Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
I waded through creeks, I passed through pine-woods, and at last got
into camp about two o’clock. I then made my way to a small house
occupied by the general as his headquarters. I wrote down my name, and
gave it to the orderly, and I was immediately told to walk in.
“The general rose and greeted me warmly. I expected
to see an old, untidy man, and was most agreeably surprised and pleased
with his appearance. He is tall, handsome, and powerfully built, but
thin. He has brown hair and a brown beard. His mouth expresses great
determination. The lips are thin and compressed firmly together; his
eyes are blue and dark, with keen and searching expression. I was told
that his age was thirty-eight, and he looks forty. The general, who is
indescribably simple and unaffected in all his ways, took off my wet
overcoat with his own hands, made up the fire, brought wood for me to
put my feet on to keep them warm while my boots were drying, and then
began to ask me questions on various subjects. At the dinner hour we
went out and joined the members of his staff. At this meal the general
said grace in a fervent, quiet manner, which struck me very much. After
dinner I returned to his room, and he again talked for a long time. The
servant came in and took his mattress out of a cupboard and laid it on
the floor.
“As I rose to retire, the general said, ‘Captain, there is plenty of
room on my bed, I hope you will share it with me?’ I thanked him very
much for his courtesy, but said ‘Good-night,’ and slept in a tent,
sharing the blankets of one of his aides-de-camp. In the morning at
breakfast-time I noticed that the general said grace before the meal
with the same fervour I had remarked before. An hour or two afterwards
it was time for me to return to the station; on this occasion, however,
I had a horse, and I returned to the general’s headquarters to bid him
adieu. His little room was vacant, so I slipped in and stood before the
fire. I then noticed my greatcoat stretched before it on a chair.
Shortly afterwards the general entered the room. He said: ‘Captain, I
have been trying to dry your greatcoat, but I am afraid I have not
succeeded very well.’ That little act illustrates the man’s character.
With the care and responsibilities of a vast army on his shoulders he
finds time to do little acts of kindness and thoughtfulness.”
With each of his staff officers he was on most friendly
terms; and the visitors to his camp, such as the English officer quoted
above, found him a most delightful host, discussing with the ease of an
educated gentleman all manner of topics, and displaying not the
slightest trace of that awkwardness and extreme diffidence which have
been attributed to him. The range and accuracy of his information
surprised them. “Of military history,” said another English soldier,
“he knew more than any other man I met in America; and he was so far
from displaying the somewhat grim characteristics that have been
associated with his name, that one would have thought his tastes lay in
the direction of art and literature.” “His chief delight,” wrote the
Hon. Francis Lawley, who knew him well, “was in the cathedrals of
England, notably in York Minster and Westminster Abbey. He was never
tired of talking about them, or listening to details about the chapels
and cloisters of Oxford.”[6]
“General Jackson,” writes Lord Wolseley, “had certainly very little to
say about military operations, although he was intensely proud of his
soldiers, and enthusiastic in his devotion to General Lee; and it was
impossible to make him talk of his own achievements. Nor can I say that
his speech betrayed his intellectual powers. But his manner, which was
modesty itself, was most attractive. He put you at your ease at once,
listening with marked courtesy and attention to whatever you might say;
and when the subject of conversation was congenial, he was a most
interesting companion. I quite endorse the statement as to his love for
beautiful things. He told me that in all his travels he had seen
nothing so beautiful as the lancet windows in York Minster.”
In his daily intercourse with his staff, however, in his office or in
the mess-room, he showed to less advantage than in the society of
strangers. His gravity of demeanour seldom wholly disappeared, his
intense earnestness was in itself oppressive, and he was often absent
and preoccupied. “Life at headquarters,” says one of his staff
officers, “was decidedly dull. Our meals were often very
dreary. The general had no time for light or trivial conversation, and
he sometimes felt it his duty to rebuke our thoughtless and perhaps
foolish remarks. Nor was it always quite safe to approach him.
Sometimes he had a tired look in his eyes, and although he never
breathed a word to one or another, we knew that he was dissatisfied
with what was being done with the army.”[7]
Intense concentration of thought and purpose, in itself an indication
of a powerful will, had distinguished Jackson from his very boyhood.
During his campaigns he would pace for hours outside his tent, his
hands clasped behind his back, absorbed in meditation; and when the
army was on the march, he would ride for hours without raising his eyes
or opening his lips. It was unquestionably at such moments that he was
working out his plans, step by step, forecasting the counter-movements
of the enemy, and providing for every emergency that might occur. And
here the habit of keeping his whole faculties fixed on a single object,
and of imprinting on his memory the successive processes of complicated
problems, fostered by the methods of study which, both at West Point
and Lexington, the weakness of his eyes had made compulsory, must have
been an inestimable advantage. Brilliant strategical manœuvres, it
cannot be too often repeated, are not a matter of inspiration and of
decision on the spur of the moment. The problems presented by a theatre
of war, with their many factors, are not to be solved except by a
vigorous and sustained intellectual effort. “If,” said Napoleon, “I
always appear prepared, it is because, before entering on an
undertaking, I have meditated for long and have foreseen what may
occur. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly and secretly what
I should do in circumstances unexpected by others; it is thought and
meditation.”
