v1.1.1 / chapter 16 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* The Federal effort to seal off the seacoasts of the Confederacy took a big step forward with the capture of New Orleans, which was a major blow to the Confederacy. The fact that Union drives south of the Tennessee border were bogging down was not much cause for relief among Southerners, and the final failure of the Confederate drive in the Far West a reason for gloom.
Federal forces were also increasing their pressure on Richmond. Robert E. Lee could only hope to divert the pressure by encouraging Stonewall Jackson to launch bold attacks in the Shenandoah Valley to bewilder Union leadership. Jackson was willing, but his record left some uncertainty as to whether he was able.
* It took Flag Officer David Farragut weeks to get his big warships over the bars that blocked the Mississippi Delta. Normally, the silt was dredged away on a regular basis to allow free passage of ships, but the Federal blockade had put a stop to that practice, and the only way Farragut could get the larger ships in was through a tedious process of running them into the bar, backing up, taking another dash, backing up again, and so on. The ships didn't make it over the bar until 8 April, and the largest vessel, the frigate COLORADO, had to be left behind since it drew too much water. Some of her crew and guns were redistributed to other vessels.
Farragut was knocking at the gates of New Orleans, and Confederate General Mansfield Lovell was hard-pressed do much about it. Whether Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip would be much of an obstacle was very uncertain. The disorderly little Confederate fleet that had been put together to fight the invaders went downstream to anchor above the forts and wait for action. A set of fire rafts was also built to attack Farragut's wooden ships. The ironclad LOUISIANA, still without motive power, was towed downstream and anchored near the other vessels to act as a floating battery, while fifty or so mechanics tried to get her engines in working order. The powerful ironclad MISSISSIPPI had been launched, but was even more incomplete; it remained upstream, with work on the vessel accelerated in hope it might be completed in time to join the fight.
During mid-April, Commodore David Porter's mortar schooners were towed into position about two miles (3.2 kilometers) downriver from Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip, with Farragut's vessels anchored about a mile (1.6 kilometers) further south. After a few days of tossing a few mortar shells to get the range, on the morning of 18 April, Good Friday, 1862, the mortar boats opened up in earnest, focusing on Fort Jackson, judged the stronger of the two. Porter proclaimed that two days of bombardment would reduce both forts to rubble. Farragut was skeptical. By sundown that day, more than 1,000 mortar shells had been tossed into Fort Jackson. Its wooden citadel and barracks were on fire, and the commander of the two forts, Brigadier General Johnson K. Duncan, was forced to confine his men to Fort Jackson's brick casemates to keep them from running away.
The bombardment was spectacular but ineffectual. The Confederates took few casualties, little of substance was damaged, and the concussion of the mortars was brutal on the Union men who had to load and fire them. The next day Porter renewed the attack, with even less apparent effect than the first day's assault, since most of that which could be easily destroyed was already gone. The bombardment continued through the night, then went on into Easter Sunday.
The forts survived Porter's deadline. In fact, they continued to return fire as best as they could. Farragut decided to go forward, having never placed much faith in the mortars anyway. That night he sent the gunboats PINOLA and ITASCA upstream to break the chain barrier that blocked the waterway. The crews of the vessels managed to cut an opening while under fire from the Confederates, escaping without serious damage to themselves. The alerted rebels then sent a fire raft downstream, its flames leaping high into the sky. In the resulting confusion, Farragut's gunboats SCIOTA and KINEO collided with severe damage. On the positive side, the fiasco did give the Navy men experience in what to expect when the time came for battle.
Meanwhile, Porter's bombardment continued through that night, all Monday, round the clock through Tuesday, and into Wednesday morning. By this time almost 17,000 shells had been expended. The forts continued to fire back. Farragut wouldn't have let it go on this long had there not been a strong north wind through Monday and Tuesday, but the wind died down on Wednesday, and Farragut decided enough was enough. Farragut said: "Look here, David, we'll demonstrate the practical value of mortar work." He sent his signal officer, B.S. Osbon, up a mast to flag if the mortar shells were actually hitting the fort. Osbon reported that few were, since the mortar crews had grown weary and indifferent. Farragut told Porter: "There's the score. I guess we'll go up the river tonight."
