Such was the condition of the Virginia Peninsula between the York and James Rivers when General McClellan embarked the ma.s.s of the army he commanded in northern Virginia and proceeded to Fortress Monroe; and when the greater part of our army, under the command of General J. E.
Johnston, was directed to move for the purpose of counteracting this new plan of the enemy.
Early in April, General McClellan had landed about one hundred thousand men at or near Fortress Monroe.[21] At this time General Magruder occupied the lower Peninsula with his force of seven or eight thousand men. Marshes, creeks, and dense wood gave to that position such advantage that, in his report, made at a subsequent period, he expressed the belief that with twenty or twenty-five thousand men he could have held it against any supposable attack.
When McClellan advanced with his immense army, Magruder fell back to the line of Warwick River, which has been imperfectly described, and there checked the enemy; and the vast army of invasion, repulsed in several a.s.saults by the most heroic conduct of our troops, commenced a siege by regular approaches. After the first advance of the enemy, General Magruder was reenforced by some troops from the south side of James River and General Wilc.o.x"s brigade, which had been previously detached from the army under General Johnston. On the 9th of April General Magruder"s command, thus reenforced, amounted to about twelve thousand. On that day General Early joined with his division from the Army of Northern Virginia. It had gone by rail to Richmond and thence down the York and James Rivers in vessels towed by tugs--except the trains and artillery, which moved by land. This division had about eight thousand officers and men for duty. General Magruder"s force was thus increased to about twenty thousand. This was the first detachment from the Army of Northern Virginia which arrived on the Peninsula.
General McClellan, in a cipher dispatch of the 7th of April, two days previous, informed Secretary Stanton that prisoners stated that General J. E. Wharton (no doubt, Johnston) had the day before arrived in Yorktown with strong reenforcements, and adds: "It seems clear that I shall have the whole force of the enemy on my hands, probably not less than one hundred thousand men, and possibly more... . When my present command all joins, I shall have about eighty-five thousand men for duty, from which a large force must be taken for guards, escort, etc." After some remarks about the strength of our intrenchments, and his conviction that the great battle which would decide the existing contest would be fought there, he urges as necessary for his success that there should be an attack on the rear of Gloucester Point, and adds: "My present strength will not admit of a detachment for this purpose without materially impairing the efficiency of this column. Commodore Goldsborough thinks the work too strong for his available vessels, unless I can turn Gloucester." [22]
In the cipher dispatch of the 7th of April to President Lincoln, General McClellan acknowledges a telegram of the previous day, and adds, "In reply, I have the honor to state that my entire force for duty only amounts to about eighty-five thousand men." [23] He then mentions the fact that General Wool"s command is not under his orders, etc.
Subsequent correspondence clearly shows that General McClellan would not risk making a detachment from his army to turn the position at Gloucester Point, and that the navy would not attempt to operate against the battery at that place. He therefore urgently pressed for reenforcements to act on the north side of York River.
General Magruder had, up to and after the time of receiving the reenforcements before mentioned, worked day and night in constructing and strengthening his defenses. His small force had been a.s.sisted in this work by a considerable body of negro laborers, and an active partic.i.p.ant and competent judge, General Early, thus wrote of his conduct:
"The a.s.suming and maintaining this line by Magruder, with his small force, in the face of such overwhelming odds, was one of the boldest exploits ever performed by a military commander; and he had so manoeuvred his troops, by displaying them rapidly at different points, as to produce the impression on his opponent that he had a large army."
As soon as it was definitely ascertained that General McClellan, with his main army, was on the Peninsula, General J. E. Johnston was a.s.signed to the command of the Department of the Peninsula and Norfolk, and directed to proceed thither to examine the condition of affairs there. After spending a day on General Magruder"s defensive line, he returned to Richmond, and recommended the abandonment of the Peninsula, and that we should take a defensive position nearer to Richmond. The question was postponed, and an appointment made for its discussion, to which I proposed to invite the Secretary of War, General Randolph, and General Lee, then stationed in Richmond, and in general charge of army operations. General Johnston asked that he might invite General Longstreet and General G. W. Smith to be present, to which I a.s.sented.
