Rebel Yell The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S. C. Gwynne

Author:S. C. Gwynne
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Biography & Autobiograpy, Retail, Nonfiction, Historical
ISBN: 9781451673289
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2014-09-29T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

VICTORY BY ANY OTHER NAME

Thus began the chase across the York-James Peninsula that became the centerpiece of the Seven Days battles. Because of McClellan’s choice of strategy, the question was not whether the Union army would be defeated but how badly it would be defeated. It was in many ways the oddest sequence of the war: a large army retreating from a smaller one, as though it could not possibly, with the resources of an industrializing nation behind it, just stand and fight. Mechanicsville and its aftermath established the model for the campaign: the Union army would wage a defensive battle by day, always on the ground of its choosing, and then retreat south toward the new base on the James River under cover of darkness. As at Mechanicsville, the rebel advance was marked by incompetence, shoddy staff work, inefficiency, miscommunication, and an almost shocking failure to take advantage of the openings McClellan gave them. In spite of this, the Seven Days was a thrilling, war-changing Confederate triumph. Lee’s, Jackson’s, and everyone else’s mistakes were debated and hashed over ad infinitum in the years following the war. But the indisputable fact was that the Army of Northern Virginia, under its brilliant new commander, had driven off the invader. It had saved Richmond. That was all anyone in the South needed to know. The Seven Days made Robert E. Lee famous. His generals, who did well enough, basked in borrowed light.

But the details were ugly. They got uglier as the two armies plunged southward, locked in their bloody embrace. In the Confederate camps, the fog of war was thick and deep on the morning after Mechanicsville. Though McClellan had decided to shift his base of operations the night before, Lee did not know that yet. He would not know it for certain for several days. The immense Army of the Potomac was out there, amorphous and moving through a densely wooded landscape, and because of its very immensity its contours and destination were hard to fathom. Lee’s assumption was that the Union would try to protect its supplies and would move large numbers of troops north across the Chickahominy toward White House Landing to do that. He was therefore surprised to find that Porter’s victorious 5th Corps had vanished from its camps, and had quietly fallen back three miles to a new defensive position along Boatswain’s Swamp, about half a mile from Chickahominy and two miles above the bridges they would have to use to cross the river.

While Lee remained ignorant of McClellan’s intention to change his base, he knew that he still had a Union corps in front of him and he knew that he wanted to destroy it. And he believed, incorrectly, that the railroad was still the larger army’s Achilles’ heel. Lee thought that Porter had moved eastward behind a small stream called Powhite Creek, three and a half miles east of Beaver Dam Creek, and was waiting in a north-to-south line for him there. His plan for the next day was thus in many ways like the first.

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