Two Wars: An Autobiography of General Samuel G. French

Move without delay your command to this place, to effect a junction with Gen. Lee.

    S. Cooper, Adjutant and Inspector General.

No. 9. Page 761

GEN. LEE. TO PRESIDENT DAVIS

    Fredericksburg, April 30, 1863.

His Excellency, President Davis.

… Enemy was still crossing the Rappahannock at 5 P.M. yesterday… Object evidently to turn my left… If I had Longstreet's Division, I would feel safe.

    R. E. Lee, General.

No. 10. Page 765

GEN. LONGSTREET TO GEN. COOPER

    Suffolk, Va., May 2, 1863.

Gen. Cooper.

I cannot move unless the entire force is moved; and it would then take several days to reach Fredericksburg. I will endeavor to move as soon as possible.

    James Longstreet, Lieutenant General Commanding.

"Responsibility cannot exist without a name," or an object.

Perhaps Longstreet delayed to execute these orders for the reason he states (page 329), that there was a "plan of battle projected" – that is, "to stand behind our intrenched lines and await the return of my troops from Suffolk." "And my impression is that Gen. Lee, standing under his trenches, would have been stronger against Hooker than he was in December against Burnside, and he would have grown stronger every hour of delay." "By the time the divisions of Pickett and Hood could have joined Gen. Lee, Hooker would have found that he must march to attack or make a retreat without battle. It seems probable that under the original plan the battle would have given fruits worthy of a general engagement."

Longstreet's first dispatch disclosed his intentions to Lee, and Lee wisely decided not to wait ten or twelve days for Longstreet to join him. Moreover, it is not probable that Lee thought Hooker would be so knightly as to await the arrival of the Suffolk troops before giving battle. Longstreet does not deal even in the conjectural, for it is not based on any evidence; he merely guesses.

But it is better to deal with the possible.

Two brigades could have been withdrawn from before Suffolk on the night of the 27th of April and sent to join Gen. Lee, then the main force on the night of the 28th. There is no doubt about this. In this event the enemy could have passed the 29th in discovering our intentions. Rather than crossing the Nansemond river and giving us battle, they would have awaited orders, and probably been sent to Fredericksburg to aid Hooker; but this is not important.

On the 28th he could have ordered Gen. D. H. Hill, then at Goldsboro, to have protected the train, called on Whiting at Wilmington for aid, while I had a division at Franklin on the Blackwater, and forces elsewhere which would no doubt have saved the train from the enemy. His first dispatch is very misleading, and does not convey the idea that he would sit down and wait six days for the wagons before he withdrew. While this was going on at Suffolk, the heroic "Stonewall" Jackson was marching to the right and rear of Hooker's army, and when it was announced to him that the enemy was capturing his wagon train, without checking the walk of his horse he said: "Do not let them capture any ammunition wagons." What value were his baggage wagons compared to the loss of even a few minutes in accomplishing the great object of his movement, on which victory depended. To his master mind before him was the enemy, the impending battle, the victory, and the reward due to genius of battle, with all the spoils of war strewn in the conqueror's path. And it was so. And thus it was that Longstreet, by not effecting a junction with Lee, "put the cause upon the hazard of a die, crippling it in resources and future progress." (See Longstreet, p. 330.)

Mark Antony, in his speech over the dead Cæsar, said: "Power in most men has brought their faults to light. Power in Cæsar brought into prominence his excellencies."

So power given Lee made known to the world the nobility of his character and greatness as a commander; while in others it disclosed a spirit of envy and a desire for detraction; and in all some peculiarities. Lee was not conscious of his strength, because his greatness of soul was derived from his goodness of heart, and it rested upon him with the ease and grace of a garment. His generosity induced him to overlook the frailty incident to humanity, and to forgive even disobedience in his lieutenants. He remembered what Job said about a book, and wrote none. He envied no one. He left no writings extant naming an enemy, and his harshest remark in reference to an officer of high rank was, in effect, that he was "slow to move."

The official reports show that Hooker had 161,491 men and 400 guns. Lee's forces numbered 58,100 men, with 170 guns. This was known to Lee's lieutenants.

