Day 94. June 2, 1862.
94
horses went down screaming….
June Monday 2 1862
This is annother wet morning. We are camped in the woods 11 miles from Frountroyal. It rained quite hard last night. The men had no blankets as the baggage train could not get up on account of infantry. The teams got up this morning. We got some provision. We took up the line of march at 8oclock although the road* was very mudy. We marched on came to where the bridge was burnt over a small stream. There was alot of the enemys comissay stores in a house. Our men took what they needed and burnt the others. There was heavy cannonading over the mountain from Page county Va. It was very heavy for some considerable time. It commenced to rain and rained very hard. We came to the town of Lurey. We came on out on the New Market road near two miles where we biovouacked in the woods for the night. It rainned very hard last night and It was very disagreable for the men as the ground was wet and their cloathes and we have marched since April 29 319 miles up to this present time
*The roads were incorrigible:
Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command Volume 1 Douglas Southall Freeman Scribner, 1942 P. 684-685
“A few, a very few, of the longer roads had strategic value. The Valley Turnpike, for example, which ran from Staunton to Martinsburg, was in large part macadamized and was a most excellent line of advance along the Shenandoah. In Western Virginia were several highways the control of which was militarily decisive.
From late November until April, most of the roads were not passable for large bodies of men and for wagon trains unless the mire was frozen. Often, too, during the rainy period known as the “Long Spell in May,” many roads were serpentine, tenacious mud trails. After a heavy thunderstorm in summer, twenty-four hours must elapse before a road was passable. In the average year, from mid-April until the oaks dropped their leaves, Virginia roads were dusty but endurable. Not least among their deficiencies was, paradoxically, their abundance. Secondary roads ran in all directions to no apparent purpose and confused the traveller by the number of approaches their frequent crossings offered. As Gen. R.E. Lee subsequently said of the routes to Lexington, it scarcely mattered which road one selected between two points. Whatever one’s choice, one was certain to wish one had gone another way.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 316
“During the first week in June, Jackson retreated from Strasburg, pursued by Frémont and followed on a parallel course, east of the Massanutten Mountain, by Shields. At the southern end of this mountain, where Frémont and Shields could join forces, Jackson paused to rest his troops briefly at the hamlet of Port Republic, posting Ewell a few miles west at Cross Keys, in Frémont’s path. On June 8 Ewell repulsed a rather spiritless attack by Frémont, and on June 9 Jackson at Port Republic had a much more severe fight with the advance regiments of Shields’s division. If the entire division had been present Jackson might have had more than he could handle, but as it was the Federals were too weak to make serious trouble and Jackson finally drove them off in full retreat. Then he withdrew to a convenient gap in the Blue Ridge, from which point he could either strike the flank of any Federal Army which tried to continue on up the valley, or if his government wished could move to Richmond; and on June 13 he wrote to Lee, outlining the situation and asking what Lee wanted him to do next.”
In Their Own Words: Civil War Commanders Collected and Edited by T.J. Stiles P. 30-31
Lee Takes Command
By General James Longstreet
“The assignment of General Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia was far from reconciling the troops to the loss of our beloved chief, Joseph E. Johnston, with whom the army had been closely connected since its earliest active life. All hearts had learned to lean upon him with confidence, and to love him dearly. General Lee’s experience in active field work was limited to his West Virginia campaign against General Rosecrans, which was not successful…. There were, therefore, some misgivings as to the power and skill for field service of the new commander. The change was accepted, however, as a happy relief from the existing policy of the late temporary commander [of repeated retreats]….”
The Confederate War: How Popular Will, Nationalism, and Military Strategy Could Not Stave Off Defeat Gary W. Gallagher P. 132
“Lauded in much of the literature on Confederate military history as a wily officer who followed the dictates of the great Fabius in retreating masterfully, keeping his army intact, and surviving to fight another day, Johnston appeared to many of his contemporaries in a decidedly different light. They saw him as a general who refused to stand and fight, and who surrendered huge chunks of land virtually without a struggle. He retreated from Manassas Junction without a battle in the spring of 1862; gave up virtually all of the Peninsula in May 1862, crowding close to Richmond before finally confronting McClellan in the battle of Seven Pines; and fell back from near Chattanooga to the defenses of Atlanta in May and June 1864 without fighting a single major battle.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 317
“Before he made final plans Lee needed to know where McClellan’s right flank was anchored, how it was guarded, and what sort of protection there was for the all-important Federal supply route, the Richmond & York River Railroad line back to White House on Pamunkey. He told his cavalry commander, the youthful, flamboyant, and highly gifted Brigadier General James Ewell Brown Stuart, to go and find out. With 1,200 troopers Stuart on June 12 rode off on what quickly became one of the most spectacular missions of the war.
He rode far to the north, crossed the headwaters of the Chickahominy and swung east, went slicing down behind the Federal right flank, crossed the railroad near the great base at White House, and wound up by riding entirely around McClellan’s army, recrossing the Chickahominy downstream and returning to the Confederate lines on June 15 after days and nights of gaudy adventure. The ride made him famous, and was most embarrassing to McClellan—if a Confederate cavalry could ride all the way around the army without even getting into a serious fight there must be something wrong with the Federal security arrangements—but the important thing was that Stuart gave Lee exactly the information Lee needed.”
