v1.1.1 / chapter 48 of 93 / 01 sep 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* Robert E. Lee's attempt in 1862 to take the war to the North had been halted at the battle of Antietam. In the late spring of 1863, he decided to try it again. After a sequence of clashes, the stage would be set for one of the biggest battles ever fought in North America.
* Chancellorsville had been a brilliant victory for the Confederacy, but it had not really changed the strategic status quo. Robert E. Lee knew that if he did not inflict a decisive defeat on the Union there would be nothing to prevent the more powerful North from eventually overwhelming the Confederacy. Remaining on the defensive would be a form of deferred suicide. That meant Lee had no choice but to strike north again in hopes of putting Northern cities, particularly Washington, at risk. His own army was also desperately in need of food and other supplies. Such materials were abundant above the Potomac, and taking the war out of northern Virginia would give its citizens a breathing spell from the wastage that accompanied the presence of large armies.
On 14 May 1863, Lee went to Richmond to discuss his plan with Jefferson Davis and his cabinet. They were all uneasy with the idea of another invasion of the North. Vicksburg was now in great danger, and sending the Army of Northern Virginia to relieve the besieged city seemed the more prudent plan. Lee argued his case for three days, and in the end the cold logic of the situation and the force of his personality won out. Another invasion of the North was a desperate and risky measure, but the alternatives were worse.
* Before beginning on the campaign, Lee reorganized his forces. Previously, the Army of Northern Virginia had been organized into two corps of about 30,000 men each, one under James Longstreet and one under Stonewall Jackson. Jackson was now dead and buried, leaving a major hole in the army's command structure.
Lee took the occasion to divide the army into three smaller corps that he judged more manageable, announcing the names of the corps commanders on 30 May. I Corps command went to Lieutenant General Longstreet. II Corps commander was Lieutenant General Dick Ewell, who had returned to duty after losing his leg at the second battle of Manassas. III Corps command went to Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill. The assignment of A.P. Hill to lead III Corps was a gamble on Lee's part: Hill was a great fighter, but his aggressiveness made him impatient, and on occasion he had proven inclined to attack without waiting for orders.
Lee also chose to bolster Jeb Stuart's cavalry command by assigning him four additional cavalry brigades that had previously been independent. One of the brigades was under the command of Brigadier General William E. Jones, a tough disciplinarian so cantankerous that he was known as "Grumble" by his men. Jones was sour and wore plain, even raggedy, clothes; Stuart was genial and flashy. The two men hated each other.
On 3 June 1863, elements of the Army of Northern Virginia began to shift their positions in preparation for the move north.
* Joe Hooker was quickly aware that the Confederates were on the move. He had been provided intelligence on 27 May indicating that the Army of Northern Virginia had received marching orders, and on 4 June got word from balloon observers that the rebels were moving out of the Fredericksburg area.
Hooker had regained some of his old bluster and suggested to Washington that the Army of the Potomac move across the Rappahannock and "pitch into" the Confederates in the area. President Lincoln immediately rejected the idea that Hooker's army should try to cross a major river when the whereabouts of Lee's army were completely unknown. Lincoln believed the army could become "entangled on the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to kick one way or gore another."
Hooker collected more intelligence and soon learned that Confederate cavalry was assembling near Culpeper at a whistle-stop town on the Rappahannock named Brandy Station. Hooker sent out his cavalry corps under Brigadier General Alfred Pleasonton to confront Stuart's troopers.
Pleasonton divided his forces into two parts. Three brigades of cavalry and one of infantry under Brigadier General John Buford were sent a few miles upstream of Brandy Station to attack the rebels from the front. A larger force of two divisions, one under Brigadier General David McMurtie Gregg and another under French-born Colonel Alfred Duffie, were sent a few miles downstream to circle around and strike the rebels from the rear.
The Union troops moved into place in the dark morning hours of 8 June. Unfortunately, Duffie's division got lost and Gregg's division was forced to wait, throwing the downstream movement off schedule. Upstream, Buford's lead brigade moved across the river at daybreak, led by Colonel Grimes Davis, the Unionist Mississippian who had led his men out of encircled Harper's Ferry the year before.
