The Victim: A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis Part 75

Lincoln refused to deprive McClellan of his command but yielded sufficiently to the clamor of the radicals of his own party to appoint John Pope of the Western army to the command of a new division of troops designed to advance on Richmond.

The generals under McClellan who did not agree with his slow methods were detached with their men and a.s.signed to service under Pope.

McClellan did not hesitate to denounce Pope as an upstart and a braggart who had won his position by the lowest tricks of the demagogue. He declared that the new commander was a military impostor, a tool of the radical wing of the Republican party, a man who mistook brutality in warfare for power and sought to increase the horrors of war by arming slaves, legalizing plunder and making the people of the South irreconcilable to a restored Union by atrocities whose memory could never be effaced.

Pope's first acts on a.s.suming command did much to justify McClellan's savage criticism. He issued a bombastic address to his army which brought tears to Lincoln's eyes and roars of laughter from Little Mac's loyal friends.

He issued a series of silly general orders making war on the noncombatant population of Virginia within his line. If citizens refused to take an oath of allegiance which he prescribed they were to be driven from their homes and if they dared to return, were to be arrested and treated as spies.

His soldiers were given license to plunder. Houses were robbed and cattle shot in the fields. Against these practices McClellan had set his face with grim resolution. He fought only organized armies. He protected the aged, and all noncombatants. It was not surprising, therefore, when Lincoln ordered him to march his army to the support of Pope, McClellan was in no hurry to get there.

Pope had boldly advanced across the Rappahannock and a portion of his army had reached Culpeper Court House. He had determined to make good the proclamation with which he had a.s.sumed command.

In this remarkable doc.u.ment he said:

"By special a.s.signment of the President of the United States, I have a.s.sumed command of this army. I have come to you from the West where we have always seen the backs of our enemies--from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when found, whose policy has been attack not defense. Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents and leave ours to take care of themselves. Let us look before us and not behind."

While his eyes were steadily fixed before him Jackson, moving with the stealthy tread of a tiger, slipped in behind his advance guard, sprang on it and tore his lines to pieces before he could move reenforcements to their rescue.

When his reenforcements reached the ground Jackson had just finished burying the dead, picking up the valuable arms left on the field and sending his prisoners to the rear.

Before Pope could lead his fresh men to an attack the vanguard of Lee's army was in sight and the general who had just issued his flaming proclamation took to his heels and fled across the Rappahannock where he called frantically for the divisions of McClellan's army which had not yet joined him.

While Lee threatened Pope's front by repeated feints at different points along the river, he dispatched Jackson's corps of twenty-five thousand "foot cavalry" on a wide flanking movement through the Blue Ridge to turn the Federal right, destroy his stores at Mana.s.sas Junction and attack him in the rear before his reenforcements could arrive.

With swiftness Jackson executed the brilliant movement. Within twenty-four hours his men had made the wide swing through the low mountain ranges and crouched between Pope's army and the Federal Capital. To a man of less courage and coolness this position would have been one of tragic danger. Should Pope suddenly turn from Lee's pretended attacks and spring on Jackson he might be crushed between two columns. Franklin and Sumner's corps were at Alexandria to reenforce his lines.

Jackson had marched into the jaws of death and yet he not only showed no fear, he made a complete circuit of Pope's army, struck his storehouses at Mana.s.sas Junction and captured them before the Federal Commander dreamed that an army was in his rear. Eight pieces of artillery and three hundred prisoners were among the spoils. Fifty thousand pounds of bacon, a thousand barrels of beef, two thousand barrels of pork, two thousand barrels of flour, and vast quant.i.ties of quartermaster's stores also fell into his hands.

Jackson took what he could transport and burned the rest.

Pope rushed now in frantic haste to destroy Jackson before Lee's army could reach him.

Jackson was too quick for the eloquent commander. He slipped past his opponent and took a strong position west of the turnpike from Warrenton where he could easily unite with Longstreet's advancing corps.

Pope attempted to turn Jackson's left with a division of his army and the wily Southerner fell on his moving columns with sudden savage energy, fought until nine o'clock at night and drove him back with heavy loss.

When Pope moved to the attack next day at two o'clock Longstreet had reached Jackson's side. The attack failed and his men fell back through pools of blood. The Federal Commander was still sending pompous messages to Washington announcing his marvelous achievements while his army had steadily retreated from Culpeper Court House beyond the Rappahannock, back to Mana.s.sas where the first battle of the war was fought.

At dawn on August 30, the high spirited troops of the South were under arms standing with clinched muskets within a few hundred yards of the pickets of Pope. Their far flung battle line stretched for five miles from Sudley Springs on the left to the Warrenton road and on obliquely to the southwest.

The artillery opened the action and for eight hours the heavens shook with its roar. At three o'clock in the afternoon Pope determined to hurl the flower of his army against Jackson's corps and smash it. His first division pressed forward and engaged the Confederates at close quarters. A fierce and b.l.o.o.d.y conflict followed, Jackson's troops refusing to yield an inch. The Federal Commander brought up two reserve lines to support the first but before they could be of any use, Longstreet's artillery was planted to rake them with a murderous fire and they fell back in confusion.

As the reserves retreated Jackson ordered his men to charge and at the same moment Longstreet hurled his division against the Federal center, and the whole Confederate army with piercing yell leaped forward and swept the field as far as the eye could reach.