In the Presence of Mine Enemies: The Civil War in the Heart of America, 1859-1864 Edward Ayers P. 297
“Robert E. Lee, like his fellow Southerners, saw in John Pope the very embodiment of Yankee hypocrisy, greed, and incompetence. Lee wrote to the U.S. government in the summer of 1862 to announce that Pope and his men were no better than “robbers and murderers”; any captured officers of that command would not be treated under the same rules as other prisoners of war but would instead be held in “close confinement.” Moreover, if Pope’s men killed any unarmed Virginians, the Confederates would hang a corresponding number of Union officers captured by the Southerners. The United States refused to accept the letter.”
Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command Volume 1 Douglas Southall Freeman Scribner, 1942 P. 266
“One complaint only the Army made against Lee: He made white men do Negroes’ work– wield picks, throw up parapets, build fortifications. Lee acted as if Southern men should hide behind a pile of dirt to shoot at the enemy instead of going out in the open and whipping the invader in a fair fight.”
Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer Jedediah Hotchkiss P. 51
“June 2nd. A part of our men burnt the White House and the Columbia bridges, on the Shenandoah, just in advance of the enemy. Col. S. Crutchfield went to see if it had been done. There was a very hard rain* in the P.M. Ashby had a fight, aided by stragglers.”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 71-72
“Getting behind Jackson was indeed what Shields intended to do. He ordered his cavalry to speed up the Luray Valley to seize the two bridges that crossed the Shenandoah River’s South Fork at Luray and the single bridge over South Fork at Conrad’s Store. These three bridges had become all the more crucial because heavy rainstorms had swept the Valley, thrown all of the streams into flood, and made it impossible to ford the river or even to bridge it with pontoons. But when the cavalry reached Luray on June 2, they found both bridges burned. At dawn on June 4, after a forced night march, the horsemen reached Conrad’s Store and found that this bridge as well had been burned.”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 54-55
“JUNE 2, MONDAY.— Fair and warm*…. Our retreat from Strasburg has certainly been an extraordinary affair. Six thousand men overloaded with baggage and impeded by a thousand sick and several thousand fugitives have retired in the face of twenty thousand men with comparatively little loss themselves and inflicting a very serious loss upon the enemy. They brought off all their artillery and all their important baggage and have lost not over six or eight hundred men…. Returning to camp we find Major [Wilder] Dwight and Dr. [Lincoln R.] Stone, returned from Winchester where they were prisoners. Dwight was captured in the streets while assisting some wounded and Stone remained with the sick and wounded. They say our prisoners and wounded were treated with the greatest courtesy. There is not a Confederate soldier on this side of that town…. When Captain Albert was wandering near Winchester, a lady from a country house ran out and earnestly warned him not to go forward toward the Martinsburg road. That road, she said, is in possession of our troops. The Captain thanked her and asked to whom he was indebted for this service. She said her name was Lovett and added, ” I have lost my husband in the Southern army, and I would not wish any other woman to suffer as I have.'”
The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 455
“All next day the rain poured down; “our God,” as Stonewall called Him, continued to smile on the efforts of the men in gray.
There was an off chance that Shields, within earshot of Frémont’s guns as he slogged through the mud in the opposite valley, might somehow have managed to rebuild the Luray bridges and thereby have gained access to the road across the mountain.
Meanwhile, far back down the pike, the rear guard was having its hands full. Shields had sent his troopers around though Strasburg to cooperate with Frémont, and they were doing their work with dash and spirit. Several times that day they charged the Confederate rear guard, throwing it into confusion. Late in the afternoon they made their most effective attempt, breaking through the scattered ranks and riding hard up the pike until they struck a Virginia regiment, which had halted to receive them with massed volleys. The result was as if they had ridden into a trip wire. Saddles were emptied and horses went down screaming; all except one of the attackers were killed or captured. That night, reporting the incident to Jackson, the Virginia colonel expressed his regret at having had to deal so harshly with such gallantry. The general heard him out, then asked: “Colonel, why did you say you saw those soldiers fall with regret?” Surprised at Stonewall’s inability to appreciate chivalrous instincts, the colonel said that it was because he admired their valor; he hated to have to slaughter such brave men. “No,” Jackson said dryly. “Shoot them all. I do not wish them to be brave.’”
*Ephraim uses the same words as Strother tomorrow. Also, both Ephraim & Hotchkiss describe the rain as “hard.”
Note: McClellan writes his wife today: “I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield, with its mangled corpses and poor suffering wounded! Victory has no charms for me when purchased at such cost.”
**Lincoln, post-Chickamauga, the 2nd bloodiest day of the war, said Rosecrans was “…confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.”
Note: On June 2, the two armies are back in their May 30 spot, only minus 6,100 men because Confederates won Seven Pines/Fair Oaks.
took what they needed and burnt the others….
Anywhere else lying in wait puts you eligible for the death penalty. Or luring you to your death. A brutal piece of directing, why. Running forward, flag also tipped forward, the whole thrust toward, a unidirection into a storm-sea of men doing the same movement toward you, your group, hell-bent on your death or capture. There was, of course, no turning back in the gargantuan momentum, the physics about to collide like a particle supercharger, two massive cellular stellar steroidal objects, supernovas on a course of mutual destruction & the sound & pain right about to hit, right now, & nothing ever the same again for either party. When they start the charge the middle extends out, so if viewed from the sky it’s a frown on the ground, a moving distaste upon the Earth, the sides frowning down down to where it’s true distaste, even aghast. What kind of a person comes up with a plan like this and carries it out?
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