General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia began crossing the Potomac River on June 15. Lieutenant-General Richard Ewell’s Second Corps led the way, with Major-General Robert Rodes’s division leading the corps. Rodes crossed at Williamsport, Maryland, and waited for the rest of Ewell’s men to follow. By this time, the Lee’s army stretched 130 miles, from Maryland to Chancellorsville.
Ewell’s cavalry under Brigadier-General Albert G. Jenkins rode ahead to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where the troopers foraged for supplies. They paid for common goods with Confederate money, but they freely took horses, weapons, and black people. Most blacks taken were sent south into slavery, even those who had never been slaves. A Chambersburg newspaper reported that Jenkins’s troopers “went to the part of the town occupied by the colored population, and kidnapped all they could find, from the child in the cradle up to men and women of 50 years of age.”
Terror swept through the region. A correspondent noted that the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, northeast of Chambersburg, was gripped by a “perfect panic… Every woman in the place seemed anxious to leave.” Wagons filled with evacuated possessions clogged the streets; state officials grabbed government archives and other valuables to keep from the falling into Confederate hands.
Major-General Joseph Hooker, commanding the Federal Army of the Potomac in pursuit of Lee, could not reach the Shenandoah Valley in time to prevent the Confederates from clearing the Federals out. Hooker now conceded that “it is not in my power to prevent” Lee from invading the North. President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 100,000 emergency six-month militia volunteers in four states: Pennsylvania (50,000), Ohio (30,000), Maryland (10,000), and West Virginia (10,000). Panic spread through Baltimore.
Hooker was still unable to pinpoint the Confederates’ exact location. He was frustrated because the Lincoln administration had not replaced the enlistments whose terms had expired yet, and because nobody had acted upon his suggestion to unify the commands in his army, the Shenandoah, and the capital defenses. As he moved the bulk of his force from Manassas Junction to Fairfax Court House, General-in-Chief Henry W. Halleck warned him against “wanton and wasteful destruction of public property.” This admonition became a third source of frustration for Hooker because it seemed to resurrect the bad blood that had existed between he and Halleck since before the war.
Hooker had taken command of the army with the understanding that he would answer directly to the president, not the general-in-chief. As such, he wrote Lincoln on the 16th, “You have long been aware, Mr. President, that I have not enjoyed the confidence of the major general commanding the army (Halleck), and I can assure you so long as this continues we may look in vain for success, especially as future operations will require our relations to be more dependent upon each other than heretofore.” In a private letter intended to ease tensions, Lincoln replied:
“You do not lack his confidence in any degree to do you any harm… If you and he would use the same frankness to one another, and to me, that I use to both of you, there would be no difficulty. I need and must have the professional skill of both, and yet these suspicions tend to deprive me of both. As it looks to me, Lee’s now returning toward Harper’s Ferry gives you back the chance that I thought (George) McClellan lost last fall… Now, all I ask is that you will be in such mood that we can get into our action the best cordial judgement of yourself and General Halleck, with my poor mite added…”
Lincoln had been unimpressed with Hooker’s performance since Lee began moving north. Then, after reading a series of telegrams between Halleck and Hooker debating the virtues of defending Harpers Ferry, Lincoln made it clear that if the chain of command had not gone up through Halleck previously, it would do so starting now:
“To remove all misunderstanding, I now place you in the strict military relation to Gen. Halleck, of a commander of one of the armies, to the General-in-Chief of all the armies. I have not intended differently; but as it seems to be differently understood, I shall direct him to give you orders, and you to obey them.”
Hooker shifted focus back to Lee’s army. He wired Lincoln, “You may depend on it, we can never discover the whereabouts of the enemy, or divine his intentions, so long as he fills the country with a cloud of cavalry. We must break through that to find him.” This implied that his Cavalry Corps, led by Brigadier-General Alfred Pleasonton, was not doing its job. Halleck went further on the 17th when he wrote, “The information sent here by General Pleasonton is very unsatisfactory.”
