This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [88]
Jackson was the sort of general Lincoln would have wanted, if that makes any difference: a dedicated hard-war man in whose eyes the enemy were a people to be exterminated with Old Testament fury. (What he would have done, as a Unionist leading a punitive column across Georgia in Sherman’s place, is something to think about with awe.) Jackson began to take a hand in the game toward the end of March, and before he got through he had fatally disrupted McClellan’s plan of campaign.
Late in March, Jackson attacked a Union outpost in the lower Shenandoah Valley, at Kernstown. He was outnumbered, and after a sharp little fight he had to retreat, fairly beaten, but the battle had strategic consequences: Union authorities were impressed by his aggressiveness, figured that he must be much stronger than he actually was, and were confirmed in their feeling that to protect Washington some of the troops McClellan wanted must be held in upper Virginia.
Then, early in May — about the time Johnston was beginning his retreat from Yorktown — Jackson really went into action.
First he moved west and jumped Frémont’s advance guard near one of the passes in the Alleghenies. In itself the fight was not especially important, but it completely upset Frémont. The Pathfinder had not changed much since his experiences in Missouri. His hastily assembled army was looking goggle-eyed at “his retinue of aides-de-camp dazzling in gold lace,” and the soldiers felt that the pomp and circumstance that surrounded him — very foreign looking and sounding, most of it — was completely out of place in the rugged West Virginia mountains. Frémont seems never to have worked out a clear plan for his projected move into eastern Tennessee, and Jackson’s attack thoroughly disrupted any plans he did have. While he was pulling himself together and trying to get ready for what Jackson might do next he was effectively immobilized for more than a fortnight; Jackson contemptuously turned his back on him and hurried back to the Shenandoah for other adventures.
Reinforced by now to a total strength of fifteen thousand men, Jackson moved rapidly toward the lower valley, baffled the expectant Banks by slipping over to the east side of the Massanutten mountain ridge, captured a detachment which Banks had guarding his communications at Front Royal, and compelled the former Speaker of the House to retreat toward Harper’s Ferry. Jackson followed, struck him en route, tore his rear guard apart in a savage morning fight at Winchester, and in the end drove him on in a desperate rout that did not end until Banks and his disorganized men were north of the Potomac. Jackson followed closely, and wild rumors went on ahead of him; Washington got the idea that he was about to invade the North, frantic telegrams went out to alert the Northern governors, and McClellan’s chance of getting any help from McDowell went down to the vanishing point.
There were plenty of Federals in upper Virginia to overwhelm Jackson’s little army, and the War Department barked and sputtered over the telegraph wires to get them into action. Fremont was ordered to march east from the mountains to cut off Jackson’s retreat at Strasburg. McDowell was moved west, with an advance detachment marching on Front Royal. His army reorganized, Banks was ordered to move down from Harper’s Ferry. Altogether, something like forty-five thousand Federal troops were converging on Jackson, who was reluctantly pulling back from the Potomac, and it looked as if he might be destroyed.
But there was no co-ordination among the pursuing columns, and Jackson slipped between them unscathed. He moved back up the valley, knocked Frémont back on