CHAPTER FORTY
Robert E. Lee was going north. As he saw it, he did not have much choice. His army was beaten up, half starved, barefoot, threadbare, and minus nine thousand experienced fighters who had been killed or wounded in the previous three months. With such a force, there was little to be gained and much to lose by attacking Washington’s fixed defenses, now bolstered by more than a hundred thousand men. Remaining where he was, in a country that had been stripped of its bounty by ravening armies—and poised precariously at the end of a rickety, vulnerable supply line—made no sense, either. Returning to Richmond would likely reset the clock for another massive Union assault.
Invading the North, on the other hand, had clear advantages, even with his tattered army. It would allow Lee to retain the initiative and replenish his depleted commissary. By threatening Washington and other Northern cities he would keep blue-clad troops clear of long-suffering Virginia. He had political motives, too: a Confederate army abroad in a nation already deeply divided over the conduct of the war, civil liberties, and the emancipation of slaves could help elect more “peace” Democrats in the fall elections in the North.1 Lee, who was acutely aware of the advantages that would accrue to the North in a long war, was intent upon securing peace, and quickly. On September 8 he wrote to Jefferson Davis with an idea for a peace proposal that would deliberately be “made when it is in our power to inflict injury upon our adversary.”2
So north it would be, across the Potomac and into Maryland and then on to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, cutting railroads and bridges and telegraphs—Washington’s connections to the West—as he went. If he could somehow pull that off, as he told a “much astonished” General John G. Walker, “I can turn my attention to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington, as may seem best for our interests.”3 This of course was exactly what Jackson had suggested more than a year before to men in Richmond who thought he was being unreasonably aggressive. So of course Jackson liked this idea very much. (Longstreet, typically, was the voice of caution.) There was hardly any delay in putting it into action. Jackson fought the Battle of Chantilly on September 1. Lee then gave his army a single day of rest. At daybreak on September 3 the Army of Northern Virginia marched for the enemy’s ground: the United States of America.
Jackson’s new fame went with them. It is impossible to underestimate the pride, wonder, and unalloyed happiness that surged through the Confederacy after Second Manassas. Victory had scarcely seemed possible. Ruin had seemed inevitable. Yet there it was: a huge Union army slinking back into Washington’s defenses, while the ragged boys in butternut and gray stood magnificent and bloody and triumphant on the field. Though the name of James Longstreet was spoken reverently, the clear heroes of the day were Lee and Jackson. Lee was the mastermind, the great solemn presence and genius of war whose strategies had driven not one but two Federal armies from Virginia within two months. Jackson was Lee’s iron fist, his righteous tool of destruction. Southerners saw it that way. They also saw the two generals, quite accurately, as a team. The two men thought alike and acted in concert. Lee trusted Jackson, alone of his generals, to make his own decisions. The nearly miraculous linking of the two armies near Manassas on the morning of August 29 was not only the culmination of one of the war’s most brilliant tactical maneuvers, it also was the product of a sort of high-command teamwork not previously witnessed on either side.4 The Richmond Whig put it this way:
The central figure of the war is, beyond question, that of Robert E. Lee. His the calm, broad military intellect that reduced the chaos after Donelson to form and order. But Jackson is the motive power that executes, with the rapidity of lightning, all that Lee can plan. Lee is the exponent of Southern power of command; Jackson, the expression of its faith in God and in itself, its terrible energy, its enthusiasm and daring, its unconquerable will, its contempt of danger and fatigue.5
Meanwhile, the stories of Jackson’s march around Pope were passing quickly into legend. Everywhere he went now, people wanted to see and touch him. Men wanted to shake his hand and speak to him. Children pressed as close as they dared when he passed. At Martinsburg, Virginia, he rode down the town’s main street to tumultuous cheers, and women clustered around him and actually managed to cut off buttons from his coat. Some of them screamed for locks of his hair, to which the blushing general replied, “Really, ladies, this is the first time I was ever surrounded by the enemy!” When he sought refuge in a hotel, citizens surrounded the place, rattling the doors and windows, even as his poor horse, Little Sorrel, was being stripped of his hair by souvenir hunters.6Jackson, who disliked such adulation, escaped it only by setting up a secret headquarters outside of town.
