Part 21 (2/2)

There was panic, but it was not of the kind that had characterized the retreat from this same field the year before. The regulars were staunch, now as then, but there was by no means the same difference, in that respect, between them and the volunteers. Sigel's Germans and the men with Reno also managed to form knots of resistance, while the rest withdrew across Stone Bridge in a drizzle of rain. McDowell, seeing the Iron Brigade hold firm along a critical ridge, put Gibbon in charge of the rear guard and gave him instructions to blow up the bridge when his Westerners had crossed over.

After McDowell left, Phil Kearny rode up, empty sleeve flapping, spike whiskers bristling with anger at the sudden reverse the army had suffered. ”I suppose you appreciate the condition of affairs here, sir,” he cried. ”It's another Bull Run, sir. It's another Bull Run!” When Gibbon said he hoped it was not as bad as that, Kearny snapped: ”Perhaps not. Reno is keeping up the fight. He is not stampeded; I am not stampeded; you are not stampeded. That is about all, sir. My G.o.d, that's about all!”

Two miles west of there, near Groveton, Lee was composing a dispatch to be telegraphed to Richmond for release by the President: This army today achieved on the plains of Mana.s.sas a signal victory over combined forces of Generals McClellan and Pope.... We mourn the loss of our gallant dead in every conflict, yet our grat.i.tude to Almighty G.o.d for his mercies rises higher and higher each day. To Him and to the valor of our troops a nation's grat.i.tude is due.

His losses were 1481 killed, 7627 wounded, 89 missing; Pope's were 1724 killed, 8372 wounded, 5958 missing. Lee reported the capture of 7000 prisoners, exclusive of 2000 wounded left by Pope on the field, along with 30 guns and 20,000 small arms, numerous colors, and a vast amount of stores in addition to those consumed or destroyed by Jackson at Mana.s.sas Junction two days back.

Nor was that all. A larger triumph was reflected in the contrast between the present overall military situation, here in the East, and that which had existed when Lee a.s.sumed command three months ago. McClellan had stood within sight of the spires of Richmond; Jackson had been in flight up the Shenandoah Valley, pursued by superior enemy combinations; West Virginia had been completely in Federal hands, as well as most of coastal North Carolina, with invasion strongly threatened from both directions. Now Richmond had not only been delivered, but the Union host was in full retreat on Was.h.i.+ngton, with the dome of the Capitol practically in view and government clerks being mustered for a last-ditch defense of the city; the Valley was rapidly being scoured of the blue remnants left behind when Pope a.s.sembled his army to cross the Rappahannock; West Virginia was almost cleared of Federals, and the North Carolina coast was safe. Except for the garrisons at Fort Monroe and Norfolk, the only bluecoats within a hundred miles of the southern capital were prisoners of war and men now busy setting fire to U.S. stores and equipment at Aquia Creek, just north of Fredericksburg, preparing for a hasty evacuation.

Nor was that all, either. Beyond all this, there was the transformation effected within the ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia itself: a lifting of morale, based on a knowledge of the growth of its fighting skill. Gone were the clumsy combinations of the Seven Days, the piecemeal attacks launched headlong against positions of the enemy's own choice. Here in the gallant rivalry of Mana.s.sas, where Longstreet's soldiers vied with Jackson's for the ”suppression” of an opponent they despised, the victory formula had apparently been found; Lee's orders had been carried out instinctively, in some cases even before they were delivered. Tonight at army headquarters, which had been set up in an open field with a campfire of boards to read dispatches by, there was rejoicing and an air of mutual congratulation as officer after officer arrived to report new incidents of triumph. Lee-who had told his wife a month ago, ”In the prospect before me I cannot see a single ray of pleasure during this war”-stood in the firelight, gray and handsome, impeccably uniformed, welcoming subordinates with the accustomed grace of a Virginia host.

”General, here is someone who wants to speak to you,” a staff captain said.

Lee turned and saw a smoke-grimed cannoneer standing before him, still with a sponge staff in one hand. ”Well, my man, what can I do for you?”

”Why, General, don't you know me?” Robert wailed.

There was laughter at this, a further lifting of spirits as troop commanders continued to report of the day's successes. Hood rode up, weary but still elated over what he called ”the most beautiful battle scene I have ever beheld.” When Lee, adopting the bantering tone he often used in addressing the blond young man, asked what had become of the enemy, Hood replied that his Texans had driven them ”almost at a double-quick” across Bull Run. He added that it had been a wonderful sight to see the Confederate battle flags ”dancing after the Federals as they ran in full retreat.” Lee dropped his jesting manner and said gravely, ”G.o.d forbid I should ever live to see our colors moving in the opposite direction.”

