Hooker On The Lower Potomac

Wherein you realize you've been duped again by "hooker" in the post title

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It's been a busy weekend for your blogger, so a post light on effort in the meantime while he puts off a longer post on the latest Beauregard-Davis bru-ha-ha. It's the October 31 report by Joe Hooker that is interesting for two reasons. First, Hooker describes his success at setting up a temporary battery with Parrott guns commanded by Lt. Colonel George W. Getty. The guns are much too small to be an effective battery to control the Potomac, but as you will read, Hooker still had fun with them. Second, it provides a sense of the attentiveness Hooker always paid to care for the men in camp. Unlike many generals of his day, Hooker had very modern scruples about things like cleanliness and nutrition, and units he lead always had better health than their fellow units. Additionally, the mistakes about rations is part of a larger scandal that would come to a head in January.

In the Southern camp, acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin spent October 31 meddling in the affairs of Joe Johnston's army again. This time, it was a communication directly to Maj. General Earl Van Dorn, who Johnston believed commanded a division in Maj. General G.W. Smith's Second Corps, and who Benjamin believed commanded the First Division in Johnston's corps-less army. Van Dorn was an old Mississippi friend of Jefferson Davis, who the provisional President had asked to train the Confederate cavalry, and subsequently promised could command all the cavalry in Johnston's army as well as infantry. Johnston didn't like the idea based on two principles: 1) that the cavalry was dispersed for scouting duty and therefore a major general would effectively command no more than a brigade of infantry and, 2) that Jeff Davis should keep his nose out of Johnston's army.

And there's one other major thing that happened on October 31, but you're going to have to wait until tomorrow so I can do that one justice.

Something of an Epilogue

Wherein Edward Baker's body begins its journey home

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A brief post today, courtesy of the Evening Star reprinted in the New York Times. Baker is the blog's first reoccurring individual during the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War to depart from our area of interest permanently (since Cump Sherman will be back), though he will not be the last and the impact of his death will loom over the remainder of the war.

The Evening Star,
October 29, 1861
The Body of Col. Baker  

The evening after the funeral of the lamented Col. Baker, the corpse was removed from the vault in the Congressional Cemetery, where it was deposited, to the embalming rooms of Dr. Holmes, to be prepared for transmission to its final resting place in California. The committee of Californians who have charge of the body, have taken great care that all the arrangements for the removal of the body should be made in the most appropriate manner. The undertaker's work, by Buchly, is in his best style. 

The temporary coffin in which the body of Col. B. was brought from Poolesville, has been replaced by a handsome metallic case, imitation of rosewood, mounted with silver; a large plate of glass covering the face, through which the features of the deceased may be seen by his friends, below which, over the breast, is a silver plate with the inscription: "Col. E.D. Baker, killed in battle near Ball's Bluff, Virginia, Oct. 21, 1861." 

The process of embalming was made very difficult by the shattered condition of the body, upon inspection of which eight wounds were apparent. One large wound in the left temple; a small ball wound above the right ear; one in the back of the neck; one between the collar bone and shoulder blade, passing down into the body; one through the chest; one passing across the thighs; one dividing all the interior fleshy portion of the left arm; and one in the breast, near the left armpit.  

Notwithstanding these difficulties, Dr. Holmes succeeded in thoroughly embalming the body. The torn and blood-stained uniform in which he was killed was removed, and this morning, clad in a new uniform, he lay in the coffin not a ghastly and pale corpse, but as life-like as we have seen him in all the glow of health, and if lying upon a couch, he would be easily mistaken for a sleeping soldier.  

Today, by invitation of the committee, the President and other distinguished friends of the gallant dead will visit the rooms of Dr. Holmes, at Buchly's establishment, Pennsylvania avenue near Ninth street, and see the face of their late friend for the last time; after which the case will be sealed for transmission to New York, thence to California.

Baker's body would reach its final resting place at San Francisco National Cemetery after a tour through the Union, including a massive parade in Philadelphia. Long after the war, a statue of Baker would be commissioned, and then delivered to the Capitol.

The Evening Star, April 13, 1868
Statue of General Baker  

On Saturday last a beautiful statuette of the late General E.D. Baker, Senator from Oregon, who was killed at the battle of Ball's Bluff, in the early part of the war, was received here from Rome, by Colonel Stephens, of California, for whom it was made by the well-known Washington, Dr. Horatio Stone, who is now in the Eternal City. It is now on exhibition at Messrs. Galt & Bro.'s jewelry store. 

Gen. Baker is represented with a roll of manuscript in his right hand, in the act of delivering a speech, and the likeness is pronounced by all who knew the deceased, to be most striking. The work is mounted on a pedestal, the upper portion of which revolves with the statue. It bears representations of justice, war, etc., and below are the following lines from the last speech of the deceased in the Senate delivered August, 1861. 

