Part 15 (1/2)

For all their slackness, the pursuers were gleaning a rich harvest of prisoners and equipment. Too badly outnumbered to turn and fight until he gained a strong defensive position, Banks was sacrificing companies in rear-guard ambuscades and dribbling wagons in his wake like tubs to Jackson's whale. With them he was buying time and distance so successfully that by sunset it was obvious that his main body was winning the race for Winchester, where just such a strong position awaited him. Even Stonewall was obliged to admit it. But he had no intention of allowing his quarry any more time than he could possibly avoid. He pushed his weary brigades through the gathering twilight. ”Press on. Press on, men,” he kept saying. Impatiently he rode with the handful of cavalry in advance, when suddenly the darkness ahead was st.i.tched with muzzle flashes. The troopers drew rein. ”Charge them! Charge them!” Jackson shouted. A second volley crashed ahead; bullets whistled past; the hors.e.m.e.n scattered, leaving the general alone in the middle of the road. ”Shameful!” he cried after them in his shrill, womanish voice. ”Did you see anybody struck, sir? Did you see anybody struck?” He sat there among the twittering bullets, still complaining. ”Surely they need not have run, at least until they were hurt.”

Sheepishly the troopers returned, and Jackson sent them forward, following with the infantry. Kernstown lay dead ahead, the scene of blundering in March. Tonight-it was Sunday again by now, as then-there was only a brief skirmish in the darkness. Winchester lay four miles beyond, and he did not intend to allow Banks time to add to the natural strength of the double line of hills south of town. When one officer remarked that his men were ”falling by the roadside from fatigue and loss of sleep. Unless they are rested,” he complained, ”I shall be able to present but a thin line tomorrow,” Jackson replied: ”Colonel, I yield to no man in sympathy for the gallant men under my command, but I am obliged to sweat them tonight that I may save their blood tomorrow.” He pressed on through Kernstown, but eventually saw that the colonel was right. If he kept on at this rate he would arrive with almost no army at all. He called a halt and the men crumpled in their tracks, asleep as soon as their heads touched the ground.

Jackson did not share their rest. He was thinking of the double line of hills ahead, outlining a plan of battle. At 4 o'clock, unable to wait any longer, he had the sleepy men aroused and herded back onto the road. Before the stars had paled he was approaching the high ground south of Winchester. To his relief he saw that Banks had chosen to make his stand on the second ridge, leaving only a few troops on the first. Quickly Stonewall threw out skirmishers, drove the pickets off, and brought up guns to support the a.s.sault he would launch as soon as his army filed into position. Banks had his cannon zeroed in, blasting away at the rebel guns while the infantry formed their lines. Jackson saw that the work would be hot, despite his advantage of numbers. Riding back to bring up Taylor, whose Louisianians he planned to use as shock troops, he pa.s.sed some Virginia regiments coming forward. They had been ordered not to cheer, lest they give away their position, but as Jackson rode by they took off their hats in salute to the man who had driven them, stumbling with fatigue, to where the guns were growling. He removed his battered cap, riding in silence past the uncovered Virginians, and came upon Taylor, whom he greeted with a question: ”General, can your brigade charge a battery?”

”It can try.”

”Very good; it must do it then. Move it forward.”

Taylor did so. Pa.s.sing along the ridge the Louisianians came under fire from the Union guns. Sh.e.l.ls screamed at them, tearing gaps in their ranks, and the men began to bob and weave. ”What the h.e.l.l are you dodging for?” Taylor yelled. ”If there is any more of it, you will be halted under this fire for an hour!” As they snapped back to attention, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked around.

”I am afraid you are a wicked fellow,” Jackson said, and rode away.

What followed was brief but decisive. Taylor's charge, on the left, was a page out of picture-book war: a long line of men in gray sweeping forward after their commander, who gestured on horseback, pointing the way through sh.e.l.lbursts with his sword. On the opposite flank, Ewell had come into position up the Front Royal road in time to share in the a.s.sault. In the center, the Stonewall Brigade surged forward, down the first slope and up the second, where 7000 Federals were breaking for the rear at the sight of 16,000 Confederates bearing down on them-or, strictly speaking, up at them-from three different directions. The attackers swept over the second ridge and charged through Winchester, firing after the bluecoats as they ran. Jackson rode among his soldiers, his eyes aglow at the sight.

