In the West, deception is usually regarded as immoral, akin to lying. This contrasts sharply with the Marxist view which, believing in inevitable dialectic change, accepts that anything which promotes that change is desirable if not essential. Therefore, according to numerous authorities, Americans resort to deception only reluctantly or else do it poorly - a deceptive statement if ever there was one. In fact, the American military has always shown great skill at deception when it wanted to: H. Norman Schwarzkopf's 'Hail Mary Play' during Desert Storm being a fine example. Prior to launching that campaign, Schwarzkopf and his staff watched videos of the Ken Burns film The Civil War, and this brought home to them the enormous responsibility that faced them. They were also doubtless reminded of the great natural flair for military deception Americans displayed, from Nathan Bedford Forrest to William S. Rosecrans and others. One of the first to do so was the Confederate, John Bankhead Magruder, who as a mere colonel and later brigadier-general, brilliantly bluffed no less than the Union's general-in-chief on the York-James Peninsula in April 1862.
Born in Virginia in 1807, Magruder was an 1830 graduate of the US Military Academy, West Point, and decorated three times during the Mexican War. A lover of amateur theatricals, he was known as 'Prince John' because of his lavish parties, fancy dress uniforms and pomposity, even affecting a 'Horse Guards' lisp. Friends recounted how he had tried to impress visiting British officers with his dinner and wines, feigning surprise when asked how much American officers earned, saying he had no idea and would have to ask his servant. Like his entire lifestyle, this was in fact a grand bluff, he had no independent income at all.
Facing him that spring was Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, noted as an able administrator and trainer, known as 'the Young Napoleon' and affectionately as 'Little Mac' by his adoring troops, but lacking resolution in the face of the enemy. Having assumed command of the Army of the Potomac following the Union's disastrous opening campaign at Manassas Junction (or Bull Run), he patiently built it into the most formidable army in the world, but was extremely reluctant to set it once more on the road to Richmond.
At this time, the Union intelligence service was run by the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded by Allan Pinkerton, formerly of Glasgow, and later to earn fame across the West. As a military intelligence bureau however, it was useless, providing wildly exaggerated reports of rebel strength in the area immediately south of Washington. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Pinkerton reported Confederate forces as totalling 270,000 men, with 150,000 within striking distance of Washington. Little Mac refused to move until he had 270,000 men of his own. Then in September 1861, rebel pickets were driven surprisingly easily from a position they had occupied within a few miles of the city, revealing that the guns McClellan's spies had assured him were trained on the Capital were nothing more than stripped logs painted black with wagon wheels tacked onto the side, christened 'Quaker Guns' by a scornful reporter.
President Abraham Lincoln became so frustrated with Little Mac's lack of resolution that when McClellan was ill, early in 1862, Lincoln told a White House war council that 'if General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time'. Eventually however, McClellan was persuaded to take the offensive, albeit not by the direct route which he remained convinced was strongly defended, but by landing on the York-James Peninsula and approaching Richmond from the southeast. The Confederates in front of Washington abandoned their position to reveal an entire battery of Quaker guns at Centerville. It prompted a senator from Maine to write his family: 'You will have heard of the wooden guns at Centerville. It is true and we are smarting under the disgrace which this discovery has brought upon us.'
On the Peninsula, Little Mac's mighty army of over 120,000 men was initially faced by the grandiloquently titled Army of the Peninsula, commanded by Magruder and based on the historic site of Yorktown, scene of the surrender of the British-German army under Earl Cornwallis to the American-French army of George Washington some 80 years previously. At the outbreak of war, Magruder had been given a commission as a Virginia Volunteer colonel, arriving on the Peninsula at the end of May 1861. The Yorktown position was a naturally strong one, and he set to work constructing fortifications while pestering the War Department in Richmond for 8,000-10,000 men, without which he said he would have to retreat in the face of any enemy. Richmond had run out of men and found it difficult to supply anything like Magruder's requirements. Undeterred, and given the Union commander's already well known psychology, he hoped to make up for his own serious lack of strength by preparing in the meantime to bluff in a grand style.
