General Lee's Army

From Victory to Collapse

Joseph Glatthaar

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781416593775
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de la Guerra de Secesión

"You would be surprised to see what men we have in the ranks, " Virginia cavalryman Thomas Rowland informed his mother in May 1861, just after joining the Army of Northern Virginia. His army -- General Robert E. Lee's army -- was a surprise to almost everyone: With daring early victories and an invasion into the North, they nearly managed to convince the North to give up the fight. Even in 1865, facing certain defeat after the loss of 30, 000 men, a Louisiana private fighting in Lee's army still had hope. "I must not despair, " he scribbled in his diary. "Lee will bring order out of chaos, and with the help of our Heavenly Father, all will be well." Astonishingly, after 150 years of scholarship, there are still some major surprises about the Army of Northern Virginia. In General Lee's Army, renowned historian Joseph T. Glatthaar draws on an impressive range of sources assembled over two decades -- from letters and diaries, to official war records, to a new, definitive database of statistics -- to rewrite the history of the Civil War's most important army and, indeed, of the war itself. Glatthaar takes readers from the home front to the heart of the most famous battles of the war: Manassas, the Peninsula campaign, Antietam, Gettysburg, all the way to the final surrender at Appomattox. General Lee's Army penetrates headquarters tents and winter shanties, eliciting the officers' plans, wishes, and prayers; it portrays a world of life, death, healing, and hardship; it investigates the South's commitment to the war and its gradual erosion; and it depicts and analyzes Lee's men in triumph and defeat. The history of Lee's army is a powerful lens on the entire war. The fate of Lee's army explains why the South almost won -- and why it lost. The story of his men -- their reasons for fighting, their cohesion, mounting casualties, diseases, supply problems, and discipline problems -- tells it all. Glatthaar's definitive account settles many historical arguments. The Rebels were fighting above all to defend slavery. More than half of Lee's men were killed, wounded, or captured -- a staggering statistic. Their leader, Robert E. Lee, though far from perfect, held an exalted place in his men's eyes despite a number of mistakes and despite a range of problems among some of his key lieutenants. General Lee's Army is a masterpiece of scholarship and vivid storytelling, narrated as much as possible in the words of the enlisted men and their officers.

Chapter 1

COMEDY OF ERRORS, TRAGEDY OF TRIUMPH

EVEN THOUGH James Thomas Petty had resided in Washington, D.C., for years, he always identified himself as a Virginian. When it came time to choose sides in the sectional crisis, Thomas, as his friends called him, had no difficulty. He left the Union for the Confederate States of America just as Virginia did.

Born in 1836 in Falmouth, Virginia, Thomas lived there and in Front Royal, Virginia, in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains during his youth. His father, James S. Petty, was a tailor by trade, and not a notably successful one at that. In 1860, at age fifty-three, James Petty owned no land and held personal property worth a meager $150.00. Although he never made much money, James and his wife, Margaret, emphasized schooling for their children. At fourteen, Thomas could have helped to ease the financial woes of the family by seeking employment. Instead, his family scrimped while Thomas secured a superior education, which reaped dividends for the rest of his life.¹

Avoiding his father’s craft and, for that matter, other forms of manual labor, young Thomas gravitated toward the nation’s capital in the early 1850s in search of employment. With support from his father’s family, he found employment as a clerk, earning decent wages with the promise of economic mobility and financial security. A bright and pleasant lad, about medium height with hazel eyes and dark hair, Thomas carved out a strong network of friends and connections in and around Washington. He socialized broadly, forging relationships with other aspiring young men from modest backgrounds, and with quite a number of single young women.²

On January 1, 1861, Petty called on President James Buchanan to offer him a happy New Year. “Poor Old Buck!” he jotted in his diary. “He looks careworn, and the effects of ‘Secession’ are visible in his countenance.” Barely a week earlier, South Carolina had voted to withdraw from the Union, and rumblings from other slave states suggested that more would follow.³

Along with other Washingtonians, Petty rejoiced when rumors circulated that Senator John Crittenden’s committee had eked out a compromise. It would have overseen the adoption of perpetually binding constitutional amendments that would secure slavery forever and guarantee slavery in territories south of the Missouri Compromise line, 36°, 30'. “A mountain seemd removed from every heart,” he exulted. But that, too, quickly unraveled.⁴

Soon, the electricity of the times seized him, as it did hundreds of thousands of others. The thrill of momentous events, the culmination of decades of struggle over the legality and geography of slavery, was so exciting that it clouded his mind to solutions and consequences. “The South,” he proclaimed joyously, “is in a blaze.” On behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia, he argued with friends so vociferously that he had to avoid political discussions to preserve his bond with them. When Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor fell to Rebel gunners in mid-April, he erupted with joy. Soon thereafter, when Virginia seceded, he announced his decision: “All my friends nearly condemn me but believing I’m right I still cry hurrah for Old Virginia! Whither she goes I’ll follow.”⁵

Although neither Petty nor his parents had slaves, many people he knew from days as a youth and an adult did—his uncle in Front Royal owned a dozen. Slaveholding was a Southern right, and Petty detested “Black Republicans” for their goals of stripping Southerners of their civil liberties as the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had reaffirmed. He took great pride in his standing as “Virginian & a Southerner.”⁶

By mid-April, Petty had written his parents to inform them where he stood on the national crisis. A week later, he arrived in Front Royal, determined to enlist in the army. Two of his cousins had already left for Harpers Ferry to serve in the Warren Rifles, and he decided to join them. Before the month was out, Thomas Petty drilled on the green in front of Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, where George Washington and Robert E. Lee had worshiped.

