The Civil War_ Fort Sumter To Perryville Part 20

After warning him not to count on reinforcements-"If I can send them I will; if I cannot, and you think it proper and advantageous, act without them"-he outlined the dilemma as he saw it and suggested what he believed was the best solution, an immediate thrust at Pope, though he cautioned against rashness: "I would rather you should have easy fighting and heavy victories." It was a warning addressed more to the erstwhile hard-driving hero of the Valley, who smote the enemy hip and thigh, wherever found, than to the sluggard of the Seven Days, who dawdled and withheld his hand from bloodshed. Apparently Lee had put the latter out of his mind. "I must now leave the matter to your reflection and good judgment," he concluded. "Make up your mind what is best to be done under all the circ.u.mstances which surround us, and let me hear the result at which you arrive. I. will inform you if any change takes place here that bears on the subject."

Mosby was right: Burnside had been ordered to Fredericksburg a week ago, on August 1, nine days after Halleck's arrival in Was.h.i.+ngton from the West. Having scattered the armies there for an a.s.similation of what had been won, Old Brains now proposed to unite those of the East for a new beginning. In both cases, however-since the concentration was not to be on the Peninsula, where defeat was recent, but in northern Virginia, where defeat was a full year old-the effect was the same: to s.h.i.+ft the Union juggernaut into reverse. McClellan, too, was about to be withdrawn.

Nothing less than a new beginning would put the derailed engine back on the track; or so it seemed to the newly appointed general-in-chief, who had reached the capital in a time of gloom. Flags drooped at half-mast under the press of heat and c.r.a.pe festooned the public buildings in observance of the death of Martin Van Buren, a used-up man. No such honors had marked the pa.s.sing of the Virginian John Tyler the month before; but that was in a sunnier time, and even in the present instance the c.r.a.pe seemed more an expression of the general mood than grief for a particular man, ex-President or not; Van Buren was already part of ancient history. Halleck, at any rate, wasted little time in speculation on such matters. Instead, after spending a day in Was.h.i.+ngton, he got aboard a steamer and went straight to what he believed was the source of discontent: the Army of the Potomac, camped now on the mud flats of the James.

In spite of the pride he took in having executed the movement under pressure, and in spite of the fact that Lincoln had been congratulatory and Stanton even fawning, McClellan had been expecting trouble ever since his change of base. The President had wired him "a thousand thanks" after Malvern Hill. "Be a.s.sured," he added, "the heroism and skill of yourself and officers and men is, and forever will be, appreciated. If you can hold your present position [at Harrison's] we shall hive the enemy yet." Stanton put it stronger, or anyhow longer. "Be a.s.sured," he wrote, "that you shall have the support of this Department as cordially and faithfully as was ever rendered by man to man, and if we should ever live to see each other face to face you will be satisfied that you have never had from me anything but the most confiding integrity." That was larding it pretty thick, but he larded it even thicker in conversation with McClellan's father-in-law, who went to Was.h.i.+ngton to see him. "General Marcy," he told the chief of staff, with a sudden rush of feeling, "I have from the commencement of our acquaintance up to the present moment been General McClellan's warmest friend. I feel so kind toward him that I would get down on my knees to him if that would serve him. Yes sir," he continued, warming as he spoke. "If it would do him any service I would be willing to lay down naked in the gutter and allow him to stand upon my body for hours."

Stanton lying naked in the gutter was a prospect McClellan could contemplate with pleasure, but he was not deluded into thinking such a scene would ever be staged-except in his mind's eye. He knew well enough that Stanton was working against him, tooth and nail. Nor did Lincoln's a.s.surances carry their former weight: especially after the arrival of John Pope and the Administration's tacit approval of the mandates he issued regarding noncombatants in his theater of operations. That was what really tore it, McClellan wrote his wife. "When you contrast the policy I urged in my letter to the President with that of Congress and of Mr Pope, you can readily agree with me that there can be little natural confidence between the government and myself. We are the antipodes of each other; and it is more than probable that they will take the earliest opportunity to relieve me from command and get me out of sight."

Now here came Halleck, slack-fleshed and goggle-eyed, formerly his subordinate, now his chief, holding the office he himself had lost. It was bitter. Presently, however, after a hasty review of the troops, Halleck calmed McClellan's apprehensions by informing him that he had not come to undermine him or relieve him of command, but to find out what he required in the way of additional men in order to renew the drive on the rebel capital. McClellan brightened and unfolded a map on which he began to indicate, with pride and enthusiasm, a new plan of attack. He would cross the James and capture Petersburg, outflanking the enemy fortifications and severing the southside supply lines, then swing north and enter Richmond by the back door. Halleck shook his head. Too risky, he said, and vetoed the proposal then and there. McClellan, his enthusiasm dampened, proceeded to an estimate of the situation. His effective strength, he said, was 88,665; Lee's was 200,000. Nevertheless, if the government would give him 30,000 reinforcements he would a.s.sault the northside intrenchments with "a good chance of success." Halleck frowned. No more than 20,000 were available, and if these would not suffice, he said, the army would have to be withdrawn from the Peninsula to unite with Pope in the vicinity of Was.h.i.+ngton. Horrified at the notion, McClellan excused himself in order to confer with his corps commanders. Next morning he reported, somewhat gloomily, that he was "willing to try it" with that number. Halleck nodded and got back aboard the steamboat to return to Was.h.i.+ngton. McClellan's genial spirits rose again. "I think that Halleck will support me and give me the means to take Richmond," he wrote his wife.

Whatever Halleck intended when he left, his final decision was considerably affected by a telegram he found waiting for him when he docked. It was from McClellan; apparently it had been sent almost as soon as Halleck's steamer pa.s.sed from sight. Confederate reinforcements, he said, were "pouring into Richmond from the South." To meet this new development, and to enable him to deliver "a rapid and heavy blow," he wanted more troops than the 20,000 just agreed on. "Can you not possibly draw 15,000 or 20,000 men from the West to reinforce me temporarily?" he pleaded. "They can return the moment we gain Richmond. Please give weight to this suggestion; I am sure it merits it."

Halleck was amazed, and went to Lincoln with the problem. Lincoln was not amazed at all. In fact, he found the telegram very much in character. If by some magic he could reinforce McClellan with 100,000 troops today, he said, Little Mac would be delighted and would promise to capture Richmond tomorrow; but when tomorrow came he would report the enemy strength at 400,000 and announce that he could not advance until he got another 100,000 reinforcements. Halleck turned this over in his mind, together with another consideration. If Lee was as strong as McClellan said he was-stronger than Pope and McClellan combined-it was folly to keep the Federal armies exposed to destruction in detail. It was in fact imperative to unite them without delay. At last he made his decision, agreeing with Lincoln that McClellan's army would have to be withdrawn. On July 29 he ordered every available steamer in Baltimore harbor to proceed at once to the James, and next day he instructed McClellan to prepare to evacuate his sick and wounded. He did not tell him why; he merely remarked ambiguously that this was being done "in order to enable you to move in any direction." Two days later, Burnside was told to take his transports up the Potomac to Aquia Creek, where the troops would debark for a twelve-mile march to Fredericksburg. McClellan's own orders were sent on August 3: "It is determined to withdraw your army from the Peninsula to Aquia Creek. You will take immediate measures to effect this, covering the movement as best you can."

