Military Reminiscences of the Civil War Volume I Part 10

Pope seems to me entirely right in claiming that Jackson's raid to Mana.s.sas was a thing which should have resulted in the destruction of that column. He seems to have kept his head, and to have prepared his combinations skilfully for making Jackson pay the penalty of his audacity. There were a few hours of apparent hesitation on August 28th, but champions of McClellan should be the last to urge that against him. His plans were deranged on that day by the accident of McDowell's absence from his own command. This happened through an excess of zeal on McDowell's part to find his commander and give him the benefit of his knowledge of the topography of the country; yet it proved a serious misfortune, and shows how perilous it is for any officer to be away from his troops, no matter for what reason. Many still think Porter's inaction on the 29th prevented the advantage over Jackson from becoming a victory. [Footnote: I have treated this subject at large in "The Second Battle of Bull Run as connected with the Fitz-John Porter Case."] But after all, when the army was united within our lines, the injuries it had inflicted on the enemy so nearly balanced those it had received that if Grant or Sherman had been in Halleck's place, Lee would never have crossed the Potomac into Maryland. McClellan, Pope, and Burnside would have commanded the centre and wings of the united and reinforced army, and under a competent head it would have marched back to the Rappahannock with scarcely a halt.

That Halleck was in command was, in no small measure, Pope's own work. He reminded Halleck of this in his letter of September 30th, written when he was chafing under the first effects of his removal.

[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. pp. 816, etc.] "If you desire," said he, "to know the personal obligation to which I refer, I commend you to the President, the Secretary of War, or any other member of the administration. Any of these can satisfy your inquiries." This means that he had, before the President and the cabinet, advocated putting Halleck in supreme command over himself and McClellan to give unity to a campaign that would else be hopelessly broken down. McClellan was then at Harrison's Landing, believing Lee's army to be 200,000 strong, and refusing to listen to any suggestion except that enormous reinforcements should be sent to him there. He had taught the Army of the Potomac to believe implicitly that the Confederate army was more than twice as numerous as it was in fact. With this conviction it was natural that they should admire the generalship which had saved them from annihilation. They accepted with equal faith the lessons which came to them from headquarters teaching that the "radicals" at Washington were trying for political ends to destroy their general and them. In regard to the facts there were varying degrees of intelligence among officers and men; but there was a common opinion that they and he were willingly sacrificed, and that Pope, the radical, was to succeed him. This made them hate Pope, for the time, with holy hatred. If the army could at that time have compared authentic tables of strength of Lee's army and their own, the whole theory would have collapsed at once, and McClellan's reputation and popularity with it. They did not have the authentic tables, and fought for a year under the awful cloud created by a blundering spy-system.

The fiction as to Lee's forces is the most remarkable in the history of modern wars. Whether McClellan was the victim or the accomplice of the inventions of his "secret service," we cannot tell. It is almost incredible that he should be deceived, except willingly. I confess to a contempt for all organizations of spies and detectives, which is the result of my military experience. The only spies who long escape are those who work for both sides. They sell to each what it wants, and suit their wares to the demand. Pinkerton's man in the rebel commissariat at Yorktown who reported 119,000 rations issued daily, laughed well in his sleeve as he pocketed the secret service money. [Footnote: For Pinkerton's reports, see Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. pp. 264-272.]

A great deal of valuable information may be got from a hostile population, for few men or women know how to hold their tongues, though they try never so honestly. A friendly population overdoes its information, as a rule. I had an excellent example of this in the Kanawha valley. After I had first advanced to Gauley Bridge, the Secessionists behind me were busy sending to the enemy all they could learn of my force. We intercepted, among others, a letter from an intelligent woman who had tried hard to keep her attention upon the organization of my command as it pa.s.sed her house. In counting my cannon, she had evidently taken the teams as the easiest units to count, and had set down every caisson as a gun, with the battery-forge thrown in for an extra one. In a similar way, every accidental break in the marching column was counted as the head of a new regiment. She thus, in perfect good faith, doubled my force, and taught me that such information to the enemy did them more harm than good.

As to the enemy's organization and numbers, the only information I ever found trustworthy is that got by contact with him. No day should pa.s.s without having some prisoners got by "feeling the lines." These, to secure treatment as regular prisoners of war, must always tell the company and regiment to which they belong. Rightly questioned, they rarely stop there, and it is not difficult to get the brigade, division, etc. The reaction from the dangers with which the imagination had invested capture, to the commonly good-humored hospitality of the captors, makes men garrulous of whom one would not expect it. General Pope's chief quartermaster, of the rank of colonel, was captured by Stuart's cavalry in this very campaign; and since the war I have read with amazement General Lee's letters to President Davis, to the Secretary of War at Richmond, and to General Loring in West Virginia, dated August 23d, in which he says: [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 940-941.]

"General Stuart reports that General Pope's chief quartermaster, who was captured last night, positively a.s.serts that c.o.x's troops are being withdrawn by the way of Wheeling." Of course Lee suggests the importance of "pushing things" in the Kanawha valley. Stuart thus knew my movement on the day I left Parkersburg.

Even when the captured person tells nothing he is bound to conceal, enough is necessarily known to enable a diligent provost-marshal to construct a reasonably complete roster of the enemy in a short time.

