Among other problems, Hooker tackled the cavalry. He began by consolidating all of the cavalry with the army into one corps, in place of leaving it split up by regiments among the different infantry divisions, and for its commander he selected a solid regular-army officer, Major General George Stoneman—not the ideal choice, perhaps, for what Hooker really wanted was a Sheridan, and Stoneman was neither fiery nor lucky. However, unification meant that the cavalry would at least have a chance to do cavalry's real job, and Stoneman was conscientious and did his best.
Cavalry's job that winter was practically impossible anyway. It was supposed to form a screen around the entire army, which meant that it had to patrol an outpost line one hundred miles long. This line for the most part ran through a broken country of dense second-growth timber which was crisscrossed by innumerable winding lanes and pathways, most of them so obscure that nobody but a regular inhabitant of the region could even find them, let alone tell where they led. The inhabitants of this country had the strongest of secessionist sympathies and formed an unofficial but highly effective Confederate intelligence network from which it was impossible to keep secrets. One Federal officer reported ruefully that even the women and children "vied with each other in schemes and ruses by which to discover and convey to the enemy facts which we strove to conceal."
24
This meant bad times for Yankee cavalry. Little bodies of Rebel horsemen could always slip across the Rappahannock and concentrate on some remote forest-hidden farm. Knowing exactly where the Yankee vedettes and picket stations were, and guided through the timber by men or boys who could find their way blindfolded, they could descend on the isolated groups of Federals, smash things up, take prisoners, and get clean away before cavalry headquarters had a chance to know what was happening. Stoneman found that his cavalry was wearing itself out simply by doing outpost duty, which, under the circumstances, could not be done effectively anyway. He had twelve thousand men, of whom on any given day one third would be on duty, with another third either going or coming.
25
Nobody was happy, the army's secrets were open to inquiring Rebel eyes, and all of the horses were foundering. In addition, the outposts were getting so jittery that nobody could depend on the reports they sent back. Army headquarters had to warn cavalry that "those whose fears magnify trifling squads into large bodies of the enemy as richly deserve death as the base wretch who deserts his country's flag or his comrades in battle."
26
That was all very well, but in the long run the only way to keep Jeb Stuart out of the Yankee lines was to go across the river in a body and attack him on his own home ground. This idea occurred to various people; among others, to youthful Brigadier General William W. Averell, who commanded one of Stoneman's cavalry divisions and who at West Point had been a classmate of Fitz Lee, now one of Stuart's brigadiers. This Fitz Lee had elevated the technique of annoying Yankee cavalry to a fine art, and he used to send taunting messages to his old pal Averell asking when the Yankee cavalry was going to begin to amount to something, and so on. His most recent message had been an invitation to Averell to come across the river and pay a little visit, bringing some coffee with him if possible. So Averell, who had won a reputation as a bold fighter against the Western Indians just before the war, at last came to Hooker and asked if he might not take his division across the river and look for a fight.
This was right in line with Hooker's ideas and he agreed, saying that there had not been many dead cavalrymen lying around lately but that if Averell went over and fought Fitz Lee there would be.
27
Averell hurried back to his division and made his men sharpen their sabers, promising them a chance to use them in action. In mid-March he led some three thousand troopers down to the Rappahannock at Kelly's Ford, pushed aside the Confederate river guards after a sharp little skirmish, and went barreling across country looking for Fitz Lee and trouble.
He found both quickly enough, but Lee came on the scene with only about half as many men as Averell had, and the Northern troopers were at last beginning to believe that they could face up to Stuart's men in an open fight. The Confederate columns were driven back half a mile or more, charging columns colliding head-on at full gallop in the dust and smoke, horse artillery banging away, everybody yelling and sabers clanging and the fields and roads and woods full of wild uproar. Lee's men counterattacked and were driven off, and opportunity quietly opened a door for young General Averell. He had the bulge on his old classmate now. He could move on and completely rout Lee's brigade and destroy its camp, and it was at a time like this that a good general had to have the instinct of a killer.
That instinct Averell did not have. He straightened his lines for a new attack, but then he began to get cautious. Prisoners told him that Stuart himself had come on the scene. This was true enough, although the prisoners forgot to add that Stuart had come all by himself, with no reinforcements. But the mere weight of Stuart's name was equal to a brigade or two in those days, and besides, Averell heard that Rebel infantry was near. So after a time he had his buglers blow the recall and the Yankee cavalry trotted back to its own side of the river.
The boys were proud of themselves—among other achievements, they had killed the fabulous Major John Pelham, commander of Stuart's artillery—and Averell was happy too. Before recrossing he had left a sack of coffee and a note for Fitz Lee: "Dear Fitz, here's your coffee. Here's your visit. How do you like it?"
But Hooker was angry. Cavalry morale might have been given a lift, but Hooker wanted more than that. In his own way he was a perfectionist—for a while, at least—and he wrote sharply that Averell had had a sweeping victory in his grasp and had lost it because of "imaginary apprehensions."
28
Many a victory this army had missed because commanding generals became nervous and saw things moving in the shadows. Under Joe Hooker this was not to happen. At
XII Corps headquarters, about this time, Hooker voiced his confidence.
"If the enemy does not run, God help them!" he cried.
29
4. May Day in the Wilderness
The Confederacy's fortified lines ran for twenty-five unbroken miles, from Port Royal all the way to Banks Ford. Trenches zigzagged along the lower slopes of the hills, with gun emplacements above them sited so that the gunners could cover all possible approaches. Where the line came out in the open and ran across level plains it was anchored at proper intervals with built-up redoubts. Lee's army could take position anywhere along the immense shallow crescent which faced Fredericksburg and the nearby river crossings, and no imaginable frontal assault could dislodge it. Professional soldiers of that era were brought up on Napoleonic lore, and it was only natural for a young Confederate officer who was trying to explain how invulnerable these lines were to exclaim: "The famous lines at Torres Vedras could not compare with them."
