A Place Called Appomattox

5. The Crusade

5 THE CRUSADE The armies strode mightily over Virginia’s landscape that spring. Fearing that stronger Union forces could easily slip around his Manassas defenses , General Joseph Johnston decided to withdraw to a safer position near Richmond, and early in March Confederate soldiers began filing out of their winter camps. Instead of pushing ahead to dog Johnston’s withdrawal , Union commander George McClellan began ferrying most of his army down Chesapeake Bay to Fort Monroe, at the tip of the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. That peninsula, ever after capitalized by veterans as the Peninsula, led straight to Richmond. The Yankees bluffed for a time, leaving the impression that their movement to Fort Monroe amounted to a feint so the Confederates would feel obliged to divide their forces between the two fronts. For a time Johnston did just that, holding his main body on the Rappahannock while detachments contained the host at the tip of the Peninsula. At the same time, Stonewall Jackson started maneuvering in the Shenandoah Valley with an independent force, tying up additional Union troops. Early in April, however, McClellan started his gargantuan army up the Peninsula, and Richmond authorities scrambled to meet it. George Abbitt’s company of the 46th Virginia stood among the first to confront the Union advance. Rejuvenated with the spring recruits, several companies of that regiment lay waiting for orders at Richmond after the February fiasco on Roanoke Island, and the momentarily orphaned battalion had already been ordered to Yorktown by the time McClellan’s vanguard left Fort Monroe. John Magruder, a brigadier with barely 10,000 men under his command, faced McClellan’s entire army below Yorktown, and the depleted 46th Virginia offered some of his first reinforcements. The Appomattox Grays of the 18th Virginia had lagged behind on the withdrawal from Manassas, and came along a few days later, while the Appomattox Rangers remained on the line of the Rappahannock with the 2nd Virginia Cavalry, screening that front after Joe Johnston pulled back to face McClellan. James Robertson’s company, also swollen with new recruits, lay in camp near Richmond as McClellan’s army gathered at Fort Monroe. The War Department had decided to detach the company from the 44th Virginia and transform it into heavy artillery; with the Union army concentrating at Old Point Comfort, it seemed likely that Norfolk and the navy yard would come under attack, so Robertson took up his veterans and his recruits for service there.1 Johnston’s army marched through the capital to meet the enemy, stalling the Federal advance for weeks. Through the rest of April McClellan encircled Yorktown with siege artillery, and not until early May did he force the outnumbered Confederates to give up the old town where, just eight decades before, the last British army had surrendered to Washington . Johnston began backpedaling to Richmond, unable to do more than delay his opponent while looking for a chance to strike him a fatal blow. A sharp fight at Williamsburg produced a few dozen casualties in the 18th Virginia on May 5, as McClellan tried to harry Johnston’s rear guard, but from there it was a steady retreat to Richmond. As the sprawling Union army crept up the swampy Peninsula, alarmed Confederate authorities again hastened to mobilize enough men to stop it. They abandoned Norfolk, and brought that city’s defenders to the capital, among them James Robertson’s new heavy artillerymen. Given its reputation for stationary duty, barracks housing, and reliable meals, heavy artillery became a popular arm of the service that spring, as the conscription law went into effect. Two of the three straggling patriots who enlisted from Appomattox County in April chose a heavy artillery regiment, including Drury Woodson the younger, who had given up teaching school to be a Baptist preacher but now faced conscription. Richmond needed heavy artillerists at the moment, for great earthen batteries surrounded the city, and their guns required a certain amount of skill that the infantry did not demand. Within a few weeks, Captain Robertson’s company was assigned to the brand-new 20th Virginia Battalion of Heavy Artillery, with a permanent (and not uncomfortable) assignment to a new fort below the capital.2 No one looked forward to any easy duty just now, though, and the War Department wanted as many bodies as it could collect for what promised { t h e c r u s a d e } 105 [18.226.222.12] Project...