The Whole Matter Is With General Banks

In which rival strategic visions lead to the arrival of John Pope, good for no one

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June 26 is best known as Robert E. Lee's first offensive with the Army of Northern Virginia, and the second day of the Seven Days, the spectacular offensive that reversed the war's strategic situation and began the legend of Lee. But for Maj. General Irvin McDowell, lately commanding the Department of the Rappahannock, it was another day when his dreams of rehabilitation and glorious military command were yanked from him.

The Confederate Maj. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and his second-in-command, Maj. General Dick Ewell, had over the month of May upended all the carefully restored order from the banks of the Potomac to the Allegheny Mountains with a campaign that had made fools of the Union commanders he faced (all that had saved their careers thus far was that the size of Jackson's army remained greatly exaggerated). McDowell, with authority over all of northern Virginia, but only west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, had initially resisted having men from his department dragged into the affair, then pledged to solve the problem the other generals couldn't, then when it appeared clear the situation had been defused again tried to extricate his command from it. Jackson's twin victories at Cross Keys and Port Republic only further cemented in McDowell's mind that his men should never have been involved.

Where McDowell's men belonged, in McDowell's mind was not Front Royal, not Manassas Junction, not even Fredericksburg, but outside Richmond with the rest of the Army of the Potomac, from which his command had been carved. That's where the war was being one, he believed, and that's where he had the chance to redeem his name from the shame of the battle at Bull Run, which was really the fault of his subordinate commanders' inability to execute his plan. The nonsense with Jackson stood between McDowell and getting to Richmond.

McDowell had sent two divisions to the Valley, his First Division under Maj. General James Shields, and his Second Division under the temporary command of Brig. General James Ricketts after its former commander was transferred out West to remove him from his feud with McDowell. It was half of Shields' division that had been defeated by Jackson at Port Republic, but nonetheless McDowell was urging their return to Falmouth the day after the battle. From his headquarters in Manassas Junction he practically begged the commander of the Department of the Shenandoah, Maj. General Nathaniel Banks, to resume responsibility for the Valley. In McDowell's mind he had bailed out Banks, so Banks owed it to him to quickly relieve his men.

Banks had other ideas, though. While McDowell thought the Jackson calamity had occurred because the borders of the departments had been drawn in a way that seemed to give him some responsibility for the Valley, Banks believed it had happened because McDowell had taken away almost all of his troops, leaving him with only two brigades to defend a vitally important area. Both were right, in a way. The real problem was without an overall commander with a broad view of the situation, the individual commanders had set conflicting plans of operation into motion. McDowell could not march to reinforce McClellan while Banks also had sufficient forces to protect against a Confederate army moving up the Valley to threaten Maryland. One of the safety of Washington, the reinforcement of McClellan, or the Confederate army had to be eliminated before the others could happen.

There was a third person involved in the affair, Maj. General John Fremont, commander of the Mountain Department. Fremont had also been ordered into the Valley to bail out Banks, and his and McDowell's forces were supposed to have worked together to cut off Jackson and destroy his army. But McDowell had let Jackson get by him and followed him to Cross Keys, where he had been defeated.

Made to Pay

The exciting conclusion of Jackson's Valley Campaign minus Jackson or the Valley

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In case you missed it, on Tuesday we looked at how Jackson's capture of Front Royal in mid-May postponed McDowell's planned march on Richmond. On Thursday, we saw the resulting race to Front Royal when Jackson continued marching north, in hopes of trapping him in the Lower Valley and eliminating his command.

On the evening of June 10, Colonel Edmund Schriver, chief of staff for the Department of the Rapphannock, and sitting in Front Royal as Maj. General Irvin McDowell's eyes and ears, ruefully forwarded a "sorry picture of Shields' division" in the form of a report from its head, Maj. General James Shields in Luray. That town, Schriver told his boss, was "filled with so-called sick officers and men, who, it is said, will never be of use again."

In any calculations you may take as to numbers do not rely on more than half what the returns call for. I do not think any of our army will be fit to take the field unless King's division, in less than a fortnight. Horses are used up as well as the men. The want of discipline and ignorance of the plainest duties are distressing. There is nothing but confusion and disorder.

Just two weeks earlier James Shields had told Schriver, "I will clear the valley of the Shenandoah of the enemy as far as I advance." Now it seemed like his men would never march again. In between they had met Maj. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, who in the second part of his stunning Valley Campaign, had incapacitated two more Union forces and saved Richmond for the Confederacy.