McClellan was thunderstruck. The order for the removal of his sick had aroused his suspicions five days ago, despite-or perhaps because of-the disclaimer that it would leave him free "to move in any direction," and he had been prompt to register his protest: "Our true policy is to reinforce [this] army by every available means and throw it again upon Richmond. Should it be determined to withdraw it, I shall look upon our cause as lost." Perhaps he thought the weight of this opinion would forestall any such calamity. If so, he now saw how useless it had been. Yet he did not abandon hope; or anyhow he did not stop trying to ward off the blow. At noon on August 4 he knelt figuratively at the feet of Halleck and made a final anguished plea. "Your telegram of last evening is received. I must confess that it has caused me the greatest pain I ever experienced, for I am convinced that the order to withdraw this army to Aquia Creek will prove disastrous to our cause." First he pointed out that it was tactical folly to make "a march of 145 miles to reach a point now only 25 miles distant, and to deprive ourselves entirely of the powerful aid of the gunboats and water transportation. Add to this the certain demoralization of this army which would ensue, and these appear to me sufficient reasons to make it my imperative duty to urge in the strongest terms afforded by our language that this order may be rescinded." Then came the impa.s.sioned words to which the rest had served as prologue: "Here, directly in front of this army, is the heart of the rebellion. It is here that all our resources should be collected to strike the blow which will determine the fate of the nation.... It matters not what partial reverses we may meet with elsewhere. Here is the true defense of Was.h.i.+ngton. It is here, on the banks of the James, that the fate of the Union should be decided."

Halleck replied by wire and by mail. "I must take things as I find them," he said in the letter. "I find the forces divided, and I wish to unite them. Only one feasible plan has been presented for doing this. If you or anyone else had presented a better plan I certainly should have adopted it. But all of your plans require reinforcements, which it is impossible to give you. It is very easy to ask for reinforcements, but it is not so easy to give them when you have no disposable troops at your command." The telegram, being briefer, was more to the point. After saying, "You cannot regret the order of withdrawal more than I did the necessity of giving it," Halleck put an end to the discussion: "It will not be rescinded and you will be expected to execute it with all possible promptness." Next day, August 7-the date of Lee's letter urging Jackson to consider a strike at Pope-the need for haste was emphasized in a second wire received by the hara.s.sed commander at Harrison's Landing. "I must beg of you, General, to hurry along this movement," Halleck told him. "Your reputation as well as mine may be involved in its rapid execution."

Left with neither voice nor choice in the matter, McClellan worked hard to speed the evacuation. But he wrote his wife: "They are committing a fatal error in withdrawing me from here, and the future will show it. I think the result of their machination will be that Pope will be badly thrashed within ten days, and that they will be very glad to turn over the redemption of their affairs to me."

The danger, the crying need for haste as Halleck saw it, was that Lee might take advantage of his interior lines and attack one or the other of the two main Federal forces before the northward s.h.i.+ft began, or, worse still, while the movement was in progress. Of the two-Pope on the Rappahannock and McClellan on the James-Old Brains was most concerned about the former. As he put it to McClellan, who was struggling to extract his troops from the malarial Peninsula bottoms, "This delay might not only be fatal to the health of your army, but in the meantime General Pope's forces would be exposed to the heavy blows of the enemy without the slightest hope of a.s.sistance from you."

Pope was worried too, although he did not let it show in his manner. Privately he was complaining to Halleck about "the supineness of the Army of the Potomac," which he said "renders it easy for the enemy to reinforce Jackson heavily," and he urged: "Please make McClellan do something." Publicly, however, he showed no symptoms of doubt or trepidation. On August 8, when he transferred his headquarters southward to Culpeper, Halleck wired him uneasily: "Do not advance, so as to expose yourself to any disaster, unless you can better your line of defense, until we can get more troops upon the Rappahannock.... You must be very cautious." Pope seemed unalarmed; he appeared, in fact, not to have a single cautious bone in his whole body. He intended to hold where he was, despite the risk involved in the knowledge that Stonewall Jackson was before him with a force he estimated at 30,000 men.

Numerically, as of early August, his confidence was well founded. Exclusive of Burnside, whose 12,000 had debarked at Aquia and were now at Falmouth, he had 77,779 soldiers in the Army of Virginia. Even after deducting the troops in the Was.h.i.+ngton fortifications, along with those in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond, he was left with just over 56,000 in the eight divisions of infantry and two brigades of cavalry comprising the three corps under McDowell, Banks, and Sigel. This was the field force proper, and it seemed ample for the execution of the project he had conceived at the outset. His intention had been to operate southward down the Orange & Alexandria to Gordonsville and beyond, thereby menacing the Virginia Central so that Lee would weaken the Richmond defenses to the point where McClellan could make a successful a.s.sault. McClellan's pending withdrawal would alter at least a part of this, of course, but Pope still thought the plan a good one: not the least of its advantages being that it had the approval and support of the Administration, since it simultaneously covered Was.h.i.+ngton. What was more, his a.s.signment-formerly minor, or anyhow secondary-now became major. Instead of setting Richmond up for capture by McClellan, he would take the place himself and be known thereafter as the man who broke the back of the rebellion. That was a thought to warm the heart. He would consolidate his gains, then proceed with his advance, reinforced by such numbers as reached him from the Army of the Potomac.

At present, it was true, his striking force was rather scattered. More than a third of McDowell's corps-11,000 infantry, with 30 guns and about 500 cavalry-was still at Fredericksburg, under Brigadier General Rufus King, blocking the direct approach to Was.h.i.+ngton. Now that Burnside had arrived, Pope might have summoned King to join him, but just now he preferred to keep him where he was, menacing Jackson's supply line and playing on Lee's fears for the safety of his capital. Besides, he felt strong enough without him. Banks and Sigel had come eastward through the pa.s.ses of the Blue Ridge, and though their five divisions had not been consolidated, either with each other or with McDowell's two, Pope still had better than 44,000 troops with which to oppose the estimated 30,000 rebels in his immediate front. The situation was not without its dangers: Halleck kept saying so, at any rate, and old General Wool, transferred from Fort Monroe to Maryland, had warned him at the outset: "Jackson is an enterprising officer. Delays are dangerous." But Pope was not alarmed. If the highly touted Stonewall wanted a fight, at those odds, he would gladly accommodate him.