1
In December, when these field fortifications were not half so strong, Burnside had broken his army's back on them. Now Hooker had the army, and he was chock-full of bubbling confidence. Over and over he repeated that this was the finest army on the planet. He told one caller that he would take the army across the river before long and seize the Rebels where the hair was short, and in a moment of extreme expansiveness he said that he hoped God Almighty would have mercy on the Confederates because he, Joe Hooker, would have none. This led Senator Sumner, at the capital, to mark him down disgustedly as a blasphemous wretch,
2
but it also indicated that Hooker felt that he knew how to get at the Rebel army without going smack over the middle of those impregnable trenches.
Thanks to his own energy and good military sense, Hooker had one asset which his predecessors had lacked—a corps of excellent cavalry whose morale was beginning to be high. The boys had learned how to ride. It was no longer necessary for a cavalry colonel to look hawk-eyed at his ranks to make sure that his gawky troopers were not hanging onto the reins with both hands, letting their elbows flap like crows' wings, or seeking to control their horses by clucking or saying "Whoa," "Git-up," and "Go-along" instead of using bit and spur the way honest cavalrymen should. They had also learned how to fight, and they had lately been outfitted with new-model carbines, Sharps single-shot breechloaders, which lacked the range and penetrating power of the infantry rifle but which could be fired much faster and hence enabled cavalrymen fighting on foot to give a good account of themselves.
The army now had nearly twelve thousand of these troopers, and Stoneman was supposed to be a first-rate soldier. He was just over forty, a West Pointer who, as a young second lieutenant of dragoons, had served as quartermaster of the famous "Mormon Battalion" during General Stephen Kearny's march across the plains to California in the Mexican War. He was at Fort Brown in Texas when the Civil War broke out, and when the departmental commander, old General Twiggs, went over to the Confederacy and advised his subordinates to do likewise Stoneman defied him and succeeded in getting north with part of his command. At Fredericksburg he had commanded an infantry corps, and he was Hooker's own choice for cavalry commander.
3
The plan of attack which Hooker was shaping now would depend in large part on Stoneman's initiative and determination.
Hooker's basic idea was to pry Lee's army out of its fortified lines and make it fight in the open. By the first of April he had concluded that Stoneman's cavalry would be the instrument with which he would do the prying. Stoneman would take the cavalry far up the Rappahannock, cross over, and go swinging south until he hit the line of the Virginia Central Railroad, when he was to turn east and head for Hanover Junction, which was believed to be Lee's principal supply depot. If he could get there with ten thousand cavalry, Lee would have to retreat, Hooker would cross the river and pursue, and with Stoneman in front of him Lee would not be able to retreat with speed. There would be a big fight, and since Hooker's army had a solid two-to-one advantage just now—Lee's force was somewhat scattered, Longstreet having taken a good part of his corps down below Richmond to foil Yankee raiders in the Suffolk area—the Rebels would be shoved back into the Richmond lines. There would eventually be a siege which could have but one outcome.
So went the plan, and on paper it worked out very well. By April 1 Hooker was stripping his army for action, ordering all surplus baggage and equipment sent to the rear and warning the War Department to have siege equipment ready for delivery. Among other things, he wanted ten thousand shovels, five thousand picks, five thousand axes, and thirty thousand sandbags shipped to him in front of Richmond for the making of saps and parallels. He also asked Army Secret Service to prepare authentic maps of the Richmond defenses, and the commissary department was told to have one and one half million rations on boats, ready to be floated up the Pamunkey River to meet the army when it got that far.
4
Hooker was a canny man, and Lee was not going to learn about this plan through any security leaks if Hooker could help it. Lincoln got a hint of it by letter around the first of the month, and a bit later when he came down to Falmouth to review the troops, Hooker told him some more. Things looked good, and Hooker took the large view, and in his chats with the President he kept beginning sentences with "After we have taken Richmond—" Lincoln listened soberly and found this excessive confidence depressing and warned Hooker and Couch, who was second-in-command: "In your next fight, gentlemen, put in all of your men." He may have been thinking of the fifty thousand soldiers whom Franklin had had on the field but had not used in the Fredericksburg fight. Whatever he was thinking about, Couch reflected, he was giving perfectly sound advice.
5
A bit later Hooker sent Dan Butterfield up to Washington to give the President all of the details. Washington was full of leaks, then as now, and Butterfield was sternly ordered to tell the President everything but to say nothing at all to anyone else. This made it a bit embarrassing, for he was shown in to Lincoln's office just at the end of a cabinet meeting and found the President surrounded by expectant cabinet ministers, including the fearsome Secretary Stanton, who enjoyed being kept out of no secrets. Butterfield kept mum, stalled while the ministers got out, and stood mute while a New England senator, ears wide open, hung around making small talk with Mr. Lincoln. In the end the general saw the President alone, told him all, and returned to army headquarters with his mission accomplished.
6
It was time to get going at last, and on April 13 the long columns of Federal horsemen went trotting along the dirt roads to the upstream crossings. Stoneman had picked a good man to go over first: Grimes Davis, the Mississippi-born brigadier who had snaked his regiments out of Harper's Ferry the previous September when Stonewall Jackson surrounded and captured the place in the Antietam campaign. Davis took his brigade over the stream several miles above the railroad bridge and came down fast on the southern side, while Stuart's pickets galloped desperately on ahead with the warning: Yankees over the river! Stoneman's main body was to cross at Rappahannock Bridge and at Beverly Ford, which was close to it. It got down to the banks and found the opposite shore strongly held, and Stoneman paused to consider whether he ought to be rash.