USA > New Jersey > New Jersey and the rebellion : a history of the service of the troops and people of New Jersey in aid of the Union cause, Pt. 2 > Part 39
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troop was superior to any other in the army ; but being taken by General Scott as his body-guard, no opportunity for personal dis- tinction was offered until the battle of Cherubusco, fought at the very gates of Mexico. At this battle, in order to avoid being flanked, General Scott had given up his escort and retired upon his center, having first detached Captain Kearney for " general service." That officer was not slow in seizing the first opportunity which offered to strike a telling blow. The enemy being discovered in retreat, the cavalry were ordered to pursue. At the point in ques- tion, Mexico is approached by a narrow causeway, crossing a deep marsh, which flanks it on either side. Along this causeway the Mexicans fled in great disorder, seeking the protection of the gates and of a battery which guarded them. Kearney, getting upon this causeway, and discovering the battery, saw at once that his safety lay in pushing desperately forward, giving the enemy no opportu- nity to rally. . Upon that conviction he acted. An officer was sent to command his return, but hurriedly indicating his situation, Captain Kearney was permitted to continue the charge, rushing up to the gate itself, sabering all who resisted. Upon retiring, he was fired upon by the enemy, who had now somewhat recovered, and here had his left arm shot away by a shower of grape.
For his gallantry in this action Captain Kearney was promoted to be Major. In 1850-52, he was employed in California and Oregon against the Indian tribes. Then, resigning his commission, he traveled extensively throughout Europe and the East, making · his residence in Paris-only returning to this country for a short time at various periods. In 1859, during the Italian war, he was attached as Aid-de-camp to the staff of General Morris, command- ing the cavalry of the Guard, and was present, under fire, at the battle of Solferino. In consideration of his services in this cam- paign, the Emperor Napoleon III conferred on him the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
At length the slaveholders' rebellion, so long plotted, flowered into open, actual hostilities. Instantly Major Kearney, abandon- ing the luxury and congenial ease of his continental life, hastened to tender his sword to his Government. Arriving in this country
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early in the spring of 1861, he applied to General Scott for employ- ment, and at his instance sought a commission first from the Gov- ernor of New York. Failing there, jostled aside by political intriguers who no more comprehended the magnitude of the strug- gle than they cared for the principles at stake, he turned away in dis- gust-burning to serve the country but absolutely denied the privi- lege. Fortunately, a prominent Jerseyman hearing of his arrival in America, interceded in his behalf with the authorities of the State, urging his appointment to the command of the First Brigade, then forming for the field. But weeks passed, and the appointment was not made. At length the disaster of the first Bull Run startled the people and their rulers into a truer conception of the work before them, and then, when the need of officers of the highest attainments became so obvious as no longer to admit of doubt, Major Kearney, still panting for the fray, willing to lead a regiment or take even a subordinate command, was made Brigadier-General of Volunteers.1
The story of his connection with the First Jersey Brigade has more than once been rehearsed. His talents as an organizer, his fervid enthusiasm for his profession, his close study of the art of war, his intuitive perception of character, his strategic genius, his generosity and lavish expenditure of his large wealth in order to promote the efficiency of his command-all these qualities from the outset distinguished his career. In a little time, his brigade was confessedly the best disciplined in the army. Keeping ever before his command the fact that the duty of the soldier was to fight, pushing them forward into the van of the army, he made them active and vigilant, and when at last opportunity came, they, of all the army, were fully prepared to meet it.
The autumn passed; the army grew daily stronger ; but nothing
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I The spirit with which General Kearney entered the army, may be inferred from the following extract from a letter written by him shortly after taking command of the First Brigade. After speaking of the difficulties experienced in organizing and disciplining the troops, he continued : "But I ought not to complain of this. My position here was not an ambition, but I felt that I was paying an early debt I owed to the country. My only hope is, not to live, but that I may not be killed early in an engagement. If I am not, New Jersey shall have no cause to be ashamed of me."
