Gettysburg Read online

  The case of the fourth brigade was a curious one. In the last three battles its commander, John R. Jones, had avoided combat in suspect fashion. The brigade was demoralized, and he was quietly but firmly removed … and replaced by another John Jones. John M. Jones, a West Pointer, had served thus far only in staff positions, presumably because of a drinking problem; he had been known since his Academy days as “Rum” Jones. Apparently he had gained the edge on his problem, for in proposing him for the brigade assignment Lee told President Davis that should Jones “fail in his duty he will instantly resign.” John M. Jones had much to prove, to the army and to himself.14

  A. P. Hill was a familiar figure to a large part of the new Third Corps, for at its heart was the Light Division he had first commanded on the Peninsula. Four of the Light Division brigades were designated a division and put in the charge of Dorsey Pender. Hill wrote enthusiastically that Pender “has the best drilled and disciplined Brigade in the Division, and more than all, possesses the unbounded confidence of the Division.” Pender’s old brigade went to Alfred Scales, a one-time member of the U.S. House of Representatives who in 1861 enlisted as a private and had risen through the brigade ranks. The proud South Carolina brigade was now under Colonel Abner Perrin, in place of the wounded Samuel McGowan. As an example of the army’s shrinking leadership pool, it was at Chancellorsville that Perrin first led even a regiment in battle. Pender’s other two brigades, however, had experienced and able generals in James H. Lane and Edward L. Thomas.15

  Harry Heth’s new infantry division, the army’s ninth, had only one tested brigade leader—the combative James Jay Archer, who brought his Alabamians and Tennesseans over from the Light Division. The other Light Division brigade, formerly Heth’s, was now under plodding, uninspiring Colonel John Brockenbrough. Filling out the new division were the two untested brigades from North Carolina, under Johnston Pettigrew and Joe Davis, the president’s nephew.

  Richard H. Anderson, brought over from Longstreet’s corps, led the third of Powell Hill’s divisions. Dick Anderson was a thorough and much-respected professional. He had managed efficiently at Chancellorsville without Longstreet’s presence, and was well regarded by General Lee. Four of his five brigades were led by competent but very different officers. The calmly efficient Cadmus Wilcox was resentful at being passed over for higher command (and rightly so), but it did not mark his generalship. Another solid veteran, Ambrose Ransom “Rans” Wright, lacked for color as well except when it came to writing his highly dramatized reports. William Mahone’s feistiness and belligerency seemed designed to compensate for his diminutive figure. When news that he had taken a flesh wound at Second Manassas reached his wife, she knew it had to be serious, she said, “for William has no flesh whatever.” Handsome Carnot Posey, invariably known as the “dashing Mississippian,” had his first chance at brigade-leading at Chancellorsville and did well, winning the respect of his hard-to-please Mississippians. Anderson’s fifth brigade, three small Florida regiments that totaled fewer than 800 men, was under the temporary leadership of Colonel David Lang, making his command debut.16

  Unlike the Federals, the Confederate artillerists undertook no wholesale changes after Chancellorsville. Only a limited reshuffling was required in Lee’s reorganization. One artillery battalion was assigned to each of the nine divisions, and the army’s artillery reserve was broken up, replaced by a two-battalion reserve for each corps. To fit this pattern required the formation of just one additional battalion. The major personnel change was a new title for the army’s senior artillerist, the bumbling William Nelson Pendleton. Rather than head the (now nonexistent) artillery reserve, Pendleton was given the more or less advisory title General in Chief of Artillery. His impatient subordinates hoped that would sever him from any combat role. Yet one much-needed reform remained out of reach. Throughout the Pennsylvania campaign some of the most skilled artillerists of the Civil War would find themselves loading often inferior guns with frequently shoddy ammunition.17

  “I hardly think it necessary to state to your Excellency,” General Lee wrote President Davis just after Chancellorsville, “that unless we can increase the Cavalry attached to this army we shall constantly be subjected to aggressive expeditions of the enemy similar to those experienced in the last ten days.” His reference was to the Yankee cavalry raiders who had penetrated to the very outskirts of Richmond. The alarm was vastly greater than the damage, but changes followed swiftly. For the Pennsylvania campaign Lee would have double the cavalry force previously attached to his army.