The publication of the Official Record by Congress discloses the fact that Mr. Seddon induced Gen. Lee to send Gen. Longstreet with Hood's and Pickett's Divisions to cover Richmond, which he thought menaced from Fortress Monroe and Suffolk. Lee thought Pickett's Division sufficient. (Official Record, Vol. 22, p. 623.)

I had the name and reported strength of every regiment in both Suffolk and Norfolk, obtained from blockade runners and verified by prisoners. Suffolk had no strategic value to the enemy of any import, and none to us. In 1862 I designed the taking of Suffolk, and on an appointed day assembled some eight or nine thousand troops at Franklin, on the Blackwater. The only officers who had any knowledge of this were Gens. G. W. Smith, in Richmond, and J. J. Pettigrew. It was stopped, the morning the troops assembled, by Gen. G. W. Smith on strategic grounds and it not being a depot of supplies; and he was right. And when Secretary Seddon, against Lee's advice, joined with Longstreet in moving on Suffolk so late in the spring, he or Longstreet committed an error, the consequence of which was Lee had to fight Hooker with the force just stated, without the aid of his lieutenant general. Who was it, then, that put the "Confederacy on the hazard of a die?"

Hooker would never have embarked his great army on the Potomac at Aquia, and carried them back where they had once been under Gen. McClellan, and Richmond was not in danger, and Longstreet's expedition to Suffolk not in accordance with grand strategy; and but for Lee's audacity, and Stonewall Jackson's swift movements and vigorous blows at Chancellorsville, the Confederacy would have been there shattered into fragments, and all by one false movement to Suffolk.

"Fortune loves a daring suitor."

Lee threw down the iron glove, and the daring suitor won! It was the most remarkable victory of the war, but by the absence of those divisions, and the death of Stonewall Jackson, the large fruits of the victory were lost.

CHAPTER XIII

Leave Petersburg for Jackson, Miss. – Visit Home – My Division Composed of the Brigades of Gens. Maxey, Evans, and McNair – Extraordinary Correspondence between Gen. Johnston and President Davis – Movements to Attack Grant at Vicksburg – Fall of Vicksburg – Retreat to Jackson – Siege of Jackson – Visit Home – Negro Troops Surround the House – Narrow Escape – Vandalism – Johnston Takes Command of the Army of Tennessee – Polk in Command of Army of Mississippi – A Court of Inquiry That Was Not Held – My Division at Meridian – President Davis – Jackson Burned – Sherman's Advance on Meridian – Ordered to Mobile – Polk Crossing Tombigbee River – He Is Slow to Move – Go to Demopolis – Mr. Fournier – Sent to Lauderdale – Tuscaloosa – Montevallo – Reach Rome – Fight at Rome – Join Gen. Johnston at Cassville.

On Wednesday, June 3, 1863, I started in accordance with orders from Petersburg to report to Gen. J. E. Johnston in Mississippi. I arrived in Jackson on the 10th. Next day reported for duty; but as I had not been home since I joined the army, and the service was not pressing, got permission to visit my family. I went by stage to Yazoo City, and by chance met my neighbor, F. A. Metcalf, there, and together we crossed the Yazoo bottoms. Riding horseback, sixty-five miles the last day, I reached my home on Deer Creek at 11 P.M., and found my mother, sister, and little daughter, aged nearly eight years, all well. I remained at home Monday, the 15th, and started back on the 16th. Before I reached home Mr. Bowie, my agent, had gone to Georgia with seventy-eight of my negro servants, leaving twenty-five here to cultivate a corn crop. I joined my division, composed of the brigades of Gens. Maxey, McNair, and Evans, on the 24th, encamped at Mrs. Carraway's, in Madison County, near Livingston; put Gen. Evans in arrest by order of Gen. Johnston. I was in camp the 25th and the two days following.

Before proceeding any further in reference to military matters in Mississippi, I will give some rich correspondence that took place between Gen. Johnston and President Davis and which I knew nothing about until months after it occurred. Here it is. (See page 195, War Records, Serial 36.)