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was done. McClellan was planning, halting, doubting. The Nation cried for action, still trusting to the god it had set up. But Kearney was not long in seeing the truth as to the Command- ing General," and he expressed it, not insubordinately but confi- dentially, and with many cautious and generous hopes that he might be mistaken. In October, 1861, he writes : " I see a vacil- lation in his great objects-allowing small objects to intrude." In February, 1862, he writes that early in the previous September the enemy might have been easily manœuvered out of Manassas, but for inefficiency at headquarters. In March, he speaks yet more decidedly : " Although there is no one exactly to replace McClellan, I now proclaim distinctly that unless a Chief, a live officer, not an engineer, of military prestige (success under fire with troops), is put in command of the Army of the Potomac (leaving Mcclellan the bureau duties of General-in-Chief), we will come in for some terrible disaster." Later, when, as is detailed in the narrative of the First Brigade, he had advanced upon and occupied Manassas,3 McClellan's neglect to take advantage of the success and follow up the retreating enemy, completely satisfied General Kearney of his incompetency. From that time nothing could change his opinion. "The stupid fact is," he writes March 17, 1862, " that not content with letting me or others push after the panic-stricken enemy, fighting him a big battle and ending the war-for his panic promised us sure success-McClellan, so power- ful with figures but weak with men, has brought us all back. It is so like our good old nursery story, 'The King of France, with twice ten thousand men, marched up the hill and then marched down again.' The result will be that in Southern character they will more than recuperate, more than think us afraid of a real
" Address of Mr. Cortlandt Parker before the New Jersey Historical Society. We are indebted to this admirable address for many of the facts furnished in this sketch as to General Kearney's opinion of men and measures.
: General Kearney announced this event to the Adjutant-General of the army as follows:
" The Third New Jersey Volunteers, under Colonel Taylor, occupied Manassas and planted the United States flag at the main fort, at the Junction, at half-past nine o'clock, a. m., March 11th, arriving by Union Mills and the line of the railroad. They understood from the occupants and citizens that they were the first troops to enter."
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stand-up fight, meet us at the preferred points, possibly play ugly tricks at the Capital, and non-plus or force us to fight with the worst of chances against us; and all this because Mcclellan, out of confidence since his failure at Ball's Bluff, despairing of a direct attack on Manassas, having invented with the aid of engineers the plan of turning the enemy by a sea route, instead of availing him- self of the good luck of the enemy's retreat-thinks that he must still adhere to his sea plan. Like the over-stuffed glutton who thinks he must cram because he has on hand an 'embarras de richesess.'" At a later date, writing upon the same subject, General Kearney says : "It would have been so beautiful to have pushed after the enemy, and in doing so, isolate Fredericksburg, carry it easily, occupy that road, and thus turn those river batteries, all the while near enough to Washington in case of any attempt upon it."
The meaning of these criticisms is plain. Some two hundred . thousand men lay at that time around Washington. The rebel force was barely forty thousand. What hindered our advance- why was it not made ? Kearney could not comprehend this delay and inactivity ; he believed in action; he knew that a direct advance would have been overwhelming. No measures, indeed, could have resisted it. Success, complete and overwhelming, must have crowned such a movement.
During the month of March, General Kearney was tendered com- mand of a division vacated by the promotion of General Sumner to a corps. General Kearney was only too glad to accept, but desiring to carry his brigade with him, and being refused, he promptly declined the proposed command, and, while ranking many Division Generals, generously remained with his brigade.' The act was characteristic, but it deepened his hold upon the men, and the scene of enthusiasm upon his return to camp, after having declined to leave his command, was one never to be forgotten.
4 In a letter dated March 19, 1862, addressed to General Seth Williams, General Kearney said : " A few days since, the General-in-Chief honored me by appointing me to command a division, transferring me without my brigade. . My duties as a volunteer General to those with whose welfare I had linked myself, appeared to me paramount, and I declined the same. In all truthfulness I asserted utter abnegation of self in this war."
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One who was with him, still tells how even his eyes filled with tears as he rode down the welcoming lines, saluted with peal upon peal of cheers.