As in our two previous posts, however, our story doesn't lie in the Valley, but east of the Blue Ridge in the Piedmont where McDowell's army in the Department of the Rapphannock had put its plans to march on Richmond on hold, to make an all-out rush for the Shenandoah Valley and Jackson. On May 31, it looked like they were well on their way to accomplishing their goal of trapping his army between Union reinforcements based around Harper's Ferry and a combined army of McDowell's men and men from the Mountain Department at Front Royal and Strasburg.

Shields, McDowell's star division commander, had two of his brigades already at Front Royal and two more that would arrive before the night was out. To the west on the Manassas Gap Railroad, another division under Maj. General Edward O.C. Ord had advanced to about Thoroughfare Gap, but damage to the railroad by Confederate cavalry near Front Royal and a train wreck near McDowell's headquarters at Rectortown was slowing them down. Further south, the division of Rufus King was at Catlett's Station, and could make use of the O&A Railroad to get to Manassas Junction and switch to the Manassas Gap line. The problem for McDowell was feeding so many men and horses.

"Fremont has not yet reached Strasburg, and I fear he will not reach it in time." Shields had told McDowell and McDowell had relayed to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, "Ord's division should be pushed forward, but with supplies, or it will starve here without them."

Fremont was supposed to have marched from the west side of the Allegheny Mountains to Harrisonburg, but had decided instead to cross further north directly at Strasburg. Throughout the race of Shields to get to the Valley, the Lincoln Administration had taken for granted that Fremont's men would get their first--for one, they had much less ground to cover--but instead Shields sat in Front Royal and Strasburg sat empty. McDowell was pleased in his morning telegram to Staunton to note that his men had arrived on hour before Lincoln's proscribed time.

A Crushing Blow

Wherein Jackson's Piedmont Campaign kicks off

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This Saturday marks the 150th Anniversary of the stunning conclusion of Jackson's Valley Campaign, an epic feat of operational warfare genius that can only be rivaled in American history by Patton's Winter '44-'45 campaigns and Washington's New Jersey campaign (with the caveat that tactically, Jackson was by far the inferior of either). Last month, we took time to examine why there was a Valley Campaign, noting the failures of Union intelligence gathering and analysis and the failures of Union planning and organization that allowed Jackson to perfectly exploit his foes.

While less exciting, Jackson's campaign was paradigm-changing for concepts of security around Washington, DC. Over the course of three weeks in early summer the plan for defending the nation's capital shifted from one based on stationary fortification to one based on a campaigning army, and in doing so sealed the fate of George McClellan. In that sense, Jackson also achieved the primary objective of warfare in the mind of a 4th Century BC Chinese strategist he had never heard of: disrupt your enemy's strategy.

While it is most exciting to study the operational masterpiece from the viewpoint of the man who commanded both sides and the men who marched themselves ragged, to appreciate the deep strategic significance it is best to look at the story from the perspective of those in the Piedmont of Virginia, specifically one sitting on the banks of the Rappahannock River. There, in Falmouth, was the headquarters of the Department of the Rapphannock, commanded by Maj. General Irvin McDowell, rehabilitated loser of Bull Run.

The Lincoln Administration had quietly--almost apologetically--stood by McDowell the turmoil of the post-disaster outrage, and, in the Spring, rewarded him with promotion to major general of volunteers, making him one of the most senior generals in the Army. They believed McDowell had been a victim of circumstances, irrational public zeal, and poor subordinates, and retained Winfield Scott's initial high confidence of his abilities--a great deal more confidence, in fact, than they had in Maj. General George McClellan, who was leading the marquee army for Union, the Army of the Potomac, in a march on Richmond up the Virginia Peninsula from Fort Monroe.

McDowell should have been leading the First Corps of the Army of the Potomac under McClellan's supervision, but, at the last minute, the Lincoln Administration had withheld him until the defense of the capital was settled. McClellan's scheme for defense relied on an impenetrable system of forts that he had constructed over the winter that had turned the District of Columbia into the most fortified city on earth. A small mobile corps was to operate in the area, making sure that any enemy couldn't get too comfortable in Northern Virginia again, but it was the futility of attacking the string of fortifications that McClellan counted on to convince strategists in Richmond that their men were better used in different theaters.