Banks felt the same way about it, only more so; for while Pope intended to earn a reputation here in the East, Banks was determined to retrieve one. On August 8, therefore, he was pleased to receive at Culpeper an order directing him to march his two divisions south: Jackson had crossed the Rapidan, moving north, and Pope wanted Banks to delay him while the rest of the army was being a.s.sembled to give him the battle he seemed to be seeking. Banks did not hesitate. McDowell and Sigel were behind him; King was on the way from Fredericksburg. Next morning, eight hot and dusty miles out of Culpeper, he came under long-range artillery fire from the slopes of a lone peak called Cedar Mountain, and pressing on found rebel infantry disposed in strength about its northern base and in the woods and fields off to the right. After more than two months of brooding over the shocks of May, he was face to face with the old Valley adversary whose soldiers had added insult to injury by giving him the nickname "Commissary" Banks.

He was itching to attack, then and there, but in the face of the known odds-he was down to about 8000 men as a result of multiple detachments, while Jackson was reported to have at least three times that many-he did not feel free to do so on his own responsibility. Then a courier arrived from Culpeper, a staff colonel sent by Pope with a verbal message which seemed to authorize an immediate all-out attack. (The officer's name was Louis Marshall, a Union-loyal Virginian and a nephew of R. E. Lee, who had said of him: "I could forgive [his] fighting against us, but not his joining Pope.") Welcome as the message was, Banks could scarcely believe his ears. In fact, he had it written down and then read back for verification: General Banks will move to the front immediately, a.s.sume command of all the forces in the front, deploy his skirmishers if the enemy approaches, and attack him immediately as soon as he approaches, and be reinforced from here.

This ambiguous farrago, dictated by Lee's nephew in the name of Pope, was open to conflicting interpretations. It might mean that the attack was to be made with skirmishers only, holding the main body on the defensive until McDowell arrived to even the odds and Sigel came up to stretch them in favor of the Union. On the other hand, it might mean what it said in the words that were quickest to catch the eye: "Attack him immediately as soon as he approaches." That sounded like the army commander who three weeks ago had admonished his generals "to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found." At any rate, whatever the odds, Banks took him at his word. He put his men in attack formation and sent them forward, on the left and on the right.

Lee's letter of August 7, recommending a swipe at Pope, had not been needed; for while he was writing it Jackson was already putting his 25,000 soldiers in motion to carry out the strategy it suggested. His cavalry having reported the superior enemy forces badly scattered beyond the Rapidan, he hoped to make a rapid march across that stream, pounce on one of the isolated segments, and withdraw Valley-style before Pope could concentrate against him. So far, it had not worked at all that way, however-primarily because another letter of Lee's, while needed, had not been heeded. A. P. Hill was kept as much in the dark as to his chief's intentions as Winder and Ewell had ever been. "I pledge you my word, Doctor," the latter told an inquiring chaplain before the movement got under way, "I do not know whether we march north, south, east or west, or whether we will march at all. General Jackson has simply ordered me to have the division ready to move at dawn. I have been ready ever since, and have no further indication of his plans. That is almost all I ever know of his designs."

Stonewall was still Stonewall, especially when secrecy was involved, and no one-not even Robert E. Lee, of whom he said: "I am willing to follow him blindfolded"-was going to change him. The result, as Lee had feared, was mutual resentment and mistrust. Not only did Jackson not "consult" with his red-haired lieutenant, whose so-called Light Division was as large as the other two combined; he rode him unmercifully for every slight infraction of the rules long since established for the Army of the Valley. Consequently, glad as he had been to get away from Longstreet, Hill began to suspect that he had leaped from the frying pan into the fire. Resentment bred confusion, and confusion mounted quickly toward a climax in the course of the march northward against Pope. Having reached Orange in good order the first day, August 7, Jackson issued instructions for the advance across the Rapidan tomorrow, which would place his army in position for a strike at Culpeper the following day. The order of march would be Ewell, Hill, Winder; so he said; but during the night he changed his mind and told Ewell to take an alternate road. Uninformed of the change, Hill had his men lined up next morning on the outskirts of town, waiting for Ewell to take the lead. That was where Jackson found him. Angry at the delay, he rebuked him and pa.s.sed Winder to the front. The result was further delay and a miserable showing, complicated by Federal cavalry probing at his wagon train. Ewell made barely eight miles before sundown, Winder about half that, and Hill was less than two miles out of Orange when the army halted for the night. Jackson was furious. So was Hill. Ewell fretted. Winder was down with fever, riding in an ambulance despite his doctor's orders that he leave the field entirely. Several men had died of sunstroke, and the rest took their cue from their commanders, grumbling at the way they had been shuffled about in the dust and heat.

Overnight, Jackson's wrath turned to gloom. The fast-stepping Army of the Valley, formerly such a close-st.i.tched organization, seemed to be coming apart at the seams. Rising next morning to resume the march, he informed Lee: "I am not making much progress.... Today I do not expect much more than to close up [the column] and clear the country around the train of the enemy's cavalry. I fear that the expedition will, in consequence of my tardy movements, be productive of but little good."

Ewell had the lead; Winder was in close support; Hill was marching hard to close the gap. The morning wore on, hot as yesterday. Noon came and went. Presently, up ahead, there was the boom of guns, and word came back to Jackson that the Federals were making a stand, apparently with horse artillery. He rode forward and made a brief reconnaissance. This was piedmont country, rolling, heavily wooded except for scattered fields of grain. The bluecoats did not appear to be present in strength, but there was no real telling: Jackson decided to wait for Hill before advancing. Off to the right was Cedar Mountain, obviously the key to the position. Ewell was told to put his batteries there and his infantry below them, along the northern base; Winder would take position on the left in order to overlap the Yankee line when the signal was given to go forward. There was no hurry. It was now past 2 o'clock and Culpeper was eight miles away: too far, in any event, for an attack to be made on it today. Jackson went onto the porch of a nearby farmhouse and lay down to take a nap.

Meanwhile the artillery duel continued, the Union guns firing accurately and fast. This was clearly something more than a mere delaying action staged by cavalry; there was infantry out there beyond the woods, though in what strength could not be told. Manifestly weak, pale as his s.h.i.+rt-he was in fact in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves-Winder had left his ambulance, ignoring the doctor's protests, put his troops in line, extending the left as instructed, and then had joined his batteries, observing their fire with binoculars and calling out corrections for the gunners. It was now about 4 o'clock. An officer went down alongside him, clipped on the head by a fragment of sh.e.l.l; another was eviscerated by a jagged splinter; a third was struck in the rump by an unexploded ricochet and hurled ten feet, though he suffered only bruises as a result. Then came Winder's turn. Tall and wavy-haired, he kept his post, and as he continued to direct the counterbattery fire, calm and cool-looking in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, with the binoculars held to his eyes, a sh.e.l.l came screaming at him, cras.h.i.+ng through his left arm and tearing off most of the ribs on that side of his chest. He fell straight back and lay full length on the ground, quivering spasmodically.

