Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
Crampton’s Gap, thus intervening between Lee and Jackson; but instead
of doing so he had directed 70,000 men against Turner’s Gap. Nor had
the attack on Hill and Longstreet been characterised by resolution. The
advanced guard was left unsupported until 2 p.m., and not more than
30,000 men were employed throughout the day. Against this number 8,000
Confederates had held the pass. Cobb, one of McLaws’ brigadiers, who
commanded the defence at Crampton’s Gap, though driven down the
mountain, had offered a stout resistance to superior forces; and
twenty-four hours had been gained for Jackson. On the other hand, in
face of superior numbers, the position at Turner’s Gap had become
untenable; and during the night Hill and Longstreet marched to
Sharpsburg.
Sept. 15 This enforced retreat was not without effect on the _moral_ of
either army. McClellan was as exultant as he was credulous. “I have
just learned,” he reported to Halleck at 8 a.m. on the 15th, “from
General Hooker, in advance, that the enemy is making for Shepherdstown
in a perfect panic; and that General Lee last night stated publicly
that he must admit they had been shockingly whipped. I am hurrying
forward to endeavour to press their retreat to the utmost.” Then, two
hours later: “Information this moment received completely confirms the
rout and demoralisation of the rebel army. It is stated that Lee gives
his losses as 15,000. We are following as rapidly as the men can
move.”[25] Nor can it be doubted that McClellan’s whole army,
unaccustomed to see their antagonists give ground before them, shared
the general’s mood.[26] Amongst the Confederates, on the other hand,
there was some depression. It could not be disguised that
a portion of the troops had shown symptoms of demoralisation. The
retreat to the Antietam, although effectively screened by Fitzhugh
Lee’s brigade of cavalry, was not effected in the best of order. Many
of the regiments had been broken by the hard fighting on the mountain;
men had become lost in the forest, or had sought safety to the rear;
and the number of stragglers was very large. It was not, then, with its
usual confidence that the army moved into position on the ridge above
the Antietam Creek. General Longstreet, indeed, was of opinion that the
army should have recrossed the Potomac at once. “The moral effect of
our move into Maryland had been lost by our discomfiture at South
Mountain, and it was evident we could not hope to concentrate in time
to do more than make a respectable retreat, whereas by retiring before
the battle [of Sharpsburg] we could have claimed a very successful
campaign.”[27] So spake the voice of prudence. Lee, however, so soon as
he was informed of the fall of Harper’s Ferry, had ordered Jackson to
join him, resolving to hold his ground, and to bring McClellan to a
decisive battle on the north bank of the Potomac.
Although 45,000 men—for Lee at most could count on no more than this
number, so great had been the straggling—were about to receive the
attack of over 90,000, Jackson, when he reached Sharpsburg on the
morning of the 16th, heartily approved the Commander-in-Chief’s
decision, and it is worth while to consider the reasons which led them
to disagree with Longstreet.
1. Under ordinary conditions, to expect an army of 45,000 to wrest
decisive victory from one of 90,000 well-armed enemies would be to
demand an impossibility. The defence, when two armies are equally
matched, is physically stronger than the attack, although we have
Napoleon’s word for it that the defence has the harder task. But that
the inherent strength of the defence is so great as to enable the
smaller force to annihilate its enemy is contrary to all the teaching
of history. By making good use of favourable ground, or by constructing
substantial works,
the smaller force may indeed stave off defeat and gain time. But it can
hope for nothing more. The records of warfare contain no instance, when
two armies were of much the same quality, of the smaller army bringing
the campaign to a decisive issue by defensive tactics. Wellington and
Lee both fought many defensive battles with inferior forces. But
neither of them, under such conditions, ever achieved the destruction
of their enemy. They fought such battles to gain time, and their hopes
soared no higher. At Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onor, where the French
were superior to the allies, Wellington repulsed the attack, but he did
not prevent the defeated armies taking the field again in a few days.
At the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, the North Anna, and Cold Harbour, the
great battles of 1864, Lee maintained his ground, but he did not
prevent Grant moving round his flank in the direction of Richmond. At
the Second Manassas, Jackson stood fast for the greater part of two
days, but he would never have driven Pope across Bull Run without the
aid of Longstreet. Porter at Gaines’ Mill held 55,000 men with 35,000
for more than seven hours, but even if he had maintained his position,
the Confederate army would not have become a mob of fugitives. No;
except on peculiarly favourable ground, or when defending an intrenched
camp, an army matched with one of equal efficiency and numerically
superior, can never hope for decisive success. So circumstanced, a wise
general will rather retreat than fight, and thus save his men for a
more favourable opportunity.[28]
But Lee and Jackson had not to deal with ordinary conditions. Whatever
may have been the case in the Peninsula and in the Valley, there can be
no question but that the armies in Maryland were by no means equal in
quality. The Federals were far more accustomed to retreat than advance.
