Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
time to arm, to assemble, to organise, to create an army, to train
a staff, or to arrange for their supplies. Each gathering of
volunteers would have been swept away before it had attained
consistency, and Virginia, at least, must have been conquered in
the first few months.
And matters would have been no different if the army corps had been
directed against the Union. In the Northern States there were over
2,000,000 men who were liable for service; and yet the Union
States, notwithstanding their superior resources, were just as
vulnerable as the Confederacy. Numbers, even if they amount to
millions, are useless, and worse than useless, without training and
organisation; the more men that are collected on the battle-field,
the more crushing and far-reaching their defeat. Nor can the theory
be sustained that a small army, invading a rich and populous
country, would be “stung to death” by the numbers of its foes, even
if they dared not oppose it in the open field. Of what avail were
the stupendous efforts of the French Republic in 1870 and 1871?
Enormous armies were raised and equipped; the ranks were filled
with brave men; the generals were not unskilful; and yet time after
time they were defeated by the far inferior forces of their
seasoned enemies. Even in America itself, on two occasions, at
Sharpsburg in 1862, and at Gettysburg in 1863, it was admitted by
the North that the Southerners were “within a stone’s throw of
independence.” And yet hundreds of thousands of able-bodied
men had not yet joined the Federal armies. Nor can Spain be quoted as
an instance of an unconquerable nation. Throughout the war with
Napoleon the English armies, not only that under Wellington, but those
at Cadiz, Tarifa, and Gibraltar, afforded solid rallying-points for the
defeated Spaniards, and by a succession of victories inspired the whole
Peninsula with hope and courage.
The patriot with a rifle may be equal, or even superior, man for
man, to the professional soldier; but even patriots must be fed,
and to win victories they must be able to manœuvre, and to manœuvre
they must have leaders. If it could remain stationary, protected by
earthworks, and supplied by railways, with which the enemy did not
interfere, a host of hastily raised levies, if armed and equipped,
might hold its own against even a regular army. But against troops
which can manœuvre earthworks are useless, as the history of
Sherman’s brilliant operations in 1864 conclusively shows. To win
battles and to protect their country armies must be capable of
counter-manœuvre, and it is when troops are set in motion that the
real difficulty of supplying them begins.
If it is nothing else, the War of Secession, with its awful
expenditure of blood and treasure, is a most startling
object-lesson in National Insurance.
[1] Sherman’s _Memoirs,_ vol. i, p. 181.
[2] O.R., vol. ii, p. 324. McDowell’s Report.
[3] O.R., vol. ii, p. 324. McDowell’s Report.
[4] The rifles (muzzle-loaders) used throughout the war by both
Federals and Confederates compare as follows with more modern
weapons:—
_Sighted to_ _Effective range_
American
Needle-gun (1866 and 1870)
Chassepôt (1870)
Martini-Henry
Magazine 1,000 yards
660 yards
1,320 yards
2,100 yards
3,200 yards 250 yards
250 yards
350 yards
400 yards
600 yards
By effective range is meant the distance where, under ordinary
conditions, the enemy’s losses are sufficient to stop his advance. The
effective range of Brown Bess was about 60 yards. The American rifled
artillery was effective, in clear weather, at 2,000 yards, the
12-pounder smooth-bore at 1,600, the 6-pounder at 1,200.
[5] O.R., vol. ii, p. 505.
[6] Hunter and Heintzleman had 13,200 officers and men; Tyler, 12,000.
Bee and Barrow had 3200 officers and men; Hampton, 630; Jackson,
3,000.
[7] _Battles and Leaders,_ vol. i, p. 236.
[8] General Kirby Smith being severely wounded, the command of this
brigade devolved upon Colonel Elzey.
[9] Report of Captain Woodbury, U.S. Engineers, O.R., vol. ii, p. 334.
[10] General J. B. Fry, _Battles and Leaders,_ vol. i, p. 191.
[11] _McClellan’s Own Story,_ pp. 66, 67.
[12] Both Johnston and Beauregard, in their official reports, did full
justice to Jackson and his brigade.
[13] O.R., vol. ii, p. 482.
[14] For the strength of divisions and brigades, see the Note at the
end of the chapter.
[15] “Had an attack,” said General Johnston, “been made in force, with
double line of battle, such as any major-general in the United States
service would now make, we could not have held [the position] for half
an hour, for they would have enveloped us on both flanks.”—_Campaigns
of the Army of the Potomac,_ W. Swinton, p. 58.
[16] Colonel Williams, of the 5th Virginia, writes that the Stonewall
Brigade was a notable exception to the general disintegration, and
that it was in good condition for immediate service on the morning
after the battle.
[17] _Battles and Leaders,_ vol. i, pp. 122, 123.
Chapter VII
ROMNEY
While the Indian summer still held carnival in the forests of Virginia,
Jackson found himself once more on the Shenandoah. Some regiments of
militia, the greater part of which were armed with flint-lock muskets,
and a few squadrons of irregular cavalry formed his sole command.
