Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War
go around and turn the Federal right, when in some way unknown to me
the battle was drawn on.”[16]
Unfortunately, through some mistake on the part of Lee’s staff, the
order of attack which had been already issued was not rescinded. It was
certainly an extraordinary production. “Batteries,” it ran, “have been
established to rake the enemy’s line. If it is broken, as is probable,
Armistead, who can witness the effect of the fire, has been ordered to
charge with a yell. Do the same.”[17] This was to D. H. Hill and to
Magruder, who had under his command Huger’s and McLaws’ divisions as
well as his own.
5.30 p.m. So, between five and six o’clock, General D. H. Hill,
believing that he heard the appointed signal, broke forward from the
timber, and five brigades, in one irregular line, charged full against
the enemy’s front. The
Federals, disposed in several lines, were in overwhelming strength.
Their batteries were free to concentrate on the advancing infantry.
Their riflemen, posted in the interval between the artillery masses,
swept the long slopes with a grazing fire, while fence, bank, and
ravine, gave shelter from the Confederate bullets. Nor were the
enormous difficulties which confronted the attack in any way mitigated
by careful arrangement on the part of the Confederate staff. The only
hope of success, if success were possible, lay in one strong
concentrated effort; in employing the whole army; in supporting the
infantry with artillery, regardless of loss, at close range; and in
hurling a mass of men, in several successive lines, against one point
of the enemy’s position. It is possible that the Federal army, already
demoralised by retreat, might have yielded to such vigorous pressure.
But in the Confederate attack there was not the slightest attempt at
concentration. The order which dictated it gave an opening to
misunderstanding; and, as is almost invariably the case when orders are
defective, misunderstanding occurred. The movement was premature.
Magruder had only two brigades of his three divisions, Armistead’s and
Wright’s, in position. Armistead, who was well in advance of the
Confederate right, was attacked by a strong body of skirmishers. D. H.
Hill took the noise of this conflict for the appointed signal, and
moved forward. The divisions which should have supported him had not
yet crossed the swamp in rear; and thus 10,500 men, absolutely unaided,
advanced against the whole Federal army. The blunder met with terrible
retribution. On that midsummer evening death reaped a fearful harvest.
The gallant Confederate infantry, nerved by their success at Gaines’
Mill, swept up the field with splendid determination. “It was the onset
of battle,” said a Federal officer present, “with the good order of a
review.” But the iron hail of grape and canister, laying the ripe wheat
low as if it had been cut with a sickle, and tossing the shocks in air,
rent the advancing lines from end to end. Hundreds fell, hundreds
swarmed back to the woods, but still the brigades pressed on, and
through the smoke of battle
the waving colours led the charge. But the Federal infantry had yet to
be encountered. Lying behind their shelter they had not yet fired a
shot; but as the Confederates reached close range, regiment after
regiment, springing to their feet, poured a devastating fire into the
charging ranks. The rush was checked. Here and there small bodies of
desperate men, following the colours, still pressed onward, but the
majority lay down, and the whole front of battle rang with the roar of
musketry. But so thin was the Confederate line that it was impossible
to overcome the sustained fire of the enemy. The brigade reserves had
already been thrown in; there was no further support at hand; the
Federal gunners, staunch and resolute, held fast to their position, and
on every part of the line Porter’s reserves were coming up. As one
regiment emptied its cartridge-boxes it was relieved by another. The
volume of fire never for a moment slackened; and fresh batteries,
amongst which were the 32-pounders of the siege train, unlimbering on
the flanks, gave further strength to a front which was already
impregnable.
Jackson, meanwhile, on receiving a request for reinforcements, had sent
forward three brigades of his own division and a brigade of Hill’s. But
a mistake had been committed in the disposition of these troops. The
order for attack had undoubtedly named only D. H. Hill’s division. But
there was no good reason that it should have been so literally
construed as to leave the division unsupported. Whiting was guarding
the left flank, and was not available; but Ewell and Winder were doing
nothing, and there can be no question but that they should have
advanced to the edge of the woods directly D. H. Hill moved forward,
and have followed his brigades across the open, ready to lend aid
directly his line was checked. As it was, they had been halted within
the woods and beyond the swamp, and the greater part, in order to avoid
the random shells, had moved even further to the rear. It thus happened
that before the reinforcements arrived Hill’s division had been beaten
back, and under the tremendous fire of the Federal artillery it was
with difficulty that the border of the forest was maintained.
While Hill was retiring, Huger, and then Magruder, came into action on
the right. It had been reported to Lee that the enemy was beginning to
fall back. This report originated, there can be little doubt, in the
withdrawal of the Federal regiments and batteries which had exhausted
their ammunition and were relieved by others; but, in any case, it was
imperative that D. H. Hill should be supported, and the other divisions
were ordered forward with all speed. Huger’s and Magruder’s men
attacked with the same determination as had been displayed by Hill’s,
but no better success attended their endeavours. The brigades were not
properly formed when the order arrived, but scattered over a wide
front, and they went in piecemeal. Magruder’s losses were even greater
than Hill’s; and with his defeat the battle ceased.
Had the Federals followed up the repulse with a strong counter-attack
the victory of Malvern Hill might have been more decisive than that of
Gaines’ Mill. It is true that neither Longstreet nor A. P. Hill had
been engaged, and that three of Jackson’s divisions, his own, Whiting’s
and Ewell’s, had suffered little. But Magruder and D. H. Hill, whose
commands included at least 30,000 muskets, one half of Lee’s infantry,
had been completely crushed, and Holmes on the river road was too far
off to lend assistance. The fatal influence of a continued retreat had
paralysed, however, the initiative of the Federal generals. Intent only
on getting away unscathed, they neglected, like McClellan at Gaines’
Mill, to look for opportunities, forgetting that when an enemy is
pursuing in hot haste he is very apt to expose himself. Jackson had
acted otherwise at Port Republic.
The loss of over 5,000 men was not the worst which had befallen the
Confederates. “The next morning by dawn,” says one of Ewell’s
brigadiers, “I went off to ask for orders, when I found the whole army
in the utmost disorder—thousands of straggling men were asking every
passer-by for their regiments; ambulances, waggons, and artillery
obstructing every road, and altogether, in a drenching rain, presenting
a scene of the most woeful and disheartening
confusion.”[18] The reports of other officers corroborate General
Trimble’s statement, and there can be no question that demoralisation
had set in. Whether, if the Federals had used their large reserves with
resolution, and, as the Confederates fell back down the slopes, had
followed with the bayonet, the demoralisation would not have increased
and spread, must remain in doubt. Not one of the Southern generals
engaged has made public his opinion. There is but one thing certain,
that with an opponent so blind to opportunity as McClellan a strong
counterstroke was the last thing to be feared. After witnessing the
opening of the attack, the Federal commander, leaving the control of
the field to Porter, had ridden off to Harrison’s Landing, eight miles
down the James, whither his trains, escorted by the Fourth Army Corps,
had been directed, and where he had determined to await reinforcements.
The Federal troops, moreover, although they had withstood the charge of
the Confederate infantry with unbroken ranks, had not fought with the
same spirit as they had displayed at Gaines’ Mill. General Hunt,
McClellan’s chief of artillery, to whose admirable disposition of the
batteries the victory was largely due, wrote that “the battle was
desperately contested, and frequently trembled in the balance. The last
attack . . . was nearly successful; but we won from the fact that we
had kept our reserves in hand.”[19] Nor had McClellan much confidence
in his army. “My men,” he wrote to Washington on the morning of the
battle, “are completely exhausted, and I dread the result if we are
attacked to-day by fresh troops. If possible, I shall retire to-night
to Harrison’s Landing, where the gunboats can render more aid in
covering our position. Permit me to urge that not an hour should be
lost in sending me fresh troops. More gunboats are much needed. . . . I
now pray for time. My
men have proved themselves the equals of any troops in the world, but
they are worn out. Our losses have been very great, we have failed to
win only because overpowered by superior numbers.”[20]
Surely a more despairing appeal was never uttered. The general, whose
only thought was “more gunboats and fresh troops,” whatever may have
been the condition of his men, had reached the last stage of
demoralisation.
The condition to which McClellan was reduced seems to have been
realised by Jackson. The crushing defeat of his own troops failed to
disturb his judgment. Whilst the night still covered the battle-field,
his divisional generals came to report the condition of their men and
to receive instructions. “Every representation,” says Dabney, “which
they made was gloomy.” At length, after many details of losses and
disasters, they concurred in declaring that McClellan would probably
take the aggressive in the morning, and that the Confederate army was
in no condition to resist him. Jackson had listened silently, save when
he interposed a few brief questions, to all their statements; but now
he replied: “No; he will clear out in the morning.”
July 2 The forecast was more than fulfilled. When morning dawned, grey,
damp, and cheerless, and the Confederate sentinels, through the cold
mist which rose from the sodden woods, looked out upon the
battle-field, they saw that Malvern Hill had been abandoned. Only a few
cavalry patrols rode to and fro on the ground which had been held by
the Federal artillery, and on the slopes below, covered with hundreds
of dead and dying men, the surgeons were quietly at work. During the
night the enemy had fallen back to Harrison’s Landing, and
justification for Lee’s assault at Malvern Hill may be found in the
story of the Federal retreat. The confusion of the night march,
following on a long series of fierce engagements, told with terrible
effect on the _moral_ of the men, and stragglers increased at every
step. “It was like the retreat,” said one of McClellan’s generals, “of
a whipped army. We retreated like a parcel of sheep, and a
few shots from the rebels would have panic-stricken the whole
command.”[21] At length, through blinding rain, the flotilla of
gunboats was discovered, and on the long peninsula between Herring Run
and the James the exhausted army reached a resting-place. But so great
was the disorder, that during the whole of that day nothing was done to