The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 2: Fredericksburg to Meridian

  Back at Falmouth that evening, while his army straggled eastward in his wake, Hooker learned that Stoneman’s raid, from which so much had been expected, had been almost a total failure. Intending, as he later reported, to “magnify our small force into overwhelming numbers,” the cavalryman had broken up his column into fragments, none of which, as it turned out, had been strong enough to do more than temporary damage to the installations in Lee’s rear. According to one disgusted trooper, “Our only accomplishments were the burning of a few canal boats on the upper James River, some bridges, hen roosts, and tobacco houses.” Stoneman returned the way he had come, recrossing at Raccoon Ford on the morning of May 7, while other portions of his scattered column turned up as far away as Yorktown. His total losses, in addition to about 1000 horses broken down and abandoned, were 82 men killed and wounded and 307 missing. These figures seemed to Hooker to prove that Stoneman had not been seriously engaged, and it was not long before he removed him from command. However, his own casualties, while quite as heavy as anyone on his own side of the line could have desired—the ultimate total was 17,287, as compared to Lee’s 12,821—were equally condemning, though in a different way, since a breakdown of them indicated the disjointed manner in which he had fought and refrained from fighting the battle. Meade and Reynolds, for example, had lost fewer than 1000 men between them, while Sedgwick and Sickles had lost more than four times that number each. Obviously Lincoln’s parting admonition, “Put in all your men,” had been ignored. Hooker was quick to place the blame for his defeat on Stoneman, Averell, Howard, and Sedgwick, sometimes singly and at other times collectively. It was only in private, and some weeks later, that he was able to see, or at any rate confess, where the real trouble had lain. “I was not hurt by a shell, and I was not drunk,” he told a fellow officer. “For once I lost confidence in Joe Hooker, and that is all there is to it.”

  In time that would become the registered consensus, but for the present many of his compatriots were hard put to understand how such a disaster had come about. Horace Greeley staggered into the Tribune managing editor’s office Thursday morning, his face a ghastly color and his lips trembling. “My God, it is horrible,” he exclaimed. “Horrible. And to think of it—130,000 magnificent soldiers so cut to pieces by less than 60,000 half-starved ragamuffins!” An Episcopal clergyman, also in New York, could not reconcile the various reports and rumors he recorded in his diary that night. “It would seem that Hooker has beaten Lee, and that Lee has beaten Hooker; that we have taken Fredericksburg, and that the rebels have taken it also; that we have 4500 prisoners, and the rebels 5400; that Hooker has cut off Lee’s retreat, and Lee has cut off Sedgwick’s retreat, and Sedgwick has cut off everybody’s retreat generally, but has retreated himself although his retreat was cut off.… In short, all is utter confusion. Everything seems to be everywhere, and everybody all over, and there is no getting at any truth.” Official Washington was similarly confused and dismayed. When Sumner of Massachusetts heard that Hooker had been whipped, he flung up his hands and struck an attitude of despair. “Lost—lost,” he groaned. “All is lost!” But the hardest-hit man of them all was Lincoln, whose hopes had had the longest way to fall. Six months ago, on the heels of Emancipation, he had foreseen clear sailing for the ship of state provided the helmsman kept a steady hand on the tiller. “We are like whalers who have been on a long chase,” he told a friend. “We have at last got the harpoon into the monster, but we must now look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail he will send us all into eternity.” Then had come Fredericksburg, and he had said: “If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it.” Now there was this, a still harder flop of the monster’s tail, and Hooker and the Army of the Potomac had gone sprawling. Even before the news arrived, a White House caller had found the President “anxious and harassed beyond any power of description.” Yet this was nothing compared to his reaction later in the day, when he reappeared with a telegram in his hand. “News from the army,” he said in a trembling voice. The visitor read that Hooker was in retreat, and looking up saw that Lincoln’s face, “usually sallow, was ashen in hue. The paper on the wall behind him was of the tint known as ‘French gray,’ and even in that moment of sorrow … I vaguely took in the thought that the complexion of the anguished President’s visage was like that of the wall.” He walked up and down the room, hands clasped behind his back. “My God, my God,” he exclaimed as he paced back and forth. “What will the country say? What will the country say?”