In Frederick, Maryland, despite an otherwise chilly reception by the town’s mostly non-slave-owning, pro-Union citizens, Jackson was ambushed in the street by two “bright Baltimore girls” who had concealed themselves in his carriage. One took his hand, while the other “threw her arms around him,” according to Henry Kyd Douglas, “and talked with the wildest enthusiasm, until he seemed simply miserable.” A few minutes later, the young ladies rode off, “leaving him there bowing, blushing, and speechless.” Jackson, fearing another such encounter, did not venture out again until late in the evening.7 That same day in Frederick, Jeb Stuart’s chief of staff, Heros Von Borcke, experienced what it was like to be mistaken for the famous Stonewall Jackson. Von Borcke wrote later, “All remonstrances with the crowd were utterly useless. . . . I was very soon followed by a wild mob of people of all ages, from the old greybeard down to the smallest boy, all insisting that I was Jackson and venting their admiration in loud cheers and huzzas. Ladies rushed out of their houses with bouquets. . . . To escape these annoying ovations I dismounted at last at a hotel, but here I was little better off. It was like jumping in the mill pond to get out of the rain.”8
Some of Jackson’s enemies, too, were swept up in this wave of national adulation. A short time later, as he was riding by a large body of captive Union soldiers, “Almost the whole mass of prisoners broke over us, [and] rushed to the road,” wrote one South Carolina soldier. “[They] threw up their hats, cheered, roared, bellowed, as even Jackson’s troops had scarcely ever done. . . . The General gave a stiff acknowledgement of the compliment, pulled down his hat, drove spurs into his horse, and went clattering down the hill, away from the noise.”9 It is hard to know how his new celebrity struck him. Perhaps he really could not tolerate the idea that he, and not God, was getting credit for his victories. Perhaps, too, as his brother-in-law D. H. Hill theorized, what bothered him most was the temptation he felt, the warring of his own desires. Maybe some part of him liked being famous. Maybe that was what bothered him.
The notion of Lee and Jackson as invincible warriors had more practical effects. It gave new hope and inspiration to many Northern antiwar Democrats and Lincoln opponents whose vision of an endless, bloody, and unaffordable war was starting to look more and more real. European leaders had followed each turn of the Virginia campaigns with rapt interest, and the Confederate victories had convinced many of them that Lincoln would never be able to restore the Union by force of arms. With their triumph at Second Manassas, Lee and Jackson—who became overnight folk heroes in Europe—had made the case for de facto Confederate independence. All that remained now, many influential Europeans believed, was to formally acknowledge that state of affairs, either by an offer of mediation or outright diplomatic recognition or both. A majority in the House of Commons—saddled by a Union blockade with a “cotton famine” that had left three-fourths of British cotton millworkers unemployed or working part-time—clearly favored it, as did rising numbers of ordinary Britons. The British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, who had blocked a parliamentary resolution favoring mediation in June, now seemed ready to accept the idea. The Union had received “a complete smashing [at Second Manassas],” he wrote Lord John Russell, “and it seems not altogether unlikely that still greater disasters await them, and that even Washington or Baltimore might fall into the hands of the Confederates.”10
The French seemed to be leaning Richmond’s way, too. That summer Emperor Louis-Napoléon seriously considered a Southern alliance in exchange for cotton, and told his foreign secretary to “ask the English government if the moment has not come to recognize the South.”11 By September, according to the French foreign secretary, “not a reasonable statesman in Europe believed the North could win.”12 Confederate diplomat John Slidell, riding this wave of pro-Southern feeling, said, “I am more hopeful [of recognition] than I have been at any moment since my arrival.” Even better, there was clear American historical precedent for all this. Colonial victory over Great Britain in the Second Battle of Saratoga in 1777 was a turning point in the Revolutionary War and led directly to French recognition of American independence and subsequent intervention on the American side. All this was in play as never before when Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and the Army of Northern Virginia tramped north.
