Day 99. June 7, 1862.
99
I think Jackson is caught this time….
June Saturday 7 1862
Quite cool this morning and a fine appearance for a fine day as the sun came up quite bright. We took up the line of march at 7oclock. This is the 4 Brigade 7 Ind 1st Va 84 & 110th Regt P.V. came on towards Port Republick. We marched on until 8 ½ oclock at night when we camped in a clover & thimothy field. The grass was 2 ½ feet high. We got something to eat and at 9 ½ oclock we went and made my bed and layed down to sleep expecting to get a good nights sleep but at 12oclock we was roused up* and to march. We drew Provision and started at 1oclock at night on towards the Town of Republic. We march some 8 miles until 6oclock in the morning. I was not very well. I have the Rheumatism
*Imagine, on top of everything else, getting awakened & told to start marching. Below, Brand, of the 66th Ohio, is in the same brigade (3rd Brigade, Lander’s Division) as Ephraim; he fights & camps alongside the 110th. Whether Ephraim & Brand ever met is unknown. They’re both frustrated today. And they’re walking, & walking, then walking some more into two straight days of fighting….
Army Life According to Arbaw: Civil War Letters of William A. Brand 66th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Edited by Daniel A. Masters P. 68
“We moved from Columbia Bridge near where my last letter was written on Saturday June 7th and proceeded leisurely southward on some unknown expedition. Some days previous had been involved in mystery, and the men were getting very tired of performing hard and what seemed to them useless labor. We would march forward three or four miles, remain in bivouac long enough to get comfortably fixed, and then ordered to countermarch and back we would go to our old camp or some place near there.”
How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat Bevin Alexander P. 72-73
“When Jackson arrived at Port Republic with his advance guard on June 7, he found the bridge still in Confederate hands. The village was located just west of where North River and South River came together to form the South Fork. Over South River was a ford. Over the bolder North River was the bridge that Jackson had been so determined to save. Holding this bridge gave him access to both sides of the river, while denying it to the Federals. Jackson now occupied the central position between Shields on one side of the South Fork and Frémont on the other side. Neither Union force could help the other.
Leaving Ewell’s division near Cross Keys, five miles northwest of Port Republic, to block Frémont, Jackson chose to strike at Shields’s smaller army first. These Federal elements could still block Jackson’s escape route to Brown’s Gap over the Blue Ridge, could capture his wagon train, only a short distance below Port Republic, and could press on to Waynesboro, sixteen miles south, and there cut the Virginia Central Railroad.”
Conquering the Valley Robert K. Krick P. 35
“Federals of Shields’s advance guard were moving south toward Jackson’s other front with more expedition and purpose than Frémont displayed. Shields himself was hanging back near Luray because Confederate deserters had bedazzled him with a ludicrous tale that General James Longstreet and 10,000 Southern reinforcements were headed for that location. He sent forward General Erastus B. Tyler on June 7, however, and Tyler reached Naked Creek early that evening after a march of about fifteen miles that had begun at eight A.M. Tyler’s men had a terrible time on the road, “completely worn out… [and] completely disgusted…. Things have got in a terrible Snarl.” At particularly muddy spots, double and triple teams were required to extricate artillery and wagons, even with infantrymen adding their strength to the effort. Tyler’s men would have gone hungry had they not stolen food from civilian homes along the roadside.
Shields’s forward element, the brigade of Colonel S.S. Carroll, was nearly a day’s march ahead of Tyler. Carroll’s men marched for Port Republic soon after five P.M. On the same sodden, muddy roads “lakes of liquid mud.” Some mules sank into the gumbo until only their long ears protruded. To add to the misery, the contents of an artillery ammunition chest inexplicably exploded, scattering missiles in every direction. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt. Carroll’s men halted for a grimy rest during the night, but would press forward before sunup.”***
Note: “bedazzled him with a ludicrous tale”– Krick’s overwrought smarmy writing is often annoying & unprofessional. I can only assume that at some point in the near future, someone else will amble along & do a better job on 1862 Virginia. Word is maybe Kevin M. Levin is working on the Valley as we speak.
Destruction and Reconstruction: Personal Experiences of the Late War Richard Taylor New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1879 P. 72
“On the 7th of June we marched to a place within four miles of Port Republic, called Cross Keys, where several roads met. Near at hand was the meeting-house of of a sect of German Quakers, Tunkers or Dunkards, as they are indifferently named. Here Jackson determined to await and fight Frémont, who followed him hard; but as a part of Shields’s [sic] force was now unpleasantly near, he pushed on to Port Republic with Winder’s and other infantry, and a battery, which camped on the hither bank of the river. Jackson himself, with his staff and a mounted escort, crossed the bridge and passed the night in the village.”