In the Atlanta campaign I always carried a memorandum book in which I noted and corrected all the information of this sort which came to me, and by comparing this with others and with the lists at General Sherman's headquarters, there was no difficulty in keeping well up in the enemy's organization. It may therefore be said that every commanding officer ought to know the divisions and brigades of his enemy. The strength of a brigade is fairly estimated from the average of our own, for in people of similar race and education, the models of organization are essentially the same, and subject to the same causes of diminution during a campaign. Such considerations as these leave no escape from the conclusion that McClellan's estimates of Lee's army were absolutely destructive of all chances of success, and made it impossible for the President or for General Halleck to deal with the military problem before them. That he had continued this erroneous counting for more than a year, and through an active campaign in the field, destroyed every hope of correcting it. The reports of the peninsular campaign reveal, at times, the difficulty there was in keeping up the illusion. The known divisions in the Confederate army would not account for the numbers attributed to them, and so these divisions occasionally figure in our reports as "grand divisions." [Footnote: In his dispatch to Halleck on the morning after South Mountain (September 15), D. H. Hill's division is called a corps. Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 294.] That the false estimate was unnecessary is proven by the fact that General Meigs, in Washington, on July 28th, made up an estimate from the regiments, brigades, etc., mentioned in the newspapers that got through the lines, which was reasonably accurate. But McClellan held Meigs for an enemy. [Footnote: General Meigs found ninety regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry, and five batteries of artillery designated by name in the "Confederate" newspaper reports of the seven days' battles. Comparing this with other information from similar sources, he concluded that Lee had about one hundred and fifty regiments. These, at 700 men each, would make 105,000, or at 400 (which he found a full average) the gross of the infantry would be 60,000. General Webb, with official doc.u.ments before him, puts it at 70,000 to 80,000. Does one need better evidence how much worse than useless was McClellan's secret service? See Official Records, vol. xi. pt. iii. p. 340.] When I joined McClellan at Washington, I had no personal knowledge of either army except as I had learned it from the newspapers. My predilections in favor of McClellan made me a.s.sume that his facts were well based, as they ought to have been. I therefore accepted the general judgment of himself and his intimate friends as to his late campaign and Pope's, and believed that his restoration to command was an act of justice to him and of advantage to the country. I did not stay long enough with that army to apply any test of my own to the question of relative numbers, and have had to correct my opinions of the men and the campaigns by knowledge gained long afterward. I however used whatever influence I had to combat the ideas in McClellan's mind that the administration meant to do him any wrong, or had any end but the restoration of National unity in view.

Whether Halleck was appointed on Pope's urgent recommendation or no, his campaign in the West was the ground of his promotion. The advance from the Ohio to Fort Donelson, to Nashville, to Shiloh, and to Corinth had been under his command, and he deservedly had credit for movements which had brought Kentucky and Tennessee within the Union lines. He had gone in person to the front after the battle of Shiloh, and though much just criticism had been made of his slow digging the way to Corinth by a species of siege operations, he had at any rate got there. Mr. Lincoln was willing to compromise upon a slow advance upon Richmond, provided it were sure and steady.

Halleck's age and standing in the army were such that McClellan himself could find no fault with his appointment, if any one were to be put over him.

Everything points to the expectation, at the time of his appointment, that Halleck would a.s.sume the personal command in the field. He visited McClellan at Harrison's Landing on July 25th, however, and promised him that if the armies should be promptly reunited, he (McClellan) should command the whole, with Burnside and Pope as his subordinates. [Footnote: McC. Own Story, p. 474; Official Records, vol. xi. pt. iii. p. 360.] That he did not inform Pope of this abdication of his generalship in the field is plain from Pope's correspondence during the campaign. It is made indisputably clear by Pope's letter to him of the 25th of August.

[Footnote: _Id_., vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 65, 66.] He probably did not tell the President or Mr. Stanton of it. He seems to have waited for the union of the parts of the army, and when that came his prestige was forever gone, and he had become, what he remained to the close of the war, a bureau officer in Washington. He had ordered the transfer of the Potomac Army from the James to Acquia Creek, intending to unite it with Burnside's at Falmouth, opposite Fredericksburg, and thus begin a fresh advance from the line of the Rappahannock. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. ii. p. 5; vol. xi. pt. i. pp. 80-84; _Id_., pt. iii. p. 337.] He believed, and apparently with reason, that ten days was sufficient to complete this transfer with the means at McClellan's disposal, but at the end of ten days the movement had not yet begun. [Footnote: The order was given August 3; the movement began August 14. _Id_., pt. i. pp. 80, 89.] He was right in thinking that the whole army should be united.

McClellan thought the same. The question was where and how.

McClellan said, "Send Pope's men to me." Halleck replied that it would not do to thus uncover Washington. McClellan had said that vigorous advance upon the enemy by his army and a victory would best protect the capital. [Footnote: _Id_., vol. xii. pt. ii. pp. 9, 10.]

Again he was right, but he seemed incapable of a vigorous advance.

Had he made it when he knew (on July 30) that Jackson had gone northward with thirty thousand men to resist Pope's advance, his army would not have been withdrawn. [Footnote: _Id_., vol. xi. pt.

iii. p. 342.] He was then nearly twice as strong as Lee, but he did not venture even upon a forced reconnoissance. The situation of the previous year was repeated. He was allowing himself to be besieged by a fraction of his own force. Grant would have put himself into the relation to McClellan which he sustained to Meade in 1864, and would have infused his own energy into the army. Halleck did not do this. It would seem that he had become conscious of his own lack of nerve in the actual presence of an enemy, and looked back upon his work at St. Louis in administering his department, whilst Grant and Buell took the field, with more satisfaction than upon his own advance from Shiloh to Corinth. He seemed already determined to manage the armies from his office in Washington and a.s.sume no responsibility for their actual leadership.

