Mr Lincoln's Army (7 page)

Kearny and Hooker might be hard to
manage, and Heintzelman might offer negligible qualities of leadership, but
those two divisions would fight furiously wherever they were put: Pope could be
sure of that. The same thing was true of the army corps brought in by Fitz-John
Porter: two divisions, one of regulars, one of volunteers, superb soldiers who
had fully proved their fighting qualities, with a corps commander who might
well have been the best officer then in the army. Porter was well-born—a New
Hampshire man, nephew of the Commodore David Porter who was a hero of the War
of 1812, and a cousin of the Captain David Dixon Porter who was Farragut's
right-hand man on the Mississippi—and he was an intimate friend of McClellan,
who let him fight both Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill in his own way. He was
handsome, soldierly-looking, perhaps just a shade arrogant. He had nothing but
contempt for Pope and he expressed his contempt freely, both verbally and in
writing, a fact which later had tragic results. He was one of the few soldiers
of that be-whiskered era who could wear a full beard and still look trim and
dapper.

Lastly, Pope had just been joined by General
Jesse Reno, a stocky, capable soldier who brought one slim division and two
brigades of another from Burnside's corps; men who technically belonged to
McClellan but who had been on an expedition along the Carolina coast and had
not fought in front of Richmond. They had done well in the Carolinas, and
Burnside was not at the moment with them—a considerable advantage, though no
one realized it at the time.

All of these troops Pope was frantically summoning
to overwhelm Jackson. If battles were fought on a simple basis of counting numbers,
he had more than enough to do the job, but battles aren't settled that way.
Pope's handicaps outweighed any conceivable advantage numbers might give him.
Pope's own men were discouraged because they had never had good top leadership
and saw no reason to believe they were getting it now. The men from the Army of
the Potomac were battle-tried and considered themselves fighters every bit as
good as any Confederates they were apt to meet, but they were deeply dejected
by their transfer to Pope, and they had no higher opinion of him than McClellan
had. This was largely Pope's own fault. He had celebrated his assumption of
command by issuing an incredibly bombastic address to the troops, announcing
that out West where he came from he was used to looking upon the backs of his
enemies, and asserting that the army would henceforth stop worrying about bases
of supply, lines of retreat, and so on, and simply go ahead and win battles.
This was just asking for trouble and everybody knew it, and the Federal
soldiers jeered at the message quite as much as did the Confederates. After the
war Pope told a friend that Secretary Stanton had written the address and
induced him to issue it. Even if that explanation is true (and Pope makes a
poor witness) it doesn't exculpate him: the difference between the stupidity
of a man who would write such a screed in the first place and the stupidity of
a man who would issue it in his own name after someone else wrote it is a difference
only in degree.

So
the men Pope brought up to the Warrenton turnpike on the twenty-ninth of August
were men who expected the worst and knew they were entitled to expect it.
Whatever bravery and endurance could do to redeem the mistakes of the general
in command would be done, but unless the soldiers' luck was in, for a change,
it would not be enough. And their luck was not in. From first to last the Army
of the Potomac was unlucky. It fought for four years, and it took more killing,
proportionately, than any army in American history, and its luck was always
out; it did its level best and lost; when it won the victory was always clouded
by a might-have-been, and when at last the triumph came at Appomattox there
were so very, very many of its men who weren't there to see it.

