VI.

THE MARYLAND CAMPAIGN.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1862.

I.

MANŒUVRES PREVIOUS TO ANTIETAM.

WHEN Lee put his columns in motion from Richmond, it was with no intent of entering upon a campaign of invasion across the great river that formed the dividing line between the warring powers. But who can foretell the results that may spring from the simplest act in that complex interplay of cause and effect we name war? A secondary operation, having in view merely to hold Pope in check, had effected not only its primal aim, but the infinitely more important result of dislodging the Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula. Thus relieved of all care touching Richmond, Lee was free to assume a real offensive for the purpose not merely of checking but of crushing Pope. The success of the campaign had been remarkable. From the front of Richmond the theatre of operations had been transferred to the front of Washington; the Union armies had been reduced to a humiliating defensive, and the rich harvests of the Shenandoah Valley and Northern Virginia were the prize of the victors. To crown and consolidate these conquests, Lee now determined to cross the frontier into Maryland.

The prospective advantages of such a transfer of the theatre of war to the north of the Potomac seemed strongly to invite it; for, in addition to the telling blows Lee might

hope to inflict in the demoralized condition of the Union army, and the prestige that the enterprise would lend the Confederate cause abroad, it was judged that the presence of the hostile force would detain McClellan on the frontier long enough to render an invasion of Virginia during the approaching winter difficult, if not impracticable.*

Yet, if the enterprise had promised only such military gain, it is doubtful whether the Richmond government would have undertaken a project involving the renunciation of the proved advantages of their proper defensive; but it seemed, in addition, to hold out certain ulterior inducements, which were none the less alluring for being somewhat vague. The theory of the invasion assumed that the presence of the Confederate army in Maryland would induce an immediate rising among the citizens of that State for what General Lee calls "the recovery of their liberties." If it did not prompt an armed insurrection, it was, at least, expected that the people of Maryland would assume such an attitude as would seriously embarrass the Government and necessitate the retention of a great part of its military force for the purpose of preventing anticipated risings. By this means it was believed that it would be difficult for the Union authorities to apply a concentrated effort to the expulsion of the invading force.†

Without the prospect of some such incidental and ulterior advantages as these, the enterprise would hardly have been undertaken; for, not only was it perilous in itself, but the Confederate army was not properly equipped for invasion: it lacked much of the material of war and was feeble in transportation, while the troops were so wretchedly clothed and

* Lee: Report of the Maryland Campaign, in Reports of the Army of Northern Virginia, vol. i., p. 27.

† General Lee's statement on this head is somewhat vague; but it can hardly mean any thing else than what is indicated above: "The condition of Maryland encouraged the belief that the presence of our army, however inferior to that of the enemy, would induce the Washington Government to retain all its available force to provide against contingencies which its course towards the people of that State gave it reason to apprehend.”—Ibid.

shod that little else could be claimed for them than what Tilly boasted of his followers-that they were "ragged soldiers and bright muskets."*

an army of

Plausible though this anticipation of a secessionist uprising in Maryland seemed, it rested on a false basis and was not more emphatically belied by experience than it was condemned by sound reasoning before the fact. Nevertheless, misled by this illusion, Lee turned the heads of his columns away from the direction of Washington, which he never seems to have dreamed of assailing directly, and put them in motion towards Leesburg. Between the 4th and 7th of September the whole Confederate army crossed the Potomac by the fords near that place, and encamped in the vicinity of Frederick, where the standard of revolt was formally raised, and the people of Maryland invited by proclamation of General Lee to join the Confederate force. But it soon became manifest that the expectation of practical assistance from the Marylanders was destined to grievous disappointment; and the ragged and shoeless soldiers who entered the State chanting the song in which Maryland was made passionately to invoke Southern aid against Northern despotism found, instead of the rapturous reception they had anticipated, cold indifference or ill-concealed hostility. Of the citizens of Maryland a large number (and notably the population of the western counties) were really loyal, a considerable number indifferent, and a smaller number bitterly secessionist. But to permit the secessionists to move at all, it was necessary that Lee should first of all demonstrate his ability to remain in the State by overthrowing the powerful Union force that was moving to meet him; while the lukewarm, whom the romance of the invasion might have allured, were repelled by the wretchedness, the rags, and the shocking filth of the "army of liberation."

