Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
that the victory they had won would be barren of result unless it were
at once utilised as a basis for further action. Jackson, engrossed as
he was with the training of his command, found time to reflect on the
broader aspects of the war. Before he left for the Shenandoah Valley he
sought an interview with General G. W. Smith, recently appointed to the
command of his division. “Finding me lying down in my tent,” writes
this officer, “he expressed regret that I was sick, and said he had
come to confer with me on a subject of great importance, but would not
then trouble me with it. I told him that I wished to hear whatever he
desired to say, and could rest whilst he was talking. He immediately
sat down on the ground, near the head of the cot on which I was lying,
and entered on the subject of his visit.
“‘McClellan,’ he said, ‘with his army of recruits, will not attempt to
come out against us this autumn. If we remain inactive they will have
greatly the advantage over us next spring. Their raw recruits will have
then become
an organised army, vastly superior in numbers to our own. We are ready
at the present moment for active operations in the field, while they
are not. We ought to invade their country now, and not wait for them to
make the necessary preparations to invade ours. If the President would
reinforce this army by taking troops from other points not threatened,
and let us make an active campaign of invasion before winter sets in,
McClellan’s raw recruits could not stand against us in the field.
“‘Crossing the Upper Potomac, occupying Baltimore, and taking
possession of Maryland, we could cut off the communications of
Washington, force the Federal Government to abandon the capital, beat
McClellan’s army if it came out against us in the open country, destroy
industrial establishments wherever we found them, break up the lines of
interior commercial intercourse, close the coal-mines, seize and, if
necessary, destroy the manufactories and commerce of Philadelphia, and
of other large cities in our reach; take and hold the narrow neck of
country between Pittsburg and Lake Erie; subsist mainly the country we
traverse, and making unrelenting war amidst their homes, force the
people of the North to understand what it will cost them to hold the
South in the Union at the bayonet’s point.”
“He then requested me to use my influence with Generals Johnston and
Beauregard in favour of immediate aggressive operations. I told him
that I was sure that an attempt on my part to exert any influence in
favour of his proposition would do no good. Not content with my answer
he repeated his arguments, dwelling more at length on the advantages of
such strategy to ourselves and its disadvantages to the enemy, and
again urged me to use my influence to secure its adoption. I gave him
the same reply I had already made.
“After a few minutes’ thought he abruptly said: ‘General, you have not
expressed any opinion in regard to the views I have laid before you.
But I feel assured that you favour them, and I think you ought to do
all in your power to have them carried into effect.’
“I then said, ‘I will tell you a secret.’
“He replied, ‘Please do not tell me any secret. I would prefer not to
hear it.’ I answered, ‘I must tell it to you, and I have no hesitation
in doing so, because I am certain that it will not be divulged.’ I then
explained to him that these views had already been laid before the
Government, in a conference which had taken place at Fairfax Court
House, in the first days of October, between President Davis, Generals
Johnston, Beauregard, and myself, and told him the result.
“When I had finished, he rose from the ground, on which he had been
seated, shook my hand warmly, and said, ‘I am sorry, very sorry.’
“Without another word he went slowly out to his horse, a few feet in
front of my tent, mounted very deliberately, and rode sadly away. A few
days afterwards he was ordered to the Valley.”[2]
Nov. 5 It was under such depressing circumstances that Jackson quitted
the army which, boldly used, might have ensured the existence of the
Confederacy. His headquarters were established at Winchester; and, in
communication with Centreville by road, rail, and telegraph, although
sixty miles distant, he was still subordinate to Johnston. The
Confederate front extended from Fredericksburg on the Rappahannock to
Winchester on the Opequon. Jackson’s force, holding the Valley of the
Shenandoah and the line of the Potomac westward of Point of Rocks, was
the extreme outpost on the left, and was connected with the main body
by a detachment at Leesburg, on the other side of the Blue Ridge, under
his brother-in-law, General D. H. Hill.
At Winchester his wife joined him, and of their first meeting she tells
a pretty story:—
“It can readily be imagined with what delight General Jackson’s
domestic plans for the winter were hailed by me, and without waiting
for the promised ‘aide’ to be sent on escort, I joined some friends who
were going to Richmond, where I spent a few days to shop, to secure a
passport, and
to await an escort to Winchester. The latter was soon found in a
kind-hearted, absent-minded old clergyman. We travelled by stage coach
from Strasbourg, and were told, before reaching Winchester, that
General Jackson was not there, having gone with his command on an
expedition. It was therefore with a feeling of sad disappointment and
loneliness that I alighted in front of Taylor’s hotel, at midnight, in
the early part of dreary cold December, and no husband to meet me with
a glad welcome. By the dim lamplight I noticed a small group of
soldiers standing in the wide hall, but they remained silent
spectators, and my escort led me up the big stairway, doubtless feeling
disappointed that he still had me on his hands. Just before reaching
the landing I turned to look back, for one figure among the group
looked startlingly familiar, but as he had not come forward, I felt
that I must be mistaken. However, my backward glance revealed an
officer muffled up in a military greatcoat, cap drawn down over his
eyes, following us in rapid pursuit, and by the time we were upon the
top step a pair of strong arms caught me; the captive’s head was thrown
back, and she was kissed again and again by her husband before she
could recover from the delightful surprise he had given her. The good
old minister chuckled gleefully, and was no doubt a sincere sharer in
the joy and relief experienced by his charge. When I asked my husband
why he did not come forward when I got out of the coach, he said he
wanted to assure himself that it was his own wife, as he didn’t want to
commit the blunder of kissing anybody else’s _esposa_!”