Pope fought his battle about as one might
expect: with great energy, but defective judgment. Jackson, whose position he
had finally discovered, was lined up behind an unfinished railroad embankment
north of the turnpike, a position as good as a fort; and Jackson was quite
happy to let Pope wear the Federal army out while he waited for Lee to join
him. As soon as it was light enough to fight Pope began to oblige him. Sigel's
Germans attacked first and were repulsed. Then Hooker drove for the center of
the line and got a brigade up on the embankment, where Northern and Southern
boys fought desperately with bayonets and clubbed muskets before the
Northerners were driven down. Now Phil Kearny came in through the woods to
smash at A. P. Hill, at the left end of Jackson's line—bent him back and forced
him to call for reinforcements, but, like Hooker, found the task too much for
him and had to pull out. Kearny sat his horse in the woods and watched his beaten
boys returning; saw the 3rd Michigan, which had had ruinous losses, and wept as
the regiment went by, crying, "Oh, what has become of my gallant old
Third?"
⁴
Reynolds sent his Pennsylvanians in, but Jackson had
too much artillery for them and they, too, were rebuffed; and after twilight
Hatch's division collided with Hood's Texans along the highway and had to
retreat in the darkness after a savage and confused encounter. A major in
Hatch's 76th New York, unhorsed and wounded, came limping back and met disorganized
troops in the dark and tried to rally them, only to find himself a prisoner of
war: the men belonged to the 2nd Mississippi and wore the Rebel gray.

Meanwhile, off to the left, Porter was coming
up with his men. Pope thought Porter had a clear road ahead that would put him
on Jackson's flank and roll up his lines for keeps, and ordered him to attack
and win the day. But Porter discovered that his clear road was most effectively
blocked by thirty thousand sinewy Confederates under James Longstreet, who had
silently filed into line of battle around noon, all unseen, and who were now
lying in wait, fairly aching to be attacked. Longstreet was a counterpuncher,
and a deadly one, and he wanted nothing on earth that day quite so much as to
receive an attack by Porter, whom he outnumbered three to one. Porter, sensibly
enough, notified Pope of this obstruction and sat tight. But Pope simply
refused to believe him. His calculations (made God knows how) had convinced him
that Longstreet couldn't possibly reach the field for another twenty-four
hours, and he sent back word that Porter was wrong—there was nothing whatever
in front of him, the way to Jackson's unguarded flank was wide open, Porter
must attack at once. In the end, the attack was not made—to the salvation of
the army and the personal ruin of Fitz-John Porter—and long after dark Pope
sullenly recalled Porter and his men and brought them up to the main line along
the highway.

When
morning came Pope gave way to his final, most disastrous delusion. The Texans
whom Hatch had bumped into the night before had withdrawn along toward
midnight, and Jackson had pulled back his own men in one or two places to make
his alignment more compact and had his troops snugly concealed in the woods
back of the railroad embankment. Pope was persuaded by all of this that Jackson
was in full retreat, and he triumphantly notified Washington that he had won a
great victory, and ordered an immediate pursuit, horse, foot, and guns. He had
his headquarters on an open knoll and he stood there this morning with his
generals, puffing a cigar, overflowing with good humor, exchanging jokes and
congratulations, while a small regiment of orderlies stood in the background
holding the generals' horses and the breeze whipped the flags and pennants.
McDowell was to be in general charge of the pursuit, and Porter, whose troops
were fresh, was to lead; Hatch and Reynolds would follow him, while Hooker and
Kearny would go along on a parallel road a couple of miles to the north. Orders
were to press the enemy vigorously all day. In vain Porter tried to convince
Pope that there was an ominous congregation of Rebels off to the south of the
highway, with nothing to indicate that they had departed. When Pope made up
his mind it stayed made up, and there was no room in it this morning for
anything but the conviction that the enemy was in flight. So the troops were
wheeled around and got into formation, the artillery came rumbling up, and the
pursuit began.

It
was probably the briefest pursuit in history. The skirmish lines that went
combing through the meadows and groves very quickly discovered that something
was still waiting behind that railway embankment. Under Pope's concept of
things, that could be nothing more than a rear guard, left there to fight a
delaying action while the main body got safely away. So Porter, with deep
misgivings, pulled his men out into a battle line on the north side of the road
and sent them forward, through a tangle of little hillocks and gullies, across
a quiet country road, and on up a gradual rise toward the embankment and the
silent woods behind it. Reynolds was under orders to follow him, fanning his
troops out on the south side of the turnpike just in case there should be a few
Rebels in that area, but now it looked as if Porter might need help, so
Reynolds was called in to lend a hand on the right, and Porter's left was quite
exposed. To give it a little protection, Porter pulled the 5th and 10th New
York out of Sykes's division and sent them, with a battery of regular
artillery, to a little hill south of the highway. His men went on, while Hatch
formed line farther to the right, and the generals on the hill waited in quiet
confidence.