”Order forward the whole line! The battle's won!” he shouted. All around him, men were kneeling to fire after the scampering Yankees. He s.n.a.t.c.hed off his cap and waved it over his head in exultation. ”Very good!” he cried. ”Now let's holler!” The men took it up, and the Valley army's first concerted rebel yell rang out so loud it seemed to rock the houses. Stonewall cheered as wildly as the rest. When a staff officer tried to remonstrate with him for thus exposing himself, he paid him no mind except to shout full in his face: ”Go back and tell the whole army to press forward to the Potomac!”

The Potomac was thirty-six miles ahead, but distance meant nothing to Jackson so long as an opportunity like the present was spread before his eyes. North of Winchester, all the way to the horizon, Banks' army was scattered in headlong flight, as ripe for the saber this fine May morning as grain for the scythe in July. At Front Royal his artillery had failed him; today it was his cavalry. As he watched the blue fugitives scurry out of musket range, the Valley commander clenched his fists and groaned: ”Never was there such a chance for cavalry! Oh that my cavalry were in place!” Attempting to improvise a horseback pursuit, he brought up the nearest batteries, had the teams uncoupled, and mounted the cannoneers. But he soon saw it would not do; the horses were worn out, wobbly from fatigue, and so were the men. The best he could manage was to follow at a snail's pace through the waning Sunday afternoon, picking up what the fleeing enemy dropped.

Added to what had already been gleaned in three days of marching and fighting, the harvest was considerable, entirely aside from the Federal dead, the uncaptured wounded, and the tons of goods that had gone up in smoke. At a cost of 400 casualties-68 killed, 329 wounded, and 3 missing-Jackson had taken 3030 prisoners, 9300 small arms, two rifled cannon, and such a wealth of quartermaster stores of all descriptions that his opponent was known thereafter as ”Commissary” Banks.

Those were only the immediate and material fruits of the opening phase of the campaign. A larger gain-as Lee had foreseen, or at any rate had aimed at-was in its effect on Lincoln, who once more swung round to find the Shenandoah shotgun loaded and leveled at his head. Banks put on a brave face as soon as he got what was left of his army beyond the Potomac. ”It is seldom that a river crossing of such magnitude is achieved with greater success,” he reported. Though he admitted that ”there were never more grateful hearts in the same number of men than when at midday of the 26th we stood on the opposite sh.o.r.e,” he denied that his command had ”suffered an attack and rout, but had accomplished a premeditated march of nearly 60 miles in the face of the enemy, defeating his plans and giving him battle wherever he was found.”

Lincoln was not deceived. Anxious though he was for rea.s.surance, he saw clearly that Banks was in no condition to repulse the rebels if they continued their advance beyond the Potomac. In fact, he had already reacted exactly as Lee had hoped and intended. s.h.i.+elds had reached McDowell, and they had set out to join McClellan in front of Richmond; but on Sat.u.r.day, as soon as news reached Was.h.i.+ngton of the disaster at Front Royal, they were halted six miles south of the Rappahannock and ordered to countermarch for operations against Jackson. McDowell replied with ”a heavy heart” that he would attempt what the President commanded, though he did not believe the movement would succeed. ”I am entirely beyond helping distance of General Banks,” he told Lincoln; ”no celerity or vigor will avail so far as he is concerned.” Nor did he have a high opinion of Lincoln's scheme to use him to recover control of the Valley. ”I shall gain nothing for you there, and shall lose much for you here.... I feel that it throws us all back, and from Richmond north we shall have our large ma.s.ses paralyzed.” The Commander in Chief thanked him for his promptness, but rejected his advice. ”For you it is a question of legs,” he urged as soon as McDowell's men were on the march for the Valley. ”Put in all the speed you can.”