"There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be some privation. There will be some loss of luxury. The will be somewhat more need of labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the Constitution, Free Government, with all these will return all the blessings of well ordered civilization. The path of the country will be a career of greatness and glory, such as our Fathers in the olden time foresaw in the dim visions of years yet to come; and such as would have been ours today had it not been for the treason for which the Senator [Breckinridge] too often seeks to apologize."

Galt & Brothers opened in 1802 near the White House and operated as a District cornerstone until 2001. Baker's statue (which fittingly inscribed part of his final stemwinder countering John Breckinridge) stood for years in the Capitol rotunda and is still somewhere in the building (your intrepid blogger is hunting down its location). But the impact of his death would return to haunt the capital must more quickly.

Miserable Marksmen

Wherein Hooker is sent to end the "blockade" of Washington

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Scene of Northern ships running the gauntlet on the Lower Potomac, from Harper's Weekly

Brig. General Joe Hooker must have been gratified. After months of trying to join the army despite an old grudge held by general-in-chief Winfield Scott, followed by months of parades and organizing under the finicky eye of the Union Army of the Potomac's George McClellan, he had finally embarked on some real soldiering. His division had been tasked with defending a mighty bend of the Potomac River, stretching clockwise from Port Tobacco to Pomonkey Creek, on the Maryland side.

McClellan's primary concern was the battery at Evansport [Quantico] and its companion across Quantico Creek at Shipping Point, that had recently shut down river traffic to the capital. The channel of the Potomac at that point in the river winds close to the Virginia side, which put any ships sailing for Georgetown or Alexandria City right under the guns of the Confederates, including, according to the historian of the 1st Massachusetts, a state-of-the-art 7-inch Blakely muzzle-loading rifled cannon purchased from England. The weapon could fire a 120-pound projectile with stunning accuracy, assuming its operators could use it correctly. In the opinion of the New Englanders, they weren't:

High hills on the Maryland side afforded the troops an excellent observatory wherefrom to watch the firing; and, as the rebels, it seemed, had plenty of powder and ball to expend, twenty-four hours seldom passed but they afforded observers an opportunity to observe what miserable marksmen they were.

The Key to Decipher History

Wherein he blogs about that thing that didn't happen

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Just a short post today on the nature of writing history. McClellan spent October 27 reviewing troops from the division of Fitz John Porter at Fort Corcoran [Rosslyn]. Joe Hooker was leading his division down to Budd's Ferry, opposite Evansport [Quantico], to monitor the Confederates and see if action could be taken to shut down their battery there. Charles P. Stone was trying to get his division put back together after Ball's Bluff. And Winfield Scott was darkly waiting for the President's order into retirement, having heard the results of the previous week's cabinet meeting.

But in the Southern army headquarters at Centreville, the concern was entirely focused on areas outside the theater. First, the army's commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, was doing his best to ignore an order he had received on October 23 from Richmond assigning one of the new major generals he and his fellow general, G.T. Beauregard, had fought to obtain. Maj. General Thomas Jackson, called "Stonewall" because of his actions at Manassas, was supposed to command a division in Johnston's Second Corps. But the Confederate War Department had decided instead to send him to organize the defenses of the Shenandoah Valley in a new subordinate command to Johnston's, the District of the Valley.

Theoretically, Johnston agreed with the creation of a command specifically focused on delivering the Valley, the breadbasket of Virginia. He didn't know it, but Winfield Scott had created a semi-analogous Northern command, the District of Harper's Ferry and the Cumberland, which was to protect the critical railroad infrastructure that Confederates from the Valley could easily spill into and disrupt, cutting the capital from Ohio Its commander, Frederick Lander, had been wounded the day following Ball's Bluff and was in Washington recuperating before heading to his new command. On October 27, men from his department under Brig. General Benjamin Kelley (a former B&O executive and a key player in McClellan's early war western Virginia successes) took aggressive action and captured the mountain city of Romney, underscoring the need for a Confederate commander.

Johnston just didn't want to lose Jackson, who, along with J.E.B. Stuart, he had been working with since April and come to rely heavily on. The trick was dragging his feet enough that the War Department would ask him to name a different commander to the critical post. Richmond, for its part, was too occupied with a different threat altogether to bother Johnston about sending Jackson (or the daily lecture about reorganizing the army to brigading state regiments together). "Sir," acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin wrote Johnston, "We have received from several quarters information that the enemy intend a movement in force up the Rappahannock and that he has about 25,000 men in the fleet now concentrated at Fort Monroe for that purpose."

