Terrible Swift Sword (62 page)
The Yankees themselves were far from
happy. Buell, who had been actively campaigning all summer without once encountering
Confederate infantry, was as deliberate as ever. He got up to Louisville while
Bragg was occupying Bards-town, and he busied himself organizing the untrained
reinforcements which Middle Western governors were frantically sending to him,
but Washington was growing irritable. Before September ended, the War
Department ordered him to turn over his command to George Thomas, suspending
the order only when Thomas protested that it was unfair to change generals on
the eve of a decisive battle. (Unfair to the man replaced; unfair, also, to the
man who had to replace him.) Buell stayed in command, but his neck was in a
noose and he would inevitably pass from the scene unless he won a victory.
But the real pressure was on the
Confederates. Taking the offensive, they had obligated themselves to live
beyond their means. All that they had won would be lost unless they got a
victory in the open field. Unlimited war demanded an unlimited victory.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Thenceforward and Forever
1.
Recipe for Confusion
In the west
,
John Pope had declared, Federal soldiers mostly saw the backs of their enemies,
and the same thing ought to happen in Virginia. Whatever this statement lacked
in accuracy—Buell's army right now was going north at top speed, the backs of
its enemies out of sight in advance—it at least breathed the offensive spirit.
Acting on this spirit, and recovering quickly from the embarrassing check at
Cedar Mountain, General Pope in mid-August assembled his troops and set out to
carry the war to the foe. He got as far as the Rapidan River, made ready to
cross and campaign in true western style, and then began to learn that in
Virginia things were different.
To
begin with, he was facing Robert E. Lee, whose like he had not yet seen. In
addition he was at the mercy both of his own shortcomings, which General Lee
would cruelly expose and exploit, and of the high command of the Army of the
Potomac, which expected him to fail and which in the end would be deliberate
enough to make failure certain. Finally, General Pope was coming to the stage
just when the nature of the war was changing.
Both sides had supposed originally that
they fought to restore the past, the difference between them being largely a
question of what the past really meant and how it could best be regained. Now
something more fundamental was coming to the surface, compelling men to examine
their ideas about the future. So the fighting would be different, hereafter,
infinitely harder to control and understand than it had been before. The
going was likely to be rough for a Federal Army commander unless he was either
totally phlegmatic or exceptionally perceptive; and John Pope unfortunately
was neither.
He was just average, operating in a time
and place where
a
strictly average soldier was likely to run
into trouble. What happened to him was probably inevitable, and anyway he
brought most of it on himself, but he could have been luckier.
By August 15, Pope had about 55,000 men
under his immediate direction, including 8000 men of General Burnside's corps
under Major General Jesse Reno. He was on the Rapidan —that fated river which
almost seemed to be a boundary between Federal and Confederate Virginia—and
Halleck had warned him to stay there until the Army of the Potomac joined him;
and so Pope waited, guarding the river crossings and expecting that from 70,000
to 100,000 of McClellan's veterans would presently be lined up beside him. When
that happened, Pope believed, General Halleck would come down from Washington
to take field command, with Pope and McClellan as his chief lieutenants.
Meanwhile Pope would hold the pivot.
He had picked
a
poor
spot for it, because his position was potentially most dangerous. The
Rappahannock River was behind him, and the railroad which was his life line
ran back to that river on a long diagonal, from his right front to his left
rear. If the Confederates should steal a march, side-step a few miles to the
east and then move due north across the Rapidan, they could reach the Rappahannock
crossing before Pope could—cutting off his supplies, closing his escape hatch,
trapping him between the rivers and then disposing of him at their leisure. The
inexpert Federal cavalry was hopelessly overmatched by Jeb Stuart's men, which
meant that Lee almost certainly could steal a march or two if he tried, and
Lee was exactly the sort who would try. He would try it soon, because time was
running out. McClellan was still at Harrison's Landing but his troops would
begin to reach Pope in ten days or less. Whatever Lee did must be done quickly.
His first attempt just missed. On August
18, Lee ordered a shift to the right followed by a quick drive across the
river, and if things had gone as planned Pope's army very probably would have
been crushed. But some of Stuart's cavalry missed an assignment and Robert
Toombs's infantry left unguarded
a
river crossing that
was supposed to be sealed, and so a Federal patrol got south of the Rapidan
and learned what was up by capturing an officer bearing Lee's orders. So Pope
was warned; and although he had spoken freely about letting lines of retreat
take care of themselves and acting always on the offensive he retreated now in
great haste, and late on August 19 he had his entire force safely back behind
the Rappahannock. He guarded the crossings with care, and for several days Lee
could do nothing but spar with him and look for an opening.
