By June 15 the army was on the roads again. The Virginia coastal plain can get hot in June, and the Army of the Potomac remembered the first few days of this march up from Falmouth as the worst march of the entire war. The sun came out blistering hot, roadside springs and brooks were scarce, and unfriendly Rebels had filled many of the wells with stones. The roads were ankle-deep in dust, and each regiment moved in a choking opaque cloud. When a column did reach a small spring the rush of men to fill canteens quickly turned it into a mud puddle, and in any case the water in canteens reached blood heat in no time. Any number of men were prostrated by the heat—a Sanitary Commission nurse wrote that there were 120 cases of sunstroke in one division—and a good many deaths occurred.
20
To add to the discomfort, GHQ was in a hurry, and l
ong marches were ordered. The XII
Corps did thirty-three miles to Fairfax Courthouse in one day, and Humphreys's division of the III Corps was kept marching all night, following the railroad to Manassas Junction. When morning came with no break for breakfast the men began to chant "Coffee! Coffee!" until they were finally turned into a field and allowed to take a nap until noon. The Philadelphia Brigade remembered doing twenty-eight miles on the dustiest of roads, and as the army moved on at this killing pace it littered the whole countryside with stragglers. John Gibbon, commanding a division in the II Corps, sternly announced in general orders that "in the vast majority of cases the straggler is a skulking cowardly wretch who strives to shift his duties upon the shoulders of more honest men and better soldiers." He told his men that the 15th, 19th, and 20th Massachusetts regiments customarily reached camp at night with few or no absentees, and said that showed that "straggling, even in the worst weather, is inexcusable." The historian of the 15th proudly recorded this tribute to his regiment's steadfastness but admitted that on the very evening the order was issued the 15th came into camp with only fifty-three men to stack arms. The remaining three hundred men in the outfit came stumbling in at all hours.
21
Cavalry horses, like foot soldiers, often gave out on this march. Many of these were simply abandoned by the troopers, and it often happened that after a rest they would revive and go sauntering along, following the army. This was a boon to many footsore infantry stragglers, who would capture the beasts, rig makeshift reins and bridles out of strips of tent cloth or other material, and go riding along bareback—until, no doubt, the provost guard got them. It was noticed that stragglers who were congenital shirks would hide out in barns or sheds when sundown came in order to escape the guard, but that good men who had honestly been trying to keep up would tramp along until late at night to overtake their regiments.
A few days of this intensive marching pulled the army far away from the Rappahannock, and its bivouacs presently ran from the Bull Run Mountains all the way up to the Potomac. It was generally believed by the men in the ranks that if Lee had not already gone north of the river he would do so shortly, and some of the old-timers were wagging their heads and telling each other that they were going to have Antietam all over again. Nobody in his right mind wanted to repeat that fight, but the men who had marched through Maryland remembered it as a green and pleasant land where the citizens were glad to see Union soldiers, and there was a general feeling that this army could not fail to win once it got north of the Potomac.
22
After a few days of forced marches the high command let the men take it a little more easily as they got nearer the river, and the army caught its breath and found its spirits reviving.
Late one afternoon the I Corps was hiking along the road toward Leesburg. The column went past an old plantation, and on a rail fence by the roadside there was an unexpected audience—some dozens of the plantation's colored folk, perching on the fence and rolling their eyes hugely as the Lincoln soldiers went by. The mounted officers at the head of the column passed along, and the color guard with the cased dusty flags, and then came the infantry, rank upon endless rank, tramping the miles off with the stolid silence of veterans. The colored folk were simple people who knew very little about many things, but they were familiar with the apocalyptic visions and the wild sharp poetry of Scripture, and as they looked at these tired soldiers they saw what the reviewing officers would never see—Freedom stepping lightly along the hills, the King of the Earth striding by with a ram's horn in his hand, the walls of Jericho itself collapsing to the sound of far-off trumpets—and before long they began to rock and sway on their perch, and they shouted "Hallelujah!" and "Bless de Lord!" and some of them cried out that Lincoln was a mighty warrior.
In front of the fence, close to the road, stood a gray-haired bent old patriarch, and he finally spoke up to ask where Lincoln was personally. Soldier-like, the men answered that he wouldn't be along for a while yet—he was back behind the mule train, and maybe it would be tomorrow before he showed up. The slaves on the fence took this in, and they continued to shout, and before long the old man by the roadside began to sway and chant, and the first thing anyone knew he was leading the colored people in a song, all of the bodies rocking back and forth with the music, while the tanned soldiers with their gleaming rifles marched by:
"Don't you see 'em, comin, comin, comin
, Millions from de odder shore? Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Bless de Lord forever more!
"Don't you see 'em, goin', goin', goin', Past ol' massa's mansion door? Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Bless de Lord forever more!
"Jordan's stream is runnin', runnin', runnin'— Million soldiers passin' o'er: Lincoln comin' wid his chariot-Bless de Lord forever more!"
One of the soldiers who marched past them wrote that it seemed to him as if he could see the rocking figures and hear the singing far into the night, while the army kept on its way to the river.
23
Yet this army rarely heard the echoes of a glory-hallelujah chorus as it tramped the long roads of war, and it was much more likely to punctuate its endless rambling narrative with a ribald jeer than with a chant .about Jordan's flowing stream.
Part of the army came up to the North by a road that took it straight across the old Bull Run battlefield. It was ten months since the great battle there, but many dead had never been buried. The day was as sultry here as everywhere else in Virginia, and the men tramped along the historic turnpike, with bleached skulls and ribs and shinbones lying in the meadows amid heaps of rotted clothing. The men glanced casually aside from time to time, but they kept walking along and they said nothing, except to curse wearily when galloping staff officers or couriers crowded them. Finally they passed a too-shallow grave by the roadside. From it there extended a dead hand, withered to parchment, reaching bleakly toward the sky as if in some despairing, unanswered supplication. A New Jersey soldier saw it, reflected upon it, and was moved to mirth.
