Gettysburg Page 13
“YOU MAY DEPEND upon it,” General Hooker told Mr. Lincoln on June 16, “we can never discover the whereabouts of the enemy, or divine his intentions, so long as he fills the country with a cloud of cavalry. We must break through that to find him.” This reflected ill upon Alfred Pleasonton and the cavalry. Thus far the Yankee troopers had learned little beyond rumor of the enemy’s whereabouts, and Pleasonton’s contribution to the intelligence picture consisted largely of wild guesses. General-in-Chief Halleck rendered a tart verdict: “The information sent here by General Pleasonton is very unsatisfactory.” Brusque orders went out to cavalry headquarters. General Hooker, Pleasonton was told, “relies upon you with your cavalry force to give him information of where the enemy is, his force, and his movements…. Drive in pickets, if necessary, and get us information. It is better that we should lose men than to be without knowledge of the enemy, as we now seem to be.“12
Pleasonton was quick enough to act on these orders, but he continued befuddled about the task of intelligence-gathering. He simply set out, on June 17, to pick a fight with the first Rebel cavalry he found in the Loudoun Valley. Near the village of Aldie, in Aldie’s Gap in the Bull Run Mountains, the Federals got all the fight they could handle.
From Aldie two turnpikes ran westward across the Loudoun Valley to Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps in the Blue Ridge, necessary vantage points for any Federal efforts to locate Lee’s army. To prevent that, Jeb Stuart had Fitz Lee’s brigade—just then commanded by Colonel Thomas Munford—guarding the two highways just west of Aldie. With his characteristic brashness, Judson Kilpatrick sent the four regiments of his brigade charging headlong against the Rebel blocking forces. But Kill-Cavalry launched his attacks piecemeal, just as he had at Brandy Station, and with similar results. There was some very sharp cavalry fighting done that afternoon, but at the end of the day Munford still controlled the two important roads.
The ordeal of the 1st Massachusetts troopers exemplified Kilpatrick’s management of the Aldie battle. The regiment was fed into the action one squadron after another, and each ran a gauntlet of saber-swinging Rebel horsemen and a line of sharpshooters sheltered behind a stone wall. “My poor men were just slaughtered and all we could do was to stand still and be shot down,” wrote Captain Charles Francis Adams, Jr., grandson and great-grandson of presidents. “The men fell right and left, and the horses were shot through and through…. I was ordered to dismount my men to fight on foot … and in a second the rebs were riding yelling and slashing among us.” The 1st Massachusetts lost 77 dead and wounded—the greatest battle toll of any Union cavalry regiment during the Pennsylvania campaign—and another 90 men captured. By day’s end the Federals had lost 305 men at Aldie, against the Confederates’ 119. In his report Colonel Munford remarked, “I do not hesitate to say that I have never seen as many Yankees killed in the same space of ground in any fight….“13
In General Pleasonton’s sole effort at reconnaissance that day, the 1st Rhode Island passed through Thoroughfare Gap, a dozen miles south of Aldie Gap, and ranged northward through the Loudoun Valley. Colonel Alfred Duffié, demoted to regimental command after Brandy Station, led the Rhode Islanders to Middleburg, west of Aldie, and nearly swept up Jeb Stuart and his headquarters. As Stuart’s adjutant phrased it, general and staff “were compelled to make a retreat more rapid than was consistent with dignity and comfort.” That was the high point of Duffié‘s expedition, however. That night he barricaded himself in Middleburg and called on Pleasonton for help, but his plea was ignored. By the next day his regiment had been systematically cut up and captured nearly en masse; just 61 of the 275 Rhode Island troopers made it back to Union lines.
General Lee had dispatched Longstreet’s First Corps into the Loudoun Valley in part to confuse the Yankees about Confederate intentions. It turned out to be a wasted ruse. On June 18, with Longstreet’s foot soldiers spread all along the eastern base of the Blue Ridge, General Pleasonton informed headquarters, “From all the information I can gather, there is no force of consequence of the enemy’s infantry this side of the Blue Ridge.” Chief of Staff Dan Butterfield fired back, “The general says your orders are to find out where the enemy is, if you have to lose men to do it.” 14
On the 18th Pleasonton sent several parties probing toward the Blue Ridge, but none could get past the screening Rebel cavalry. Stuart was in the comfortable position of knowing exactly what the Federals were about. John Singleton Mosby, the partisan leader who held sway throughout this part of Virginia—widely known as “Mosby’s Confederacy”—had captured a pair of Union officers carrying dispatches for Pleasonton. From these it was clear the Federals were largely in the dark about Lee’s movements. “The advance of the infantry,” one dispatch read, “is suspended until further information of the enemy’s movements.” To preserve this advantage, Stuart determined to keep his cavalry screen in the Loudoun Valley intact by using defensive tactics.