Benjamin continued (with a typically peculiar and prickly addendum):

This may be a feint or the information although coming from friends may have been allowed to leak out with the view of deceiving us, yet it is of sufficient importance to be sent to you. I send a private note to Colonel [Thomas] Jordan the adjutant of General Beauregard by special messenger. The note incloses [sic] a communication in cipher sent to the President from some unknown quarter and the President has an impression that Colonel Jordan has a key which will decipher it. If so, the contents will no doubt be communicated to you by General Beauregard, if of any importance. We have so many apparently reliable yet contradictory statements about the destination of this great expedition that we are much at a loss to prepare defense against it.

History recognizes the expedition as the Port Royal Expedition and so usually leaves out the consternation it caused Joe Johnston when he thought his flank was about to be turned, and instead focuses on the planning, lead-up to, execution, and aftermath of the event as if it was one coherent whole. Union Brig. General Thomas W. Sherman and Commodore Samuel F. DuPont (of the Circle fame) were using Hampton Roads as a rendezvous for two separate forces before heading off to South Carolina together. But for those living it, the arc of the story would only be clear much later, and not fully until after the war. At the time it was a confusing event that led Benjamin to federalize the Virginia militia and accelerate the deployment of troops from as far as Georgia to Virginia, in order to protect Johnston's flank, as well ask ask Johnston to be prepared to shift large numbers of his men around.

On the next day, Benjamin wrote to Johnston, saying, "Just heard from Norfolk that the enemy's great fleet is going to sea, thus indicating that the threat of attack on the Rappahannock was intended to deceive us." Even then, though, for the people living the event, where was the flotilla headed to? Thomas Jordan wrote back to Jefferson Davis directly, coolly ignoring the question about the cipher key and instead confidently let him know that his informants in Washington City indicated the attack was to be on Cape Fear, North Carolina. He was wrong, but that wouldn't be clear for another week, until the expedition appeared at Port Royal. Cape Fear wouldn't be attacked until 1864.

But while the non-story of a Union flank attack via the Rappahannock is ignored by historians short on time and space, the subject Benjamin turned his mind to next shows up in almost every account, because the story it begins goes somewhere stunning:

Stars, Falling and Rising

Wherein an extinguished political career helps launch a newspaper's

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Ad for Baker's Philadelphia funeral march,
November 7, 1861

The newspaper of record in Washington City in 1861 was the Evening Star, sometimes called the Washington Star outside of the city, a name it wouldn't take officially until 1970s and would keep until it closed in 1981. Its presses and building (and the contracts of many of its staff, including Mary McGrory, Howard Kurtz, Fred Hiatt, and Jonathan Yardley, as well as rights to those soap comics that still run) were purchased by the Washington Post. The building at the corner of 11th and Pennsylvania now houses Fogo de Chao, among other tenants, but the paper's original 1861 building stood across Pennsylvania Avenue. The paper was small and new then, it had only been in operation for ten years, but the boom in population in Civil War Washington would build the paper, and the evolving, sensational news surrounding Ball's Bluff and the death of sitting U.S. Senator Edward Baker would be part of what caused the paper's circulation to explode.

On October 23, the paper reprinted George McClellan's General Orders No. 31 commemorating Baker, and added its own report, which would subsequently be forwarded by newspapermen around the country:

The remains of the late gallant Col. E.B. Baker have not yet reached Washington.  They are to be taken to the residence of Major J.W. Webb, at the corner of Fourteenth and H streets--No. 363.  We learn incidentally that his body was pierced with six balls, either of which would probably have been fatal; thus showing that his person on the field was a shining mark indeed. On leaving his quarters at his friend, Major Webb's for the field of his death, he remarked to that gentleman that he expected to be in action in less than forty-eight hours, and felt that he should lose his life; closing the conversation with a request that Major W. should send for his body if his presentment proved true.

Only A Few Lines

In which our author succumbs to drowsiness and lets the reader draw his own conclusions

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On October 24, 1861, the battle at Ball's Bluff was still electrifying the public, as more detailed accounts began to get out. Southerners rejoiced at a second victory over the best and brightest of the Northern armies (especially since the secondary theaters, like Robert E. Lee's campaign in western Virginia, were going very poorly). Northerners became more and more horrified as every report proved worse than the one before.

But for the high command of both Northern and Southern Armies of the Potomac, things were starting to get back to normal. Senator Edward Baker's body was brought to Washington City, where it lay in state in the home of Colonel J.W. Webb, at the corner of 14th and H Streets, NW. Lincoln had wanted his friend to lay in the East Room of the White House, but the room was undergoing repairs.

Jefferson Davis wrote another pedantic letter to Maj. General G.W. Smith on the issue of ranks for Confederate army officers in relation to the size of their commands. In blue, Brig. Generals James Bayard and William Barry, chief engineer and artillery officer, respectively, submitted more details on their report to Brig. General Seth Williams (McClellan's adjutant) about the number of troops and pieces required to defend Washington, a report that brought the construction of forts into the unified system of defenses that heavily influenced the development of the modern District.