"General, do you know me?" a staff lieutenant asked, bending over the sufferer in order to be heard above the thunder of the guns.

"Oh yes," Winder said vaguely, and his mind began to wander. The guns were bucking and banging all around him, but he was back at home again in Maryland. In shock, he spoke disconnectedly of his wife and children until a chaplain came and knelt beside him, seeking to turn his thoughts from worldly things.

"General, lift up your head to G.o.d."

"I do," Winder said calmly. "I do lift it up to him."

Carried to the rear, he died just at sundown, asking after the welfare of his men, and those who were with him were hard put for a comforting answer. By then the fury of the Union a.s.sault had crashed against his lines, which had broken in several places. Jackson's plan for outflanking the enemy on the left had miscarried; it was he who was outflanked in that direction. The sudden crash of musketry, following close on the news that Winder had been mangled by a sh.e.l.l, brought him off the farmhouse porch and into the saddle. He rode hard toward the left, entering a moil of fugitives who had given way in panic when the bluecoats emerged roaring from the cover of the woods. Drawing his sword-a thing no one had ever seen him do before in battle-he brandished it above his head and called out hoa.r.s.ely: "Rally, brave men, and press forward! Your general will lead you; Jackson will lead you! Follow me!"

This had an immediate effect, for the sight was as startling in its way as the unexpected appearance of the Federals had been. The men halted in their tracks, staring open-mouthed, and then began to rally in response to the cries of their officers, echoing Stonewall, who was finally persuaded to retire out of range of the bullets twittering round him. "Good, good," he said as he turned back, Winder's successor having a.s.sured him that the Yankees would be stopped. Whether this promise could have been kept in the face of another a.s.sault was another matter, but fortunately by now the battle was moving in the opposite direction: A. P. Hill had arrived with the Light Division. Opening ranks to let the fugitives through, Little Powell's veterans swamped the blue attackers, flung them back on their reserves, and pursued them northward through the gathering twilight. So quickly, after the manner of light fiction, had victory been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the flames of defeat, if not disaster.

Thankful as Jackson was for this deliverance, he was by no means satisfied. Banks had escaped him once before; he did not intend to let him get away again. A full moon was rising, and he ordered the chase continued by its light. Whenever resistance was encountered he pa.s.sed his guns to the front, sh.e.l.led the woods, and then resumed the pursuit, gathering sh.e.l.l-dazed prisoners as he went. Four hundred bluecoats were captured in all, bringing the total Federal losses to 2381; Jackson himself had lost 1276. At last, however, receiving word from his cavalry that the enemy had been heavily reinforced, he called a halt within half a dozen miles of Culpeper and pa.s.sed the word for his men to sleep on their arms in line of battle. He himself rode back toward Cedar Mountain, seeking shelter at roadside houses along the way. At each he was told that he was welcome but that the wounded filled the rooms. Finally he drew rein beside a gra.s.sy plot, dismounted stiffly, and lay face down on the turf, wrapped in a borrowed cloak. When a staff officer asked if he wanted something to eat: "No," he groaned, "I want rest: nothing but rest," and was soon asleep.

Sunday, August 10, dawned hot and humid, the quiet broken only by the moans and shrieks of the injured, blue and gray, presently augmented by their piteous cries for water as the sun rose burning, stiffening their wounds. Surgeons and aid men pa.s.sed among them, and burial details came along behind. The scavengers were active, too, gleaning the field of arms and equipment; as usual, Old Blue Light wanted all he could lay hands on. Thus the morning wore away, and not a shot was fired. Aware that Sigel and McDowell had arrived to give Pope two whole corps and half of a third-King was still on the way from Fredericksburg, where Burnside was on call-Jackson would not deliver a Sabbath attack; but he was prepared to receive one, whatever the odds, so long as there were wounded men to be cared for and spoils to be loaded into his wagons. That afternoon, as always seemed to be the case on the morrow of a battle, the weather broke. There were long peals of thunder, followed by rain. Jackson held his ground, and the various details continued their work into the night.

Next morning a deputation of Federal hors.e.m.e.n came forward under a flag of truce, proposing an armistice for the removal of the wounded. Jackson gladly agreed; for King's arrival that night would give Pope better than twice as many troops as he himself had, and this would afford him additional time in which to prepare for the withdrawal he now knew was necessary. While the soldiers of both armies mingled on the field where they had fought, he finished packing his wagons and got off a message to Lee: "G.o.d blessed our arms with another victory." When darkness came he lighted campfires all along his front, stole away southward under cover of their burning, and recrossed the Rapidan, unmolested, unpursued.

Another victory, he called it: not without justification. He had inflicted a thousand more casualties than he suffered, and for two days after the battle he had remained in control of the field. Yet there were other aspects he ignored. Banks had done to him what he had tried to do to s.h.i.+elds at Kernstown, and what was more had done it with considerably greater success, even apart from the initial rout; for in the end it was Stonewall who retreated. But now that the roles were reversed he applied a different set of standards. Privately, according to his chief of staff, he went so far as to refer to Cedar Mountain as "the most successful of his exploits." Few would agree with him in this, however, even among the men in his own army. They had been mishandled and they knew it. Outnumbering the enemy three to one on the field of fight, he had been careless in reconnaissance, allowing his troops to be outflanked while he drowsed on a farmhouse veranda, and had swung into vigorous action only after his left wing had been shattered. Following as it did his sorry performance throughout the Seven Days, the recrossing of the Rapidan gave point to a question now being asked: Had Stonewall lost his touch? "Arrogant" was the word applied by some. Others remarked that his former triumphs had been scored against second-raters out in the Valley, "but when pitted against the best of the Federal commanders he did not appear so well." Then too, there had always been those who considered him crazy-crazy and, so far, lucky. Give him "a month uncontrolled," one correspondent declared, "and he would destroy himself and all under him."

Time perhaps would show who was right, the general or his critics, but for the present at least two other men derived particular satisfaction from the battle and its outcome, despite the fact that they viewed it from opposite directions. One of the two was A. P. Hill. Still fuming because of the undeserved rebuke he had received on the outskirts of Orange the day before, he had marched toward the sound of firing and reached the field to find his tormentor face to face with disaster. After opening his ranks to let the fugitives through-including hundreds from the Stonewall Brigade itself-he had launched the counterattack that saved the day and provided whatever factual basis there was for Jackson's claim to "another victory." Revenge was seldom sweeter; Hill enjoyed it to the full.