Lincoln had something more in mind than the relief of pressure on Banks or even the salvation of Was.h.i.+ngton. He wanted to capture Jackson, bag and baggage. Poring over maps of Northern Virginia, he had evolved a plan whereby he would block the rebel general's retreat and crush him with overwhelming numbers. McDowell's command, advancing on the Valley from the east, was one jaw of the crusher; Fremont's was the other. Concentrated at Franklin, the Pathfinder was thirty miles from Harrisonburg, which was eighty miles in Stonewall's rear. Lincoln wired instructions for him ”to move against Jackson at Harrisonburg, and operate against the enemy in such a way as to relieve Banks.” He added: ”This movement must be made immediately. You will acknowledge the receipt of this order and specify the hour it is received by you.” Fremont replied within the hour that he would march at once. ”Put the utmost speed into it. Do not lose a minute,” Lincoln admonished. And having ordered the combination of two large forces in the presence of the enemy-the movement Napoleon characterized as the most difficult in the art of war-he sat back, like a long-distance chess player, to await results.

Not that he was not kept busy with other matters growing out of this one. The North was in turmoil. ”Intelligence from various quarters leaves no doubt that the enemy in great force are advancing on Was.h.i.+ngton,” Stanton wired the governors of thirteen states, asking them to send him whatever militia they could lay hands on. Three others were told, ”Send all the troops forward that you can immediately. Banks is completely routed. The enemy in large force are advancing upon Harpers Ferry.” Recruiting offices were reopened. The railroads were taken over to provide speedy transportation for reinforcements before the capital was beleaguered. Rumors spread fast on Monday, so quickly had Sunday's bolt come tumbling. The New York Herald Herald, whose morning edition had carried an editorial captioned ”Fall of Richmond,” replaced it with a report that the whole rebel army was on the march for the Potomac. Harried by congressmen and distraught citizens, Lincoln hoped that his opponent in the Confederate seat of government could be given a hard time, too. To McClellan in front of Richmond went a wire: ”Can you get near enough to throw sh.e.l.ls into the city?”

The Young Napoleon was scarcely in a mood to throw anything at anybody: except possibly at Lincoln. When he first got the news that McDowell would not be joining him just yet, after all, his first reaction was, ”Heaven save a country governed by such counsels!” On second thought, however, he could see at least one benefit proceeding from the panic in the capital: ”A scare will do them good, and may bring them to their senses.” But the President wired on Sunday that the enemy movement was ”general and concerted,” not merely a bluff or an act of desperation-”I think the time is near,” he wrote, ”when you must either attack Richmond or else give up the job and come to the defense of Was.h.i.+ngton”-McClellan reacted fast. The last thing he wanted in this world was to return to ”that sink,” within reach of ”those hounds.” Replying that ”the time is very near when I shall attack,” he added that he disagreed with Lincoln's appraisal of Confederate strategy: ”The object of the movement is probably to prevent reinforcements being sent to me. All the information from balloons, deserters, prisoners, and contrabands agrees in the statement that the ma.s.s of the rebel troops are still in the immediate vicinity of Richmond, ready to defend it.”

Lincoln knew how to translate ”very near” and also how to a.s.sess McClellan's estimates as to the strength of an enemy intrenched to his front; he had encountered both before. Just now, though, his attention was distracted. On Tuesday, May 27, he received from Fremont a message that alarmed him: not because of what it said, but because of the heading, which showed that the Pathfinder had moved north instead of east. ”I see that you are at Moorefield,” Lincoln wired. ”You were expressly ordered to march to Harrisonburg. What does this mean?” Fremont replied that it meant the road leading east from Franklin was ”impossible,” that he had swung north to pick up food for his men, who otherwise would have starved, and that he was obeying instructions to ”relieve Banks” in the best way he saw fit: by marching on Strasburg. ”In executing any order received,” he declared, ”I take it for granted that I am to exercise discretion concerning its literal execution, according to circ.u.mstances. If I am to understand that literal obedience to orders is required, please say so.”

The reply threw Lincoln into much the same state as when he flung his hat on the floor at Fort Monroe, three weeks ago. Fremont now had seventy miles to march instead of thirty. However, McDowell was closing in fast from the east, and Jackson was still reported near Harpers Ferry. There was plenty of time to cut him off, if the troops marched on schedule. On May 30 Lincoln sent two wires, one to Fremont: ”You must be up in the time you promised,” the other to McDowell: ”The game is before you.” Three days later he had Stanton give them both a final warning: ”Do not let the enemy escape you.”

