Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War

by G. F. R. Henderson

This force, which had now received the title of the Army of the Valley, was organised in three brigades:—

First Brigade (“Stonewall”): Brigadier-General Garnett	2nd Virginia Regiment 4th Virginia Regiment 5th Virginia Regiment 27th Virginia Regiment 33rd Virginia Regiment
Second Brigade: Colonel Burks	21st Virginia Regiment 42nd Virginia Regiment 48th Virginia Regiment 1st Regular Battalion (Irish)
Third Brigade: Colonel Fulkerson	23rd Virginia Regiment 27th Virginia Regiment
McLaughlin’s Battery Waters’ Battery Carpenter’s Battery Marye’s Battery Shumaker’s Battery Ashby’s Regiment of Cavalry Chew’s Horse-Artillery Battery	8 guns 4 guns 4 guns 4 guns 4 guns 3 guns

The infantry were by this time fairly well armed and equipped, but the field-pieces were mostly smoothbores of small calibre. Of the quality of the troops Bull Run had been sufficient test. Side by side with the sons of the old Virginia houses the hunters and yeomen of the Valley had proved their worth. Their skill as marksmen had stood them in good stead. Men who had been used from boyhood to shoot squirrels in the woodland found the Federal soldier a target difficult to miss. Skirmishing and patrolling came instinctively to those who had stalked the deer and the bear in the mountain forests; and the simple hardy life of an agricultural community was the best probation for the trials of a campaign. The lack of discipline and of competent regimental officers might have placed them at a disadvantage had they been opposed to regulars; but they were already half-broken to the soldier’s trade before they joined the ranks. They were no strangers to camp and bivouac, to peril and adventure; their hands could guard their heads. Quick sight and steady nerve, unfailing vigilance and instant resolve, the very qualities which their devotion to field-sports fostered, were those which had so often prevailed in the war of the Revolution over the mechanical tactics of well-disciplined battalions; and on ground with which they were perfectly familiar the men of the Shenandoah were formidable indeed.

They were essentially rough and ready. Their appearance would hardly have captivated a martinet. The eye that lingers lovingly on glittering buttons and spotless belts would have turned away in disdain from Jackson’s soldiers. There was nothing bright about them but their rifles. They were as badly dressed, and with as little regard for uniformity, as the defenders of Torres Vedras or the Army of Italy in 1796. Like Wellington and Napoleon, the Confederate generals cared very little what their soldiers wore so long as they did their duty. Least of all can one imagine Stonewall Jackson exercising his mind as to the cut of a tunic or the polish of a buckle. The only standing order in the English army of the Peninsula which referred to dress forbade the wearing of the enemy’s uniform. It was the same in the Army of the Valley, although at a later period even this order was of necessity ignored. As their forefathers of the Revolution took post in Washington’s ranks clad in hunting shirts and leggings, so the Confederate soldiers preferred the garments spun by their own women to those supplied them by the State. Grey, of all shades, from light blue to butter-nut, was the universal colour. The coatee issued in the early days of the war had already given place to a short-waisted and single-breasted jacket. The blue képi held out longer. The soft felt hat which experience soon proved the most serviceable head-dress had not yet become universal. But the long boots had gone; and strong brogans, with broad soles and low heels, had been found more comfortable. Overcoats were soon discarded. “The men came to the conclusion that the trouble of carrying them on hot days outweighed their comfort when the cold day arrived. Besides, they found that life in the open air hardened them to such an extent that changes in temperature were hardly felt.”[^[5]] Nor did the knapsack long survive. “It was found to gall the back and shoulders and weary the man before half the march was accomplished. It did not pay to carry around clean clothes while waiting for the time to use them.”[^[6]] But the men still clung to their blankets and waterproof sheets, worn in a roll over the left shoulder, and the indispensable haversack carried their whole kit. Tents—except the enemy’s—were rarely seen. The Army of the Valley generally bivouacked in the woods, the men sleeping in pairs, rolled in their blankets and rubber sheets. The cooking arrangements were primitive. A few frying-pans and skillets formed the culinary apparatus of a company, with a bucket or two in addition, and the frying-pans were generally carried with their handles stuck in the rifle-barrels! The tooth-brush was a button-hole ornament, and if, as was sometimes the case, three days’ rations were served out at a single issue, the men usually cooked and ate them at once, so as to avoid the labour of carrying them.