When the Army of the Potomac was arriving at Alexandria, another crisis occurred in which a single responsible head in the field was a necessity. McClellan had been giving a continuous demonstration, since August 4th, how easy it is to thwart and hinder any movement whilst professing to be accomplishing everything that is possible.

No maxim in war is better founded in experience than that a man who believes that a plan is sure to fail should never be set to conduct it. McClellan had written that Pope would be beaten before the Army of the Potomac could be transferred to him, and Pope was beaten.

[Footnote: Halleck to McClellan, August 10 and 12, and McClellan's reply: Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. pp. 86-88. See also O. S., p. 466.] The only chance for any other result was for Halleck himself to conduct the transfer. If Halleck meant that Franklin should have pushed out to Mana.s.sas on the 27th of August, he should have taken the field and gone with the corps. He did not know and could not know how good or bad McClellan's excuses were, and nothing but his own presence, with supreme power, could certainly remove the causes for delay. He wrote to Pope that he could not leave Washington, when he ought not to have been in Washington. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xii. pt. iii. p. 797.] He worked and worried himself ill trying to make McClellan do what he should have done himself, and then, overwhelmed with details he should never have burdened himself with, besought his subordinate to relieve him of the strain by practically taking command. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 691; vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103.]

As soon as McClellan began the movement down the James, Lee took Longstreet's corps to Jackson, leaving only D. H. Hill's at Richmond. [Footnote: _Id_., pt. ii. pp. 177, 552.] From that moment McClellan could have marched anywhere. He could have marched to Fredericksburg and joined Pope, and Halleck could have met them with Burnside's troops. But the vast imaginary army of the Confederacy paralyzed everything, and the ponderous task of moving the Army of the Potomac and its enormous material by water to Washington went on. The lifeless and deliberate way in which it went on made it the 1st of September when Sumner and Franklin reached Centreville, and the second battle of Bull Run had ended in defeat on the evening before.

But the army was at last reunited, within the fortifications of Washington, it is true, and not on the James or on the line of the Rappahannock. There was another opportunity given to Halleck to put himself at its head, with McClellan, Pope, and Burnside for his three lieutenants. Again he was unequal to his responsibility. Mr.

Lincoln saw his feebleness, and does not seem to have urged him.

Halleck was definitely judged in the President's mind, though the latter seems to have clung to the idea that he might be useful by allowing him to a.s.sume the role he chose, and confine himself to mere suggestions and to purely routine work. Pope's unpopularity with the army was adopted by popular clamor, which always finds a defeated general in the wrong. The President, in real perplexity, compromised by a.s.signing McClellan to command for the purpose of organizing, a work in which he was admitted by all to be able. The command in the field was a second time offered to Burnside, who declined it, warmly advocating McClellan's claims and proving his most efficient friend. [Footnote: C. W., vol. i. p. 650.] Within three days from the time I had ridden with McClellan to meet the retreating army, the enemy had crossed the Potomac, and decision could not be postponed. The President met McClellan, and told him in person that he was a.s.signed to command in the field. [Footnote: _Id_., p. 453; Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103.]

On the 5th of September Halleck had sent to McClellan a confidential note, telling of the President's action relieving Pope, and antic.i.p.ating the issue of formal orders: [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 182.] "The President has directed that General Pope be relieved and report to the War Department; that Hooker be a.s.signed to command of Porter's corps, and that Franklin's corps be temporarily attached to Heintzelman's. The orders will be issued this afternoon. Generals Porter and Franklin are to be relieved from duty till the charges against them are examined. I give you this memorandum in advance of orders, so that you may act accordingly in putting forces in the field." Later in the same day Halleck sent to McClellan the opinion that the enemy was without doubt crossing the Potomac, and said, "If you agree with me, let our troops move immediately." The formal order to Pope was: "The armies of the Potomac and Virginia being consolidated, you will report for orders to the Secretary of War." [Footnote: _Id_., p. 183.] Pope had caused charges to be preferred against Porter and Franklin, and had accused McClellan of wilfully delaying reinforcements and so causing his defeat. His indignation that the interpretation of affairs given by McClellan and his friends should be made into public opinion by the apparent acquiescence of Halleck and the administration overcame his prudence. Had he controlled his feelings and schooled himself into patience, he would hardly have been relieved from active service, and his turn would probably have come again. As it stood, the President saw that McClellan and Pope could not work together, and the natural outcome was that he retired Pope, so that McClellan should not have it to say that he was thwarted by a hostile subordinate. McClellan himself was so manifestly responsible for Franklin's movements from the 27th to the 30th of August, that it was a matter of course that when the chief was a.s.signed to command the condonation should cover the subordinate, and at McClellan's request Franklin was allowed to take the field at once. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 190, 197.] A few days later he urged the same action in Porter's case, and it was done. Porter joined the army at South Mountain on the 14th of September.

[Footnote: _Id_., pp. 190, 254, 289.] The same principle demanded that McDowell, who was obnoxious to McClellan, should be relieved, and this was also done. As an ostensible reason for the public, McDowell's request for a Court of Inquiry upon his own conduct was a.s.sumed to imply a desire to be relieved from the command of his corps. [Footnote: _Id_., pp. 188, 189, 197.] But the court was not a.s.sembled till the next winter. McDowell had been maligned almost as unscrupulously as Pope. A total abstainer from intoxicating drinks, he was persistently described as a drunkard, drunken upon the field of battle. One of the most loyal and self-forgetting of subordinates, he was treated as if a persistent intriguer for command. A brave and competent soldier, he was believed to be worthless and untrustworthy. As between Halleck, McClellan, and Pope, the only one who had fought like a soldier and manoeuvred like a general was sent to the northwestern frontier to watch the petty Indian tribes, carrying the burden of others' sins into the wilderness. Mr. Lincoln's sacrifice of his sense of justice to what seemed the only expedient in the terrible crisis, was sublime.