At this meeting. General Johnston announced his plan to be, the withdrawal of General Magruder"s troops from the Peninsula, and of General Huger"s from Norfolk, to be united with the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the withdrawal of the troops from South Carolina and Georgia, his belief being that General Magruder"s line was indefensible with the forces we could concentrate there; that the batteries at Gloucester Point could not be maintained; that the enemy would turn the position at Yorktown by ascending the York River, if the defensive line there should possibly be maintained. To this plan the Secretary of War objected, because the navy-yard at Norfolk offered our best if not our only opportunity to construct in any short time gunboats for coastwise and harbor defense. General Lee, always bold in his views and unusually sagacious in penetrating the designs of the enemy, insisted that the Peninsula offered great advantages to a smaller force in resisting a numerically superior a.s.sailant, and, in the comprehensive view which he usually took of the necessities of other places than the one where he chanced to be, objected to withdrawing the troops from South Carolina and Georgia, as involving the probable capture of Charleston and Savannah. By recent service in that section he was well informed as to the condition of those important ports. General G. W. Smith, as well as I remember, was in full accord with General Johnston, and General Longstreet partially so.
After hearing fully the views of the several officers named, I decided to resist the enemy on the Peninsula, and, with the aid of the navy, to hold Norfolk and keep the command of the James River as long as possible. Arrangements were made, with such force as our means permitted, to occupy the country north of Richmond, and the Shenandoah Valley, and, with the rest of General Johnston"s command, to make a junction with General Magruder to resist the enemy"s forces on the Peninsula. Though General J. E. Johnston did not agree with this decision, he did not ask to be relieved, and I had no wish to separate him from the troops with whom he was so intimately acquainted, and whose confidence I believed he deservedly possessed.
To recur to General Magruder: soon after the landing of the enemy, skirmishes commenced with our forces, and the first vigorous attempt was made to break the line at Lee"s Mills, where there were some newly constructed defenses. The enemy was so signally repulsed that he described them as very strong works, and thereafter commenced the construction of parallels and regular approaches, having an exaggerated idea as well of the number of our troops as of the strength of our works at that time. General Magruder, in his report, notices a serious attempt to break his line of the Warwick at Dam No.
1, about the center of the line, and its weakest point. Opening with a heavy bombardment at nine in the morning, which continued until three P.M., heavy ma.s.ses of infantry then commenced to deploy, and, with musketry-fire, were thrown forward to storm our six-pounder battery, which had been effectively used, and was the only artillery we had there in position. A portion of the column charged across the dam, but Brigadier-General Howell Cobb met the attack with great firmness, the enemy was driven with the bayonet from some of our rifle-pits of which he had gained possession, and the a.s.saulting column recoiled with loss from the steady fire of our troops.
The enemy"s skirmishers pressed closely in front of the redoubts on the left of our line, and with their long-range rifles had a decided advantage over our men, armed with smooth-bore muskets. In addition to the rifle-pits they dug, they were covered by a dwelling-house and a large peach-orchard which extended to within a few hundred yards of our works. On the 11th of April General Magruder ordered sorties to be made from all the main points of his line. General Wilc.o.x sent out a detachment from Wynne"s Mill which encountered the advance of the enemy in his front and drove it back to the main line. Later in the day General Early sent out from Redoubt No. 5 Colonel Ward"s Florida regiment and the Second Mississippi Battalion, under Colonel Taylor.
They drove the sharpshooters from their rifle-pits and pursued them to the main road from Warwick Court-House, encountered a battery posted at an earthwork, and compelled it precipitately to retire. On the approach of a large force of the enemy"s infantry, Colonel Ward returned to our works, after having set fire to the dwelling-house above mentioned. These affairs developed the fact that the enemy was in strong force, both in front of Wynne"s Mill and Redoubts Nos. 4 and 5. On the next night General Early sent out Colonel Terry"s Virginia regiment to cut down the peach-orchard and burn the rest of the houses which had afforded shelter to the a.s.sailants; and on the succeeding night Colonel McRae, with his North Carolina regiment, went farther to the front and felled the cedars along the main road which partially hid the enemy"s movements, and subsequently our men were not annoyed by the sharpshooters. About the middle of April a further reenforcement of two divisions from the Army of Northern Virginia was added to our forces on the Peninsula, which amounted, when General Johnston a.s.sumed command, to something over fifty thousand.
The work of strengthening the defenses was still continued. On the 16th of April an a.s.sault was made on our line, to the right of Yorktown, which was repulsed with heavy loss to the enemy, and such serious discomfiture that henceforward his plan seemed to be to rely upon bombardment, for which numerous batteries were prepared.
