X. — THE SLIM ANIMAL.
Fleetwood was the first gun of the great campaign which culminated on the heights of Gettysburg. A week afterward, Lee’s columns were in motion toward Pennsylvania.
Was that invasion the dictate of his own judgment? History will answer. What is certain is, that the country, like the army, shouted “Forward!” The people were ablaze with wild enthusiasm; the soldiers flushed with the pride of their great victories of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. The authorities at Richmond shared the excitement, and the commissary-general, with unwonted humor, or in sober earnest, indorsed, it is said, upon a requisition for supplies: “If General Lee wishes rations, let him seek them in Pennsylvania.”
I doubt if the great commander shared the general agitation. I think he aimed to draw Hooker out of Virginia, leaving the rest to Providence. So he moved toward the Potomac.
The world had called Lee cautious. After this invasion, that charge was not repeated. From first to last audacity seemed the sentiment inspiring him.
With Hooker on the Rappahannock, threatening Richmond, Lee thrust his advance force under Ewell through the Blue Ridge toward Maryland; pushed Longstreet up to Culpeper to support him, and kept only A.P. Hill at Fredericksburg to bar the road to the Confederate capital.
Hooker wished to advance upon it, but President Lincoln forbade him. The dispatch was a queer official document.
“In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock,” Lincoln wrote, “I would by no means cross to the south of it. I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”
Ludicrous perhaps, but to the point; the “Rail-Splitter” was not always dignified, but often judicious. Chancellorsville had been defeat—Lee’s assault, foreboded thus by Lincoln, would be death.
Hooker fell back, therefore, in the direction of Washington. Lee had foreseen that fact, and had given himself small anxiety. His three corps were already in full motion toward the Potomac; and suddenly the thunder of artillery came on the winds of the mountains.
Ewell, the head of the Southern spear, was driving at Milroy, holding Winchester. The struggle was brief. General Milroy had put the iron heel on the poor valley; had oppressed the unfortunate people beyond the power of words—and suddenly the hand of Fate clutched and shook him to death. Ewell stormed his “Star Fort” near Winchester, with the bayonet; drove him to headlong flight; got in rear of him, capturing nearly all his command; and poor Milroy scarce managed to escape, with a small body-guard, beyond the Potomac.
“In my opinion Milroy’s men will fight better under a soldier!”
It was his commanding officer, Hooker, who wrote those words a few days afterward. From the hands of his own general came that unkindest cut!
Exit Milroy, thus amid hisses and laughter—the hornet’s nest at Winchester was swept away—and Ewell headed straight for Pennsylvania.
Longstreet came up rapidly to fill the gap in the line—Hill followed Longstreet—and then the world beheld the singular spectacle of an army extended in a long skirmish line over a hundred miles, with another army massed not daring to assail it.
Hooker did not see his “opening;” but Lincoln did. One of his dispatches has been quoted—here is another as amusing and as judicious.
“If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg,” Lincoln wrote Hooker, “and the tail of it on the Plank road, between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere—could you not break him?”
But Hooker could not. He did not even try. Lee’s movements seemed to paralyze him—his chief of staff wrote:—
“We cannot go boggling round, until we know what we are going after.”
“Boggling round” exactly described the movements of Hooker. He was still in a grand fog, and knew nothing of his adversary’s intent, when a terrific cry arose among the well-to-do farmers of Pennsylvania. The wolf had appeared in the fold. Ewell was rapidly advancing upon Harrisburg.
Behind came the veteran corps of Hill and Longstreet. The gorges of the Blue Ridge were alive with bristling bayonets. Then the waters of the Potomac splashed around the waists of the infantry and the wheels of the artillery carriages. Soon the fields of Maryland and Pennsylvania were alive with “rebels,” come, doubtless, to avenge the outrages of Pope and Milroy. Throughout those commonwealths—through Philadelphia, New York, and Boston—rang the cry, “Lee is coming!”
To return to the cavalry. The horsemen of Stuart were going to move in an eccentric orbit. These are my memoirs, reader, not a history of the war; I describe only what I saw, and am going to ask you now, to “follow the feather” of Stuart.
Stuart was promptly in the saddle, and when Lee began to move, advanced north of the Rappahannock, drawing a cordon of cavalry across the roads above Middleburg, to guard the approaches to the mountain.
The result was that the infantry defiled through the Blue Ridge without Hooker’s knowledge. He knew that something was going on, but there his information terminated. The troopers of Stuart kept watch over fifteen miles of front, and through this wall of sabres the Federal eye could not pierce.
Stuart is regarded by many as only a brave “raider.” It was on occasions like this, however, that he performed his greatest services. Everywhere he confronted the enemy in stubborn battle; and the work was hard. It was fighting, fighting, fighting—now, as in 1862, when he covered Lee’s retreat after Sharpsburg. Day and night the cavalry had no rest. The crack of carbines, the clash of sabres, and the roar of cannon were incessant. It was a war of giants which Fauquier and Loudoun saw in those days—and not until the rear of Lee’s column had nearly reached the Potomac, did General Hooker by a desperate effort succeed in driving Stuart back.
In these pages I must leave that obstinate struggle undescribed. It was full of romantic scenes, and illustrated by daring courage: but all is lost to view in the lurid smoke of Gettysburg.
With one scene in the hurrying drama I shall pass to greater events.
But first, I beg to introduce to the reader a very singular personage, who is destined to play an important part in the history I am writing.