McClellan commanded the army, and Porter and Franklin each commanded a corps. If the country was to be saved, confidence and power could not be bestowed by halves.

In his "Own Story" McClellan speaks of the campaign in Maryland as made "with a halter round his neck," [Footnote: O. S., p. 551.]

meaning that he had no real command except of the defences of Washington, and that he marched after Lee without authority, so that, if unsuccessful, he might have been condemned for usurpation of command. It would be incredible that he adopted such a mere illusion, if he had not himself said it. It proves that some at least of the strange additions to history which he thus published had their birth in his own imagination brooding over the past, and are completely contradicted by the official records. [Footnote: This illusion, at least, is shown to be of later origin by his telegram to his wife of September 7. "I leave here this afternoon," he says, "to take command of the troops in the field. The feeling of the government towards me, I am sure, is kind and trusting. I hope, with G.o.d's blessing, to justify the great confidence they now repose in me, and will bury the past in oblivion." O. S., p. 567.] The consolidation of the armies under him was, in fact, a promotion, since it enlarged his authority and committed to him the task that properly belonged to Halleck as general-in-chief. For a few days, beginning September 1st, McClellan's orders and correspondence were dated "Headquarters, Washington," because no formal designation had been given to the a.s.sembled forces at the capital. When he took the field at Rockville on the 8th of September, he a.s.sumed, as he had the right to do in the absence of other direction from the War Department, that Burnside's and Pope's smaller armies were lost in the larger Army of the Potomac by the consolidation, and resumed the custom of dating his orders and dispatches from "Headquarters, Army of the Potomac," from the command of which he had never been removed, even when its divisions were temporarily separated from him. [Footnote: On August 31st Halleck had written to him, "You will retain the command of everything in this vicinity not temporarily belonging to Pope's army in the field;" and in the general order issued August 30, McClellan's command of the Army of the Potomac is affirmed. Official Records, vol. xi. pt. i. p. 103; _Id_., vol. li.

pt. i. p. 775.] The defences of Washington were now entrusted to Major-General Banks, strictly in subordination, however, to himself.

[Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 202, 214.] The official record of authority and command is consistent and perfect, and his notion in his later years, that there was anything informal about it, is proven to be imaginary. [Footnote: _Ante_, p. 257.]

Halleck's direction, which I have quoted, to "let our troops move immediately," would be absurd as addressed to the commandant of the Army of the Potomac into which the Army of Virginia was consolidated, unless that commandant was to take the field, or a formal order relieved him of command as Pope was relieved. Certainly no other commander was designated, and I saw enough of him in those days to say with confidence that he betrayed no doubt that the order to "move immediately" included himself. McClellan's popularity with the Army of the Potomac had seemed to Mr. Lincoln the only power sufficient to ensure its prompt and earnest action against the Confederate invasion. His leadership of it, to be successful, had to be accompanied with plenary powers, even if the stultification of the government itself were the consequence. When the patriotism of the President yielded to this, the suggestion of McClellan twenty years afterward, that it had all been a pitfall prepared for him, would be revolting if, in view of the records, the absurdity of it did not prove that its origin was in a morbid imagination. It is far more difficult to deal leniently with the exhibition of character in his private letters, which were injudiciously added to his "Own Story" by his literary executor. In them his vanity and his ill-will toward rivals and superiors are shockingly naked; and since no historian can doubt that at every moment from September, 1861, to September, 1862, his army greatly outnumbered his enemy, whilst in equipment and supply there was no comparison, his persistent outcry that he was sacrificed by his government destroys even that character for dignity and that reputation for military intelligence which we fondly attributed to him.

The general arrangement of the campaign seems to have been settled between Halleck and McClellan on the 5th of September. General Sumner with the Second and Twelfth corps moved up the Potomac by way of Tenallytown, Burnside with the First and Ninth corps moved to Leesboro with a view to covering Baltimore, the front was explored by the cavalry under Pleasonton, and the Sixth Corps, under Franklin, const.i.tuted a reserve. [Footnote: Confusion in the numbers of the First and Twelfth corps is found in the records and dispatches, owing to the fact that in the Army of Virginia the corps numbers were not those given them by the War Department. Sigel's, properly the Eleventh Corps, had been called First of that army.

Banks's, properly Twelfth, had been called Second, and McDowell's, properly First, had been called Third. In the Maryland campaign Hooker was a.s.signed to McDowell's, and it sometimes figures as First, sometimes as Third; Mansfield was a.s.signed to Banks's. The proper designations after the consolidation were First and Twelfth.

Reno had been a.s.signed to the First, but McClellan got authority to change it, and gave it to Hooker, sending Reno back to the Ninth.

Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. pp. 197, 198, 279, 349.] The preliminary movements occupied the 5th and 6th, but on the 7th the positions were as I have stated them. The princ.i.p.al bodies were designated, respectively, as right and left wings instead of armies.

The two corps from the Army of Virginia were separated, one being a.s.signed to the right wing under Burnside, and the other to the left under Sumner.