Yet even before the arrival of reinforcements, he inflicted a defeat on Federal forces. In June 1861, what little infantry he had, supported by an artillery battery, amounting in total to some 1,400 men, beat off a Federal force of 4,400 at Big Bethel. It was a scattered fight, barely worthy of the name battle, the Confederates inflicting some 75 casualties for the loss of 11. Insignificant as it would appear in the light of what was to come, this action still brought Magruder instant fame, despite the real commanding having been done by D. H. Hill, a professional colonel from North Carolina. Nevertheless, the Richmond Dispatch of 15 June described Magruder as all that 'fancy had pictured of a Virginia gentleman, the frank and manly representative of the chivalry of the dear Old Dominion', and Magruder was promoted brigadier-general.
Magruder continued to build his defence works with great energy. With a 13-mile line to defend, he built dams on the Warwick River to create obstacles and posted detachments to deny passage across them. On the left of his line, where the stream was too small for this, he built redoubts connected with curtains and at Yorktown and Gloucester Point, where the York River narrows to less than a mile in width, he erected batteries to produce a crossfire. Further back towards Williamsburg, where the Peninsula narrowed, he constructed a second line of defences. Unfortunately, though these works were excellent there were simply not enough guns to cover them. Magruder had been able to secure just 15, including light field pieces, and had barely 60 rounds for each. He therefore made up the numbers with Quaker guns, ensuring that these were mixed with real ones along the line, and prepared to gamble that this would prove sufficient to delay an advancing enemy just enough.
Magruder hoped to have a chance to replace all the Quaker guns, but McClellan arrived too soon for this. His vast force anchored off Fort Monroe on 2 April 1862 and 36 hours later were slogging their way ashore, unopposed except for a few curious scouts. They immediately set off with one column moving directly towards Yorktown and another along the Lee's Mill Road with the intention of outflanking it. Deserters reported to Little Mac that there were barely 8,000 men facing him and he was filled with optimism, but he did not use it to press on with urgency. 'The march was slow and tedious', reported a Federal officer to his diary on 4 April. Halts were frequent when the roads were found to be in much worse condition than anticipated and the baggage and artillery became bogged. McClellan soon lost heart, especially when reports arrived that his flank march was opposed. Fortifications had been discovered and to McClellan, any fortifications, however poorly manned, amounted to stiff opposition. Besides, Prince John was really beginning to put on a show. He ordered the few units he had to move about as conspicuously as possible.
'The way Magruder fooled them', reported a lieutenant of the 14th Louisiana, 'was to divide each body of his troops into two parts and keep them travelling all the time for 24 hours, till reinforcements came.' '[We] have been travelling most of the day,' wrote an Alabama corporal, 'seeming with no other view than to show ourselves to the enemy at as many different points of the line as possible. I am pretty tired.' When Federal troops appeared in front of the 11th Alabama, Capt. H. McMath recalled that the unit jumped out of the trenches and ran through enemy fire 'until we got out of sight just around the point of a hill. We were halted there some half-hour, when we were counter-marched over to a place we started from.' Magruder had trains roll into places behind the lines with their whistles blowing, and then backed them up a few hundred yards before repeating the process. Each time, drummers and buglers would sound the assembly, while men shouted orders to non-existent regiments. All along the line, a running fire was maintained by both guns and infantry. Jubal Early who commanded one of the brigades that arrived to Magruder's aid, wrote later that 'the assuming and maintaining [of] the line by Magruder with his small force in the face of such overwhelming odds, was one of the boldest exploits ever performed by a military commander, and he had so manoeuvred his troops by displaying them rapidly at different positions as to produce the impression on his opponent that he had a large army'.
