Gods and Generals - Jeff Shaara [86]
Johnston spun around, faced Davis and said, “If I fight there, I will be pushed back, and then they will have Yorktown anyway.” Davis did not speak, and Johnston turned and left the office.
Lee sensed Davis’s anger, knew the two men would expend great energy on their differences, that Johnston had made it clear he would have his way, something Davis would not swallow. Lee suddenly realized that there might be an opportunity, and his mind began to move, the wheels of the engineer, as he formulated his own plan.
LEE AGREED with Johnston that MCDowell’s forces would try to link up with McClellan, that McClellan had shown he would not move forward until he had every piece of strength available. There was an opportunity to delay McClellan from moving by keeping McDowell away. The man in a position to do this was General Jackson.
McDowell’s army was spread over an area that began in front of Jackson, in the Shenandoah Valley, and arched eastward, up toward Washington, then down near Fredericksburg, where they were a short march down the Rappahannock River from McClellan’s right flank.
Lee was not in a position to give direct orders to Jackson, could not assume that authority without stepping on the toes of both Johnston and Davis. But he had seen Jackson’s reports, his urgent requests to be allowed to attack the Federal forces in front of him. While Johnston maintained actual command over Jackson, and over General Ewell’s division, which was positioned across the Blue Ridge near Jackson, Lee assumed that Johnston would be completely absorbed in his plans on the peninsula.
Because of his distance from Johnston, Jackson had been operating more or less as an independent force, and Johnston’s lack of concern for correspondence included Jackson and Ewell. Thus, for long stretches the two commanders had no direct orders from Johnston. Lee saw the opportunity to fill that void.
Lincoln, and his Secretary of War, Stanton, had made it clear that the protection of Washington was a top priority. This was frequently discussed in Northern newspapers, which Lee occasionally saw. He began to reason that if Lincoln felt Washington was threatened, McDowell’s troops would be withdrawn from Virginia and brought back closer to the capital. The best way Lee saw to convince Washington there was a threat was to allow Jackson to move aggressively north, attacking McDowell’s forces at the mouth of the Shenandoah Valley.
Jackson had sent his own letters to Johnston, which had passed through Lee’s offices, in which he stated his desire to attack the forces to his front. His reasons were clear: to stall any movement by McClellan. It was not difficult for Lee to “suggest” to Jackson what his course of action should be.
Jackson’s small force had been used primarily to observe the movements of Federal troops in that area, but by adding Ewell’s division, he would have nearly sixteen thousand troops, a sizable force when commanded by a man like Jackson, whose single-minded sense of aggression Lee was coming to appreciate.
The greatest threat to Lee’s quiet plan was a sudden southward move by McDowell into the center of Virginia, down through Fredericksburg, which would cut off Jackson from Richmond and effectively cut Virginia in half. This was a risk Lee accepted, confident that the Federal commanders would remain as sluggish as they had always been.
JACKSON ACCEPTED Lee’s suggestions as the authority he needed, and began a campaign that resulted in the defeat of four Federal armies, including Generals Milroy and Fremont, who threatened the valley to the west, plus the complete destruction of the forces under Generals Banks and Shields. With his force of sixteen thousand men, Jackson defeated and drove from the valley Federal forces numbering nearly seventy thousand. The defeat of Banks was so complete, and the retreating troops so panicked, that Banks’s force was pushed all the way back across the Potomac. The response from Washington was as Lee had predicted.