While Lee was at Groveton, composing the dispatch to Davis, Pope was at Centerville, composing one to Halleck. All things being considered, the two were by no means as different as might have been expected.

We have had a terrific battle again today.... Under all the circ.u.mstances, both horses and men having been two days without food, and the enemy greatly outnumbering us, I thought it best to draw back to this place at dark. The movement has been made in perfect order and without loss. The troops are in good heart, and marched off the field without the least hurry or confusion.... Do not be uneasy. We will hold our own here.... p.s. We have lost nothing; neither guns nor wagons.

Of the several inaccuracies here involved (one being the comparison of forces; Lee had had 50,000 men engaged, while Pope had had 60,000-exclusive of Banks, who was guarding his trains) the greatest, perhaps, was the one in which he declared that his troops were ”in good heart.” It was true that, after the first wild scramble for an exit, they had steadied and retired in column, under cover of the rear-guard action on Henry Hill; but their spirits were in fact so far from being high that they could scarcely have been lower. If Pope did not know the extent of his defeat, his men did. They agreed with the verdict later handed down by one of their corps historians, that Pope ”had been kicked, cuffed, hustled about, knocked down, run over, and trodden upon as rarely happens in the history of war. His communications had been cut; his headquarters pillaged; a corps had marched into his rear, and had encamped at its ease upon the railroad by which he received his supplies; he had been beaten or foiled in every attempt he had made to 'bag' those defiant intruders; and, in the end, he was glad to find a refuge in the intrenchments of Was.h.i.+ngton, whence he had sallied forth, six weeks before, breathing out threatenings and slaughter.”

They agreed with this in all its harshness, but just now what they mainly were was sullen. They had fought well and they knew it. Defeat had come, not because they were outfought, but because they were outgeneraled-or misgeneraled. As one of their number put it, ”All knew and felt that as soldiers we had not had a fair chance.” The fault, they believed, was Pope's; he had ”acted like a dunderpate.” And McDowell's; he had revived their suspicions by repeating his past performance on this field. ”General McDowell was viewed as a traitor by a large majority of the officers and men,” one diarist wrote, adding: ”Thousands of soldiers firmly believed that their lives would be purposely wasted if they obeyed his orders in the time of the conflict.” The story was told that one of his regiments had stepped gingerly up to the firing line, loosed a random volley, then turned and made for the rear, the men shouting over their shoulders as they ran: ”You can't play it on us!” Slogging tonight through the drizzle of rain, they saw him sitting his horse beside the pike, identifiable in the murk because of the outlandish silhouette of his canvas helmet. One Ma.s.sachusetts private nudged another, pointing, and said darkly: ”How guilty he looks, with that basket on his head!”

Pope, too, came in for his share of abuse. ”Open sneering at General Pope was heard on all sides,” one veteran observed. Another, pa.s.sing the luckless commander by the roadside, hailed him with a quote from Horace Greeley: ”Go west, young man! Go west!” Perhaps this had something to do with changing his mind as to the state of his men's hearts. At any rate, when morning came-Sunday, August 31-he wired Halleck: ”Our troops are...much used-up and worn-out,” and he spoke of giving the enemy ”as desperate a fight as I can force our men to stand up to.” Franklin's corps had come up the night before, in time to establish a straggler line in front of Centerville; Sumner too was at hand, giving Pope 20,000 fresh troops with which to oppose the rebels. But his confidence was ebbing. He told Halleck, ”I should like to know whether you feel secure about Was.h.i.+ngton should this army be destroyed. I shall fight it as long as a man will stand up to the work. You must judge what is to be done, having in view the safety of the capital.”