Hooker told Pleasonton that the army “relies upon you with your cavalry force to give him information of where the enemy is, his force, and his movements… Drive in pickets, if necessary, and get us better information. It is better that we should lose men than to be without knowledge of the enemy, as we now seem to be.” Pleasonton was directed to “put the main body of your command in the vicinity of Aldie, and push out reconnaissance towards Winchester, Berryville, and Harpers Ferry” to “obtain information of where the enemy is, his force, and his movements.”
Pleasonton had been ordered to gather information, but he set out looking for a fight instead. He dispatched Brigadier-General David McM. Gregg’s division west to Aldie, which had roads leading through the gaps and into the Shenandoah. A Confederate brigade led by Colonel Thomas T. Munford was riding east from the Valley and both sides unexpectedly clashed at Aldie. This resulted in a vicious four-hour fight, until the Federals withdrew around 7 p.m. Munford wrote, “I do not hesitate to say that I have never seen as many Yankees killed in the same space of ground in any fight…”
Meanwhile, Pleasonton ordered Colonel Alfred Duffie to take the 1st Rhode Island Cavalry to Middleburg, site of the headquarters of the Confederate cavalry commander, Major-General Jeb Stuart. Duffie drove the Confederate pickets out of Middleburg and put up barricades as Stuart gathered reinforcements and returned to take back the town. Of the 280 men in Duffie’s command, only 32 escaped. Duffie was removed from command.
Based on these engagements, Pleasonton reported, “From all the information I can gather, there is no force of consequence of the enemy’s infantry this side of the Blue Ridge.” Major-General Daniel Butterfield, chief of staff to Hooker, replied, “The general says your orders are to find out where the enemy is, if you have to lose men to do it.”
Pleasonton sent the 16th Pennsylvania Cavalry under Colonel J. Irwin Gregg to capture Middleburg. Gregg succeeded but then received orders to support the fight at Aldie. The engagement at Aldie resumed when Federal cavalry, strongly supported by infantry, forced Stuart to withdraw. However, Stuart had taken some 400 prisoners along with a large amount of horses and equipment. Confederates also reoccupied Middleburg, and Stuart received intelligence from Federal prisoners that Hooker did not know where the Confederate army was.
Pleasonton then dispatched Gregg to Middleburg and Union. Gregg’s goal was to break through the Confederate cavalry and find out once and for all what Lee was doing. Stuart’s horsemen took positions on a ridge west of Middleburg. The Federals attacked, eventually driving the Confederates to another ridge farther west. However, Pleasonton still did not achieve the breakthrough needed to learn Lee’s intentions. He wrote Hooker, “We cannot force the gaps of the Blue Ridge in the presence of a superior force.”
Meanwhile, Hooker continued to get conflicting reports of Lee’s activity, both from his army and the press. He wired Halleck, “So long as the newspapers continue to give publicity to our movements, we must not expect to gain any advantage over our adversaries. Is there no way of stopping it?” Halleck replied with a touch of sarcasm: “I see no way of preventing it as long as reporters are permitted in our camps. Every general must decide for himself what persons he will permit in his camps.”
During this time, Ewell’s corps completed its Potomac crossing. Lee expressed dissatisfaction that Ewell had not crossed sooner due to rain swelling the river. He wrote Ewell, “Should we be able to detain General Hooker’s army from following you, you would be able to accomplish as much, unmolested, as the whole army could perform with General Hooker in its front.”
Ewell sent his lead elements up the Cumberland Valley toward Chambersburg on the 19th. Lieutenant-General James Longstreet’s First Corps moved through Ashby’s and Snickers gaps in the Blue Ridge and entered the Shenandoah. However, Lee ordered Longstreet to return to the gaps and support Stuart, who was having trouble keeping up the screening movement. Lieutenant-General A.P. Hill’s Third Corps had left Fredericksburg and was now on its way to the Shenandoah.
Bibliography
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