For once, Jackson-”the game,” as Lincoln styled him-was exactly where the Federal high command had him spotted: at Charles Town, with his infantry thrown forward to demonstrate against Harpers Ferry, seven miles away. Though he had known for two days now of the forces moving east and west toward a convergence that would put 35,000 soldiers in his rear, nothing in his manner showed that the information bothered him at all. After setting Monday aside for rest and prayer, in compensation for another violated Sabbath, he had come on by easy marches, driving the enemy not merely ”toward the Potomac,” as Lee had suggested, but to and beyond it. While the rea.s.sembled cavalry was pressing northward down the Valley pike, through Martinsburg and on to the Williamsport crossing, the infantry took the fork that branched northeast to Harpers Ferry. It was all rather anti-climactic, though, even lackadaisical, compared to what had gone before, and on the 28th-the day he was warned of the movement that threatened to cut off his retreat-he ordered his troops to resume the prescribed four hours of daily drill. Howls went up from the ranks at this, but the howls availed the outraged soldiers no more than did the complaints of the staff that the present delay would result in utter ruin. If Jackson was oblivious to the danger in his rear, they certainly were not. Once more they called him crack-brained, and one young officer muttered darkly: ”quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.” ”quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat.”

There was no middle ground for confidence where Stonewall was concerned; you either trusted him blindly, or you judged him absolutely mad. That was the obverse of his method, never better ill.u.s.trated than now. It was true that he had already wrung every possible psychological advantage from his present exposed position, which he knew was growing more perilous by the hour, but there were other considerations. He had 2300 unparoled prisoners on his hands, each of whom could be exchanged for a southern soldier now in a northern prison camp, and near Winchester his chief of transportation was a.s.sembling a double line of wagons eight miles long, loaded with a wealth of captured goods, including 9000 badly needed rifles, mostly new, and invaluable medical equipment shut off from the Confederacy by blockade. All this took time, but Jackson was determined to give the grinding column of spoils and captives a head start up the Valley turnpike before he attempted to bring his army out of the two-jawed trap about to snap shut in its rear.

On May 30, when the long train started rolling south, there were even more urgent reasons for the army to follow in its wake at once. Intelligence reports placed the advance of McDowell's column within a day's march of Front Royal and Fremont's about the same distance from Strasburg, both of which places were more than forty miles in Jackson's rear. Banks had been reinforced at Williamsport and presumably was about ready to take the field again, tamping the Confederates into the grinder that would be created when Fremont and McDowell met in the shadow of the northern face of Ma.s.sanutton Mountain. Nothing in Stonewall's manner expressed concern, however, when he emerged from his tent this Friday morning. After receiving a delegation of Charles Town ladies who called to pay their respects, he rode toward Harpers Ferry and watched some desultory skirmis.h.i.+ng. When a shower of rain came up, he stretched out under a tree for shelter and presently fell asleep.

He woke to find A. R. Boteler, a Valley congressman who had volunteered for duty on his staff, making a sketch of him. Jackson studied it, then remarked: ”Colonel, I have some harder work than this for you to do, and if you'll sit down here now I'll tell you what it is.... I want you to go to Richmond for me; I must have reinforcements. You can explain to them down there what the situation is here.” Boteler replied that he would be glad to go, but that he was not sure he understood the situation: whereupon Jackson outlined it for him. ”McDowell and Fremont are probably aiming to effect a junction at Strasburg, so as to cut us off from the upper Valley, and are both nearer to it now than we are. Consequently, no time is to be lost. You can say to them in Richmond that I'll send on the prisoners, secure most if not all of the captured property, and with G.o.d's blessing will be able to baffle the enemy's plans here with my present force, but that it will have to be increased as soon thereafter as possible.” If Boteler thought the general wanted to use those reinforcements merely to help stand off the various columns now converging on him, he was much mistaken-as he discovered from what Stonewall said in closing: ”You may tell them, too, that if my command can be gotten up to 40,000 men a movement may be made...which will soon raise the siege of Richmond and transfer this campaign from the banks of the Potomac to those of the Susquehanna.”