CHAPTER XIII

SOUTH MOUNTAIN

March through Washington--Reporting to Burnside--The Ninth Corps--Burnside's personal qualities--To Leesboro--Straggling--Lee's army at Frederick--Our deliberate advance--Reno at New Market--The march past--Reno and Hayes--Camp gossip--Occupation of Frederick--Affair with Hampton's cavalry--Crossing Catoctin Mountain--The valley and South Mountain--Lee's order found--Division of his army--Jackson at Harper's Ferry--Supporting Pleasonton's reconnoissance--Meeting Colonel Moor--An involuntary warning--Kanawha Division's advance--Opening of the battle--Carrying the mountain crest--The morning fight--Lull at noon--Arrival of supports--Battle renewed--Final success--Death of Reno--Hooker's battle on the right--His report--Burnside's comments--Franklin's engagement at Crampton's Gap.

Late in the night of the 5th I received orders from McClellan's headquarters to march from my position on Upton's Hill through Washington toward Leesboro, [Footnote: Leesboro, a village of Maryland eight or ten miles north of Washington, must be distinguished from Leesburg in Virginia.] as soon as my pickets could be relieved by troops of McDowell's corps. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 183; vol. li. pt. i. p. 789.] My route was designated as by the road which was a continuation northward of Seventh Street, and I was directed to report to General Ambrose E.

Burnside, commanding right wing, whose headquarters were in the suburbs of the city on that road. This was in accordance with my wish, expressed to McClellan that I might have active field work.

For two or three days we were not attached to a corps, but as the organization of the army became settled we were temporarily a.s.signed to the Ninth, which had been Burnside's, and had been with him in North Carolina. During this campaign it was commanded by Major-General Jesse L. Reno, who had long had a division in it, and had led the corps in the recent battle. We marched from Upton's Hill at daybreak of the 6th, taking the road to Georgetown by Ball's Cross-Roads. In Georgetown we turned eastward through Washington to Seventh Street, and thence northward to the Leesboro road. As we pa.s.sed General Burnside's quarters, I sent a staff officer to report our progress. It was about ten o'clock, and Burnside had gone to the White House to meet the President and cabinet by invitation. His chief of staff, General J. G. Parke, sent a polite note, saying we had not been expected so soon, and directed us to halt and bivouac for the present in some fields by the roadside, near where the Howard University now is. In the afternoon I met Burnside for the first time, and was warmly attracted by him, as everybody was. He was pre-eminently a manly man, as I expressed it in writing home.

His large, fine eyes, his winning smile and cordial manners, bespoke a frank, sincere, and honorable character, and these indications were never belied by more intimate acquaintance. The friendship then begun lasted as long as he lived. I learned to understand the limitations of his powers and the points in which he fell short of being a great commander; but as I knew him better I estimated more and more highly his sincerity and truthfulness, his unselfish generosity, and his devoted patriotism. In everything which makes up an honorable and lovable personal character he had no superior. I shall have occasion to speak frequently of his peculiarities and his special traits, but shall never have need to say a word in derogation of the solid virtues I have attributed to him. His chief-of-staff, General Parke, was an officer of the Engineers, and one of the best instructed of that corps. He had served with distinction under Burnside in North Carolina, in command of a brigade and division. I always thought that he preferred staff duty, especially with Burnside, whose confidence in him was complete, and who would leave to him almost untrammelled control of the administrative work of the command.

On September 7th I was ordered to take the advance of the Ninth Corps in the march to Leesboro, following Hooker's corps. It was my first march with troops of this army, and I was shocked at the straggling I witnessed. The "roadside brigade," as we called it, was often as numerous, by careful estimate, as our own column moving in the middle of the road. I could say of the men of the Kanawha division, as Richard Taylor said of his Louisiana brigade with Stonewall Jackson, that they had not yet _learned_ to straggle.

[Footnote: See Taylor's "Destruction and Reconstruction," p. 50, for a curious interview with Jackson.] I tried to prevent their learning it. We had a roll-call immediately upon halting after the march, and another half an hour later, with prompt reports of the result. I also a.s.signed a field officer and medical officer to duty at the rear of the column, with ambulances for those who became ill and with punishments for the rest. The result was that, in spite of the example of others, the division had no stragglers, the first roll-call rarely showing more than twenty or thirty not answering to their names, and the second often proving every man to be present.

[Footnote: See letters of General R. B. Hayes and General George Crook, Appendix B.] In both the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia the evil had become a most serious one. After the battle of Antietam, for the express purpose of remedying it, McClellan appointed General Patrick Provost-Marshal with a strong provost-guard, giving him very extended powers, and permitting n.o.body, of whatever rank, to interfere with him. Patrick was a man of vigor, of conscience, and of system, and though he was greatly desirous of keeping a field command, proved so useful, indeed so necessary a part of the organization, that he was retained in it against his wishes, to the end of the war, each commander of the Army of the Potomac in turn finding that he was indispensable.

[Footnote: I have discussed this subject also in a review of Henderson's Stonewall Jackson, "The Nation," Nov. 24, 1898, p. 396.]

The Confederate army suffered from straggling quite as much, perhaps, as ours, but in a somewhat different way. At the close of the Antietam campaign General Lee made bitter complaints in regard to it, and asked the Confederate government for legislation which would authorize him to apply the severest punishments. As the Confederate stragglers were generally in the midst of friends, where they could sleep under shelter and get food of better quality than the army ration, this grew to be the regular mode of life with many even of those who would join their comrades in an engagement. They were not reported in the return of "effectives" made by their officers, but that they often made part of the killed, wounded, and captured I have little doubt. In this way a rational explanation may be found of the larger discrepancies between the Confederate reports of casualties and ours of their dead buried and prisoners taken.