For several months, whether they were engaged on the Shenandoah, on the
Chickahominy, on the Rappahannock, or on Bull Run, they had been
invariably outmanœuvered. Their losses had been exceedingly severe, not
only in battle, but from sickness and straggling. Many of their bravest
officers and men had fallen. With the exception of the Second and Sixth
Army Corps, commanded by Sumner and by Franklin, by far the greater
part of the troops had been involved in Pope’s defeat, and they had not
that trust in their leaders which promises a strong offensive. While at
Washington the army had been reinforced by twenty-four regiments of
infantry, but the majority of these troops had been but lately raised;
they knew little of drill; they were commanded by officers as ignorant
as themselves, and they had never fired a musket. Nor were the generals
equal in capacity to those opposing them. “If a student of history,”
says a Northern officer, “familiar with the characters who figured in
the War of Secession, but happening to be ignorant of the battle of
Antietam, should be told the names of the men who held high commands
there, he would say that with anything like equality of forces the
Confederates must have won, for their leaders were men who made great
names in the war, while the Federal leaders were, with few exceptions,
men who never became conspicuous, or became conspicuous only through
failure.”[29] And the difference in military capacity extended to the
rank and file. When the two armies met on the Antietam, events had been
such as to confer a marked superiority on the Southerners. They were
the children of victory, and every man in the army had participated in
the successes of Lee and Jackson. They had much experience of battle.
They were supremely confident in their own prowess, for the fall of
Harper’s Ferry had made more than amends for the retreat from South
Mountain, and they were supremely confident in their leaders. No new
regiments weakened
the stability of their array. Every brigade and every regiment could be
depended on. The artillery, which had been but lately reorganised in
battalions, had, under the fostering care of General Pendleton, become
peculiarly efficient, although the materiel was still indifferent; and
against Stuart’s horsemen the Federal cavalry was practically useless.
In every military attribute, then, the Army of Northern Virginia was so
superior to the Army of the Potomac that Lee and Jackson believed that
they might fight a defensive battle, outnumbered as they were, with the
hope of annihilating their enemy. They were not especially favoured by
the ground, and time and means for intrenching were both wanting; but
they were assured that not only were their veterans capable of holding
the position, but, if favoured by fortune, of delivering a
counterstroke which should shiver the Army of the Potomac into a
thousand fragments.
2. By retreating across the Potomac, in accordance with General
Longstreet’s suggestion, Lee would certainly have avoided all chances
of disaster. But, at the same time, he would have abandoned a good hope
of ending the war. The enemy would have been fully justified in
assuming that the retrograde movement had been made under the
compulsion of his advance, and the balance of _moral_ have been
sensibly affected in favour of the Federals. If the Potomac had once
been placed between the opposing forces, McClellan would have had it in
his power to postpone an encounter until his army was strongly
reinforced, his raw regiments trained, and his troops rested. The
passage of the river, it is true, had been successfully forced by the
Confederates on September 5. But it by no means followed that it could
be forced for the second time in face of a concentrated enemy, who
would have had time to recover his _moral_ and supply his losses.
McClellan, so long as the Confederates remained in Maryland, had
evidently made up his mind to attack. But if Maryland was evacuated he
would probably content himself with holding the line of the Potomac;
and, in view of the relative strength of the two armies, it would be an
extraordinary stroke of fortune which should lay him open to assault.
Lee and Jackson were firmly convinced that it was the wiser policy to
give the enemy no time to reorganise and recruit, but to coerce him to
battle before he had recovered from the defeat which he had sustained
on the heights above Bull Run. To recross the Potomac would be to
slight the favours of fortune, to abandon the initiative, and to
submit, in face of the vast numbers of fresh troops which the North was
already raising, to a defensive warfare, a warfare which might protract
the struggle, but which must end in the exhaustion of the Confederacy.
McClellan’s own words are the strongest justification of the views held
by the Southern leaders:—
“The Army of the Potomac was thoroughly exhausted and depleted by the
desperate fighting and severe marching in the unhealthy regions of the
Chickahominy and afterwards, during the second Bull Run campaign; its
trains, administrative services and supplies were disorganised or
lacking in consequence of the rapidity and manner of its removal from
the Peninsula, as well as from the nature of its operations during the
second Bull Run campaign.
“Had General Lee remained in front of Washington (south of the Potomac)
it would have been the part of wisdom to hold our own army quiet until
its pressing wants were fully supplied, its organisation was restored,
and its ranks were filled with recruits—in brief, until it was prepared
for a campaign. But as the enemy maintained the offensive, and crossed
the Upper Potomac to threaten or invade Pennsylvania, it became
necessary to meet him at any cost, notwithstanding the condition of the
troops, to put a stop to the invasion, to save Baltimore and
Washington, and throw him back across the Potomac. Nothing but sheer
necessity justified the advance of the Army of the Potomac to South
Mountain and Antietam in its then condition. The purpose of advancing
from Washington was simply to meet the necessities of the moment by