• • •
The Confederate army that splashed across the Potomac River into Maryland on September 4 and 5, fresh from its victories in the Seven Days and at Cedar Mountain and Second Manassas, shocked the civilians who saw it. “They were the roughest set of creatures I ever saw,” wrote a correspondent for the Baltimore American, “their features, hair, and clothing matted with dirt and filth; and the scratching they kept up gave warrant of vermin in abundance.”13 Many were without shoes, their uniforms so tattered they barely held together, their slouch hats so riddled with tears and holes that their greasy hair protruded from them at odd and comical angles. They stunk so badly—many had not even removed their clothing in weeks—that it was said that you could smell the vaunted Army of Northern Virginia long before you could see it.14 The most striking thing about the men was their gauntness, the startling hollowness of eyes and cheeks and chests. Many were malnourished; most suffered from diarrhea brought on by everything from poor sanitation to bad water to a steady diet of roasted green corn and green apples. They were victims of the long and unreliable supply line that stretched all the way to Richmond, victims, too, of the Confederate military withdrawal from central Tennessee, where most of the South’s pork was produced, and of the severe summer drought that had ruined the corn crop in several states.15
As always, Lee’s men were poorly armed. By Union standards, what they carried across the river with them was just as unsettling as their beggarly appearance. Fully 30 percent of their muskets were still the antiquated .69-caliber smoothbores. There were also large numbers of .54-caliber muskets—three types, in fact—including some models that dated from 1841. Some were captured Springfield .58-calibers; and the balance—most—were imported, British-made .577-caliber Enfields. (A requisition from Jackson’s command in the fall of 1862 listed twenty thousand .69-caliber cartridges and forty thousand .58-caliber cartridges.16) Their batteries were woefully inferior, too. Not only did they possess vastly fewer rifled guns than the Union, but also some 20 percent of their cannons were ancient Model 1841 six-pounders. The quality of their fuses was often atrocious: many shells either failed to burst or burst prematurely; a good number exploded while still in the guns.17
Lastly, for anyone who could see it, the army that marched up into Maryland was simply not the same one that had departed from the vicinity of Washington just a few days before. Lee approached the river with fifty thousand to fifty-five thousand men, a force that had been replenished by Richmond after Second Manassas. Twelve days later he had less than forty thousand.18 The cause was straggling on an unprecedented scale. Some of the men fell away for lack of shoes, some because of illness or diarrhea or malnourishment. Many wanted nothing to do with an invasion of the North. They were fighting only to protect their homeland, as they saw it, only to repel the invader. But “straggling” didn’t quite cover what was going on: a lot of this was outright desertion by men who had a bellyful of fighting and marching and suffering.19 (The Union, too, was experiencing straggling at record levels: Union general in chief Henry Halleck was so frustrated by it that he wrote McClellan to suggest that “shooting them while in the act of straggling from their commands is the only effective remedy.”20 McClellan himself complained that “the states of the North are flooded with deserters and absentees.”21)
Strangest of all, perhaps, was that the undernourished, lice-infested troops who stayed with the army were remarkably happy. Morale was high. Hopes were high. They were fully conscious of their new fame. The name of the Army of Northern Virginia was now known to the whole world. They were the heroes of the Confederacy and they knew it. In spite of great disparities in troop strength and in the quality of weapons, ammunition, and supplies, from the start of the war to the present—First Manassas, Jackson’s valley campaign, Seven Pines, Seven Days, Cedar Mountain, and Second Manassas—the Yankees had not beaten them. They had a sense, moreover, that one more big victory might change everything. When they crossed the river at White’s Ford, near Leesburg, they did so, in the words of one of Jackson’s soldiers, “with great enthusiasm—bands playing, men singing and cheering!”22 The regimental band was playing “Maryland, My Maryland”—a pro-Southern song that portrayed Lincoln as a tyrant. (“The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland! / His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland!”) Even Old Jack got caught up in the excitement, removing his hat while the band played, and, once on the other side, accepting gifts from Confederate sympathizers of a powerful gray mare and a prize melon.23
The mysterious new land they were entering—Maryland—was a slave state that had not seceded and thus remained divided in its loyalties. Just how divided no one knew for sure. It had been an article of faith among Confederate officialdom that the state was ripe for conversion. They believed that their troops would be welcomed with open arms by a people who had felt the heavy hand of a Federal government that had occupied it militarily, arrested its citizens and legislators without warrants or charges, and suppressed its newspapers and rights of free speech. Lincoln had done all that, and more, while trying to keep Maryland in the Union.24 But the Confederates were wrong, especially in the town of Frederick, where they arrived on September 6. Able-bodied men did not throng to their ranks. There was no uprising or movement to force Maryland to join the Confederacy. The majority of citizens treated them coldly and fearfully, having made sure to hide their money and valuables.
