Also This Week

An effort to not lose things

...........................................................................................................................................

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.