CHAPTER XXX

LEE'S FIRST INVASION OF MARYLAND

Lee seemed now to be master of the situation so far at least as determining when and where the fighting should be done. Within the brief space of two months he had raised the siege of Richmond, maneuvered McClellan completely out of Virginia, and overthrown Pope in a two-days' battle compelling that commander to retire behind the defenses of Washington.

There remained no Federal army in Virginia. There was no further defensive campaigning to be done there. Lee decided at once upon an aggressive operation of the utmost boldness. He determined to transfer the seat of war to the regions north of the Potomac, to threaten and if possible to capture the Federal capital, either by direct approach or by the conquest of Baltimore, which would isolate Washington and compel its abandonment.

In order to understand the importance of the issues of such a campaign as Lee now planned, the reader must bear in mind that Mr. Lincoln's government was at that time subject to a "fire from the rear;" that a very large part of the Northern people sympathized with the South; that a still larger part disapproved of the war on other grounds than sympathy--grounds of commercial interest, political prejudice and the like. The cost of carrying on the struggle had already become appalling to those who must meet it by the payment of taxes. The desire to end it, and the conviction that it was hopeless of the results proposed, were widespread.

Under such conditions it is easily obvious that if Lee could at that time have made himself master of Washington or Baltimore or both, all that had gone before either of victory or of defeat would have been as dust in the balance. It would have been next to impossible, under such circumstances for Mr. Lincoln's administration to prosecute the struggle further. The national credit, already seriously impaired, would have been destroyed. Neither men nor the material necessaries of war would have been at all adequately forthcoming. A great cry must in that case have arisen for the ending of the struggle by the recognition of Southern independence. With the Confederates in possession of Washington and Baltimore every foreign power would have joined its voice to that of the doubters and malcontents at home in a clamorous demand for an immediate "peace at any price" with a triumphant foe.

To make an end of the war in this way was the stupendous task that Lee set himself to accomplish. His means were scanty and his grounds of hope for success were small. But "war is a hazard of possibilities, probabilities, luck and ill luck," and Lee was a commander given to the taking of stupendous risks.

He had but 45,000 men with whom to undertake a task for which a quarter of a million would not have been an excessive or even a certainly sufficient force. But those 45,000 men were soldiers of the very best quality imaginable. They had been seasoned by severe campaigning. They had accustomed themselves to win in battle against heavy odds. They believed in their leader and in themselves and were ready to undertake any task that Lee might assign them. They were stubborn men and stalwart, and experience on march and in battle had made them as nearly perfect soldiers as the world has anywhere or at any time known.

On such an expedition as that which Lee planned, they were certain to be opposed by armies greatly exceeding themselves in numbers and immeasurably superior in equipment and supplies. But they were soldiers of that sort that can march on a diet of hard tack and fight on no diet at all.

So with this slender force Lee crossed the Potomac, on the fifth of September, abandoning his base of supplies and his communications and depending for the support of his army upon such foodstuffs as he could secure in his enemy's country. As for reinforcements, he perfectly knew that there were none who could come to him.

It was a desperate hazard, conspicuously Napoleonic in its daring.

Crossing the Potomac on the fifth of September, Lee established himself on the eighth near Frederick, Maryland, a point at which his presence threatened Washington and Baltimore about equally. And both those cities must be guarded against his advance, the direction of which was of course uncertain. The capture of either city would mean the speedy surrender of the other.

To meet this danger the Federal Administration hurriedly called to Washington every regiment and brigade it could in any wise command. It united the armies of McClellan and Pope and reinforced them with every regiment that could be drawn from other quarters. It restored McClellan to command--for he had been temporarily removed in consequence of his disastrous defeat at Richmond--and set him the task of defending the National capital by meeting and crushing Lee in the field. If Lee had commanded an army of half a million men instead of the meager 45,000 actually under his orders, the alarm could scarcely have been greater or the preparations to meet him more elaborate.

President Lincoln visited McClellan in person and asked him to resume command of the combined armies. McClellan accepted the commission.

