Rebels at the Gate: Lee and McClellan on the Front Line of a Nation Divided (16 page)

The Rebel defenses were formidable. Mountain spurs above the turnpike bristled with entrenchments. Impenetrable laurel thickets guarded each flank. The dreadful defile leading to Camp Garnett was choked with timber—a veritable “Valley of Death.” The works might be taken by storm, but McClellan fretted over such bloody work. Privately, he feared the result “at least doubtful.”
²⁴¹

If a frontal assault was required, McClellan looked to his most experienced brigadier, that “silly fussy goose,” William Rosecrans. The high-strung Rosecrans was hunting up a young civilian named David Hart. It was rumored that Hart lived nearby and that he “knew the mountains thoroughly” from herding cattle. Late that evening, he was found at the outer picket line and delivered to Rosecrans.

Hart was twenty-two years old, rugged and forthright. He was a strong Unionist, descended from John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. David's father owned a home beside the turnpike on the summit of Rich Mountain, about two miles behind Camp Garnett. Having returned from visiting relatives, the boy now offered to guide Rosecrans around the Confederate left flank by an obscure path. The path was rugged, David warned, and no artillery could follow. The excitable Rosecrans led Hart straight to McClellan's tent.

It was about ten o'clock in the evening when General McClellan began to question young Hart. David related in simple language all he knew of Rich Mountain and its defenders. McClellan listened raptly as he described the rude path to his father's farm on the summit. The mountain was very steep, David acknowledged, and laurel grew so thick along part of the route that a man could actually walk upon its matted crown.

McClellan interrupted, “Do you say men can walk on the
tops
of the laurel?

“Yes sir,” answered David.

“Do you think my army can go up the mountain, over the tops of the laurel?”

“No sir,” David replied, “but
I
have done so, and a man
might
, if he would walk slowly and had nothing to carry.”

“Tell the truth, my boy.”

“I
am
telling you the truth, General.”

“But,” McClellan shot back, “do you know, if you are not, you will be shot as a spy?”

“I am
willing
to be shot if all I say is not true.”
²⁴²

Rosecrans ushered Hart away and offered McClellan a plan. “Now General,” he intoned, “if you will allow me to take my brigade I will take this guide and, by a night's march, surprise the enemy at the gap, get possession of it, and thus hold his only line of retreat. You can then take him on the front. If he gives way we shall have him; if he fights obstinately I will leave a portion of the force at the gap and with the remainder fall upon his rear.”

McClellan listened in silence. Major Marcy piped up, “General, I think that is a good plan.” Nearly an hour passed before the details were arranged. Rosecrans would start before dawn on July 11, following young Hart on a three-hour march to the summit. He expected to reach the Hart farm by 10 A.M. Upon hearing Rosecrans's musketry in rear of the Rebel works, McClellan would launch the frontal assault.
²⁴³

Colonel Isaac Morrow of the Third Ohio Infantry roused his men for battle. It was midnight, recalled John Beatty, “the hour when graveyards are supposed to yawn, and the sheeted dead to walk abroad.” Colonel Morrow's speech reflected the funereal character of the hour:

Soldiers of the Third: The assault on the enemy's works will be made in the early morning. The Third will lead the column. The secessionists have ten thousand men and forty rifled cannon. They are strongly fortified…. They will cut us to pieces. Marching to attack such an enemy, so entrenched and so armed, is marching to a butcher-shop rather than to a
battle…Many of you, boys, will go out who will never come back again.

A chill shot through Beatty as Morrow's words pierced the darkness. It was hard to die so young and far from home. The men kicked campfire embers into a blaze that revealed “scores of pallid faces.” Thoughts turned to mothers, wives, and sweethearts. “In short,” Beatty declared, “we all wanted to go home.” The Confederates also mulled their fate. A brilliant comet was visible in the night sky over Camp Garnett—thought to be an omen of disaster.
²⁴⁴

