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  Jeb Stuart was content to see the Yankees go. General Lee had told him during the fighting that the incursion was apparently a reconnaissance “to determine our force and position,” which he had no intention of revealing, and he told Stuart not to expose his men too much. In any event, the presence of the Federal infantry made a cavalry pursuit highly risky. So it was that by 9:00 P.M. the Yankees had completed their recrossing unmolested. The Battle of Brandy Station had lasted some sixteen hours and was, everyone there agreed, the largest cavalry fight of the war thus far—a distinction it would in fact maintain through 1865.16

  While Brandy Station certainly qualified as a battle spectacle, it was tactically inconclusive and produced no immediate strategic effect on either army. Lee’s march north was neither hampered nor unduly delayed. Alfred Pleasonton had quite failed to carry out his orders to “disperse and destroy” the Rebel cavalry, and the effort cost him considerably more casualties than he inflicted. Federal losses came to 866, with almost 45 percent marked as missing. Confederate casualties were 523. Stuart had managed the fighting skillfully enough, but the fact remained that he had been inexcusably surprised. Furthermore, he was exceedingly fortunate that the Yankees’ delay at Kelly’s Ford allowed him to fight Buford first and then Gregg, rather than facing the two simultaneously, attacking from front and rear. 17

  Pleasonton, characteristically, set about transmuting his role at Brandy Station from lead into gold. As he would later tell it in various quarters, instead of launching an attack to break up Stuart’s cavalry, his Rappahannock crossing was actually a reconnaissance in force to find out what the enemy was planning. Then, during the fighting, he claimed to have captured the camp of the Rebel horse artillery “with important papers,” after which he “seized Stuart’s headquarters with all its documents.” All this, along with a sighting of a trainload of Confederate infantry, was evidence enough for General Pleasonton to claim he discovered Lee’s plan for invading Pennsylvania. All this, in fact, was fiction. The few fragments of intelligence gleaned from this day-long battle were already known to the Bureau of Military Information, and the Federals grasped no more of Lee’s plan on June 10 than they had on June 8.18

  Jeb Stuart, characteristically, claimed victory. He congratulated his men on a “glorious day.” A strong force of the enemy “tested your mettle and found it proof-steel…. An act of rashness on his part was severely punished by rout and the loss of his artillery.” The Southern press, however, took a rather different view of Brandy Station. An “ugly surprise” was how the Charleston Mercury characterized it, and the Richmond Enquirer concluded that “Gen. Stuart has suffered no little in public estimation by the late enterprises of the enemy.” The Richmond Examiner spoke of the “puffed up cavalry” of the Army of Northern Virginia suffering the “consequences of negligence and bad management.” Stuart was more prideful than most, and this public criticism stung him. General Dorsey Pender wrote his wife, “I suppose it is all right that Stuart should get all the blame, for when anything handsome is done he gets all the credit,” but surely Stuart himself did not view the matter that philosophically.19

  The surprise was the subject of comment by infantrymen. Major Henry McDaniel, whose 11th Georgia had to round up cavalry stragglers, explained to his wife that “Our boys have the heartiest contempt for Cavalrymen and never let slip an opportunity of taunting them with their dread of battle. They do well enough in raids, frightening women and children, flirting with the ladies, and plundering the farmers,” he noted, but the real fighting was left to “the ragged, barefoot infantry.”

  The most significant consequence of Brandy Station was its effect on the Federal cavalry arm. The astute Confederate observer of cavalry matters, Major Henry McClellan, looked back on Brandy Station and observed that “it made the Federal cavalry. Up to that time confessedly inferior to the Southern horsemen, they gained on this day that confidence in themselves and in their commanders which enabled them to contest so fiercely the subsequent battlefields….” A trooper in the 3rd Pennsylvania put it more simply: “the Cavalry begins to hold up its head.“20

  ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, June 10, as scheduled, Dick Ewell’s Second Corps stepped off for the Shenandoah Valley. It was Lee’s plan for Ewell to clear the Valley route to the Potomac, followed by Longstreet marching east of the Blue Ridge to screen Ewell and to mystify the enemy (or in Lee’s phrase, “with the view of creating embarrassment as to our plans”). In due course, depending upon the Federal response to these moves, Powell Hill’s Third Corps would follow by way of the Valley.

