Volume I Part 41 (2/2)
”Richmond, Virginia, March 6, 1862.
”General J. E. Johnston:... Notwithstanding the threatening position of the enemy, I infer from your account of the roads and streams that his active operations must be for some time delayed, and thus I am permitted to hope that you will be able to mobilize your army by the removal of your heavy ordnance and such stores as are not required for active operations, so that, whenever you are required to move, it may be without public loss and without impediment to celerity. I was fully impressed with the difficulties which you presented when discussing the subject of a change of position. To preserve the efficiency of your army, you will, of course, avoid all needless exposure; and, when your army has been relieved of all useless enc.u.mbrance, you can have no occasion to move it while the roads and the weather are such as would involve serious suffering, because the same reasons must restrain the operations of the enemy....
”Very respectfully yours,
”Jefferson Davis.”
[pg 464]
At the conference at Fairfax Court-House, heretofore referred to, I was sadly disappointed to find that the strength of that army had been little increased, notwithstanding the reenforcements sent to it since the 21st of July, and that to make an advance the generals required an additional force, which it was utterly impracticable for me to supply. Soon thereafter the army withdrew to Centreville, a better position for defense but not for attack, and thereby suggestive of the abandonment of an intention to advance. The subsequent correspondence with General Johnston during the winter expressed an expectation that the enemy would resume the offensive, and that the position then held was geographically unfavorable. There was a general apprehension at Richmond that the northern frontier of Virginia would be abandoned, and a corresponding earnestness was exhibited to raise the requisite force to enable our army to take the offensive. On the 10th of March I telegraphed to General Johnston: ”Further a.s.surance given to me this day that you shall be promptly and adequately reenforced, so as to enable you to maintain your position, and resume first policy when the roads will permit.” The first policy was to carry the war beyond our own border.
Five days thereafter, I received notice that our army was in retreat, and replied as follows:
”Richmond, Virginia, March 15, 1862.
”General J. E. Johnston, Headquarters Army of the Potomac.
”General: I have received your letter of the 13th instant, giving the first official account I have received of the retrograde movement of your army.
”Your letter would lead me to infer that others had been sent to apprise me of your plans and movements. If so, they have not reached me; and, before the receipt of yours of the 13th, I was as much in the dark as to your purposes, condition, and necessities as at the time of our conversation on the subject about a month since.
”It is true I have had many and alarming reports of great destruction of ammunition, camp-equipage, and provisions, indicating precipitate retreat; but, having heard of no cause for such a sudden movement, I was at a loss to believe it.
”I have not the requisite topographical knowledge for the [pg 465] selection of your new position. I had intended that you should determine that question; and for this purpose a corps of engineers was furnished to make a careful examination of the country to aid you in your decision.
”The question of throwing troops into Richmond is contingent upon reverses in the West and Southeast. The immediate necessity for such a movement is not antic.i.p.ated.
”Very respectfully yours,
”Jefferson Davis.”
On the same day I sent the following telegram:
”Richmond, Virginia, March 15, 1862.
”General J. E. Johnston, Culpepper Court-House, Virginia.
”Your letter of the 13th received this day, being the first information of your retrograde movement. I have no report of your reconnaissance, and can suggest nothing as to the position you should take except it should be as far in advance as consistent with your safety.
”Jefferson Davis.”
To further inquiry from General Johnston as to where he should take position, I replied that I would go to his headquarters in the field, and found him on the south bank of the river, to which he had retired, in a position possessing great natural advantages. An elevated bank commanded the north side of the river, overlooking the bridge, and an open field beyond it, across which the enemy must pa.s.s to reach the bridge, which, if left standing, was an invitation to seek that crossing. Upon inquiring whether the south bank of the river continued to command the other side down to Fredericksburg, General Johnston answered that he did not know; that he had not been at Fredericksburg since he pa.s.sed there in a stage on his way to West Point, when he was first appointed a cadet. I then proposed that we should go to Fredericksburg, to inform ourselves upon that point. On arriving at Fredericksburg, a reconnaissance soon manifested that the hills on the opposite side commanded the town and adjacent river-bank, and therefore Fredericksburg could only be defended by an army occupying the opposite hills, for which our force was inadequate. In returning to the house of [pg 466] Mr. Barton, where I was a guest, I found a number of ladies had a.s.sembled there to welcome me, and who, with anxiety, inquired as to the result of our reconnaissance. Upon learning that the town was not considered defensible against an enemy occupying the heights on the other side, and that our force was not sufficient to hold those heights against such an attack as might be antic.i.p.ated, the general answer was, with a self-sacrificing patriotism too much admired to be forgotten, ”If the good of our cause requires the defense of the town to be abandoned, let it be done.” The purposes of the enemy were then unknown to us. If General Johnston's expectation of a hostile advance in great force should be realized, our course must depend partly upon receiving the reenforcement we had reason to expect from promises previously given and renewed, as was announced to General Johnston in my telegram of 10th of March, 1862, in these words:
”Further a.s.surance given to me this day that you shall be promptly and adequately reenforced, so as to enable you to maintain your position, and resume first policy when the roads will permit.”
No immediate decision could therefore be made, and I returned to Richmond, to wait the further development of the enemy's plans, and to prepare as best we might to counteract them.
The feeling heretofore noticed as arousing in Virginia a determination to resist the abandonment of her northern frontier, and which caused the a.s.surance of reenforcements, bore fruit in the addition of about thirty thousand men, by a draft made by the Governor of the State. These, it is true, were not the disciplined, seasoned troops which were asked for by the generals in the conference at Fairfax Court-House, but they were of such men as often during the war won battles for the Confederacy. The development of the enemy's plans, for which we had to wait, proved that, instead of advancing in force against our position at Centreville, he had, before the retreat of our army commenced, decided to move down the Potomac for a campaign against Richmond, from the Peninsula as a [pg 467] base. The conflagration at Centreville gave notice of its evacuation, and an advance was made as far as Mana.s.sas, but, as appears by General McClellan's report, with no more important design than to attack our rear guard, if it should be encountered. In the report on the conduct of the war by a committee of the United States Congress, evidence is found of much vacillation before the conclusion was finally reached of abandoning the idea of a direct advance upon Richmond for that of concentrating their army at the mouth of the Chesapeake. Whatever doubt or apprehension continued to exist about uncovering the city of Was.h.i.+ngton by removing their main army from before it, was of course dispelled by the retreat of our army, and the burning of bridges behind it. In this last-mentioned fact, General McClellan says he found the strongest reason to believe that there was no immediate danger of our army returning.
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