General Rosecrans's flank march began at 5 A.M. A drenching rain commenced. Young David Hart led the way, accompanied by Colonel Frederick Lander, now a fixture on any expedition in the mountains. The Eighth, Tenth, and Thirteenth Indiana Infantry regiments, the Nineteenth Ohio Infantry, and Burdsal's Ohio Cavalry made up Rosecrans's brigade—a total of 1,917 men. Each toted a firearm and cartridge box, a haversack with one day's rations, and a canteen of water. Entering the forest in silence, they kept low on the mountain spurs to avoid detection, slogging through laurel thickets on a circuit estimated to be five miles in length. A member of Burdsal's cavalry backtracked every hour with a report for General McClellan.
²⁴⁵

At Roaring Creek headquarters, McClellan grew restless. By 9 A.M., he sent a mounted courier after Rosecrans—reportedly to call off the attack until a better plan was devised. But the galloping courier blundered into Confederate pickets, was shot from his horse, and was taken in for questioning. From him, Lt. Col. Pegram learned of the flank attack, if not its direction. Pegram believed his flanks were unapproachable. To play it safe, however, he sent Captain Julius DeLagnel, Garnett's chief of artillery, with a cannon and reinforcements to the picket station on top of Rich Mountain.
²⁴⁶

The 310 Confederates on the summit that day consisted of members of the Twentieth and Twenty-fifth Virginia Regiments, a
detachment of the Churchville Cavalry, and the crew of a bronze six-pounder gun led by Lt. Charles Statham of the Lee Battery. The Virginians fashioned crude log breastworks in a gap along the turnpike opposite the two-story Hart farmhouse. Captain DeLagnel, a fourteen-year veteran of the U.S. Army, commanded the post. His orders were to defend it “to the last extremity.”
²⁴⁷

While Rosecrans's brigade marched around the Confederate left flank, Lt. Col. Pegram imagined they were circling his right flank instead. He notified General Garnett at Laurel Hill and sent a messenger to hurry up Colonel William C. Scott's Forty-fourth Virginia Infantry, just in from Staunton. Scott was ordered to guard the Merritt Road, an obscure track intersecting the turnpike from the north, one and a half miles west of Beverly.
²⁴⁸

The Federals under General Rosecrans clambered up Rich Mountain from the
south
. Their route proved nearly impassible for horses, just as young Hart had claimed. Pausing above a steep gorge at 11 A.M., Rosecrans sent a dispatch to McClellan stating that he would send no more messengers until there was “something of importance to communicate.” It was the last word between the two generals that day.

Following a brief rest near the summit, the brigade turned north. Rosecrans was badly off schedule—his three-hour march had stretched to nearly ten. At 2:30 P.M., on the crest of the mountain less than a mile from Hart's, skirmishers of the Tenth Indiana Regiment were fired on by Confederate pickets. Captain Christopher Miller and two other members of the Tenth fell before the Rebels were driven to flight. David Hart had already dropped back into the main Federal column, fearing for his safety. Now he was accused of treachery. “Gentlemen,” David replied, “go where I take you and you will not be beaten.”
²⁴⁹

As gunfire echoed from the south, startled Confederates at the Hart house rolled their cannon around and leapt behind logs and boulders in the stable yard. Peering up the mountainside, they watched Federal skirmishers emerge from the woods at a range of three hundred fifty yards. Almost on cue, a heavy rainstorm
erupted. The lone Confederate cannon opened with a roar. Lieutenant Statham, commander of the gun, watched his case shot bursting in the midst of the enemy. Urgent cries of Union officers to “close up ranks” spurred him on. Statham poured on the fire at a rate of nearly four shots per minute.

The Tenth Indiana, in advance, was ordered to “lie down” as cannonballs sheared off the treetops. Limbs crashed to the ground. Exploding shrapnel filled the air. David Hart hugged the wet slope for dear life, certain the Rebels had twenty-five or thirty cannon.