Note: Take caution with which source of McClellan’s wires is consulted (along with any other original record you look up regarding the war, of course). The below version of McClellan’s reply to Stanton** is far different from the one I had originally typed up that I found on Americancivilwar.com. The line “Your dispatch astonishes me” has gone down in history as the correct line. It is not correct. It never was. And if one line out of the official written record got so easily twisted, you have to wonder how much else about this war has been is a lie we have all unknowingly swallowed. It also concerns me that much of what I have run across & even quoted in this manuscript that historians wrote is simply inaccurate. I’m not saying there’s an agenda. But I am puzzled as an outsider how inaccuracies happen. I’ve caught so many of my own mistakes, & God knows there’s probably many more I’ve missed in these pages that a historian can easily catch. I’ve re-looked up countless passages because I found typos in my typing. Like below. I misspelled unnecessary. Was it like that in the original? Tonight, June 6th before posting this for tomorrow, found this telegram on NYT Archive AND IT’S YET AGAIN DIFFERENT FROM SEARS’ VERSION BELOW. FFS.
The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865 Edited by Stephen W. Sears P. 291
“June 7, 1862 [TELEGRAM]
To Edwin M. Stanton
Hon. E M Stanton
Secy War McClellan’s [June] 7 [1862] 1 pm
Your dispatch of twelve thirty pm today recd & I must confess that its contents have not only struck me with astonishment but have given me much pain. The care of our sick & wounded has tasked the unremitted great share of my attention from other important duties & I feel conscious that everything has been done for their comfort that human efforts could accomplish. The White House of the rebel Gen Lee referred to is a small frame building of six rooms worth probably fifteen hundred dollars & the medical director states that it would not accomodate more than 30 patients. He has tents where the patients are comfortable & he has therefore never conceived it necessary to call for the use of the house as a hospital. As to the story about thirsty wounded suffering soldiers having to buy a glass of water its only foundation probably originated in the fact that some civilian who was too indolent to go for the water himself may have paid a negro for bringing it to him. The following extract from a dispatch just recd from Col R Ingalls the chief Q M in charge at White House will give you some light upon this subject & perhaps satisfy you as to the motive of the individuals who make the urgent complaints in question. “No one here has ever had cause to suffer for water unless he was too drunk or sick to drink it. We have water in unnecessary abundance. The springs are numerous the water is very fine & no prohibition has ever been placed on the free & unlimited use of it. The author of any report to the contrary of this statement must be a simpleton or a malicious knave.” I have given special directions to protect the property of the White House from any unnecessary injury or destruction because it was once the property of Gen Washington & I cannot believe that you will regard this as a cause for rebuke or censure. I protect no house against use when they are needed for sick or wounded soldiers. Persons who endeavor to impose upon you such malicious & unfounded reports as those alluded to are not only enemies of this army but the cause in which we are now fighting.
Geo B McClellan
Maj. Gen”
The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865 Edited by Stephen W. Sears P. 291
(Edwin Stanton telegraphs McClellan)
“Very urgent complaints are being made from various quarters respecting the protection afforded to the Rebel General Lee’s property, called the ‘White House,’ instead of using it as a hospital for the care of wounded soldiers. It is represented that they have even to purchase a glass of water….”
Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War Elizabeth R. Varon P. 99-100
“In the eyes of Union men such as John Hay and Alfred Castleman, the White House was the perfect symbol of the pretenses and faded glories of Virginia; Hay commented that the property was “worn-out” and “generally, like Virginia, going to decay.” When Radical Republicans heard press reports that wounded, suffering Union men were left outside, writing on the swampy soil and exposed to the elements, rather than being admitted to the house, they were livid. Secretary of War Stanton and a host of Republican congressmen upbraided McClellan for his “cowardly policy of conciliation” toward the enemy. The way to honor Washington’s memory, they insisted, was to use his ancestral home to serve Union soldiers. When Lincoln got wind of the controversy, he reversed McClellan’s order. But the issue was soon moot, as McClellan decided on June 28 to abandon the White House as part of his retreat to the James. He left orders to put to the torch the public property the Union army left behind but not the private dwelling. Those orders were disregarded, and the White House was burned to the ground.
For Confederates, the fate of the Lees’ house was just more proof that the Yankees waged a ruthless war of subjugation. Confederate cavalry commander J.E.B. “Jeb” Stuart saw the charred remains of the White House the day after its destruction. “An opportunity was here offered for observing the deceitfulness of the enemy’s pretended reverence for everything associated with the name of Washington,” he remarked bitterly. The remains told a tale of “desolation and vandalism.”
Stuart gave voice to a central theme in Confederate political culture. Southern nationalists had long maintained that they were the true heirs and protectors of the Revolutionary legacy. They condemned abolitionism as a slander on the reputations of the slaveholding Founding Fathers and as a betrayal of the constitutional compromises that had safeguarded slavery. During the war, Confederates took inspiration from the colonists’ underdog victory against the mighty British Empire, casting Lincoln in the role of the tyrannical King George III, the Yankee army as the ruthless and mercenary “Hessians,” and Southern Unionists as treasonous “Tories.” In the Confederate version of American history, the Northern patriots of the Revolutionary era were cowards who had never carried their weight, and the Northern founders were either false idols unworthy of emulation or fallen idols who had been betrayed by their faithless descendants. The great principle of the revolution was not human equality or reverance for the Union but instead the idea that “humans no longer needed to blindly trust in their government,” as historian Paul Quigley has explained. George Washington, whose image was featured on the Confederate national seal and on patriotic envelopes, stamps, currency, and other forms of iconography, was in Southern culture “the Great Southerner” and belonged solely to the South. Confederates insisted that Washington had led a revolution “for the freedom of the white, and the slavery of the black race”— and that Yankees, waging a ruthless abolition war, had forfeited the right to evoke Washington’s memory.”