The other satisfied observer was John Pope, who celebrated his eastern debut as a fighting man by publis.h.i.+ng, for the encouragement of his army, Halleck's personal congratulations "on your hard earned but brilliant success against vastly superior numbers. Your troops have covered themselves with glory." Pope thought so too, now, although at first he had experienced definite twinges of anxiety and doubt. Alarmed by what had happened to Banks as a result of misinterpreting the verbal message garbled by Lee's nephew, he had hastened to a.s.semble his eight divisions (including King's, which arrived Monday evening to give him well over 50,000 men) for a renewal of the contest on the morning after the armistice expired. While Jackson was stealing away in the darkness behind a curtain of blazing campfires, Pope was wiring Halleck: "The enemy has been receiving reinforcements all day.... I think it almost certain that we shall be attacked in the morning, and we shall make the best fight we can." This did not sound much like the belligerent commander who had urged his subordinates to "discard such ideas" as the one of "'taking strong positions and holding them.'" However, when he found Stonewall gone with the dawn he recovered his former tone and notified Halleck: "The enemy has retreated under cover of the night.... Our cavalry and artillery are in pursuit. I shall follow with the infantry as far as the Rapidan." Now it was Halleck's turn to be alarmed. "Beware of a snare," he quickly replied. "Feigned retreats are secesh tactics."

But he need not have worried; not just yet. Pope was content to follow at a distance, and when he reached the near bank of the Rapidan he stopped as he had said he would do. Presently he fell back toward Culpeper, pausing along the way to publish Halleck's congratulations. He was "delighted and astonished," he told his soldiers, at their "gallant and intrepid conduct." Whatever their reaction to this astonishment might be, he went on to venture a prophecy: "Success and glory are sure to accompany such conduct, and it is safe to predict that Cedar Mountain is only the first in a series of victories which shall make the Army of Virginia famous in the land."

Lee saw it otherwise. Pleased with Jackson's repulse of Banks, he congratulated him "most heartily on the victory which G.o.d has granted you over our enemies" and expressed the hope that it was "but the precursor of others over our foe in that quarter, which will entirely break up and scatter his army." However, the withdrawal to Gordonsville on August 12, despite Stonewall's subsequent double-barreled explanation that it was done "in order to avoid being attacked by the vastly superior force in front of me, and with the hope that by thus falling back General Pope would be induced to follow me until I should be reinforced," not only ended the prospect that his lieutenant would be able to "suppress" Pope and return to Richmond in time to help deal with McClellan; it also re-exposed the Virginia Central. This was as intolerable now as it had been a month ago, and Lee moved promptly to meet the threat the following day by ordering Longstreet to Gordonsville with ten brigades, which reduced by half the army remnant protecting the capital from a.s.sault on the east and south. Simultaneously he sent Hood, who now commanded a demi-division composed of his own and Law's brigades, to Hanover Junction in order to block an advance from Fredericksburg; or if Burnside moved westward to join Pope, Hood could parallel his march and join Jackson. Something of a balance was thus maintained in every direction except McClellan's, potentially the most dangerous of them all.

Still, potential was a long way from kinetic: especially where McClellan was concerned. A week ago, when the bluecoats marched up Malvern Hill and then back down again, Lee had said of him: "I have no idea that he will advance on Richmond now." He took the risk, not thinking it great, and presently found it even smaller than he had supposed. On this same August 13, while Longstreet's men were boarding the cars for their journey out to the piedmont, an English deserter came into the southern lines with a story that part of McClellan's army was being loaded onto transports. Next day this was confirmed by D. H. Hill, whose scouts on the south side of the James reported Fitz-John Porter's corps already gone. That was enough for Lee. Convinced that Pope was about to be reinforced from the Peninsula-though he did not know to what extent-he decided to turn his back on Little Mac and give his undivided close-up personal attention to "the miscreant" on the Rapidan. The time was short. Before he went to bed that night he notified Davis: "Unless I hear from you to the contrary I shall leave for G[ordonsville] at 4 a.m. tomorrow. The troops are acc.u.mulating there and I must see that arrangements are made for the field." Tactfully-for he expected to be busy and he understood the man with whom he dealt-he added: "When you do not hear from me, you may feel sure that I do not think it necessary to trouble you. I shall feel obliged to you for any directions you may think proper to give."

In this sequence of events, Halleck's worst fears moved toward realization. The Federal dilemma, as he saw it, was that the rebels might concentrate northward and jump Pope before McClellan completed his roundabout transfer from the James to the Rappahannock. The southern commander had already proved himself an opponent not to be trusted with the initiative; yet that was precisely what he would have so long as the Army of the Potomac was in transit. The contest was in the nature of a race, with the Army of Virginia as the prize to be claimed by whichever of the two superior armies moved the fastest.

Lee was not long in seeing it that way, too, and once he had seen it he acted. In fact-necessity, in this case, being not only the mother of invention, but also first cousin to prescience-he acted before he saw it: first, by detaching Jackson: then by reinforcing him with Hill: finally, by sending Longstreet up to reinforce them both: so that, in a sense, he was already running before he heard the starting gun. And now that he heard it he ran faster. As a result he not only got there first, he got there before McClellan had done much more than lift his knees off the cinders. Yet that was all: Fortune's smile changed abruptly to a frown. Having reached the finish line, Lee found himself unable to break the ribbon he was breasting.

The ribbon was the Rapidan, and Pope was disposed behind it. However, it was not the Union commander who forestalled the intended destruction, but rather a recurrence of the malady which had plagued the Confederates throughout the Seven Days: lack of coordination. Detraining at Gordonsville on August 15, Lee conferred at once with Longstreet and Jackson, who showed him on the map how rare an opportunity lay before him. Nine miles this side of Fredericksburg, the Rapidan and the Rappahannock converged to form the apex of a V laid on its side with the open end to the west. Pope's att.i.tude within the V, and consequently the att.i.tude of the fifty-odd thousand soldiers he had wedged in there between the constricting rivers, was not unlike that of a browsing ram with his attendant flock. Unaware that the butcher was closing in, he had backed himself into a fence corner, apparently in the belief that he and they were safer so.

In this he was considerably mistaken, as Lee was now preparing to demonstrate. Across the open end of the V, at an average distance of twenty miles from the apex, ran the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, leading back to Mana.s.sas Junction, the Army of Virginia's main supply base. While the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia was being concentrated behind Clark's Mountain, masked from observation from across the Rapidan, the cavalry would swing upstream, cross in the darkness, and strike for Rappahannock Station. Destruction of the railroad bridge at that point, severing Pope's supply line and removing his only chance for a dry-shod crossing of the river in his rear, would be the signal for the infantry to emerge from hiding and surge across the fords to its front. Pope's army, caught off balance, would be tamped into the cul-de-sac and mangled.