Stalled by nature's fury and Statham's artillery, General Rosecrans called up his troops. The Eighth Indiana joined the Tenth in line of battle on his right and center. The Thirteenth Indiana formed on the left, with the Nineteenth Ohio in reserve. From the Confederate works, Captain David Curry of the Rockbridge Guards watched the drama unfold: “As Regt. after Regt. of the enemy came into view, our small force saw it had heavy work before it.…We knew we had no chance to defeat so much superior force, but we believed that our whole force would be brought up from our Camp and that at this point would be fought the battle we had for days been anticipating.”
²⁵⁰

Moving his cannon up the opposite slope to gain elevation, Lieutenant Statham pounded the Union line with short-fused shot. Blast after blast of his gun echoed across Rich Mountain. The confused Yankees fell back. Grimy Confederate defenders waved their hats and rent the air with shouts.
²⁵¹

Their cheers were premature. Laboring to reform his green troops, General Rosecrans brought skulkers into line with a sharp rap from the flat of his sword. Union regiments again filled the mountainside, pouring musketry into a line of defenders little more than one hundred yards long. The attack played havoc with Lieutenant Statham's artillery. Terrified horses bolted away with caisson and drivers, leaving only a little ammunition in the limber box. Statham moved the gun downhill beside a log stable, placed his artillery horses behind it for protection, and discharged rounds of canister into Rosecrans's lines.

One of those rounds felled Colonel Lander's horse. Struggling to his feet, the intrepid Lander hopped upon a large rock. Muskets were handed up and he fired them at the Rebel artillerists. “Bang away, you scoundrels!” roared Lander. “We'll come down there and lick you like the devil directly!”
²⁵²

Federal sharpshooters leveled a deliberate volley at some Rebels on the opposite slope, but cleanly missed. A Confederate seemed much amused. He turned around, dropped his pantaloons, and offered a “glaring insult.” One of the sharpshooters answered with a “centre shot,” leaving the dead Rebel in a rather undignified pose.
²⁵³

Leaden missiles rattled and whined through the underbrush. “[O]ur boys…let into them with their Enfield and Minie rifles,” wrote David Hart. “I never heard such screaming in my life.” Sharpshooters reaped a fearful toll in the stable yard—Statham's artillerists were dropping fast. Anxious to silence that gun, General Rosecrans gave the order to “fix bayonets.” Defenders plainly heard the jangle of cold steel. Rosecrans rode to the head of the Indiana Thirteenth and drew his sword. “Charge bayonets,” he screamed. The Federals swept downhill “like a thunderbolt.”
²⁵⁴

Lieutenant Statham loaded canister until he fell wounded near his gun. Captain DeLagnel rushed to the piece and fired three or four rounds before he too was shot down. The searing bronze cannon was silenced at last. By one count, it had fired 165 rounds.
²⁵⁵

Seven companies of the Nineteenth Ohio Infantry delivered a terrific volley into the Rebels. “The whole earth seemed to shake,” David Hart attested. Hot lead whistled through the stable yard, ricocheting wildly off the boulders. A second thunderous volley broke the defenders' resolve. General Rosecrans spurred for the enemy works. A resolute Confederate was killed in the act of firing point-blank at the general. Charging with a terrific yell, Federal troops swarmed across the turnpike, hoisting one poor fellow off the cannon with their bayonets.
²⁵⁶

Lt. Colonel Pegram arrived from Camp Garnett with fifty men and a second cannon of Captain Pierce Anderson's Lee Battery—
too little, too late. Federals shot the wheel horses of the second gun, plunging it over an embankment. Indiana troops crowded over the prize. Pegram, badly hurt by a fall from his horse, joined the Confederates in retreat. “Trepidation seized me and I ran up the hill,” recalled Willis Woodley of the Upshur Grays, “and every bullet that passed me knocked up the leaves…which only accelerated my speed. In fact there is no telling how fast a fellow can go with bullets pattering around his feet.”
²⁵⁷

Unlike Pegram, Colonel Scott's Forty-fourth Virginia Infantry, 570 strong, never reached the fight. Scott—guarding the unused Merritt Road at the eastern foot of Rich Mountain—had sent Beverly lawyer John Hughes up the mountain to find out what all the shooting was about. Hughes, an avowed secessionist from the Richmond convention, mistook Confederate soldiers for the enemy and hailed them as a “Northern man.” It was a fatal error. By one count, seventeen bullets riddled his corpse. Scott later marched to within sight of the battlefield—but deemed discretion the better part of valor and withdrew.
²⁵⁸