1
There was no opening, for Pope was on the
alert; and with each passing day Lee's chance for victory grew smaller. On
August 20 McClellan's V Army Corps, under Fitz John Porter, began landing at
Aquia Creek, ten miles northeast of Fredericksburg, and started to move west
toward the upper Rappahannock. On August 22 the III Corps, led by Samuel P.
Heintzelman, reached Alexandria and began to march down overland. The rest of
Burnside's men were coming up, and so was a detachment brought over from
western Virginia, and, by August 25, Pope had 70,000 men within call, with more
on the way. Lee was already outnumbered, and in another week his case would be
hopeless.
2
He
would not give the Yankees that week. He had said that John Pope ought to be
"suppressed"—quite as if the man were no soldier but a mere disturber
of the peace on whom the law ought to descend—he proposed to do it personally,
and if he could not break through Pope's line he would go around it. On August
25 he sent Stonewall Jackson with 24,000 men off on a long swing to the
northwest. Jackson was to march entirely away from Pope's front, circling off
behind the Bull Run mountains and then coming east through Thoroughfare Gap to
strike Pope in the rear. Lee and Longstreet would tarry on the Rappahannock, to
persuade Pope that the whole Confederate Army was still there, and in due time
they would follow Jackson, join hands with him somewhere far to the north of
their present position, and there compel Pope to fight a battle. Once Pope was
beaten there would be time to see about the Army of the Potomac.
This
of course was precisely the sort of move Stonewall Jackson liked. Something
about the campaign in the Chickahominy swamps had baffled him, but he was over
it now, thinking and acting like the Jackson of the Valley campaign; he was a
panther once more, swift and stealthy and deadly, and he got his veterans on
the road at dawn and set off on a typical Jackson march, driving his men
relentlessly, discussing his plans with no one. Lee saw him off, and then—as
calmly as if there was nothing on earth to worry about—he wrote to Mrs. Lee,
giving her a modest summing-up of the plan that had been in his mind ever since
he left Richmond.
"I think we shall at least change
the theater of war from James river to north of the Rappk," he wrote.
"That is part of the advantage I contemplated. If it is effective at least
for a season it will be a great gain."
3
To move the war from the vicinity of
Richmond to the vicinity of Washington would, as he said, be very good; even
if he failed to destroy Pope's army he would nevertheless have gained much. But
Lee was really looking for a chance to win it all—to get the Yankees entirely
out of Virginia and to win on Northern soil the victory that would end the war.
The Confederate tide was rising, in the east and in the west, and the unearthly
vision of independence achieved was something better than a mirage. Lee was not
looking solely for a tactical advantage; he was leading the counteroffensive
that sought nothing less than final triumph, and this move that risked so much
had everything to gain.
The
risk, to be sure, was immense. Already outnumbered, Lee was dividing his army
in the immediate presence of his enemy, which is the sort of thing that all the
books warn against, and for at least two days the halves of his army would be
out of touch. If Pope discovered what was going on and acted with reasonable
intelligence and energy he could bring Lee's entire campaign to ruin, holding
those separated halves apart and dealing with each in turn under conditions
which would give him all of the advantages. If he could even stall for another
week or so, the two Federal armies would be fully united and no conceivable
strategic brilliance would help the Confederacy. Once again, Lee was letting
everything ride on the play of one card.
But the risks had been carefully
figured. Lee had no higher opinion of Pope's military capacity than McClellan
had. He knew that Pope's army was still a collection of unassimilated units,
some of which were poorly led and were used to defeat. If Lee was trying to
unite two separate armies on the field of battle, the Federals after all were
trying to do the same thing, and Lee undoubtedly was able to see that smooth
co-operation between Pope and McClellan was unlikely. Finally, the whole tone
of the war just now was in his favor. The Yankees were at odds with themselves;
a sudden shock might jar them apart. Secretary of the Navy Mallory expressed
it, in a letter he wrote at the end of the month:
"We are stronger today than we have
ever been, while our enemy is weaker. As our people have become firmly bound
together for this war, those of the North have become discontented, and
discord is now predominant in their counsels. Lincoln's cabinet dread a defeat,
and hence their armies are everywhere retreating.
...
If we should defeat Pope decidedly, the backbone of the war
will be over; for the opposition to the abolition party would shear it of its
strength."
4
Northern discord and discontent were
very real, producing tangible military consequences. Among these (and this was
much to General Lee's advantage) there was a distorting, paralyzing pressure on
the central nervous system of the Army of the Potomac.