The views of the enemy, as revealed by the testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, were that he could gain possession of Gloucester Point only by reenforcements operating on the north side of York River, or by the previous reduction of Yorktown. In addition to the answer given by General McClellan, I quote from the testimony of General Keyes. He said, "The possession of Gloucester Point by the enemy r.e.t.a.r.ded the taking of Yorktown, and it also enabled the enemy to close the river at that point," and added, "Gloucester must have fallen upon our getting possession of Yorktown, and the York River would then have been open." [24]
With the knowledge possessed by us, General McClellan certainly might have sent a detachment from his army which, after crossing the York River, could have turned the position at Gloucester Point and have overcome our small garrison at that place; but this is but one of the frequent examples of war in which the immunity of one army is derived from the mistakes of the other.
An opinion has existed among some of our best-informed officers that Franklin"s division was kept on transports for the purpose of landing on the north side of York River to capture our battery at Gloucester Point, and thus open the way to turn our position by ascending the York River. Upon the authority of Swinton, the fairest and most careful of the Northern writers on the war, it appears that Franklin"s division had disembarked before the evacuation of Yorktown; and, upon the authority of the Prince de Joinville, serving on the staff of General McClellan, it appears that his commanding general was not willing to intrust that service to a single division, and plaintively describes the effect produced by the refusal of President Lincoln to send McDowell"s corps to reenforce McClellan. He writes thus:
"The news was received by the Federal army with dissatisfaction, although the majority could not then foresee the deplorable consequences of an act performed, it must be supposed, with no evil intention, but with inconceivable recklessness... . It was the mainspring removed from a great work already begun. It deranged everything. Among the divisions of the corps of McDowell, there was one--that of Franklin--which was regretted more than all the rest... . He [the commander-in-chief] held it in great esteem, and earnestly demanded its restoration. It was sent back to him without any explanation, in the same manner as it had been withheld.
This splendid division, eleven thousand strong, arrived, and for a moment the commander thought of intrusting to it alone the storming of Gloucester, but the idea was abandoned."
On the 28th of April General J. E. Johnston wrote to Flag-Officer Tatnall, commanding the naval forces in the James River, requesting him, if practicable, to proceed with the Virginia to York River for the purpose of destroying the enemy"s transports, to which Commodore Tatnall replied that it could only be done in daylight, when he would be exposed to the fire of the forts, and have to contend with the squadron of men-of-war stationed below them, and that, if this should be safely done, according to the information derived from the pilots, it would not be possible for the Virginia to reach the enemy"s transports at Poquosin, while the withdrawal of the Virginia would be to abandon the defense of Norfolk, and to remove the obstacles she opposed to "the enemy"s operations in the James River." [25]
Meanwhile, the brilliant movements of the intrepid Jackson created such apprehension of an attack upon Washington City by the Army of the Shenandoah, that President Lincoln refused the repeated requests of General McClellan to send him McDowell"s corps to operate on the north side of the York River against our battery at Gloucester Point.
On the 28th of the following June, Mr. Lincoln, noticing what he regarded as ungenerous complaint, wrote to General McClellan: "If you have had a drawn battle or a repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in Washington. We protected Washington, and the enemy concentrated on you." [26]
The month of April was cold and rainy, and our men poorly provided with shelter, and with only the plainest rations; yet, under all these discomforts, they steadily labored to perfect the defenses, and, when they were not on the front line, were constantly employed in making traverses and epaulments in the rear. Whether General McClellan, under the pressure from Washington, would have made an early a.s.sault,[27] or have adhered to the policy of regular approaches, and, relying on his superiority in artillery, have waited to batter our earthworks in breach, and whether all which had been done, or which it was practicable under the circ.u.mstances to do, to strengthen the main line would have made it sufficiently strong to resist the threatened bombardment, is questionable; and how soon that bombardment would have commenced is now indeterminate. A telegram from President Lincoln to General McClellan is suggestive on this point. It reads thus:
"WASHINGTON, _May 1, 1862._
"Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me--chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything to be done?" [28]
By the following telegram sent by me to General J. E. Johnston, commanding at Yorktown, the contents of that which I had received from him, and of which I am not now possessed, will be readily inferred:
"RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, _May 1, 1862._
"General J. E. JOHNSTON, _Yorktown, Virginia_.
"Accepting your conclusion that you must soon retire, arrangements are commenced for the abandonment of the navy-yard and removal of public property both from Norfolk and Peninsula. Your announcement to-day that you would withdraw to-morrow night takes us by surprise, and must involve enormous losses, including unfinished gunboats. Will the safety of your army allow more time?
