10. At Second Manassas, McClellan effectively withheld the main part of his army from General John Pope, famously suggesting that Lincoln “leave Pope to get out of his own scrape.” See my later chapter on this.
11. William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 240.
12. McClellan letter to Samuel L. M. Barlow, November 8, 1861, in Stephen Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, pp. 127–128.
13. McClellan to his wife, Mary Ellen McClellan, July 27, 1861, in ibid., p. 70.
14. McClellan to his wife, July 30, 1861, in ibid., p. 71.
15. McClellan letters to his wife, October 2, 7, 10; November 2, 17, 1861; selection of quotes comes from James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 364.
16. Letter from McClellan to his wife, November 2, 1861, in Sears, Civil War Papers.
17. Ethan Rafuse, McClellan’s War: The Failure of Moderation in the Struggle for the Union, p. 390.
18. Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, p. 50.
19. James A. Morgan, “The Accidental Battle of Ball’s Bluff,” Hallowed Ground Magazine, Fall 2011.
20. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 398.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A PRETERNATURAL CALM
1. G.F.R. Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, p. 174.
2. W. J. Wood, Civil War Generalship: The Art of Command, p. 12; Wood wrote, “American generals of 1861 studied Jomini [Précis de l’Art de la Guerre] in the misguided faith that they were studying Napoleon. They marched against strategic points—Corinth, Richmond, Atlanta—content to let Confederate armies escape to fight again, so long as they could occupy real estate.”
3. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 30.
4. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, p. 104.
5. Jackson letter to Anna, October 1, 1861, in Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 194.
6. Ibid.
7. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 278. Robertson makes the case for Davis’s impression of Jackson as a “fanatic.” The future event referred to is Davis overriding Jackson’s orders and recalling General William W. Loring from Romney in January 1862.
8. G. W. Smith gave this account to early Jackson biographer G.F.R. Henderson; see Henderson, Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War, pp. 174–175.
9. Sheridan’s army spent the last week of September and the first week of October 1864 burning buildings, farms, mills, houses, and any public buildings that had survived the previous valley campaigns. “Such as cannot be consumed, destroy” were his orders.
10. Ibid., p. 176.
11. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 30.
12. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy, pp. 248–250.
13. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 188–189.
14. The material concerning Anna’s visit comes from her own descriptions; ibid., pp. 188–191.
15. Ibid., p. 206.
16. Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 14.
17. Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A SEASON OF STORMS
1. The Virginia Central Railroad ran from Staunton in the southern valley through Rockfish Gap to Charlottesville, Gordonsville, and Richmond beyond.
2. Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, p. 51.
3. Cited in William Allan, History of the Campaign of Gen. T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, p. 16.
4. James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Legend, the Soldier, p. 841, note 30.
5. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 218ff.
6. Jedediah Hotchkiss, letter to Fitzhugh Lee, October 22, 1891, Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress.
7. William B. Taliaferro, “Some Personal Reminiscences of Lt.-Gen. Thos J. (Stonewall) Jackson,” in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 510.
8. Letter from W. L. Jackson to Thomas J. Jackson, November 23, 1861; Thomas J. Jackson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
9. Letter from John Preston to Maggie, December 5, 1861, in Elizabeth Preston Allan, Margaret Junkin Preston: Life and Letters, p. 123.
10. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 306.
11. Charges and specifications against Gilham can be found in Thomas J. Jackson Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
12. Letter from William Gilham to Jedediah Hotchkiss, November 25, 1866, Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress.
13. Harman cited in Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, pp. 84–85.
14. John H. Worsham, One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry, p. 63.
15. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 24.
16. William Thomas Poague, Gunner with Stonewall, p. 17.
17. John Overton Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 63.
18. Letter from Jackson to Benjamin, January 20, 1862, cited in Allan, History of the Campaign of Gen. T. J. (Stonewall) Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, p. 28.
19. Taliaferro, “Some Personal Reminiscences of Lt.-Gen. Thos. J. (Stonewall) Jackson,” in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 511.
20. Jackson letter to Boteler, January 29, 1862, Alexander R. Boteler, “Stonewall Jackson’s Discontent,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, June 2, 1877, in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Cough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders, vol. 6, pp. 102ff.
21. Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 103. Cozzens does a superb job of sorting out the Union side of the Romney fiasco, including Lander’s aborted advance.
22. Hunter McGuire to Jedediah Hotchkiss, November 8, 1897, Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress.
23. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 5, pp. 1041–1042.
24. Alexander R. Boteler, “Stonewall Jackson’s Discontent,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, June 2, 1877, in Johnson and Buel, Battles and Leaders, vol. 6, pp. 102ff.
25. Ibid., p. 106.
26. Letter from Taliaferro to Loring, January 29, 1862, Roy Bird Cook Papers, West Virginia University.
27. Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee’s Lieutenants, vol. 1, p. 116.
28. Ibid.
29. Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, p. 89.
30. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 314; draft of report on the winter campaign, Dabney Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
31. Boteler, “Stonewall Jackson’s Discontent,” p. 107.
32. Ibid., pp. 107–108.
33. Letter from Rev. Francis McFarland to Jackson, February 5, 1862, Dabney-Jackson Collection, Library of Virginia, Series II.
34. Col. S. Bassett French, cited in Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, p. 320.
35. Rev. James R. Graham, “Reminiscences of Gen. T.J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson,” in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 496–497.
36. Boteler, “Stonewall Jackson’s Discontent,” p. 108.
37. Charges and specifications against Loring in Dabney Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina.
38. McClellan’s troop estimates were, as usual, well in excess of everyone else’s. Around this time Pinkerton reported that Johnston had seventy-five thousand fresh troops, ready to attack Washington, which was a wholesale fabrication.
39. The local Union commanders, as it turned out, had been anxious to attack Jackson. In mid-November, General Nathaniel Banks, in possession of remarkably accurate information about the Confederate forces facing him, had asked McClellan for permission “to make the expedition to Winchester.” McClellan had refused, ordering Banks into winter headquarters. On December 19, Banks had put forth another proposal, this time to move in force across the Potomac and take Martinsburg, a mere fifteen miles north of Winchester. McClellan had again turned him down flat. In January, Brigadier General Frederick Lander, in Hancock, just across the Potomac from Bath, had asked
for permission to cross the river and pursue Jackson. He, too, was turned down. Finally, Lander, sputtering with anger and frustration, was ordered by McClellan to go to Romney and retreat northward with the Union army to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Jackson’s boldness may not have frightened Nathaniel Banks, but it had absolutely scared the timorous George McClellan. The rest did not matter.
40. H. W. Brands, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses S. Grant in War and Peace, pp. 167–169.
CHAPTER NINETEEN: A LOOMING PERIL
1. Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, p. 115.
2. David Hunter Strother, A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War, pp. 10ff.
3. Richard R. Duncan, Beleaguered Winchester: A Virginia Community at War, 1861–1865, p. 40.
4. Richmond Whig, February 15, 1862.
5. James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 428, citing various published sources.
6. Elizabeth Preston Allan, The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston, pp. 134–135.
7. John Harman, letter to David Harman, February 18, 1862, in Hotchkiss Papers, Box 38, Library of Congress.
8. Gary Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!” The First Battle of Kernstown, p. 38.
9. John Harman, letter to David Harman, March 7, 1862, Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress.
10. The aggregate Union forces number comes from Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 38; the number for Banks alone is from Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 121.
11. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 45; the information about weaponry came from a Private Jacob Poisel, a Confederate deserter whose information confirmed what other spies, slaves, and deserters had told Banks.
12. Letter from Jackson to Letcher, March 1862; Thomas T. Munford Papers, Duke University.
13. LTC (ret.) Joe Griffin, “Joe Brown’s Pikes: Southern Cold Steel in Close Quarters,” Journal of the Historical Society of the Georgia National Guard 8, no. 2, Fall 2000.
14. Jackson’s own estimates were not as accurate at Banks’s. He thought Banks had somewhat more troops than he actually had. It was a mismatch either way.
15. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 5, pp. 1083–1084; Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 115.
16. John Harman letter to David Harman, February 26, 1862, Hotchkiss Papers, Library of Congress.
17. Michael Fellman, “Sherman’s Demons,” New York Times, November 11, 2011.
18. Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 210.
19. Rev. James R. Graham, “Reminiscences of General T. J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson,” in Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 488–490.
20. Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, pp. 214–215.
21. Ibid., p. 159. Jackson first reports his good health to Anna in April 1861; she observes it in the Winchester winter, and after her departure he confirms it again in a letter to her.
22. James G. Hollandsworth, Pretense of Glory: The Life of General Nathaniel P. Banks, p. 19.
23. Ibid., p. 3.
24. W. J. Wood, Civil War Generalship: The Art of Command, pp. 46ff.
25. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” pp. 44–45.
26. Cited in ibid., p. 47.
27. Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations, p. 106.
28. Hunter McGuire, “General T. J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson: His Career and Character,” an address; Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 25, p. 97.
29. Bayard Taylor, New York Tribune, March 13, 1862.
30. Lincoln to McClellan, April 9, 1862, Official Records, Series 1, vol. 5, p. 74.
CHAPTER TWENTY: THE REALM OF THE POSSIBLE
1. Clarence Thomas, General Turner Ashby: Centaur of the South, p. 68.
2. Letter from McClellan to Banks, March 16, 1862; Official Records, Series 1, vol. 5, p. 56.
3. Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, pp. 134–136.
4. Gary L. Ecelbarge, “We are in for it!” The First Battle of Kernstown, p. 52.
5. David Hunter Strother, A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War, p. 18.
6. Ibid., p. 16.
7. Ibid., p. 17; “ridiculous distance” was his comment.
8. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 66.
9. Jack Coggins, Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, pp. 47ff.
10. Dee Brown, “War On Horseback,” The Image of War 1861–1865, vol. 4, Fighting for Time, National Historical Society.
11. Ibid.
12. P. S. Carmichael, “Turner Ashby’s Appeal,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Campaign of 1862, pp. 145ff.
13. Henry Kyd Douglas, I Rode with Stonewall, p. 82.
14. Carmichael, “Turner Ashby’s Appeal,” p. 151, citing quote from Brigadier General John W. Geary.
15. Letter from Ashby to Dorothea Farrar (Ashby) Moncure, September 6, 1861; cited in Carmichael, “Turner Ashby’s Appeal,” p. 152.
16. Dabney Herndon Maury, Recollections of a Virginian in Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars, p. 49.
17. Nominally the advantage was three to one, but thanks to Gary Ecelbarger’s statistical work, we know that Union effectives were far less than the paper force. Two to one is not precise, but a good guideline.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A JAGGED LINE OF BLOOD
1. George Neese, part of Preston Chew’s battery under Ashby, cited in Gary L. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!” The First Battle of Kernstown.
2. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 12, pt. 1, p. 340.
3. Testimony of General J. C. Sullivan, May 22, 1862, before the Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, p. 408.
4. Official Records, Series 1, vol. 12, pt. 3, p. 836.
5. Peter Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862: Stonewall Jackson’s Valley Campaign, p. 161.
6. Letter from Jackson to Anna, April 11, 1862; Mary Anna Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 249.
7. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 95.
8. Ibid., p. 110.
9. Ibid., p. 107.
10. Jack Coggins, Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, pp. 61ff.
11. Ibid., p. 63. He makes the point that both sides misused artillery tactically; until 1863 “both the confederacy and the western armies of the Union assigned a battery to each infantry brigade.” The advantages gained by massing, on the other hand, were “painfully evident at Malvern Hill when an almost continuous battery of 60 pieces directed by Gen. Henry J. Hunt beat down every Confederate attack and smashed one southern battery after another.”
12. Cozzens makes this astute observation in Shenandoah 1862, p. 177.
13. Virgil Smalley of the 7th Ohio, cited in Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 179.
14. Letter from Jackson to A. W. Harman, March 28, 1862, Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. 19 (1891), p. 318.
15. William S. Young, “Shenandoah Valley: Criticizing General Capehart’s Article on That Campaign,” National Tribune, April 18, 1889.
16. While it is true that at a range of one hundred yards or less smoothbores lost many of their disadvantages, part of this battle took place at ranges of up to two hundred yards or more. There is no question that the Federal weaponry was superior.
17. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 249.
18. Cited in ibid., p. 149.
19. Private letter from Alexander R. Boteler Jr., dated March 26, 1862, published in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 3, 1862.
20. John Overton Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 67.
21. William Thomas Poague, Gunner with Stonewall, p. 20.
22. Private letter from Alexander R. Boteler Jr., dated March 26, 1862, published in the Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 3, 1862.
23. John H. Worsham, One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry, His Experiences and What He Saw During the War, p. 69. Many Confederate soldiers blamed the retreat on lack of ammunition. In his battle report, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Grigsby wrote: “The position was held until the Reg’t was ordered to retire,
which order was received after the men had fired their last round of cartridge.”
24. “The Battle of Kernstown: An Interesting Narrative,” Richmond Dispatch, March 28, 1862.
25. Jedediah Hotchkiss, note appended in Casler, Four Years in the Stonewall Brigade, p. 68.
26. Letter from Jackson to Anna, March 28, 1862; Jackson, Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson, p. 247.
27. Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 214.
28. Sergeant John C. Marsh, of the 29th Ohio, cited in ibid., p. 211.
29. Ecelbarger, “We are in for it!,” p. 249.
30. Letter from James Shields to Assistant Adjutant General, Army of the Potomac, May 25, 1862; Official Records, Series 1, vol. 12, ch. 24, pt. 1; Shields also cites this same number in his March 27 correspondence (“The rebels admitted they had 11,000 in the field”).
31. William J. Miller, “Such Men as Shields, Banks, and Frémont,” essay in Gallagher, The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, p. 50.
32. Cozzens, Shenandoah 1862, p. 228.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE SHOOTING WAR
1. Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, p. 66.
2. “The Rifle-Musket and the Minie Ball,” Civil War Times, June 12, 2006.
3. Bevin Alexander, Lost Victories: The Military Genius of Stonewall Jackson, p. 3.
4. Jack Coggins, Arms and Equipment of the Civil War, p. 23.
5. Mark Grimsley, “How to Read a Civil War Battlefield,” www.cohums.ohio-state.edu/history/people/grimsley.1/tour/default.htm.
6. Ibid.
7. Pat Leonard, “The Bullet That Changed History,” New York Times, August 31, 2012.
8. Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s War, p. 198.
9. John Worsham, One of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry, p. 106.
10. Ibid., p. 60.
11. Edward Porter Alexander, Fighting for the Confederacy, p. 122.
12. Keith S. Bohannon, “Placed on the Pages of History in Letters of Blood: Reporting on and Remembering the 12th Georgia Infantry in the 1862 Valley Campaign,” essay in Gary W. Gallagher, ed., The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862, p. 120.