  Allen C. Redwood, a staff officer in the 55th Virginia infantry, titled this drawing Confederate Types. (Century Collection)

  At Chancellorsville J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry division had operated with but two brigades—those of Fitzhugh Lee, the commanding general’s nephew, and W.H.F. “Rooney” Lee, the commanding general’s son. The third brigade, under Wade Hampton, had like Hood’s and Pickett’s infantry been stationed south due to the food and forage shortages on the Rappahannock. Hampton was now back with the army, and in Hampton and the two Lees Jeb Stuart had three expert generals of cavalry. The commanding general then began to scour all the nearby commands to raise more troopers, with results that appeared somewhat problematical.

  He was able to obtain from D. H. Hill, without the slightest protest, a small brigade under Beverly Robertson; Hill had characterized Robertson’s command as “wonderfully inefficient.” From southwestern Virginia came Albert Jenkins’s brigade, very rough and unschooled by Stuart’s standards. Jenkins was a Virginia planter-lawyer-politician who had rushed to the colors in 1861 and who was picking up his military education on the job. William E. Jones brought 1,700 troopers from the Shenandoah Valley. “Grumble” Jones was famously sour of disposition but trained at West Point, and therefore was of value in managing a brigade. He and Jeb Stuart struck sparks, however, not a promising sign. Lastly, there was the large brigade under John D. Imboden, from western Virginia. Imboden was a lawyer-politician who started his service in 1861 by organizing the Virginia Partisan Rangers, and his brigade retained much of that partisan flavor. Its forte was freewheeling detached service. These additions would give Stuart 12,400 troopers, fully half of whom would require very careful handling in order to realize whatever worth they might have.18

  By the time he was prepared to cross the Potomac, General Lee could count under his command some 80,000 men of all arms—67,600 infantry and artillery and 12,400 cavalry. It would be the largest army he had commanded since the opening of the Seven Days’ Battles in June 1862; then his total force came to 92,400. On the Peninsula Lee had been within 13,500 men of achieving parity with the enemy. Marching into Pennsylvania a year later, he would fall short of parity by some 32,700 men.19

  Questions were bound to be raised among thoughtful observers about the leadership in this new-formed Army of Northern Virginia. Chief among them, of course, involved the ultimate effects of Stonewall Jackson’s death. How much of the leadership vacuum would be taken up by Dick Ewell and Powell Hill? How would Longstreet handle his new position as Lee’s senior lieutenant? Could the army’s new patchwork ninth division be shaped into an effective fighting force while on the march? Could the new additions to the cavalry be managed?

  There were, to be sure, several brigades under uncertain leadership, yet some of these were just as uncertain before Chancellorsville as after. And without a doubt there were gains. Allegheny Johnson was manifestly an improvement on Raleigh Colston, for example, and the army was better off without John R. Jones and Alfred Colquitt. On balance, at the divisional and brigade levels the army was about as strong in leadership as before. Any challenges in the coming campaign would more probably be felt at the corps level.

  ALL THROUGH MAY and into June the news reaching Richmond from Mississippi grew progressively worse. It was reported that General Pemberton finally had marched out of Vicksburg to challenge Grant’s army in the field, only to be beaten badly twice. Pemberton’s troops fled back into
the Vicksburg lines with the Yankees hard on their heels. Grant soon ringed the city, reestablished his communications, and opened siege operations. Joe Johnston with his relief force watched from afar and called for more reinforcements. At first President Davis was optimistic, writing Lee that “Pemberton is stoutly defending the entrenchments at Vicksburg, and Johnston has an army out side, which I suppose will be able to raise the siege.” A few days later, however, his optimism had faded. “Genl. Johnston did not, as you thought advisable, attack Grant promptly,” he told Lee, “and I fear the result….“As early as June 15 Johnston would end the suspense. “I consider saving Vicksburg hopeless,” he telegraphed Richmond.20

  Lee was meanwhile hastening his preparations for the march. While he saw no possibility of saving Vicksburg by his own operations, there was the strong possibility of countering or neutralizing the evil effects of its loss. He explained the case to Secretary Seddon: “As far as I can judge there is nothing to be gained by this army remaining quietly on the defensive….” He spoke of the risk of “taking the aggressive” against the large Federal army entrenched on the other side of the Rappahannock. “Unless it can be drawn out in a position to be assailed,” Lee said, it would in its own time renew the offensive and likely push the Army of Northern Virginia back into the Richmond defenses. “This may be the result in any event, still I think it is worth a trial to prevent such a catastrophe.” He put the matter in a nutshell: “There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.”