No sooner had he sent this, however, than a reply to last night's rosy message bucked him up again. ”My Dear General: You have done n.o.bly,” Halleck wired. ”Don't yield another inch if you can avoid it.” Pope thanked him for this ”considerate commendation” and pa.s.sed along the encouraging news that ”Ewell is killed. Jackson is badly wounded.... The plan of the enemy will undoubtedly be to turn my flank. If he does so he will have his hands full.” Meanwhile, Franklin's soldiers mocked and taunted the bedraggled Army of Virginia, jeering along the straggler line at its ”new route” to Richmond. Overnight, Pope's confidence took another sickening drop. Three hours after sunrise, September 1, he got off another long dispatch to Halleck. After a bold beginning-”All was quiet yesterday and so far this morning. My men are resting; they need it much.... I shall attack again tomorrow if I can; the next day certainly”-he pa.s.sed at once to darker matters: ”I think it my duty to call your attention to the unsoldierly and dangerous conduct of many brigade and some division commanders of the forces sent here from the Peninsula. Every word and act and intention is discouraging, and calculated to break down the spirits of the men and produce disaster.” In the light of this, he closed with a recommendation that ran counter to the intention expressed at the outset: ”My advice to you-I give it with freedom, as I know you will not misunderstand it-is that, in view of any satisfactory results, you draw back this army to the intrenchments in front of Was.h.i.+ngton, and set to work in that secure place to reorganize and rearrange it. You may avoid great disaster by doing so.”

While waiting to see what would come of this, he found that Jackson (who was no more wounded than Ewell was dead) was in the act of fulfilling his prediction that Lee would try to turn his flank. Stonewall's men had crossed Bull Run at Sudley Springs, then moved north to the Little River Turnpike, which led southeast to Fairfax Courthouse, eight miles in the Union rear. Pope pulled the troops of Phil Kearny and Brigadier General I. I. Stevens, who commanded Burnside's other division under Reno, out of their muddy camps and sent them slogging northward to intercept the rebel column. They did so, late that afternoon. There beside the pike, around a mansion called Chantilly, a wild fight took place during a thunderstorm so violent that it drowned the roar of cannon. Jackson's march had been slow; consequently he was in a grim and savage humor. In the rain-lashed confusion, when one of his colonels requested that his men be withdrawn because their cartridges were too wet to ignite, the reply came back: ”My compliments to Colonel Blank, and tell him the enemy's ammunition is just as wet as his.”

This spirit was matched on the Federal side by Kearny, who dashed from point to point, his empty sleeve flapping as he rode with the reins clamped in his teeth in order to have his one arm free to gesture with his saber, hoicking his troops up to the firing line and holding them there by showing no more concern for bullets than he did for raindrops. His prescription for success in leading men in battle was a simple one; ”You must never be afraid of anything,” he had told a young lieutenant two days ago. Stevens followed his example, and between them they made Stonewall call a halt. The firing continued into early darkness, when on A. P. Hill's front the men were surprised to see a Union general come riding full-tilt toward them, suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. They called on him to surrender, but he whirled his mount, leaning forward onto its withers with his arm around its neck, and tried to gallop away in the confusion. They fired a volley that unhorsed him, and when they went out to pick him up they found that he was dead, lying one-armed in the mud, the back of his coat and the seat of his trousers torn by bullets. They brought his body into their lines. ”Poor Kearny,” Hill said, looking down at him. ”He deserved a better death than that.”

Stevens too was dead by now, shot while leading a charge, and the Federals fell back down the pike and through the woods. They did so more from being disheartened by the loss of their leaders, however, than from being pressed; Jackson did not pursue. Thus ended the Battle of Chantilly, a rain-swept drama with off-stage thunder, vivid flashes of lightning, and an epilogue supplied next morning by Lee, who sent Kearny's body forward under a flag of truce, ”thinking that the possession of his remains may be a consolation to his family.”

Pope by then was back at Fairfax, within twenty miles of Was.h.i.+ngton, having received from Halleck the instructions he had sought: ”You will bring your forces as best you can within or near the line of fortification.” As the army retreated-”by squads, companies, and broken parts of regiments and brigades,” according to one enlisted diarist-its commander lost the final vestige of his former boldness. ”The straggling is awful in the regiments from the Peninsula,” he complained to Halleck. ”Unless something can be done to restore tone to this army it will melt away before you know it.” This was a new and different Pope, a Pope not unlike a sawdust doll with most of its stuffing leaked away. A surgeon who looked through a headquarters window the previous evening saw him so: ”He sat with his chair tipped back against the wall, his hands clasped behind his head, which bent forward, his chin touching his breast-seeming to pay no attention to the generals as they arrived, but to be wholly wrapped in his own gloomy reflections.” The doctor wrote long afterward, and being a kind-hearted man, who had dealt with much misery in his life, he added: ”I pitied him then. I pity him now.”