A few Confederate batteries were in sight
(part of the rear guard, judged Pope; harbingers of coming trouble, thought
Porter) and they opened on Porter's lines, Union batteries replying
immediately. The staccato bursts of fire from the skirmishers came more
frequently as the advance continued, and the artillery fire on both sides
became heavier and heavier. Then suddenly the whole railway embankment sparkled
and glistened as the sunlight was reflected off polished rifle barrels, and
Stonewall Jackson's massed troops came out of the woods to take their places on
the firing line. A gigantic tumult of musketry filled the air, and Federals and
Confederates exchanged long, crashing volleys at close range, and instead of a
rear-guard action there was a full-dress battle. Jackson's men burned the slope
with rifle fire, and on a hill to the southwest new batteries unlimbered, to
rake Porter's battle lines with heavy salvos—a deadly enfilade fire that cut
the support lines to pieces and left the advance isolated and helpless. The
troops in front crumbled and fell back, rallied on the fragments in the rear,
and went forward again, drifted back anew, and then drove ahead a third time.

It came to hand-to-hand fighting in places,
and at one spot the Confederates ran out of ammunition and threw heavy stones
down the bank on the heads of the Federals who were scrambling up. Everywhere
there was a smother of battle smoke, the yells of the soldiers, and a
tremendous uproar of gunfire. One Northern column came up led by an officer on
horseback who rode two dozen paces in front, in defiance of regulations
(mounted officers were supposed to ride in rear of the troops in all columns
of assault). He rode straight for the embankment, looking neither to the right
nor the left, sword held high, the storm of bullets somehow missing him, and
put his horse up the steep slope and got clear to the top. For one agonizing,
dramatic moment he was poised there, still facing to the front, all alone on
the deadly sky line that his men could not reach, central figure in an
unbelievable tableau. From the hard Southern fighters to the right and left
there went up one spontaneous cry—
"Don't kill
him!"
Then the smoke-fog covered the bank, and the
crash of the rifles swept along the line, and when the smoke drifted away the
horse and rider were dead at the top of the bank.

Off to Porter's right Hatch sent in his
brigades in a deep column. The first line got to the embankment, broke, and
came flying back. Gibbon was dashing about on foot, his revolver out, shouting:
"Stop those stragglers—make them fall in—shoot them if they don't!"
while a Wisconsin regiment crouched with fixed bayonets, ready to impale the
fugitives if they went any farther. The rout was stopped, the attack went
ahead again, and a skirmish line, strengthened almost to the weight of a line
of battle, got on the embankment but could not stay there. From the left, Rebel
artillery sent solid shot straight along the front. "A solid shot will
plow into the ground, spitefully scattering the dirt," a survivor
recalled afterward, "and bound a hundred feet into the air, looking as it
flies swiftly like an India-rubber playing ball."
⁵

Abner Doubleday brought his brigade into
action. He had heard the first shot of the entire war—indeed, it had been fired
at him personally, in a manner of speaking, since he had been a captain of
artillery in Fort Sumter in the spring of 1861—and it was reported that
Doubleday himself had sighted the gun which fired the first Union shot in
reply. He had got his star when the Sumter garrison came north after the
surrender, and now he was leading his troops in a desperate fight. One has to
chuckle, just a little, thinking about Doubleday. The generals of that army,
the good ones and the bad ones alike, were intensely jealous of fame and
distinction. Here was Doubleday, strictly an average general, never making any
great mistakes but never winning any great laurels either—when Reynolds was
killed at Gettysburg the following year Meade took good care not to turn his
corps over to Doubleday, the ranking division commander. It is fascinating to
wonder what the other generals would have said if they could have known that in
the end Doubleday was going to be one of the most famous of them all—not for
his war record, but for his alleged connection with the origin of the game of
baseball, which the soldiers were just then beginning to play in their off
hours.