Crossing (45 page)

As they ate, they slowly began talking, just a little, about the day, telling each other of the dispatches they had taken to which commander, and of the situation at the time. Both of them had been to General Lee’s headquarters twice that day, and they compared notes on the beloved “Marse Robert” as his army called him.

“It’s too bad that Chuckins can’t do courier duty sometimes, as he loves General Lee so much.” Yancy stopped, sat up, and looked around blankly. “Where is Chuckins, anyway?”

Peyton answered, “General Jackson called all his clerks together. He’s taking them to tour the field hospital to get the information about the dead and wounded.”

“Oh,” Yancy said unhappily. “I’d rather ride through a hail of bullets than do that.”

Peyton didn’t answer.

Knowing that General Jackson could call them to duty at any time, after they ate they spread their blankets and went to sleep.

Long after midnight, Yancy was roused from feverish, hateful dreams of blood and gore by a small, pitiful sound. He sat up.

Charles Satterfield sat against the trunk of the oak tree, his knees drawn up, his arms hugging them, and his head resting on them. His shoulders shook. The little noises that Yancy heard was Chuckins sobbing quietly.

Yancy went to him, sat down by him, and put his arms around him. Chuckins buried his face in Yancy’s shoulder. Chuckins cried for a long time, but finally the sobs subsided and he drifted off to sleep, leaning against Yancy’s side, Yancy’s arm still around him. They slept until dawn.

I
n October 1862, General Lee reorganized and streamlined his army. Major General James Longstreet was promoted to Lieutenant General and named commander of the newly-created First Corps. Major General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was also promoted to Lieutenant General and named commander of Second Corps. The Army of Northern Virginia was now not only in spirit, but also in letter, a cohesive unified whole.

Jackson called Yancy and Peyton into his headquarters tent. “I’ve just received a promotion, by the grace of God,” he said humbly. “And for your outstanding service, your courage, your valor, and your dedication to the army, General Lee and I have agreed to give you field promotions to Second Lieutenant.”

He rose, raised his right hand, and, stunned, Yancy and Peyton did the same. Jackson swore them in with the Confederate Officers Notice of Commission, and then they took the Loyalty Oath. It was some time before Peyton and Yancy could actually believe that they were now lieutenants.

A few days after his own illustrious promotion, Jackson received a letter from Anna suggesting that she take steps to publicize his career. His reply was ever that of the devout Christian that he was:

The Battle of Antietam almost claimed another casualty—President Abraham Lincoln. News of the horrendous bloodshed so anguished him that he came very near to physical prostration, and his grief was so great that his advisors, for a day or two, feared that he might suffer a mental breakdown. However, being the keen and stalwart leader that he was, he quickly overcame his desolation and turned again to leading his country in war.

In the aftermath of the shambles at Sharpsburg, Lincoln knew very well that it was the perfect opportunity to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia and shorten the war. He could clearly see that the Army of the Potomac, again fortified to 110,000 men, should pursue Lee’s weakened and exhausted army into Virginia and crush them. But Lincoln could also clearly see that General George B. McClellan had no such plans in mind. After Antietam he had trumpeted his great triumph and settled down there to winter, safely and comfortably back across the Potomac and near to the 73,000 troops guarding Washington.

Determined to prod him, Lincoln made a surprise visit to him and the army on October 1. He stayed for three days, much of it spent pressing “Little Mac” to move the army forward. Yet he could sense it was to no avail.

Early one morning the president invited his close friend, Ozias Hatch, to go for a walk. On a hillside, Lincoln gestured with exasperation to the expanse of white tents spread out below. He asked, “Hatch, Hatch, what is all this?”

“Why, Mr. Lincoln,” Hatch replied, “this is the Army of the Potomac.”

“No, Hatch, no,” Lincoln retorted. “This is McClellan’s bodyguard.”

After this fruitless visit, Lincoln tried peremptorily ordering McClellan to cross the Potomac and engage Lee.

McClellan flatly refused and engaged in a long series of shrill telegraphic demands for more reinforcements and more supplies.

Lincoln reached the end of his considerable patience. On November 5, 1862, he relieved McClellan of duty, directing him to return immediately to his home in Trenton, New Jersey, where he was to await “further orders,” which he had no intentions of ever sending.

When he learned of his dismissal, McClellan wrote his wife that night:

But that November, McClellan saw war for the last time.

For the third time, President Lincoln asked General Ambrose Burnside to take command of the Army of the Potomac. For the third time he refused, again insisting that he was not competent to handle so large a force. But when he learned that if he did not accept, the command would go to an officer that Burnside had long detested—General Joseph Hooker—he reversed his decision.

General Robert E. Lee was uncertain of what this change of command would take. He lamented McClellan’s departure. “We always understood each other so well,” he remarked to Longstreet with his characteristic modesty. What he really meant was that McClellan was transparent to him. General Lee, from the beginning of his adversary’s command, had understood that McClellan dawdled, he was reluctant to seize the offensive, he was an incredibly poor strategist, and that most of his reputation as a military genius was due to adroit political posturing. Lee rarely spoke so harshly aloud of anyone, however, so he merely continued, “I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find someone whom I don’t understand.”

It was, indeed, a while before General Lee came to understand Ambrose Burnside. It was not because Burnside was clever, however. It was because he was so incredibly incompetent that Lee viewed him with disbelief … until he proved it.

However, when Burnside took command, Lee had good reason to be wary, because his army was split in two. This was because at the beginning of November, in the last days of McClellan’s command, “Little Mac” had perhaps deep down begun to sense his own downfall. He had begun to slowly deploy the Army of the Potomac into Virginia, creeping down to Warrenton, Virginia, on the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His strategy, as Lincoln had been pressing for months, was to stay astride Lee’s lines of supply from the Shenandoah Valley and then to press south toward Richmond, engaging Lee from the north.

The problem, as always, was that McClellan dawdled along so slowly that Lee had been given time to position his army in what would most likely mean another Confederate victory and another Federal rout. Lee sent Jackson and Second Corps to the valley, threatening McClellan’s western flank. He sent Longstreet and First Corps to Culpeper, twenty miles to the southwest, directly in McClellan’s path.

Still, Lee was no fool, and he understood the peril that his army was in. It was divided in half, which in military terms equaled a weakening of the whole. As always, Lee was terrifically outnumbered—at this time the Army of the Potomac numbered about 116,000 men; the Army of Northern Virginia, 72,000. Again, as always, the Federal army was much better equipped than Lee’s men. Lee knew very well that if the Federal army could be led by a daring and courageous commander instead of Little Mac, the odds of a victory for the Confederates would be diminished indeed.

And so, when Lee finally did see the new strategy of Burnside’s Army of the Potomac, he was puzzled. On November 19, he learned that Burnside was moving the entire army south, along the east sideof the Rappahanock River. Burnside was abandoning a promising opportunity to strike the two separated wings of the Army of Northern Virginia. Also, he was skirting around the Confederates again, a move very reminiscent of McClellan. Lee couldn’t understand how Burnside could hope to gain a better position, but that was because Robert E. Lee was a military genius, and it was difficult, if not impossible, for him to comprehend utter military ignorance.

Abraham Lincoln and the War Department did not view General Burnside as ignorant. They had approved his grand new strategy. He proposed to position the army on the east side of the Rappahanock, just across from Fredericksburg, which was a picturesque village that stood squarely midway between Richmond and Washington. Burnside planned to build floating bridges across the Rappahanock River, send across the army quickly and in force, take Fredericksburg before Lee could block him, then move south and seize Richmond.

The plan depended on speed. General Burnside did succeed in marching his forces quickly, a stunning change from the days of “Little Mac.” The army began their march on November 15, and by November 19, they were in position, a long, heavy blue line from Falmouth, north of Fredericksburg, some miles south of Fredericksburg at a possible alternate crossing called Skinker’s Neck. From Stafford Heights, a series of hills on the west side of the river, Federal cannons brooded menacingly, aimed directly at the eastern shore.

And there and then the Army of the Potomac stopped and stayed, immovable and unmovable. Once again, incomprehensible Union hesitation gave Robert E. Lee ample time to deploy his army and position them on the most favorable ground. Fredericksburg was down in a little valley, with a line of gentle hills just behind it. Longstreet’s First Corps was on the right, arrayed along a ridge called Marye’s Heights. Jackson’s Second Corps was on the left, along a crest of hills that looked down on wide, flat fields that stretched from the river all the way to the steep banks of the hills.

And so the two mighty engines of destruction faced each other across the gentle river and the forlorn little town. And still Burnside waited.

General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was not, in war, a man who could tolerate inaction very well. Every day he rode or walked the heights behind Fredericksburg restlessly, eyeing the army across the river with flaming blue eyes, envisioning scene after scene of vicious attacks. He was as cross as a fishwife, so irascible that his staff and aides—though they always accompanied him—stayed at a discreet, safe distance.