It was perhaps the only pity felt for him by anyone in the whole long weary column slogging its way eastward. Last night's thunderstorm had deepened the mud along the pike, and overhead a scud of clouds obscured the sun, which shed an eerie yellow light upon the sodden fields. In a way, though, the weather was fitting, matching as it did the mood of the retreat. ”Everyone you met had an unwashed, sleepy, downcast aspect,” one officer observed, ”and looked as if he would like to hide his head somewhere from all the world.” Now that the immediate danger was past, a still worse reaction of sullenness had set in among the troops, whose mistrust of Pope quite balanced his expressed mistrust of them. As one colonel put it, ”No salutary fear kept them in the ranks, and many gave way to the temptation to take a rest.... There was everywhere along the road the greatest confusion. Infantry and cavalry, artillery and wagons, all hurried on pell mell, in the midst of rallying cries of officers and calls and oaths of the men.”

Banks had come up from Bristoe Station, bringing the army's wagons with him though he had been obliged to put the torch to all the locomotives and freight cars loaded with stores and munitions from Warrenton and other points below the wreckage of Broad Run bridge. His corps, having seen no fighting since Cedar Mountain, was a.s.signed the rear guard duty, which consisted mainly of prodding frazzled stragglers back into motion and gathering up abandoned equipment littered along the roadside. At the head of the column-miles away, for the various units were badly strung out, clotted in places and gapped in others as a result of accordion action-rode Pope and McDowell, attended by their staffs and followed closely by the lead division, formerly King's but now under Brigadier General John P. Hatch, who had succeeded the ailing King. That afternoon the sun came out, but it did little to revive the downcast marchers: least of all Hatch, who had more cause for gloom than most. He had commanded a cavalry brigade, that being the arm of service he preferred, until Pope relieved him for inefficiency and transferred him to the infantry. So Hatch had this to brood over, in addition to the events of the past few days. Then suddenly, up ahead, he saw something that made him forget his and the army's troubles.

Off to one side loomed Munson's Hill, which Joe Johnston had held with a dummy gun last winter. From its crown, Hatch knew, you could see the dome of the Capitol. But what engaged his attention just now was a small group of hors.e.m.e.n coming down the road toward Pope and McDowell: particularly the man in front, who rode a large black horse and wore a vivid yellow sash about his waist. Hatch thought there was something familiar about the trim and dapper way he sat his charger. Then, as the man reined to a halt in front of the two generals, returning their salutes with one of his own which ”seemed to carry a little of personal good fellows.h.i.+p to even the humblest private soldier,” Hatch knew the unbelievable was true; it was Little Mac. He spurred ahead in time to hear McClellan tell Pope and McDowell he had been authorized to take command of the army. Off to the left rear just then there was a sudden thumping of artillery, dim in the distance. What was that? McClellan asked. Pope said it was probably an attack on Sumner, whose corps was guarding the flank in that direction. Then he inquired if there would be any objection if he and McDowell rode on toward Was.h.i.+ngton. None at all, McClellan replied; but as for himself, he was riding toward the sound of gunfire.

Before the two could resume their journey, Hatch took advantage of the chance to revenge the wrong he believed had been done when his cavalry brigade was taken from him the month before. Trotting back to the head of his infantry column, within easy hearing distance of Pope and McDowell, he shouted: ”Boys, McClellan is in command of the army again! Three cheers!” The result, after an instant of shock while the words sank in, was pandemonium. Caps and knapsacks went sailing high in the air, and men who a moment ago had been too weary and dispirited to do anything more than plant one leaden foot in front of the other were cheering themselves hoa.r.s.e, capering about, and slapping each other joyfully on the back. ”From an extreme sadness,” one Ma.s.sachusetts volunteer recalled, ”we pa.s.sed in a twinkling to a delirium of delight. A deliverer had come.” This was the reaction all down the column as the news traveled back along its length, pausing at the gaps between units, then being taken up again, moving westward like a spark along a ten-mile train of powder.

Such demonstrations were not restricted to green troops, volunteers likely to leap at every rumor. Sykes' regulars, for example, were far back toward the rear and did not learn of the change till after nightfall. They were taking a rest-halt, boiling coffee in a roadside field, when an officer on picket duty saw by starlight the familiar figure astride Dan Webster coming down the pike. ”Colonel! Colonel!” he hollered, loud enough to be heard all over the area, ”General McClellan is here!” Within seconds every man was on his feet and cheering, raising what one of them called ”such a hurrah as the Army of the Potomac had never heard before. Shout upon shout went out into the stillness of the night; and as it was taken up along the road and repeated by regiment, brigade, division and corps, we could hear the roar dying away in the distance. The effect of this man's presence upon the Army of the Potomac-in suns.h.i.+ne or rain, in darkness or in daylight, in victory or defeat-was electrical.” Hard put for words to account for the delirium thus provoked, he could only add that it was ”too wonderful to make it worth while attempting to give a reason for it.”