Both wing commanders approved of the plan. Jackson, in fact, was so enthusiastic that he proposed to launch the a.s.sault tomorrow. But Longstreet, as on the eve of the Seven Days, and no doubt recalling the Valley general's faulty logistics on that occasion, suggested a one-day wait. Moreover, though he approved of the basic strategy proposed, he thought better results would be obtained by moving around the enemy right, where the army could take up a strong defensive position in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, forcing Pope to attack until, bled white, too f.a.gged to flee, he could be counterattacked and smothered. Lee agreed to the delay-which was necessary anyhow, the cavalry not having arrived-but preferred to a.s.sault the enemy left, so as to come between Pope and whatever reinforcements might try to join him, by way of Fredericksburg, either from Was.h.i.+ngton or the Peninsula. Next day it was so ordered. The army would take up masked positions near the Rapidan on Sunday, August 17, and be prepared to cross at dawn of the following day, on receiving word that the bridge was out at Rappahannock Station.

That was when things started going wrong: particularly in the cavalry. Stuart had two brigades, one under Wade Hampton, left in front of Richmond, the other under Fitzhugh Lee, the army commander's nephew, stationed at Hanover Junction. The latter was to be used in the strike at Rappahannock Station; he was expected Sunday night, and Stuart rode out to meet him east of Clark's Mountain, in rear of Racc.o.o.n Ford. Midnight came; there was no sign of him; Jeb and his staff decided to get some sleep on the porch of a roadside house. Just before dawn, hearing hoofbeats in the distance, two officers rode forward to meet what they thought was Lee, but met instead a spatter of carbine fire and came back shouting, "Yankees!" Stuart and the others barely had time to jump for their horses and get away in a hail of bullets, leaving the general's plumed hat, silk-lined cape, and haversack for the blue troopers, who presently withdrew across the river, whooping with delight as they pa.s.sed the captured finery around. Subsequently it developed that the ford had been left unguarded by Robert Toombs, who, feeling mellow on his return from a small-hours celebration with some friends, had excused the pickets. Placed in arrest for his neglect, he defied regulations by buckling on his sword and making an impa.s.sioned speech to his brigade: whereupon he was relieved of command and ordered back to Gordonsville, much to the discomfort of his troops. This did little to ease Stuart's injured pride and nothing at all to recover his lost plumage. Skilled as he was at surprising others, the laughing cavalier was not accustomed to being surprised himself. Nor were matters improved by the infantrymen who greeted him for several days thereafter with the question, "Where's your hat?"

Fitz Lee's nonarrival, which required a one-day postponement of the attack-it was as well; not all the infantry brigades were in position anyhow-was explained by the fact that, his orders having stressed no need for haste, he had marched by way of Louisa to draw rations and ammunition. When this was discovered it caused another one-day postponement, the attack now being set for August 20. Even this second delay seemed just as well: Pope appeared oblivious and docile, and in the interim Lee would have time to bring another division up from Richmond. Before nightfall on the 18th, however, word came to headquarters that the Federals were breaking camp and retiring toward Culpeper. Next morning Lee climbed to a signal station on Clark's Mountain and saw for himself that the report was all too true. The sea of tents had disappeared. Long lines of dark-clothed men and white-topped wagons, toylike in the distance, were winding away from the bivouac areas, trailing serpentine clouds of dust in the direction of the Rappahannock. After watching for a time this final evidence of Pope's escape from the destruction planned for him there between the rivers, Lee put away his binoculars, took a deep breath, and said regretfully to Longstreet, who stood beside him on the mountain top: "General, we little thought that the enemy would turn his back upon us thus early in the campaign."

If there could be no envelopment, at least there could be a pursuit. Lee crossed the Rapidan the following day: only to find himself breasting another ribbon he could not break. This time, too, the ribbon was a river-the Rappahannock-but the failure to cross this second stream was not so much due to a lack of efficiency in his own army as it was to the high efficiency of his opponent's. Pope knew well enough now what dangers had been hanging over his head, for he had captured along with Stuart's plume certain dispatches showing Lee's plan for his destruction, and in spite of his early disparagement of defensive tactics he was displaying a real talent for such work. After pulling out of the suicidal V, he skillfully took position behind its northern arm, and for two full days, four times around the clock, wherever Lee probed for a crossing there were solid ranks of Federals, well supported by artillery, drawn up to receive him on the high left bank of the Rappahannock.

Notified of the situation, Halleck wired: "Stand firm on that line until I can help you. Fight hard, and aid will soon come." Pope replied: "You may rely upon our making a very hard fight in case the enemy advances." Halleck, preferring firmer language, repeated his instructions: "Dispute every inch of ground, and fight like the devil till we can reinforce you. Forty-eight hours more and we can make you strong enough." Encouraged by this pep talk, as well as by his so-far success in preventing a crossing of the river to his front, Pope rea.s.sured the wrought-up Was.h.i.+ngton commander: "There need be no apprehension, as I think no impression can be made on me for some days."

Once more Lee was in disagreement. He not only intended to make what his opponent called an "impression," he knew he had to make one soon or else give up the game. Information from Richmond, added to what he gleaned from northern papers, had convinced him by now that the whole of the Army of the Potomac was on its way to the Rappahannock. Burnside's troops, under Major General Jesse L. Reno, had already joined Pope, bringing his total strength to 70,000 according to Lee's computations, and this figure would in turn be more than doubled when McClellan's men arrived. To oppose this imminent combination, Lee himself had 55,000 of all arms, plus 17,000 still at Richmond. Manifestly, with the odds getting longer every day, whatever was to be done must be done quickly. At any rate, the present stalemate was intolerable. Perhaps one way to break it, Lee reasoned, would be to startle Pope and make him jump by sending Stuart to probe at his rear, particularly the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, which stretched like an exposed nerve back to his base at Mana.s.sas. Stuart thought so, too. Ever since the loss of his plume, five days ago near Racc.o.o.n Ford, he had been chafing under the jibes and begging Lee to turn him loose. "I intend to make the Yankees pay for that hat," he had written his wife.