"Look, boys!" he called, pointing to the lifeless hand. "See the soldier putting out his hand for back pay!"
24
The men guffawed briefly and tramped on without another glance.
3. White Road in the Moonlight
Off beyond the Blue Ridge Lee's army was moving, and Federal outposts in the Shenandoah Valley collapsed before a tidal wave of Rebel soldiers who struck as suddenly and as hard as if Stonewall Jackson himself still led them. Stragglers from the routed Union detachments scrambled back through Harper's Ferry, and a long rabble of civilian refugees went rocketing clear up into Pennsylvania, blocking the roads, picking up strength as they went, taking horses and cattle and household goods with them, as if the destroying angel and the original flood were hard upon their heels. Among these refugees, bewildered and lost, were hundreds of free colored folk, headed for no discernible goal short of the north star. Word had gone forth that the Confederates were rounding up all colored people and sending them south into slavery, and no Negro cared to wait to see if the rumor were true or false.
1
Clearly enough, this was invasion again and not a mere cavalry foray, and the North took the alarm. At Washington's request, Northern governors called out the militia, and as far away as New York the natty home-guard regiments fell in at their armories, counted themselves and their equipment, and took the trains for Pennsylvania. At Harrisburg, where national guardsmen felled trees and dug up wheat fields to build fortifications, there was infinite excitement. The toll bridge over the Susquehanna did the biggest business in its history as people cleared out from before Lee's advance guard. There was the greatest demand for railroad tickets the city had ever known;
the state capitol was stripped of its valuables—including the expressionless oil paintings of bygone governors—which were crated for shipment to some safer place, and around the railroad depot the pavement was blocked with trunks and boxes piled up six deep.
2
To President Lincoln, from disturbed opposition party governors, town councils, and frightened pro bono publicos, there came an old familiar plea: Put McClellan back in command of the army, put him at least in command of our brave but untrained militia; if this is done the people will rise en masse and we may yet get out of our scrape. Lincoln filed most of these pleas with his miscellaneous papers. To one of the complainants, Governor Joel Parker of New Jersey, he coolly replied that Lee's march north represented opportunity, not disaster, for the Union cause, and he reminded the governor that no one outside of the White House could quite understand "the difficulties and involvements of replacing General McClellan in command."
3
Between Joe Hooker and General Halleck there passed many telegrams, a running debate by wire, Hooker trying to get some sort of firm instructions, Halleck vetoing Hooker's suggestions but offering few of his own. The Army of the Potomac moved closer to the Potomac, and Pleasonton and the cavalry galloped west to go knifing at Stuart's protective cordon in front of the Blue Ridge gaps in an effort to get authentic news of Lee's movements. Stuart was on the job and his squadrons struck back, and for four days in mid-June there was a series of desperate little fights around Middleburg and Aldie.
Yankee cavalry lived up to its new reputation in these fights. On one occasion the 1st Rhode Island, led
by dapper French Colonel Duffie,
went swirling through Middleburg and made Stuart himself take to his heels, paying for it a few hours later when Stuart came storming back with reinforcements in a countercharge that tore the little regiment to pieces. The fields in this part of the country were cut up with stone fences, and the Federals displayed a talent for fighting dismounted, the troopers lining up behind the walls and using their carbines like infantry, and the Confederates were pressed back to the mountain wall so that in the end Longstreet had to send infantry forward to help bar the way.
After one of these running fights a Federal cavalry officer rode across the stony upland field and studied the dead Confederates, lean men in homespun, their saddles and harness and other equipment mostly homemade and makeshift, many of their carbines made by cutting down the barrels of infantry rifles. He compared this with the abundant equipment that was available to the Yankee cavalry, and he mused: "How desperately in earnest must such a people be, who, after foreign supplies are exhausted, depend on their own fabrics rather than submit."
4
Desperately in earnest they were, and in the end they finally held the gaps, so that no Yankee saw what was happening beyond the Blue Ridge. But what went almost unnoticed at the time was that this succession of fights screened the Army of the Potomac as well. With June two-thirds gone and Lee beginning to slip his infantry over the Potomac and up across Maryland toward Hagerstown and the Pennsylvania line, Stuart was somewhat in the dark as to the location and intent of the Federal infantry. This fact was to have important consequences.
As Lee got the bulk of his infantry north of the Potomac, the need for Stuart's screening operation ended, and it became important to get the cavalryman up into Pennsylvania with the advance echelons of the army. The obvious way would be to have Stuart pull his troops back through the Blue Ridge gaps, follow the rear of the army across the Potomac, and then go spurring northward on Lee's right flank. The route was roundabout, however, considering that Stuart was expected to pick the advance guard up around York, and going up the valley to the fords behind infantry and wagon trains would mean delay. Stuart accordingly proposed that he repeat his famous old stunt of riding clear around the sluggish Yankee army, crossing the Potomac somewhere east of the Blue Ridge, and striking north cross
-
country to meet Ewell. The way would be shorter, and there probably would be a chance to annoy the Yankees by molesting supply lines. For this plan Stuart got Lee's approval.
It appears that Stuart believed mat Hooker's army was lying behind the Bull Run Mountains, facing west, in a formation that had no very great depth. Also, he considered that the Federals were being pretty static just then. That conception had been given him by John S. Mosby, the famous Rebel ranger, who had just been riding through Hooker's camps and found them all quiet. It seemed to Stuart, therefore, that by making only a short march to his right he could get around Hooker's flank and that he could then march north, west of Centreville, and hit the Potomac at Dranesville or thereabouts.