The services of General Kearney in the Peninsula campaign have passed into history. Just before reaching Yorktown, a vacan- cy occurred in a division of Heintzleman's Corps. The division being actually under fire, he felt bound to assume at once the posi- tion to which he was ordered, and with a grief which he could not conceal, he laid down his command of the Jersey troops (April 30th), and thenceforward ceased to be known as their General. But his thought, down to the hour of his death, was ever with them, and in every engagement his concern for their welfare, and his solicitude for their success, was no less earnest and profound than for the reputation of his own immediate command." The losses of the brigade at Gaines' Mills, where the Division General failed to appear on the field, he never ceased to deplore, nor did he hesitate to denounce in vehement terms the unaccountable derelic- tion of the offending commander.
In all the battles of the Peninsula campaign, General Kearney displayed conspicuous bravery and skill. Three days after he assumed command, he participated in the battle of Williamsburg, coming to the support of Hooker and his New Jersey troops at a most critical moment, and handsomely saving the army from dis- aster. He entered this battle with five regiments, going in at double quick, the band playing and Kearney moving impetuously far in advance of the little column. At another time, he led two companies to the charge to drive back the sharpshooters of the enemy, and during the whole engagement he displayed a coolness, discrimination and courage which elicited the admiration of all
s Next to his sense of the disgrace inflicted upon the army at large, and the coun- try, by the retreat which he so severely denounced, was his grief at the losses and almost ruin of his pet Jersey Brigade, upon whose fate he ever looked with parental anxiety. "I am sickened," he writes in a letter of July 24th, " by the false- uess of the times, and the gratuitous sacrifice of the Jersey Brigade is enough to make me so. Why did not their Division General go to command in person? It was his own part of the division (Slocum's). It was half of his provisional corps, and surely why not place it in the fight, even if he did no more?"-Mr. Parker's Address.
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beholders." In the battle of Fair Oaks, his division again achieved distinction, saving the army from utter wreck after the headlong stampede of Casey's Division. In the fight of the second day, his troops, with those of Hooker, again beat back the exultant enemy, driving him broken and crippled from the field, and had Mcclellan vigorously pursued his advantage, he might without doubt have marched, at the conclusion of this engagement, straight into Rich- mond, already smitten and trembling with fear.7 Both Hooker and Kearney were earnest, not only in conviction, but in request- ing that they might pursue the enemy and capture his Capital ; but McClellan was still timid and undecided, and not perhaps really knowing his own mind or the actual facts of the situation, refused permission, and once more the fruits of victory were lost. General Kearney, his impatience.deepened still more by this fresh exhibi- tion of incompetency, did not hesitate to speak his mind in refer- ence to the whole subject, characterizing, as it deserved, the weak vacillation of the commanding General. In a letter written three
6 Chaplain Marks, in his aecount of this battle, in his interesting work, " The Penin- sula Campaign," says :
"And now Kearney performed one of those brilliant feats which made him the model soldier of his division. In order to disclose to his troops the concealed position of the enemy, and to exhaust their fire, he announeed his determination to ride in front of the enemy's lines. Surrounded by his aids and officers he dashed out into the open field, and as if on parade, leisurely galloped along the entire front. Five thousand guns were pointed at him, the balls fell around him like hail, two of his aids dropped dead at his side, and before he reached the end he was almost alone. He secured by this hazardous exploit what he aimed to accomplish, the uncovering of the enemy's position-then riding baek amongst his men he shouted, 'You see, my boys, where to fire !' "
: Chaplain Marks, on page one hundred and ninety-eight, of his " Peninsula Cam- paign," says :
"There is no doubt of the truth of the statement often made, that the enemy on this day was thoroughly defeated, and that it was possible for us to have taken Rich- mond. The rebel soldiers rushed into Richmond, heralding their defeat and spreading alarm, thousands of them throwing away their guns in their flight; and if we had pushed vigorously forward we could have been in Richmond before night. General Johnston had been severely wounded the previous day, and the enemy aeted without concert or plan."
Of General Kearney's eonduet in this battle, Chaplain Marks says:
"General Kearney showed himself equal to every emergency, dared every danger, and risked his life in the most hazardous positions. His men seemed to be capable of performing anything under his eye, for their confidence in his eourage and military sagacity was unbounded. I have often heard the men speak at the camp-fires of his unruffled coolness during both of those days."