Riding south with all the speed he could manage-by rail to Winchester, by horseback to Staunton, by rail again to Richmond-the congressman-colonel arrived to find that the eastern theater's first major engagement since Mana.s.sas, eighty miles away and ten full months ago, had been fought at the city's gates while he was traveling. With his back to the wall and the choice narrowed to resistance or evacuation, Johnston at last had found conditions suitable for attack.

In point of fact, despite his fondness for keeping the tactical situation fluid-in hopes that his opponent would commit some error or be guilty of some oversight and thereby expose a portion of the blue host to destruction-Johnston really had no choice. With McDowell poised for a southward advance, a junction that would give the Federals nearly a three-to-one advantage over the 53,688 Confederates drawn up east of Richmond, not even evacuation would a.s.sure the salvation of Johnston's army, which now as always was his main concern: McClellan would still be after him, and with overwhelming numbers. The only thing to do, he saw, was to strike one Mac before the other got there. Besides, the error he had been hoping for seemed already to have been committed. McClellan's five corps were unequally divided, three north and two south of the Chickahominy. Normally a sluggish stream, not even too broad for leaping in the dry months, the river was greatly swollen as a result of the continual spring rains, and thus might serve to isolate the Union wings, preventing their mutual support and giving the Confederates a chance to slash at one or the other with equal or perhaps superior numbers. Johnston would have preferred to attack the weaker south-bank wing, keeping Richmond covered as he did so; but this would not only leave McDowell's line of advance unblocked, it would probably also hasten the junction by provoking a rapid march from Fredericksburg when McClellan yelled for help. By elimination, then, Johnston determined to strike down the north bank, risking uncovering Richmond for the sake of wrecking McClellan's right wing and blocking McDowell's advance at the same time.

He had his plan, a product of necessity; but as usual he took his time, and kept his counsel as he took it. Least of all did he confer with the President, afterwards explaining: ”I could not consult him without adopting the course he might advise, so that to ask his advice would have been, in my opinion, to ask him to command for me.” The result, with the Federals a rapid two-hour march away, was a terrible strain on Davis. Unable to get the general's a.s.surance that an all-out defense of the city would be attempted, he never knew from day to day which flag might be flying over the Capitol tomorrow. May 22, riding out the Mechanicsville turnpike with Lee, he found few troops, no fortifications, indeed no preparations of any kind, as he wrote Johnston, for blocking a sudden Union drive ”toward if not to Richmond.” Two days later Johnston came to town for a conference, but he told his superior nothing except that he intended to be governed by circ.u.mstances. To make matters worse, while he was there the Federals seized Mechanicsville, five miles north, just as Davis had predicted. Not only was this an excellent location for a hook-up when McDowell made his three- or four-day march from Fredericksburg, but now there was nothing at all to stand in the way of such an advance, Johnston having instructed Anderson to fall back from the line of the Rappahannock.

Two days later, May 26, while he was reviewing the situation with Lee, the President's anxiety over Johnston's undivulged intentions was so obviously painful that Lee proposed, ”Let me go and see him, and defer this discussion until I return.” When he was gone a dispatch arrived from Jackson, who broke his silence with an outright shout of joy. ”During the past three days,” it began, ”G.o.d has blessed our arms with brilliant success.” Banks had been routed and Stonewall was in pursuit, ”capturing the fugitives.” Whether this would have the intended effect of frightening the Union high command into holding back McDowell remained to be seen, but the news was a tonic for Davis, arriving as it did at the very crisis of his concern. Presently Lee returned, to be heartened by this early yield from the seeds of strategy he had sown in the Valley and to deliver tidings that bore directly on the subject of the President's anxiety. Johnston at last had announced his decision to attack. Intended to crumple McClellan's right wing, which brushed the purlieus of the city, the strike would be made on the 29th.

That was Thursday; today was Monday. Davis braced himself for the three-day wait.