Davis's men roared down the road towards Brandy Station, first encountering a unit of about 100 rebels who had been rudely awakened by the attack. The Confederates were forced to withdraw, but a rebel lieutenant who had been left behind managed to ride up on Davis and put a pistol ball into his head, killing him. Davis was a energetic and bold officer and his death robbed the Union cavalry of a potentially significant leader.
By this time Jeb Stuart was aware of the trouble. He ordered the wagon train he had assembled to support his movement north to the rear and sent reinforcements to deal with Buford's men. The Union troopers finally ran up against stiff Confederate resistance and their charge faltered. They fell back, dismounted, and formed up a line along with infantry that had moved forward in support.
In the meantime, the Federal force under Gregg and Duffie had sorted itself out and was moving to attack Stuart's force from the rear. Grumble Jones reported the movement to Stuart, who dismissed it, saying: "Tell General Jones to attend to the Yankees in his front, and I'll watch the flanks." When given this response, Jones commented: "So he thinks they ain't coming, does he? Well, let him alone, he'll damned soon see for himself."
Gregg's column advanced on Brandy Station while Duffie led his men further around the Confederate rear. As Gregg's men moved up the road to Fleetwood Hill, which commanded the approach to Brandy Station, they were spotted by Major Henry McClellan, Stuart's adjutant. Stuart had run off to fight Buford's men with three brigades, leaving McClellan with only a handful of troopers, but McClellan was a fighter and wasn't going to be run off. He found a light howitzer with a small supply of ammunition and ordered his men to fire on the Union column.
The Federals at the head of the column, a brigade under Colonel Percy Wyndham, a British adventurer in Union blue, paused in response to the fire. The Yankees were uncertain of rebel strength and decided to wait for the main body to come up the road. In the meantime, the boom of the howitzer finally alerted Stuart to the fact that there was something wrong in his rear.
Stuart sent four more guns and two regiments of Grumble Jones' troopers back to stop Gregg's division. They arrived at Fleetwood Hill just as the little howitzer ran out of ammunition. Wyndham's cavalry was in a full charge up the hill and ran straight into Jones' troopers. The result was a violent collision, with the Union cavalry smashing through and riding over the rebel horsemen. Gregg's men rode up the hill but encountered more Confederate soldiers coming up as reinforcements. The Union charge faltered in the face of stiffened resistance and fell back, pressed by the rebels. Gregg sent a messenger to Duffie to ask him to assist, but by the time Duffie arrived the Confederates had stabilized their defense and were not inclined to be pushed out.
In the meantime, to the northeast, Buford had made another drive against the Confederates, but despite fierce fighting the Federals were unable to break through. By this time, it was late afternoon and Pleasonton realized there was nothing more he could do. At 4:30 PM, he ordered his forces to withdraw, and they did so in good order.
The battle of Brandy Station was in almost any terms a Confederate victory. There were 866 Union losses to only 523 Confederate casualties. Among the rebel casualties was Brigadier General W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee, Robert E. Lee's 26-year-old son, who was wounded in the thigh while leading a cavalry charge. The Federal attempt to smash Jeb Stuart's cavalry had failed, and Stuart was pleased with the results.
However, there was a dark side to the victory. Stuart's cavalrymen were accustomed to riding rings around the Yankees. Although they did beat the Federals at Brandy Station, they were hard-pressed for a time to do it. The Union cavalry was clearly not the gang of clumsy plowboys they had once been. Pleasonton's men were proud of their performance, and the days when Confederate cavalry could do what it pleased were fading. Even Henry McClellan would write that the battle of Brandy Station "made the Federal Cavalry."
* Incidentally, the balloon observations provided to Hooker on 4 June were one of the last actions of Professor Lowe's balloon corps. Lowe had lost his main patron with the dismissal of George McClellan, and since that time the Union balloon corps had been fading away in the face of military indifference and quarreling among the balloonists. Lowe had resigned in April, and the corps was formally disbanded even as Lee was marching North. Some Confederates felt the Union balloonists had been effective, forcing the rebels to camouflage their positions and conceal their movements, but few Federal officers expressed any interest in balloons one way or another. They were a weapon for a later war.