With the Manifest Aid of the God of Battles

The aftermath of Ball's Bluff for the Southern army

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On the evening of October 22, Colonel Thomas Jordan received a message from Colonel Thomas Rhett. As the adjutants of Generals G.T. Beauregard and Joe Johnston, respectively, the two were in charge of transmitting all orders and communications from headquarters to headquarters. Rhett was sending General Orders No. 47 for promulgation to all units in the army, to congratulate Colonel Nathan "Shanks" Evans on his victory at Ball's Bluff. It is an order typical of Johnston, orderly, straightforward, and gracious. "The skill and courage with which this victory has been achieved entitles Colonel Evans and the Seventh Brigade of the First Corps to the thanks of the Army."

But Jordan didn't send the order to the brigades on October 22, instead he held it over for a day, so that Beauregard could add his own, typically Beauregard, order to accompany it:

At 10:00 am on October 23, the Northern prisoners of war arrived in Manassas Junction for movement to Richmond. Depending on the account, there were between 500 and 600 men that had surrendered at the battle, among them Colonel William Lee of the 20th Massachusetts (a distant relative of Robert E.). Evans had sent the captives to Leesburg the day after the battle, locking the enlisted prisoners in the yard of the courthouse [the present building only dates to 1894, but is on the same site as the Civil War-era yard]. As was the custom, the officers were offered parole, wherein they would be able to move about freely without guard.

Something Being Done

Wherein a sitting Senator is dead on the field of battle

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The death of Senator Edward D. Baker at Ball's Bluff

A quick programming note: it had been my intention to live blog the Battle of Ball's Bluff, but life sometimes gets in the way of plans. However, if study of the Civil War battlefield reveals anything, it's that the victorious are rarely those who planned the best, but those who adapted their plans best when they met reality. Hopefully that works for writing about history too. And so, I'll continue my plan to live blog the battle, but instead I'll live blog it the way most Americans experienced it -- through the weeks and months afterwards that it took to understand what had happened. For a more traditional account, I recommend Disunion today. Or, if you prefer to read in "real time", I recommend the collection of telegrams between Washington and Poolesville that tell the story rather poignantly (though slightly out of order).

On the evening of October 21, the public around the capital city was beginning to realize that something had happened. For those living along the upper Potomac River, the day had been punctured by the deep boom of artillery and the staccato rattle of musketry, signifying that that thing must be a battle, and word was spreading about it fairly quickly. But who had been engaged and who had won?

Only the barest rumors of a battle had George Meade, leading a brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves. On the afternoon, Meade was marching with the rest of his division away from Dranesville, only a few miles from the battlefield, where men from the division of Charles P. Stone were suffering and dying all day long. The Reserves, under Brig. General George McCall, had been moved to Dranesville on October 19, by order of the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, Maj. General George McClellan. McClellan had received a report from Stone, who was charged with watching the river crossings around Leesburg, that the Confederates there had mostly withdrawn. So he had sent McCall and the Reserves to scout out the area and try to scare away any remaining troops, hoping that Stone might have the chance to capture Leesburg, and thus secure Union control of the Potomac.

On October 19, McClellan had wanted McCall to march back to their camp in Langley immediately the next day, so as to not leave a hole in the army's line of defenses around Washington. But the older general had persuaded his young commander to allow him to keep his men out through the weekend in order to give his engineers time to make detailed maps that would be needed for a possible future attack on Leesburg. If the division required to pick up McCall's slack hadn't been that of McClellan favorite "Baldy" Smith, then there may have been no Ball's Bluff, but as it happened, McClellan accepted McCall's request under strict orders that the Reserves were to be back in Langley by October 21.

At 10:00 am on Monday, October 21, McCall dutifully ordered his three brigades to return home. The men marched back down the Georgetown Pike towards Langley, probably split between disappointment that no battle had been fought and eagerness for a properly cooked dinner when they reached camp. The historian of the division recorded that two brigades had reached Camp Pierpont at 1:00 pm (probably Meade's and the Colonel McCalmont's), when McCall was presented with a telegram from McClellan ordering him to remain in Dranesville, if he hadn't left yet. McCall quickly sent a reply asking for new orders, since he had already returned to camp, and was told to let the men rest, but be prepared to move out.

Also This Week

An effort to not lose things

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When we study and relate history, we tend to do it backwards, starting with an event of significance, like Ball's Bluff, and working backwards to show how it came about. This gives the false impression that history is coherent, unlike the present. The present is a million strands of thread, that may or may not become story lines for future generations.

