.................................................................................................................................................
East of Warrenton
Sigel had finally cleared out of Reynolds’ way, and the
Pennsylvania Reserves could begin marching up the Warrenton Turnpike [US 29]
towards the old battlefield. But Reynolds was barely underway before it became
obvious that Sigel had seriously botched his job. Pickets began to report that
there were no Union troops to the right of the Reynolds’ men.
Over the course of the several hours it took Reynolds and
McDowell to figure out what happened, Sigel marched his entire corps south and
formed it up to the right of the O&A tracks, rather than marching with his
right-most brigade on the railroad. This left a massive gap between McDowell’s
corps and Sigel’s, though how massive would not be immediately apparent.
Thinking that Sigel must be only a mile or two separated, McDowell gave orders
to the senior brigadier of King’s Division to follow behind Reynolds on the
turnpike, but send out flankers to look for Sigel.
Thoroughfare Gap
For a little over an hour the advanced scouts of
Longstreet’s Wing had been cautiously trying to determine what force was
felling trees in the gap. With nearly all of the cavalry commanded by Stuart
and east of Bull Run Mountain, Longstreet couldn’t reconnoiter like he should
have.
Had he been able to, he would have learned that the only
Union force opposing him was the First New Jersey Cavalry, once again under the
ludicrous Sir Percy Wyndham. Always reckless, Colonel Wyndham had decided that
he would hold the Gap, and sent messengers to McDowell to hurry infantry
reinforcement while his cavalry cut down trees and hid themselves throughout
the narrow gorge.
Unfinished Railroad
Despite the delay of McDowell and Sigel, Pope was moving
much too quickly for Jackson to strike him at Manassas Junction, so he pulled
his men back to the line of an unfinished railroad. Alternating cuts and banks,
the railroad line had been dug by the owners of the Manassas Gap Railroad to
avoid the exorbitant fees the O&A owners were charging them for running
traffic from Alexandria to Manassas Junction. The line was supposed to diverge
from Gainesville and travel north through Fairfax Court-House to Jones Point in
Alexandria, where a terminus would have directly served a wharf on the Potomac
River.
But the Panic of 1857 had effectively killed the project,
drying up capital for its construction, which had ended in 1858, even though
the rails for the line had already been purchased and were sitting in
Alexandria. Traveling over the rolling Piedmont of Virginia, the railroad had
been overwhelmed by the price of cuts and embankments needed to maintain a
suitable grade for rail traffic, but it was those cuts and embankments that now
offered a solution to Stonewall Jackson.
He placed his division, under Taliaferro, behind the
unfinished railroad behind the Brawner family farm, and Ewell’s Division
between the farm and the Sudley Road. The railroad bed provided natural cover,
behind which the extent of his force could be hidden from Union scouts, and the
large, downward sloping plain in front of them provided a perfect killing field
if the scouts happened to find them anyway.
It would become the defining geography of the battle.
South of Manassas Junction
No comments:
Post a Comment