Excerpt:

Chapter Five
Second Manassas
“If I did not have money I would be in a bad fix here and every
thing is so high it takes a heap of it to do a man.”
Private James M. Garrett

James Garrett lay far from the danger of battle on the eve of the climactic fight with John Pope’s army. However, a Richmond hospital bed did not guarantee the young private’s safety. Disease and infection coupled with grievous wounds ensured that Confederate hospitals witnessed far more deaths than all the battlefields combined.

Physicians sent the ill Garrett to a medical facility on August 1. Records indicated his admission to Richmond’s Winder Hospital on or about August 18. There the doctors diagnosed his loss of strength and energy as debilitus. He wrote his mother in Heard County, eight days later, that he felt better and his appetite had returned. Unfortunately, there was not a lot to eat. “I will tell you what we get. [B]read and coffee for supper and the same for breakfast and a little fat bacon boiled and for dinner we have a little fat bacon and bread that is not fitten for a sick man to eat.” Garrett longed for home and he hoped to get a furlough soon. He promised to send some of his pay home soon to help his mother and four younger siblings [Sophronia, 17; William (Bud), 15; Mary (Ellen), 13; and John, 10] on their farm. The Georgian wrote that due to the current high prices of food in Richmond “I have to keep it [money] to live on hear. If I did not have money I would be in a bad fix here and every thing is so high it takes a heap of it to do a man.” In frustration he listed the exorbitant prices for various goods in the capital city:

[Y]ou cant buy a chicken her[e] for less than a dollar; butter is a dollar a pound; roasting ears [corn] fifty cts a doz.; cabbage $1.00 a head; little plate pies fifty cts a piece; ginger cakes 25 cts a piece; watermelons $2.00 to $2.50 a piece; peaches 50 cts a doz.; apples the same; sweet milk ten cents a glass; fresh meat is fifty cents a pound; irish potatoes 25 cents a quart; eggs $1.00 a doz and corn bread 10 cents a pone. [S]mall pity at that. [Y]ou cant get a meals vituals [victuals] hear for less than a $1.00.

The inflation problem had spread from southern cities to the countryside. Several things caused this crisis: an effective Federal naval blockade of Confederate ports; decreased farm output because most military age farmers wore a gray uniform; and overcrowding in southern cities, especially Richmond.

Garrett pleaded with his family to send him some home cooking:

I would like very much to get a box of vituals [victuals] from home if you can get the chance. I want you to send me a nice piece of ham. [T]he best you have got as soon as possible and anything else you can send that is to eat. [A]nybody can find me at Winder Hospital Second Division and ward No. 47. [M]aybe you can send it by railroad and it would not cost much. I would like to have a baked chicken or some fried chicken. [A]nything that is good will do me.

Garrett changed his attitude about his hospital environment in the same letter. Maybe he feared alarming his family or perhaps he read the Cedar Mountain casualty reports. “[I]f I dont get a furlough I am going to stay hear all winter as I have a good bed to ly [lie] on and a good house to stay in and a plenty to eat. [S]uch as it is I can make out on it.

All of the brigade commanders in the Light Division had received their brigadier general’s star by mid-August 1862 with the exception of one officer. Colonel Edward Thomas’ lack of promotion created a controversy because he commanded the only Georgia brigade in the division. Many soldiers perceived this lack of recognition as a significant slight in an era where appearances carried great weight. The officers of Thomas’ Brigade wrote a letter in mid-August to both the Confederate Adjutant & Inspector General and the Secretary of War George W. Randolph urgently requesting Thomas’ promotion. Two more months would pass before Thomas received his promotion.

Robert E. Lee recognized another opportunity to attack Pope’s army. The Light Division moved on August 15 from their bivouac on the Crenshaw Farm located halfway between Gordonsville and Orange Court House. They marched with the rest of Jackson’s corps north about twenty miles to Mountain Run, west of Clark’s Mountain. The men remained in this area for several days. Due to confusion in orders, the Light Division failed to begin a march early on the morning of August 20 according to Jackson’s timetable. The troops sloshed across the Rapidan River at Somerville Ford and despite the delay, they still covered nearly twenty miles. They camped that evening near Stevensburg.