The bluff was a success. Little Mac halted his infantry when it could have walked through the Confederate position at any point it chose, and ordered his artillery to begin probing the defences. Given the badly rutted nature of the roads, this was bound to take time and reinforcements were slowly coming up to Magruder, making the bluff more tangible. Along with the Union artillery came the Aeronautic Department - the balloon section - directed by a civilian balloonist on a colonel's salary, Thaddeus Lowe. The balloon was filled by portable coal-gas generators and the tethered balloon was slowly hoisted into the air behind the Federal lines. Magruder, aware of the balloon from previous reports, simply continued with his efforts to march and counter-march his men and Lowe dutifully reported all he saw to McClellan's headquarters using the telegraph carried in the basket. But not everyone on the Union side was so taken in.
On the right of the Union line, Brig. Gen. Charles S. Hamilton, whose division faced the Confederates opposite the portion of line between Yorktown and the start of the Warwick river, reported to his corps commander, Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman, that the Confederate defences to his front were thin. He was sure that a stout push would take him clean through them and that he wanted to make a reconnaissance in force there. The two generals went to see McClellan with the request, but the Young Napoleon, armed with notes from the amateur Col. Lowe and backed up by his Chief Engineer, John Barnard and his favourite, Fitz John Porter, rejected the proposal out of hand. McClellan, himself an engineer, had seemingly set his heart upon a siege; operations that he believed he understood better than anyone else in the army having been present as an observer at the Anglo-French siege of Sebastopol some seven years previously.
Then, on the far left (a naturally much stronger position due to the river and the dams constructed there), an unauthorised reconnaissance in force took place that nearly blew the deception wide open. Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock was sent forward with two regiments by Brig. Gen. William F. 'Baldy' Smith to scout the river line and seek holes in it. Shortly after the hard-fighting Hancock had left, orders were received from McClellan's headquarters to dig in for a siege. Smith left his corps commander, Maj. Gen. Erasmus Keyes, to go forward and tell Hancock that the recconnaissance was off. When Smith got to him, Hancock was furious at the news. He had found one weak spot already and was preparing to tear the veil aside and roll up the whole stage-set Confederate line. Smith insisted that orders were just that and must be obeyed. Hancock reluctantly agreed, but Smith became convinced that had those orders been delayed for two hours the attack would have opened the road to Richmond. Unfortunately, what Hancock did bring back served only to reinforce Little Mac's caution. Four prisoners from the 14th Alabama announced that there were 40,000 men manning the Warwick line and there would soon be 100,000. Why, the South's leading soldier, Joe Johnston, was due to bring another 8,000 on that day alone.
A Union staff officer wrote years later that 'the Confederate deserter was an institution which has received too little consideration ...He was ubiquitous, willing and altogether inscrutable. Whether he told the truth or a lie, he was always equally sure to deceive. He was sometimes a real deserter and sometimes a mock deserter. In either case he was sure to be loaded.' Although this was, in all fairness, probably not apparent at this early stage of the war, McClellan needed little or no prompting to circumspection. As early as 7 April he was telegraphing Washington to report: 'All prisoners state that Gen. J. E. (Joe) Johnston arrived in Yorktown yesterday with strong reinforcements. It seems clear that I shall have the whole force of the enemy on my hands, probably not less than 100,000 men and possibly more.' He believed therefore that his own force was 'possibly less than that of the enemy'. No attack could succeed, and 'were I in possession of their entrenchments and assailed by double my numbers I should have no fear as to the result'. Despite intelligence reports that the enemy had no more than 15,000 men, surely nobody still less another professional soldier, would try to hold so precarious a line with so few, reasoned the Young Napoleon. His decision to dig in and prepare for a siege, he convinced himself, was the only rational choice for a professional. He later wrote that 'whatever may have been said afterward, no one at the time - so far as my knowledge extended - thought an assault practicable without certain preliminary siege operations. At all events, my personal experience in this kind of work was greater than that of any officer under my command; and after personal reconnaissances more appropriate to a lieutenant of engineers than to the commanding general, I could neither discover nor hear of any point where an assault promised any chance of success. We were thus obliged to resort to siege operations in order to silence the enemy's artillery fire, and open the way to an assault.'