  From Culpeper Ewell followed a route well to the west, avoiding contact with the Yankee cavalry picketing the Rappahannock. “We found the grass, clover and timothy, perfectly luxuriant, a great change from the bare fields of Fredericksburg,” Jed Hotchkiss noted in his diary. “The men marched well.” On the 12th, Robert Rodes’s lead division passed through Chester Gap in the Blue Ridge and descended into the Shenandoah. One of Rodes’s men, Louis Leon, recorded their march as 56 miles in fifty-two hours, not unusually testing for the veterans of Jackson’s foot cavalry. “We marched through Front Royal,” Private Leon wrote, “where the ladies treated us very good.”

  That evening the cavalry brigade of Albert Jenkins, ordered over from southwestern Virginia, joined the column, and General Ewell gathered his lieutenants to plan their Valley campaign. Lee selected Ewell to lead the operation primarily because he had played a major role in Jackson’s victorious Valley campaign of 1862. Furthermore, the bulk of Stonewall’s old Valley army was now under Ewell in the Second Corps, and very much attuned to reconquering the Shenandoah. The Federals were known to be holding the lower Valley with large garrisons at Winchester and Harper’s Ferry, and with lesser garrisons at Berryville and Martinsburg. It was Dick Ewell’s task to clear away the enemy forces in his path and open the passage to the upper Potomac for a crossing into Maryland.

  With 23,000 men of all arms, Ewell’s concern was whether the Yankees would get away before he could catch any of them—and whether the Army of the Potomac might interfere in the chase.21

  The previous September, when General Lee set off on his first incursion north of the Potomac, he made a point of assuming the role of military statesman. He proposed to Mr. Davis that they couple the army’s offensive into Maryland with a peace overture to Washington. Let the world understand, said the general, that in this war the Confederacy sought not conquest but only independence. “Such a proposition, coming from us at this time, could in no way be regarded as suing for peace,” he explained. Quite the contrary, for “being made when it is in our power to inflict injury upon our adversary,” it would actually give teeth to the claim for independence. Shrewdly, Lee pointed out that should Lincoln and his Republican administration reject the peace overture, they would have to accept the onus of prolonging the war “for purposes of their own.” Northerners going to the polls that fall, he said, could easily see who was responsible for the continued fighting.

  Nothing had come of this proposal, for just ten days after offering it Lee and the army were back in Virginia following the bloodletting at Sharpsburg. Now it was nine months later, and as Ewell led the vanguard of this second incursion toward the Potomac, General Lee again donned the mantle of military statesman. This time, however, he went beyond shrewdness and became positively Machiavellian.

  In a letter to President Davis dated June 10, Lee pointed to what he termed “the rising peace party of the North”—and how it was being viewed in the South. He warned that the Confederacy dare not neglect any “honorable means of dividing and weakening our enemies,” especially since it was becoming only too evident that the disparity of forces between the two sides was steadily growing. Southerners must not “conceal from ourselves that our resources in men are constantly diminishing,” and therefore they could not afford to “abstain from measures or expressions that tend to discourage any party whose purpose is peace.”

  What troubled Lee was the hostility of Sou
thern writers and public speakers, as expressed in the newspapers, toward “friends of peace at the North” who were linking an end to the fighting with restoration of the Union. Such parties should be encouraged by the Southern press, not spurned, said Lee. He opposed drawing “nice distinctions” between those declaring for “peace unconditionally and those who advocate it as a means of restoring the Union….” Should the belief among Northerners “that peace will bring back the Union become general,” he pointed out, “the war would no longer be supported, and that after all is what we are interested in bringing about.” Divide first and then conquer was General Lee’s objective, and that end justified any means: “When peace is proposed to us it will be time enough to discuss its terms….”

  President Davis’s response to Lee’s letter has not survived, but apparently he concurred with Lee’s thinking. “I have received today your letter of the 19th,” Lee wrote him, “and am much gratified by your views in relation to the peace party at the North.” Even should they be unable to promote this “pacific feeling,” said Lee, “our course ought to be so shaped as not to discourage it.” As it happened, just then Mr. Davis had in hand a possible means to expand on Lee’s ideas and to talk peace with the enemy.