McClellan was quite aware of the danger of straddling what he called ”the confounded Chickahominy,” but his instructions left him no choice. In the dispatch of the 17th, rewarding his prayers with the announcement that McDowell would be moving south as soon as s.h.i.+elds arrived, Stanton had told McClellan: ”He is ordered-keeping himself always in position to save the capital from all possible attack-so to operate as to place his left wing in communication with your right wing, and you are instructed to cooperate, so as to establish this communication as soon as possible, by extending your right wing to the north of Richmond.”

That was that, and there was nothing he could do to change it, though he tried. Next day, as if he knew how little an appeal to Stanton would avail him, he wired Secretary Seward: ”Indications that the enemy intend fighting at Richmond. Policy seems to be to concentrate everything there, They hold central position, and will seek to meet us while divided. I think we are committing a great military error in having so many independent columns. The great battle should be fought by our troops in ma.s.s; then divide if necessary.” Three days later, when this had brought no change in his instructions, he wrote to his friend Burnside: ”The Government have deliberately placed me in this position. If I win, the greater the glory. If I lose, they will be d.a.m.ned forever, both by G.o.d and men.”

Consoled by this prediction as to the verdict that would be recorded in history as in heaven, and rea.s.sured the following day by a message from Fredericksburg-”s.h.i.+elds will join me today,” McDowell wrote, and announced that he would be ready to march on the 24th with 38,000 men and 11,000 animals-McClellan took heart and labored to make the dangerous waiting period as brief as possible. On the scheduled date he sent his cavalry to drive the rebels out of Mechanicsville, thus extending his grasp north of Richmond in accordance with Stanton's instructions. Before the day was over, however, he received a telegram from the President which informed him that he was clutching at emptiness: ”In consequence of General Banks' position, I have been compelled to suspend McDowell's movements.” Next day, with Banks ”broken up into a total rout,” Lincoln explained his action by combining a justification with an appeal: ”Apprehensions of something like this, and no unwillingness to sustain you, have always been my reason for withholding McDowell from you. Please understand this, and do the best you can with the force you have.”

That was what McClellan did. Though he found the order ”perfectly sickening,” he took comfort at least in the fact that McDowell's southward movement had been ”suspended,” not revoked, and he worked hard to strengthen his army's position astride the river and to pave the way for the eventual junction on the right as soon as the Fredericksburg command got back from what McDowell himself considered a wild-goose chase. Eleven new bridges, ”all long and difficult, with extensive log-way approaches,” were erected across the swollen Chickahominy between Mechanicsville and Bottom's Bridge, twelve miles apart. It was an arduous and unending task, for the spans not only had to be constructed, they often had to be replaced; the river, still rising though it was already higher than it had been in twenty years, swept them away about as fast as they were built. While thus providing as best he could for mutual support by the two wings in event that either was attacked, he saw to the improvement of the tactical position of each. Keyes, supported by Heintzelman on the south bank, pushed forward along the Williamsburg road on the 25th and, a mile and a half beyond Seven Pines, constructed a redoubt within five miles of the heart of the enemy capital. Though McClellan could not comply with Lincoln's request next day that he ”throw some sh.e.l.ls into the city,” he could see Richmond's tallest steeples from both extremities of his line, north and south of the river, and hear the public clocks as they struck the quiet hours after midnight.

On the north bank, Porter was farthest out; behind him were Franklin, in close support, and Sumner, who occupied what was called the center of the position, eight miles downstream from Mechanicsville. The latter's corps was theoretically on call as a reserve for either wing, though the rising flood was steadily increasing its pressure on the two bridges he had built for crossing the river in event of an attack on Keyes or Heintzelman. To protect his rear on the north bank, and to shorten McDowell's march from Fredericksburg, McClellan on the 27th had Porter take a reinforced division twelve miles north to Hanover Courthouse, where a Confederate brigade had halted on its fifty-mile retreat from Gordonsville. Porter encountered the rebels about noon, and after a short but sharp engagement drove them headlong, capturing a gun and two regimental supply trains. At a cost of 397 casualties, he inflicted more than 1000, including 730 prisoners, and added greatly to the morale of his corps.