Federal engineers came forward and began laying out the trench line and preparing battery positions for siege guns and heavy mortars. Pioneers began logging to build parapets and corduroy roads. Having once stalled Little Mac, Prince John contemplated the second part of his deception, one that would surely be more difficult to bring off, that any attempt by the Federals to assault his position would be fruitless. Fortunately, Little Mac was making the task far easier for him. Magruder rode everywhere in full dress rig accompanied by a brilliantly attired staff, all the while doing his best to keep up appearances while he desperately signalled Richmond for reinforcements. These were sent as speedily as possible but it was necessarily a slow business. A brigade had arrived on 5 April and two regiments the following day. Another brigade arrived on the 7th and a third on the 8th. Another brigade arrived on the 10th and three on the 11th to bring his total up to 34,000, somewhat less than McClellan's guesstimate of 100,000.
Having barely enough men to man his posts in the most threadbare fashion, Prince John began to order sorties to keep the Federals on the hop. It worked - the Federals took twice as long as they ought to complete their trenches because they had always to be aware of Confederate sharpshooters and scouts. The appearance on the 11th of the much-feared CSS Virginia served to add to McClellan's discomfort. The next day, Joe Johnston finally did arrive, at least in Richmond, taking command of both Magruder's Army of the Peninsula and those Confederate troops at Norfolk that would in due course become known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Johnston was another engineer and again cautious; unhappy to commit to battle unless sure of victory. Very little pleased him and his inspection of the Yorktown defences proved no exception.
The lines were vulnerable and badly drawn and when he returned to Richmond on 14 April, he informed President Jefferson Davis that it would be best to give them up altogether and prepare for a single decisive battle. This did not appeal to Davis at all. He called together a war council that included James Longstreet, Gustavus W. Smith and his personal advisor, Robert E. Lee. Longstreet recalled that 'it was the first time that I had been called to such August presence, to deliberate on momentous matters, so I had nothing to say until called on'. Finally asked his opinion, however, he began to say that McClellan was a cautious engineer who would not move before 1 May but Davis interrupted him, declaring that he would not hear a word said against Little Mac. 'McClellan had been a special favourite with Mr Davis when he was Secretary of War in the Pierce administration, and he seemed to take such reflections upon his favourites as somewhat personal. From the hasty interruption I concluded that my opinion had only been asked through polite recognition of my presence, not that it was wanted, and said no more.'
Johnston on the other hand offered two plans. One involved abandoning Yorktown and concentrating all available troops - including garrison detachments culled from Georgia and North Carolina - near Richmond to force a climactic battle. The other was for Magruder to maintain his position as long as possible while Johnston moved against Washington. Lee favoured holding Yorktown and falling back only as necessary. Eventually, after some two hours discussion, Davis, who as yet had proffered no opinion, informed them of his decision: Johnston would continue to hold at Yorktown for as long as possible. However, Johnston did not believe that Yorktown could be held and was already beginning to prepare mentally to retire.
Before he did so though, his troops poured into the base line created by Prince John's display. McClellan had methodically brought forward 111 pieces of siege artillery. These included two giant 200-pounder Parrott rifles, a dozen 100-pounder Parrotts, all much larger than anything the Confederates possessed; 30-pounder and 20-pounder Parrots and 4.5-inch Rodman guns. In addition were 41 mortars including 13-inch seacoast mortars firing shells weighing 220 pounds. In one salvo, the Federal guns could throw over 7,000 pounds of iron and explosive directly onto the Confederate positions at Yorktown. Jubal Early recalled that 'the enemy continued to work very busily on his approaches, and each day some new work was developed. He occasionally fired with artillery on our works, and the working parties engaged in strengthening them and making traverses and epaulements in the rear, but we very rarely replied to him as our supply of ammunition was very limited.' Federal observation continued from Lowe's balloon while the Confederates invented the world's first aircraft carrier. They too had a balloon, but having no portable coal-gas generator, they had to fill it in Richmond and bring it forward tied to a flatboat.