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weeks after the battle, he said : "Here we are again at a dead-lock ; Manassas over again ; both parties intrenched up to their eyes ; both waiting for something; unluckily, our adversaries gaining two to our one. Our last chance to conquer Richmond-for Dame Fortune is resentful of slighted charms-was thrown away when our great battle of Fair Oaks was thrown away. We had tempted the enemy to attack us whilst divided by the Chickahominy. Fortunately, he failed. The prestige, nearly lost to us by our inac- tion since Williamsburg, was once more in the ascendency. It only required Mcclellan to put forth moral force and his military might, and Richmond would have been ours. But no; delay on delay ; fortifications, as if we were beaten, met by stronger counter-fortifi- cations, on points previously neglected ; undue concentration of our troops on points already over-manned, met by a net-work envelop- ing us by them ; supineness in our camps, met by daring forays by them ; the boasted influence of our reserve artillery, counter- balanced by their availing themselves of the respite to get up artillery even of greater calibre; the reliance on further troops from the North more than met by reinforcements of two to one by their recalling troops from the South. Indeed, everything so beto- kens fear on the part of the General commanding, and the enemy show themselves so emboldened, that, with the numbers crowding up around us, I am puzzled to divine the next act of the drama. It will be either another inexplicable evacuation, or the suffocation of this army by the seizure of our communications when least expected. The enemy wish us to attack. McClellan has proved by his fortifications that he is feeble. We are surrounded in front by a cordon of troops and forts. It is true that they will fail if they attack us; but, if they do not do that, they will leave enough troops in our front, and, crossing the Chickahominy, cut us off from our lines of communication and sustenance."
The wonderful foresight-amounting to actual prophecy-which is developed in this extract, cannot but attract the attention of every careful reader. Only a week later, the event here predicted actually came to pass; our communications being cut, and the army driven from the position where it was rotting behind intrench-
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ments to the banks of the James, with a loss of life, materiel and prestige which, in the first hours of the disaster, seemed fatal to all our hopes of success over the rebellion.
As to General Kearney's action in the battles of the seven days' retreat, the accounts of the time give full and glowing particulars. In every action in which he shared, he exhibited the same fearless intrepidity and high resources of command which had given him success on every other field. In the battle of White Oak Swamp, he seemed ubiquitous, directing all movements, and imparting by his presence and bearing the most determined courage to his men. " Wherever the danger was greatest, there he pressed, carrying with him a personal power which was equal to a reinforcement. In a pre-eminent degree," adds Chaplain Marks, " he exhibited that military prescience, or an anticipation of what was coming, and the point of an enemy's attack, which has characterized every great man who has risen to distinction in the art of war." In this battle, as the troops passed General Kearney's position, marching into the open field, he looked on each man, saying cheerily, "Go in my boys ! go in gayly, go in gayly !" and during all the subse- quent conflict, they heard the voice of their General, "Gayly, gayly, my boys !" At Malvern Hill, " Fighting Phil. Kearney " was again " the grandest Roman of them all," and his indignation at McClellan's failure to improve his opportunity to advance upon Richmond was violent in the last degree. When the order to retreat to Harrison's Landing was received, he exclaimed in the presence of many officers, "I, Philip Kearney, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order for retreat; we ought, instead of retreating, to follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of all the responsibility of such a declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason."> In a letter to a friend in New Jersey, he said : " Very far from having a base to act on, General Mcclellan has boxed us. You will soon hear of the James River being rendered impassable for our supplies, and then, like drowned rats, we must
& Chaplain Marks' " Peninsula Campaign."
