This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [101]
They would be calling them in the West as well as in the East; indeed, during this summer the entire direction of the war would be in their hands, and the Confederate forces that had been doomed to an almost hopeless defensive in May were being given the chance to stage an all-out offensive in August. For Grant’s army was divided and immobilized, and Buell was painfully creeping along a shattered railway line, stitching it together as he went, and the Richmond government got reinforcements over into Mississippi from the region beyond the river, posted these where they could watch Grant’s men, and sent Beauregard’s old army swinging up through mid-Tennessee toward Kentucky in a hard counterblow that canceled all Federal strategic plans.
It was Beauregard’s army no longer. After his retreat from Corinth, Beauregard became ill and took leave of absence. He had never been able to get along with Jefferson Davis anyway, and Davis now replaced him, giving the army to scowling, black-bearded Braxton Bragg, who was always able to get along with Davis but who could hardly ever get along with anybody else.
Bragg was a fantastic character, as singular a mixture of solid competence and bewildering ineptitude as the war produced. He distrusted democracy, the volunteer system, and practically everything except the routine of the old regular army, and just before Shiloh he had complained that most of the Confederate soldiers had never fired a gun or done a day’s work in their lives. He was disputatious to a degree, and in the old army it was said that when he could not find anyone else to quarrel with he would quarrel with himself. A ferocious disciplinarian, he shot his own soldiers ruthlessly for violations of military law, and his army may have been the most rigidly controlled of any on either side.
This summer he was at the top of his form. He took his army off toward the east and then went up into Tennessee, smoothly by-passing Buell and heading straight for the Ohio River. In Kentucky, it was believed, the people would rise enthusiastically to welcome him, and he carried wagonloads of muskets to arm the recruits that were expected there. From eastern Tennessee a smaller Confederate army under Kirby Smith drove the Federals out of Cumberland Gap and moved north simultaneously. It would join up with Bragg’s men somewhere in Kentucky.
While this was going on — causing Buell to forget about Chattanooga and the railroad and to start backtracking feverishly in an effort to overtake Bragg — Lee in Virginia was devoting himself with deft persistence to the task of suppressing Pope.
Jackson had the first part to play. He struck Pope’s advance at Cedar Mountain a few days after McClellan had received his orders to evacuate Harrison’s Landing and head for the transports at Hampton Roads, and opened a furious attack. Pope’s advance was composed of Banks’s corps, and these men put up an unexpectedly stout fight, knocking Jackson’s men back on their heels and for an hour or so giving them a good deal more than they could handle. But Jackson had a huge advantage in numbers, and by dusk he had driven Banks’s corps off in rout with heavy loss. Pope’s main body came up next day, and Jackson drew off to wait for Lee and the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia.
He did not have long to wait, for McClellan’s departure freed Lee of concern for the James River area. Pope presently found himself up against the first team, and he was woefully outclassed. Lee quickly maneuvered him out of the triangle between the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers and made him draw back; then, anxious to finish him off before McClellan’s men could come up and give Pope the advantage of numbers, Lee divided his army and sent Jackson off in a long sweep around Pope’s right flank, to strike at his supply base at Manassas Junction.
Jackson reached this base and destroyed it after a spectacular two-day march around and through the Bull Run Mountains. Utterly confused, Pope turned to strike him, fumbled in the attempt, and at last