Major General J.E.B. Stuart’s chief of staff described the strength of Pendleton’s commanding position in a letter written the following week: “Pendleton had some guns on the tremendous cliff overlooking the Ford, which is a very bad & rough one.” Despite that strategic position, Pendleton lost track of his forces and lost control of the situation. Entirely unfamiliar with infantry operations, and primarily an artillery bureaucrat instead of a fighting artillerist, “the minister-artillerist” (as Douglas Freeman called him in describing the fiasco) panicked. Pendleton assumed that all had been lost. He headed disconsolately rearward, finally reaching Lee’s headquarters “past midnight.” In Pendleton’s own crestfallen words, Lee “was of course disturbed.”

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Civil War Times magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

A member of Lee’s staff who had been aroused by the hubbub described Pendleton’s report much more vividly: “The first announcement was, that the enemy had taken the heights, and captured ALL of the guns. ‘All,’ said the General. ‘Yes, General, I fear, all.’ This announcement lifted me right off my blanket, and I moved away, fearful I might betray my feelings.” To the aide’s amazement, however, Lee “exhibited no temper, made no reproach.”

To everyone’s relief, the staff officer concluded, the gallantry of an unnamed subordinate officer “had saved the command, and [Pendleton] had been premature in his report.” But before the true state of affairs became known in Lee’s camp, the army seemed in imminent peril. A member of General D.H. Hill’s staff saw Lee “pacing restlessly before his tent and showing great agitation” during the crisis, and said of the commanding general, “I never saw a man more confused.”

Before the extent of Pendleton’s exaggeration could be ascertained, Lee sent a worried dispatch to Jefferson Davis in Richmond on the morning of the 20th: “From General Pendleton’s report after midnight, I fear much of his reserve artillery has been captured. I am now obliged to return to Shepherdstown….”

Obviously discomfited, Pendleton wrote an immensely detailed apologia by way of an official report. It runs longer than Jackson’s report for his entire corps, nearly twice as long as Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s, and nearly as long as Lee’s. Pendleton’s pleading tone and flowery language at best sound embarrassed to a modern ear.

Despite Lee’s magnificent poise in the face of apparent disaster, his chagrin over Pendleton’s ineptitude is apparent in the wording of a letter he wrote two weeks later. In directing Pendleton to a routine position well away from danger, Lee explained punctiliously, “you will still be accessible to the points I have named, and perfectly safe by exercising care and attention.” Having heard that Pendleton’s health remained “indifferent,” Lee told his subordinate that “relaxation might benefit you,” and also suggested he might want to take a furlough for health reasons.

In a letter to his wife about the disaster, Pendleton displayed astonishing, and utterly inaccurate, optimism about the army’s reaction. Although the letter hints at some personal embarrassment, the general insisted: “No blame that I ever heard of is attached to me by any body. On the contrary, it is felt, I think, that with the means at my disposal, a great deal was accomplished.”

Another letter home a few weeks later, however, suggests that the general may have come to recognize his own incapacity in the field. In it he enjoined his wife and family to “join me in special prayer for divine guidance—as to what God would have me do. May not my mission as a soldier have been fulfilled in two campaigns? May it not be my sacred duty…to resume exclusively the sword of the Spirit?”

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to