Accomplished soldier that he was, he saw clearly that the "objective" of his campaign must be the crushing of Lee and the enforced retreat of the Confederates to the southern side of the Potomac. To that end McClellan desired to employ the utmost force within call. He had about 70,000 men against Lee's 45,000, but he urgently asked for the 11,000 additional men who were guarding Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg. He asked that those untenable positions should be abandoned and their defenders added to the already superior force with which he was to try conclusions again with the masterful adversary who had so conspicuously defeated him before Richmond.

But General Halleck was now in chief command and he refused this request.

His refusal to order the evacuation of the two untenable positions and to add their important garrisons to McClellan's force, seriously embarrassed Lee and contributed, in an indirect but effective way, to the defeat of those purposes with which the Confederate chieftain had undertaken his hazardous campaign.

Lee had assumed, quite as a matter of course, that upon his passage of the Potomac, Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry would be evacuated, being obviously untenable. But in fact they were not abandoned. So Lee was compelled to pause and to send Jackson back to the south side of the river to secure control of positions that commanded his own only secure line of retreat in case of disaster.

This caused a very serious delay in Lee's operations, and in such a campaign of aggression, promptitude and swiftness are all important to the accomplishment of desired results.

Jackson went back across the river to assail Harper's Ferry from the South. In the meanwhile McLaws, Walker and D. H. Hill seized and held respectively Maryland Heights, Loudon Heights and Boonesboro Pass, while Lee with the remainder of his now dangerously divided army advanced to Hagerstown in search of food supplies.

Jackson did his part of the work perfectly, as it was his custom to do. He drove his enemy out of Martinsburg and captured Harper's Ferry with 11,500 prisoners, seventy-three serviceable guns and important stores.

But in the meanwhile Lee's army had been scattered in a very perilous way, and in his anxiety for its reconcentration, he wrote out an order, giving in detail his instructions to his several subordinates.

A copy of this order somehow fell into McClellan's hands. It clearly revealed to him Lee's divided and scattered condition, and for once in his life McClellan hurried. If he, with 70,000 men, could manage to attack in detail the several widely separated fragments of Lee's army which had now been reduced by casualties to less than a total of 40,000, surely he must win.

Accordingly he hurriedly pushed forward, hoping to carry Turner's and Crampton's Gaps in the South Mountain before Lee could concentrate for their defense.

He was a trifle too late, however, and a stubborn defense was made there on the fourteenth, giving Lee time to bring up the remainder of his forces for the decisive battle at Sharpsburg or Antietam, as the action is variously called at the South and at the North. McClellan finally carried the gaps at cost of a loss of 2,000 men--the Confederates losing a like number.

But in the meanwhile McClellan had lost all the strategic advantage that he was striving for. It had been his hope to push his columns through the gaps--as he might have done twenty-four hours earlier without serious resistance--and to occupy commanding positions between Lee's widely scattered forces, from which, with his vastly superior numbers he might conquer them in detail, probably compelling Lee's surrender as a part of the price exacted.

But McClellan was twenty-four hours late. He therefore had to fight all day in order to force his way through passes that a day earlier had been practically open to him.

These actions were fought on the fourteenth of September, 1862. They were quite separate in their strategy and action, but they are classed together in history as the Battle of South Mountain. The struggle at both points was a fierce one and the casualties were heavy on either side. At the end of it all McClellan held the passes and was free to push his army through them. To that extent he had won a victory. But by his stout defense Lee had gained the time he so badly needed in which to bring his scattered forces together for the decisive struggle, and as that was his sole object at the time, he justly felt that he had accomplished the purpose with which he had undertaken the battle.

Lee promptly prepared himself for the decisive struggle. Retiring behind Antietam Creek, he took up a strong position and awaited McClellan's assault. He had by this time an army of less than 38,000 men with which to meet McClellan's 70,000 or 75,000--for reinforcements were hourly coming to the Federal commander, and none to the Confederate.