The weather during this brief campaign was as lovely as possible, and the contrast between the rich farming country in which we now were, and the forest-covered mountains of West Virginia to which we had been accustomed, was very striking. An evening march, under a brilliant moon, over a park-like landscape with alternations of groves and meadows which could not have been more beautifully composed by a master artist, remains in my memory as a page out of a lovely romance. On the day that we marched to Leesboro, Lee's army was concentrated near Frederick, behind the Monocacy River, having begun the crossing of the Potomac on the 4th. There was a singular dearth of trustworthy information on the subject at our army headquarters. We moved forward by very short marches of six or eight miles, feeling our way so cautiously that Lee's reports speak of it as an unexpectedly slow approach. The Comte de Paris excuses it on the ground of the disorganized condition of McClellan's army after the recent battle. It must be remembered, however, that Sumner's corps and Franklin's had not been at the second Bull Run, and were veterans of the Potomac Army. The Twelfth Corps had been Banks's, and it too had not been engaged at the second Bull Run, its work having been to cover the trains of Pope's army on the retrograde movement from Warrenton Junction. Although new regiments had been added to these corps, it is hardly proper to say that the army as a whole was not one which could be rapidly manoeuvred. I see no good reason why it might not have advanced at once to the left bank of the Monocacy, covering thus both Washington and Baltimore, and hastening by some days Lee's movement across the Blue Ridge. We should at least have known where the enemy was by being in contact with him, instead of being the sport of all sorts of vague rumors and wild reports. [Footnote: McClellan was not wholly responsible for this tardiness, for Halleck was very timid about uncovering Washington, and his dispatches tended to increase McClellan's natural indecision. Official Records, vol. xix. pt. ii. p. 280.]

The Kanawha division took the advance of the right wing when we left Leesboro on the 8th, and marched to Brookville. On the 9th it reached Goshen, where it lay on the 10th, and on the 11th reached Ridgeville on the railroad. The rest of the Ninth Corps was an easy march behind us. Hooker had been ordered further to the right on the strength of rumors that Lee was making a circuit towards Baltimore, and his corps reached Cooksville and the railroad some ten miles east of my position. The extreme left of the army was at Poolesville, near the Potomac, making a spread of thirty miles across the whole front. The cavalry did not succeed in getting far in advance of the infantry, and very little valuable information was obtained. At Ridgeville, however, we got reliable evidence that Lee had evacuated Frederick the day before, and that only cavalry was east of the Catoctin Mountains. Hooker got similar information at about the same time. It was now determined to move more rapidly, and early in the morning of the 12th I was ordered to march to New Market and thence to Frederick. At New Market I was overtaken by General Reno, with several officers of rank from the other divisions of the corps, and they dismounted at a little tavern by the roadside to see the Kanawha division go by. Up to this time they had seen nothing of us whatever. The men had been so long in the West Virginia mountains at hard service, involving long and rapid marches, that they had much the same strength of legs and ease in marching which was afterward so much talked of when seen in Sherman's army at the review in Washington at the close of the war.

I stood a little behind Reno and the rest, and had the pleasure of hearing their involuntary exclamations of admiration at the marching of the men. The easy swinging step, the graceful poise of the musket on the shoulder, as if it were a toy and not a burden, and the compactness of the column were all noticed and praised with a heartiness which was very grateful to my ears. I no longer felt any doubt that the division stood well in the opinion of my a.s.sociates.

I enjoyed this the more because, the evening before, a little incident had occurred which had threatened to result in some ill-feeling. It had been thought that we were likely to be attacked at Ridgeville, and on reaching the village I disposed the division so as to cover the place and to be ready for an engagement. I ordered the brigades to bivouac in line of battle, covering the front with outposts and with cavalry vedettes from the Sixth New York Cavalry (Colonel Devin), which had been attached to the division during the advance. The men were without tents, and to make beds had helped themselves to some straw from stacks in the vicinity. Toward evening General Reno rode up, and happening first to meet Lieutenant-Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes, commanding the Twenty third Ohio, he rather sharply inquired why the troops were not bivouacking "closed in ma.s.s," and also blamed the taking of the straw. Colonel Hayes referred him to me as the proper person to account for the disposition of the troops, and quietly said he thought the quartermaster's department could settle for the straw if the owner was loyal. A few minutes later the general came to my own position, but was now quite over his irritation. I, of course, knew nothing of his interview with Hayes, and when he said that it was the policy in Maryland to make the troops bivouac in compact ma.s.s, so as to do as little damage to property as possible, I cordially a.s.sented, but urged that such a rule would not apply to the advance-guard when supposed to be in presence of the enemy; we needed to have the men already in line if an alarm should be given in the night. To this he agreed, and a pleasant conversation followed. Nothing was said to me about the straw taken for bedding, and when I heard of the little pa.s.sage-at-arms with Colonel Hayes, I saw that it was a momentary disturbance which had no real significance. Camp gossip, however, is as bad as village gossip, and in a fine volume of the "History of the Twenty-first Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment," I find it stated that the Kanawha division coming fresh from the West was disposed to plunder and pillage, giving an exaggerated version of the foregoing story as evidence of it. This makes it a duty to tell what was the small foundation for the charge, and to say that I believe no regiments in the army were less obnoxious to any just accusation of such a sort. The gossip would never have survived the war at all but for the fact that Colonel Hayes became President of the United States, and the supposed incident of his army life thus acquired a new interest. [Footnote: This incident gives me the opportunity to say that after reading a good many regimental histories, I am struck with the fact that with the really invaluable material they contain when giving the actual experiences of the regiments themselves, they also embody a great deal of mere gossip. As a rule, their value is confined to what strictly belongs to the regiment; and the criticisms, whether of other organizations or of commanders, are likely to be the expression of the local and temporary prejudices and misconceptions which are notoriously current in time of war. They need to be read with due allowance for this. The volume referred to is a favorable example of its cla.s.s, but its references to the Kanawha division (which was in the Ninth Corps only a month) ill.u.s.trate the tendency I have mentioned. It should be borne in mind that the Kanawha men had the position of advance-guard, and I believe did not camp in the neighborhood of the other divisions in a single instance from the time we left Leesboro till the battle of South Mountain. What is said of them, therefore, is not from observation. The incident between Reno and Hayes occurred in the camp of the latter, and could not possibly be known to the author of the regimental history but by hearsay. Yet he affirms as a fact that the Kanawha division "plundered the country unmercifully," for which Reno "took Lieutenant-Colonel Hayes severely though justly to task." He also a.s.serts that the division set a "very bad example" in straggling. As to this, the truth is as I have circ.u.mstantially stated it above. He has still further indulged in a "slant" at the "Ohioans" in a story of dead Confederates being put in a well at South Mountain,--a story as apocryphal as the others. Wise's house and well were within the camp of the division to which the Twenty-first Ma.s.sachusetts belonged, and the burial party there would have been from that division. Lastly, the writer says that General c.o.x, the temporary corps commander, "robs us [the Twenty-first Ma.s.sachusetts] of our dearly bought fame" by naming the Fifty-first New York and Fifty-first Pennsylvania as the regiments which stormed the bridge at Antietam. He acquits Burnside and McClellan of the alleged injustice, saying they "follow the corps report in this respect."