But McClellan had violated his own strategy in the opinion of the Administration, particularly Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. An analysis conducted by two veteran generals at Stanton's request found that McClellan had shortchanged the defenses and the mobile corps in manpower and so McDowell's corps had been retained until the problem could be corrected. To better maintain control over the capital's defense, Stanton had created new Departments over which McClellan had no authority for McDowell and other commanders in the Shenandoah, the western Virginia mountains, the District, and Maryland.

Why Was There A Valley Campaign?

In which we look at Northern organization and strategy

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This is the second in a two part post on Northern mistakes in the first month of May.

Last week we looked at how mistakes in intelligence gathering and analysis led leaders of the Northern war effort to coalesce behind a likely enemy course of action that ended up being drastically different from the one actually pursued by their Southern opponents. But history is full of poor intelligence gathering and analysis that nevertheless ends in victory. So this week, we'll look at the mistakes those same leaders made in their own planning--mistakes that allowed Stonewall Jackson to execute his brilliant Valley Campaign.

Central to our discussion is what are known in modern military doctrine as the "levels of war." The concept goes back to ancient times, when it was recognized that some leaders needed to tell individuals where to stand and who to fight, while others needed to decide where the battle should occur. The "general" officer was created precisely to make those sorts of general decisions. By the time of the American Civil War, it was already long understood that even among general officers there were further levels of responsibility, with some moving groups of men in the field, and some deciding where to move armies several months hence. Today, we recognize roughly four levels of war: national-strategic, theater-strategic, operational, and tactical.

Prior to the American Civil War, there had never been a clear delineation of responsibility for military strategy in the United States--who to put where and when, in order to win a war. At the highest level, which we would call today "National-Strategic" and some 1862 contemporaries would have called "Grand Strategy", control depended on the personality of the Secretary of War. More aggressive secretaries would locate and direct men and materiel themselves, while secretaries selected more for their politics than their smarts would defer to the senior general in the U.S. Army, which, after 1841, meant Winfield Scott. But there was no clearly expressed distinction between the responsibilities of the general-in-chief and the Secretary.

Why Was There A Valley Campaign?

Wherein we examine failures of intelligence

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The first of two posts on mistakes by the North the first week of May 1862.

May 8, 1862, was the date of the Battle of McDowell, the beginning of Stonewall Jackson's legendary Valley Campaign. Much has justly been written about Jackson's operational-level brilliance and an equal amount has unjustly been written about his rather mundane tactics. Only in recent years, have reevaluations of the campaign been conducted, most notably in Peter Cozzens fantastic Shenandoah 1862 which acknowledges the immense personal cost to the soldiers of Jackson's army and, in the words of the friend who gifted the book to me, "bothers to examine the Yankee sources."

The Valley, though technically in the Potomac watershed, has simply been beyond the capacity of your blogger to post on, which means the area that drains directly into the Shenandoah has usually been beyond the scope of this blog. But Jackson's campaign deeply threatened the area we usually cover, and ended up being the strategic center of gravity for the entire Virginia theater. Without Jackson's operation, Joe Johnston, hundreds of miles away on the Virginia Peninsula, would have been unable to fend of McClellan's army, and Richmond would have been scrambling to find defenders in fall 1862 instead of Washington.

Edwin Stanton

It was largely planning mistakes made in Washington at the strategic level from May 8 to May 17 that allowed Jackson to conduct his famous campaign. This post focuses on the first part of those mistakes, the failure in intelligence collection and analysis.

With the demotion of McClellan in March, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton became the Administration's principle war planner. Unlike his predecessor, Simon Cameron, Stanton believed the Secretary should be active in decisions about the prosecution of the war, rather than only concerned with supplying and administering the armies. Stanton signaled this when he added Peter H. Watson as a second Assistant Secretary of War as a condition of joining the Administration himself. Watson was appointed to straighten out and manage the contracts the Department made to supply the army, which was usually a tightly held responsibility of the Secretary in order to bestow political favors.

Before It's Too Late

Wherein the end of the war is imminent

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On May 6, 1862 nowhere was the imminent Union victory in the Civil War more apparent than in Northern Virginia, and no one in Northern Virginia was working harder to put the final nail in the Confederacy than the man who had botched up the whole thing ten months earlier. Maj. General Irvin McDowell, commander of the Department of the Rappahannock was working night and day to repair both the historic Potomac Path [U.S. 1] and the Fredericksburg and Richmond Railroad to allow a full advance towards Richmond.