  General Lee set June 3 as the starting date for the Pennsylvania campaign. “I recall the morning vividly,” wrote First Corps artillerist Porter Alexander. “A beautiful bright June day, & about 11 A.M. a courier from Longstreet’s headqrs. brought the order. Although it was only to march to Culpeper C. H. we knew that it meant another great battle with the enemy’s army….“21

  4. Armies on the March

  FOR THE PAST ten days, as May turned to June, rumors had been flying through the Army of Northern Virginia about where the army was bound. Since it was considered highly unlikely that General Lee would retreat or withdraw after a victory, the consensus opinion was an advance north. Not a few speculated that Pennsylvania was the target. “I am no convert to the invasion theory with an army no larger than ours,” Captain Charles M. Blackford of Longstreet’s staff wrote his father, “but still I have so much confidence in Gen. Lee that I am satisfied with his plans be they what they may.” Blackford’s was a view widely echoed. As Porter Alexander remembered those June days, “nothing gave me much concern so long as I knew that Gen. Lee was in command. I am sure there can never have been an army with more supreme confidence in its commander than that army had in Gen. Lee. We looked forward to victory under him as confidently as to successive sunrises.“1

  One of the fine arts of the military craft is disengaging one’s army from a guarding army without striking sparks and igniting a battle. Initially, Lee’s task was made easier by the fact that the Rappahannock firmly separated the two forces, and by the Wilderness region west of Fredericksburg that concealed his opening moves. Lafayette McLaws’s division of Longstreet’s corps was first to move, from its position behind Fredericksburg. In the event, McLaws’s troops setting the pace on the bright morning of Wednesday, June 3, 1863, formally marked the start of the Pennsylvania campaign. Precisely one month later the campaign would reach its climax.

  Lee set the assembly point for his march of invasion at Culpeper, some 30 miles northwest of Fredericksburg. Culpeper, a court house village on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, was a dozen miles south of the Rappahannock and, most notably, well beyond the right flank of Joe Hooker’s army. On the afternoon of June 3, John B. Hood’s division, also from Longstreet’s First Corps, was ordered to Culpeper from its posting to the south on the Rapidan. For the moment, Longstreet’s third division, under George Pickett, remained well to the south at Hanover Junction, as a guardian for Richmond.

  Over the next two days, Dick Ewell’s three divisions joined the march to Culpeper. Lee’s design now became clear: to shift two-thirds of his army to the northwest and past Hooker’s flank, while A. P. Hill’s Third Corps remained entrenched at Fredericksburg to observe Hooker and perhaps fix him in place long enough for the rest of the army to gain several marches on the Federals. Mr. Davis expressed his worry that Lee “could not get away” from the Rappahannock without being attacked, but Lee seemed confident he could do just that and then move swiftly north to threaten Washington. That, he thought, should engage the Federals’ full attention and distract them from any thought of making a dash at Richmond. Once he was in a position to menace the enemy’s capital, Lee said, “there was no need of further fears about their moving on Richmond.“2

  Joe Hooker’s intelligence sources were vigilant, and hints of Confederate activity across the river soon reached Army of the Potomac headquarters. As early as June 4 Colonel George Sharpe of the Bureau of Military Information was reporting, “There is a considerable movement of the enemy. Their camps are disappearing at some points.” Hooker reacted quickly. He had a pair of pontoon bridges thrown across the Rappahannock just downstream from Fredericksburg, and ordered a division of Sedgwick’s Sixth Corps across as a reconnaissance in force “to learn, if possible, what the enemy are about.” After skirmishing for a time with A. P. Hill’s troops, Sedgwick reported that he could not advance 200 yards without bringing on a battle. The enemy was strongly posted, he said, and “I am satisfied that it is not safe to mass the troops on this side.” General Lee, as a precaution, had halted the march of Ewell’s corps, but when the Federal interlopers showed no signs of aggression, he sent Ewell on his way.3

  For several days, too, intelligence had been accumulating of Jeb Stuart’s cavalry massing around Culpeper in preparation, so the stories went, for a major raid of some sort. The raid rumor was actually planted by the Rebels to distract from their infantry movements, but in any event it suited Hooker perfectly as offering an opportunity for a fight.