  From Georgia Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederacy’s vice president, had written Davis volunteering to initiate talks with Washington to revive the lagging prisoner-exchange cartel. Stephens added the significant point that such a high-level meeting might offer the opportunity to discuss “on any point” in regard to the war, and thereby “to turn attention to a general adjustment….” On June 18 Davis wired Stephens to come to Richmond immediately. It was the president’s thought to attach the vice president to Lee’s invading army as a sort of minister plenipotentiary. Indeed Mr. Davis could visualize thereby conquering a peace—the glorious moment when Lee’s army, having vanquished the foe on some Pennsylvania battlefield, would require the services of a peace commissioner.22

  The first dispatches from the Shenandoah must have nourished the president’s hopes. The Federal commander at Winchester, Major General Robert H. Milroy, was a military amateur with a chip on his shoulder. He had little tolerance for professional soldiers, and in fact little tolerance for almost everyone. General Milroy, said one of his men, “was of the extremely nervous, excitable kind. He was generally out of patience with something or other, and when in such a mood it seemed difficult for him to treat one civilly.” For the past six months Milroy had been considerably more than uncivil to the citizens of Winchester, who considered his regime there tyrannical and intolerable. President Davis charged him with outlawry, and Dick Ewell and his men were eager to execute sentence on this Yankee vandal.23

  The intelligence that the Rebels were on the move had been slow to reach Washington, and watered down on arrival. Finally, at what would prove to be the eleventh hour, General-in-Chief Halleck telegraphed Milroy’s superior, Major General Robert Schenck, that Winchester “should” be evacuated. When he was shown this dispatch, the belligerent Milroy fired back that he could hold Winchester “against any force the rebels can afford to bring against me.” (“I deemed it impossible,” Milroy said later, that any of Lee’s main force could have slipped away from the Army of the Potomac’s grasp.) Schenck, a politician turned general, took Halleck’s “should” to be discretionary, and told Milroy, “Be ready for movement, but await further orders.” At last, from Halleck, came peremptory orders to pull everything back to Harper’s Ferry. Mr. Lincoln, following these exchanges at the War Department telegraph office, was sharply direct with Schenck: “Get General Milroy from Winchester to Harper’s Ferry if possible. He will be gobbled up, if he remains, if he is not already past salvation.” 24

  The president’s prediction came all too true, and all too soon. On June 13, just one day after crossing into the Valley, Ewell had his forces pressing in close on Milroy. The divisions of Jubal Early and Allegheny Johnson were directed against the Winchester garrison. Robert Rodes’s division, with Jenkins’s cavalry, swung off to the right to sweep up the Berryville garrison, 10 miles east of Winchester, and then to push rapidly down the Valley for Martinsburg. Milroy had some 6,900 men to defend his Winchester fortifications, with another 1,800 at Berryville, and he had no suspicion that the Confederates he was skirmishing with on the outskirts of town were anything more than cavalry raiders.

  The primary defenses of Winchester were three forts on high ground north and west of the town, armed with two dozen cannon. After a reconnoiter, Ewell concluded that taking these forts might be more of a test than he had expected. As one of his men put it, “we all began to feel as if we had caught the elephant, but could not tell what to do with it.” On the other hand, Ewell was pleased that the Yankees had not run but stayed to fight. Jubal Early pointed out some higher ground to the west, a ridgeline that dominated one of the forts. He proposed a concealed flanking march to seize this ridge as an artillery platform from which to assail the fort. Ewell approved the scheme. On Sunday, the 14th, Early set off on his eight-mile flank march with three brigades of infantry and seven batteries of artillery. Ewell meanwhile occupied the Federals’ attention with a series of noisy demonstrations south of the town.25

  It was 5:00 P.M. by the time Early was ready to signal his surprise assault. Twenty guns, concealed below the crest of the ridge, were quickly run up into firing position and opened in unison. The fort’s startled defenders tried to return fire but their battery was overwhelmed by the storm of shells. Harry Hays, whose brigade of Louisiana Tigers was poised to rush forward, recorded the fire as so accurate that “scarcely a head was discovered above the ramparts.” As the barrage lifted, the Tigers raised the Rebel yell and charged into the fort.