McDowell can be forgiven for being swept up into the prevailing opinion that the end of the war was months away. In the West, several armies had been united under the command of Maj. General Henry Halleck in what we would call an "Army Group" today, with the purpose of capturing Confederate strongholds on the Mississippi and, by controlling the continent's great river, slicing the Southern nation in half and crushing their internal economy. Halleck's armies were drawing tight around Corinth, the key to defending Memphis, and General P.G.T. Beauregard, in command by accident after the death of the preferred Albert Sidney Johnston, appeared out-manned, out-gunned, and out-generaled.

At the other end of the Mississippi, Tennessee native and loyal Unionist Commodore David Farragut had completed a daring operation in cooperation with Maj. General Benjamin Butler and captured New Orleans, providing an ideal harbor for the Gulf Blockade Squadron as well as closing the best blockade-running port for cotton transited south from the cotton-growing Confederate heartland. With major Northern armies present in Pensacola, Port Royal, and Roanoke, too, the South was being dissected.

And in Virginia, McClellan was finally on the move. By May 6, word had arrived that the siege at Yorktown on the Virginia Peninsula was over, and McClellan was on the heels of Joe Johnston's army as it bolted back towards Richmond. Lincoln and his Secretaries of War, Navy, and the Treasury had taken the revenue cutter Miami the evening of May 5 to Fort Monroe to view the collapse of the major army defending Richmond personally. While they did so, Johnston had made a stand at Williamsburg, where after a brutal day of fighting for Joe Hooker's division, the Army of the Potomac had triumphed [Johnston's army had belatedly and at last assumed its famous name, the Army of Northern Virginia].

Entirely Secure

Wherein Lincoln turns to McDowell to defend Washington...again

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On Tuesday, April 1, 1862, Maj. General George B. McClellan had sailed away from Alexandria en route to the Virginia Peninsula. On Wednesday, April 2, 1862, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton moved to banish him from the capital region for good.

Stanton, like Winston Churchill, was a pedantic, obnoxious, arrogant, unlikable, borderline sociopath, without whom the world as we know it today would not exist. Like Churchill, Stanton's highest loyalty was to his own ideas, and the resulting wild shifts in political affiliations led to accusations of opportunism. Both men were beyond stubborn, and held no beliefs loosely, and had become fanatically devoted to ideas they had hatched that proved disastrously wrong. Both also got the most important question of their lifetime right, and their single-minded devotion to seeing it achieved saved democracy for their countries.

For Stanton, that idea was the primacy of the Union, which required the full efforts of a dominant Federal government to establish and sustain. Stanton was a lawyer from Ohio, who had dropped out of Kenyon College when his father died and completed his studies reading with a lawyer in his home town. He was relentless in his cases, and early on earned a reputation for ruthlessness or dedication, depending on which side of the court room one sat. He earned national fame when he defended then-Congressman Daniel Sickles from charges of murder when he shot District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Philip Barton Key (son of the author of the Star Spangled Banner) to death in Lafayette Park. Sumner argued successfully for the first time in an American court room that Sickles had become temporarily insane because of Key's affair with the Congressman's wife (in the opinion of this blogger the defense was a lie; Sickles was permanently insane).

In 1858, Attorney General Jeremiah Black sent Stanton to California, deputized to settle land disputes. Stanton's well-known anti-slavery Democratic politics made him appealing to the Buchanan Administration, which was trying to split the difference between its Northern and Southern wings. His popularity at getting the Democrat Sickles off in what had become a very political celebrity trial made his appointment a victory of sorts for Northern Democrats, who felt they were losing out by Buchanan's gentle treatment of Southerners. But in California, Sickles turned his formidable intellect and pit bull personality on the land disputes and uncovered a massive conspiracy to defraud the Federal government. On top of his celebrity, he had turned out to be useful.

In December 1860, Buchanan's Northern Democrat Secretary of State resigned in protest, because the President had refused to deploy the U.S. Army to defend Federal property in South Carolina after it announced secession. Buchanan quickly asked Black to serve in the position. Black advocated a less confrontational approach: reinforce Fort Sumter, but let the South Carolinians cool down and then reengage diplomatically. Stanton was appointed Attorney General to replace Black.