But that would not change Lee’s plans. With the knowledge that McClellan’s army was on its way to intercept him, he had an idea for yet another daring maneuver whose key player, once again, was Stonewall Jackson. As the rebel army moved north, Lee had worried about the two Union garrisons in his rear, one at Harpers Ferry with 10,400 men, and one at nearby Martinsburg with 2,500. Left alone, this force, the size of a full army corps, would menace both Lee’s supply lines and his escape routes. As anyone who had ever been there knew, Harpers Ferry was extremely vulnerable, a custom-made trap wedged into the delta formed by the confluence of two great rivers, with mountains rising as high as a thousand feet on three sides. Harpers Ferry had been Jackson’s first command. He knew its weaknesses better than anyone.
On September 9, Lee, camped at Frederick, Maryland, decided to divide his army and send part of it to capture Harpers Ferry. He had done so in consultation with Jackson, who was very much in favor of the plan, and had based it on the assumption that McClellan would move with his typical slowness. That would allow Jackson to reunite with Lee and Longstreet before McClellan caught up. Longstreet, who had opposed the idea, later recalled that he came upon Lee and Jackson together, eagerly plotting the destruction of the Union garrison. Seeing the enthusiasm of his colleagues, he yielded. “They had gone so far that it seemed useless for me to offer any further opposition,” he wrote, “and I only suggested that Lee should use his entire army in the move.”25
Lee’s decision was embodied in a fateful, ten-paragraph directive dated September 9 and known as Special Orders 191. In it, he split his army into four pieces. Three of them, under Jackson—consisting of twenty-six of the army’s forty brigades—were to march to Harpers Ferry, where they would surround and attack the garrison simultaneously from three directions. Because of the Ferry’s peculiar terrain, the three would have to take entirely separate routes: General Lafayette McLaws’s division (five thousand men) would secure Maryland Heights on the Maryland side; Brigadier General John Walker with his two-brigade division (less than four thousand men) would secure Loudoun Heights across the Shenandoah River in Virginia; and Jackson’s three divisions (fourteen thousand men), with a long march around to the west, would seal off Harpers Ferry by seizing Bolivar Heights. Longstreet, with the rest of the army, would march west through the Blue Ridge (South Mountain) to the town of Boonsboro, using D. H. Hill as his rear guard against attack through the mountains. Special Orders 191’s flaw was immediately obvious: for as long as it took for Jackson to seize the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, the rest of Lee’s army—merely sixteen thousand men—would be isolated and at the mercy of the entire Army of the Potomac. Thus Lee gave Jackson just three days to get the job done.
Once in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry, Jackson’s forces deployed quickly. After a sharp fight, McLaws seized Maryland Heights from the 1,600 Federals whom Union commander Dixon Miles had stationed there on the morning of September 13. That afternoon, Walker took the undefended Loudoun Heights. Jackson, meanwhile, moved his forces in on the western flank of the town and began to set his artillery in position. Jackson, the old artillerist, with the immense advantages offered by the spectacular headlands around Harpers Ferry, was planning a big-gun assault from three directions on the roughly 13,000 Federals below. (The Martinsburg garrison had retreated before Jackson’s advance and joined the other Union troops.) Though Jackson was a day behind schedule, and McClellan was already at Frederick, Lee did not yet see any reason to panic. McClellan was McClellan, after all.
Except, of course, when he was in possession of the greatest intelligence leak of the Civil War. That same day a corporal from Indiana named Barton Mitchell found an envelope containing a sheet of paper wrapped around three cigars. The cigars were of excellent quality, something enlisted men rarely got to sample. Before lighting up, Mitchell and another soldier decided to take a closer look at the document. It was addressed to D. H. Hill, contained the names of prominent Confederate generals, and closed with “By Command of R. E. Lee.” It was signed by Lee’s adjutant, R. H. Chilton. News of the find quickly climbed the chain of command. Soon Major General Alpheus Williams, commanding the Union 12th Corps, was peering at “Special Orders 191,” a document that appeared to provide, in elaborate detail, the movements, whereabouts, and precise strategy of the entire Army of Northern Virginia. The order was so detailed, precise, and comprehensive, in fact—rare in the war—that some of its original Confederate recipients had taken action to prevent just such a leak: Longstreet had put it in his mouth and chewed it up like a plug of tobacco; Walker had pinned it to the inside of his jacket; Jackson had meticulously burned it. It was a stroke of luck that General Williams’s aide Colonel Samuel Pittman, who had known Chilton well in prewar army days, could confirm that it was Lee’s chief of staff ’s handwriting.