It did not take long before Petty’s officers discovered the value of his clerking talents. After a stint as recorder for a court-martial, duty that earned him the praise of the judge advocate, his captain asked him to prepare the company rolls. Soon, the brigade commissary sought his labor, and a struggle for Petty’s services ensued that went all the way to the brigade commander, Brig. Gen. James Longstreet. Longstreet directed that Petty should remain with his regiment.⁷

In mid-July, a Union army of 32,000 under Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell marched southward toward the main Confederate body that guarded Manassas Junction, where the Manassas Gap Railroad from Front Royal intersected the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. Advanced Rebel units fell back in the face of the large Union column, joining forces with other elements of Brig. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard’s command behind a sluggish, fairly shallow stream with steep banks called Bull Run, about one and a half miles from Manassas Junction.

Petty’s regiment, the 17th Virginia Infantry, had only pulled its component companies together in late June. Along with the rest of Longstreet’s Brigade, it guarded Blackburn’s Ford across Bull Run, on the right of Beauregard’s line. About noon on July 18, the lead column of the Union command approached, placing the entire regiment under fire for the first time. To open the contest, Union artillery hurled projectiles to the left of the brigade. Soon, the fire drifted on top of the 17th. As the soldiers hugged the ground for protection, Federal infantrymen deployed and delivered volleys at the Rebel line. Some soldiers panicked and began withdrawing to the rear. Suddenly, Longstreet rode among them. A large and powerful man who appeared like a giant on horseback, Longstreet’s imperturbability amid enemy gunfire reassured the raw troops and restored order. Others held their ground but nervously fidgeted with their firing hammers, itching for a chance to respond in kind. Once Confederates countered with volleys of their own, many of them regained composure. The mere act of defending themselves, and the physical activity of loading and firing, dissipated skittishness among the inexperienced volunteers.

In haste, soldiers loaded and fired, but not in accordance with the procedures officers had taught the men. Perspiration streamed down on the warm day, combining with gunpowder to form a black batter on their faces. Hands, too, took on a charcoal hue from careless pouring of gunpowder into musket barrels. Most men were soon barely recognizable. Hours passed in what appeared to be only seconds. One soldier recalled little of the fight, except his captain parading behind them directing their fire, and his shooting a Yankee some seventy yards out. For that act of killing, he shed no tears of remorse. “Well, I was fighting, for my house, and he had no business there,” he wrote.⁸

Three times the Yankees tried to drive off the Rebel defenders, and three times they fought them back. Finally, Rebel volleys suppressed Federal rifle fire enough to allow three companies from the 17th Virginia to rush across Bull Run. Popping up on the Union flank, they delivered withering blasts that forced the attackers into retreat.

Despite some shaky moments, Longstreet’s Brigade, and the 17th Virginia Infantry, acquitted themselves well in their first firefight. All told, Longstreet’s command suffered seventy casualties while inflicting eighty-three on the attackers. One member of the 17th was killed, with another eighteen wounded. Petty gazed on the corpse of the only fatality, Tom Sangster, of Alexandria. “A triumphant smile rested like a ray of sunshine upon his marble-like features,” he commented. At least some of those casualties, Petty complained, were victims of friendly fire. Frightened men shot first and identified targets later. “Just say boo!” grumbled Petty the day after, “& pop goes a gun at whoever is before them.”⁹

Petty himself witnessed no action that day. Off on an errand for his regimental commander, he returned after the fighting was done. Chagrined by his own absence, and perhaps a bit embarrassed, Petty extracted a promise from his colonel two days later that he could return to his company for the remainder of the campaign. Next time, he would not miss the fight.

Yet the next time, the true Battle of First Manassas on July 21, was even more embarrassing for Petty. Deployed as skirmishers in advance of the Rebel army, Petty and his captain were nearly captured. While running back to Rebel lines, they both stumbled and fell into Bull Run. As Petty plunged into the water, his musket slipped from his grasp. His body crashed into a rock just below the surface, bruising him badly, and as he rolled away, he knocked his captain back under. Completely saturated, the two struggled with each other and the current to stand once more. Hastily, Petty felt around for his weapon, without success. He was suddenly unarmed and in the midst of the largest battle yet fought on the North American continent. Petty limped back to Confederate trenches to secure another rifled musket. By the time he returned to the company, his captain had realized that Petty’s bruise was severe enough to prevent him from moving quickly. He ordered the private back to camp. Petty hobbled off to a commanding hill, and from 11:00 A.M. until 5:00 P.M., watched the battle from safety. The simultaneous roar of musketry and artillery from both sides must have stunned the green soldier. One eyewitness described it to his father by writing, “It was one continual thunder upon thunder until the Earth seemed to shake its very foundations.” By very late afternoon, eruptions of gunfire slowly dissipated, and as darkness settled on the field, Petty returned to the trenches.¹⁰

First Manassas

For Thomas Petty and many others, the start of the war was a comedy of errors, more slapstick than drama. His story is a useful reminder that any single narrative of the war, any story of one united army defeating another, obscures as much as it clarifies. War is the sum total of its individual stories, from comedy to romance to drama to tragedy.