He took off on the morning of August 22, crossing the Rappahannock at Waterloo Bridge with 1500 troopers and two guns. His goal was Catlett's Station on the O & A, specifically the bridge over Cedar Run just south of there, and he intended to reach it by pa.s.sing around the rear of Pope's army, which was drawn up along the east bank of the river north of Rappahannock Station to contest a crossing by Lee's infantry. During a midday halt at Warrenton a young woman informed him that she had wagered a bottle of wine against a Union quartermaster's boast that he would be in Richmond within thirty days. "Take his name and look out for him," Stuart told one of his staff. The column pushed on toward Auburn Mills, rounding the headwaters of Cedar Run, and then proceeded southeastward down the opposite watershed. At sunset a violent storm broke over the troopers' heads. Night came early; "the darkest night I ever knew," Stuart called it; but he pressed on, undetected in the rain and blackness, and within striking distance of Catlett's was rewarded with a piece of luck in the form of a captured orderly, a contraband who, professing his joy at being once more among his "own people," offered to guide them to the private quarters of General Pope himself. Stuart took him up on that. Surrounding the brightly lighted camp, he had the bugler sound the charge, and a thousand yelling hors.e.m.e.n emerged from the outer darkness, swinging sabers and firing revolvers. The startled bluecoats scattered, and the troopers pursued them, spotting targets by the sudden glare of lightning. It was strange. A lightning flash would show the road filled with running men; then the next would show it empty, the runners vanished.

Despite the effectiveness of evasive tactics which appeared to enlist the aid of the supernatural, more than 200 prisoners and about as many horses were rounded up, including a number of staff officers and blooded animals, along with a good deal of miscellaneous loot. From Pope's tent-though the general himself, fortunately or unfortunately, was away on a tour of inspection-the raiders appropriated his personal baggage, a payroll chest stuffed with $350,000 in greenbacks, and a dispatch book containing headquarters copies of all messages sent or received during the past week. The railroad bridge over Cedar Run, however-the prime objective of the raid-resisted all attempts at demolition. Too wet to burn, too tough to chop, it had to be left intact when Stuart pulled out before dawn, returning the way he had come.

By daylight, one bedraggled trooper remarked, "guns, horses, and men look[ed] as if the whole business had pa.s.sed through a shower of yellow mud last night." But Stuart's spirits were undampened. At Warrenton he called a halt in front of the young woman's house and had the captured quartermaster brought forward to collect the wagered bottle of wine for drinking in Libby Prison. Fitz Lee was in equally high spirits. Safely back across Waterloo Bridge that afternoon, he hailed an infantry brigadier and said he had something to show him. Stepping behind a large oak, he presently emerged wearing the c.o.c.kaded hat and blue dress coat of a Federal major general. The infantryman roared with laughter, for the coat was so much too long for the bandy-legged Lee that the hem of it nearly covered his spurs. Stuart laughed hardest of all, and when he saw the name John Pope on the label inside the collar, he extended the joke by composing a dispatch addressed to the former owner: "You have my hat and plume. I have your best coat. I have the honor to propose a cartel for a fair exchange of the prisoners." Although nothing came of this-the coat was sent instead to Richmond, where it was put on display in the State Library-Stuart was quite satisfied. "I have had my revenge out of Pope," he told his wife.

Pope's coat was a prize R. E. Lee could appreciate as well as the next man, not excepting his charade-staging nephew; but more important to him, by far, was the captured dispatch book which reached his headquarters the following morning, August 24. In it he found laid before him, as if he were reading over his adversary's shoulder, a sequent and detailed account of the Federal build-up beyond the Rappahannock. In addition to Reno, whose two divisions had already joined, Pope had other forces close at hand, including one on its way from western Virgina by rail and ca.n.a.l boat. Most urgent, though, was the news that Porter, whose corps was the advance unit of McClellan's army, had debarked at Aquia Creek three days ago and marched next day to Falmouth, which placed him within twenty miles of Pope's left at Kelly's Ford, five miles downstream from Rappahannock Station. He might have joined today-or yesterday, for that matter-along with Heintzelman, whose corps was reported steaming northward close behind him. "Forty-eight hours more and we can make you strong enough," Halleck had wired Pope, and Pope had replied: "There need be no apprehension." That, too, was three days ago, while Porter's men were filing off their transports. The race was considerably nearer its finish than Lee had supposed.

In point of fact, it was over. Pope was already too strong and too securely based for Lee to engage him in a pitched battle with anything like certainty of the outcome. Unless he could maneuver him out of his present position, and by so doing gain the chance to fall on some exposed detachment, Pope would go unscathed. And unless Lee could do this quickly, he could not do it at all; for once McClellan's whole army was on the scene, or even the greater part of it, the odds would be hopeless. Lee, then, had two choices, neither of which included standing still. He could retreat, or he could advance. To retreat would be to give up the piedmont and probably the Shenandoah Valley; the siege of Richmond, lately raised, would be renewed under conditions worse than those which had followed Joe Johnston's retreat. That would not do at all. And yet to advance might also worsen matters, since Pope might retire on Fredericksburg and thereby hasten the concentration Lee was seeking to delay.

The gray-bearded general studied his map, and there he found what he thought might be the answer. Pope's supply line, the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, extended northeastward in his rear, so that to maneuver him in that direction would be to make him increase the distance between his present force and the troops coming ash.o.r.e at Aquia Creek. Twice already Lee had tried to cut that artery: once with a blow aimed at Rappahannock Station, which had failed because Pope pulled back before it landed, and once more with another aimed at Catlett's, which had failed because the rain soaked the bridge too wet for burning. Now he would try again, still farther up the line. If successful, this would not only provoke a longer retreat by threatening Pope's main base of supplies, miles in his rear, but would also repeat the months-old Valley ruse of seeming to threaten Was.h.i.+ngton, which had yielded such rich dividends before. In reasoning thus, Lee was not discouraged by his two previous failures; rather, he resolved to profit by them. This time he would swing a heavier blow. Instead of using cavalry, he would use infantry. And he would use it in strength.

Infantry in this case meant Stonewall: not only because his three divisions were on the flank from which the march around Pope's right would most conveniently begin, but also because he knew the country he would be traversing and his men had won their "foot cavalry" fame for long, fast marches such as the one now proposed. Conversely, Longstreet too would be a.s.signed the kind of work he preferred and did best: holding, with his four divisions, the line of the Rappahannock against possible a.s.sault by Pope's ten divisions across the way. This was risky in the extreme, both for Jackson and Old Pete. Pope was not only stronger now than both of them combined; he was apt to be heavily reinforced at any time, if indeed he had not been already. Furthermore, in dividing his army Lee was inviting disaster by reversing the basic military principle of concentration in the presence of a superior enemy. Yet he did not plan this out of contempt for Pope (Pope the bl.u.s.terer, Pope the "miscreant" had handled his army with considerable skill throughout the five days since his escape from the constricting V); he planned it out of necessity. Unable on the one hand to stand still, or on the other to retire-either of which would do no more than postpone ruin and make it all the more ruinous when it inevitably came-Lee perceived that the only way to deal with an opponent he did not feel strong enough to fight was to maneuver him into retreat, and to do that he would have to divide his army. Thus the argument, pro and con, came full circle to one end: He would do it because there was nothing else to do. The very thing which made such a division seem overrash-Pope's numerical superiority-was also its strongest recommendation, according to Lee, who later remarked: "The disparity...between the contending forces rendered the risks unavoidable."