It was handsomely done; McClellan was delighted. The sizeable haul of men and equipment indicated a decline of the enemy's fighting spirit. Lying quiescent all this time in the Richmond intrenchments, despite his reported advantage in numbers, Joe Johnston seemed to lack the nerve for a strike at the divided Federal army. At this rate, the contest would soon degenerate into a siege-a type of warfare at which his young friend George was an expert. ”We are getting on splendidly,” McClellan wrote his wife before he went to bed that night. ”I am quietly clearing out everything that could threaten my rear and communications, providing against the contingency of disaster, and so arranging as to make my whole force available in the approaching battle. The only fear is that Joe's heart may fail him.”

That seemed to be about what had happened Thursday morning when, after hurrying through some office work, Davis rode out to observe the scheduled attack, but found the troops lounging at ease in the woods and heard no sound of gunfire anywhere along the line. Johnston had told him nothing of canceling or postponing the battle; Davis was left to wonder and fret until late in the day, when investigation uncovered what had happened.

At a council of war held the previous night for issuing final instructions, something in the nature of a miracle had been announced. Only the day before, Johnston had been given definite information that McDowell was on the march; already six miles south of Fredericksburg, his advance was within thirty miles of Hanover Courthouse, where Porter had been waiting since his midday repulse of the Confederate brigade. But now, at the council held on Wednesday evening, a dispatch from Jeb Stuart announced that McDowell, with nothing at all between him and a junction with McClellan, had halted his men and was countermarching them back toward the Rappahannock. It seemed entirely too good to be true; yet there it was. Johnston breathed a sigh of relief and canceled tomorrow's attack. That was why Davis heard no gunfire when he rode out next morning, expecting to find the battle in full swing.

Johnston did not abandon his intention to wreck one wing of McClellan's divided army, but he was doubly thankful for the delay. For one thing, it gave him additional time, and no matter how he squandered that commodity while backing up, time was something he prized highly whenever he considered moving forward. For another, with McDowell no longer a hovering threat, he could s.h.i.+ft the attack to the south bank of the Chickahominy, where the Federals were less numerous and reportedly more open to a.s.sault. With this in mind he drew up a plan of battle utilizing three roads that led eastward out of the capital so patly that they might have been surveyed for just this purpose. In the center was the Williamsburg road, paralleling the York River Railroad to the Chickahominy crossing, twelve miles out. On the left was the Nine Mile road, which turned southeast to intersect the railroad at Fair Oaks Station and the Williamsburg road at Seven Pines, halfway to Bottom's Bridge. On the right, branching south from the Williamsburg road about two miles out, was the Charles City road, which reached a junction six miles southeast leading north to Seven Pines and Fair Oaks. Thus all three roads converged upon the objective, where the advance elements of the Federal left wing were intrenched. The attack could be launched with all the confidence of a bowler rolling three b.a.l.l.s at once, each one down a groove that had been cut to yield a strike.

A third advantage of the delay was that it brought in reinforcements. R. H. Anderson's command, at the end of its long withdrawal from the line of the Rappahannock, was combined with the brigade that had been thrown out of Hanover Courthouse, thus creating a new division for A. P. Hill, a thirty-seven-year-old Virginia West Pointer just promoted to major general. Another division was on the way from Petersburg under Huger, who had stopped there after evacuating Norfolk. These additions would bring Johnston's total strength to nearly 75,000 men, giving him the largest army yet a.s.sembled under the Stars and Bars. What was more, the six divisions were ideally located to fit the plan of battle. A. P. Hill and Magruder, north of Richmond, could maintain their present positions, guarding the upper Chickahominy crossings. Smith and Longstreet were camped in the vicinity of Fairfield Race Course, where the Nine Mile road began; Longstreet would move all the way down it to strike the Union right near Fair Oaks, while Smith halted in reserve, facing left as he did so, to guard the lower river crossings. D. H. Hill was east of the city, well out the Williamsburg road; he would advance and deliver a frontal attack on signal from Huger, who had the longest march, coming up from the south on the Charles City road. The object was to maul Keyes, then maul Heintzelman in turn as he came up, leaving McClellan a single wing to fly on.