McClellan understood immediately what he had. After reading it, he threw his hands in the air and exclaimed, “Now I know what to do!” Later that same day he was in his tent chatting with his old army friend Brigadier General John Gibbon and another officer when he pulled the folded orders from his pocket. “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip ‘Bobbie Lee,’ I will be willing to go home,” he told them. “It gives the movement of every division of Lee’s army.” He then vowed to “put Lee in a position he will find hard to get out of,” and noted that “Castiglione will be nothing to it.” His reference was to the Battle of Castiglione in Italy in 1796, in which Napoléon Bonaparte famously routed an Austrian army.26 The message of 191 was perfectly clear: Lee had divided his army, and his separated units could thus be attacked and beaten in detail. It was probably the greatest single military opportunity of the war. McClellan wired Lincoln, saying, “I think Lee has made a gross mistake and that he will be severely punished for it. . . . I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency.”
At about 5:00 p.m. that same day Jeb Stuart received a provocative piece of intelligence. A Confederate sympathizer happened to be standing near McClellan’s tent when he had received the copy of Special Orders 191, and had described McClellan’s reaction. Though the spy did not fully understand what had happened, it was clear that McClellan certainly knew something. Stuart immediately sent a courier to Lee with the news, then sent another dispatch at about midnight on the same subject. Since the message has been lost, it is impossible to say what Stuart told Lee, or what Lee suspected, though it is unlikely that Lee knew McClellan had a copy of the order itself.27 But he would soon be very aware that McClellan was not behaving in his usual way.
That change was visible the very next day. Lee, who had told Brigadier General G. John Walker on September 6 that McClellan “would not be prepared for offensive operations for three weeks,” now watched in amazement on September 14 as McClellan’s army pushed its way forward through three passes in South Mountain, the elevated, elongated, north-to-south-running formation that marked the extension of the Blue Ridge Mountains into Maryland.28 There were pitched battles that day at Turner’s Gap and Fox’s Gap, where D. H. Hill fought a fierce rear-guard action; and Crampton’s Gap, where a vastly outnumbered Lafayette McLaws—who was also manning the guns on nearby Maryland Heights—tried to hold back William Franklin’s 6th Corps, whose mission was to relieve Harpers Ferry. In all, some 28,000 Union troops faced some 18,000 rebels. The Confederate purpose was not to win, but to delay the Federal advance long enough for Jackson to come up from Harpers Ferry. They very definitely did not win. By the end of the day, they were blown out of all three passes, suffering 2,685 casualties to the Union’s 2,385.
They did, however, buy Lee precious time. Even though the Union commanders knew with certainty that Lee’s weakened and divided army lay before them, none pushed aggressively forward. Franklin, headed for the Ferry with 12,300 men, came to a complete standstill. McClellan, moving through the northern passes, and suspicious that Longstreet’s main force lay just ahead, slowed to a crawl. Though Special Orders 191 had specified troop movements, the document had said nothing about troop strength, which meant that McClellan could indulge his usual wild fantasies. “The Battle of South Mountain was one of extraordinary illusions and delusions,” wrote D. H. Hill. “The Federals were under the self-imposed illusion that there was a very large force opposed to them, whereas there was only one weak division until late afternoon [at Turner’s and Fox’s Gaps]. They might have brushed it aside almost without halting.”29 McClellan believed—and he had taught his more cautious generals to believe—that the greatest threat came from what they could not see, from those phantom army corps lying in wait in the next valley or wooded grove, warming themselves by ten thousand campfires and waiting to fall upon his outnumbered army.
For the moment he was triumphant, and he wasted no time in trumpeting his achievement to his bosses in Washington. “It has been a glorious victory,” he telegraphed, and followed it the next morning with two more dispatches saying that the enemy was retreating “in a perfect panic, & that Genl. Lee last night stated publicly that he must admit they had been shockingly whipped. . . . It is stated that Lee gives his loss at 15,000.”30 He did not mention the rumors that were sweeping his army: that Lee and Longstreet were dead. McClellan had the rebels on the run. He knew for certain that Jackson was still in Harpers Ferry. His great opportunity to destroy Lee had come at last.
