Upon the Altar of the Nation (24 page)

Vickers’s sentiments were echoed by nonclerical abolitionists. In a letter to her friend Mary Johnson, Martha LeBaron Goddard excoriated the Northern leader’s performance to date:

Later in the letter she reflected on the perils of a nonabolitionist command: “I do think the greatest curse we have had is McClellan—and I am fast growing to think Lincoln is almost a match for him. War meetings as they are called are stupid and heavy and spread-eagle and vain attempts to create enthusiasm for the war merely.”
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The abolitionist chaplain Horace James took these thoughts further. For such a “baptism of blood,” the war ought to have larger moral goals than simply the preservation of a large nation-state. It is not enough, he argued, “to bring this country to its position just before the breaking out of the rebellion.” Only a war for abolition would justify the bloodshed. The stakes, James concluded, were global: “The present country has seen no such opportunity of blessing the world, no such opportunity of kindling a new light in the moral heavens to shine as the stars forever and ever, and may we not lose it by our driveling unbelief.”
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Despite pockets of criticism, after more than a year of fighting, the mobilization of two massive armies with complex chains of command and coordination was virtually complete. Already in 1862, most citizens on both sides of the conflict knew family or friends called to service. Churches, schools, and town meetings could talk of little but war. Religious press editors feared their papers would not be read (or subscribed to) if the war was not elevated to supreme status and with a patriotic and supportive spin.

A surprised writer for Philadelphia’s
Banner of the Covenant
observed:

The writer went on to note disapprovingly how even religious publications were festooned with “the stars and stripes in gorgeous red, white and blue.”
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In the South, a writer for the
Richmond Daily Dispatch
quoted a Methodist minister hoping that the war would last “ten to fifteen years” so that the South would be forever purged of Northern dependence.
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Patriotism and Christianity were becoming interleaved and virtually inseparable, with patriotism leading and Christian ministers and churches in tow. In fact, Americans of the North and South were discovering a new appetite for war.

W
hile Union navies and western armies moved relentlessly on Confederate defenses, General McClellan continued to dawdle in Virginia. Even with a massive army of one hundred thousand soldiers, McClellan claimed to be woefully undermanned and requested reinforcements from Lincoln for a show of overwhelming force. In reality, only fifteen thousand Confederate forces under General John Magruder were holding an eight-mile front. Instead of attacking Magruder’s undermanned forces and smashing through to Richmond, McClellan ignored Lincoln’s orders and laid siege to Yorktown from April 5 to May 5.
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McClellan’s timidity bought precious time for Lee and Davis to bring their numbers closer to parity with McClellan’s. Concurrently, General Joseph E. Johnston redeployed his army from Manassas in a superior defensive position closer to Richmond. Confederate generals were more than willing to grant McClellan his bloodless success while they planned something far more bloody and daring.

Throughout the spring, Stonewall Jackson’s hard-driving infantry had been busy tearing up Federal forces in the Shenandoah Valley and striking terror everywhere. In a rash decision, Lincoln redirected General McDowell’s corps from McClellan’s Army of the Potomac to the valley, hoping to catch Jackson by surprise. Instead, Lincoln and McDowell played right into the rebels’ hands. Jackson’s “foot cavalry” was simply too elusive and fast to be caught. But by sequestering McDowell on a fruitless chase, the Army of the Potomac was left at reduced strength. To compound the problem, Lincoln’s excessive estimation of Jackson’s prowess led him to withhold forty-five thousand men to protect Washington, D.C., from an attack that would never come.

With Robert E. Lee still in the shadows as a military adviser to President Davis, there was only Jackson. Richmond newspapers, which were read throughout the Confederacy, led the way in praising their native son.
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Southern evangelicals and the Richmond religious weeklies also cooperated in the mythmaking that focused on Jackson’s all-consuming personal faith and his acknowledgment of God as the giver of victory to his troops at Manassas.

Confederate soldiers, sensing another side to Jackson, admired his stated preference for “taking no prisoners” and absorbed his almost manic obsession with destruction and glory even at the cost of unprecedented casualties. Jackson’s imperious style took in generals no less than soldiers. He had General Richard Garnett, commander of the “Stonewall Brigade,” arrested in the Shenandoah Valley for not charging Union General James Shields’s victorious army with the bayonet when his ammunition ran out. Garnett was later released only to die in Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Jackson also had Provost Marshall General Charles Winder arrested and, amazingly, arrested the veteran commander General A. P. Hill twice (with whom Jackson eventually reconciled only after Lee’s intervention).

In her diary, Mary Chesnut quoted a frank assessment of Jackson’s fiery character by General Alexander Lawton, who served under Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley. Lawton noted that Jackson rarely slept. To train his troops for battle, he would wake them at all hours, send them out marching for a few miles, and bring them back. “All this,” said Lawton, “was to make us always ready, ever on the alert.” Jackson never asked for his men’s love, only their respect. “He gave his orders rapidly and distinctly and rode away. Never allowing answer nor remonstrance ... When you failed, you were apt to be put under arrest. When you reported the place
taken,
he only said ‘Good.’ ”

Lawton continued:

In the spring of 1862, Jackson embodied all that Sherman would eventually become.