The proper objective, speaking in general terms, of all military
operations is the main army of the enemy, for a campaign can never be
brought to a successful conclusion until the hostile forces in the
field have become demoralised
by defeat; but, to ensure success, preponderance of numbers is usually
essential, and it may be said, therefore, that the proper objective is
the enemy’s main army when it is in inferior strength.
Under ordinary conditions, the first step, then, towards victory must
be a movement, or a series of movements, which will compel the enemy to
divide his forces, and put it out of his power to assemble even equal
strength on the battle-field.
This entails a consideration of the strategic points upon the theatre
of war, for it is by occupying or threatening some point which the
enemy cannot afford to lose that he will be induced to disperse his
army, or to place himself in a position where he can be attacked at a
disadvantage. While his main army, therefore, is the ultimate
objective, certain strategic points become the initial objectives, to
be occupied or threatened either by the main body or detached forces.
It is seldom, however, that these initial objectives are readily
discovered; and it is very often the case that even the ultimate
objective may be obscured.
These principles are well illustrated by the operations in the Valley
of Virginia during the month of May and the first fortnight of June,
1862. After the event it is easy to see that Banks’ army was Jackson’s
proper objective—being the principal force in the secondary theatre of
war. But at the time, before the event, Lee and Jackson alone realised
the importance of overwhelming Banks and thus threatening Washington.
It was not realised by Johnston, a most able soldier, for the whole of
his correspondence goes to show that he thought a purely defensive
attitude the best policy for the Valley Army. It was not realised by
Jackson’s subordinates, for it was not till long after the battle of
Winchester that the real purport of the operations in which they had
been engaged began to dawn on them. It was not realised by Lincoln, by
Stanton, or even by McClellan, for to each of them the sudden attack on
Front Royal was as much of a surprise as to Banks himself; and we may
be perfectly confident that none but a trained strategist, after
a prolonged study of the map and the situation, would realise it now.
It is to be noted, too, that Jackson’s initial objectives—the
strategical points in the Valley—were invariably well selected. The
Luray Gap, the single road which gives access across the Massanuttons
from one side of the Valley to the other, was the most important. The
flank position on Elk Run, the occupation of which so suddenly brought
up Banks, prevented him interposing between Jackson and Edward Johnson,
and saved Staunton from capture, was a second; Front Royal, by seizing
which he threatened Banks at Strasburg in flank and rear, compelling
him to a hasty retreat, and bringing him to battle on ground which he
had not prepared, a third; and the position at Port Republic,
controlling the only bridge across the Shenandoah, and separating
Shields from Frémont, a fourth. The bearing of all these localities was
overlooked by the Federals, and throughout the campaign we cannot fail
to notice a great confusion on their part as regards objectives. They
neither recognised what the aim of their enemy would be, nor at what
they should aim themselves. It was long before they discovered that
Lee’s army, and not Richmond, was the vital point of the Confederacy.
Not a single attempt was made to seize strategic points, and if we may
judge from the orders and dispatches in the Official Records, their
existence was never recognised. To this oversight the successive
defeats of the Northern forces were in great part due. From McClellan
to Banks, each one of their generals appears to have been blind to the
advantages that may be derived from a study of the theatre of war. Not
one of them hit upon a line of operations which embarrassed the
Confederates, and all possessed the unhappy knack of joining battle on
the most unfavourable terms. Moreover, when it at last became clear
that the surest means of conquering a country is to defeat its armies,
the true objective was but vaguely realised. The annihilation of the
enemy’s troops seems to have been the last thing dreamt of.
Opportunities of crushing him in detail were neither sought for nor
created. As General
Sheridan said afterwards: “The trouble with the commanders of the Army
of the Potomac was that they never marched out to ‘lick’ anybody; all
they thought of was to escape being ‘licked’ themselves.”
But it is not sufficient, in planning strategical combinations, to
arrive at a correct conclusion as regards the objective. Success
demands a most careful calculation of ways and means: of the numbers at
disposal; of food, forage, and ammunition; and of the forces to he
detached for secondary purposes. The different factors of the
problem—the strength and dispositions of the enemy, the roads,
railways, fortresses, weather, natural features, the _moral_ of the
opposing armies, the character of the opposing general, the facilities
for supply have each and all of them to be considered, their relative
prominence assigned to them, and their conflicting claims to be brought
into adjustment.
For such mental exertion Jackson was well equipped. He had made his own