  Ever since taking command of the Potomac army in January, Joe Hooker had sought to inject some backbone into the cavalry. In March he had ordered the troopers under General Stoneman to “attack and rout or destroy” Fitz Lee’s cavalry brigade in the vicinity of Kelly’s Ford on the Rappahannock. Although Stoneman failed to press his battle to a conclusion, his men at least had demonstrated their mettle as fighters, and morale went up. Hooker now determined to repeat the experiment. If Stuart intended making mischief with one of his raids, he told the president, it was his “great desire to ‘bust it up’ before it got fairly under way.” He would send all the cavalry against Stuart, stiffened by about 3,000 infantry. 4

  Union artillery shells Rebel positions across the Rappahannock on June 5 as the Sixth Corps prepares to cross the river to make a reconnaissance in force. Drawing by Alfred Waud. (Library of Congress)

  Hooker meanwhile was trying to divine Lee’s intentions. He telegraphed Lincoln on June 5 that Confederate infantry appeared ready to move up the Rappahannock “with a view to the execution of a movement similar to that of Lee’s last year”—that is, to cross the upper Potomac into Maryland, as Lee had done in September 1862—or “to throw his army between mine and Washington….” If Lee did indeed intend to move north, he was known to be holding back a substantial force south of the Rappahannock around Fredericksburg. “After giving the subject my best reflection,” said Hooker, “I am of opinion that it is my duty to pitch into his rear.” Whatever else this might achieve, Hooker was confident that it would check the enemy’s offensive plans.

  Lincoln replied that he was turning Hooker’s telegram over to General Halleck for a proper professional military response, but then he went on to offer his own view of the case—an astute view, couched in one of his vivid frontiersman’s metaphors. Should Lee move north, leaving behind a force at Fredericksburg, “tempting you to fall upon it,” he warned his general not to take the bait. “In one w
ord, I would not take any risk of being entangled upon 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 gore one way or kick the other. If Lee would come to my side of the river, I would keep on the same side & fight him….”

  General Halleck expressed the same opinion, if less colorfully. If Lee was in fact marching toward the northwest, Hooker ought to be on his flank and in position to cut him in two. “Would it not be more advantageous to fight his movable column first, instead of first attacking his intrenchments, with your own forces separated by the Rappahannock?” asked the general-in-chief. He also warned of Washington’s vulnerability to the enemy’s main force should the Army of the Potomac lag too far behind. Hooker subsided, contenting himself with his reconnaissance in force at Fredericksburg and with pressing his attack against Stuart’s cavalry at Culpeper.5

  ALL THIS TIME Jeb Stuart was preening himself in pleased expectation of leading the largest cavalry force the Confederacy had ever assembled. By the May 31 returns, Stuart at the moment had under his command five brigades of cavalry and six batteries of horse artillery, 10,292 officers and men all told. He scheduled a grand review of his mounted legions for June 5. Guests, most of them female, were invited from Culpeper and surrounding counties. Special trains carrying the visitors pulled into Brandy Station on the Orange & Alexandria, close by Stuart’s headquarters, and on the evening of June 4 there was a grand ball in celebration of the grand review. According to a newspaper account, that evening Culpeper’s court house was a “gay and dazzling scene, illuminated by floods of light from numerous chandeliers,” and the gallant cavaliers and their ladies partook of “revelry by night.”

  The grand review on June 5 was surely the proudest day of Jeb Stuart’s thirty years. As he led a cavalcade of resplendent staff officers to the reviewing stand, trumpeters heralded his coming and women and girls strewed his path with flowers. Before the awed spectators the assembled cavalry brigades stretched a mile and a half. After Stuart and his entourage galloped past the line in review, the troopers in their turn saluted the reviewing stand in columns of squadrons. In performing a second “march past,” the squadrons started off at a trot, then spurred to a gallop. Drawing sabers and breaking into the Rebel yell, the troopers rushed toward the horse artillery drawn up in battery. The gunners responded defiantly, firing blank charges. Amidst this tumult of cannon fire and thundering hooves, a number of ladies swooned into their escorts’ arms. In the evening there was an outdoor ball, lit by soft moonlight and bright bonfires. “It was a brilliant day,” wrote Major Henry B. McClellan of the cavalry staff, “and the thirst for the ‘pomp and circumstance’ of war was fully satisfied.”