Jackson met with Lee on August 24. The commanders decided to leave Longstreet’s troops along the western bank of the Rappahannock River just northeast of Culpeper to mask Jackson’s sweep northwestward. Jackson would march west of the Bull Run Mountains using the terrain to screen his move and then turn east through Thoroughfare Gap and destroy Pope’s supply line. This move, if successful, might pull Pope away from the Rappahannock River and a consolidation with McClellan’s army.

Jackson’s troops prepared three days cooked rations. Orders specified the men could only carry haversacks. Officers refused to allow the men to carry knapsacks nor would supply wagons follow the column. Each soldier knew the minimal provisions signaled some rough, rapid marching. Jackson’s corps moved several miles toward their unknown destination by sunrise on August 25. Ewell’s Division led the march followed by the divisions of Hill and Taliaferro. Jackson allowed only his chief engineer, Lieutenant James Keith Boswell, to know the destination. The hot, dusty march continued all day and into the night. The column finally stopped just south of Salem, known today as Marshall, Virginia.

The troops pulled their sore bodies off the ground before dawn on August 26. When the column reached Salem, it turned sharply eastward. They soon passed through White Plains, Virginia as the Bull Run Mountains loomed larger to the east. The hungry soldiers stripped the edges of the numerous apple orchards and cornfields along the route. When Jackson’s “foot cavalry” reached Thoroughfare Gap they found a surprise. Pope’s men had failed to defend the mountainous pass. The Southerners trudged through the gap and their enthusiasm grew. They had marched undetected into the rear of Pope’s army.

Jackson’s column met slight picket resistance at Hay Market and Gainesville. When the men halted for the night, the soldiers of the 35th Georgia found themselves in a field about four miles east of Gainesville, Virginia. Jackson’s corps of 23,500 men had marched fifty-four miles in barely thirty-six hours, achieving total surprise.

Meanwhile in Richmond, Captain Evan R. Whitley penned a note on August 27 to Benjamin Moody’s widow in Campbell County. The Company E commander failed to explain why he was not with his men on the march. Whitley had received a power of attorney to collect Moody’s back
wages. The Confederacy owed Moody two-month’s pay as a private at $11 per month and one month and twenty-six days as a corporal at $13 per month. His total pay for this period amounted to $46.26. He owed the Confederacy $7.75 for a uniform coat and cap so the actual balance due the dead soldier was $38.51. Whitley explained to Martha Moody that her husband, who had made the ultimate sacrifice, missed eligibility for a one-year enlistment bounty by only forty-six days.

Jackson’s men continued the march toward Manassas Junction early on August 27. After a mile Colonel Thomas halted his troops to watch the torching of two Federal trains. A Confederate artillery battery unlimbered its guns and fired into a nearby detachment of Union cavalry sending the enemy dashing for cover. The march resumed a short while later, and the Georgians reached the Federal supply depot at Manassas Junction around noon. Two regiments from Isaac Trimble’s Brigade and Stuart’s cavalry had seized this depot on the previous night. Abeggar’s dream unfolded before the members of the Light Division. Federal boxcars stretched for a half-mile. Warehouses and wagons, full of essential military and luxury items, stood in every direction. The dirty, hungry soldiers quickly overwhelmed the guards who Jackson had posted to prevent pillaging. Hill’s troops tore into the boxcars and wagons and gorged themselves on lobster salad, sardines, vegetables, corned beef, cakes, fruits, pickles and mustard. The joyous men washed the feast down with champagne, whiskey and wine. Pockets bulged with handfuls of cigars. Trimble noted in his report, “It was with extreme mortification that, in reporting to General A.P. Hill for orders about 10 o’clock, I witnessed an indiscriminate plunder of the public stores, cars and sutler’s houses by the army which had just arrived, in which General Hill’s division was conspicuous, setting at defiance the guards I had placed over the stores.” General Jackson officially reported that the seized items included: “50,000 pounds of bacon, 1,000 barrels of corned beef, 2,000 barrels of salt pork, 2,000 barrels of flour, quartermaster’s, ordnance, and sutler’s stores deposited in buildings and filling two
trains of cars.”

