JACKSON'S PLANS

JACKSON'S PLANS

Early in the afternoon of the Friday above mentioned, May 30th, the general and his staff - of which I was then a member - were on a hill near Halltown, to the right of the turnpike, where one of our batteries was engaged in an artillery duel with some heavy guns of the enemy that were posted on an eminence in the direction of Bolivar Heights. After noting for some time the effects of the firing he dismounted from the old sorrel - his favorite war horse - and seating himself on the ground at the foot of a large tree, immediately in rear of the battery, he presently assumed a more recumbent attitude and went to sleep.

As he laid there on his back with his arms folded over his breast, his feet crossed like those of a crusader's effigy and his head turned aside sufficiently to show his face in profile, I could not resist the temptation to make a sketch of him and was busily engaged with my pencil when, on looking up, I met his eyes fixed full upon me. Extending his hand for the drawing, he said with a smile: “Let me see what you have been doing there,” and on my handing him the sketch he remarked: “My hardest tasks at West Point were the drawing lessons, and I never could do anything in that line to satisfy myself,” “or, indeed,” he added, laughingly, “anybody else.”

“But, colonel,” he continued, after a pause, “I have some harder work than this for you to do, and if you'll sit down here, now, I'll tell you what it is.”

The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1. 

HIS KNOWLEDGE OF McDOWELL

HIS KNOWLEDGE OF McDOWELL

On placing myself by his side, he said: “I want you to go to Richmond for me. I must have reinforcements. You can explain to them down there what the situation is here. Get as many men as can be spared, and I'd like you, if you please, to go as soon as you can.” After expressing to him my readiness to go at once and to do what I could to have his force increased.

I said: “But you must first tell me, general, what is the situation here.” Whereupon he informed me of McDowell's movement, how he was transferring a large portion of his army from Fredericksburg to the Valley, by way of Manassas Gap, to cut him off; how Fremont, with 15,000 men, was marching from the direction of Romney to effect a junction with McDowell; how Banks had some 4,000 or 5,000 at Williamsport ready to recross the river, and how Saxton had 7,000 more at Harper's Ferry, who were being reinforced by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and were prepared to co-operate with the rest of the Federal forces who were closing in around him.

“McDowell and Fremont,” said he, “are probably aiming to effect a junction at Strasburg, so as to head us off from the upper valley, and are both nearer to it now than we are; consequently, no time is to be lost. You can say to them in Richmond that I'll send on the prisoners, secure most, if not all of the captured property, and with God's blessing will be able to baffle the enemy's plans here with my present force, but that it will have to be increased as soon thereafter as possible. You may tell them, too, that if my command can be gotten up to 40,000 men a movement may be made beyond the Potomac, which will soon raise the siege of Richmond and transfer this campaign from the banks of the James to those of the Susquehanna.”

AFTER REINFORCEMENTS

AFTER REINFORCEMENTS

He then told me to go Charlestown, where I would find a railroad train ready at the station, with the engine fired up; to detach all the cars but one; to take that and proceed without delay to Winchester, where his quartermaster, Major Harmon, would furnish me with transportation to Staunton, and that I could leave my horse in charge of the assistant quartermaster at Charlestown, to be sent with the troops that evening. Thus instructed, I stood not on the order of my going, but went at once; and, although I rode rapidly, I had hardly reached the railroad station at Charlestown before Jackson himself came galloping up with his assistant adjutant, the gallant and accomplished “Sandy” Pendleton, who was subsequently killed in battle at Fisher's Hill; the general having suddenly come to the conclusion after I had left him at Halltown to go by rail to Winchester in advance of his army, which, meanwhile, having been ordered back, was making one of those wonderful marches through the mud and rain that had already won for it the sobriquet of “Jackson's foot cavalry.

” As soon as we took our places in the car, putting his arm on the back of the seat before him as a rest for his head, he fell into a sleep which lasted all the way to Winchester with but one interruption - that was near Summit Point, when, seeing a horseman galloping across the fields towards us, whom I made out with my glass to be a Confederate cavalryman, I awakened him that he might order the train to stop, as I supposed the approaching horseman to be a messenger with information. My supposition was correct, for it was a courier with a dispatch, who, as he reined up the side of the car and handed the paper into its window, informed us of the defeat of Colonel Connor, of the Twelfth Georgia, at Front Royal, showing that McDowell's advance was already within twelve miles of Strasburg, while Jackson's was upwards of forty miles north of it, Strasburg being eighteen miles south of Winchester on the line of Jackson's retreat, and the important point towards which both the Federals and Confederates were now converging. The general, having glanced at the dispatch, tore it up, and dropping the fragments on the floor of the car, said to the conductor: “Go on, sir, if you please,” and resumed his slumbers. 

 The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1.