In the third week of October 1861, there was no indication what story would be told 150 years later. Stone's "slight demonstration" of October 20 was centered on Edward's Ferry, and not on Ball's Bluff, which was the sideshow of a sideshow (the main event, at the very least from Shanks Evans' perspective, being McCall's advance to Dranesville).

A similar, now utterly forgotten, reconnaissance was carried out by Israel Richardson towards Occoquan on October 18:



And in terms of other story lines for historians, October 20 included a letter to Beauregard from Jefferson Davis that proposed creating a Department of Northern Virginia for Joe Johnston to head, allowing Beauregard to again become sole commander of a subordinate Army of the Potomac (as long as he brigaded troops by states), an idea that would be a significant occurrence otherwise.



But on October 20, Charles Stone also decided to make a raid, and because of what happened the next day, that is the significant event of this one, 150 years ago.

A Slight Demonstration

Wherein Stone attempts to scare Evans out of Leesburg

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On the morning of October 20, Brig. General Charles P. Stone commanding a division of the Army of the Potomac based at Poolesville received the following message from that army's commanding general's staff:

Stone had been in charge of guarding the river crossings on the upper Potomac River since the launch of the Rockville Expedition in July. As a sizable community in a fertile country, with two good ferrying points, Leesburg would make a splendid base of operations for a sudden northward stab by the Confederates to cut the line between Washington and southern-sympathizing Baltimore, thus enveloping the capital. The bulk of the Army of the Potomac blocked the direct approach for the Southerners on Washington, Harper's Ferry was far enough away to allow a wheeling movement by that army, and a Northern flotilla controlled the lower Potomac (the batteries at Evansport not yet fully operational), and so throughout the summer and fall, Leesburg was presumed to be the jumping off point for an attack by the overestimated-in-size Confederate army.

Stone was the man asked to guard that point, and it was a job he intended to do professionally. He was a serious man, described as polished and well-mannered. A Democrat fiercely loyal to the Union, Stone had accomplished the unusual feat of being well-liked by both his immediate commander, Maj. General George McClellan, and the aged general-in-chief, Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott. Stone's obsession with doing things according to the professional code he had developed in his career with the U.S. Army sometimes bothered his superiors and volunteer troops. He was famous for sending careful enumerations of his division's supply problems, persistently requesting regular troops to carry out his mission, and scolding the War Department for sending him documents marked "secret" by U.S. Mail. His men had just had a run-in on October 16, when, after catching two possible Confederate spies in camp selling pornography to the men, he expelled them and then had the entire division searched for pornography, which he destroyed.

Making Them Abandon Leesburg

Wherein McClellan sends the Pennsylvania Reserves to check on a key spot on the Potomac

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"It seems pretty well settle that I will be Comdr in Chf within a week," Maj. General George B. McClellan crowed to his wife, Mary Ellen, writing from Lewinsville, Virginia on October 19, where he was spending time with the division of "Baldy" Smith. McClellan had heard the results of  a secret cabinet meeting the day before, where the President had determined to act on the offer to resign by his general-in-chief, Bvt. Lt. General Winfield Scott, which had been pending for months now.

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles recorded the meeting in his diary:

The Presdt. read to us a draft to a letter to Gen S. (delicately and handsomely written) importing that Gen S. had expressed a wish to be retired, under the act, and only witheld [sic] it at the Presdt.'s request; that he would no longer object--That he would still, sometimes, need his advice--not so often as to burden him--and was disposed to deal generously by the Genl.'s military family...

Scott's military family meant the officers he had helped promote and whose careers he had helped advance, such as Brig. General Irvin McDowell. But foremost in Scott's mind would have been Henry Wager Halleck. Halleck was nicknamed "Brains" because of his intellectualism and Scott became enamored of him because of his translations of French military strategy and efforts to turn the rough American army into a leader in the realm of military science. When the Civil War broke out, Scott made sure that Halleck was made a major general in the regular army, fourth in rank behind himself, McClellan, and John C. Fremont. Then Scott sent Halleck to Missouri to clean up the mess Fremont had made.

"Genl Scott proposes to retire in favor of Halleck," McClellan told Mary Ellen. "The Presdt & Cabinet have determined to accept his retirement, but not in favor of Halleck. The old ____'s [sic] antiquity is wonderful & lasting." Welles wrote down no such comment about Halleck, but hindsight suggest McClellan's information was correct. By tradition, the general-in-chief was always the longest serving major general, anyway, so to name Halleck to the position while McClellan and Fremont were still on active duty would be unprecedented.

"The enemy have fallen back on Manassas--probably to draw me into the old error," McClellan added, almost as an afterthought. "I hope to make them abandon Leesburg tomorrow."