Nor was the enthusiasm limited to veterans of Little Mac's own army, men who had fought under him before. When Gibbon announced the new commander's arrival to the survivors of the Iron Brigade, they too reacted with unrestrained delight, tossing their hats and breaking ranks to jig and whoop, just as the Peninsula boys were doing. Later that night, Gibbon remembered afterward, ”the weary, f.a.gged men went into camp cheerful and happy, to talk over their rough experience of the past three weeks and speculate as to what was ahead.”

It was Lincoln's doing, his alone, and he had done it against the will of a majority of his advisers. Chase believed that the time had come, beyond all doubt, when ”either the government or McClellan must go down,” and Stanton had prepared and was soliciting cabinet signatures for an ultimatum demanding ”the immediate removal of George B. McClellan from any command in the armies of the United States.” When Welles protested that such a doc.u.ment showed little consideration for their chief, the War Secretary bristled and said coldly: ”I know of no particular obligation I am under to the President. He called me to a difficult position and imposed on me labors and responsibilities which no man could carry.” Already he had secured four signatures-his own, Chase's, Bates', and Smith's-and was working hard for more (Welles and Blair were obdurate, and Seward was still out of town) when, on the morning of this same September 2, he came fuming into the room where his colleagues were waiting for Lincoln to arrive and open the meeting. It was a time of strain. Reports of Pope's defeat had caused Stanton to call out the government clerks, order the contents of the a.r.s.enal s.h.i.+pped to New York, and forbid the retail sale of spirituous liquors in the city. Now came the climactic blow as he announced, in a choked voice, the rumor that McClellan had been appointed to conduct the defense of Was.h.i.+ngton.

The effect was stunning: a sort of reversal of what would happen later that day along the blue column plodding east from Fairfax. Just as Chase was declaring that, if true, this would ”prove a national calamity,” Lincoln came in and confirmed the rumor. That was why he was late for the meeting, he explained. He and Halleck had just come from seeing McClellan and ordering him to a.s.sume command of the armies roundabout the capital. Stanton broke in, trembling as he spoke: ”No order to that effect has been issued from the War Department.” Lincoln turned and faced him. ”The order is mine,” he said, ”and I will be responsible for it to the country.”

Four nights ago he had gone to bed confident that the army had won a great victory on the plains of Mana.s.sas: a triumph which, according to Pope, would be enlarged when he took up the pursuit of Jackson's fleeing remnant. Overnight, however, word arrived that it was Pope who was in retreat, not Stonewall, and Lincoln came into his secretary's room next morning, long-faced and discouraged. ”Well, John, we are whipped again, I am afraid,” he said. All day the news got worse as details of the fiasco trickled through the screen of confusion. Halleck was a weak prop to lean on; Lincoln by now had observed that his general in chief was ”little more than...a first-rate clerk.” What was worse, he was apt to break down under pressure; which was presently what happened. Before the night was over, Old Brains appealed to McClellan at Alexandria: ”I beg of you to a.s.sist me in this crisis with your ability and experience. I am utterly tired out.”

Lincoln's mind was also turning in Little Mac's direction, although not without reluctance. Unquestionably, it appeared to him, McClellan had acted badly in regard to Pope. One of his subordinates had even been quoted as saying publicly, ”I don't care for John Pope a pinch of owl dung.” It seemed to Lincoln that they had wanted Pope to fail, no matter what it cost in the blood of northern soldiers. McClellan, when appealed to for counsel, had advised the President to concentrate all the reserves in the capital intrenchments and ”leave Pope to get out of his sc.r.a.pe” as best he could. To Lincoln this seemed particularly callous, if not crazy; his mistrust of the Young Napoleon was increased. But early Tuesday morning, when Pope warned that ”unless something can be done to restore tone to this army it will melt away before you know it,” he did what he knew he had to do. ”We must use what tools we have,” he told his secretary. ”There is no man in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops of ours into shape half as well as [McClellan].... If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.”