Today was Sunday. Shortly after noon, having made his decision, he rode to left-wing headquarters at Jeffersonton to give Stonewall his a.s.signment. Jeffersonton was two miles back from the river, where a noisy artillery duel was in progress from opposite banks; Lee spoke above the rumble of the guns. The march would begin tomorrow, he said. Moving upstream for a crossing well above Pope's right, Jackson would then swing northward behind the screen of the Bull Run Mountains, beyond which he would turn southeast through Thoroughfare Gap-the route he had followed thirteen months ago, coming down from the Valley to reach the field where he had won his nickname-for a strike at Pope's supply line, far in his rear. No precise objective was a.s.signed. Anywhere back there along the railroad would do, Lee said, just so Pope was properly alarmed for the safety of his communications, the welfare of his supply base, and perhaps for the security of Was.h.i.+ngton itself. Lee explained that he did not want a general engagement; he wanted Pope drawn away from the reinforcements being a.s.sembled on the lower Rappahannock. Once that was done, the two wings would reunite in the vicinity of Mana.s.sas and take advantage of any opening Pope afforded, either through negligence or panic.

Jackson began his preparations at once. After sending a topographical engineer ahead to select the best route around the Bull Run Mountains, he set his camps astir. The march would begin at earliest dawn, "with the utmost prompt.i.tude, without knapsacks"-without everything, in fact, except weapons, the ordnance train, and ambulances. Beef on the hoof would serve for food, supplemented by green corn pulled from fields along the way. Ewell would lead, followed by A. P. Hill; Winder's division, now under Brigadier General W. B. Taliaferro, would bring up the rear, with orders to tread on the heels of Hill's men if they lagged. During the night, Longstreet's guns replaced Jackson's along the Rappahannock south of Waterloo Bridge, and Lee, who would be left with 32,000 troops-including Stuart's cavalry, which would join the flanking column the second day-prepared to stage whatever demonstrations would be needed to conceal from Pope the departure of Jackson's 23,000.

What with the moving guns, the messengers coming and going, the night-long activity in the camps, Stonewall himself got little sleep before the dawn of August 25. He rose early, ate a light breakfast, and took a moment, now that the Sabbath was over, to write a brief note to his wife. In it he said nothing of the march that lay ahead; merely that "I have only time to tell you how much I love my little pet dove." Presently he was in the saddle, doubling the column. The men looked up and sideways at him as he pa.s.sed, the bill of his mangy cadet cap pulled down over his pale eyes. As usual, they did not know where they were going, only that there would most likely be fighting when they got there. Meanwhile, they did the marching and left the thinking to Old Jack. "Close up, men. Close up," he said.

Ten days ago, still down on the Peninsula, preparing for the withdrawal he had unsuccessfully protested, McClellan had warned Halleck: "I don't like Jackson's movements. He will suddenly appear where least expected."

This was not exactly news to Halleck, coming as it did on the heels of Banks' repulse at Cedar Mountain. Besides, Old Brains had other problems on his mind: not the least of which was the situation in the West, where his carefully worked-out tactical dispositions seemed about to come unglued. Kirby Smith left Knoxville that same week, bound for Kentucky, and Bragg had his whole army at Chattanooga, apparently poised for a leap in the same direction. Lincoln was distressed, and so was Halleck. So, presently, was McClellan. Earlier, to encourage haste in the evacuation, Halleck had a.s.sured him: "It is my intention that you shall command all the troops in Virginia as soon as we can get them together." McClellan's spirits rose at the prospect. To Burnside, who arrived with further a.s.surances of Halleck's good will, he said as they stood beside the road down which his army was withdrawing to Fort Monroe: "Look at them, Burn. Did you ever see finer men? Oh, I want to see those men beside of Pope's." But there were subsequent delays, chiefly the result of a shortage of transports, and Halleck's cries for haste once more grew strident: so much so, in fact, that McClellan felt obliged to take official exception to what he called his "tone." Privately he protested to his wife that Halleck "did not even behave with common politeness; he is a bien mauvais sujet- bien mauvais sujet-he is not a gentleman.... I fear that I am very mad."

All the same, he made what haste he could. Porter left for Aquia Creek on August 20, and Heintzelman left next day for Alexandria. Both were to join Pope at once, the former by moving up the left bank of the Rappahannock, the latter by moving down the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. But Lee was across the Rapidan by now. "The forces of Burnside and Pope are hard-pressed," Halleck wired, "and require aid as quickly as you can send it. Come yourself as soon as you can." The bitter satisfaction McClellan found in this appeal was expressed in a letter to his wife: "Now they are in trouble they seem to want the 'Quaker,' the 'procrastinator,' the 'coward,' and the 'traitor.' Bien." Bien." Two days later, Franklin followed Heintzelman to Alexandria, and Sumner embarked the following day to follow Porter to Aquia Creek. Four of the five corps were gone, leaving Keyes to man the Yorktown defenses: McClellan had answered Halleck's cries for haste. But he no longer put any stock in any promises made him, either by the general in chief or by any other representative of the Administration. In fact, he told his wife as he left Old Point Comfort, August 23, "I take it for granted that my orders will be as disagreeable as it is possible to make them-unless Pope is beaten," he added, "in which case they will want me to save Was.h.i.+ngton again. Nothing but their fears will induce them to give me any command of importance or to treat me otherwise than with discourtesy." Two days later, Franklin followed Heintzelman to Alexandria, and Sumner embarked the following day to follow Porter to Aquia Creek. Four of the five corps were gone, leaving Keyes to man the Yorktown defenses: McClellan had answered Halleck's cries for haste. But he no longer put any stock in any promises made him, either by the general in chief or by any other representative of the Administration. In fact, he told his wife as he left Old Point Comfort, August 23, "I take it for granted that my orders will be as disagreeable as it is possible to make them-unless Pope is beaten," he added, "in which case they will want me to save Was.h.i.+ngton again. Nothing but their fears will induce them to give me any command of importance or to treat me otherwise than with discourtesy."

Sure enough, when he got to Aquia next morning-Sunday-he found that Porter and Heintzelman had already been released to Pope, and when he wired for instructions Halleck replied: "You can either remain at Aquia or come to Alexandria, as you may deem best, so as to direct the landing of your troops." In other words, it didn't matter; the Young Napoleon was merely to serve as an expediter, dispatching the rest of his men to Pope as fast as they came ash.o.r.e at those two points. He chose Alexandria, presumably to be close at hand for the call he believed would follow the calamity he expected. Monday and