"JEFFERSON DAVIS."
My next step was to request the Secretary of War, General Randolph, and the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, to proceed to Yorktown and Norfolk to see whether the evacuation could not be postponed, and to make all practicable arrangements to remove the machinery, material, ordnance, and supplies for future use. At the suggestion of the Secretary of War, I agreed that he should first go with the Secretary of the Navy to Norfolk and thence pa.s.s over to Yorktown.
On the next morning they left for Norfolk. General Randolph, in his testimony before a joint special committee of the Confederate Congress, said:
"A few hours after we arrived in Norfolk, an officer from General Johnston"s army made his appearance, with an order for General Huger to evacuate Norfolk immediately... . As that would have involved heavy losses in stores, munitions, and arms, I took the responsibility of giving General Huger a written order to delay the evacuation until he could remove such stores, munitions, and arms as could be carried off... . Mr. Mallory was with me and gave similar instructions to the commandant of the navy yard... . The evacuation was delayed for about a week... . When the council of war met [the conference with the President heretofore referred to], it was supposed that, if the enemy a.s.saulted our army at the Warwick River line, we should defeat them; but that, if instead of a.s.saulting they made regular approaches to either flank of the line and took advantage of their great superiority of heavy artillery, the probability would be that one flank or both of the army would be uncovered, and thus the enemy, ascending the York and James Rivers in transports, could turn the flank of the army and compel it to retreat... . They made regular approaches, mounted the largest-sized guns, such as we could not compete with, and made the position of Yorktown untenable. Nearly all of our heavy rifled guns burst during the siege. The remainder of the heavy guns were in the water-batteries," etc.
The permanent occupation of Norfolk after our army withdrew from the lower Peninsula and the enemy possessed it was so obviously impossible as not to require explanation; but, while the enemy was engaged in the pursuit of our retreating columns, it was deemed justifiable to delay the evacuation of Norfolk for the purposes indicated in the above answer of the Secretary of War. The result justified the decision.
The order for the withdrawal of the army from the line of the Warwick River on the night of the 2d of April was delayed until the next night, because, as I have been informed, some of the troops were not ready to move. Heavy cannonading, both on the night of the 2d and 3d, concealed the fact of the purpose to withdraw, and the evacuation was made so successfully, as appears by the testimony before the United States Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, that the enemy was surprised the next morning to find the lines unoccupied.
The loss of public property, as was antic.i.p.ated, was great, the steamboats expected for its transportation not having arrived before the evacuation was made. From a narrative by General Early I make the following extract:
"A very valuable part of the property so lost, and which we stood much in need of, consisted of a very large number of picks and spades, many of them entirely new. All of our heavy guns, including some recently arrived and not mounted, together with a good deal of ammunition piled up on the wharf, had to be left behind."
The land transportation was quite deficient. General Magruder"s troops had scarcely any, and others of the more recent organizations were in a like condition; as no supplies had been acc.u.mulated at Williamsburg, this want of transportation would necessarily involve want of rations in the event of delays on the retreat.
At Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown, General Magruder, as has been mentioned, had constructed a line of detached works. The largest of these, Fort Magruder, was constructed at a point a short distance beyond where the Lee"s Mill and Yorktown roads united, and where the enemy in his pursuit first encountered our retiring forces, and were promptly repulsed. General Magruder, whose arduous service and long exposure on the Peninsula has been noticed, was compelled by illness to leave his division. His absence at this moment was the more to be regretted, as it appears that the positions of the redoubts he had constructed were not all known to the commanding General, and some of them being unoccupied were seized by the enemy, and held subsequently to our disadvantage. General McClellan, in his official report from "bivouac in front of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862,"
says, "General Hanc.o.c.k has taken two redoubts and repulsed Early"s rebel brigade by a real charge of the bayonet, taking one colonel and one hundred and fifty other prisoners," etc. As this is selected for the brilliant event in the affair before Williamsburg, I will extract fully from General Early"s report:
"LYNCHBURG, June 9, 1862.