  Within the ranks of the army itself, slogging down the muddy roads toward Falmouth, the reaction was not unlike the New York clergyman’s. “No one seems to understand this move,” a Pennsylvania private wrote, “but I have no doubt it is all right.” He belonged to Meade’s corps, which had seen very little fighting, and he could not quite comprehend that what he had been involved in was a defeat. All he knew for certain was that the march back to camp was a hard one. “Most of the way the mud was over shoe, in some places knee deep, and the rain made our loads terrible to tired shoulders.” Others knew well enough that they had taken part in a fiasco. “Go boil your shirt!” was their reply to jokes attempted by roadside stragglers. Turning the matter over in their minds, they could see that Hooker had been trounced, but they could not see that this applied to themselves, who had fought as well as ever—except, of course, the unregenerate Dutchmen—whenever and wherever they got the chance. Mostly, though, they preferred to ignore the question of praise or blame. “And thus ends the second attempt on the capture of Fredericksburg,” a Maine soldier recorded when he got back to Falmouth. “I have nothing to say about it in any way. I have no opinions to express about the Gen’ls or the men nor do I wish to. I leave it in the hands of God. I don’t want to think of it at all.”

  Unquestionably, this latest addition to the lengthening roster of Confederate victories was a great one. Indeed, considering the odds that had been faced and overcome, it was perhaps in terms of glory the greatest of them all; Chancellorsville would be stitched with pride across the crowded banners of the Army of Northern Virginia. But its ultimate worth, as compared to its cost, depended in large measure on the outcome of Stonewall Jackson’s present indisposition. As Lee had said on Sunday morning, when he first learned that his lieutenant had been wounded, “Any victory is dearly bought which deprives us of the services of General Jackson, even for a short time.”

  So far—that is, up to the time when Hooker threw in the sponge and the northern army fell back across the Rappahannock—Dr McGuire’s prognosis had been most encouraging and the general himself had been in excellent spirits, despite the loss of his arm. “I am wounded but not depressed,” he said when he woke from the sleep that followed the amputation. “I believe it was according to God’s will, and I can wait until He makes his object known to me.” Presently, when Lee’s midday note was brought, congratulating him on the victory, “which is due to your skill and energy,” Jackson permitted himself the one criticism he had ever made of his commander. “General Lee is very kind,” he said, “but he should give the praise to God.” Next day, May 4, with Sedgwick threatening the army’s rear, he was removed to safety in an ambulance. The route was south to Todd’s Tavern, then southeast, through Spotsylvania Court House, to Guiney Station, where he had met his wife and child, two weeks ago today, to begin the idyl that had ended with the news that Hooker was on the march. All along the way, country people lined the roadside to watch the ambulance go by. They brought with them, and held out for the attendants to accept, such few gifts as their larders afforded in these hard times, cool buttermilk, hot biscuits, and fried chicken. Jackson was pleased by this evidence of their concern, and for much of the 25-mile journey he chatted with an aide, even responding to a question as to what he thought of Hooker’s plan for the battle whose guns rumbled fainter as the ambulance rolled south. “It was in the main a good conception, sir; an excellent plan. But he should not have sent away his cavalry. That was his great blunder. It was that which enable
d me to turn him, without his being aware of it, and to take him by the rear.” Of his own share in frustrating that plan, he added that he believed his flank attack had been “the most successful movement of my life. But I have received more credit for it than I deserve. Most men will think that I had planned it all from the first; but it was not so. I simply took advantage of circumstances as they were presented to me in the providence of God. I feel that His hand led me.”

  By nightfall he was resting comfortably in a cottage on the Chandler estate near Guiney Station. He slept soundly, apparently free from pain, and woke next morning much refreshed. His wounds seemed to give him little trouble; primary intention and granulation were under way. All that day and the next, Tuesday and Wednesday, he rested easy, talking mainly of religious matters, as had always been his custom in times of relaxation. The doctor foresaw a rapid recovery and an early return to duty. Then—late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, May 7—a sudden change occurred. McGuire woke at dawn to find his patient restless and in severe discomfort. Examination showed that the general faced a new and formidable enemy: pneumonia. He was cupped, then given mercury, with antimony and opium, and morphine to ease his pain. From that time on, as the drugs took effect and the pneumonia followed its inexorable course, he drifted in and out of sleep and fuddled consciousness. His wife arrived at midday, having been delayed by Stoneman’s raiders, to find him greatly changed from the husband she had left eight days ago. Despite advance warning, she was shocked at the sight of his wounds, especially the mutilated arm. Moreover, his cheeks were flushed, his breathing oppressed, and his senses numbed. At first he scarcely knew her, but presently, in a more lucid moment, he saw her anxiety and told her: “You must not wear a long face. I love cheerfulness and brightness in a sickroom.” He lapsed into stupor, then woke again to find her still beside him. “My darling, you are very much loved,” he murmured. “You are one of the most precious little wives in the world.” Toward evening, he seemed to improve. Once at least, in the course of the night, he appeared to be altogether himself again. “Will you take this, General?” the doctor asked, bending over the bed with a dose of medicine. Stonewall looked at him sternly. “Do your duty,” he said. Then, seeing the doctor hesitate, he repeated the words quite firmly: “Do your duty.” Still later, those in the room were startled to hear him call out to his adjutant, Alexander Pendleton, who was in Fredericksburg with Lee: “Major Pendleton, send in and see if there is higher ground back of Chancellorsville! I must find out if there is high ground between Chancellorsville and the river.… Push up the columns; hasten the columns! Pendleton, you take charge of that.… Where is Pendleton? Tell him to push up the columns.” In his delirium he was back on the field of battle, doing the one thing he did best in all the world.

  All that day and the next, which was Saturday, he grew steadily worse; McGuire sent word to Fredericksburg and Richmond that recovery was doubtful. Lee could not believe a righteous cause would suffer such a blow. “Surely General Jackson will recover,” he said. “God will not take him from us now that we need him so much.” The editor of the Richmond Whig agreed. “We need have no fears for Jackson,” he wrote. “He is no accidental manifestation of the powers of faith and courage. He came not by chance in this day and to this generation. He was born for a purpose, and not until that purpose is fulfilled will his great soul take flight.” Jackson himself inclined to this belief that he would be spared for a specific purpose. “I am not afraid to die,” he said in a lucid moment Friday. “I am willing to abide by the will of my Heavenly Father. But I do not believe I shall die at this time. I am persuaded the Almighty has yet a work for me to perform.” On Saturday, when he was asked to name a hymn he would like to hear sung, he requested “Shew Pity, Lord,” Isaac Watts’s paraphrase of the Fifty-first Psalm:

  “Shew pity, Lord; O Lord, forgive;

  Let a repenting rebel live—”

  This seemed to comfort him for a time, but night brought a return of suffering. He tossed sleepless, mumbling battle orders. Though these were mostly unintelligible, it was observed that he called most often on A. P. Hill, his hardest-hitting troop commander, and Wells Hawks, his commissary officer, as if even in delirium he strove to preserve a balance between tactics and logistics.

  Sunday, May 10, dawned fair and clear; McGuire informed Anna Jackson that her husband could not last the day. She knelt at the bedside of the unconscious general, telling him over and over that he would “very soon be in heaven.” Presently he stirred and opened his eyes. She asked him, “Do you feel willing to acquiesce in God’s allotment if He will you to go today?” He watched her. “I prefer it,” he said, and she pressed the point: “Well, before this day closes you will be with the blessed Savior in his glory.” There was a pause. “I will be the infinite gainer to be translated,” Jackson said as he dozed off again. He woke at noon, and once more she broached the subject, telling him that he would be gone before sundown. This time he seemed to understand her better. “Oh no; you are frightened, my child. Death is not so near. I may yet get well.” She broke into tears, sobbing that the doctor had said there was no hope. Jackson summoned McGuire. “Doctor, Anna informs me that you have told her I am to die today. Is it so?” When McGuire replied that it was so, the general seemed to ponder. Then he said, “Very good, very good. It is all right.” After a time he added, “It is the Lord’s day; my wish is fulfilled. I have always desired to die on Sunday.”