Porter objected loudly, but the mortar boats had obviously failed. Chains were strung over the sides of the ships to protect their engines and magazines. Rope ladders were hung all around to allow quick repairs, tubs of water were laid on the decks, and fire-fighting teams went through final drills on pushing off firerafts and dousing fires. The outer hulls were smeared with mud as camouflage, while the decks and breeches of guns were whitewashed to make them easier to see in the dark. The area around each gun was strewn with sand and ashes, so that the gunners would not slip and fall on their own blood.
At 2:00 AM on the morning of 24 April 1862, the HARTFORD hoisted two red lanterns, and the fleet got under way. Farragut had wanted to lead the way, but the senior captains felt that if he were injured or killed it might derail the entire operation. Farragut recognized the truth of this, and arranged his 17 warships in three groups of 8, 3, and 6 ships, with himself at the head of the second group. He was confident and excited, but knew the implications of what he was doing. When Signal Officer Osbon said that he didn't expect the fleet to lose more than a hundred men, Farragut replied: "I wish I could think so."
The fleet reached the barrier at 3:30 AM. After one or two had passed through, rebel lookouts spotted the vessels and sounded the alarm. It took a little time for the defenders to react, and most of the first group of ships managed to pass by before the Confederates were able to respond. Then cannons blazed from the forts, while fire rafts and piles of brush on the banks were ignited to send flames far into the night sky. Porter's mortar schooners opened up in response, their shells seeming to float in mid-air with their red fuzes glowing in the dark until they fell to an incandescent flash and a thunderous explosion. As Farragut's ships passed the forts, they added the weight of their broadsides as well.
The effect was beyond belief. One of Butler's officers described it later: "Imagine all the earthquakes in the world, and all the thunder and lightnings together in a space of two miles, all going off at once." Sailors later compared it to a vision of Hell, while Farragut related it as "the artillery of heaven" and said it "was one of the most awful sights and events I ever saw or expect to experience."
Despite the chaos, the fleet continued through. The smoke and night and raging flames led to confusion on both sides and much of the fire was inaccurate. One Confederate gunnery officer found much to his embarrassment that he was pouring fire into one of the hulks that linked the chain barrier.
The same conditions left the Federals groping in the dark to find their way upriver. On board the flagship HARTFORD, Farragut had been perched up in the rigging, but responded to pleas from his officers to return to the relative safety of the deck. His perch was blown away moments later. As the HARTFORD steamed through the barrier, a lookout spotted the Confederate tug MOSHER, pushing a fire raft towards the flagship. The helmsman tried to maneuver the HARTFORD away from the fire raft and ran the ship aground on a mud flat below the guns of Fort Saint Philip.
The MOSHER ran the fire raft up against the HARTFORD and held it there. Farragut, seeing the fires shoot up through the rigging, felt all was lost for an instant and cried out: "My God, is it to end this way?!" Then regained his nerve. Signal Officer Osbon had resourcefully set aside shells to roll onto fire rafts to blow them apart, and while he knelt to unscrew the fuze-caps Farragut called out to him, possibly in earnest, possibly in jest: "Come, Mr. Osbon, this is no time for prayer!"
Farragut told the gun crews: "Don't flinch from that fire, boys. There's a hotter fire than that waiting for those who don't do their duty! Give that rascally little tug a shot!" Inspired, the gunners put two shots into the MOSHER and sank it. Signal Officer Osbon managed to roll three shells onto the fire raft, where they exploded and tore the raft apart, its fires fizzling out in the river. Fire-fighting teams suppressed the flames on the ship; the helmsman called for full power astern, got it, and pulled the HARTFORD off the mud flat. The warship was burned, battered, but ready for action.
