Day 22. March 22, 1862.
22
Jackson, meanwhile, rolling north at full speed….
March Saturday 22
Quite cool this morning and cloudy and very mudy and will be until it clears off and gets good weather. We are still in our old Camp Shields. We heard heavy cannonading yesterday afternoon out on the other side of Winchester. Our men had an engagement with the enemy. Our Artillary killed 62 men and several horses. There was one of our artillary men killed. Gen Shields got wounded in the arm by a piece of shell and broke his arm and the enemies fell back again. Our forces following in the evening at dusk. Our Brigade which is the 3 had to take up the line of march for the sene of action. We went out as far as Winchester and had to lay out all night again. I slept in the ambulance
Note: Ambulance: https://civilwarhome.com/ambulancewagons.html and https://www.nps.gov/fosc/learn/historyculture/civil-war-ambulance.htm
Civil War Weather in Virginia Robert K. Krick P. 48
“7a.m. 36; 2p.m. 45; 9p.m. 42. Fog and drizzle.”
Editors Make War: Southern Newspapers in the Secession Crisis Donald E. Reynolds P. 199
In the March 22 Harrisonburg Virginia Citizen:
“When the question of the secession of a State from the American Union was first broached, there was not an individual in all the land with a thimble full of brains who believed it to be within the range of the rights reserved to the States…. But time wore on. Contentions grew apace; and now, strange to say, a large proportion of the Southern people not only endure but actually embrace the unclean thing; and all who do not fall down and worship at the altar of the newly found goddess, are branded as miscreants and traitors! It has become not only a legal but an excellent thing– It is good for all sorts of complaints, and is as easily applied as ever was the “Poor Man’s Plaster.” Old men roll it under their tongues as a sweet morsel, and children play with it as familiarly as little girls dandle their dolls upon their knee.’”
A Virginia Yankee in the Civil War The Diaries of David Hunter Strother David Hunter Strother P. 18
“MARCH 22, SATURDAY.—Cloudy…. It will take some time for the habitual dread of this Rebellion tyranny to wear away. People seem to be so cowed by it that they cannot feel assured of their liberation. It is really painful to see one’s friends in such a condition, but it will doubtless wear off in time. This fear is no doubt at the bottom of much of the seeming sullenness and coldness of the people toward the United States troops….”
Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson S.C. Gwynne P. 209
“While Jackson was pushing his men furiously north, Ashby, well in advance, had plans of his own. At 2:00 p.m. he and a small force of riders hit Shields’s supply train about four miles south of Winchester near the tiny hamlet of Kernstown, which consisted of a handful of businesses– butcher, wheelwright, blacksmith, cooperage, and tavern– and a stone church. He had unloaded enough shell and canister to get their attention, and nearly captured part of the supply train, when Shields summoned cavalry, artillery, and infantry and counterattacked. Ashby, greatly outnumbered, fell back six miles, to Newtown. Though he had done little damage to men or materiel, one of his shell fragments had managed to strike Brigadier General Shields in the chest and shoulder. He fainted several times and was carried from the field.
P. 211
In spite of Asby’s strenuous efforts with his little force of 290 horsemen on the afternoon of March 22, neither Banks nor his division commander, Shields, had taken his presence seriously. They were convinced that Jackson was still forty miles away, and that Ashby, for whatever reason, was simply choosing to pester them, to no particular end. Jackson, meanwhile, rolling north at full speed, was now a half day’s march away from Winchester and planning a full-scale assault. He, too, was very much in the dark about his enemy, but in a far more dangerous way. That evening Ashby reported to Jackson that only four Union regiments and one or two batteries in Winchester – a force so small that even Jackson’s little army outnumbered it. But Ashby’s normally reliable intelligence was dead wrong. Only one Union division had left the valley. (Jonah Taverner had seen the first third of it on the afternoon of March 21. The other two brigades, under Brigadier General Alpheus Williams, had followed the next morning.) But that left a full division under Shields, which outnumbered Jackson at least two to one. Jackson was marching squarely, and unknowingly, into what amounted to a trap. It was indeed such an apparently perfect, elegant trap that James Shields would later falsely claim credit for having deliberately designed it to draw Jackson in.”
The Shenandoah Campaign of 1862 Edited by Gary W. Gallagher P. 51
“The second event that deranged McClellan’s plans west of the Blue Ridge was Stonewall Jackson’s impetuous attack on Bank’s force at Kernstown on March 23. Banks, convinced that Jackson and his 4,000 men were no threat, had begun to execute McClellan’s orders to move most of his force toward Washington. Shields’s 9,000-man division, by direction of McClellan, would remain in the Valley to protect the railroads while the rest of Banks’s soldiers, some 10,000 strong, moved to Manassas. On March 22 Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams’s division broke camp in Winchester and headed eastward toward the Blue Ridge. The next day, Jackson struck at Kernstown. The Federals suffered 574 casualties, but Jackson lost 737 and the field as well. Forced to withdraw again, Stonewall slunk southward to Narrow Passage and on to Rude’s Hill, just north of New Market.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 399
“The Southern railroads were suffering most of all. Indeed, their whole situation was complicated almost beyond understanding and ultimately beyond remedy.
When the war began the railroads foresaw outright ruin, not realizing that the war would mean more traffic rather than less, and so they did their best to retrench, encouraging their workers to enlist and reducing their workshop crews to a minimum. By the time they discovered that this was a mistake the conscription act was in force, holding the enlisted workers in the army; now the roads were deteriorating badly, engines and cars and tracks were going unrepaired, carrying capacity was declining, and both the Army and the national economy were gravely handicapped.”
Note: Shields is hit in arm, as Ephraim mentions:
We Are In For It! The First Battle of Kernstown Gary L. Ecelbarger P. 68
“Expecting little resistance from a skeleton force remaining in the vicinity, Ashby’s cavalry and horse artillery strode through Kernstown at approximately 2:00 P.M. on Saturday afternoon. After two days of rain, sleet, and snow, this day warmed above fifty degrees without detectable precipitation. All roads, except the Valley Pike, were still muddy quagmires; therefore, Federal cavalry focused on the limestone turnpike for picketing.
P. 70
Some residents climbed upon the roofs in an attempt to see what the cannonading was all about south of town.
As Shields advanced through Winchester, Turner Ashby ordered a squadron to charge down the pike to break up the Michigan picket force and enter Winchester. The Southern horsemen galloped across the Abraham’s Creek bridge with exultant yells and headed toward the cluster of mills. To their surprise, two hidden companies of cavalry rose from behind the stone fence that lined the road north of the creek and delivered a hurried volley at the charging horsemen. The Union cavalry disclosed their poor marksmanship; they aimed their carbines too high and injured no one. However, it effectively drove Ashby’s men back to the southern side of the creek by 4:00 P.M. Within minutes of the repulse, Shields and his reinforcements entered Milltown from the north.
Shields was surly from events occurring earlier in the day. He had complained to General Banks about seeking reprisals for what he considered to be the miscreants of Winchester who “fly before us and leave their wives and children in our power, and while doing this wreak their vengeance on the poor Union men who happen to be found amongst them.” Shields did not believe the first request for aid and was still skeptical after deciding to move in response to the second call for troops. He heard the Confederate cannons while moving through Winchester and took personal charge to out-muscle them. Shields rode forward with Captain James F. Huntington’s 1st Ohio Light Artillery, six rifled pieces of Battery H, and positioned them on an eminence near the mill, well within the sight of Chew’s gunners opposing them. While aligning the cannons on the left side of the battery, an incoming shell found its mark on the head of one of the artillery horses and exploded on impact. The bomb blast killed the horse and its driver, Private Jacob Yeager, while shell fragments flew in all directions. A second artillery horse was hit while another shell fragment struck Shields above the left elbow, breaking the humerus bone and injuring the general’s shoulder and left side.
Shields dropped to the ground in pain. Dr. H.M. McAbee, the surgeon of the 4th Ohio Infantry, arrived quickly to aid the general. Shields requested to be helped back on his horse, but fainted as soon as he was placed in an upright position. An open carriage was ordered and became another target for Chew’s gunners who forced the empty vehicle off the turnpike. Once again, Shields fainted when held upright so Dr. McAbee sent for an ambulance to take him back to town. In the meantime, staff aides carried Shields to one of the houses near the mill to escape the raining shot and shell.”
Terrible Swift Sword Bruce Catton P. 265-266
“A hint of the way things were going to work came on March 23, in the battle of Kernstown.
Ever since the unhappy canal boat expedition McClellan had kept an army corps in the lower Shenandoah Valley, and the commander of this corps, General Nathaniel P. Banks, had been having a pleasantly uneventful war. He had 25,000 men and the Confederates in his front numbered hardly 4500; decisive odds, surely, except that the Confederates were led by Stonewall Jackson, about whose singular capacities neither General Banks nor the rest of the world knew as much just then as they would know a little later. Jackson’s little force had been pushed out of Winchester and had gone, apparently, far to the south, and could be nothing more than a minor nuisance; so when McClellan began his move to Fort Monroe and needed a garrison for the area around Manassas he naturally thought about General Banks. Banks was ordered to leave a division at Winchester and prepare to bring everybody else east of the Blue Ridge, and he promptly obeyed. At Winchester, with its principal advanced line at Kernstown, a few miles south, he posted the division of Brigadier General James Shields; 11,000 men, approximately, whose chief function was to keep the lower valley clear of Rebels so that the rebuilt line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad could operate without interruption.
Shields came from County Tyrone by way of Illinois and the west coast; a lean, combative man who had the odd idea that Stonewall Jackson was afraid of him, and who had once challenged Abraham Lincoln to fight a duel…
Jackson had heard about Banks’s withdrawal, and he seems to have believed that the man was leaving fewer troops around Winchester than was actually the case. Joseph E. Johnston had just warned him to keep close to the Yankees– the sort of order no one ever needed to give Jackson twice– and anyway Jackson considered Winchester his own private baliwick and wanted to drive the invaders out for personal reasons. On the morning of March 23 he sent Johnston a characteristic message: “With the blessing of an everkind Providence I hope to be in the vicinity of Winchester this evening.” Then he made his word good by moving in to make a savage attack on the Federal lines at Kernstown.
Probably the least important thing about the battle of Kernstown is that Jackson tried to do the impossible, and failed. Shields had more than twice Jackson’s numbers, and these Federals were good soldiers– Westerners, mostly, plus a few Pennsylvanians, with some regiments which would eventually be listed with the best combat units in the Union Army. Jackson’s line was halted and at last it had to give ground, and by dark its dour commander, furious over the reverse, was leading it up the valley in full retreat. He had lost some 700 men, and Shields (who himself was wounded) had had smaller losses and was entitled to claim a victory. For the rest of the war, Shields’s men bragged that they were the only ones who had ever beaten Stonewall Jackson.”
Note: Jackson is now 95 miles from his supply base. Ashby reports to Jackson that Colonel Kimball has a mere 3k men at the Union garrison at Winchester.
Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend James I. Robertson, Jr. P. 339
“Ashby never learned the full strength of the Federals. Hence, he relayed to Jackson dangerous misinformation on Shields’s numbers at Winchester. Accounts differ as to why this happened. One of Ashby’s cavalrymen had Winchester ladies saying that only a skeleton force of the enemy was still in town. Another reliable source stated that several of Ashby’s scouts disguised themselves, entered Winchester, and made troop tabulations themselves. In other quarters, reports circulated of a Confederate traitor misrepresenting the number and locality of the Federals. In time, some valley residents came to believe that Jackson received a forged message from General Johnston to enter an abandoned Winchester. Still another report was that the Union army rapidly fell back en masse to put down a citizens’ uprising in Maryland. In any event, Ashby informed Jackson that only four Union regiments and a battery or two of artillery were still in town, and they were hastily preparing to withdraw to Harpers Ferry.
P. 340
Accepting Ashby’s judgment that little more than a brigade of Federals remained in Winchester, Jackson quickly formulated his strategy. Pritchard’s Hill, adjacent to the turnpike, was obviously the western anchor of the Union position as well as the key to the whole arena. West Point textbooks and Mexican War experience had taught Jackson the elementary value of seizing high ground, especially on the flank. He would gain control of Sandy Ridge a mile and half west of the turnpike, turn the enemy line, and seize the main Kernstown-Winchester road in the Federals’ rear. This would allow him to rout the enemy and march unhindered into Winchester.”
Diary of James E. Beard, of Augusta County Virginia.