Lee was not the only one who was surprised at the sudden—and suddenly aggressive—Union advance. That same day, on the west side of Harpers Ferry, Jackson still believed he had plenty of time to finish his mission. He had instructed both McLaws and Walker not to open fire “unless forced to.” His plan was to ask for surrender, then wait twenty-four hours to see what Union commander colonel Dixon Miles would do. But as the day progressed, and the sounds of battle rose from the passes at South Mountain, it became clear to General Walker on Loudoun Heights—who could hear all this and even see some of it—that this plan would not hold. He had wigwagged a message to tell Jackson about the battle taking place at Crampton’s Gap, which Jackson had dismissed as a minor cavalry fight. But Walker could hear the artillery that Jackson could not, “which left no doubt in my mind,” he wrote, “of the advance of the whole federal army.”31
Walker then contrived to be “forced” to open fire. He promptly placed two of his regiments on the treeless crest of the mountain, in full view of the Federal batteries on Bolivar Heights. “As I expected, they opened at once a heavy, but harmless fire,” Walker wrote. “I directed my batteries to reply.” Soon McLaws’s batteries began banging away from across the river, and Jackson’s followed. The Confederate cannonade kept up all afternoon, while the Federals quickly learned that you could not win an artillery fight with an opponent whose guns were positioned at much higher elevations. As one Federal soldier described it, “The infernal screech owls came hissing and singing, then bursting, plowing great holes in the earth, filling our eyes with dust, and tearing many giant trees to atoms.”32 It was a convincing display, both to Jackson’s forces and to the men who were ducking the shellfire below. When Walker later admitted his ruse to Jackson, Jackson replied, “It was just as well. . . . But I could not believe that the fire you reported indicated the advance of McClellan in force. It seemed more likely to be merely a cavalry affair.” Jackson was silent for a few moments, then added, “I thought I knew McClellan, but this movement puzzles me.”33
Back in Hagerstown, an equally puzzled Lee was growing more and more despondent. His troops had been defeated and driven back at South Mountain by an inexplicably energetic Union army, and still he had heard nothing from Jackson. By the evening of September 13 he had decided he could no longer stay where he was. He would have to retreat. At 8:00 p.m. he sent a courier to Lafayette McLaws—commanding by far the closest and most accessible of the three units assailing Harpers Ferry—saying, “The day has gone against us and this army [Longstreet’s corps] will go to Sharpsburg to cross the river.” He ordered McLaws to get back to Virginia as fast as he could. Then, just as all of Lee’s plans seemed to be falling apart, he received a dispatch from Jackson. “Through God’s blessing, the advance, which commenced this evening, has been successful thus far, and I look to Him for complete success to-morrow. The advance has been directed to be resumed at dawn.”34 Because Lee trusted Jackson’s judgment—he believed him implicitly—this changed everything. New orders went out. McLaws and the rest of the army were now to coalesce at the little town of Sharpsburg, a mile or so north of the Potomac.
The next morning Jackson quickly made good on his promise. At dawn on September 15 he opened up with everything he had on the mist-shrouded town of Harpers Ferry. On Maryland and Loudoun Heights, fifty guns shattered the morning’s calm and rained shell and shot while Jackson’s own carefully placed guns blasted the Federal troops and batteries on Bolivar Heights from three sides. The Federal return fire sputtered on erratically for a while, then stopped altogether. At about 8:00 a.m., as Jackson was readying his 14,000 for an advance against Miles’s roughly comparable force, a rider emerged from the Federal lines holding a white flag of surrender. Though 1,300 cavalry had managed to escape under cover of darkness before, Jackson soon had as his prisoners 12,415 Union soldiers, 13,000 small arms, 73 cannons, 200 wagons, 1,200 mules, and a trove of supplies. He had done it all at a cost of 39 Confederates killed and 247 wounded, mostly at the battle for Maryland Heights. Though little blood was spilled, Harpers Ferry was on paper the most comprehensive Confederate victory of the war.35 It was the largest surrender of Federal troops, larger in numbers than the surrender of British Generals Cornwallis or Burgoyne in the Revolutionary War.36 The defeat was so humiliating that when news of it was released in Washington, War Department censors cut the numbers of Union soldiers captured in half.37 Jackson immediately sent a courier to Lee with the good news. “Through God’s blessing,” he wrote with the sort of understatement that was missing from his West Point classmate’s self-congratulatory bombast, “Harper’s Ferry and its garrison are to be surrendered.” Lee was ecstatic. He ordered Jackson’s note to be read to his army. Then he wired Davis in Richmond, saying, “This victory of the indomitable Jackson and his troops gives us renewed occasion for gratitude to Almighty God for His guidance and protection.”
