lincoln and Secretary Stanton
soon recognized Jackson's thrust for what it was—a daring maneuver rather than
the beginning of a massive invasion of the North—and they realized that when he
marched to the outskirts of Harper's Ferry, Jackson actually took a very long
chance. If the available Federal troops were handled properly he could be cut
off and destroyed; and so these two civilians—who at the moment were in their
own persons the Army's high command, board of strategy, and general staff, all
combined—undertook to bring this about.
In a way this was the beginning of
wisdom, and Mr. Lincoln here came to see something which he never forgot. The
Southern Confederacy lived by its armies. While they lasted it would last and
if they died it would die, and so whatever it did with them it could not afford
to lose any of them outright. But any Confederate Army which moved out of its
own territory must always face superior numbers. If it invaded the North, or
even moved out into the border area to threaten an invasion, it gave the
Federal power the chance to make the best possible use of its greater
resources—to fight the kind of war in which the Federals held all of the
advantages. When it sent its armies north the Confederacy risked more than it
could bear to lose and presented its enemies with a rich opportunity.
This much Mr. Lincoln was beginning to
see. But to see an opportunity is one thing and to take advantage of it is something
quite different, as the President and the Secretary of War presently
discovered.
They worked out a good series of moves,
and if wars were fought on chessboards with pieces that would infallibly go to
the precise squares chosen for them, Stonewall Jackson would have come to grief
quickly. As soon as they heard about what had happened to Banks, they ordered
Fremont with something under 15,000 men to march at once to Harrisonburg, to
cut off Jackson's retreat, while McDowell brought three divisions to Strasburg,
the town from which. Jackson had just flushed Banks. Since the Potomac itself
was held by 15,000 or more, all of the exits would be blocked and Jackson could
be rounded up and defeated.
This
chessboard, however, was full of mountains and atrocious roads and it was
swept by heavy rains, and some of the pieces had minds of their own. Fremont,
at the town of Franklin, faced muddy going, he was short of supplies, the
mountain roads between Franklin and Harrisonburg had been blocked by Jackson's
engineers, and Fremont felt that he ought to use his discretion; instead of
marching east to Harrisonburg he chose to go roundabout to Strasburg, which
was much farther away but which somehow seemed easier to reach. McDowell's
troops also encountered rain and muddy roads, and although McDowell did move
toward the place he had been told to move toward the going was slow, and there
was further delay when Shields, who led the advance, paused at Front Royal
because of a wild story that Confederate James Longstreet was coming down the
valley of the South Fork of the Shenandoah from Luray with a large force.
Still, the combination nearly worked. On May 30, for instance, both Fremont and
Shields were much closer to Strasburg, which Jackson would have to pass through
on his retreat, than Jackson was himself. But Shields took a wrong road when he
left Front Royal next morning, and time was lost while the column was pulled
back and redirected, and Fremont's advance was most hesitant about driving on
into Strasburg; and in the end Jackson just made it. Pushing 2300 unhappy
Federal prisoners ahead of him, plus a wagon train loaded with booty captured
at Winchester, Jackson got his rear guard out of Strasburg just as the first
Yankee patrols entered the place, and thereafter the Federals could do nothing
but chase him. Fremont followed along the Valley Pike, and McDowell sent
Shields up the Luray Valley on the chance that he might head Jackson off or
strike his flank somewhere beyond the Massanutten Mountain . . . but the big
opportunity was gone.
2
Yet
if the attempt to destroy Jackson had been a humiliating fizzle, the President
and the Secretary of War might well have felt hopeful about the general
military situation at the end of May. Jackson, after all, had at least gone
away, and the invasion scare had gone away with him; and on the two principal
fighting fronts, in the east and in the west, the news was good and the
prospects were even better. McClellan was edging forward beyond the
Chickahominy, apparently in excellent spirits, full of confidence: notified
that McDowell would not be joining him and that he would have to take
Richmond with what he had, he replied
stoutly: "The time is very near when I shall attack Richmond." To
protect his right flank in preparation for this great event he sent Fitz John
Porter to drive Rebel infantry away from Hanover Court House, north of
Richmond. Porter did the job handsomely on May 27, and McClellan sent a
jubilant telegram to Stanton saying that this was "a glorious
victory" and that "the rout of the Rebels was complete." He
reported that he had two army corps across the Chickahominy and that the other
three were ready to cross as soon as the necessary bridges were finished. The
roads would soon be dry enough for artillery, and he spoke confidently of
"closing in on the enemy preparatory to the last struggle."