On 16 April, McClellan authorised a raid on a post on the Warwick River - the very same post Hancock had been prevented from assaulting a few days earlier. In a small action known as the battle of Lee's Mill, Federal artillery plastered the Confederate positions while men of the Vermont Brigade kept up a heavy small arms fire. After three hours, return fire had slackened so much that two companies of 3rd Vermont Infantry were able to cross the creek and occupy the Confederate positions. McClellan was present but said nothing about blue coats on the far bank; he merely rode away to headquarters. The brigade commander began to send reinforcements, but the Georgia and Louisiana brigades that had rushed to plug the gap got there first and the two companies were driven back across the stream. 'Why, sir, it was just like sap-boiling, in that stream, the bullets fell so thick', said a 16-year old Vermont private later.
Johnston knew that he would have to withdraw before the Federals launched a concerted assault and made it too difficult for him to pull back. He first notified Richmond of his decision on 27 April, when he informed them that the Federal parallels were almost complete. Two days later he wrote: 'the fight for Yorktown, as I said in Richmond, must be one of artillery, in which we cannot win. The result is certain, the time only doubtful ...I shall therefore move as soon as it can be done conveniently.' By now his force was 56,000 all ranks with 36 batteries of field artillery. So large a force could not move away from even as lethargic an opponent as McClellan without exposing itself to grave danger. Things would have to be arranged very carefully. Firstly, all tentage and impedimenta not visible to the Federals was packed and sent rearwards. The actual withdrawal was timed for completion by 3 May and anything not taken then would have to be abandoned. But despite careful security measures, an escaped slave from Yorktown reported to a northern newspaper correspondent that he had seen loaded transport moving back towards Richmond. However, when the correspondent passed this information on to McClellan's chief of staff, he was told that the army knew for a fact that the Confederates were totally committed to a last-ditch defence of Yorktown and that absolutely no withdrawal was being planned by them. Indeed, the chief of intelligence reported that McClellan could see no reason why a force of 100,000-120,000 men should want to abandon such a formidable position.
At dusk on the night of 1 May, the Confederates opened fire on the Federal lines with every gun they possessed. They fired for some time and finally, one at a time, ceased. Jubal Early recorded that this 'was to dispose of as much of the fixed ammunition as possible and produce the impression that we were preparing for an attack on the enemy's trenches. The cannonading was continued during the next day, and on one part of the line. We were ready to have commenced evacuation at the time designated, but a little before night on that day (Friday the 2nd) the order was countermanded until the next night, because some of Longstreet’s troops were not ready to move. We therefore continued to cannonade on Friday night and during Saturday. Fortunately, after dark on the latter day the evacuation began and was conducted successfully — Stuart’s cavalry having been dismounted to occupy our picket line in front, and then men attached to the heavy artillery remaining behind to continue the cannonade until near daylight next morning, so as to keep the enemy in ignorance of our movements.' On Sunday morning, Lowe's balloon reported that there was not a single man to be seen in the Confederate lines. Union pickets gingerly inched forward across what had previously been a deadly fire-zone to find that the enemy had completely vanished.
While McClellan loudly declared to Washington that the withdrawal of the Confederates from their entrenched position after a month showed that he had secured a glorious triumph, the reality was perhaps best summed up by the diarist Mary Chesnut, who recorded that 'Magruder did splendidly at Big Bethel - out there. It was a wonderful thing how he played his ten thousand before McClellan like fireflies and utterly deluded him - keeping down there ever so long.'
by Jon Latimer
About the author
Jon Latimer lives in Swansea where he studied oceanography, and after a varied career in environmental science now writes full-time. Jon also served 16 years in the Territorial Army. His book Deception in War is published by John Murray.
Further reading
Katcher, P., Men-at-Arms 170: American Civil War Armies 1 Confederate Troops, Osprey, Oxford, 1986
Katcher, P., Men-at-Arms 177: American Civil War Armies 2 Union Troops, Osprey, Oxford, 1986
Latimer, J., Deception in War, John Murray, London, 2001