If Buchanan thought Stanton might support his administration's balanced approach to session, he was disastrously wrong. Stanton instead almost single-handedly dragged Buchanan to condemn secession, and thundered about the need for immediate military action. When it became clear Buchanan would not do so, and that Secretary of War John Floyd was secretly supplying information to the South Carolinians, whipping for secession votes in his home state of Virginia, and making it easy for secessionists to seize arsenals in the South, Stanton decided to begin supplying information to President-elect Lincoln and general-in-chief Winfield Scott. It's largely thanks to Stanton that the Lincoln Administration had even limited ability to respond to the secession crisis when it was sworn in in March.

The new Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, was clearly in way over his head, at best. At worst, he may have been a corrupt war profiteer. Either way, Lincoln asked Stanton to stay on as a special counsel at the War Department. In that role, Stanton befriended fellow Ohio Democrat George McClellan, who had come to the capital after Bull Run to make things right. Or so McClellan thought. Stanton, like the famous paraphrase of Lord Palmerston's remarks to Parliament, had no friends, only interests. When it became clear that Cameron was tragically inept, Stanton made use of McClellan (who at least could recognize good ideas) to push for the organization of an army strong enough to impose Federal will on the rebellious states.

When Lincoln told Cameron he was resigning, Stanton was brought in to root out the corruption at the War Department. With fanatical zeal he turned his brain to ungumming the bureaucracy and creating an efficient machine for the administration of what later generations of Americans would learn to call total war. But with himself in the driver's seat and able to depress the gas pedal fully, McClellan had become the impediment to reinstating the Union as quickly and thoroughly as possible. And so, Edwin Stanton turned his relentless talents towards destroying McClellan.

It was probably Stanton who was responsible for Lincoln's change of heart towards his role as commander-in-chief. During Cameron's time at the War Department, the President had believed war was best left to general-in-chief Scott and his replacement, McClellan. But since January, the President had issued orders for all armies to advance, had forced McClellan to step down as general-in-chief, had created corps for the Army of the Potomac, and had set conditions for McClellan to meet before his plans could receive approval. Stanton had probably convinced him that  the first word of commander-in-chief had real meaning. At the very least, Stanton had empowered him to act on beliefs he had developed himself.

Stanton had also decided to balance McClellan's dominance of the new upper echelon of the Army created by the promotion of his favorites to brigadier generals of U.S. Volunteers, by elevating prominent members of the old pre-war Army. At the operational level, four were now McClellan's corps commanders, much to his irritation. At the national-strategic level, Stanton pulled Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas out of the dusty corner he had been confined to by McClellan, and reinstated as a major general Ethan Allen Hitchcock, to be a special advisor to the Secretary. Both men had been born around the turn-of-the-century, and both men had had senior roles in the army before the Mexican War. They were perfect for Stanton's scheme of pitting experience against the youthful "genius" of McClellan.

On April 2, Stanton turned to them to exorcise the ghost of McClellan from the capital. He submitted a request to the two men to review five papers he provided and "report to me whether the President's order and instructions have been complied with in respect to the forces to be left for the defense of Washington and its security and at Manassas."

First up was the President's General War Order No. 3, issued on March 8, which forbade shifting the base of operations of the Army of the Potomac until McClellan and all four corps commanders certified Washington was safe. The second document was that certification, with the Fourth Corps' Erasmus Keyes, the Third's Sam Heintzelman, and the First's Irvin McDowell, all further stipulating that if all the forts on the Virginia side of the Potomac were garrisoned, then only 25,000 men would be needed. The Second Corps' Edwin Sumner calculated differently, saying a total force of 40,000 men would be needed, but still agreed the city was safe under McClellan's plan. The unanimous agreement had shocked and irritated Stanton, who believed the capital needed a significantly larger force to defend it.

Third, was Stanton's own concurrence with the plan approved by the corps commanders, further stipulating that not only must Washington be secure, but Manassas Junction must be secured for the duration of the war. It's unclear how much Stanton did this to secure the line of communication that had caused disaster in July 1861 when the Valley Confederates and the Northern Virginia Confederates were able to support each other, and how much Stanton did this to move the goal posts on McClellan. It managed to accomplish both.

Fourth was McClellan's own report written on board the Commodore on April 1 as he was departing. It left under the military governor of Washington, Brig. General James Wadsworth, 18,000 men for the forts and the city, as well as under Maj. General Nathaniel P. Banks 55,456 men for defending the Valley, Warrenton, Manassas, and Charles County on the Lower Potomac.