The approach of Colonel Gustav Waagner’s 2nd New York Heavy Artillery, a green artillery-turned infantry unit, briefly interrupted the Manassas Junction party. A. P. Hill moved the Light Division east to meet the threat. Waagner expected to subdue the reported “small band of guerillas” who had captured the depot. Colonel William S. Baylor’s Stonewall Brigade unleashed the initial gunfire on Waagner’s troops. When the Light Division arrived, Hill placed Branch’s Brigade to the left and then the brigades of Archer, Pender, Thomas and Field to the right. Waagner ordered a retreat because of the hot fire. Ashort time later, Brigadier General George Taylor’s New Jersey brigade arrived by train one mile north of the depot. The New Jersey soldiers formed into line of battle and marched into the same problem recently vacated by Waagner. The Confederates routed Taylor’s brigade capturing about two hundred prisoners. Some of Hill’s exuberant men burned the train and a nearby railroad bridge.

When A.P. Hill’s men returned to the depot, they found that Jackson had ordered the guard increased. Jackson, after much cajoling, finally agreed to let the troops help themselves before he ordered the remains burned. Hill ordered the two brigades of Thomas and Gregg moved south of Manassas Junction at dark. The men formed a rear guard position to protect against an attack from Bristoe Station. The rest of Jackson’s men continued their drunken revelry. Jackson ordered the depot torched after dark. The bright flames reached the ammunition magazines around 10 p.m. The powder and shells exploded with a deafening roar as flames leaped high into the air.12One Georgian enjoyed being able to eat until he was full, but he lamented watching the majority of the needed supplies go up in smoke.

Jackson knew that Pope’s numerically superior army was not far from the smoldering ashes of Manassas Junction. The daring commander studied his map to locate some defensible terrain. He selected Stony Ridge northwest of the town of Groveton, Virginia.

Jackson’s early morning march on August 28 towards Stony Ridge became a navigational disaster. Many soldiers drunkenly stumbled along the dark roads. Most men had stuffed themselves, both internally and externally, with as much as their bodies could carry. Lieutenant Henry Kyd Douglas,
from Jackson’s staff, remarked:

The appearance of the marching columns was novel and amusing. Commissary, quartermaster, and sutler store, enough for an army and a campaign, were carried along on the backs of soldiers wearied with excessive marching the days before. Here one fellow was bending beneath the weight of a score of boxes of cigars, smoking and joking as he went, another with as many boxes of canned fruits, another with coffee enough for a winters encampment, or perhaps with a long string of shoes hung around his neck, like beads. It was a martial masquerade by night.

Awards

Virginia Author to Receive
2005 Robertson Prize for Confederate History

The Robert E. Lee Civil War Roundtable’s Civil War Library and Research Center has announced that the recipient of their 5th Annual James I. Robertson Jr. Literary Prize for Confederate History is John J. Fox, III. Fox will receive this honor for his non-fiction book, Red Clay to Richmond: Trail of the 35th Georgia Infantry Regiment, which follows a group of Georgia soldiers through four long years of war in Virginia.

The Robertson Prize is bestowed annually to the author of the best original work of published scholarship in the field of Confederate history - military, political or social. It is named for Dr. James I. Robertson, Jr., Alumni Distinguished Professor in History at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Founded in November 1997 by the Robert E. Lee Civil War Round Table of Central New Jersey, the Civil War Library and Research Center is a one-of-a-kind facility. Funded by corporate, foundation and individual donations and staffed entirely by volunteers, the library is open to the public and features one of the largest single collections of Civil War material in existence, with over 2,000 bound volumes and hundreds of periodicals.

Red Clay to Richmond is unique because it not only visits the horrors of the battlefield, but it also focuses on the daily life and voice of the average Southern soldier. It reveals the true American spirit in the midst of deprivation and hardship, not only along the battle lines but also for the family members left behind. These troops fought at many bloody places under the command of famous men like Stonewall Jackson, A.P. Hill and Robert E. Lee.

John J. Fox, a Richmond, Virginia native, has been a lifelong student of the Civil War. His articles have appeared in numerous newspapers and Civil War Times magazine. Fox now lives with his family in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.