* After the leading Federal warships passed the forts, they ran into the little Confederate fleet upriver. The USS CAYUGA, the first ship through, was confronted by eleven rebel vessels, but the CAYUGA was immediately joined by her sister ships USS ONEIDA and USS VARUNA. The Federal warships drove off five of the six vessels of the River Defense Fleet, but Captain Beverly Kennon of the Louisiana State Navy's GOVERNOR MOORE was made of tougher stuff. When the VARUNA got too far ahead of the rest of Federal fleet, he went after the Union vessel, despite the fact that the VARUNA mounted ten guns while the GOVERNOR MOORE mounted only two.
Kennon managed to get close to the VARUNA in the dark and then opened fire. The Federal gunners, though surprised, quickly returned fire, strewing the rebel ship's deck with dead and wounded. Despite the casualties, Kennon kept on closing, his gunners firing devastating rounds from the fore gun, then rammed the Federal vessel, backed off, and rammed again. The VARUNA made for the riverbank, took another impact from a second Confederate ram, and sank in shallow water, with the crew clinging to the masts.
Captain Kennon wanted to take on the rest of the Union fleet even though over half of his crew was dead or wounded, but the wounded lieutenant at the helm had had enough, protesting: "Why do this?! We have no men left! I'll be damned if I'll stand here and be murdered!" The lieutenant took the GOVERNOR MOORE towards the west bank, but the vessel came under fire from five Union warships. They blasted her apart. The few survivors ran from the flaming wreckage as the ship ran aground. Some escaped into the swamps, while others were captured.
Two Confederate Navy ships, the MCRAE, under command of Lieutenant Thomas B. Huger, and the ugly little ironclad MANASSAS, under the command of Lieutenant A.F. Warley, also jumped into the fight. The MCRAE was quickly blown to bits and Huger was killed, ironically by fire from the USS IROQUOIS, which he had served on before the war. The MANASSAS attempted to ram the CAYUGA and the PENSACOLA and missed, struck the USS MISSISSIPPI a glancing blow, and then smashed broadside into the BROOKLYN as the Federal vessel passed the chain barrier, coming close to putting the wooden ship out of action.
The MANASSAS then tried to withdraw upstream, but the current was too strong. Warley tried to go downriver past the forts to attack Porter's mortar schooners, but the forts fired on the ironclad by mistake and the MANASSAS was forced to turn back upstream again, only to encounter the MISSISSIPPI and her angry crew. Under intense fire, Warley ran his badly damaged vessel ashore and abandoned ship with his crew. The MANASSAS then floated downriver in flames, to explode near Porter's mortar flotilla.
* When the sun came up that next morning, 24 April, the Federal flotilla was in the clear, past the forts and the immobile ironclad LOUISIANA. The rebel ships had been either destroyed or dispersed. The USS VARUNA had been sunk, and three other Union vessels had not been able to make the passage. 37 Union sailors had been killed and about 150 wounded, but now there were thirteen Federal warships upriver in somewhat battered but perfectly effective condition, with no obstacle between them and New Orleans.
Farragut anchored his fleet a few miles upstream from the forts to attend to the wounded and the dead, make repairs, and return the warships to trim. By midday they were steaming upstream again. Porter remained behind to continue hammering at the forts. If he could not destroy them, he could at least give the shaken morale of their defenders another rap.
The citizens of New Orleans had believed the forts would save the city. Now they suddenly realized they were defenseless. Mobs took to the streets, waving knives and pistols, screaming: "Betrayed! Betrayed!" General Lovell could do nothing. His command had been stripped to provide reinforcements upriver, and all he had were 3,000 militiamen. He didn't even bother to issue them ammunition, since attempting to resist Farragut's firepower with small arms would have simply resulted in a futile bloodbath. Besides, he noted, "they had in some regiments manifested such an insubordinate disposition that I felt unwilling to put ammunition in their hands."
Lovell informed Mayor John Monroe that he intended to evacuate the city. Rioting and looting followed that night, with the crowds burning bales of cotton and stockpiles of foodstuffs, crying: "The damned Yankees shall not have it!" Steamships lining the banks were torched as well, and a pall of smoke hung over the city.