  Watching all this through his field glasses, Dick Ewell could hardly contain himself. “Hurrah for the Louisiana boys!” he cried. “There’s Early! I hope the old fellow won’t be hurt.” Just then Ewell was staggered by a spent bullet striking him in the chest. His surgeon, Dr. Hunter McGuire, diagnosed the injury as a bad bruise, and tried to get the general to lie down under cover by taking his crutches. But Ewell would have none of it, and he was soon stumping about again and cheering on the troops. The course of the fighting could be easily measured as more and more Yankees were seen to break out of the back of the fort and flee for their lives. Hays’s triumphant men turned two of the captured cannon on the fugitives to speed them on their way.26

  It was dark now, and both commanding generals had to make rapid-fire decisions. The Rebels had cut Milroy’s telegraph connection before Washington’s peremptory orders to retreat reached him, but his fate was obvious should he dare wait any longer. With daylight the Rebels would soon make Winchester’s remaining forts untenable. And there was no longer any doubt that he was facing major elements of Lee’s army. Milroy called in his lieutenants and set the start of the evacuation for 1:00 A.M. the next morning, June 15. To speed and silence the march, all wheeled vehicles would have to be left behind—wagons, ambulances, even the artillery.

  Dick Ewell read the portents the same way. He could not imagine any other course for Milroy but a retreat north toward Martinsburg or Harper’s Ferry, and he planned accordingly. Rodes had failed to catch the Berryville garrison before it escaped to Winchester, and he was already on his way to Martinsburg. But Ewell wanted to ambush the Federals before their retreat got fairly under way. He gave that task to Allegheny Johnson and his division.

  In this war a night action, even a night march, invariably generated vast confusion. In the pitch darkness General Johnson had to disengage from the enemy, collect his three scattered brigades, and find a way to swing around Winchester and intersect the enemy’s line of retreat somewhere beyond the town. With much profane urging he managed the task, although trailing bewildered men all across the landscape. By 4 o’clock in the morning Johnson had the beginnings of an ambush set up in a railroad cut that paralleled the Martinsburg turnpike, near Stephenson’s Depot. Suddenly, in the dark road, Milroy’s advance
guard stumbled into the flash and crash of gunfire and the battle was on.

  General Milroy had grimly determined “to cut our way out,” and without hesitation he hurled his troops against the ambush line. It was a close-run, wild fight in the smoky darkness. Allegheny Johnson was outnumbered until his trailing brigade finally reached the battlefield, and for a time all that held his wavering line together was the fire of Captain William Dement’s 1st Maryland battery. On the Federal side, the lack of artillery was demoralizing to the outgunned foot soldiers. It was hard to tell foe from friend in the dimness, and at one point a confused 18th Connecticut poured fire into the backs of the 87th Pennsylvania. “Darkness concealed the truth,” reported the mortified Connecticut colonel.

  It was first light when Milroy broke off the assaults and gave the order for everyone to get away as best he could. Not relishing being taken captive by what he had termed “the rebel fiends,” General Milroy was the first to leave. With that the already badly shaken Federal command collapsed. Men went off in every direction, and scores and then hundreds began to throw down their arms. Allegheny Johnson boasted he personally captured thirty Yankees “with his opera glass.” 27

  This Second Battle of Winchester—the first had been won by Stonewall Jackson in May 1862—was a Confederate victory of resounding proportions. Milroy lost 443 men killed and wounded, and no fewer than 4,000 prisoners. The total, 4,443, was something over half his force. The fleeing survivors would thereafter be known as “Milroy’s weary boys.” Winchester yielded up 300 loaded wagons and some 300 horses, substantial quartermaster and commissary stores, and 23 pieces of artillery, with 5 more cannon taken by Rodes at Martinsburg. The 17 highly prized 3-inch rifles among the captures quickly replaced outmoded smoothbores in Ewell’s corps artillery. All this had been achieved at the cost of just 269 casualties—47 killed, 219 wounded, 3 missing.28