Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
But the action was attended by features more remarkable than the
stubborn resistance of the Virginia regiments. It is seldom that a
battle so insignificant as Kernstown has been followed by such
extraordinary results. Fortune indeed favoured the Confederates. At the
time of the battle a large portion of McClellan’s army was at sea, and
the attack was delivered at the very moment when it was most dreaded by
the Northern Government. Nor was it to the disadvantage of the
Southerners that the real head of the Federal army was the President,
and that his strategical conceptions were necessarily subservient to
the attitude of the Northern people. These were circumstances purely
fortuitous, and it might seem, therefore, that Jackson merely blundered
into success. But he must be given full credit for recognizing that a
blow at Banks might be fraught with most important consequences. It was
with other ideas than defeating a rear-guard or detaining Banks that he
seized the Kernstown ridge. He was not yet aware of McClellan’s plan of
invasion by sea; but he knew well that any movement that would threaten
Washington must prove embarrassing to the Federal Government; that they
could not afford to leave the Upper Potomac ill secured; and that the
knowledge that an active and enterprising enemy, who had shown himself
determined to take instant advantage of every opportunity, was within
the Valley, would probably cause them to withdraw troops from McClellan
in order to guard the river. A fortnight after the battle, asking for
reinforcements, he wrote, “If Banks is defeated it may greatly retard
McClellan’s movements.”[30]
Stubborn as had been the fighting of his brigades, Jackson himself was
not entirely satisfied with his officers. When Sullivan and Kimball
came to Tyler’s aid, and a new line of battle threatened to overwhelm
the Stonewall
regiments, Garnett, on his own responsibility, had given the order to
retire. Many of the men, their ammunition exhausted, had fallen to the
rear. The exertions of the march had begun to tell. The enemy’s attacks
had been fiercely pressed, and before the pressure of his fresh
brigades the Confederate power of resistance was strained to
breaking-point. Garnett had behaved with conspicuous gallantry. The
officers of his brigade declared that he was perfectly justified in
ordering a retreat. Jackson thought otherwise, and almost immediately
after the battle he relieved him of his command, placed him under
arrest, and framed charges for his trial by court-martial. He would not
accept the excuse that ammunition had given out. At the time the
Stonewall Brigade gave back the 5th and 42nd Virginia were at hand. The
men had still their bayonets, and he did not consider the means of
victory exhausted until the cold steel had been employed. “He
insisted,” says Dabney, “that a more resolute struggle might have won
the field.”[31]
Now, in the first place, it must be conceded that Garnett had not the
slightest right to abandon his position without a direct order.[32] In
the second, if we turn to the table of losses furnished by the brigade
commander, we find that in Garnett’s four regiments, numbering 1,100
officers and men, there fell 153. In addition, 148 were reported
missing, but, according to the official reports, the majority of these
were captured by the Federal cavalry and were unwounded. At most, then,
when he gave the order to retreat, Garnett had lost 200, or rather less
than 20 per cent.
Such loss was heavy, but by no means excessive. A few months later
hardly a brigade in either army would have given way because every
fifth man had fallen. A year later and the Stonewall regiments would
have considered an action in which they lost 200 men as nothing
more than a skirmish.[33] The truth would seem to be that the Valley
soldiers were not yet blooded. In peace the individual is everything;
material prosperity, self-indulgence, and the preservation of existence
are the general aim. In war the individual is nothing, and men learn
the lesson of self-sacrifice. But it is only gradually, however high
the enthusiasm which inspires the troops, that the ideas of peace
become effaced, and they must be seasoned soldiers who will endure,
without flinching, the losses of Waterloo or Gettysburg. Discipline,
which means the effacement of the individual, does more than break the
soldier to unhesitating obedience; it trains him to die for duty’s
sake, and even the Stonewall Brigade, in the spring of 1862, was not
yet thoroughly disciplined. “The lack of competent and energetic
officers,” writes Jackson’s chief of the staff, “was at this time the
bane of the service. In many there was neither an intelligent
comprehension of their duties nor zeal in their performance. Appointed
by the votes of their neighbours and friends, they would neither
exercise that rigidity in governing, nor that detailed care in
providing for the wants of their men, which are necessary to keep
soldiers efficient. The duties of the drill and the sentry-post were
often negligently performed; and the most profuse waste of ammunition
and other military stores was permitted. It was seldom that these
officers were guilty of cowardice upon the field of battle, but they
were often in the wrong place, fighting as common soldiers when they
should have been directing others. Above all was their inefficiency
marked in their inability to keep their men in the ranks. Absenteeism
grew under them to a monstrous evil, and every poltroon and laggard
found a way of escape. Hence the frequent phenomenon that regiments,
which on the books of the commissary appeared as consumers of 500 or
1,000 rations, were reported as
carrying into action 250 or 300 bayonets.”[34] It is unlikely that this
picture is over-coloured, and it is certainly no reproach to the
Virginia soldiers that their discipline was indifferent. There had not
yet been time to transform a multitude of raw recruits into the
semblance of a regular army. Competent instructors and trained leaders
were few in the extreme, and the work had to be left in inexperienced
hands. One Stonewall Jackson was insufficient to leaven a division of
5,000 men.