The next afternoon, at about 1:00 PM on 25 April, the Federal warships arrived at New Orleans in the midst of a gray drizzle. They anchored, "silent, grim, and terrible" as one watcher described them, having brushed aside what little resistance they had encountered as they had steamed upriver. When the HARTFORD docked, it was recorded, the citizens "howled and screamed with rage. The swarming decks answered never a word; but one old tar on the HARTFORD, standing with lanyard in hand beside a great pivot-gun, so plain to view that you could see him smile, silently patted its great black breech and blandly grinned."
The unfinished ironclad MISSISSIPPI sat at a New Orleans wharf with two of her three propellers lying on the dock, and without guns and armor. When the Federals arrived, the Confederate officer in charge set the vessel on fire and put her adrift to float down the river past the Union fleet. He later explained: "I did not know, in the name of God, what to do with her."
The crowd was still raging when Farragut sent a boat ashore carrying Captain Theodorous Bailey, Lieutenant George Perkins, and a guard of sailors. The two officers left the guard behind and walked to City Hall to present Farragut's ultimatum to the city officials. The two men were trailed by the mob which shouts of: "Hang them!", "Hurrah for Jeff Davis!", "Kill them!". A reporter wrote that "it required the intervention of several citizens to prevent violence to the rash ambassadors," and a New Orleans citizen said it was "one of the bravest deeds I ever saw done."
Captain Bailey met Mayor Monroe at City Hall and present Farragut's ultimatum: the city must surrender unconditionally. Monroe had nothing but legalisms to fall back on; he replied that as the city was under martial law, he wasn't in charge, and so the decision was General Lovell's. Lovell came to the meeting and also declined to surrender, dropping the matter back into the unhappy mayor's lap by restoring authority to the city government.
There matters rested for the day. The crowd outside City Hall had grown even louder and more violent, and so Bailey and Perkins were escorted out a back door and driven back to their boat in a closed carriage. Lovell appeared before the crowd, and was cheered after he told them he had refused to surrender. In reality, he had washed his hands of the city. He rode to the train station and took the last train out of the city to join his command.
Farragut sent Lieutenant Albert Kautz ashore with a guard of Marines the next morning to demand surrender again. The crowd refused to let them pass, pushing women and children in front of the Marines when they raised their rifles, shouting: "Shoot, Yankees, shoot!" Kautz told the men to lower their rifles.
An officer of the City Guard finally escorted Kautz to see the mayor, who continued to waffle, refusing to surrender and daring the Federals to occupy the city. While the two sides were talking, a group of Federal sailors went to the roof of the Mint and raised the Stars & Stripes while a crowd below shouted insults. When they left, a gambler named William Mumford hauled it down and the crowd tore it to pieces. Mumford was the hero of the moment. The Federals took down his name for later.
All this was frustrating to Farragut, but he held most of the cards and he could afford to wait until the rest fell into his hands. Despite his enthusiasm for action Farragut was not bloodthirsty, and he had his fill of killing for the time being. Shelling the city didn't seem very sensible or sporting anyway.
* On 27 April, General Ben Butler began moving his troops into position to besiege Fort Jackson and Fort Saint Philip. The Confederate defenders were already demoralized and that was the last straw. Despite General Duncan's pleas, the men mutinied that night, spiked their guns, and shot at anyone who attempted to stop them. Half of them fled into the swamps. Duncan was baffled to find among the deserters "men who had stood last and best to their guns throughout the bombardment."
Duncan, believing Fort Saint Philip had mutinied as well, decided to surrender, and then his misfortunes took another bizarre turn. Confederate Commodore John Mitchell, in charge of the anchored LOUISIANA, which had largely sat out Farragut's passage, now decided to make use of his ironclad. As the surrender documents were about to be signed, Mitchell torched the LOUISIANA and sent her drifting toward's Porter's ships to act as a floating bomb. Porter was indignant, but Duncan replied: "We do not consider ourselves responsible for anything the naval officers do ... their course has been a remarkable one throughout the entire bombardment. They have acknowledged no authority but their own, and although I am commanding officer here I have no power to coerce them." The ironclad blew itself to fragments before it reached the Union vessels.