Finally, the April 2 report from Wadsworth that precipitated Stanton's request from Thomas and Hitchcock, showing 20,000 men under his command, but complaining that he had, in fact, far less, since McClellan had ordered him to send nearly half to places Banks was supposed to defend. Stanton would have had McClellan's report, which Wadsworth did not, and know that the defense scheme called for Banks to replace Wadsworth as soon as he was done finally putting an end to Stonewall Jackson in the Valley, but it was Wadsworth's other charge that the troops under him were untrained and the worst of the regiments brought in during the winter that angered him and gave him an opportunity to eliminate the deliberate, limited war waging McClellan.

I deem it my duty to state that, looking at the numerical strength and character of the force under my command, it is my judgment entirely inadequate and unfit for the important duty to which it assigned. I regard it very improbably that the enemy will assail us at this point, but this belief is based upon the hope that they may be promptly engaged elsewhere and may not learn the number and character of the force left here.

 Hitchcock and Thomas made a reply the very same day. On examining the documents they determined that 55,000 men would be necessary total to accomplish, with 30,000 men manning the forts (every fort, unlike McClellan's scheme to man only the Virginia forts) around Washington and 25,000 in a mobile corps, that could engage launch counterattacks. So far, so good, for McClellan. He even received unexpected support when they declared Stanton's order about Manassas Junction unnecessary, since "as the enemy have destroyed the railroads leading to it it may be fair to assume that they have no intention of returning for the reoccupation of their late position...."

But when comparing Wadsworth's report to McClellan's, Thomas and Hitchcock struck the coup de grace. McClellan had double counted a brigade of Wadsworth's men as defending Washington and defending Manassas Junction. Since the men couldn't be in both places, no matter what their quality, McClellan's report was inaccurate. An argument can be made that the commanding general was exhausted from the long hours loading his army for transport and simply made a mistake, but Stanton was happy to claim perfidy.

Thomas and Hitchcock gave him the conclusion he needed:

In view of the opinion expressed by the council of the commanders of the army corps of the force necessary for the defense of the capital, though not numerically stated, and of the force represented by General McClellan as left for that purpose, we are of opinion that the requirement of the President that this city shall be left entirely secure, not only in the opinion of the General-in-Chief, but that of the commanders of all the army corps also, has not been fully complied with.

It took until April 4 for Stanton to take action, he first had to convince Lincoln to interfere with the plan McClellan had made and that all his corps commanders had approved. But finally the president agreed, and Lorenzo Thomas issued an order by telegraph the day that McDowell's First Corps had been scheduled to board transports in Alexandria: "By direction of the President, Gen. McDowell's army corps has been detached from the force under your immediate command, and the general is ordered to report to the Secretary of War."

It would take several days for the letter Thomas also mailed explaining that the detachment was because of the insufficiency of forces to defend Washington, but by that point McDowell's First Corps had been officially turned into the Department of the Rapphannock, with authority from its namesake river to the Patuxent River in Maryland, and west to the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the new Department of the Shenandoah under Nathaniel Banks picked up. Both former subordinates of McClellan now reported directly to Stanton, and McClellan's authority was at last confined only to the troops within his army.

The Full Pressure

Wherein McClellan tries to escape Washington

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On March 31, 1862, the wharfs at Alexandria were a flurry of activity. The largest army that the United States had ever seen had been sailing out of the port for Fort Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula, and the previous two weeks men, animals, and supplies from all over the North had squeezed their way through the narrow streets to board the rickety ships converted from civilian use to transport them.

The man orchestrating it all was Maj. General George B. McClellan, one time general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, now confined only to command the Department of the Potomac. In the months since he returned from his illness, McClellan had become deeply unhappy with Washington, and longed to get away from Secretary of State Edwin Stanton's oppressive scrutiny. Once Stanton and McClellan had mocked Lincoln together, but the Secretary had switched sides and, unlike his predecessor, he knew McClellan all too well. Paranoia was nothing new to McClellan's worldview, he always believed powerful forces were arrayed against him, but with Stanton at the War Department, for once, McClellan was right.

So McClellan was transferring the Army of the Potomac as quickly as he could to get to a place where he was the top officer in the theater (though the commander of Fort Monroe, the elderly Maj. General John Wool, was making even that a complex feat). Over 70,000 men in six divisions of the Army of the Potomac had already left through Alexandria. Two divisions (Fitz John Porter's and Charles Hamilton's) of Brig. General Sam Heintzelman's Third Corps were already fighting on the Virginia Peninsula, as was one (Baldy Smith's) of Brig. General Erasmus Keyes' Fourth Corps. Another of Keyes' divisions (Darius Couch's) was en route, along with the Reserve Division (Andrew Porter), most of the artillery and cavalry, and a division (John Sedgwick's) of Brig. General Edwin Sumner's Second Corps.