This defensive battle was not at all what the Confederate general had hoped for or intended. He had been baffled of his purposes by adverse circumstances. Had his enemy promptly evacuated Harper's Ferry as he had expected and as McClellan had urged, Lee would have pushed on towards Washington or Baltimore, giving battle as the assailant wherever his march might have been opposed. The necessity of pausing to reduce Harper's Ferry had delayed him during precious days, during which McClellan's advance had completely changed the aspect of the campaign. Instead of advancing to conquer Washington or Baltimore, Lee fell back into a defensive position, there to meet an army nearly or quite twice as large as his own. In the meanwhile the necessity of living upon the country had completely demoralized those "lewd fellows of the baser sort," who constitute a pestilently important contingent in every fighting force. Men were away raiding chicken coops when they should have been in line with guns in their hands. Straggling was general beyond precedent, so that Lee declared that his army was "ruined" by it, while D. H. Hill said in his report of operations that "Had all our stragglers been up McClellan's army would have been completely crushed or annihilated. Thousands of thievish poltroons had kept away from sheer cowardice."

But the fact stares us in the face that McClellan had under his command quite all of 70,000 men and probably more, while Lee had at most considerably less than 40,000,--and as both armies were composed of seasoned soldiers who had fought before, it is by no means safe to say that if this or if that had been changed the result would have been other than it was. With an "if," it is easy to demonstrate anything.

The simple facts are that on the seventeenth of September, 1862, the two armies met on Antietam Creek in front of Sharpsburg, that they fought all day with high courage and desperate determination on both sides; that the Federals lost, by official report, 12,469 men, while the Confederate loss, never accurately reported, was estimated at between 9,000 and 10,000 men; that at the end of the struggle each army held the position it had occupied at the beginning, neither having yielded position to the other.

So far were both reluctant to renew the struggle that they lay still, facing each other during the whole of the next day, neither side firing a gun, and neither undertaking a maneuver of any kind.

That was what is technically called a drawn battle, a battle in which neither army can claim advantage over the other. And in fact that was the exact situation. Lee's men prided themselves upon the fact that they had held their own against nearly or quite twice their numbers, McClellan's men were proud to think that they had not been beaten as other armies had been by this phenomenal fighting machine of Robert E. Lee's; that they had not been flanked or caught in the rear, or in any other way outmaneuvered or outfought, but had been able to hold their own throughout the day and to maintain their ground when the day was done.

Considered by itself this was in fact a drawn battle. But considered more broadly in its relation to the general course of the war, it was very clearly a defeat for Lee, and a victory for his adversary. It made a final end of the Confederate general's scheme of invasion. It baffled all of his cherished purposes. It rendered utterly futile the plans in pursuit of which he had crossed the Potomac. It ended his hope of winning the war by the conquest of Washington or Baltimore, or both. It referred military operations again to Virginia, relieving all states north of the Potomac of their share in the sufferings incident to battles and campaigning.

Lee, being too badly crippled to continue his campaign, retired after a day's rest, to Virginia. McClellan, being too badly hurt to risk another contest, declined to follow him or in any way to interfere with his purposes.

The net results of Lee's campaign were that he had captured 11,500 prisoners at Harper's Ferry together with seventy-three guns and a vast store of food and munitions. He had inflicted upon his enemy in battle a loss of 12,469 men. On the other hand he had suffered a loss of 9,000 or 10,000 men; his army was reduced to 30,000 or less, and the strategic purpose of the campaign had utterly failed. He had encountered no disaster, but the expedition undertaken with high hopes and positively Napoleonic purposes had come to naught.

Then occurred one of those prolonged and unexplainable pauses in the war to which wondering reference has been made in an earlier chapter of this work. With all the superb autumn weather before them--the very best campaigning weather known to Virginia--neither side did anything or tried to do anything. Lee remained in the neighborhood of Winchester for a month, at once inactive and unmolested. Then he slowly retired to Fredericksburg, where he fortified himself to meet the advance which Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan, seemed to threaten by taking up a position at Acquia Creek, seven miles or so in Fredericksburg's front.

But the battle at Sharpsburg or Antietam, had occurred on the seventeenth of September and it was not until near the middle of December that either of these two armies again challenged the other to a contest of arms.

END OF VOL. I.

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Transcribers' note:

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors, including occasional unpaired quotation marks, were corrected.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Page 340: "Pass á l'Outre" was printed with that accent mark.