The defenders of Fort Jackson were evacuated on 28 April. Porter allowed them to leave with their flag flying above the fort as a compliment to their valor. Fort Saint Philip was evacuated the next day, and the Federals moved into the installations. The forts were essentially intact. The garrisons had lost only 11 killed and 39 wounded throughout the whole fight.
On 29 April, General Duncan reached New Orleans and confirmed that the forts had fallen. Farragut's decision to hold off taking action proved wise. The crowds grew weary and soon dispersed in a fog of despair and gloom, while the Federal ships in the harbor echoed with cheers. Farragut sent a marine detachment, backed by howitzers, to haul down all the Confederate flags and replace them with the Stars & Stripes. So much for legalisms. So much for wrathful indignation. On 1 May, Butler and his men arrived to take control.
The fall of New Orleans seemed like a lethal blow to the Confederacy. It wasn't fatal, but it was serious enough. It opened up points north along the river to Federal occupation, deprived the rebels of a major port, gave those same facilities to the Federals for their own blockade operations, and provided striking proof of the military weakness of the Southern cause. Farragut would be made a rear admiral for his achievement, the first admiral in the US Navy, and General Benjamin F. Butler became military dictator of the largest city in the South, a role he would enjoy immensely.
* The battle at Shiloh left Grant the target of criticism. Halleck arrived on 11 April and took direct command, with Grant appointed "second in command" and hung out to dry. Rumors had been circulating in the rear about the lack of Federal preparedness before the battle, which was a fact, and Grant's laziness and drunkenness, which were not. Ohio citizens, newspapers, and politicians were particularly angry at Grant because a large proportion of the Union boys killed in the fight were from that state, and also because many of the regiments that had suffered the brunt of Beauregard's first assault were from there as well.
The lieutenant governor of Ohio reported after a fact-finding trip of "a general feeling among the most intelligent men that Grant and Prentiss ought to be court-martialed or shot." Other states picked up the cry, and eventually a Pennsylvania spokesman took the case to President Lincoln, suggesting that Grant be dismissed. Lincoln sat and thought it over for a moment, and then replied: "I can't spare this man. He fights."
* Halleck's reorganization not only kicked Grant upstairs, but also merged Grant's Army of the Tennessee, Buell's Army of the Ohio, and Pope's Army of the Mississippi. Buell and Pope retained their commands, but there was a little reshuffling of combat units and command assignments.
George Thomas had arrived with Buell's fifth division after the battle at Shiloh. He was now a major general as a reward for his victory at Logan's Crossroads. His division was shuffled from Buell's command to join the divisions that had reported to Grant, and Thomas was given effective command as a whole. Grant's useless position gave him oversight over Thomas in principle, but in practice Grant had no authority. John McClernand was assigned command of three reserve divisions, including his own division, one of Lew Wallace's, and a third taken from Buell. C.F. Smith was not part of the organization, since his infection from a scraped knee killed him before the month was out. Halleck ordered a salute fired at every post and on every warship in his command, and Grant grieved for the subordinate he had looked up to.
Halleck had, in total, 15 divisions with 120,000 men and 200 guns. Pope and Thomas were happy with their new positions. Buell, who was reduced to three divisions, and McClernand, who found being in command of a reserve unlikely to bring him much glory, were just as unhappy.
* Halleck also had control over two divisions left behind when Buell had marched his other forces to Pittsburgh Landing. One, under Brigadier General George W. Morgan, was positioned in front of Cumberland Gap. Morgan wanted to move forward and seize Knoxville, but mud and mountains made it impossible in the face of Confederate forces, and his division stayed where it was.
The other division, under Brigadier General Ormsby M. Mitchel, was on the move and in fact was deep into Confederate territory. Mitchel's division took Huntsville, Alabama, on 11 April 1862, achieving complete surprise and the capture of 15 locomotives plus a large number of railroad cars, and then continued along a curving arc back up towards Chattanooga, Tennessee, the key to the mountain regions. If Mitchel could take Chattanooga, a central rail hub in the region, Knoxville would be open to an advance from the rear, and the Confederates would have to pull out. Morgan's division would then join hands with Mitchel's, and the rebels would be cleaned out of East Tennessee.