JACKSON'S TODDY

JACKSON'S TODDY

Having lingered to the last allowable moment with the members of my family “hereinbefore mentioned” - as the legal documents would term them - it was after 10 o'clock at night when I returned to headquarters for final instructions, and before going to the general's room I ordered two whiskey toddies to be brought up after me. When they appeared, I offered one of the glasses to Jackson, but he drew back, saying:

“No, no, colonel, you must excuse me; I never drink intoxicating liquors.”

“I know that, general,” said I, “but though you habitually abstain, as I do myself, from everything of the sort, there are occasions, and this one of them, when a stimulant will do us both good, otherwise I would neither take it myself nor offer it to you. So you must make an exception to your general rule and join me in a toddy to-night.”

He again shook his head, but, nevertheless, took the tumbler and began to sip its contents. Presently putting it on the table after having but partly emptied it, he said:
“Colonel, do you know why I habitually abstain from intoxicating drinks?” And, on my replying in the negative, he continued:

“Why, sir, because I like the taste of them, and when I discovered that to be the case I made up my mind at once to do without them altogether.”

HELP ASKED FROM RICHMOND

After this characteristic reason for his temperate habits, he handed me the documents I was to take to Richmond, together with a memorandum of other matters to be attended to there, whereupon, bidding him good-by, I left his room and was soon on the road to Staunton, realizing the discomforts of a midnight ride in the rain, with nothing but the “darkness visible.” When I arrived at Staunton, learning that a portion of the Central Railroad between Cordonsville and Richmond had, a day or two before, been torn up by the enemy and that I would, therefore, be obliged to turn off at Charlottesville for Lynchburg, so as to take the Southside Railroad, which would keep me a day or two longer on the route, I telegraphed to the Confederate Secretary of War as follows:

“Jackson in a critical position. Send him all the help you can spare. Am on my way to explain situation, but the Central Railroad being cut, cannot reach you until day after to-morrow.”

 The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1.

ASHBY'S LAST DAYS

ASHBY'S LAST DAYS

“To the heroic Ashby was now entrusted the responsibility of protecting the Confederate rear,” and he was, as usual, indefatigable in the discharge of his allotted duty. Indeed, his proverbial daring was never more conspicuously displayed than in this campaign, which was destined to be the last of his brief and brilliant career, for poor fellow, he was killed in battle on the following Friday, June 6, and Virginia never lost a purer citizen, a braver soldier or more devoted son. He was a very dear friend of mine, I got him his first gun and last commission, the little English Blakely with which the gallant Chew did such signal service under him, and the brigadiership he received ten days only before his death. Some idea may be formed of his arduous duties from an incidental remark made to me in one of his last letters that in twenty-eight successive days he had had no less than thirty fights. As the incidents of the retreat became each day more numerous and exciting they cannot, of course, be specified in the limited space allowed for this article. Suffice it, therefore, to say that they culminated in those two crowning events by which Jackson effectually disposed of his antagonists in both the valleys - the battles of Cross Keys and Port Republic, in the former of which, fought June 8, Fremont was defeated, and in the battle fought on the following day, June 9, Shields shared the same fate.

EFFECTS OF THE CAMPAIGN

This closed Jackson's Valley campaign of '62, in which according to Major Dabney, his biographer and chief of staff, “within forty days he had marched 400 miles, fought four pitched battles, defeating four separate armies, with numerous combats and skirmishes, sent to the rear 3,500 prisoners, killed and wounded a still larger number of the enemy and defeated or neutralized forces three times as numerous as his own upon his proper theater of war, besides the corps of McDowell, which was rendered inactive at Fredericksburg by fear of his prowess ;” in addition to which he had at the same time thwarted the plans of McClellan at Richmond and made those of Lee there practicable; all of which was done at a loss of not more than 1,500 men and with an army of only as many thousand. So it was no wonder that I found him in fine spirits when, on my return from Richmond, just after the battle of Port Republic, I rejoined him at his bivouac in Brown's Gap, on the Blue Ridge, from which, on the 12th of June, we descended before dawn to the plains of Mount Meridian on the Middle Fork of the Shenandoah, having our headquarters near Wier's Cave.

The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1.

AN AGREEABLE DELAY

AN AGREEABLE DELAY

We reached Winchester at dusk in a heavy rain storm, and, on arriving at the general's headquarters, which were in the Taylor Hotel, he told me that, as he had concluded to forward certain important papers by me to Richmond, which would take two or three hours to prepare, I would not be able to get off as soon as I expected. I was very glad to know this, as more time was thereby given me to spend with my only son, a youth in his teens, who had received two severe wounds in the battle of the previous Sunday and was then lying disabled at the house of a friend in Winchester, where, by the way, on hastening to see him, I had the unexpected happiness to find my wife also, who had managed, with much difficulty, to reach there two days before. The exigencies of the times had prevented our meeting for many months previously, and our brief interview by the bedside of our wounded son was the only we had for more than a year thereafter.

