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.

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].

Eppa Hunton Returns to Leesburg

In which we name check Prince William, Fauquier, and Loudon

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Eppa Hunton II

"We made our march to Leesburg, the citizens all along the road greeting the victorious soldiers with tumultuous joy, and welcoming their safe return to the County of Loudoun," Eppa Hunton remembered about the days following Manassas. Hunton was colonel of the 8th Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which had guarded the two major Potomac River crossings near Leesburg (Edward's and Conrad's Ferries) while Charles P. Stone's Rockville Expedition was ongoing. When Irvin McDowell began his march on Washington and Stone went west to Harper's Ferry, the 8th Virginia and a South Carolina regiment that had reinforced them had scurried south to Manassas to bolster the Army of the Potomac, then under G.T. Beauregard.


At a crucial moment on Henry Hill, Hunton had thrown his regiment into the fray after deciding on it with another regiment's colonel and helped turn the tide decisively. But in the confusion it was unclear whether the result was going to be a Union retreat, or the forces were just repositioning themselves closer to Stone Bridge to try to flank. Hunton's eight company regiment would have been the only ones to defend such an attack and the colonel became very grim until it became clear the Northerners had broken and were running for Washington. Hunton wrote in his autobiography:

I had up to that time passed with my soldiers for an exceedingly pious man, but I lost my reputation as such, then and there. After I discovered that this force that I thought I would have to fight, had broken into pieces, I was extremely relieved and galloped back to my regiment, only a hundred yards off; and they said, and proved, that I proclaimed with a hearty oath that the Yankees were running like dogs. I was utterly unconscious of using an oath, but have no doubt I did. They proved it on me conclusively, and I never recovered my reputation for piety during the war.