Note: Over 9,000 African Americans fought in the American Revolution. In 1783, VA. passed an emancipation law that freed the enslaved who served in the Continental Army. Only in Europe did King George tear-down depictions like paintings include Black people. One U.S. painting went as far as to show one Indigenous male in a headdress. But Black men helped tear down the statue of King George III too. 42,088 bullets were made from him & the horse he rode in on. https://galleries.lafayette.edu/2019/01/02/william-walcutt-pulling-down-the-statue-of-george-iii-at-bowling-green-n-y-july-9-1776
And American Revolution: The DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) was no better than the UDC, ultimately. Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1939, resigned from DAR when they refused Marian Anderson entrance to sing at Constitution Hall near the White House.
The Civil War, A Narrative: Fort Sumter to Perryville Shelby Foote P. 459
“Shields was a politician, having represented both Illinois and Minnesota in the U.S. Senate, but he was also a veteran of the Black Hawk War and a Mexico brigadier. A fifty-six-year-old native of Tyrone County, Ireland, he had proved his fighting ability by whipping Jackson at Kernstown back in March, and now that his opponent’s fame had risen he was anxious to prove it again in the same way. From Conrad’s Store, where he had paused to let his division catch its breath near the end of its wearing march up the narrow valley, he sent two brigades forward along the right bank of the South Fork to explore the situation at Port Republic. Stonewall was there already and might launch a sudden attack across the river, so Shields sent a message requesting cooperation from Frémont, whose guns he had been hearing intermittently for a week: “If he attempts to force a passage, as my force is not yet large there yet, I hope you will thunder down on his rear…. I think Jackson is caught this time.”
He very nearly was: quite literally. The Valley chieftain had spent the night at Port Republic, saddened by the death of his cavalry commander, Brigadier General Turner Ashby, who had fallen that afternoon in a skirmish just this side of Harrisonburg. Ashby had had his faults, the main one being an inability to keep his troopers on the job when there was loot or applejack within reach, but he had established a reputation for personal bravery that was never outdone by any man in either army. In death the legend was complete, “Charge, men! For God’s sake, charge!” he cried as he took the bullet that killed him; now only the glory remained.”
The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860-1865 Edited by Stephen W. Sears P. 291
Edwin Stanton telegraphs McClellan:
“Very urgent complaints are being made from various quarters respecting the protection afforded to the Rebel General Lee’s property, called the ‘White House,’ instead of using it as a hospital for the care of wounded soldiers. It is represented that they have even to purchase a glass of water….”
*Mrs. Lee’s house was burned to the ground in August after the Union Army “abandoned the landing.” Look at those giant columns down in her yard that had stood that mansion up. Look at it now. Down in the yard, the columns. Columned mansion now down in the yard, scattered columns laying on their sides, indented, those indented columns. Horizontal. In her yard. Except they’re not. They’re still standing…..
**Edwin Stanton was Lincoln’s Secretary of War.
***Carrroll’s Brigade– of which Ephraim’s 110th PA. is part of– I think I figured out they all actually marched 7a.m. to 8:30p.m., then 1a.m. to 6a.m. They walked in mud for 13 and 1/2 hours, then made camp after maybe eating some stolen food, some bleating sheep maybe, then rested for 2 1/2 until then everyone got roused up & moved as a mass, all of them, woken up and forced to walk with heavy packs through mud in the dark of night and covered, in five hours, 8 miles.
These commanders thought they could treat men this way yet expected them to stick around. AND THEN? THEN THEY GET TO DO BATTLE FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS: Battle of Cross Keys, then the next day Port Republic. Tomorrow? Ephraim’s one of 2,000 men who will hold off Jackson & his 7-8,000 men for 3 hours. After all that.
Note: Today Jackson rests his army while the 110th is led on an all-night odyssey by a man who ranked 44th out of 48 total in the 1856 West Point graduating class. Colonel Carroll– at just 29 years of age– commands the entire 4th Brigade of General Shields’ division. Lee’s nephew ranked 45th.
Note too: As well today in 1862: Today William Mumford is hung at the order of General Butler because he and 6 others tore down Union flag from New Orleans City Hall. The charge: “high crimes and misdemeanors against the laws of the United States, and the peace and dignity thereof and the Law Martial.” The Pocahontas was just offshore, & threatened to fire on anyone who tore the flag down. Yet New Orleans was still in Confederate control when Mumford took the flag & walked it over to the Mayor.
layed down to sleep expecting to get a good nights sleep….
Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the Shenandoah.
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