"Thousands of the troops," says Lee, 66 were destitute of shoes."-Reports of the Army of Northern Virginia, vol. i., p. 27. "Never," says General Jones, who commanded Jackson's old "Stonewall” division, “had the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill provided for, as on this march.”—Ibid., vol. ii., p. 221.

In the dark hour when the shattered battalions that survived Pope's campaign returned to Washington, General McClellan, at the request of the President, resumed command of the Army of the Potomac, with the addition thereto of Burnside's command and the corps composing the late Army of Virginia. Whatever may have been the estimate of McClellan's military capacity at this time held by the President, or General Halleck, or Mr. Secretary Stanton, or the Committee on the Conduct of the War, there appears to have been no one to gainsay the propriety of the appointment or dispute the magic of his name with the soldiers he had led. McClellan's reappearance at the head of affairs had the most beneficial effect on the army, whose morale immediately underwent an astonishing change. The heterogeneous mass made up of the aggregation of the remnants of the two armies, and the garrison of Washington, was reorganized into a compact body-a work that had mostly to be done while the army was on the march ;* and as soon as it became known that Lee had crossed the Potomac, McClellan moved towards Frederick to meet him. The advance was made by five parallel roads, and the columns were so disposed as to cover both Washington and Baltimore; for the left flank rested on the Potomac, and the right on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The right wing consisted of the First and Ninth corps, under General Burnside; the centre, of the Second and Twelfth corps, under General Sumner; and the left wing, of the Sixth Corps, under General Franklin.†

* "Like the rest of the army, the artillery may be said to have been organized on the march and in the intervals of conflict."-Hunt: Report of Artillery Operations of the Maryland Campaign.

The First Corps (McDowell's old command) had been placed under General Hooker. The Ninth Corps, of Burnside's old force, was under General Reno. Sumner continued to command his own (Second) corps, and also controlled the Twelfth (Banks' old command), which was placed under General Mansfield, a veteran soldier, but who had not thus far been in the field. The Sixth Corps, under General Franklin, embraced the divisions of Smith (W. F.), Slocum, and Couch. Porter's did not leave Washington until the 12th of September, and rejoined the army at Antietam. General H. J. Hunt, who had Public

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The uncertainty at first overhanging Lee's intentions caused the advance from Washington to be made with much circumspection; and it might, perhaps, be fairly chargeable with tardiness, were there not on record repeated dispatches of the time from the general-in-chief, charging McClellan with too great a precipitancy of movement for the safety of the capital. The van of the army entered Frederick on the 12th of September, after a brisk skirmish at the outskirts of the town with the Confederate troopers left behind as a rearguard. It was found that the main body of Lee's army had passed out of Frederick two days before, heading westward towards Harper's Ferry.

It is now necessary, for a just appreciation of the events of the Maryland campaign, that I should give an outline of the plan of operations which the Confederate commander had marked out for himself. This plan was simple, but highly meritorious. Lee did not propose to make any direct movement against Washington or Baltimore with the Union army between him and these points, but aimed so to manœuvre as to cause McClellan to uncover them. With this view, he designed, first of all, to move into Western Maryland and establish his communications with Richmond through the Shenandoah Valley. Then, by a northward movement, menacing Pennsylvania by the Cumberland Valley, he hoped to draw the Union army so far towards the Susquehanna as to afford him either an opportunity of seizing Baltimore or Washington, or of dealing a damaging blow at the army far from its base of supplies. His first movement from Frederick was, therefore, towards the western side of that mountain range which, named the Blue Ridge south of the Potomac, and the South Mountain range north of the Potomac, forms the eastern wall of the Shenandoah and Cumberland valleys--the former

been in command of the reserve artillery on the Peninsula, relieved General Barry as chief of artillery, and remained in that position till the close of the war. General Pleasonton commanded the cavalry division. The army with which McClellan set out on the Maryland campaign, made an aggregate of eighty-five thousand men, of all arms.