No sublimer pageant of blood and flame and smoke and shrouded Death ever moved across the earth than that which Lee now witnessed from the hilltop on which he stood. For five miles across the Mana.s.sas plains the gray waves rolled, their polished bayonets gleaming in the blazing sun.

They swept through the open fields, now lost a moment in the woods, now flashing again in the open. They paused and the artillery dashed to the front, spread their guns in line and roared their call of death to the struggling, fleeing, demoralized army. Another shout and the charging hosts swept on again to a new point of vantage from which to fire.

Through clouds of smoke and dust the red tongues of flame from a hundred big-mouthed guns flashed and faded and flashed again.

The charging men slipped on the wet gra.s.s where the dead lay thickest.

Waves of white curling smoke rose above the tree-tops and hung in dense clouds over the field lighted by the red glare of the sinking sun.

The relief corps could be seen dashing on, with stretchers and ambulances following in the wake of the victorious army.

The hum and roar of the vast field of carnage came now on the ears of the listener--the groans of the wounded and the despairing cry of the dying. And still the living waves of gray-tipped steel rolled on in relentless sweep.

Again the fleeing Federal soldiers choked the waters of Bull Run. Ma.s.ses of struggling fugitives were pushed from the banks into the water and pressed down. Here and there a wounded man clung to the branch of an overhanging tree until exhausted and sank to rise no more.

The meadows were trampled and red. Hundreds of weak and tired men were ridden down by cavalry and crushed by artillery. On and on rushed the remorseless machine of the Confederacy, crushing, killing, scarring, piling the dead in heaps.

It was ten o'clock that night before the army of Lee halted and Pope's exhausted lines fell into the trenches around Centreville for a few hours' respite. At dawn Jackson was struggling with his tired victorious division to again turn Pope's flank, get into his rear and cut off his retreat.

A cold and drenching rainstorm delayed his march and the rabble that was once Pope's army succeeded in getting into the defenses of Washington.

Davis' army took seven thousand prisoners and picked up more than two thousand wounded soldiers whom their boastful commander had left on the field to die. Thirty pieces of artillery and twenty thousand small arms fell into Lee's hands.

Pope's losses since Jackson first struck his advance guard at Culpeper Court House had been more than twenty thousand men and his army had been driven into Washington so utterly demoralized it was unfit for further service until reorganized under an abler man.

For the moment the North was stunned by the blow. Deceived by Pope's loud dispatches claiming victory for the first two days it was impossible to realize that his shattered and broken army was cowering and bleeding under the shadow of the Federal Capitol.

Even on the night of August thirtieth, with his men lying exhausted at Centreville where they had dropped at ten o'clock when Lee's army had mercifully halted, poor Pope continued to send his marvelous messages to the War Department.

He reported to Halleck:

"The enemy is badly whipped, and we shall do well enough. Do not be uneasy. We will hold our own here. We have delayed the enemy as long as possible without losing the army. We have damaged him heavily, and I think the army ent.i.tled to the grat.i.tude of the country."

To this childish twaddle Halleck replied:

"My dear General, you have done n.o.bly!"

Abraham Lincoln, however, realized the truth quickly. He removed Pope and in spite of the threat of his Cabinet to resign called McClellan to reorganize the dispirited army.

The North was in no mood to listen to the bombastic defense of General Pope. They were stunned by the sudden sweep of the Confederate army from the gates of Richmond on June first, to the defenses at Washington within sixty days with the loss of twenty thousand men under McClellan and twenty thousand more under Pope.

The armies of the Union had now been driven back to the point from which they had started on July 16, 1861. It had been necessary to withdraw Burnside's army from eastern North Carolina and the forces of the Union from western Virginia. The war had been transferred to the suburbs of Washington and the Northern people who had confidently expected McClellan to be in Richmond in June were now trembling for the safety of Pennsylvania and Maryland, to say nothing of the possibility of Confederate occupation of the Capital.

An aggressive movement of all the forces of the South under Lee in the East and Bragg and Johnston in the West was ordered.

In spite of the fact that Lee's army could not be properly shod--the supply of army shoes being inadequate and the lack of shoe factories a defect the Confederacy had yet been unable to remedy, the Southern Commander threw his army of barefooted veterans across the Potomac and boldly invaded Maryland on September the fifth.

The appearance of Stonewall Jackson on his entrance into Frederick City, Maryland, was described by a Northern war correspondent in graphic terms:

"Old Stonewall was the observed of all observers. He was dressed in the coa.r.s.est kind of homespun, seedy, and dirty at that. He wore an old hat which any Northern beggar would consider an insult to have offered him.

In his general appearance he was in no respect to be distinguished from the mongrel barefoot crew who followed his fortunes. I had heard much of the decayed appearance of rebel soldiers,--but such a looking crowd!

Ireland in her worst straits could present no parallel, and yet they glory in their shame!"

Lee's army was now fifty miles north of Washington, within striking distance of Baltimore. His strategy had completely puzzled the War Department of the Federal Government. McClellan was equally puzzled.

Lincoln and his Cabinet believed Lee's movement into Maryland a feint to draw the army from the defense of the Capital, and, when this was accomplished, by a sudden swoop the Southern Commander would turn and capture the city.