* Although Stuart was forced to spend a week reorganizing his force, the Confederate offensive was on a timetable and did not wait for him.
On 10 June, Ewell put his II Corps on the road. He accompanied the march in a buggy. They crossed into the Shenandoah Valley through Chester Gap, and by 13 June were converging on the town of Winchester, in the northern part of the valley.
There was a force of 5,100 Union soldiers in Winchester under the command of
Major General Robert H. Milroy. The War Department had been wiring Milroy
for a week, pleading with him to withdraw to Harper's Ferry, 30 miles (48
kilometers) to the north, but Milroy felt his defenses were strong enough to
hold. On 13 June, the Confederates made contact with Milroy's men, and in
response Milroy ordered them to fall back to three forts north and west of
Winchester. President Lincoln did not share Milroy's confidence, and the
next day wired the general's commander:
GET MILROY FROM WINCHESTER TO HARPER'S FERRY IF POSSIBLE.
IF HE REMAINS HE WILL GET GOBBLED UP, IF HE IS NOT ALREADY
PAST SALVATION.
By this time, Dick Ewell's troops were moving into position to attack the
critical West Fort. Their movements went unnoticed, even though Milroy had
himself hoisted to the top of a flagpole in the West Fort in a basket to
survey the countryside with a spyglass.
At about 5:00 PM, the rebels went forward under the support of 20 guns in an enthusiastic charge, and brisk fighting followed. The West Fort fell as the sun was going down. Milroy pulled his men out and set them on the road to Harper's Ferry at about 10:00 PM.
Ewell had expected such a move and had ordered a division under Major General Edward Johnson to cut off Milroy's line of retreat. The two forces ran into each other at about 3:30 AM at a bridge that ran across a deep railroad cut. Milroy's force was substantially larger than Johnson's, but Milroy was unable to coordinate an effective attack, while the Confederates took up good defensive positions in the railroad cut. They also set up a gun on the narrow bridge and repeatedly forced back Federal attacks with canister and grapeshot fired at point-blank range. Confederate gunners were shot, but enough volunteers came forward to keep the gun firing and the Union men at bay.
As the sun came up the next morning, a Confederate brigade under Brigadier General James Walker came up the road and threw themselves into the fight. Milroy's force dissolved, with the soldiers breaking and scattering. Many were captured. The Federals suffered 443 killed and wounded and lost 3,358 men as prisoners. Ewell seized 23 guns and 300 wagons, with a loss of only 269 men.
On 15 June, Ewell's men began their crossing of the Potomac near Shepherdstown. The crossing was completed by 18 June. The next day, Ewell sent his lead division through the Cumberland Valley into Pennsylvania. The state appeared wide open. Ewell's general objective was the state capitol of Harrisburg, on the north bank of the Susquehanna River.
* On 15 June, Lee sent orders to Longstreet at Culpeper and A.P. Hill at Fredericksburg to put their men on the march and move fast. Lee himself was to follow in two day's time. The march was hot and dusty, many men fell out, and a few died.
On 16 June, Jeb Stuart's men mounted up to join the movement. Pleasonton's Union cavalry, encouraged by the good showing they made at Brandy Station, gave Stuart's troopers little peace as they moved toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the afternoon of 17 June, a Federal brigade under Brigadier General Judson Kilpatrick met a smaller force of Stuart's cavalry under Colonel Thomas Munford near the village of Aldie, in the Loudon Valley. Kilpatrick sent his men in piecemeal and they were badly cut up. The outnumbered rebels stood their ground until about 7:00 PM, and then decided to retire.
Kilpatrick had been trying to link up with Colonel Alfred Duffie's 1st Rhode Island cavalry, but instead of finding Kilpatrick, Duffie ran into three brigades of Stuart's men. Duffie was surrounded and didn't manage to escape until early in the morning of 18 June, having lost over two-thirds of his 300 men in the process.