In order to achieve this, Mitchel enlisted the aid of James J. Andrews, a Kentuckian who had been running quinine to the rebels but who was in fact a Union spy. Mitchel wanted to wreck the Western and Atlantic Railroad, the only rail connection between Atlanta and Chattanooga, which would cut off Confederate reinforcements from Chattanooga. Andrews volunteered to lead a band of 21 Ohio soldiers dressed in civilian clothes to seize a engine and then proceed along the railroad, burning bridges and blowing up tunnels.
The men infiltrated south and assembled in Marietta, Georgia. On 12 April, they boarded a northbound train as passengers, and during the breakfast stop they made off with the engine, named the GENERAL, and three boxcars. The conductor, W.A. Fuller, was so infuriated that he set out after them on a handcar, then commandeered a switch engine, and finally took over a freight locomotive, gathering armed assistance as he proceeded north. He stayed so close on Andrews' tail that the Yankees had no time to do any serious damage. The GENERAL ran out of fuel and water north of the Tennessee line. Andrews and his men tried to escape through the woods, but were all captured. Andrews and seven others were hanged as spies, eight others escaped, six others were exchanged. All got the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The Andrews raid was a great adventure story, but it was a military failure. The line to Chattanooga remained intact, and Mitchel was finding his military position uncomfortably precarious. Although he was loudly promoting his successes, even going so far as to send wires directly to Secretary of War Stanton, Mitchel was finding himself increasingly at risk of isolation deep in enemy territory. Beauregard had sent two columns of cavalry behind Union lines, one towards Paducah, Kentucky, and the other in Mitchel's rear. The raid towards Paducah fizzled because of bad leadership, but the second column, under John Hunt Morgan, now a colonel, raised hell on Mitchel's supply lines. Short on supplies to begin with, Mitchel ended his advance and pulled back into northern Alabama, destroying bridges and tearing up rail lines behind him.
Halleck, never the most decisive of commanders, was not encouraged by Mitchel's withdrawal. It made the capture of Corinth, Mississippi, a more difficult prospect, since for the moment the Confederates were undistracted elsewhere and could focus their attention on its defense. On 28 April, Halleck uneasily sent his army forward to capture Corinth.
* Back in Virginia, there was nothing to the north of Richmond that could seriously block Union General McDowell if he moved south. Robert E. Lee knew it; the only thing to do was to make sure McDowell was kept busy elsewhere. The Confederate forces left in that region were even more outnumbered than Johnston's on the Peninsula, with only one rebel for every three Yankees, but there was plenty of room for maneuver. A fast-moving force, hitting Federal targets and then moving on quickly, fighting only on its own terms with no need to stand its ground, might successfully take on a bigger force and at least keep it confused, or even inflict serious damage on it.
When Joe Johnston left for the Peninsula, he left behind a brigade of 2,500 men under Brigadier General Charles Field along the Rappahannock to keep an eye on McDowell. The other forces in that region were situated to protect the vital rail line running through the southern end of the Shenandoah Valley. Stonewall Jackson was still in the Valley with about 6,000 men, facing his adversary Nathaniel Banks; another force of about 2,800 under Brigadier General Edward Johnson was keeping an eye on Fremont in the mountains to the west; and Major General Dick Ewell was in charge of a force of 8,500 men to the east of the Blue Ridge mountains.
Lee's strategic considerations fit neatly with Stonewall Jackson's current mindset. After his defeat at Kernstown by General Shields in March, Jackson had retreated south in the Shenandoah Valley to a town coincidentally named Mount Jackson. While Banks outnumbered the rebels in front of him by a good margin, the terrain was rough, the weather was bad, and he was timid. Banks moved forward cautiously and halted whenever confronted by Confederate aggressiveness, which mostly appeared in the form of Jackson's cavalry commander, Lieutenant Colonel Turner Ashby, and his men. Ashby's brother had been killed in action early in the war, riddled with bullets and then bayoneted by the Yankees, and Ashby never passed up an opportunity to even the score.