"I had just seated myself down to write you a nice long letter," George Meade had written his wife on the evening of October 18, "when orders came to march to-morrow, requiring me to stir about and give the requisite directions."

Their Absence Not Perceived

Wherein the beginning of the biggest story of October 1861 goes unnoticed

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On the evening of October 17, 1861, Brig. General Charles P. Stone heard a remarkable report. The Confederates had left Leesburg. Since June, Stone had been responsible for soldiers based in Poolesville, Maryland watching the upper Potomac for signs of a Confederate crossing, save for approximately a week around the Battle of Bull Run. The size of their force had varied, but his opponents had never before abandoned Leesburg.

He carefully interviewed the scouts and peered across the river at their usual positions himself, before finally transmitting to the commander of his army the surprising news:

Stone's division of three brigades numbered about 12,000 men. His opponent on the Virginia side of the river mustered only 2,500 men by the more optimistic accounts. Colonel Nathan "Shanks" Evans, one of the heroes of Manassas, commanded the Seventh Brigade of General G.T. Beauregard's First Corps. It had one under-sized artillery battery, five companies of cavalry (numbering about 300 horsemen), three regiments of Mississippi infantry (about 600 each), and Colonel Eppa Hunton's 8th Virginia Infantry (at only about 450, probably due to the close proximity to the homes of its members).

Some of Evans' cavalry had close ties to the cavalry of Colonel Turner Ashby operating around Harper's Ferry (they either would eventually become part of his 7th Virginia Cavalry or already were, depending on the source) and were quick to report to the South Carolinian about a skirmish near there on the day before. The Seventh Brigade formed a salient, or a part of the line that sticks out and is surrounded on three sides, especially since the Union army had recently occupied Langley and Lewinsville. Continuing to hold Leesburg would put Evans at risk of being attacked from behind by a Union army.

So when Evans heard about the skirmish at Harper's Ferry and combined it with the occupation of Langley and Lewinsville, he assumed that the North was planning a push to secure Leesburg and Loudoun County beofre winter. So, without checking with anyone up the chain of command, he decided to move his little brigade to a safer line of defense at Goose Creek where it intersected the Old Carolina Road [today, the site of Oatlands Plantation].

Recs: The Pickets Unusually Vigilant

The best pieces I read this week

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Harper's Weekly cartoon from October 14 referring to Rose O'Neal Greenhow and her fellow female spies

October 15, 1861 was most significant to the war along the Potomac because of a seemingly minor event. General G.T. Beauregard at last put the finishing touches on his grandiose official report of the Battle of Manassas and mailed it to General Samuel Cooper. The Confederate commander had not spared Richmond from any of his characteristic purple prose and had also taken the opportunity to grind a few axes, for instance beginning not with the lead up to the battle, but with his own account of the rejection of his strategic proposals by the very people he was submitting his report to. The minute he signed his name to it, it became a time bomb ticking down to detonation.

The Campaign Continues

Wherein the fighting of Fall 1861 continues, over policies and tents

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As the sun rose higher in the sky on October 13, George McCall's Pennsylvania Reserves waited for a Confederate attack that wasn't coming. Other than driving in of the pickets on the evening of October 12, there was no hostile activities by the Southerners. In all likelihood some Confederate cavalry had been ordered to ride up to the picket line around the newly created camps to get an idea of the new position. The pickets had followed their orders and retreated back to tell their commanders the Confederates were testing their lines and commanders itchy for a fight had seen the signs they wanted to see.

One of these commanders had been the commander of the Army of the Potomac, George B. McClellan. By the time of his daily letter on October 13 to his wife (who had just given birth), he was back at his headquarters at the Wilkes House on 19th and Pennsylvania, NW, after having spent the night in anticipation with the division of "Baldy" Smith in Lewinsville, nearby the Reserves. McClellan was on to other things already. He wrote Mary Ellen:

I am firmly determined to force the issue with Genl Scott--a very few days will determine whether his policy or mine is to prevail--he is for inaction and the defensive, he endeavors to cripple me in every way--yet I see that the newspapers begin to accuse me of want of energy. He has even complained to the War Dept of my making the advance of the last few days [of McCall and Smith's divisions]. Hereafter the truth will be shown & he will be displayed in his true light.

But while McClellan was off to other battles, the Pennsylvania Reserves and Smith's Division had to keep waiting for theirs, as the sun continued to creep across the sky.

On the Eve of Battle

Wherein George Meade prepares himself and his family for a Confederate attack

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October 12, 1861 was a fairly quiet day in the Confederate Army of the Potomac. The promotions to major general had come in for James Longstreet and T.J. Jackson (who was being called "Stonewall" in the popular press after the story about his defense of Henry Hill had spread over the summer), who were assigned to G.T. Beauregard's First Corps and G.W. Smith's Second Corps, respectively. It would be a few more days before they were given multiple brigades to make up their divisions. At least in Longstreet's case, it would only be two brigades, preserving hope that the plan of creating multiple divisions under major generals might continue despite provisional President Jefferson Davis' recent attempts to kill it once and for all (Jackson's subordinates are not recorded in the Official Records, if they were even made).