So he went to him and told him to return to the army whose wounded were already beginning to pour into the city. And that afternoon, despite the howls of the cabinet-Stanton was squelched, but Chase was sputtering, ”I cannot but feel that giving command to McClellan is equivalent to giving Was.h.i.+ngton to the rebels”-Lincoln had Halleck issue the formal order: ”Major General McClellan will have command of the fortifications of Was.h.i.+ngton and of all the troops for the defense of the capital.” This left Pope to be disposed of, which was done three days later. ”The Armies of the Potomac and Virginia being consolidated,” he was told by dispatch, ”you will report for orders to the Secretary of War.” Reporting as ordered, he found himself a.s.signed to duty against the Sioux, who had lately risen in Minnesota. From his headquarters in St Paul, where he was settled before the month was out, Pope protested vehemently against the injustice of being ”banished to a remote and unimportant command.” But there he stayed, for the duration.

Two Advances; Two Retreats

ON THE DAY LEE WRECKED POPE ON THE plains of Mana.s.sas, driving him headlong across Bull Run to begin his scamper for the Was.h.i.+ngton intrenchments, Kirby Smith accomplished in Kentucky the nearest thing to a Cannae ever scored by any general, North or South, in the course of the whole war. This slas.h.i.+ng blow, the first struck in the two-p.r.o.nged offensive Bragg had designed to recover for the Confederacy all that had been lost by his predecessors, was delivered in accordance with Smith's precept, announced at the outset, that ”brilliant results...will be accomplished only with hard fighting.”

Accordingly, on August 25, after a week's rest at Barbourville, he had resumed his northward march. There were 21,000 men in his four divisions, but the largest of these-9000-strong; the others had about 4000 each-remained in front of c.u.mberland Gap, observing the 9000 Federals who held it, while the rest continued their advance toward the Bluegra.s.s. Meanwhile this was still the barrens, which meant that water was scarce, the going rough, and people in general unfriendly. This last might well have been based on fear, however, for the appearance of the marchers, whether they came as ”liberators” or ”invaders,” struck at least one citizen as anything but prepossessing: ”[They were] ragged, greasy, and dirty, and some barefoot, and looked more like the bipeds of pandemonium than beings of this earth.... They surrounded our wells like the locusts of Egypt and struggled with each other for the water as if peris.h.i.+ng with thirst, and they thronged our kitchen doors and windows, begging for bread like hungry wolves.... They tore the loaves and pies into fragments and devoured them. Some even threatened to shoot others if they did not divide with them.” (”Notwithstanding such a motley crew,” the alarmed observer added with relief, ”they abstained from any violence or depredation and appeared exceedingly grateful.”) As a supplement to what could be cadged in this manner, they gathered apples and roasting ears from roadside orchards and fields, eating them raw on the march with liberal sprinklings of salt, a large supply of which had been procured at Barbourville. Spirits were high and there was much joking, up and down the column. CSA, they said, stood for ”Corn, Salt, and Apples.”

No matter how much horseplay went on within the column itself, pa.s.sing through London on the 27th the men continued to obey their commander's insistence upon ”the most perfect decorum of conduct toward the citizens and their property.” Two days later, by way of reward for good behavior, they climbed Big Hill, the northern rim of the barrens, and saw spread out before them, like the promised land of old, the lush and lovely region called the Bluegra.s.s. Years afterward, Smith would remember it as it was today, ”a long rolling landscape, mellowing under the early autumn rays,” and would add that when it ”burst upon our sight we were astonished and enchanted.” However, there was little time for undisturbed enjoyment of the Pisgah view. Up ahead, near the hamlet of Rogersville, seven miles short of Richmond, the princ.i.p.al settlement this side of the Kentucky River, the cavalry encountered resistance and was driven back upon the infantry. This was a sundown affair, soon ended by darkness. Although he did not know the enemy strength, Smith was not displeased at this development; for it indicated that the Federals would make a stand here in the open, rather than along the natural line of defense afforded by the bluffs of the river eight miles beyond Richmond. Earlier that week he had written Bragg that he would ”fight everything that presents itself,” and now, having issued instructions for his men to sleep on their arms in line of battle, he prepared to do just that at dawn. After more than a hundred miles of marching, they were about to be required to prove their right to be where they were and-if they won-to penetrate farther into what Smith would call the ”long rolling landscape.”

The bluecoats slept in line of battle, too, and there were about 7000 of them. They were under William Nelson, whom Buell had sent north two weeks ago, a month after his promotion to major general, to take charge of the defense of his native Kentucky. ”The credit of the selection will be mine,” Buell had told him. ”The honor of success will be yours.” Nelson was of a sanguine nature-”ardent, loud-mouthed, and violent,” a fellow officer called him-but by now, having completed a tour of inspection of what he had to work with, he was not so sure that either credit or success, let alone honor, was very likely to come his way as a res

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