Note: Beard joined the 5th VA. Infantry in August, 1861. Hit in his leg at Second Manassas, “taking out some pieces of bone,” his diary ends there, but he survives the war to go back to farming, & dies in Augusta County in 1906. He is 37 writing here. See: The Valley of the Shadow Project by Edward Ayers at valley.lib.virginia.edu/papers/AD1008.
Beard notes in an entry that the 5th VA., on the 21st of March, 1862, “struck tents and marched 41 miles below Mt. Jackson and stayed one night, and again struck tents and marched to near Cedar Creek 24 miles and camped for the night.” On the 23rd, they marched an additional 22 miles, then “got into the fight about half hour…. where we remained until dark being twice repulsed by the enemy.” They left the field in good order, fell back 4 miles and stayed the night. The next day they tried to cook a day’s rations, but before they finished, the enemy “commenced throwing bombs at us, we then fell back to the Passage and stayed all night….”
Note: The sun is going down, the wind coming up, descending off the sky darker & darker. Ephraim’s a few hours out from tomorrow, at a point northwest of D.C., an hour & change down I-66, where at 3:55pm, the war’s full presence will begin. At precisely 38º8’42”N 78º11’2”W, Kernstown will happen, the battle that could have ended it all before this war devolved into the wasting it became, the size of 7-8 or more million dead were it to happen today. Tomorrow, the high cards will fall into Jackson’s hand, & there’s no coming back from that now. He makes his kill clean because he waits for it; he will spec Lincoln up for 3 additional years when Richmond, Richmond, Richmond could have been taken & made the Confederacy done for, at least back east. But their blood doesn’t feel it, the Federals, enough to cut into two lines to surround Jackson’s, to circle the Rebels, then capture the Capitol. 6 miles off but it was too far. The North could have taken Richmond. They were about 6 miles away when they reached the mouth of that possibility, my god, six miles. https://richmond.com/photos-the-burning-of-richmond-1865/collection_1fd801a8-d971-11e4-97f9-cf34a72fd58d.html
Note: The moon Ephraim is looking up at, in anticipation of tomorrow morning, tonight moves into its third quarter phase.
our forces following in the evening at dusk….
It’s an imaginary line, the equator, where the sun’s directly over the men’s heads today, the sun crossing the equator, where the sun’s as far north of the equator as it can get. At Chichen Itza, Mexico, at the Snake of Sunlight, on the day of the equinox, they’d sacrifice who they took to the top.
Because of Earth’s position relative to the sun– the two ends of light & dark– there’s a lull before the sun heads south, stays put 3 days until time ticks down again, until December 21 & then the light is all a sudden here again, gleaming & sudden like a new sun. The ancient folktale turned urban legend is you can balance an egg on the equinox, make it stay upright on a surface one day a year due to gravitational force. Today the sun resembles a black swan floating by, a missile that stays to the sky– here & not here– but never lands.
Meantime, something goes under something & all that Lincoln thought he knew had been pushed out beyond calculation with Jackson’s pigeon drop.This, here. This is where it goes bad, if it weren’t bad enough already. Here it gathers mass, lyses tomorrow, March 23, 1862. And halfway through Ephraim’s first battle he’s under artillery bombardment at the hottest place on the field attempting to hide in the open with the remains & a black Vulture only slightly smaller than the sky hovers above, soars way up at the top of the sky, waiting. Buzzards, they start before you’re gone. Old World Vultures: they’re huge, see the pictures.
Ephraim’s laying down, heart beating as if in his hands shaking uncontrollably, everything narrowing in front of him. All he hears are echoes, richochets tinny & nonspecific, a rush toward something, anything, making sense. Cannonballs slamming down right in his vicinity & tricking the sky down too. And, scene. Explosion. Cut to: Bigger Explosions. Jump cut. Explosion. Sometimes the most important thing to know is when to get out. Everyone in town headed down-valley, flammable objects. Ready, aim, fire. Carpenter ants. Bang, bang, bang, bang. “Git, you damn Yankees.” Running away, the rush of nowhereness like an early dispersal route of modern humans, or like something headed out to sea, like a vein was breached, moving on a dead run. A tireless running in back of them, dark salmon.
It goes different tomorrow. It will turn on its own axis, go into its own dark orbit. The campaign will reach its flashover stage. It will become more than itself. So much more & so much worse.
Like a really dark variety show.
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