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soon come out of our holes. But it will be done with more awful sacrifices of useless, because avoidable battles. We are fortifying here again, unnecessarily so. It breaks the hearts of the soldiers ; gives them the idea that they cannot win fields, and yet in a few days, sooner or later, we will have to burst through the net-work, that the enemy are preparing around us, and, if we do not, look out for Washington. That city will go. They will crush Pope, by leaving Mcclellan in ignorance of their departure, then for a foreign alliance, and good night to the North. Even now McClel-
lan's defeat will be likely to produce this. His ' change of base ' may cheat the American newspapers and fool the American people; but the ignominious retreat, the abandonment of the sick and wounded, the abandonment of stores, and loss of strat- egical supremacy, cannot be concealed from military eyes in France, England, nor elsewhere."
Again, General Kearney's predictions were justified by the event. The enemy did crush Pope, but not until Kearney had given his life in a brave and desperate endeavor to rescue him and his army from the peril into which they had been brought by blunders amounting to crimes. In all the later fighting of the Pope cam- paign, he was everywhere the lion of the fray, fighting with tre- menduous audacity, and striking the enemy with a power which more than once sent him reeling to the dust. But in all that cam- paign the fates were against us. Fighting bravely and brilliantly, the soldiers of that grand army could not overcome both treachery and imbecility among its own commanders, and the swarming legions of the foe, fighting as they had never fought before. On the 30th of August, Pope, betrayed by some of his own lieuten- ants, was driven, or compelled to retire across Bull Run, with a view of concentrating about Centerville. Lee, however, did not mean that our disordered army should reach the Potomac if he could help it, and accordingly, on the afternoon of the 1st of Sep- tember, the enemy made a bold flank attack on General Reno with the remains of two divisions, near Chantilly, endeavoring to gain possession of the Fairfax road, with a view of interposing a bar- rier between us and Washington. This movement, so threatening
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in its character, needed to be promptly met; the enemy must be repulsed, in order to save the army, if not indeed the Capital itself. In such a crisis, General Pope was naturally unwilling-we quote the language of one who was on the bloody field-to trust any untried commander, and looked for help to those who had never failed in any duty. Kearney, Reno and Stevens were selected for the task. Their divisions had been shattered and thinned by the pre- ceding struggles, but with Kearney as their leader, there was no thought of failure. Reno and Stevens attacked, but after desperate fighting against overpowering numbers, were compelled gradually to retire. Stevens fell, flag in hand, cheering and leading on his old Highland regiment, in the very front of the battle. At this moment, as our forces were giving way, General Kearney appeared upon the field. With all the impetuosity which ordinarily charac- terized his attacks, he hurled his columns against the exultant and advancing lines of the enemy, unlimbered Randolph's guns, shot- ted with double canister, and then placing himself at the head of Birney's charging column, ordering staff and orderlies to the rear, broke through the enemy's center, dashed him back in disorder and confusion, saved Pope's Army and the Capital, but paid for the vic- tory with his own precious life. Riding forward, about sunset, to reconnoiter the enemy's position, he unexpectedly came upon the rebel lines, and was summoned to surrender, but refusing with words of defiance, was shot dead as he turned to fly, his body fall- ing into the hands of the enemy.
No more conclusive testimony of the popular appreciation of Kear- ney's character and talents could possibly have been furnished than was given him in the universal outburst of lamentation over the news of his death. Everywhere it occasioned the profoundest grief. In Washington, the intelligence of his fall was especially depressing. At eight o'clock on that dismal morning, the writer, walking the streets of the Capital, met everywhere groups of men with saddened faces and tearful eyes, talking together with subdued voice of the nation's loss. At Willard's, the lobbies and halls were thronged with officers and civilians listening to the details of the sad event as rehearsed . y members of his staff and others fresh from the
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front. At the telegraph office, as a dispatch was handed in to dis- tant friends of the dead General, the operator, a grey-haired man, with a sob in his voice, exclaimed, "This is the sorest loss of all." At the White House, the rough, grand, heroic man into whose face the last week's losses and reverses had brought a deeper sad- ness and an almost holy look of patient weariness and grief, mourned no less keenly the knightly soldier fallen, saying in his heart also, "This is the sorest loss of all." In the hospitals, crowded with mangled heroes ; in the barracks and camps in and about the Capital; among the cavalry filing over the Long Bridge and moving towards the upper Potomac; everywhere, the words " Kearney is dead," smote upon the listening ear like a knell.9 He
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