Such was Jackson’s infantry, a sorry contrast indeed to the soldierly array of the Federals, with their complete appointments and trim blue uniforms. But fine feathers, though they may have their use, are hardly essential to efficiency in the field; and whilst it is absolutely true that no soldiers ever marched with less to encumber them than the Confederates, it is no empty boast that none ever marched faster or held out longer.

If the artillery, with a most inferior equipment, was less efficient than the infantry, the cavalry was an invaluable auxiliary. Ashby was the beau-idéal of a captain of light-horse. His reckless daring, both across-country and under fire, made him the idol of the army. Nor was his reputation confined to the Confederate ranks. “I think even our men,” says a Federal officer, “had a kind of admiration for him, as he sat unmoved upon his horse, and let them pepper away at him as if he enjoyed it.” His one shortcoming was his ignorance of drill and discipline. But in the spring of 1862 these deficiencies were in a fair way of being rectified. He had already learned something of tactics. In command of a few hundred mounted riflemen and a section of horse-artillery he was unsurpassed; and if his men were apt to get out of hand in battle, his personal activity ensured their strict attention on the outposts. He thought little of riding seventy or eighty miles within the day along his picket line, and it is said that he first recommended himself to Jackson by visiting the Federal camps disguised as a horse doctor. Jackson placed much dependence on his mounted troops. Immediately he arrived in the Valley he established his cavalry outposts far to the front. While the infantry were reposing in their camps near Winchester, the south bank of the Potomac, forty miles northward, was closely and incessantly patrolled. The squadrons never lacked recruits. With the horse-loving Virginians the cavalry was the favourite arm, and the strength of the regiments was only limited by the difficulty of obtaining horses. To the sons of the Valley planters and farmers Ashby’s ranks offered a most attractive career. The discipline was easy, and there was no time for drill. But of excitement and adventure there was enough and to spare. Scarcely a day passed without shots being exchanged at one point or another of the picket line. There were the enemy’s outposts to be harassed, prisoners to be taken, bridges to be burnt, and convoys to be captured. Many were the opportunities for distinction. Jackson demanded something more from his cavalry than merely guarding the frontier. It was not sufficient for him to receive warning that the enemy was advancing. He wanted information from which he could deduce what he intended doing; information of the strength of his garrisons, of the dispositions of his camps, of every movement which took place beyond the river. The cavalry had other and more dangerous duties than vedette and escort. To penetrate the enemy’s lines, to approach his camps, and observe his columns—these were the tasks of Ashby’s riders, and in these they were unrivalled. Many of them were no more than boys; but their qualifications for such a life were undeniable. A more gallant or high-spirited body of young soldiers never welcomed the boot and saddle. Their horses were their own, scions of good Virginian stock, with the blood of many a well-known sire—Eclipse, Brighteyes, and Timoleon—in their veins, and they knew how to care for them. They were acquainted with every country lane and woodland track. They had friends in every village, and their names were known to every farmer. The night was no hindrance to them, even in the region of the mountain and the forest. The hunter’s paths were as familiar to them as the turnpike roads. They knew the depth and direction of every ford, and could predict the effect of the weather on stream and track. More admirable material for the service of intelligence could not possibly have been found, and Ashby’s audacity in reconnaissance found ready imitators. A generous rivalry in deeds of daring spread through the command. Bold enterprises were succeeded by others yet more bold, and, to use the words of a gentleman who, although he was a veteran of four years’ service, was but nineteen years of age when Richmond fell, “We thought no more of riding through the enemy’s bivouacs than of riding round our fathers’ farms.” So congenial were the duties of the cavalry, so attractive the life and the associations, that it was no rare thing for a Virginia gentleman to resign a commission in another arm in order to join his friends and kinsmen as a private in Ashby’s ranks. And so before the war had been in progress for many months the fame of the Virginia cavalry rivalled that of their Revolutionary forbears under Light-Horse Harry, the friend of Washington and the father of Lee.

But if the raw material of Jackson’s army was all that could be desired, no less so was the material of the force opposed to him. The regiments of Banks’ army corps were recruited as a rule in the Western States; Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia furnished the majority. They too were hunters and farmers, accustomed to firearms, and skilled in woodcraft. No hardier infantry marched beneath the Stars and Stripes; the artillery, armed with a proportion of rifled guns, was more efficient than that of the Confederates; and in cavalry alone were the Federals overmatched. In numbers the latter were far superior to Ashby’s squadrons; in everything else they were immeasurably inferior. Throughout the North horsemanship was practically an unknown art. The gentlemen of New England had not inherited the love of their Ironside ancestors for the saddle and the chase. Even in the forests of the West men travelled by waggon and hunted on foot. “As cavalry,” says one of Banks’ brigadiers, “Ashby’s men were greatly superior to ours. In reply to some orders I had given, my cavalry commander replied, ‘I can’t catch them, sir; they leap fences and walls like deer; neither our men nor our horses are so trained.’”[^[7]]