But in the Union Army of the Potomac, things were aflutter. "I am at this moment looking after the enemy," its commander, Maj. General George B. McClellan wrote to his wife, Mary Ellen. He splurged to send the message by telegram, because that morning he had received a telegram from her announcing she had given birth to the couples fifth (and, as it turned out, final) child, Mary. "I thank God you are safe," McClellan had told her, before his words about seeing to an enemy attack. Despite being sure he would be "in the saddle all day" he encouraged her to telegraph him throughout the day with updates of her status.

McClellan had been at the camp of Fitz John Porter, in what is now Rosslyn, when he received word that the enemy was advancing on the divisions of Brig. Generals W.F. "Baldy" Smith at Lewinsville, Virginia and George McCall at Langley, Virginia. General Joe Johnston, as we have seen, had no intention of an offensive operation, but since Manassas he and his subordinates had actively deceived McClellan about their true intentions. Beauregard especially enjoyed dabbling in these schemes and had a willing partner in his signals and ordnance chief Porter Alexander. In an undated plot implied by Beauregard's biographer to be in August and by Alexander to be in the early fall (perhaps after the Evansport battery opened) the two took advantage of new technology Alexander had wheedled out of Richmond to unhinge the whole Union command structure. As Alexander recalled:

I had my signal stations scattered about on the high places, & of course under orders to report promptly all unusual occurrences. One night, I remember, about bedtime receiving a report that one or two or possibly more rockets had been seen over the Federal lines. I took the report to Gen. Beauregard & he asked me if I had rockets. I said yes, every station was provided, on which he told me to have every station send up one & during the night to have one or two more demonstrations of them. It took very few minutes to send the orders everywhere, & we soon had rockets apparently answering each other for a long distance right & left, & couriers were sent to shoot others, later, at other points. The next papers from the North brought the story above referred to It was said McClellan complained to Lincoln that only he and Gen. Scott knew of his plans, & yet they were allowed to become known to some one who must have betrayed us.

Speaking Freely

What Davis told G.W. Smith behind Johnston's back

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It was no secret that by October 10 the relationship between provisional President Jefferson Davis and acting Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin on the one hand, and Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard on the other. For months since the battle at Manassas, various combinations of the leadership in Richmond and the leadership of the marquee army in Northern Virginia had traded increasingly aggressive letters and telegrams. Davis had even come north to consult in person at Fairfax Court-House, but rather than easing the tension it made it worse.

On October 6, Maj. General Gustavus W. Smith, assigned by Johnston to command the unauthorized "Second Corps" of the Army of the Potomac, wrote to Jefferson Davis. The letter is recorded as "not found" in the official records, but its contents can be inferred from Davis' October 10 reply. Also not recorded, is whether or not Smith was prompted to send his letter by Johnston and Beauregard. He certainly had been at the Fairfax Court-House meeting, and, based on his own memorandum written up months later, suggests his sympathies lay with the generals. Whether the letter was a stab at diplomacy (either on Johnston's part or on Smith's own initiative) or not, Davis saw it as any modern politician would: an opportunity to pass on a leaked message to Johnston and Beauregard.

Davis wrote back October 10, starting off easy. Smith had evidently suggested that a unified command be established for the transportation of goods and personnel by rail. By Davis' reply it looks like he suggested Beauregard for the position, though he almost certainly did not recommend it at the loss of command of the First Corps. But that's how Davis decided to take it: "He could no doubt do more than anyone thought of in that connection; but how can he be spared from his present duty?" No, Davis concluded, the best idea was to maintain the quartermaster system based in Richmond.

The Confederate Blockade of Washington

Wherein guns at Quantico cut off shipping and hunt spies

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Theophilus Holmes

By Fall 1861, the U.S. Navy was already beginning to establish an effective blockade of the South, though it still had a ways to go before it would match general-in-chief Winfield Scott's vision of cutting off outside commerce to the South. But the South was also hard at work to cut off the Washington from the rest of the world. The raids against the B&O Railroad west of the capital are still fairly well known, as is the fear of partisan activity on the stretch to Baltimore, but the Confederate blockade of the river is less well known.

The town of Evansport at the mouth of Quantico Creek had been a native village known as Pamacocack when Captain John Smith landed there about a year after the settlement of Jamestown. Today, it is the town of Quantico, entirely surrounded by the Marine Base. In 1861, as Evansport, it was a community looking for a rebirth from gold mines in nearby Independent Hill, after the tobacco that it had become prosperous shipping down Quantico Creek to the Potomac in the 18th Century had caused massive soil erosion that silted up the 19th Century waterway.