The people amongst whom they found themselves were Virginian to the
core. In Winchester itself the feeling against the North was
exceptionally bitter. The town was no mushroom settlement; its history
stretched back to the old colonial days; the grass-grown intrenchments
on the surrounding hills had been raised by Washington during the
Indian wars, and the traditions of the first struggle for independence
were not yet forgotten. No single section of the South was more
conservative. Although the citizens had been strong Unionists, nowhere
were the principles
which their fathers had respected, the sovereignty of the individual
State and the right of secession, more strongly held, and nowhere had
the hereditary spirit of resistance to coercive legislation blazed up
more fiercely. The soldiers of Bull Run, who had driven the invader
from the soil of Virginia, were the heroes of the hour, and the leader
of the Stonewall Brigade had peculiar claims on the hospitality of the
town. It was to the people of the Valley that he owed his command.
“With one voice,” wrote the Secretary of War, “have they made constant
and urgent appeals that to you, in whom they have confidence, their
defence should be assigned.”
“The Winchester ladies,” says Mrs. Jackson, “were amongst the most
famous of Virginia housekeepers, and lived in a good deal of
old-fashioned elegance and profusion. The old border town had not then
changed hands with the conflicting armies, as it was destined to do so
many times during the war. Under the rose-coloured light in which I
viewed everything that winter, it seemed to me that no people could
have been more cultivated, attractive, and noble-hearted. Winchester
was rich in happy homes and pleasant people; and the extreme kindness
and appreciation shown to General Jackson by all bound us to them so
closely and warmly that ever after that winter he called the place our
‘war home.’”
But amid congenial acquaintances and lovely surroundings, with the
tumult of war quiescent, and the domestic happiness so dear to him
restored, Jackson allowed no relaxation either to himself or to his
men. His first care was to train and organise his new regiments. The
ranks were filled with recruits, and to their instruction he devoted
himself with unwearied energy. His small force of cavalry, commanded by
Colonel Turner Ashby, a gentleman of Virginia, whose name was to become
famous in the annals of the Confederacy, he at once despatched to
patrol the frontier.
Prompt measures were taken to discipline the troops, and that this last
was a task of no little difficulty the following incident suggests. In
the middle of November, to Jackson’s great delight, the Stonewall
Brigade had been
sent to him from Manassas, and after its arrival an order was issued
which forbade all officers leaving the camp except upon passes from
headquarters. A protest was immediately drawn up by the regimental
commanders, and laid before the general. They complained that the
obnoxious order was “an unwarranted assumption of authority, disparaged
their dignity, and detracted from that respect of the force under their
command which was necessary to maintain their authority and enforce
obedience.” Jackson’s reply well illustrates his own idea of
discipline, and of the manner in which it should be upheld. His
adjutant-general wrote as follows to the discontented officers:—
“The Major-General Commanding desires me to say that the within
combined protest is in violation of army regulations and subversive of
military discipline. He claims the right to give his pickets such
instructions as in his opinion the interests of the service require.
“Colonels —— and —— on the day that their regiments arrived at their
present encampment, either from incompetency to control their commands,
or from neglect of duty, so permitted their commands to become
disorganised and their officers and men to enter Winchester without
permission, as to render several arrests of officers necessary.
“If officers desire to have control over their commands, they must
remain habitually with them, industriously attend to their instruction
and comfort, and in battle lead them well, and in such a manner as to
command their admiration.
“Such officers need not apprehend loss of respect resulting from
inserting in a written pass the words ‘on duty,’ or ‘on private
business,’ should they have occasion to pass the pickets.”
Even the Stonewall Brigade had yet much to learn.
At this time Jackson was besieged with numerous applications for
service on his staff. The majority of these were from persons without
experience, and they were made to the wrong man. “My desire,” he wrote,
“is to get a staff specially qualified for their specific duties. I
know Mr. —— personally, and was favourably impressed by him. But if
a person desires office in these times, the best thing for him to do is
to pitch into service somewhere, and work with such energy, skill, and
success as to impress those round him with the conviction that such are