Yet mention is not made of the fact that my report literally copies that of the division commander, who himself selected the regiments for the charge! The "Ohioan" had soon gone west again with his division, and was probably fair game. There is something akin to provincialism in regimental _esprit de corps_, and such instances as the above, which are all found within a few pages of the book referred to, show that, like Leech's famous Staffordshire rough in the Punch cartoon, to be a "stranger" is a sufficient reason to "'eave 'arf a brick at un." See letters of President Hayes and General Crook on the subject, Appendix B.]

From New Market we sent the regiment of cavalry off to the right to cover our flank, and to investigate reports that heavy bodies of the enemy's cavalry were north of us. The infantry pushed rapidly toward Frederick. The opposition was very slight till we reached the Monocacy River, which is perhaps half a mile from the town. Here General Wade Hampton, with his brigade as rear-guard of Lee's army, attempted to resist the crossing. The highway crosses the river by a substantial stone bridge, and the ground upon our bank was considerably higher than that on the other side. We engaged the artillery of the enemy with a battery of our own, which had the advantage of position, whilst the infantry forced the crossing both by the bridge and by a ford a quarter of a mile to the right. As soon as Moor's brigade was over, it was deployed on the right and left of the turnpike, which was bordered on either side by a high and strong post-and-rail fence. Scammon's was soon over, and similarly deployed as a second line, with the Eleventh Ohio in column in the road. Moor had with him a troop of horse and a single cannon, and went forward with the first line, allowing it to keep abreast of him on right and left. I also rode on the turnpike between the two lines, and only a few rods behind Moor, having with me my staff and a few orderlies. Reno was upon the other bank of the river, overlooking the movement, which made a fine military display as the lines advanced at quick-step toward the city. Hampton's hors.e.m.e.n had pa.s.sed out of our sight, for the straight causeway turned sharply to the left just as it entered the town, and we could not see beyond the turn. We were perhaps a quarter of a mile from the city, when a young staff officer from corps headquarters rode up beside me and exclaimed in a boisterous way, "Why don't they go in faster? There's nothing there!" I said to the young man, "Did General Reno send you with any order to me?" "No," he replied.

"Then," said I, "when I want your advice I will ask it." He moved off abashed, and I did not notice what had become of him, but, in fact, he rode up to Colonel Moor, and repeated a similar speech.

Moor was stung by the impertinence which he a.s.sumed to be a criticism upon him from corps headquarters, and, to my amazement, I saw him suddenly dash ahead at a gallop with his escort and the gun.

He soon came to the turn of the road where it loses itself among the houses; there was a quick, sharp rattling of carbines, and Hampton's cavalry was atop of the little party. There was one discharge of the cannon, and some of the brigade staff and escort came back in disorder. I ordered up at "double quick" the Eleventh Ohio, which, as I have said, was in column in the road, and these, with bayonets fixed, dashed into the town. The enemy had not waited for them, but retreated out of the place by the Hagerstown road. Moor had been ridden down, unhorsed, and captured. The artillery-men had unlimbered the gun, pointed it, and the gunner stood with the lanyard in his hand, when he was struck by a charging horse; the gun was fired by the concussion, but at the same moment it was capsized into the ditch by the impact of the cavalry column. The enemy had no time to right the gun or carry it off, nor to stop for prisoners.