After the Stampede

A boring day leading an army

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With history of warfare, it's easy to write about the fighting, the things before the fighting that led to it, and the things after that resulted from it. But real-time life in warfare is full of insignificant events that appear monumental, and significant events that go unnoticed. Both occurred in the first week of October.

"I have not written you since the few lines the day we expected to have a fight," Brig. General George Meade wrote to his wife on October 6 from his new camp in present-day McLean, referring to his last letter dashed off at 3:00 pm on September 30. "The stampede lasted for thirty-six hours." In his characteristic fashion, the mild cynic related to her the rumor going through the Union Army of the Potomac that its commander, Maj. General George McClellan, had planned a trap that would be slammed shut by the Pennsylvania Reserves, the informal name for the division to which Meade's brigade of four regiments belonged. "There is no doubt [the Confederates] were appraised of it, though McClellan asserts he did not tell even the generals who were to share in it till the very moment of action, and he is now convinced it is impossible to do or attempt anything without their knowing it."

At the present all is quiet, the enemy having withdrawn to his old lines at Manassas [Meade was off, they had only retired to Fairfax Court-House]. His threatening Washington was a bravado, hoping to draw McClellan out. Failing in this, he has fallen back, thinking we would rush after him, and thus give them a chance to get us at a disadvantage. They are, as Woodbury said, great on strategy, but I guess they will find after awhile that our movements are not to be governed by theirs, and that McClellan is not going to move until he is ready, and then not in the direction they want him.

Scott Strikes Back

Wherein the blue-on-blue violence continues

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On October 4, Winfield Scott launched his counterattack. The 75 year old general-in-chief of the U.S. Army had been sidelined by his subordinate, the ambitious 35 year old George McClellan. Scott, responsible for winning the war, and McClellan, responsible for defending Washington, were originally at odds about the best strategy and about the nature of the threat to Washington. It quickly became a personal battle, and the two men became consumed by their dislike of each other.

On September 16, Winfield Scott had set a trap for McClellan, to give him a legitimate grievance to take to the civilian leadership. Scott had issued two orders through his chief of staff, both aimed at McClellan's most common offenses. The first ordered all officers in the army to use the proper chain of command for communications. So McClellan had to communicate to Scott, and Scott to Secretary of War Simon Cameron (and Cameron to the President). The second ordered McClellan to send Scott a detailed description of the units in the Army of the Potomac.

Beginning to Move

Four vignettes of the beginning of October

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As the weather changed in October 1861, the stagnation that had characterized summer around the nation's capital began to break up. At the end of September, the Confederates evacuated their advanced position at Munson's and Mason's Hills, and the picket war around Bailey's Crossroads and Falls Church died down. The Confederacy's Army of the Potomac, under General Joseph E. Johnston, was falling back to a stronger defensive position, in light of the conclusion that they would be unable to launch an offensive anytime soon.

For Maj. General George McClellan, commanding the Union's Army of the Potomac, it was a time when command of his army was coming together. For McClellan, though, the passing of the imminent threat of Confederate attack (not that he didn't still believe it might come, he just felt prepared for it) seems to have given him full time to worry about his personal battles. "I am becoming daily more disgusted with this administration," he wrote to Mary Ellen on October 2, "perfectly sick of it."

If I could with honor resign I would quit the whole concern tomorrow; but so long as I can be of any real use to the nation in its trouble I will make the sacrifice. No one seems able to comprehend my real feeling--that I have no ambitious feelings to gratify, & only want to serve my country in its trouble, & when this weary war is over to return to my wife...

Little Difference of Opinion

Wherein the future of the CSA is decided

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Beauregard's Headquarters on Main St and Oak St in Fairfax today (LOC)

On the morning of October 1, provisional President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis bid farewell to his would-be nation's Army of the Potomac and rode by horse for Manassas Junction, where he would take the train to Richmond. He had spent a grim evening the night before with Generals Joseph E. Johnston and G.T. Beauregard, as well as Maj. General Gustavus W. Smith, concluding that the Confederacy was in serious trouble. Like so many choices made by Davis, Johnston, and Beauregard in the first six months of the war, the results of this conference would have a lasting impact on the rest of the war, the fate of the Confederacy, and the war about the war into the 20th Century.

Five days earlier, Johnston had written the acting Secretary of War, Judah P. Benjamin, requesting a strategic conference about the future of his army. In a missive once again berating the War Department for failing to give him enough troops and supplies he wrote, "I think it important that either his excellency the President of the Confederate States, yourself, or some one representing you, should here upon the ground confer with me in regard to this all-important question."