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It was good to find the commander of the
Army of the Potomac talking so hopefully, considering all of the things that
had gone wrong; it was even better to learn what had been happening in the
west. General Halleck's powerful army had at last taken the Mississippi town of
Corinth, on May 30. Beauregard and his Confederate Army had fled to the south,
and it was briefly possible to believe, in Washington, that final conquest of
everything the Confederacy had west of the Alleghenies was imminent.
Corinth by itself was nothing in
particular; a railroad junction town, the base from which Albert Sidney
Johnston had led his troops up to fight at Shiloh and to which the beaten army
had returned after he and his high hopes had died. It had almost been swamped
with wounded men after the battle, and there was a great deal of sickness; one
dejected Confederate described the town as "the worst place I have ever
been in," said that the drinking water was foul, and asserted that 17,000
sick men had been sent away from the place in the weeks following the big
battle on the Tennessee.
4
Corinth was important partly because it
was the place where the one railroad line directly connecting the Mississippi
with Virginia crossed the north-south line of the Mobile & Ohio, and even
more because as long as it was held by a Confederate Army the Confederacy had
protection for Fort Pillow, Memphis, Vicksburg, and that segment of the
Mississippi River which the Federals had not yet taken. Grant's move up the
Tennessee early in the spring had been aimed at Corinth, and after Shiloh had
been won Halleck assembled a huge army at Pittsburg Landing and resumed the
offensive.
He resumed it with
great deliberation. He began by bringing together the separate armies of
Grant, Buell, and Pope for a total of better than 100,000 effectives—an army
more than twice as large as anything Beauregard could bring against him—and he
took the supreme command himself, making Grant his second-in-command and
turning Grant's troops over to George H. Thomas. This actually put Grant on the
shelf, giving him an impressive title but nothing at all to do; it almost drove
Grant out of the Army, and it doubtless reflected Halleck's feeling that Grant
had been careless at Shiloh.
5
Buell, Thomas, and Pope became in
effect corps commanders; Halleck insisted that the army remain concentrated
when it moved, and ordered these officers to maintain constant touch with him.
Every segment of the army was kept under his direct control.
Halleck reached
Pittsburg Landing on April 11, spent a little more than three weeks perfecting
his army's organization, and during the first week in May he set out for
Corinth, twenty-four miles away. The army took two days to move the first
fifteen miles and twenty-four days to move the last six. When it marched, front
and flanks were protected by clouds of pickets and scouts; when it halted, it
entrenched to the eyes. This advance was the most defensive-minded offensive
imaginable, and it took that form not merely because Halleck was ultracautious
by nature—a born office worker, he felt ill at ease as a field commander—but
also because his whole operation was aimed primarily at Corinth rather than at
the Confederate soldiers who held the town. He did not try to make Beauregard
fight and he did not try to surround and capture him; he simply wanted Corinth,
and if Beauregard would get his army out of there and go away Halleck would be
happy.
There was nothing else for Beauregard to
do. The heavy Confederate losses at Shiloh had been more than made good when
Van Dorn and Price finally crossed the Mississippi and came to Corinth with
some 12,000 men who had fought at Pea Ridge, but the camp at Corinth was
unhealthful and there had been a steady wastage; when the Federals reached the
Confederate lines Beauregard had approximately 50,000 effectives of all arms.
On May 25 he called his subordinates into council: Bragg, the pessimistic
martinet, the studious Hardee, Bishop Polk, former Vice-President Breckinridge,
and the two westerners, Van Dorn and Price—and explained the situation. To give
up Corinth would be to lose an important strategic position—it was especially
important to hold on as long as possible because the task of fortifying
Vicksburg was just getting under way—but to stay too long would be to risk loss
of the entire army, and so it was time to leave. The generals could do nothing
but agree, and Beauregard ordered the army withdrawn to Tupelo, a town on the
Mobile & Ohio fifty miles to the south. Sick men and wagon trains were sent
on ahead, various devices to make the Federals anticipate a Confederate
offensive were worked out, and on the night of May 29 the army left Corinth and
moved south. The Federals were completely fooled; just when the last
Confederates were getting out of Corinth, General Pope advised Halleck that he
would probably be attacked as soon as morning came, and when the first Northern
troops entered Corinth no one knew where Beauregard had gone. Halleck sent Pope
down the railroad to examine the situation and pick up stragglers, and
dispatched a triumphant telegram to Stanton. Beauregard, he said, had given up
a fortified position of surpassing strength, had abandoned great quantities of
stores and baggage and was in headlong flight: Pope was "pushing the enemy
hard" and had taken 10,000 prisoners, and "the result is all I could
possibly desire."
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