The Union surrender that followed provided one of the war’s most theatrical spectacles. “The entire garrison of 13,000 [sic] men was drawn up in imposing lines,” wrote Heros Von Borcke, “presenting, with their well-kept equipments, their new uniforms and beautiful banners, a striking contrast to Jackson’s gaunt and ragged soldiers, who formed opposite to them, and whose tattered garments and weather-beaten features showed only too plainly the hardships they had undergone.”38 When the mythical Jackson himself rode into Harpers Ferry with his staff at about 11:00 a.m., Union soldiers and other observers were stunned by his shoddy appearance. “He was dressed in the coarsest kind of homespun, seedy and dirty at that,” wrote a correspondent for the New York Times, with no attempt to conceal his withering contempt. “[He] wore an old hat which any Northern beggar would consider an insult to have offered him, and in general appearance was in no respect to be distinguished from the mongrel, barefooted crew who follow his fortunes . . . and yet they glory in their shame.”39 The contrast became even more marked when the ranking Union officer, Brigadier General Julius White, rode up with A. P. Hill and drew rein in front of Jackson. (Garrison commander Dixon Miles had been wounded in the leg by one of Jackson’s shells and would die the next day.) In contrast to his rebel counterpart, White was handsomely uniformed and mounted on a splendid black horse. Jackson offered him no terms but unconditional surrender. But he also made generous concessions, partly dictated by necessity. Captured soldiers would be paroled, not imprisoned, which meant they could walk away, without their weapons. Enlisted men were allowed to keep their overcoats and blankets and were given two days’ provisions. Officers would retain their sidearms and baggage.
While Jackson was gathering his spoils—and once again allowing the men free rein with the nonalcoholic supplies—a drama was unfolding five miles away in the valley below Crampton’s Gap. Early that morning, Major General William Franklin and his twenty thousand bluecoats had streamed down out of the pass on South Mountain in pursuit of their objective, the relief of Harpers Ferry. Special Orders 191 had told McClellan exactly where Jackson was and what he would be doing, and Franklin was going to save Harpers Ferry. Together the garrison plus Franklin’s corps would field some thirty-three thousand men, almost as many as in Lee’s entire army. Facing Franklin were Lafayette McLaws’s paltry five thousand. As McLaws’s men prepared to be crushed by the obviously superior force, they could hear the roll of Jackson’s artillery in the distance.
“Up in the valley we could see heavy masses of infantry bearing down on us,” wrote Confederate cavalry officer W. W. Blackford, “their lines of skirmishers extending clear across from mountain to mountain as they came hastening down to the relief of their beleaguered garrison.”40 On they came, until those skirmishers arrived within musket range of the Confederate lines. But just as the inevitable clash was about to occur, the reverberating roar of Jackson’s guns stopped. The Union soldiers stopped, too, seemingly intrigued by the sudden silence. Then, as everyone stood frozen, came a sound, distant at first, then louder and louder as it rolled up the valley and through the Confederate ranks. It was the sound of wild cheering. The rebels had finally understood the meaning of the silence: Harpers Ferry had surrendered. A short time later, a courier arrived on a foaming horse to confirm the news. As the rebel yell rang through the Confederate column, a Yankee skirmisher stood up on a stone wall and yelled, “What the hell are you fellows cheering for?” A rebel soldier shouted back, “Because Harper’s Ferry is gone up, God damn you!” To which the Union soldier replied, “I thought that was it.”41
Maybe it was those rolling rebel cheers. Maybe it was Jackson himself, or, once again, the idea of Jackson, unbeaten, mysteriously powerful, and fresh from another bloody meal of Union soldiery. But for some reason Franklin, in the middle of his McClellan-ordered advance on Harpers Ferry, simply gave up. At 11:00 a.m. he told McClellan, “They outnumber me two to one. It will of course not answer to pursue the enemy under these circumstances.” Four hours later he made essentially the same report. Thus, for the rebel general McLaws, whose brigades had fought hard twice, once at Maryland Heights and once at Crampton’s Gap, a moment of serendipity. In the afternoon he and his command marched down to the Potomac and across the pontoon bridge and into Harpers Ferry while his enemies looked on, helplessly now, from a distance.