    Canton, Miss., June 9, 1863.}
    Via Montgomery, June 10. }

His Excellency, President Davis.

It has been suggested to me that the troops in this department are very hostile to officers of Northern birth, and that on that account Maj. Gen. French's arrival will weaken instead of strengthening us. I beg you to consider that all the general officers of Northern birth are on duty in this department. There is now a want of major generals (discipline). It is important to avoid any cause of further discontent.

    J. E. Johnston.

THE ANSWER

    Richmond, Va., June 11, 1863.

Gen. J. E. Johnston.

Your dispatch received. Those who suggest that the arrival of Gen. French will produce discontent among the troops because of his Northern birth are not probably aware that he is a citizen of Mississippi, was a wealthy planter until the Yankees robbed him; and, before the Confederate States had an army, was the chief of ordnance and artillery in the force Mississippi raised to maintain her right of secession. As soon as Mississippi could spare him he was appointed a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, and has frequently been before the enemy where he was the senior officer. If malignity should undermine him, as it had another, you are authorized to notify him of the fact and to relieve him, communicating it to me by telegram.

Surprised by your remark as to the general officers of Northern birth, I turned to the register, and find that a large majority of the number are elsewhere than in the Department of Mississippi and eastern Louisiana.

    Jefferson Davis.

Men of Northern birth who held high rank in the Confederacy: Samuel Cooper, general, New Jersey; Josiah Gorgas, chief of ordnance, Pennsylvania; John C. Pemberton, general, Pennsylvania; Charles Clark, general and Governor of Mississippi, Ohio; Daniel Ruggles, general, Massachusetts; Walter H. Stevens, general, New York; Julius A. DeLagnel, New Jersey; John R. Cooke, general, Missouri; R. S. Ripley, general, Ohio; Hoffman Stevens, general, Connecticut; Samuel G. French, general, New Jersey; Bushrod R. Johnson, general, Ohio; James L. Alcorn, general, Illinois (was Governor and United States Senator); Danville Leadbetter, general, Maine; Archibald Gracie, general, New York; William McComb, general, Pennsylvania; Otho French Strahl, general, Ohio; Daniel M. Frost, general, New York; Albert G. Blanchard, general, Massachusetts; Johnson K. Duncan, general, Pennsylvania; Albert Pike, general, Massachusetts; Daniel H. Reynolds, general, Ohio; Edward Aylesworth Perry, general, Massachusetts; Francis A. Shoup, general, Indiana; Martin L. Smith, general, New York; Franklin Gardner, general, New York.

A brief sketch of these men was published in the Atlanta Constitution by Prof. J. T. Derry. The number is twenty-six, and twelve of them were educated at West Point. They believed in the right of States to secede, and, owing allegiance to the States where they lived or wished to reside, they cast their lot with the South.

July 1, 1863. Moved to some springs on the Vernon and Brownsville road.

2d. Moved at 4 A.M.; marched through Brownsville. I slept under a tree last night, but have an abandoned house to-night.

3d. Rode over to meet Gen. Johnston. There were present Gens. Loring, W. H. T. Walker, Jackson, and myself. If there be any one thing in this part of the country more difficult than all others, it is to find a person who knows the roads ten miles from his home. Nine hours were spent in vainly attempting to get accurate information from the citizens respecting the roads and streams. But little could be learned of the country on either side of the Big Black that was satisfactory, because it was so contradictory.

July 4. Anniversary of a declaration that was read eighty-seven years ago, and which awakened a benighted world to the fact that man was born with certain inalienable rights. All was still in the direction of Vicksburg. What does it portend? No firing there yet, and it is 12 M. But there is always something to mar one's pleasure or disturb his rest, for now came the news that the enemy had crossed Messenger's Ferry, on the Big Black…

5th. Remained in camp. Some skirmishing on the Big Black. The order of Gen. Johnston to cross the Big Black and attack Grant's new line was issued. I soon after received news of the surrender of Vicksburg, and it was determined to fall back toward Jackson. The enemy's camp fires extend about three miles on the other side of the stream…