...........................................................................................................................................................
Dogan’s Ridge
From the Dogan House, Joe Hooker could clearly see the
Confederate artillery that had made short work of Milroy’s brigade massed on
Stony Ridge on the north end of the Brawner’s Farm. There seemed twice as many
as there had been at that time, which was, in fact, true, but Hooker had no way
of knowing that Longstreet’s artillery had been added to Jackson’s since then.
He was still operating off John Pope’s representation of the situation, which
claimed Longstreet had moved on Winchester and was taking up defensive
positions in the Shenandoah Valley.
Pope was also the reason that Hooker was on Dogan’s Ridge
looking across at Stony Ridge. The Massachusetts man was trying to convince
Pope to call off an order for his men to launch an all-out attack on the
Unfinished Railroad line to fix Jackson in place so that Porter and McDowell
could more completely surprise him from the rear (a movement that had already
been aborted). Based on what had happened to the men of the First Corps, Army
of Virginia all morning and all those guns looking down on him from Stony
Ridge, Hooker thought his men would be murdered.
Pope was unconcerned. He had heard three guns fire far to
the southwest [unaccounted for in after action reports] that he believed
signaled the beginning of Porter’s attack, which would be able to easily take
the artillery on Stony Ridge. Hooker had to attack, but he issued Kearny an
order to attack at Sudley Church as well to remove some of the pressure from
Hooker’s men. Almost as an afterthought, he sent a copy of the written orders
to Hooker and Kearny’s corps commander, Sam Heintzelman.
Sudley Springs
Heintzelman’s men were going in to replace the men of Franz
Sigel’s corps. The First Corps, Army of Virginia were weary from fighting all
morning, and almost out of ammunition. They had mostly been mauled by the
Confederates, but one brigade from Schurz’s division had managed to take the
railroad embankment and turn the tables on the Confederates, only to be
overwhelmed because no reinforcements came. Too late, a brigade from the Ninth
Corps had arrived, allowing them to pull back, but also for the Confederates to
retake the embankment.
The localized success of Schurz’s division should have had
the support of the division of Phil Kearny already, but the aggressive Kearny
had inexplicably refused to move decisively. Kearny had positively boiled under
George McClellan on the Peninsula, culminating in a signed statement
pronouncing the army’s commander a coward. It seemed hardly possible, but he
liked John Pope even less. He believed the general a braggart and a fool, so
its unsurprising that even direct orders from Pope himself were unable to move
the one-armed New Yorker until he had double- and tripled-checked everything.
That the men of Sigel’s corps were widely stereotyped as the worst in the Union
and always on the verge of a catastrophe probably didn’t help him move faster.
But that is not to say that Kearny did nothing for hours
after his arrival. In fact, he was engaged in a series of marches and
countermarches trying to find the weak point to exploit in the Confederate
defenses along the railroad. At Sudley Church he thought he had finally found
it. There were no Confederates on the railroad embankment there, so, after
placing skirmishers on the church grounds to avoid surprises, he ordered one of
his brigades to take up position at a 45 degree angle across the embankment,
with the bulk of it on the far side. Now when Hooker attacked, Kearny’s men
would be in position to cut off the retreat and rout the Confederates that had
bedeviled Schurz all morning.
Groveton Woods
Just north of Groveton to the east of the Groveton-Sudley
Road [Featherbed Lane], Brig. General Cuvier Grover received word from Hooker
that Pope would not call off the attack. Hooker chose the brigade of New
Englanders he himself had trained during the winter in Charles County, Maryland
to lead the attack, so Grover began forming up the men. He had dubiously asked
the staff officer carrying the message where his support was for an attack, and
was assured “it is coming.”
Spotting the signs of a brigade preparing to attack, Robert
Milroy sought him out.
I saw [Grover] forming up his Bgd. For the attack and being deeply interested in his success, I rode up along his lines to where he was and told him how I had wrecked on that position and what to expect. He asked me how he had best do. I told him the only way he could drive them was to go forward with fixed bayonets and loaded guns, fire when they got close and dash over the R.R. embankment with a yell and drive them at a point of a bayonet.
Grover didn’t record his opinion of Milroy’s advice, but he
certainly took it, riding up and down his line and ordering his men to load and
fix bayonets. When another order came to go forward, despite the support still
not having materialized, the general moved the brigade forward through the
brush slowly, while Milroy’s men called out a mixture of encouragement and
doom. The five regiments were grouped in two lines, the 11th
Massachusetts, 2nd New Hampshire, and 1st Massachusetts
in front, with the 20th Pennsylvania and the 16th
Massachusetts in back. It would provide a broad front to impact the line, with
two regiments to rush to either flank if threatened or push forward more.
Grover halted the brigade and rode forward with his staff to
personally survey the ground. Remembering Milroy’s account, which certainly
included a great deal more caution than what that general later wrote down,
Grover made a decision not to strike the railroad where it was intersected by
the Groveton-Sudley Road [Featherbed Lane], and to turn it to the right to seek
a place of greater vulnerability.
Northwest of Manassas Junction
Robert E. Lee rode down Meadowville Lane [No longer
existent] with Longstreet through the right wing of the Army of Northern
Virginia. Hearing reports from the brigade commanders and viewing what
Longstreet had viewed a few hours early, he ruefully admitted that his trusted
subordinate was correct. The Union forces coming upon the Confederate right
from the Manassas-Gainesville Road [Wellington Road] were a serious threat. Lee
recommended that Longstreet order his reserve division under Cadmus Wilcox from
Brawner’s Farm to take up a position astride the road as a further precaution.
Meanwhile, the Union division in strong position at the
Lewis Farm that Longstreet had been concerned about, began to advance. It was
the Pennsylvania Reserves of John Reynolds, who had been irritated to receive
an order directly from Pope to attack the Confederates in front so that Porter
and McDowell could get in position to attack from Gainesville. It is unclear
whether Pope understood Reynolds’ position, but he certainly didn’t understand
that Reynolds had spent the last few hours watching Confederates march past
him. The Bucktails leading as skirmishers, the two so-far unengaged brigades of
the Reserves started forward.
Across the way, watching from the woods, the South Carolina
brigade of Jenkins division watched the Pennsylvanians cross the field and
prepared to welcome them.
Further south, on the Manassas-Gainesville Road [Wellington
Road], the Union troops that so worried Lee were equally worried about him. In
command of the Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, Fitz John Porter had concluded
that Longstreet’s wing of the army was on the field in front of him, which
meant that his roughly 9,000 men were faced off against 20,000 Confederates.
Without cavalry, Porter had no idea if those 20,000 men were all right in front
of him, or stretched out to Gainesville and beyond. But his lead division
commander had been reliably sending back every shred of evidence gathered by
his skirmishers, and it was definitely Longstreet in front of him.
Assuming McDowell would soon take up position to his right,
Porter had his men begin preparing defenses to be the far left of Pope’s army.
No comments:
Post a Comment