The only way to develop the full story of a war is to tell a number of its individual stories, while keeping them in balance. The Confederacy had some Thomas Pettys, but it had many more Jesse Jordans. Jordan and his comrades in the 4th Alabama Infantry experienced the harsh realities of war at First Manassas. A twenty-one-year-old from Huntsville, Alabama, Jordan had grown up in a very wealthy slaveholding family. His father, a planter, held personal property and real estate worth $50,000, a staggering sum in 1860. With all the opportunities that opulence often offers, Jesse received excellent academic preparation, which culminated in the study of law at the University of Virginia. When the secession crisis erupted, he had just hung his shingle in his hometown.¹¹

Like many other wealthy individuals, Jesse felt a great sense of obligation, too. Thoughtful and sensitive by nature, he never questioned the moral legitimacy of the “peculiar institution.” Jesse had grown up in a slave-owning environment, and his family had prospered in it. The Jordans had enjoyed all the rights and benefits of a free white society in Alabama, and with those privileges came the responsibility to defend it. “My country desires my services & she must have it,” he explained to his sister. “I am bound to her by a solemn oath.” Duty demanded that he pick up the sword “for the defence of the rights of my injured country.”¹²

In the spring of 1861, Jordan enlisted as a private in a company of infantrymen that formed in his native Madison County. Ultimately called Company I, 4th Alabama Infantry, the “North Alabamians” assembled with the other prospective companies from around Alabama in Dalton, Georgia, in early May, where the men swore an oath to serve for a year. After a raucous election for field-grade officers and a rousing send-off by the neighboring Georgians, the men in the 4th Alabama entrained for Lynchburg, Virginia. To ease Private Jordan’s military burden, his father sent along a young male family slave, who would act as his body servant, cooking his meals, washing his clothes, and running various errands for him. Three days of travel placed Jordan and his comrades in the Virginia Theater, and by mid-month they joined Brig. Gen. Barnard Bee’s brigade of Johnston’s army in Harpers Ferry, along the Potomac River.¹³

Nagging Jordan was a premonition that he would never see his family again. “I am going to the tented field,” he informed his sister, “going to leave Mother, Father, Sisters & Brothers with the expectation of never returning.” The idea of dying did not haunt him. He accepted death as likely, but an unyielding sense of responsibility and honor overrode any uneasiness. Warfare, he noted, was a horrible thing, yet he could not dodge his duty. “What unhappiness to us, & devastation to the human race,” he acknowledged. “Husbands obliged to leave their wives, & their dear children[,] Mothers to part with their sons, & sisters with their brothers.” Still, he must serve “for the defence of the rights of my injured country; & if ever I forsake her in her hour of need may the God of my fathers forsake me in that Eternal day.”¹⁴

At Harpers Ferry, soldiers drilled in the warm Virginia sun, mastering the basic tactical formations that they must assume on the battlefield. The officers in the 4th Alabama marched and paraded their men anywhere from six to eight hours per day. They honed tactical maneuvers and instilled a sense of unity and élan, but drilling alienated troops from their colonels and major.¹⁵

Nor were regimental officers the only targets of criticism. When Johnston deemed the occupation of Harpers Ferry too precarious and withdrew his command to the southwest, epithets against him gushed forth from the men in the 4th Alabama. “This thin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Also by Joseph Glatthaar
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Prologue
• 1. Comedy of Errors, Tragedy of Triumph
• 2. Secession and Mobilizing for War
• 3. The Volunteers of ’61
• 4. Why They Enlisted
• 5. Becoming Soldiers
• 6. “To Slaughter One Another Like Brutes”
• 7. “A Great Canvass City”
• 8. Keeping the Army Together
• 9. Clashes within the High Command
• 10. Playing Troops Like Fireflies
• 11. Lee in Command
• 12. The Battle for Richmond: The Seven Days’Campaign
• 13. Taking War to the Enemy
• 14. A Failure of Discipline
• 15. Lee’s Officer Corps and Army Culture
• 16. The Soldiers of ’62
• 17. Supplying the Army
• 18. Camp and Recreation
• 19. Religion and Morality
• 20. Chancellorsville
• 21. Arms and Ammunition
• 22. The Failure at Gettysburg
• 23. Home Front
• 24. Blacks and the Army
• 25. Combat
• 26. Lee and the High Command
• 27. Preparing for the Spring Campaign of 1864
• 28. The Overland Campaign
• 29. The Trenches
• 30. Medical Care
• 31. Manpower
• 32. Desertion
• 33. The Grind of War
• 34. Spiral of Defeat
• 35. The Final Days
• Appendix I: The Sample
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author