The next day, June 19, Pleasonton adopted another straight-ahead drive on the Aldie pattern, this time against Middleburg, five miles to the west on the road leading to Ashby’s Gap in the Blue Ridge. The affair at Middleburg proved a virtual repeat of the standoff at Aldie. Stuart took position on a low ridge west of the town and fended off charge after charge. At one point a squadron of the 10th New York, under Major John Kemper, rode into an ambush in a narrow defile in the woods, with dismounted Rebel troopers behind a stone wall firing point-blank into the New Yorkers as they charged past. The survivors ran up against Stuart’s reserves, turned back, and to escape had to run the gauntlet a second time. Eighty men began the charge; five returned. “Don’t go into those woods,” a shaken Major Kemper told a fellow squadron leader. “It is a slaughter pen.”
As the Federal pressure continued, Stuart broke off the action and pulled back to the next ridgeline. The two sides rested and licked their wounds. The next day Pleasonton reported to headquarters, “We cannot force the gaps of the Blue Ridge in the presence of a superior force.“15
On June 21, a Sunday, Pleasonton launched his most ambitious effort yet to crack Stuart’s cavalry screen. The scene of this latest attempt was Upperville, a village only some four miles from Ashby’s Gap in the Blue Ridge. Thus far in these Loudoun Valley cavalry fights Stuart had made effective use of defensive skirmish lines of dismounted troopers, most of them sharpshooters, posted behind stone walls and other obstructions and supported by batteries from his horse artillery. He massed his mounted units behind these deadly barricades, poised to counterattack. At Upperville General Pleasonton countered with a new tactic of his own— clearing away these defensive thickets not with cavalry but with infantry.
Alfred Waud sketched dismounted 1st Maine troopers skirmishing with Rebel cavalry in the Loudoun Valley on June 19. (Library of Congress)
Pleasonton borrowed from Hooker an entire Fifth Corps infantry division, although that day the cavalryman would use just a single brigade, under Colonel Strong Vincent. On Sunday morning the Yankee infantrymen—20th Maine, 16th Michigan, 44th New York, 83rd Pennsylvania— led the way in dislodging the Rebel troopers from their defensive skirmish lines. Lieutenant William Fuller’s Battery C, 3rd United States, took on Captain James Hart’s defending South Carolina battery and bested it, blowing up a limber chest and so damaging one of Hart’s English Blakely rifles that it had to be abandoned. Stuart would make sad note that this was the first piece his horse artillery had ever lost to the enemy.
With the first line of defense breached, David Gregg’s Yankee cavalry now engaged Wade Hampton’s troopers. There were swirls of close-in clashes, fought desperately with carbines, pistols, and sabers amidst great clouds of dust. A fierce counterattack against Kilpatrick’s brigade led personally by Hampton, “seemingly angered, looking a veritable god of war,” emptied dozens of saddles. The Confederates parried successive blows and fell back to take up new defensive positions. A Fifth Corps infantry captain watching from high ground wrote that “the sight was magnificent—the sabres flashed
in the sun light as the men mingled together and fought in a writhing mass, cutting and slashing each other. Riderless horses ran to and fro over the fields, many of them covered with the blood of their late riders.”
