Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
victory on Northern soil, within easy reach of Washington, was far more
likely to bring about the independence of the South than even a
succession of victories in Virginia. It was time, then, for a strategic
counterstroke on a larger scale than had hitherto been attempted. The
opportunity was ripe. No great risk would be incurred by crossing the
Potomac. There was no question of meeting a more powerful enemy. “The
Federals, recruited by fresh levies; would undoubtedly be numerically
the stronger; and the Confederate equipment, despite the large captures
of guns and rifles, was still deficient. But for deficiencies in
numbers and in materiel the higher _moral_ and the more skilful leading
would make ample compensation. It might safely be inferred that the
Northern soldiers would no longer display the cool confidence of
Gaines’ Mill or even of Malvern Hill. The places of the brave and
seasoned soldiers who had fallen would
be filled by recruits; and generals who had been out-manœuvred on so
many battle-fields might fairly be expected, when confronted once more
with their dreaded opponents, to commit even more egregious errors than
those into which they had already fallen.
Sept. 2 Such were the ideas entertained by Lee and accepted by the
President, and on the morning of September 2, as soon as it was found
that the Federals had sought shelter under the forts of Alexandria,
Jackson was instructed to cross the Potomac, and form the advanced
guard of the army of invasion. It may be imagined with what feelings he
issued his orders for the march on Leesburg, above which lay an easy
ford. For more than twelve months, since the very morrow of Bull Run,
he had persistently advocated an aggressive policy.[2] The fierce
battles round Richmond and Manassas he had looked upon as merely the
prelude to more resolute efforts. After he had defeated Banks at
Winchester he had urged his friend Colonel Boteler to inform the
authorities that, if they would reinforce him, he would undertake to
capture Washington. The message had been conveyed to Lee. “Tell General
Jackson,” was the reply of the Commander-in-Chief, “that he must first
help me to drive these people away from Richmond.” This object had been
now thoroughly accomplished, and General Lee’s decision to redeem his
promise was by none more heartily approved than by the leader of the
Valley army. And yet, though the risks of the venture were small, the
prospects of complete success were dubious. The opportunity had come,
but the means of seizing it were feeble. Lee himself was buoyed up by
no certain expectation of great results. In
advocating invasion he confessed to the President that his troops were
hardly fit for service beyond the frontier. “The army,” he wrote, “is
not properly equipped for an invasion of the 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. . . .
What concerns me most is the fear of getting out of ammunition.”[3]
This description was by no means over-coloured. As a record of military
activity the campaign of the spring and summer of 1862 has few
parallels. Jackson’s division, since the evacuation of Winchester at
the end of February, that is, in six months, had taken part in no less
than eight battles and innumerable minor engagements; it had marched
nearly a thousand miles, and it had long ago discarded tents. The
remainder of the army had been hardly less severely tasked. The demands
of the outpost service in front of Richmond had been almost as trying
as the forced marches in the Valley, and the climate of the Peninsula
had told heavily on the troops. From the very first the army had been
indifferently equipped; the ill effects of hasty organisation were
still glaring; the regimental officers had not yet learned to study the
wants and comfort of their men; the troops were harassed by the
ignorance of a staff that was still half-trained, and the commissariat
officials were not abreast of their important duties. More than all,
the operations against Pope, just brought to a successful issue, had
been most arduous; and the strain on the endurance of the troops, not
yet recovered from their exertions in the Peninsula, had been so great
that a period of repose seemed absolutely necessary. It was not only
that battle and sickness had thinned the ranks, but that those whose
health had been proof against continued hardships, and whose strength
and spirit were still equal to further efforts, were so badly shod that
a few long marches over indifferent roads were certain to be more
productive of casualties than a pitched battle. The want of
boots had already been severely felt.[4] It has been said that the
route of the Confederate army from the Rappahannock to Chantilly might
have been traced by the stains of bloody feet along the highways; and
if the statement is more graphic than exact, yet it does not fall far
short of the truth. Many a stout soldier, who had hobbled along on his
bare feet until Pope was encountered and defeated, found himself
utterly incapable of marching into Maryland. In rear of the army the
roads were covered with stragglers. Squads of infantry, banding
together for protection, toiled along painfully by easy stages, unable
to keep pace with the colours, but hoping to be up in time for the next
fight; and amongst these were not a few officers. But this was not the
worst. Lax discipline and the absence of soldierly habits asserted
themselves with the same pernicious effect as in the Valley. Not all
the stragglers had their faces turned towards the enemy, not all were
incapacitated by physical suffering. Many, without going through the
formality of asking leave, were making for their homes, and had no idea
that their conduct was in any way peculiar. They had done their duty in
more than one battle, they had been long absent from their farms, their
equipment was worn out, the enemy had been driven from Virginia, and
they considered that they were fully entitled to some short repose. And
amongst these, whose only fault was an imperfect sense of their
military obligations, was the residue of cowards and malingerers shed
by every great army engaged in protracted operations.