In the second place, Jackson probably remembered that the Stonewall
Brigade at Bull Run, dashing out with the bayonet on the advancing
Federals, had driven them back on their reserves. It seems hardly
probable, had Garnett at Kernstown held his ground a little longer,
that the three regiments still intact could have turned the tide of
battle. But it is not impossible. The Federals had been roughly
handled. Their losses had been heavier than those of the Confederates.
A resolute counterstroke has before now changed the face of battle, and
among unseasoned soldiers panic spreads with extraordinary effect. So
far as can be gathered from the reports, there is no reason to suspect
that the vigour of the Federal battalions was as yet relaxed. But no
one who was not actually present can presume to judge of the temper of
the troops. In every well-contested battle there comes a moment when
the combatants on both sides become exhausted, and the general who at
that moment finds it in his heart to make one more effort will
generally succeed. Such was the experience of Grant, Virginia’s
stoutest enemy.[35] That moment, perhaps, had come at Kernstown; and
Jackson, than whom not Skobeleff himself had clearer vision or cooler
brain in the tumult of battle, may have observed it. It cannot be too
often repeated that numbers go for little on the battle-field. It is
possible that Jackson had in his mind, when he declared that the
victory might yet have been won, the decisive counterstroke at Marengo,
where 20,000 Austrians, pressing forward in pursuit of a defeated
enemy, were utterly overthrown by a
fresh division of 6,000 men supported by four squadrons.[36]
Tactical unity and _moral_ are factors of far more importance in battle
than mere numerical strength. Troops that have been hotly engaged, even
with success, and whose nerves are wrought up to a high state of
tension, are peculiarly susceptible to surprise. If they have lost
their order, and the men find themselves under strange officers, with
unfamiliar faces beside them, the counterstroke falls with even greater
force. It is at such moments that cavalry still finds its opportunity.
It is at such moments that a resolute charge, pushed home with drums
beating and a loud cheer, may have extraordinary results. On August 6,
1870, on the heights of Wörth, a German _corps d’armée,_ emerging,
after three hours’ fierce fighting, from the great wood on McMahon’s
flank, bore down upon the last stronghold of the French. The troops
were in the utmost confusion. Divisions, brigades, regiments, and
companies were mingled in one motley mass. But the enemy was
retreating; a heavy force of artillery was close at hand, and the
infantry must have numbered at least 10,000 rifles. Suddenly three
battalions of Turcos, numbering no more than 1,500 bayonets, charged
with wild cries, and without firing, down the grassy slope. The Germans
halted, fired a few harmless volleys, and then, turning as one man,
bolted to the shelter of the wood, twelve hundred yards in rear.
According to an officer of the 14th Indiana, the Federals at Kernstown
were in much the same condition as the Germans at Wörth. “The
Confederates fell back in great disorder, and we advanced in disorder
just as great. Over logs, through woods, over hills and fields, the
brigades, regiments, and companies advanced, in one promiscuous, mixed,
and uncontrollable mass. Officers shouted themselves hoarse in trying
to bring order out of confusion, but
all their efforts were unavailing along the front line, or rather what
ought to have been the front line.”[37]
Garnett’s conduct was not the only incident connected with Kernstown
that troubled Jackson. March 23 was a Sunday. “You appear much
concerned,” he writes to his wife, “at my attacking on Sunday. I am
greatly concerned too; but I felt it my duty to do it, in consideration
of the ruinous effects that might result from postponing the battle
until the morning. So far as I can see, my course was a wise one; the
best that I could do under the circumstances, though very distasteful
to my feelings; and I hope and pray to our Heavenly Father that I may
never again be circumstanced as on that day. I believed that, so far as
our troops were concerned, necessity and mercy both called for the
battle. I do hope that the war will soon be over, and that I shall
never again be called upon to take the field. Arms is a profession
that, if its principles are adhered to, requires an officer to do what
he fears may be wrong, and yet, according to military experience, must
be done if success is to be attained. And the fact of its being
necessary to success, and being accompanied with success, and that a
departure from it is accompanied with disaster, suggests that it must
be right. Had I fought the battle on Monday instead of Sunday, I fear
our cause would have suffered, whereas, as things turned out, I
consider our cause gained much from the engagement.”
We may wonder if his wife detected the unsoundness of the argument. To
do wrong—for wrong it was according to her creed—in order that good may
ensue is what it comes to. The literal interpretation of the Scriptural
rule seems to have led her husband into difficulties; but the incident
may serve to show with what earnestness, in every action of his life,
he strove to shape his conduct with what he believed to be his duty.
It has already been observed that Jackson’s reticence was remarkable.
No general could have been more careful that no inkling of his design
should reach the enemy. He had not the slightest hesitation in
withholding his plans from