These skirmishes had gone badly for the Yankees, but they weren't in any mood to give up easily and the fighting in the Loudon Valley continued. On 19 June, Stuart fought an all-day rearguard action against a division of Federal troopers under General David Gregg along a ridge west of Middleburg. Stuart was forced to withdraw to a further ridge. Stuart was so hard-pressed that even though Longstreet had brought his men into the Shenandoah Valley through Ashby's Gap and Snicker's Gap that day, Lee ordered him to move back into the mountains to back up Stuart.
There was no serious fighting in the Loudon Valley on 20 June because of heavy rains, but the shooting flared back up with a vengeance on the 21st. Stuart was forced back to Upperville and wild battles raged around the town. The fighting went on all day, with Stuart finally withdrawing through Ashby's Gap at about 6:00 PM.
Pleasonton's soldiers and horses were worn out by the five days of fighting and did not pursue. The final score was 613 Union casualties versus 510 Confederate casualties. In absolute numbers the Federals had got the worst of it, but not by so much, and not by more than they could afford. They hadn't been able to penetrate Stuart's screens, but they had kept him on the defensive and pressed him hard, and the Union cavalry were rightly proud of themselves.
* Stuart understood this as well as the Federals did. Being manhandled by the Yankee cavalry he and his men had so long held in contempt was humiliating, even if he had given them a bloodying. He was also smarting from the criticisms the poisonous Southern newspapers had thrown at him for his bumbling at Brandy Station. The Richmond EXAMINER had pointed an accusatory finger at "vain and empty-headed officers", and other papers had been equally unkind.
Stuart, who was indeed vain, burned to recover his reputation. Lee, who along with his other virtues was an excellent judge of character, knew that Stuart's pride might make him rash. Stuart wanted to ride off and harass Hooker's army, but Lee emphasized that the cavalry's proper place was to protect the western flank of the advancing Confederate forces.
Then, on 23 June, Lee suggested that Stuart might indeed be allowed to engage in an extended foray, but only under the condition that Hooker's army did not move north across the Potomac. If the Federals did move north, Stuart was to immediately take up guard on the Army of Northern Virginia's flank. Stuart was so excited about the prospect of further glory that the conditions stipulated by Lee carried little weight.
The next morning, 24 June, Stuart ordered his two largest brigades, under Beverly Robertson and Grumble Jones and totalling about 3,000 men, to stay behind and guard the Blue Ridge passes. He gave orders to his three best brigades, under Wade Hampton, Fitzhugh Lee, and Colonel John R. Chambliss (in brigade command in the absence of the wounded Rooney Lee) to accompany him on a raid. They left in the dark hours of 25 June and for all practical purposes rode right out of the campaign.
By this time, Ewell's advance forces were over ten miles (16 kilometers) up the Cumberland Valley into Pennsylvania. Longstreet and A.P. Hill had begun their crossings of the Potomac at Shepherdstown and Williamsport on 24 June. The Confederates were now fully committed to their invasion of the North.
* Joe Hooker led the Army of the Potomac out of camp on 25 June, crossing the Potomac on 27 June. After crossing the river, however, Joe Hooker and the Army of the Potomac went their separate ways.
Not long after Chancellorsville, President Lincoln, War Secretary Stanton, and General Halleck had agreed that Hooker wasn't fit to command an army and should be sacked. To deflect public criticism, they decided to wait for the volatile Hooker to offer his resignation.
They were actually doing much to encourage him to do so. Halleck and the War Office had been badgering him incessantly since Lee began his move north, simultaneously pushing him to take action while imposing conditions on what actions he could take. Following a dispute with Halleck over the disposition of troops near Harper's Ferry, Hooker submitted his resignation on the afternoon of 27 June. Halleck replied that it had to go to the President for approval.
In fact, a Colonel James A. Hardie had left Washington by train even before Halleck sent that reply. Hardie's mission was to find Major General George Gordon Meade and inform him that he was to lead the Army of the Potomac. In the dark hours of the morning of 28 June, Hardie awakened Meade to tell him the news. Meade, punchy with sleep, at first thought he was being arrested. Hardie compounded Meade's confusion by saying: "General, I've come to make trouble for you."