The autumn of 1861 was a comparatively quiet season. The North, silent
but determined, was preparing to put forth her stupendous strength.
Scott had resigned; McDowell had been superseded; but the President had
found a general who had caught the confidence of the nation. In the
same month that had witnessed McDowell’s defeat, a young officer had
gained a cheap victory over a small Confederate force in West Virginia,
and his grandiloquent dispatches had magnified the achievement in the
eyes of the Northern people. He was at once nicknamed the “Young
Napoleon,” and his accession to the chief command of the Federal armies
was enthusiastically approved. General McClellan had been educated at
West Point, and had graduated first of the class in which Jackson was
seventeenth. He had been appointed to the engineers, had served on the
staff in the war with Mexico, and as United States Commissioner with
the Allied armies in the Crimea. In 1857 he resigned, to become
president of a railway company, and when the war broke out he was
commissioned by the State of Ohio as Major-General of Volunteers. His
reputation at the Military Academy and in the regular army had been
high. His ability and industry were unquestioned. His physique was
powerful, and he was a fine horseman. His influence
over his troops was remarkable, and he was emphatically a gentleman.
It was most fortunate for the Union at this juncture that caution and
method were his distinguishing characteristics. The States had placed
at Lincoln’s disposal sufficient troops to form an army seven times
greater than that which had been defeated at Bull Run. McClellan,
however, had no thought of committing the new levies to an enterprise
for which they were unfitted. He had determined that the army should
make no move till it could do so with the certainty of success, and the
winter months were to be devoted to training and organisation. Nor was
there any cry for immediate action. The experiment of a civilian army
had proved a terrible failure. The nation that had been so confident of
capturing Richmond, was now anxious for the security of Washington. The
war had been in progress for nearly six months, and yet the troops were
manifestly unfit for offensive operations. Even the crude strategists
of the press had become alive to the importance of drill and
discipline.
October 21 A reconnaissance in force, pushed (contrary to McClellan’s
orders) across the Potomac, was repulsed by General Evans at Ball’s
Bluff with heavy loss; and mismanagement and misconduct were so evident
that the defeat did much towards inculcating patience.
So the work went on, quietly but surely, the general supported by the
President, and the nation giving men and money without remonstrance.
The South, on the other hand, was still apathetic. The people, deluded
by their decisive victory, underrated the latent strength of their
mighty adversary. They appear to have believed that the earthworks
which had transformed Centreville into a formidable fortress, manned by
the Army of Northern Virginia, as the force under Johnston was now
designated, were sufficient in themselves to end the war. They had not
yet learned that there were many roads to Richmond, and that a passive
defence is no safeguard against a persevering foe. The Government,
expecting much from the intervention of the European Powers, did
nothing to press the
advantage already gained. In vain the generals urged the President to
reinforce the army at Centreville to 60,000 men, and to give it
transport and supplies sufficient to permit the passage of the Potomac
above Washington.
In vain they pointed out, in answer to the reply that the Government
could furnish neither men nor arms, that large bodies of troops were
retained at points the occupation of which by the enemy would cause
only a local inconvenience. “Was it not possible,” they asked the
President, “by stripping other points to the last they would bear, and
even risking defeat at all other places, to put the Virginian army in
condition for a forward movement? Success,” they said, “in the
neighbourhood of Washington was success everywhere, and it was upon the
north-eastern frontier that all the available force of the Confederacy
should be concentrated.”
Mr. Davis was immovable. Although Lee, who had been appointed to a
command in West Virginia almost immediately after Bull Run, was no
longer at hand to advise him, he probably saw the strategical
requirements of the situation. That a concentrated attack on a vital
point is a better measure of security than dissemination along a
frontier, that the counter-stroke is the soul of the defence, and that
the true policy of the State which is compelled to take up arms against
a superior foe is to allow that foe no breathing-space, are truisms
which it would be an insult to his ability to say that he did not
realise. But to have surrendered territory to the temporary occupation
of the enemy, in order to seek a problematical victory elsewhere, would
have probably provoked a storm of discontent. The authority of the new
Government was not yet firmly established; nor was the patriotism of
the Southern people so entirely unselfish as to render them willing to
endure minor evils in order to achieve a great result. They were
willing to fight, but they were unwilling that their own States should
be left unprotected. To apply Frederick the Great’s maxim[1]
requires greater strength of will in the statesman than in the soldier.
The cries and complaints of those who find themselves abandoned do not
penetrate to the camp, but they may bring down an administration. It is
easy to contrive excuses for the inaction of the President, and it is
no new thing to find the demands of strategy sacrificed to political
expediency. Nor did the army which had suffered so heavily on the banks
of Bull Run evince any marked desire to be led across the Potomac.
Furloughs were liberally granted. Officers and privates dispersed to
look after their farms and their plantations. The harvests had to be
gathered, the negroes required the master’s eye, and even the counties
of Virginia asked that part of the contingents they had furnished might
be permitted to return to agricultural pursuits.
The senior generals of the Virginia army were not alone in believing