Fremont's forces were active to the west in the Alleghenies, presenting a more distant threat to Jackson. Fremont was dealing with even worse terrain and was also timid, but his forces still outnumbered Edward Johnson's. Fremont's advance brigades, under Brigadier General Robert S. Milroy, were driving Johnson back through the mountains to the town of Staunton at the southern end of the Valley.
In the meantime, Jackson had discovered an opportunity in the form of a 34-year-old schoolmaster named Jedidiah Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss was a New Yorker who had visited the Shenandoah Valley in 1847 and liked it so much that he had decided to settle there, eventually setting up a pair of schools. He had taken to making maps of the Valley as a useful hobby and learned the layout of the area in detail. Although Hotchkiss was anti-slavery, when the war broke out he sided with the South, and just before the battle of Kernstown he joined Jackson's staff as a captain. His knowledge of the Valley's highly irregular terrain gave Jackson a potential advantage over Banks, who had poor and misleading maps, and Jackson had been in correspondence with Dick Ewell to see what might be made of such an advantage.
Such plans were rudely disrupted in mid-April when Banks finally decided to get aggressive and started moving south through the Valley again. Jackson fell back quickly after a few skirmishes and, as far as Banks was concerned, disappeared. Jackson, however, was simply laying low and biding his time.
* The total headcount of the four rebel forces north of Richmond amounted to less than 20,000 Confederates to oppose 21,000 Federals under Banks, 30,000 under McDowell, and 17,000 under Fremont, a total of 68,000 Yankees. However, the three Union forces were separated and not working in coordination. Lee figured that if he had Jackson and Ewell join forces, they would have enough men to hit Banks or Fremont with the strength to do them some real harm, and then get away before the Federals could join forces.
The whole thing would take some juggling on Lee's part. Field needed to be reinforced to at least maintain an appearance of strength. Since Joe Johnston couldn't spare any of his men, Lee took 10,000 men from the Carolina coast, Burnside being quiet for the moment, and sent them to Fredericksburg under Brigadier General J.R. Anderson, who then took command of Field's brigade.
It also took some faith on Lee's part, since neither Ewell nor Jackson inspired much confidence. Dick Ewell was 45 years old and regarded as eccentric, an odd-looking fellow with a bald head and sharp nose who tended to remind people of a woodcock. He lived on a diet of cracked wheat to deal with digestive problems, and was prone to inject odd non-sequiters into his conversation, such as: "Now why do you suppose President Davis made me a major general, anyway?" He had such a nervous disposition that he didn't sleep in a regular way, spending his nights curled around a campstool in a way that would have been torture for almost anyone else.
As for Jackson, his shining performance at Manassas had been largely forgotten. His defeat at Kernstown had not, and his sacking of Richard Garnett after that fight had made his officers resentful. He had also conducted a pointless campaign in the mountains during the winter that had accomplished little more than giving his men some training in surviving operations in ice and snow, while demonstrating to them his complete and obvious indifference to their hardships.
Jackson was 38, a West Pointer and Mexican War veteran, and had spent the decade before the war at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) as a professor of Natural & Experimental Philosophy and an artillery instructor. As a professor he was petty about the rules, his voice was shrill, and his lectures were notoriously dull. He was not popular with his students, who referred to him as "Tom Fool". He wore a raggedy uniform he'd had since the Mexican War, with a old beaten-up VMI cadet cap and outsized boots, size 14 it is thought, though Jackson was only of average height. He suffered from digestive problems like Ewell, as well as a bit of hypochondria. Jackson lived on raspberries, plain bread, milk, and lemons. He was forever sucking on lemons, and nobody ever figured out how he maintained his supply of them.
Jackson was a man of intense concentration, inflexible habits, and, as noted previously, was a religious zealot. He seemed to go into an altered state in combat, his eyes gleaming in a strange way, leading the men to call him "Old Blue Light". He wrote his wife that he would make his troops "an army of the Living God as well as of its country." Even in this more devout age, his religious extremism tended to alarm people. His zeal also tended to make him quarrelsome, small-minded, and blindly one-sided.
