Upon the Altar of the Nation (40 page)

On May 4 Sedgwick’s imposing army finally overran Jubal Early’s undermanned holding action at Marye’s Heights, but not before the Mississippi volunteers held off four Federal assaults, buying precious time for Lee to hammer an utterly confused Hooker one more time. As Sedgwick began driving his army to the Wilderness to envelop Lee’s army from the rear, Lee saw the new threat and completed his masterpiece—one that is still studied by military strategists. In a dizzying back and forth movement of his interior lines, Lee created the illusion of a force double his actual strength.

The reunited wings did not remain together long. Again Lee divided his army, this time leaving Stuart’s Stonewall brigade with twenty-five thousand men to contain Hooker’s immobile seventy-five thousand Federals, and marched the remaining twenty thousand to reinforce Early. Faced with enemies that suddenly appeared from nowhere on three sides, Sedgwick was forced to retreat across Banks’ Ford, taking heavy casualties along the way and leaving Lee once again to unite his divided army and turn back on Hooker’s well-entrenched defensive position. On May 6, a thoroughly whipped Hooker withdrew his forces to Falmouth.

Chancellorsville represented the first large battle in which both sides built substantial field fortifications that furthered the already definitive superiority of the strategic defense. The destruction was multiplied geometrically, and it was a chilling preview of a new era of horror.

 

At first the Northern papers minimized the defeat, preparing the country gradually for the shock to come. But by May 7, the country knew what Washington knew. Again the Army of the Potomac had been driven back across the Potomac with numbing losses. In all, 11,116 Yankees lay dead or wounded alongside 10,746 Confederates. Neither blood count was reasonable. Even the loyal Republican Horace Greeley sought to muzzle his reporters and protect Hooker. But he could not prevent Josiah Sypher from writing the blunt truth that “there was no time from Friday morning to Monday night but what Hooker could have attacked and defeated Lee’s army, but he lacked the ability to give the order.”
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Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of newly created widows, desolate parents, and loved ones gathered at the telegraph offices, unable to comprehend the extent of death and suffering. For Union officer Philo Buckingham, who earlier conveyed the destruction of civilian property to his wife, the battlefield’s aftermath was almost indescribable:

Two weeks later, it still was not clear to Buckingham who had won: “The army feels it has not been defeated and yet it has not won a victory, although the rebels without doubt lost in killed and wounded 3 times as many as we did. What will be done next I do not know.”
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Though soldiers’ letters in the immediate aftermath of battles virtually never discussed the morality of the war or the ethics of battle, they did invoke themes of sin and salvation as they faced death. Thomas Sherman of South Abington, Massachusetts, was also at Chancellorsville where “maney of my comrades fell on Sabbath morn May 3.” His thoughts turned to conversion: “God onely knows how thankfull I am to Him, that my life was spared once more. I pray that all this present disciplin may draw me nearer to my Saviour.”
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When Lincoln learned the full extent of defeat on May 6, he reportedly turned “ashen” and, asking no one in particular, moaned, “My God! my God! What will the country say?”
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Lincoln did not have to wait long. While Lincoln grieved, the country raged. As Lincoln ruminated once again over his generals, Democrat “Copperheads” and peace Democrats gloated, seeing in Chancellorsville the possibility of their own victory at the polls. Armchair generals throughout the Union marveled at Lee and Jackson almost as much as their countrymen did. Detailed battle maps refought the battles and highlighted Federal incompetence.

Again Northern censorship withheld news of the disaster for several days, but ingenious reporters circumvented the censors and published their accounts. The
New York Times
led the way with reports from William Swinton and Lorenzo Crounse. When Horace Greeley learned the extent of defeat, his face turned gray as he exclaimed, “My God! It is horrible—horrible; and to think of it, 130,000 magnificent soldiers so cut to pieces by less than 60,000 half-starved ragamuffins.”
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In fact, Lincoln’s Republicans worried prematurely. “Lee’s masterpiece” at Chancellorsville represented a Pyrrhic victory that marked the beginning of the end of the Confederate army. Without Jackson, Lee never replicated the brilliance of Chancellorsville. Even with Jackson, the odds of future victories were slim. The logic of Lincoln’s “awful arithmetic” continued to wear down the limited resources of the South. And though a marvel of military strategizing and pinpoint execution, Chancellorsville settled nothing in an ultimate strategic sense. Hooker was still at large with his massive Army of the Potomac, and Richmond still lay under its menacing cloud. Indeed, within days of his victory, Lee was imploring Davis for reinforcements. Without them, he would have to retreat to Richmond. In the West Grant was making more progress in his campaign for Vicksburg than anyone knew.