That army would fight
heroically when the time for fighting came, but its military mind had been
warped. There was that overwrought, emotional atmosphere at headquarters in
which the government itself was seen as an enemy, individual members of the
government were abominable villains, leaders of other Federal armies were
stupid rivals; and. a long-nursed sense of injury and isolation created a
sensitivity so acute that the army could not be handled at all except by
someone with the most delicate touch. Just when the outcome of the war might
depend on the agility with which this army left its own chosen field to operate
in a field selected by someone else (villainous superior or detested rival)
the army was sluggish and petulant. It disliked the way Washington treated it;
even more, it disliked the kind of war Washington obviously meant to fight,
and it wanted to define what victory was going to mean even before it flexed
its muscles to insure that the victory would be gained.
While he was preparing to send his sick
away from Harrison's Landing, at a time when the order to withdraw his army
had been foreshadowed but not yet received. McClellan explained to Halleck, by
letter, that the Federal government must fight for a victory which the South
would accept.
"The people of the South," he
wrote, "should understand that we are not making war upon the institution
of slavery, but that if they submit to the Constitution and the laws of the
Union they will be protected in their constitutional rights of every nature.
...
I therefore deprecate and view with
infinite dread any policy which tends to render impossible the reconstruction
of the Union and to make this contest simply a useless effusion of blood."
Halleck replied that he agreed entirely, and that Pope's venomous orders
regarding Southern civilians in occupied territory were most injudicious: still
(he said) it was necessary to bring the Army of the Potomac to Pope's side, and
would McClellan please hurry the movement along?
5
All things considered, the movement went
slowly. Orders to leave the peninsula had been received on August 3, and the
first contingents reached the upper Potomac nineteen days later. Those nineteen
days added up to more time than the Federal government could afford to lose.
They were time enough to enable Lee to shift the cockpit of the war from the
valley of the James back to northern Virginia, and to compel the government at
Washington to stop thinking about what the capture of Richmond would mean and
to think instead about what would happen if Pope's army were lost. Perhaps,
indeed, these were the days in which the last chance to keep the war within
bounds faded and died. General Halleck grew impatient and told McClellan to
move faster, and McClellan's feelings were hurt; and it was necessary to send
down a sort of military ambassador to smooth his feathers.
The
ambassador was General Burnside, who managed to convince McClellan that
although the general-in-chief was more or less in a hurry he was not actually
hostile, and McClellan at length wrote Halleck: "I am glad to say that
Burn-side has satisfied me that you are still my friend." Halleck replied
almost apologetically, admitting that in the heat of the moment, what with the
crisis of the war at hand and all, he may have been a trifle brusque: "It
is very probable that my messages to you were more urgent and pressing than
guarded in their language. I certainly meant nothing harsh, but I did feel that
you did not act as promptly as I thought the circumstances required."
Then, as delicately as possible, Halleck again called for speed:
"There is enough and more than
enough for all of us to do, although none of us can do exactly what we would
wish. That Lee is moving on Pope with his main army I have no doubt. Unless we
can unite most of your army with Burn-side and Pope, Washington is in great
danger. Under these circumstances you must pardon the extreme anxiety (and
perhaps a little impatience) which I feel. Every moment seems to me as
important as an ordinary hour."
e
In all of this General Pope was caught in a
squeeze. He understood very well that the Army of the Potomac was moving
deliberately, and he knew what this meant; but he did not yet see that the Army
of Northern Virginia was moving with lightning speed, and to understand what
this meant was altogether beyond him. Beset in front and in rear, he was simply
in over his depth, and he continued to think that he had the initiative even
after Lee had thrown him squarely on the defensive; now he was beginning to
strike at shadows.
Jackson began his
deadly flank march on the morning of August 25, and by evening of that day Pope
had been told about it. But he could see only what he wanted to see, and he
concluded now that Jackson's men were heading for the Shenandoah Valley once
more. It seemed probable, as well, that the rest of Lee's army might follow
Jackson, and so Pope notified Washington that he would send a force across the
Rappahannock the next day to see about it. If his suspicions were correct he
would pitch into the Confederate rear. He was beginning to see that he had
problems. Of the three corps which made up his army, he believed that only
McDowell's corps really amounted to much. Sigel, who led the men once commanded
by Fremont, struck Pope as an incompetent who ought to be replaced, and Banks's
corps had been roughly handled at Cedar Mountain, contained no more than 5000
men, and must be kept in the rear until it could be "set up again."
Of the Army of the Potomac, Philip Kearny's division from Heintzelman's corps
had joined him. It was a good division and Kearny was a first-rate combat
soldier who did not share in the feeling that the government was conspiring
darkly against McClellan; still, this was only one division, and for his
riposte to Lee's feint Pope felt somewhat shorthanded.
7