As originally planned, John Buford’s division was meanwhile supposed to turn the Confederates’ northern flank, but that flank was not where it was said to be, and instead Buford joined in the general combat around Upperville. The Federals’ General Gregg had his horse shot out from under him, and for a time Kill-Cavalry himself was surrounded and nearly captured. A charge by the 6th U.S. regulars, under a leader green and inexperienced, started off at the gallop far too soon and bogged down in exhaustion and had to turn back, to the hoots of friend and foe alike. As the light faded, Federal troopers approached Ashby’s Gap, only to find it securely held by the enemy. Pleasonton pulled his cavalry corps back to Aldie for rest and refitting. “The road we charged was literally covered with blood,” a man in the 1st Maine wrote, “and to see the dead piled up was perfectly horrid.“16
The intense cavalry fighting in the Loudoun Valley had indeed been costly. All told, over a five-day span, the Federals lost 883 men and the Confederates 510, reflecting the aggressive moves of Pleasonton and the defensive tactics of Stuart. Stuart had denied the Yankees any look at Lee’s main body, but from deserters Pleasonton was finally able to deduce that Longstreet’s corps had been in the Loudoun Valley but now had passed through the Blue Ridge gaps into the Shenandoah. Ewell’s corps had gone toward Winchester the previous week, Pleasonton reported, “and another corps (A. P. Hill’s, I think) is to move with Longstreet into Maryland. Such is the information given by the negroes here.” This intelligence might be somewhat speculative, but at least it appeared logical. It made sense that General Lee would conceal his whole army in the Shenandoah. What was still not at all clear, however, was whether the Confederates would continue on northward into Maryland and Pennsylvania or suddenly turn eastward toward Washington or Baltimore. Until Joe Hooker could get an answer to that question, he must hold his army below the Potomac to protect the capital.17
DURING THESE HOT June days that saw Jeb Stuart fend off the Yankees, General Lee carefully maneuvered his forces behind the cavalry screen, building up for the thrust into Pennsylvania. By June 19 Dick Ewell’s three divisions were marking time on or just across the Potomac—Early at Shepherdstown on the river, Rodes at Hagerstown and Allegheny Johnson at Sharpsburg, in Maryland. Longstreet’s corps crossed
In an unfinished drawing by newspaper artist Edwin Forbes, Yankee cavalry, right, charges Stuart’s command near Upperville on June 21. Ashby’s Gap is in the left distance. (Library of Congress)
the Blue Ridge into the Shenandoah by way of Ashby’s and Snicker’s gaps, sealing off both passes in support of Stuart. Powell Hill’s Third Corps meanwhile pushed down the Valley to fall in behind Ewell. Lee opened headquarters at Berryville in the Valley to supervise. “The General seemed yesterday in fine spirits…,” General Dorsey Pender wrote of Lee on the 23rd. “It is stated on all sides that Hooker has a small army and that very much demoralized. The General says he wants to meet him as soon as possible and crush him and then if Vicksburg and Port Hudson do their part, our prospects for peace are very fine.”
Matters had advanced well enough by June 22, the day after the cavalry fight at Upperville, that Lee started the Second Corps into Pennsylvania. Ewell’s primary function would be to collect supplies for the army, and while he did so Lee intended to occupy Hooker’s attention—“should we be able to detain General Hooker’s army from following you,” he explained to Ewell, “you would be able to accomplish as much, unmolested, as the whole army could perform with General Hooker in its front.” Ewell was to advance his three divisions fan-wise toward the Susquehanna. They would cross the Pennsylvania line, marching in parallel columns, and enter the Cumberland Valley, the extension of the Shenandoah Valley. Throughout they would be shielded on the east by South Mountain, the extension of Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Rodes and Johnson would continue north by east through Greencastle and Chambersburg and Carlisle toward Harrisburg, the state capital. “If Harrisburg comes within your means,” Ewell was told, “capture it.” Early’s division would be assigned to turn off through South Mountain in a more easterly direction to Gettysburg and on to York.18
It was thought that for this scheme to work required Stuart’s cavalry guarding and screening the eastern flank of Ewell’s columns at every turn. Lee and Stuart puzzled out the best way to accomplish that task. The major puzzle was the lack of information on the enemy. Pleasonton’s aggressive tactics had tied Stuart down, preventing him from doing what he did best—gathering intelligence on the Yankee army. Just then the sole intelligence gatherer was the partisan John Mosby. The Potomac army headquarters dispatches Mosby had captured located only two of the seven Federal corps, and only as of June 17. Colonel Mosby crept about in his private Confederacy and on his return suggested to Stuart that the cavalry corps, rather than marching northward alongside the rest of the army, instead swing eastward through or entirely around the Yankees, cross the Potomac to the east of them, and form up on Ewell’s right in Pennsylvania.