 

On May 12 Jackson’s coffin returned to Richmond. The Baptist
Richmond Religious Herald
reported: “The sun arose yesterday upon a mourning city ... it beamed upon a nation to whom its light, brilliantly and beautifully as it shone, became suddenly veiled and opaque, shedding gloom instead of gladness.”
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Thousands flocked to observe the ceremony in numbed silence. Leading the procession was Jackson’s riderless horse led by a black servant. Behind it were fellow general officers and President Davis, looking worn and haggard. Later, while standing over Jackson’s casket, a tearful Davis murmured to a fellow mourner, “You must excuse me, I am still staggering from a dreadful blow. I cannot think.”
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Despite the great victory, the whole city was shut down for religious services and a review of Jackson’s coffin. In their minds and words, Jackson was not only a heroic general, but a “martyr” to his cause. A writer for the
Richmond Daily Dispatch
grieved, but not without hope: “All has been against us save our own innate vigor, and a just and righteous cause with God to aid.”
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In Richmond Sallie Putnam described the procession of the “hero-idol of the South” in its “metallic coffin” to its conclusion at the hall of the House of Representatives, where the coffin was placed “on an altar covered with white linen.” Crowds estimated at upwards of twenty thousand lined and stood patiently despite sweltering heat to view the remains. Not until Abraham Lincoln’s assassination two years later would there be a comparable sense of loss. And, as with Lincoln, the loss would be interpreted in terms that would pave the way for a civil religion, in this case a Southern civil religion.
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Sallie Putnam concluded her description of a man who was not only a great general but Christlike in his death:

In similar terms, Attorney General John Randolph Tucker described the general’s legacy in terms that fused Christian piety with patriotic nationalism:

Tucker turned from Jackson’s piety to a spirited defense of “the institution” of slavery—an institution ordained by God for the transformation of the African race:

In the public response to Jackson’s death we see a concrete illustration of the process by which a Confederate civil religion was incarnated through a violent atonement. Themes of Christian faith, righteous cause, white supremacy, martial valor, and a “martyr’s” immortality all intermingled, creating a powerful national faith with the soul of a church. Christianity and Confederate nationhood became impossible to separate. And in Jackson, the citizens discovered a messianic figure who “can never die.”

Surprisingly, the Northern press was as obsessed with Jackson as the Southern. The
Christian Instructor and Western United Presbyterian
wrote an account of “How Gen. Jackson was wounded” without any criticism or even outspoken wishes for his death.
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Their reaction to his death was not unusual. Instead of berating him as a devil or murderer, they evidenced respect. In like manner, the
New York Evangelist
wrote:

Meanwhile, Northern armies were active on two of the three major fronts. Hooker’s Army of the Potomac remained positioned at Chancellorsville in the Wilderness of Virginia, and a portion of his army under Sedgwick threatened the Confederates at nearby Fredericksburg. In the West the earlier frustrations of laying siege to Vicksburg began to yield results as Grant now lay below the city on Mississippi soil. Confederate General Joseph Johnston saw the situation as desperate and hoped to relieve General John Pemberton to save the city. On the third front in Tennessee, Rosecrans and Bragg continued to recover and build their armies back to fighting strength. There was not yet a Union general with the prescience to mount a massive campaign on all fronts simultaneously, but in the West Grant and Sherman were learning rapidly and would soon improve on those lessons.

As the war entered its third summer, both sides focused their attention on the West. For Confederates, fresh off their stunning victories at Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg, anxiety rose as Pemberton’s army and Vicksburg’s citizens braced for a long siege and the relentless artillery of Grant’s big guns. For the North, stung by surprise defeats and inferior command, hopes rose with Grant and his army.

As for Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, nobody knew where the next campaign would ensue, but by June 3 Lee’s army was on the move again. In a crucial strategy meeting with President Davis on May 15, Lee had dissuaded Davis from sending reinforcements to Vicksburg, despite Davis’s strong loyalties to his native state and the pleas of General Johnston. Instead Lee held forth the glittering prospect of a Northern offensive, this time to Pennsylvania, where a victory would terrify Northern cities and lead to a negotiated peace for the Confederacy. In the heady days of post-Chancellorsville, Davis and his cabinet were prepared to believe that Lee’s charm would never end. More tellingly, so was Lee.
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Union commanders and soldiers felt certain that Lee was preparing just such a desperate maneuver and remained alert to all movements north. In a letter on June 6 written from Ellis Ford, Virginia, Private Howard Prince of Pennsylvania described the readiness of Union troops and, along the way, provided a glimpse into the strange and ironic fraternization between enemies that took place between the battles:

Yet the decision to invade the North a second time had been made and it was only a matter of time before the clash. Although nobody knew it at the time, the Gettysburg Campaign had already begun.

L
ee’s chances for a successful Northern campaign looked good. His reorganized Army of Northern Virginia included First Corps, still commanded by James Longstreet, Second Corps commanded by Stonewall Jackson’s successor Richard Ewell (returning from Second Bull Run with a wooden leg), and Third Corps under the veteran A. P. Hill, with Jeb Stuart’s cavalry as his intelligence. Lee’s total strength, expanded to three infantry and six cavalry brigades, was 75,000. True, they faced a formidable buffer between Virginia and Pennsylvania with the Army of the Potomac and its seven infantry corps of 122,000 effectives. But a smaller army was nothing new to Lee. Nor was his confidence in his own abilities to take his battle-hardened veterans into the jaws of hell, if that was what victory required.