  At 1.30 the doctor told him he had no more than a couple of hours to live. “Very good; it’s all right,” Jackson replied as before, but more weakly, for his breathing was high in his throat by now. When McGuire offered him brandy to keep up his strength, he shook his head. “It will only delay my departure, and do no good,” he protested. “I want to preserve my mind, if possible, to the last.” Presently, though, he was back in delirium, alternately praying and giving commands, all of which had to do with the offensive. Shortly after 3 o’clock, a few minutes before he died, he called out: “Order A. P. Hill to prepare for action! Pass the infantry to the front.… Tell Major Hawks—” He left the sentence unfinished, seeming thus to have put the war behind him; for he smiled as he spoke his last words, in a tone of calm relief. “Let us cross over the river,” he said, “and rest under the shade of the trees.”

  II

  The Beleaguered City

  WHILE HOOKER WAS CROSSING THE RAPPAHANNOCK, unaware as yet that he would come to grief within a week, Grant, having caught what he believed was a gleam of victory through the haze of cigar smoke in the former ladies’ cabin of the Magnolia, was putting the final improvisatorial touches to a plan of campaign that would open, two days later, with a crossing of the greatest river of them all. He too might come to grief, as two of his three chief lieutenants feared and even predicted, but he was willing to risk it for the sake of the prize, which had grown in value with every sore frustration. As spring advanced and the roads emerged from the drowned lands adjacent to the Mississippi—although so far they were little more than trails of slime through the surrounding ooze, not quite firm enough for wagons nor quite wet enough for boats—the Illinois general, with seven failures behind him in the course of the three months he had spent attempting to take or bypass Vicksburg, reverted in early April to what he had told Halleck in mid-January, before he left Memphis to assume command in person of the expedition four hundred miles downriver: “[I] think our troops must get below the city to be used effectively.”

  His plan, in essence, was to march his army down the Louisiana bank to a position well south of the fortified bluff, then cross the river and establish a bridgehead from which to assail the Confederate bastion from the rear. The Duckport canal, designed to give his transports access to Walnut and Roundaway bayous, and thus allow them to avoid exposure to the plunging fire of the batteries at Vicksburg and Warrenton, had failed; only one small steamer had got through before the water level fell too low for navigation; but exploration of the route had shown that, by bridging th
ose slews that could not be avoided by following the crests of levees flanking the horseshoe curves of the several bayous, it might be practicable to march dry-shod all the way from Milliken’s Bend to New Carthage, a west-bank hamlet about midway between Warrenton and Grand Gulf, third of the rebel east-bank strongholds. In late March, by way of preparation, Grant had assigned McClernand the task of putting this route into shape for a march by his own corps as well as the two others, which would follow. This, if it worked, would get the army well south of its objective. Getting the troops across the river was quite another matter, however, depending as it did on the co-operation of the navy, which, as Grant said, “was absolutely essential to the success (even to the contemplation) of such an enterprise.” For the navy to get below, in position to ferry the men across and cover the east-bank landing, it would have to run the batteries, and this had been shown in the past to be an expensive proposition even for armored vessels, let alone the brittle-skinned transports which would be required for the ferrying operation. Moreover, Porter was no more under Grant’s command than Grant was under Porter’s. The most Grant could do was “request” that the run be made. But that was enough, as it turned out. The admiral—who had returned only the week before from the near-disastrous Steele Bayou expedition, considerably the worse for wear and with his boats still being hammered back into shape—expressed an instant willingness to give the thing a try, though not without first warning of what the consequences would be, not only in the event of initial failure but also in the event of initial success, so far at least as the navy was concerned. He could make a downstream run, he said, and in fact had proved it twice already with the ill-fated Queen of the West and the equally ill-fated lndianola, but his underpowered vessels could never attempt a slow-motion return trip, against the four-knot current, until Vicksburg had been reduced. “You must recollect that when these gunboats once go below we give up all hopes of ever getting them up again,” he replied, wanting it understood from the start that this would be an all-or-nothing venture. Moreover: “If I do send vessels below, it will be the best vessels I have, and there will be nothing left to attack Haines Bluff, in case it should be deemed necessary to try it.” Grant replied on April 2 that McClernand’s men were already at work on the circuitous thirty-mile road down to New Carthage; he had no intention of turning back, even if that had been possible; and in any case Haines Bluff had cost the army blood enough by now. “I would, Admiral, therefore renew my request to prepare for running the blockade at as early a day as possible.”