When Meade found out that he was being given command of the Army of the Potomac, he wasn't much happier. He tried to turn it down, suggesting that other officers, particularly John Reynolds or John Sedgwick, were better qualified, and in fact technically senior to him. As with Burnside before him, Meade was told that the assignment was an order, not a request. Meade abandoned his protests and replied: "Well, I've been tried and condemned without a hearing, and I suppose I shall have to go to execution."
Meade was then 47 years old. He was a West Pointer who had served in the Mexican War; he was competent, intelligent, cooly courageous under fire, and neither given to self-promotion nor political partisanship. He wasn't particularly impressive in appearance, being a tall skinny man with a balding head and glasses, and in fact he tended to be quiet and bookish. However, his quiet demeanor concealed an explosive temper. His troops called him an "old goggle-eyed snapping turtle", and he both knew it and accepted it. He was not what anyone would call a natural leader of men.
Hardie took Meade to Hooker's tent. Hooker had no specific advance warning of the change in command, though considering how often the Army of the Potomac changed hands he couldn't have been too surprised. Meade wrote his wife that Hooker had no trouble with the transfer, saying of his command that "he had enough of it, and almost wished he had never been born." Hooker was very cooperative and generally pleasant about the matter.
However, Hooker didn't have much in the way of a battle plan to hand to Meade, and Meade didn't even have a clear idea of where all the Army of the Potomac was. Fortunately, the instructions Halleck provided in the order promoting Meade to command were surprisingly loose. Meade had a free hand to do what he pleased, as long as he followed the stipulations to shield Washington and Baltimore, and to bring the enemy to battle. Halleck wrote: "You will not be hampered by any minute instructions from these headquarters." Whether Halleck knew that changing commanders so close to a battle made micromanagement unwise, or if Halleck had no particular urge to harass Meade as he had Hooker, is hard to say.
John Reynolds and John Sedgwick dropped by to offer their congratulations and promise their support, which reassured Meade, who had feared they might be resentful at being passed over. In fact, Reynolds had gone to Washington a few weeks earlier to make it clear to the authorities that he did not want command of the Army of the Potomac unless he was free from political interference in his decisions. Reynolds had no reason to feel that he had been badly treated in not having been given the top job. Sedgwick had more reason for complaint, and in fact at first he seemed to take the news badly, but he was a highly sensible and level-headed man and got over it quickly.
Meade threw himself into his work, and in the afternoon of 28 June he
telegraphed Halleck:
I MUST MOVE TOWARDS THE SUSQUEHANNA, KEEPING WASHINGTON
AND BALTIMORE WELL COVERED, AND IF THE ENEMY IS CHECKED
IN HIS ATTEMPT TO CROSS THE SUSQUEHANNA, OR IF HE TURNS
TOWARD BALTIMORE, GIVE HIM BATTLE.
On the morning of 29 June, the Army of the Potomac moved out and marched
north towards the Pennsylvania border. Intelligence reported that the corps
of A.P. Hill and Longstreet were camped near Chambersburg, and so Meade
ordered Major General Dan Sickles' III Corps, Major General John Reynolds' I
Corps, and Major General Oliver O. Howard's XI Corps to concentrate near
Emmitsburg, Maryland, just below the Pennsylvania border, to meet the threat.
Meade urged haste, telling Reynolds "strong exertions are required." Meade had much less of "the slows" than McClellan and also had a much better grasp of realities. Meade's intelligence suggested that Lee's rebel force numbered 80,000 and had 275 guns, which was within a few thousand men and a handful of guns of the truth.
Despite the past history of humiliations, the Army of the Potomac marched back onto Union soil with a general sense of enthusiasm and confidence. Northern Virginia had been badly trashed by the back-and-forth movements of armies and the Virginians regarded Northern soldiers with the hatred given an invader. North of the Potomac, the land was green and prosperous, and the people generally glad to see them, though that did not restrain some inconsiderate Union soldiers from their accustomed habits of theft and looting.
The soldiers were looking forward to a fight. One officer wrote: "They are used to being whipped, and no longer mind it. Some day or other we shall have our turn." They felt this was going to be it, one soldier saying: "We felt some doubt about whether it was ever going to be our fortune to win a victory in Virginia, but no one admitted the possibility of a defeat north of the Potomac." A surgeon wrote of the troops: "They are more determined than I have ever before seen them."