Lee had been joined by the divisions of D. H. Hill, McLaws, Walker, and
by Hampton’s cavalry, and the strength of his force should have been
65,000 effectives.[5] But it was evident that these numbers could not
be long
maintained. The men were already accustomed to half-rations of green
corn, and they would be no worse off in Maryland and Pennsylvania,
untouched as yet by the ravages of war, than in the wasted fields of
Virginia. The most ample commissariat, however, would not compensate
for the want of boots and the want of rest, and a campaign of invasion
was certain to entail an amount of hard marching to which the strength
of the troops was hardly equal. Not only had the South to provide from
her seven millions of white population an army larger than that of
Imperial France, but from a nation of agriculturists she had to provide
another army of craftsmen and mechanics to enable the soldiers to keep
the field. For guns and gun-carriages, powder and ammunition, clothing
and harness, gunboats and torpedoes, locomotives and railway plant, she
was now dependent on the hands of her own people and the resources of
her own soil; the organisation of those resources, scattered over a
vast extent of territory, was not to be accomplished in the course of a
few months, nor was the supply of skilled labour sufficient to fill the
ranks of her industrial army. By the autumn of 1862, although the
strenuous efforts of every Government department gave the lie to the
idea, not uncommon in the North, that the Southern character was
shiftless and the Southern intellect slow, so little real progress had
been made that if the troops had not been supplied from other sources
they could hardly have marched at all. The captures made in the Valley,
in the Peninsula, and in the Second Manassas campaign proved of
inestimable value. Old muskets were exchanged for new, smooth-bore
cannon for rifled guns, tattered blankets for good overcoats. “Mr.
Commissary Banks,” his successor Pope, and McClellan himself, had
furnished their enemies with the material of war, with tents,
medicines, ambulances, and ammunition waggons. Even the vehicles at
Confederate headquarters bore on their tilts the initials U.S.A.; many
of Lee’s soldiers were partially clothed in Federal uniforms, and the
bad quality of the boots supplied by the Northern contractors was a
very general subject of complaint in the
Southern ranks. Nor while the men were fighting were the women idle.
The output of the Government factories was supplemented by private
enterprise. Thousands of spinning-wheels, long silent in dusty
lumber-rooms, hummed busily in mansion and in farm; matrons and maids,
from the wife and daughters of the Commander-in-Chief to the mother of
the drummer-boy, became weavers and seamstresses; and in every
household of the Confederacy, although many of the necessities of
life—salt, coffee and sugar—had become expensive luxuries, the needs of
the army came before all else.
But notwithstanding the energy of the Government and the patriotism of
the women, the troops lacked everything but spirit. Nor, even with more
ample resources, could their wants have been readily supplied. In any
case this would have involved a long halt in a secure position, and in
a few weeks the Federal strength would be increased by fresh levies,
and the _moral_ of their defeated troops restored. But even had time
been given the Government would have been powerless to render
substantial aid. Contingents of recruits were being drilled into
discipline at Richmond; yet they hardly exceeded 20,000 muskets; and it
was not on the Virginia frontier alone that the South was hard pressed.
The Valley of the Mississippi was beset by great armies; Alabama was
threatened, and Western Tennessee was strongly occupied; it was already
difficult to find a safe passage across the river for the supplies
furnished by the prairies of Texas and Louisiana, and communication
with Arkansas had become uncertain. If the Mississippi were lost, not
only would three of the most fertile States, as prolific of hardy
soldiers as of fat oxen, be cut off from the remainder, but the enemy,
using the river as a base, would push his operations into the very
heart of the Confederacy. To regain possession of the great waterway
seemed of more vital importance than the defence of the Potomac or the
secession of Maryland, and now that Richmond had been relieved, the
whole energy of the Government was expended on the operations in
Kentucky and
Tennessee. It may well be questioned whether a vigorous endeavour,
supported by all the means available, and even by troops drawn from the
West, to defeat the Army of the Potomac and to capture Washington,
would not have been a more efficacious means to the same end; but Davis
and his Cabinet consistently preferred dispersion to concentration,
and, indeed, the situation of the South was such as might well have
disturbed the strongest brains. The sea-power of the Union was telling
with deadly effect. Although the most important strategic points on the
Mississippi were still held by Confederate garrisons, nearly every mile
of the great river, from Cairo to New Orleans, was patrolled by the
Federal gunboats; and in deep water, from the ports of the Atlantic to
the roadsteads of the Gulf, the frigates maintained their vigilant
blockade.
Even on the northern border there was hardly a gleam of light across
the sky. The Federal forces were still formidable in numbers, and a