Even Lincoln and Northern soldiers were awed (and intimidated) by Jackson. Jackson himself remained resolutely Calvinist. In his eyes, the glory of the coming of a vengeful Lord was before him. In time, he was certain, his ravaging army would be moving north. In a letter to the Reverend Robert Dabney, who had joined Jackson’s army as a preacher and staff member of the adjutant general, Jackson wrote: “In God’s own time I hope that He will send an army North and crown it with victory, and make its fruits peace, but let us pray that He send it not, except he goes with it.”
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By the end of May 1862, McClellan’s moment of absolute superiority had passed. Confederate reinforcements continued to pour into Virginia, narrowing the odds between the two armies. A writer for the
Richmond Daily Dispatch
commented on May 21: “The Critical Moment. The enemy is near the city.... Let us bear it like a people conscious of right and relying implicitly upon that Providence which fails not in the end to secure the triumph of justice.”
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The first “critical moment” occurred on May 31 at Seven Pines (Fair Oaks), Virginia, outside of Richmond. There, Johnston’s forces were driven back toward Richmond and Johnston himself was wounded and relieved of command. Though a great general, Johnston, like Beauregard, never got along with Davis. As cadets at West Point, Davis and Johnston got into a fistfight over a belle and Davis lost. Johnston would pay a stiff price thereafter. President Davis replaced him with General Robert E. Lee, a choice that would soon mythologize the “saviour” of the newly designated “Army of Northern Virginia.”

At first Lee was not a popular choice with the officers. When Lee was appointed commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, one of Jackson’s aides complained that he was “slow.” To this Jackson replied: “General Lee is not slow; He is cautious. He ought to be. General Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man I would follow blind-fold.”
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For three long and bloody years, the Army of Northern Virginia—and its commander—would stand as the virtual embodiment of the Confederacy.

As Lee assumed command of Richmond’s defense, McClellan added a division of McDowell’s corps (previously held in reserve to protect Washington) and more confidently moved his expanded army south of the Chickahominy River. He did not realize, however, that his was not the only expanded army. By June Jackson was through the Shenandoah Valley and joined up with Lee’s forces to face McClellan and the Army of the Potomac. The two created a combined force of eighty-five thousand, the largest Confederate force yet, and they were fighting in their own backyards.

With Jackson at his side, Lee wasted no time planning coordinated attacks between Jackson and his other top generals: A. P. Hill, James Longstreet, John B. Magruder, and Benjamin Huger. From June 25 to July 1, some of the greatest feint-and-maneuver movements in military history would take place. Collectively, they would become known as the “Seven Days’ Battles.”

In early fighting the North prevailed, but a cautious McClellan again failed to follow up on the advantage with a counterattack and instead moved his army to Harrison’s Landing on the James River south of Richmond. Not only was Lee spared to fight another day, but the siege of Richmond was effectively lifted before it ever began. Seldom was defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in a more stunning fashion.

On June 27, the third of the Seven Days’ Battles was fought at Gaines’ Mill between Cold Harbor and Seven Pines, where the Union had set up a new defensive position. A. P. Hill led the assault followed by Longstreet, while an uncharacteristically tardy Jackson was late to the fight. The Yankees fought well. But finally, after multiple charges across rugged ravines and swamps by commander John Bell Hood’s Texas brigade and George E. Pickett’s Virginians, the Union line broke, leaving behind nearly three thousand Federal prisoners. Gaines’ Mill marked one of the few instances in which a tactical offensive succeeded. When the armies clashed in the same locale two years later with defensive entrenchments that were far deadlier, the offensive failed miserably.

Again the costs of victory were horrendous, with the North taking sixty-eight hundred casualties and Lee sacrificing close to nine thousand. Lee’s losses were steep, but the blow to Northern pride was even steeper. Insisting that he was outmanned and outgunned, McClellan withdrew his army to the James River under the rubric of a “change of base.” No one in the North or South bought the rationalization, and Richmond celebrated its relief from the siege.

From his new headquarters at Harrison’s Landing, McClellan prepared for yet another encounter at Malvern Hill, north of the James River.
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In this last of the Seven Days’ Battles, fought on July 1, an overconfident Lee suffered a nasty reversal. Wrongly assuming that McClellan’s soldiers were as timid as McClellan, Lee again employed a tactical offensive. But this time McClellan’s veteran soldiers were set up in strong defensive positions and could not wait to fight Lee. Unknowingly, Confederate General D. H. Hill initiated a suicidal frontal assault along the Willis Church Road and across open fields and a steep embankment. Union General Fitz-John Porter’s well-equipped Fifth Corps—with 250 artillery pieces covering all enemy approaches—rained canister upon oncoming Confederates at point-blank range. The result, as Hill would later charge, “was not war—it was murder.”
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This would not be the last time such words were uttered.