They forced Moor on another horse, and turned tail as the charging lines of infantry came up on right and left as well as the column in the road, for there had not been a moment's pause in the advance. It had all happened, and the gun with a few dead and wounded of both sides were in our hands, in less time than it has taken to describe it. Those who may have a fancy for learning how Munchausen would tell this story, may find it in the narrative of Major Heros von Borke of J. E. B. Stuart's staff. [Footnote: Von Borke's account is so good an example of the way in which romance may be built up out of a little fact that I give it in full. The burning of the stone bridge half a mile in rear of the little affair was a peculiarly brilliant idea; but he has evidently confused our advance with that on the Urbana road. He says: "Toward evening the enemy arrived in the immediate neighborhood of Monocacy bridge, and observing only a small force at this point, advanced very carelessly. A six-pounder gun had been placed in position by them at a very short distance from the bridge, which fired from time to time a shot at our hors.e.m.e.n, while the foremost regiment marched along at their ease, as if they believed this small body of cavalry would soon wheel in flight. This favorable moment for an attack was seized in splendid style by Major Butler, who commanded the two squadrons of the Second South Carolina Cavalry, stationed at this point as our rear-guard.

Like lightning he darted across the bridge, taking the piece of artillery, which had scarcely an opportunity of firing a shot, and falling upon the regiment of infantry, which was dispersed in a few seconds, many of them being shot down, and many others, among whom was the colonel in command, captured. The colors of the regiment also fell into Major Butler's hands. The piece of artillery, in the hurry of the moment, could not be brought over to our side of the river, as the enemy instantly sent forward a large body of cavalry at a gallop, and our dashing men had only time to spike it and trot with their prisoners across the bridge, which, having been already fully prepared for burning, was in a blaze when the infuriated Yankees arrived at the water's edge. The conflagration of the bridge of course checked their onward movement, and we quietly continued the retreat." Von Borke, vol. i. p. 203. Stuart's report is very nearly accurate: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 816.] Moor's capture, however, had consequences, as we shall see. The command of his brigade pa.s.sed to Colonel George Crook of the Thirty-sixth Ohio.

Frederick was a loyal city, and as Hampton's cavalry went out at one end of the street and our infantry came in at the other, and whilst the carbine smoke and the smell of powder still lingered, the closed window-shutters of the houses flew open, the sashes went up, the windows were filled with ladies waving their handkerchiefs and national flags, whilst the men came to the column with fruits and refreshments for the marching soldiers as they went by in the hot sunshine of the September afternoon. [Footnote: Although at the head of the column, the "truth of history" compels me to say that I saw nothing of Barbara Frietchie, and heard nothing of her till I read Whittier's poem in later years. When, however, I visited Frederick with General Grant in 1869, we were both presented with walking-sticks made from timbers of Barbara's house which had been torn down, and, of course, I cannot dispute the story of which I have the stick as evidence; for Grant thought the stick shut me up from any denial and established the legend.] Pleasonton's cavalry came in soon after by the Urbana road, and during the evening a large part of the army drew near the place. Next morning (13th) the cavalry went forward to reconnoitre the pa.s.ses of Catoctin Mountain, Rodman's division of our corps being ordered to support them and to proceed toward Middletown in the Catoctin valley. Through some misunderstanding Rodman took the road to Jefferson, leading to the left, where Franklin's corps was moving, and did not get upon the Hagerstown road. About noon I was ordered to march upon the latter road to Middletown. McClellan himself met me as my column moved out of town, and told me of the misunderstanding in Rodman's orders, adding that if I found him on the march I should take his division also along with me. [Footnote: As is usual in such cases, the direction was later put in writing by his chief of staff. Official Records, vol. li. pt. i. p. 827.] I did not meet him, but the other two divisions of the corps crossed Catoctin Mountain that night, whilst Rodman returned to Frederick. The Kanawha division made an easy march, and as the cavalry was now ahead of us, met no opposition in crossing Catoctin Mountain or in the valley beyond. On the way we pa.s.sed a house belonging to a branch of the Washington family, and a few officers of the division accompanied me, at the invitation of the occupant, to look at some relics of the Father of his Country which were preserved there. We stood for some minutes with uncovered heads before a case containing a uniform he had worn, and other articles of personal use hallowed by their a.s.sociation with him, and went on our way with our zeal strengthened by closer contact with souvenirs of the great patriot. Willc.o.x's division followed us, and encamped a mile and a half east of Middletown.

Sturgis's halted not far from the western foot of the mountain, with corps headquarters near by. My own camp for the night was pitched in front (west) of the village of Middletown along Catoctin Creek.

Pleasonton's cavalry was a little in advance of us, at the forks of the road where the old Sharpsburg road turns off to the left from the turnpike. The rest of the army was camped about Frederick, except Franklin's corps (Sixth), which was near Jefferson, ten miles further south but also east of Catoctin Mountain.

The Catoctin or Middletown valley is beautifully included between Catoctin Mountain and South Mountain, two ranges of the Blue Ridge, running northeast and southwest. It is six or eight miles wide, watered by Catoctin Creek, which winds southward among rich farms and enters the Potomac near Point of Rocks. The National road leaving Frederick pa.s.ses through Middletown and crosses South Mountain, as it goes northwestward, at a depression called Turner's Gap. The old Sharpsburg road crosses the summit at another gap, known as Fox's, about a mile south of Turner's. Still another, the old Hagerstown road, finds a pa.s.sage over the ridge at about an equal distance north. The National road, being of easier grades and better engineering, was now the princ.i.p.al route, the others having degenerated to rough country roads. The mountain crests are from ten to thirteen hundred feet above the Catoctin valley, and the "gaps"

are from two to three hundred feet lower than the summits near them.

[Footnote: These elevations are from the official map of the U.S.

Engineers.] These summits are like scattered and irregular hills upon the high rounded surface of the mountain top. They are wooded, but along the southeasterly slopes, quite near the top of the mountain, are small farms, with meadows and cultivated fields.