"In accordance with orders received the evening before, my brigade was in readiness to take up the line of march from its camp west of Williamsburg toward Richmond on the 5th of May... . I was directed by Major-General D. H. Hill not to move my infantry, and in a short time I was ordered by him to march back, and report with my regiments to Major-General Longstreet at Williamsburg... . Between three and four o"clock, P.M., I was ordered by General Longstreet to move to the support of Brigadier-General Anderson of his division, at or near Fort Magruder... . Before my command had proceeded far toward its destination, I received an order from General Longstreet to send him two regiments... . With the remainder of my command, being my brigade proper, I proceeded, as near as practicable, to the position designated by General Longstreet on the left and rear of Fort Magruder... . In a short time Major-General Hill arrived, and, having ascertained that the enemy had a battery in front of us, he informed me that he wished me to attack and capture the battery with my brigade, but before doing so he must see General Longstreet on the subject... . General Hill being on the right and accompanying the brigade, I placed myself on the left with the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment for the purpose of directing its movements, as I was satisfied from the sound of the enemy"s guns that this regiment would come directly on the battery... . In an open field, in view of Fort Magruder, at the end farthest from the fort, the enemy had taken position with a battery of six pieces ... supported by a brigade of infantry under the command of Brigadier-General Hanc.o.c.k. In this field were two or three redoubts, previously built by our troops, of one, at least, of which the enemy had possession, his artillery being posted in front of it, near some farmhouses, and supported by a body of infantry, the balance of the infantry being in the redoubt, and in the edge of the woods close by. The Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment, as I had antic.i.p.ated, came directly upon the battery... . This regiment, without pausing or wavering, charged upon the enemy under a heavy fire, and drove back his guns and the infantry supporting them to the cover of the redoubt. ... I sent orders to the other regiments to advance; these orders were antic.i.p.ated by Colonel McRae of the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, who was on the extreme right of my brigade, and marched down to the support of the Twenty-fourth, traversing the whole front that should have been occupied by the other two regiments."
General Early, having received a severe wound, soon after the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment charged the battery, was compelled by exhaustion from loss of blood and intense pain to leave the field just as the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, led by its gallant colonel, charged on the enemy"s artillery and infantry. Of that charge General Early writes:
"This North Carolina Regiment, in conjunction with the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment, made an attack upon the vastly superior forces of the enemy, which for its gallantry is unsurpa.s.sed in the annals of warfare: their conduct was such as to elicit from the enemy himself the highest praise."
This refers to the chivalric remark made by General Hanc.o.c.k to Dr.
Cullen, left in charge of our wounded, viz., "The Fifth North Carolina and Twenty-fourth Virginia deserve to have the word immortal inscribed on their banners." Colonel McRae, who succeeded to the command after General Early retired, states in his report that he sent to General Hill for reenforcements in order to advance, and in reply received an order to retire: that his men were holding the enemy to his shelter in such way that they were not at all suffering, but, when he commenced retiring, the enemy rose and fired upon his men, doing the greatest damage that was done. Some of them obliqued too far to the right in going back, and met a regiment of the enemy concealed in the woods, and were thus captured. General Early writes: "The two regiments that united in the a.s.sault were not repulsed at all. They drove the enemy to the cover of the redoubt and the shelter of the woods near it, where he was held at bay by my two regiments, which had suffered comparatively little at that time." He confidently expresses the opinion that, had his attack been supported promptly and vigorously, the enemy"s force there engaged must have been captured, as it had crossed over to that point on a narrow mill-dam, and had only that way to escape.
The claim of the enemy to have achieved a victory at Williamsburg is refuted by the fact that our troops remained in possession of the field during the night, and retired the next morning to follow up the retreat, which was only interrupted by the necessity of checking the enemy until our trains could proceed far enough to be out of danger.
The fact of our wounded being left at Williamsburg was only due to our want of ambulances in which to remove them.
Though General McClellan at this time estimated our force as "probably greater a good deal" than his own, the fact is, it was numerically less than half the number he had for duty. Severe exposure and fatigue must, by sickness, have diminished our force more than it was increased by absentees returning to duty after the middle of April, so that at the end of the month the number was probably less than fifty thousand present for duty. General McClellan"s report on the 30th of April, 1862, as shown by the certified statement, gives the aggregate present for duty at one hundred and twelve thousand three hundred and ninety-two.[29]
When the Confederates evacuated Yorktown, General Franklin"s division had just been disembarked from the transports. It was reembarked, and started on the morning of the 6th up the York River.[30]
After the battle of Williamsburg our army continued its retreat up the Peninsula. Here, for the first time, sub-terra sh.e.l.ls were employed to check a marching column. The event is thus described by General Rains, the inventor: