Mosby's War Reminiscences; Stuart's Cavalry Campaigns

by John Singleton Mosby

This march of Jackson's I regard as one of the most wonderful things ever achieved in war. Gen. Pope says that it "was plainly seen and promptly reported to Gen. Halleck," but that so confidently did he rely on troops promised from Washington being in position to oppose Jackson that it gave him no uneasiness. That it gave Gen. Pope no uneasiness, I think is due to the fact that he knew nothing about it. It certainly would have given Napoleon or Wellington a good deal of uneasiness to have had Stonewall Jackson with 20,000 men in his rear and in nine miles of his headquarters. Now, it seems to me that his knowledge of what Jackson was doing cannot be reconciled with fidelity to his government, and his contemporaneous despatches and conduct. They can only be explained on the theory of his ignorance of the movement, or his co-operation with Jackson. The night before he had told McDowell that he believed the Confederate troops had gone to the Shenandoah valley. Jackson, I know, did marvellous things; but Gen. Pope could hardly have thought he could march an army east and west at the same time. If he knew that Jackson was going to Manassas, he could not have believed that he had gone to the valley. Admitting that he thought Franklin's corps was at Manassas to meet him, he would be a curious commander-in-chief not to inquire if it was or not to give his subordinate warning of the enemy's approach, in order that he might get ready to fight, or burn his stores and run away. If he had even called the telegraph operators at Bristoe and Manassas, they could have told him that there were just enough troops there to get caught, and that they knew nothing of Jackson's coming. He tells McDowell, after Jackson got to Bristoe, that the enemy's cavalry have interrupted communication with Manassas, and orders a single regiment to go down on the cars to repair the damage. Did he think one regiment could drive Stonewall Jackson away?

The next morning Halleck sends up a brigade to Manassas, that was almost annihilated,—its commander killed, and the train captured on which they came. If Halleck had known he was sending them into the jaws of death, he would have incurred a criminal responsibility. All of General Pope's orders and despatches at the time have been published; there is not a hint in any of them that he knew of Jackson's movement around him. The first time he suspected it was when the telegraph wire was cut, and he had to stop talking with Halleck. Three hours after that, McDowell telegraphs to Pope that an intelligent negro had just come in and reported that Jackson had passed through Thoroughfare Gap that day. Pope's answer shows that this news was a revelation and a surprise to him.

At that time Jackson's men, after a march of over fifty miles in two days, were eating his rations in sight of the blazing bridges and railroad trains at Manassas. The next day a cavalry reconnoissance under Buford was ordered to Salem, to ascertain the truth of the negro's statement. If it had been sent two days earlier it might have done some good. But Pope did not wait to hear from Buford, but changed front and hastened towards Manassas to recover his communications. Buford returned with his broken-down cavalry to Warrenton that night, but Pope's whole army had gone. During that day Jackson's wearied soldiers were resting and refreshing themselves from their abundant spoils. At night Jackson marched away towards Thoroughfare to unite with Longstreet. The supplies that he could not transport were burned. Pope's army with the railroad broken was now in a starving condition.[31] To lead Pope astray, A. P. Hill's division was sent a roundabout way by Centreville and rejoined Jackson the next day at Sudley.

The reason that Jackson left Manassas was that Stuart had captured a despatch showing that Pope was concentrating his army on that point. General Jackson says: "General Stuart kept me advised of the movements of the enemy." In a despatch to Fitz John Porter on the evening of the 27th, Pope ordered him to be at Bristoe at daylight the next morning to bag Jackson who was then five miles off. General Pope says that Jackson made a mistake in leaving Manassas before he got there. If Jackson went there to be caught it was. If Pope had reached the place at daylight he would have found nothing but a rear-guard of Stuart's cavalry. He has censured Porter for not getting there in time to bag Jackson. Pope himself arrived about noon. It happened that the evening before I rode off to a farmer's house to get some supper and slept under a tree in the yard. The next morning I returned to the Junction thinking our army was still there. I found the place deserted and as silent as the cities of the plain. So, if General Pope and Fitz John Porter had come at that time they might have caught me, that is, if their horses were faster than mine. Pope was deceived by Jackson's stratagem and marched off to Centreville to find him. Every step he took in that direction carried him farther from Jackson. He seemed to be groping in the dark. Instead of marching his infantry off in the morning on a fool's errand to Manassas in search of Jackson he ought first to have felt the enemy with his cavalry, and then manœuvred his army so as to intercept his junction with Longstreet. Pope did exactly the reverse.

On the evening of the 28th, Longstreet drove Ricketts' division from Thoroughfare and the head of his column bivouacked in about six miles of Jackson. During the fight I rode with Stuart towards the Gap.

As Ricketts was then between him and Longstreet, Stuart sent a despatch by a trusty messenger urging him to press on to the support of Jackson.

I do not think any other commander ever performed such a feat, or extricated himself from such perils as environed Jackson on this expedition. His success was largely due to Stuart's cavalry, who were the eyes of the army, that brought him quick intelligence of the enemy, and as the Count of Paris says, "screened all Jackson's movements as with an impenetrable veil." On the morning of the 29th, in a despatch to Porter and McDowell, Gen. Pope says: "The indications are that the whole force of the enemy is moving in this direction at a pace that will bring them here by to-morrow night or next morning." His cavalry could not then have informed him of the result of the combat between Longstreet and Ricketts on the afternoon before; for it was impossible for him to believe that the man who was called the war-horse of the Southern Army would take two days to march six miles with the thunders of battle rolling in his ears. General Pope does not seem to have recovered his mental equilibrium when he wrote his report, for he says, in one place, "Every indication during the night of the 29th and up to 10 o'clock on the morning of the 30th pointed to the retreat of the enemy from our front;" and further on he says, "During the whole night of the 29th and the morning of the 30th the advance of the main army under Lee was arriving on the field to reinforce Jackson." That is, the arrival of 30,000 fresh Confederate troops on the field was a sign to Gen. Pope that they were running away.

No one can study this campaign without being struck by the marked difference between the commanders of the two armies in the employment of their cavalry. A distinguished general who served under Pope says: "That judicious use of cavalry by which Jackson covered his front, concealed his movements, discovered his enemies, and succeeded in his raids, had not at that period been generally appreciated by Federal commanders, and was almost entirely neglected by Pope."

I cannot close this account of the part borne by Stuart's cavalry in this campaign without some reference to the use that has been made of his report of it by the partisans of General Pope, and the criticism it has borne from the friends of General Porter. It is remarkable that both parties should agree in the construction put upon it, and that so clearly a wrong one. One side refers to it to prove the assertion of General Pope: "I believe—in fact I am positive—that at five o'clock on the afternoon of the 29th General Porter had in his front no considerable body of the enemy. I believed then—as I am very sure now—that it was easily practicable for him to have turned the right flank of Jackson and to have fallen on his rear: and if he had done so, we should have gained a decisive victory over the army under Jackson before he could have been joined by any of the forces of Longstreet," etc. He further says that about sunset of the 29th the advance of Longstreet began to arrive on the field. The essence of the controversy is the time of Longstreet's arrival. Could Porter have reached Gainesville, the objective point on which he and Longstreet marched that day, in time to have executed the order of 4.30 P.M. of the 29th to turn the Confederate flank? While the order does not specify Jackson's, but says the enemy's flank, it clearly referred to Jackson, for General Pope asserted that Longstreet was not then on the field and could not arrive before the next day. As Porter and Longstreet had camped the night before about the same distance from that place, and as Porter,[32] owing to contradictory orders, had marched twice the distance that Longstreet did, the presumption is that the latter arrived there first.

To my mind Stuart is a conclusive witness for Porter. Yet one critic (General Cox) argues that there was no obstruction but Stuart's cavalry between Porter and Jackson, and an author of a defence of Porter (General George H. Gordon) calls his report a romance. Stuart says that General Lee arrived at Gainesville on the morning of the 29th with Longstreet's corps; that he passed his cavalry through Longstreet's column and placed it on his flank; that during the day his videttes reported the approach of Porter's corps; and that he sent notice of it to General Lee, who ordered infantry and artillery to his support. He adds that in the mean time he kept his cavalry dragging brush to raise a dust, and that the ruse had the desired effect of deceiving Porter. As Stuart was recovering Longstreet's flank he would be close to it. Now the object he had in dragging the brush was to deceive Porter as to the force with which he was in immediate contact. His saying that Porter was deceived by it was the mere expression of his opinion—not the statement of a fact. Stuart's object was to gain time enough for Longstreet (not Jackson) to readjust his line to meet a threatened attack on his flank. That was all. If Porter saw a heavy cloud of dust rising in the road before him, he could not tell, without halting his column and reconnoitring, what created it. But the delay involved in doing this was all that Stuart wanted. Longstreet had been in the same dilemma at Salem two days before; when he reached there he met Buford's cavalry. If he had known that nothing else was in front of him, he would have brushed them away with a few skirmishers without losing a minute on his march. But he halted his column, he says, and was detained an hour before he could find out what it was. Pope was deceived by a few shells the Confederates threw at him across the Rappahannock into the belief that our army was in his front when in fact it was in his rear. The divine genius has never yet appeared in war that could always at a glance detect every stratagem and see through every mask. "He who wars," says Napier, "walks in a mist through which the keenest eye cannot always discern the right path."