John Buford's cavalry division rode ahead of the Union columns, probing for the Confederates. At midmorning on 30 June 1863, the troopers rode into the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was east of Chambersburg and north of Emmitsburg, where the citizens told them that a Confederate infantry brigade had just come and gone, apparently on a mission to seize shoes and boots.
* Lee's columns had moved north into Pennsylvania with their usual swiftness. Dick Ewell had divided his II Corps into three parts to advance over a wide front, with Ewell accompanying the main column, which consisted of two brigades and a division under Major General Robert Rhodes moving towards the Susquehanna and Harrisburg through the towns of Carlisle and Mechanicsburg. A brigade foraged in parallel to the west, while Jubal Early's division headed east to make a crossing of the Susquehanna downstream at Wrightsville, allowing the rebels to attack Harrisburg from two sides.
Early's division had to go through the towns of Gettysburg and York to get to Wrightsville, and the Confederates came into Gettysburg late in the afternoon of 26 June, with Pennslyvania militiamen prudently fleeing ahead of them. Early commented: "It was well that the regiment took to their heels so quickly, or some of its members might have been hurt."
The citizens of Gettysburg found the rebels "exceedingly dirty, some ragged", but observed their "perfect discipline". Early demanded supplies from the townspeople but they had hidden away most of their goods, and the Confederates were in too much of a hurry to insist. However, Early noticed that there was a shoe factory in Gettysburg and sent a messenger to A.P. Hill to inform him about it.
Early's men reached York on the evening of 27 June and Wrightsville the next day, only to find out that the long covered bridge that went over the Susquehanna from that town had been burned. Early pulled back to York to await instructions from Ewell.
* In the meantime, Ewell's main column had marched through Carlisle on 27 June, and by the next day his advance cavalry was camped on a hill just south of the Susquehanna and Harrisburg. Harrisburg seemed wide open and defenseless.
However, that same night, a ragged Confederate spy who had been sent north by Longstreet and remains known to history only as Harrison showed up at Lee's headquarters. Harrison reported the Union Army of the Potomac was on the move, and that he had seen two corps camped near Frederick, Maryland, and Federal columns moving towards South Mountain to fall on Lee's supply lines.
He also informed Lee that Meade had replaced Hooker. Some time later, a few of Lee's officers commented that Lincoln had yet again given command to an officer who would be no match for their own superlative leader, but Lee had known Meade well in the old Army and did not agree: "General Meade will commit no blunder on my front, and if I make one he will make haste to take advantage of it."
Lee had no great confidence in spies and scouts but Longstreet vouched for Harrison's reliability, and with Stuart nowhere to be found, Lee had no other sources of intelligence. The next morning, Lee ordered Ewell to pull all his forces south and concentrate to the west of Gettysburg for battle. The rebel cavalrymen just south of Harrisburg had gone as far north as the Army of Northern Virginia would get during the entire war.
Longstreet and A.P. Hill were ordered to lead their corps to the area near Gettysburg as well. On 30 June, a Confederate infantry brigade under Brigadier General James Johnston Pettigrew, part of Henry Heth's division in A.P. Hill's corps, marched on Gettysburg to follow up the report about the shoe factory there. The rebel brigade got there just in time to see Buford's cavalry approach the town. Pettigrew had no mandate to start a fight and didn't want to bite off on what might be more than a brigade of infantry could deal with on their own, and so he ordered his men to withdraw a few miles away from the town.
That afternoon, Pettigrew reported to Heth what he had seen. A.P. Hill came up and overheard the conversation, and told Pettigrew he didn't believe the enemy was at Gettysburg. Heth said to Hill: "If there is no objection, general, I will take my division tomorrow and get those shoes." Hill replied: "None in the world."
If Heth and Hill had illusions about what was in store for them at Gettysburg, John Buford did not. One of his brigadiers suggested that the enemy wouldn't return, and if they did they would be easily driven off. Buford was a deceptively easy-going Kentuckian who was all fighter under the surface. He replied: "No, you won't. They will attack you in the morning and they will come booming, skirmishers three deep. You will have to fight like the devil before support arrives."