It was easy enough to fill the ranks of the Northern squadrons. Men volunteered freely for what they deemed the more dashing branch of the service, ignorant that its duties were far harder both to learn and to execute than those of the other arms, and expecting, says a Federal officer, that the regiment would be accompanied by an itinerant livery stable! Both horses and men were recruited without the slightest reference to their fitness for cavalry work. No man was rejected, no matter what his size or weight, no matter whether he had ever had anything to do with horseflesh or not, and consequently the proportion of sick horses was enormous. Moreover, while the Southern troopers generally carried a firearm, either rifle or shot-gun, some of the Northern squadrons had only the sabre, and in a wooded country the firearm was master of the situation. During the first two years of the war, therefore, the Federal cavalry, generally speaking, were bad riders and worse horse-masters, unable to move except upon the roads, and as inefficient on reconnaissance as in action. For an invading army, information, ample and accurate, is the first requisite. Operating in a country which, almost invariably, must be better known to the defenders, bold scouting alone will secure it from ambush and surprise. Bold scouting was impossible with such mounted troops as Banks possessed, and throughout the Valley campaign the Northern general was simply groping in the dark.

But even had his cavalry been more efficient, it is doubtful whether Banks would have profited. His appointment was political. He was an ardent Abolitionist, but he knew nothing whatever of soldiering. He had begun life as a hand in a cotton factory. By dint of energy and good brains his rise had been rapid; and although, when the war broke out, he was still a young man, he had been Governor of Massachusetts and Speaker of the House of Representatives. What the President expected when he gave him an army corps it is difficult to divine; what might have been expected any soldier could have told him. To gratify an individual, or perhaps to conciliate a political faction, the life of many a private soldier was sacrificed. Lincoln, it is true, was by no means solitary in the unwisdom of his selections for command. His rival in Richmond, it is said, had a fatal penchant for his first wife’s relations; his political supporters were constantly rewarded by appointments in the field, and the worst disasters that befell the Confederacy were due, in great part, to the blunders of officers promoted for any other reason than efficiency. For Mr. Davis there was little excuse. He had been educated at West Point. He had served in the regular army of the United States, and had been Secretary of War at Washington. Lincoln, on the other hand, knew nothing of war, beyond what he had learned in a border skirmish, and very little of general history. He had not yet got rid of the common Anglo-Saxon idea that a man who has pluck and muscle is already a good soldier, and that the same qualities which serve in a street-brawl are all that is necessary to make a general. Nor were historical precedents wanting for the mistakes of the American statesmen. In both the Peninsula and the Crimea, lives, treasure, and prestige were as recklessly wasted as in Virginia; and staff officers who owed their positions to social influence alone, generals, useless and ignorant, who succeeded to responsible command by virtue of seniority and a long purse, were the standing curse of the English army. At the same time, it may well be questioned whether some of the regular officers would have done better than Banks. He was no fool, and if he had not studied the art of war, there have been barrack-square generals who have showed as much ignorance without one-quarter his ability. Natural commonsense has often a better chance of success than a rusty brain, and a mind narrowed by routine. After serving in twenty campaigns Frederick the Great’s mules were still mules. On this very theatre of war, in the forests beyond Romney, an English general had led a detachment of English soldiers to a defeat as crushing as it was disgraceful, and Braddock was a veteran of many wars. Here, too, Patterson, an officer of Volunteers who had seen much service, had allowed Johnston to slip away and join Beauregard on Bull Run. The Northern people, in good truth, had as yet no reason to place implicit confidence in the leading of trained soldiers. They had yet to learn that mere length of service is no test whatever of capacity for command, and that character fortified by knowledge is the only charm which attracts success.

Jackson had already some acquaintance with Banks. During the Romney expedition the latter had been posted at Frederick with 16,000 men, and a more enterprising commander would at least have endeavoured to thwart the Confederate movements. Banks, supine in his camps, made neither threat nor demonstration. Throughout the winter, Ashby’s troopers had ridden unmolested along the bank of the Potomac. Lander alone had worried the Confederate outposts, driven in their advanced detachments, and drawn supplies from the Virginian farms. Banks had been over-cautious and inactive, and Jackson had not failed to note his characteristics.