Jeb Stuart had gained renown for twice riding around McClellan’s army, once during the Peninsula campaign and again after Sharpsburg, and surely this proposal to ride around Joe Hooker’s army had great appeal for him. For one thing, it ought to create havoc in the Army of the Potomac’s rear areas, cutting its communications with Washington. For another, it ought to confuse the Federals as to Lee’s intentions. And, perhaps not incidentally, it ought to restore the shine to a reputation tarnished by the Brandy Station surprise.
According to Mosby, it would be easy enough to do. “I had located each corps and reported it to Stuart,” Mosby later wrote. “They were so widely separated that it was easy for a column of cavalry to pass between them. No corps was nearer than ten miles to another corps.” Mosby’s confidence was seriously misplaced; he had probably observed the camps of only two or three of the Federal corps, those closest to the Bull Run Mountains. And by the time it could be acted on, Mosby’s freshest intelligence would be some forty-eight hours old.
Stuart met with Lee and Longstreet on June 18 at Paris, a village just east of Ashby’s Gap, to discuss the cavalry’s coming role, and at this meeting he apparently introduced the thought of riding around Hooker as one of the options. On the 22nd Lee sent Stuart his orders, in outline—should the enemy be found to be moving northward, the cavalry was to move into Maryland with intent to form on Ewell’s right. Stuart was to guard Ewell’s column, gather intelligence on the enemy, “and collect all the supplies you can for the use of the army.” This directive was delivered by way of Longstreet, who wrote Lee that he was forwarding it to Stuart “with the suggestion that he pass by the enemy’s rear if he thinks that he may get through.” That Lee knew of and approved of this idea of riding around Hooker’s army was evident in Longstreet’s covering letter to Stuart. The general commanding, Longstreet wrote, “speaks of your leaving, via Hopewell Gap”—a pass in the Bull Run Mountains just south of Aldie Gap—“and passing by the rear of the enemy.”
The next day Lee sent Stuart a second directive, an apparent but rather confusing attempt to clarify the cavalryman’s options. If Hooker’s army “remains inactive,” Stuart was told to leave two brigades to watch the Blue Ridge passes and “withdraw the three others” as planned. But should Hooker “not appear to be moving northward,” Stuart must pull back through the Blue Ridge and accompany the main body of the army down the Valley to the Potomac crossing at Shepherdstown.
Although this June 23 directive has mystified observers ever since that day—what difference was there between remaining inactive and not moving?—it does not seem to have mystified Jeb Stuart. He simply followed the directions in the next paragraph: “You will, however, be able to judge whether you can pass around their army without hinderance, doing them all the damage you can, and cross the river east of the mountains
. In either case, after crossing the river, you must move on and feel the right of Ewell’s troops, collecting information, provisions, &c.”
At 1 o’clock on the morning of Thursday, June 25, at the head of the brigades of Wade Hampton, Fitz Lee, and John Chambliss (commanding in place of the wounded Rooney Lee), Jeb Stuart set off for Pennsylvania. Events over the next eight days would demonstrate that, whatever else occurred, Stuart faithfully carried out General Lee’s orders. He rode around the enemy’s army (although not without hindrance) and confused it and broke its communications, he gathered military intelligence, he collected ample supplies, and he tried his best to “feel the right” of Ewell’s corps. In doing all this he also rode into a torrent of controversy.19
The question going to the heart of Stuart’s “ride around Hooker” is why it was undertaken at all. Longstreet, on June 22, noted that if Stuart’s cavalry should cross the Potomac along with the rest of the army—that is, passing from the Shenandoah Valley into the Cumberland Valley—it would “disclose our plans.” That seems the flimsiest of answers. If the gaps in the Blue Ridge continued to be securely held (as Lee’s orders specified), surely the Yankees would continue to be mystified as to Confederate intentions. In any event, by Lee’s design he needed to have the enemy follow him if he was to shift the seat of war into Northern territory; it was merely a matter of timing. Fast-moving cavalry, starting promptly, could easily catch up with Ewell’s infantry by this direct route through the Valley—half the distance of the more easterly, roundabout route. Should there be the threat of congestion at the Shepherdstown Potomac crossing, a short detour would take the cavalry to Williamsport, one of Ewell’s earlier crossing points.