Added to this uncertainty over Jackson's capabilities was the fact that General Lee's authority as Jefferson Davis's military advisor was vague and limited, and both Ewell and Jackson reported to Joe Johnston, who was notoriously touchy about interference in his command structure. Jackson was, however, all that Lee had for the job, and Jackson would have to do. Lee got approval to unleash Jackson from Jefferson Davis, who was more of a military man than Abraham Lincoln and understood the value of an active defense.
Lee wrote Jackson on 21 April, suggesting a number of options for a strike against the Yankees, in particular a fast combined attack with Ewell against Banks. Lee also sent a letter to Ewell, suggesting a "speedy blow". Jackson replied that he was in complete agreement with this idea. He would move out of his own camp, which would then be occupied by Dick Ewell and his men to cover the movement. Jackson would then combine forces with Edward Johnson, knock Milroy out of the picture, and then combine again with Ewell's force to deal with Banks.
Banks had no clue what was brewing. He believed that Jackson was "not in condition to attack, neither to make strong resistance." In fact, Banks concluded on 30 April that "there is nothing more to be done by us in the Valley." Believing this to be the case, he requested that he and his force be sent eastward to join McDowell or McClellan. The war was going to be over soon and Banks didn't want to miss his share of the glory. He got only half his wish, and the worst half at that. On 1 May, Secretary Stanton ordered General Shields' division to join McDowell, leaving Banks to hold the Valley with his remaining division. The Union pincher move south that Lee feared was going into motion, but as it did so it left some shining opportunities for the Confederacy behind it.
Jackson was on the move to exploit those opportunities. He had contacted Ewell without waiting for a reply from General Lee, asking Ewell to link up with Jackson's forces, and on 30 April 1862 Ewell and his 8,500 men marched over the Blue Ridge Mountains as Jackson had requested. The ball was rolling.
* The balance between the Union and Confederacy for the control of the Southwest had tilted to the Federals after the Battle of Glorieta Pass on 28 March, but in the first weeks of April it appeared that the rebels would make one desperate grab to tilt it back. On 1 April, Union commander Edward Canby, now a brigadier general, left Fort Craig and marched his men north towards Albuquerque for a final confrontation with Confederate General Henry Sibley and his forces. Canby arrived on 8 April, his artillery then exchanging fire with rebel gunners. Canby drew back and called for reinforcements from Fort Union, while Sibley ordered his forces in Santa Fe to pull out and march south to join him.
The two armies appeared ready to fight, but in reality Sibley had no stomach for a battle. His supplies were almost gone, the environment was hostile, and Canby had been reinforced by the Coloradans. On 12 April, Sibley's men began a retreat down the west bank of the Rio Grande, while Canby's forces shadowed them on the east bank. This odd pursuit continued for several days. Although the Union soldiers wanted to attack the rebels and pleaded with Canby to let them off the leash, he had no desire for another bloody battle like that at Valverde, two months before. He simply wanted to ensure that the Confederates went back to where they came from. Three days after the march had begun, the Federals woke up to find the rebels had disappeared; Sibley had marched his forces westward into the desert to shake the Yankees.
Canby returned with his men to Fort Craig, arriving on 22 April. In the meantime, Sibley and his men endured one of the most terrible ordeals of the war, marching for ten days over hot desert wastelands and difficult terrain, with little food or water. Sibley reached Fort Bliss in early May, and sent a report to Richmond on 4 May that crushed all the bright dreams he and Jefferson Davis had for a Confederate corridor to the Pacific. On 14 May, Sibley assembled the survivors and marched them to San Antonio, where they disbanded. The Confederate Territory of Arizona was no more. Of the 3,700 men Sibley had led north through the desert, only 2,000 had come back. 500 had been lost in battle, while the other 1,200 had fallen in the bitter march home to Texas.
The war in the Far West was over. A Union lieutenant and his men retraced Sibley's route a year later, to find it littered with pieces of Confederate gear and bleached skeletons.