Truly war, under any circumstances and in any shape, is a sad disturber of domestic life. In its best aspects it is a deplorable calamity to any country. But, when it comes in that direct of forms - in the hideous guise of a fratricidal civil war - raging in the region of one's own residence, with its debasing system of social espionage and ex parte criminations, alienating communities and separating friends, filling the hearts of families with anxieties and dread, desolating their fair fields and destroying their happy homes, even over the defenseless heads of women and children, the horrors of that calamity, to say nothing of its sanguinary features, are enhanced a hundredfold, and no people of the South experienced them in greater degree or endured them with more heroic and uncomplaining fortitude than those whose fate it was to live during the late war in the lower Valley of Virginia, within a radius of forty miles around the battle-scarred town of Winchester. Especially may this be said of those “ministering angels,” the mothers and daughters of that historic valley, where the most delicately nurtured and refined ladies of the land were ever found among the foremost in all good works, and never weary in well-doing for the sick and suffering soldiers of both sections throughout the whole of that sad and sanguinary episode of our country's history. 

 The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1.

OPERATIONS IN THE VALLEY

OPERATIONS IN THE VALLEY

 On getting to Richmond by the roundabout way I had to go, it was a great gratification to find that the authorities there immediately upon the receipt of my dispatch, had telegraphed to North Carolina for additional troops and that General Lawton with several thousand men, was already en route to reinforce Jackson in the Valley, his advance passing by rail through Richmond the day after my arrival there. In the meantime Jackson with his little army of 15,000 men, was making good his promise to send forward the prisoners, captured property, etc., and at the same time not only to baffle the converging armies that were seeking to surround him, but also to beat them in detail. The masterly movements by which these results were accomplished have been so fully and faithfully described by others, and especially by Colonel Allan, in his admirable paper on “Jackson's Valley Campaign,” published in the Philadelphia Weekly Times of November 30, 1878, that I shall not attempt to detail them here, contenting myself with a mere outline of their more salient features to preserve the continuity of my narrative.

Leaving Winchester on Saturday morning, May 31, he made a forced march that day with the main body of his troops as far as Strasburg, his line, including prisoners, a large park of artillery and 1,500 wagons, being nearly twelve miles long. At Strasburg he went into camp to rest his men, who, since the previous afternoon, had come fifty miles, and also to wait for Winder, who had been left behind with the Stonewall Brigade to cover the retreat and recall the Second Virginia Regiment, which had been sent to Loudown Heights, and which, by the way, marched that Saturday evening from across Shenandoah to a point beyond Newtown, making more than thirty-five miles without rations, over muddy roads, amidst a succession of showers that drenched its members to the skin. Jackson's position was now directly between that of the two hostile armies which had been sent to “crush or capture” him; Fremont, with a force numerically equal to his own, being but five miles to the west of him, and Shields within twelve to the east, with a full division, supported by McDowell with two other divisions. But though 36,000 men were thus upon his flanks within striking distance of him and two other armies, under Banks and Saxton, were following his rear, he halted for twenty-four hours at Strasburg.

Standing there like a hunted stag at bay defying his pursuers, he presented so bold a front to them that Fremont paused in his advance near Wardensville, and Shields came no further than Front Royal; though the former had telegraphed to Washington that he would certainly occupy Strasburg by Saturday, 31st, and the latter had boasted that, with the division sent forward under him by McDowell, to seize the same strategic point, he would be able to “clean out the Valley.” Both were puzzled by the celerity of Jackson' movements, and, apparently, deterred by his audacity. While there had been nothing in the previous career of either Shields or Fremont to justify the suspicion that they were deficient in gallantry and dash they certainly, on this occasion, seemed to be like the cat in the adage, “letting I would wait on I dare not,” for they remained at a convenient distance from Strasburg all the while that Jackson was resting his troops there and securing a safe passage for his prisoners and trains.

A MASTERLY RETREAT

On Sunday morning, June 1, in order to observe the movements of Fremont, a small force was sent out toward Wardensville, which was attacked by the Federal advance. But General Ewell going to the support of the Confederates with his division, drove the enemy back into the mountain gorge from which he had emerged, and Jackson that evening, with his forces refreshed and his rear guard closed up, slowly resumed his retreat, which seemed more like a triumphal march in the bearing of his men, as well as in the superabundant amount of his “spoila optima belli.” During that night the Federal cavalry attacked the Confederate rear guard, throwing it into some confusion, but were soon repulsed with the loss of several prisoners, from whom it was ascertained that Shields, instead of attempting to unite with Fremont, had wasted two days at Front Royal, marching and countermarching on different roads, and finally was marching southward toward Luray in the Page Valley, which is parallel with the main Valley of Virginia, up which Jackson was retiring. Penetrating his purpose to cross the Massanutton Mountain, which separates the two valleys, so as to intercept him at New Market, Jackson had the White House and Columbia bridges over the Shenandoah, in the Page Valley, destroyed, which, as the river was swollen by recent rains, effectually prevented Shields, who had no pontoon train, from coming over to the western side of it, and, consequently, from crossing the mountains to co-operate with Fremont.