That left one division from the Fourth Corps (Silas Casey's), one from the Third Corps (Joe Hooker's), two from the Second Corps (Israel Richardson's and Louis Blenker's), and all three from Brig. General Irvin McDowell's the First Corps (William Franklin's, George McCall's, and Rufus King's). Casey's Division from the Fourth Corps was the next scheduled to depart, and, when it arrived, would make the first complete corps of the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula, as well as mean McClellan had more divisions on the Peninsula than in Northern Virginia. So the commanding general had decided to depart with it and take command in the field, leaving it to others to embark all three divisions of McDowell's First Corps on April 2, followed by Hooker's division on April 7, and the remaining two divisions of Sumner's Second Corps some time in-between.

He would then have around 150,000 men to march on Richmond, one of the largest field armies in world history in 1862. The previous army marching on fixed positions on the Virginia Peninsula had been the coalition operation under George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, who had 5,500 men and 9,500 men, respectively. True, Napoleon had waged the War of the Second Coalition with an army of 200,000 men, but the geographic area he had covered had been several times the size of the Virginia Peninsula. For a modern comparison, at the height of the Iraq War surge in 2007, the United States had deployed 168,000 troops to Iraq, nation-wide, plus about 10,000 coalition troops in an area 160,000 square miles (counting Kuwait, where around 25,000 troops were in reality), which the CIA World Factbook unhelpfully describes as "slightly more than twice the size of Idaho". The entire state of Virginia is only 43,000 square miles, meaning that by the third week of April the Peninsula was going to have a population density close to a modern urban area.

Or that was McClellan's plan. On March 23, Confederate Maj. General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson had thrown the first wrench in it when he attacked in the Shenandoah Valley, against any reasonable expectation, and diverted McClellan from transferring three brigades from there to Manassas Junction. That had slowed his departure schedule for the Second Corps, but there were plenty of other divisions to load in their place. It took Edwin Stanton to really derail McClellan's plans.

As McClellan readied all his baggage for transport, that blow was delivered by the President, though it is black with Stanton's fingerprints. "This morning I felt constrained to order Blenker's division to Fremont," Lincoln wrote in a note to McClellan.

I write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident you would justify it--even beyond the mere acknowledgement that the commander-in-chief may order what he pleases.

McClellan must have fumed. Fremont was Maj. General John C. Fremont, the Great Pathfinder who had been the first Republican nominee for president. Supporters praised him for winning California during the Mexican War, for treating the rebels with a firm hand, and for taking on the Slave Power in Missouri, by freeing the slaves of rebellious owners. Detractors saw the same events and criticized him for filibustering to interfere with operations the Navy already had well in hand, brutally turning neutrals into Jeff Davis supporters, and acting unconstitutionally based only on the might of the men with guns who surrounded him. Lincoln had sacked Fremont, but the Radical Republicans in Congress, led by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, had come dangerously close to attacking Lincoln himself and the President had made up a new command for Fremont.

Fremont was given the Mountain Department, a newly invented command between the ridge of the Appalachian Mountains and the Virginia [now West Virginia] that Lincoln may have vaguely hoped would lead to an invasion of loyalist East Tennessee. The small number of troops he would lead happened to be the same troops that McClellan had led pre-Bull Run, and his taking command would displace McClellan loyalist Brig. General William Rosecrans. While that pleased the more radical members of Congress, they quickly understood Fremont had been stuck in an out-of-the-way corner and began demanding he be provided with troops. It was probably their ally Stanton that suggested sending Blenker's division, sitting idle at Warrenton Junction.

According to McClellan, writing years later, Lincoln had visited him in Alexandria as much as a week earlier to view the progress of embarkation and to discuss the pressure to transfer Blenker.

A few days before sailing for Fort Monroe I met the President, by his appointment, on a steamer at Alexandria. He informed me that he was most strongly pressed to remove Blenker's German division from my command and assign it to Fremont, who had just been placed in command of the Mountain Department. He suggested several reasons against the proposed removal of the division, to all of which I assented. He then said that he had promised to talk to me about it, that he had fulfilled his promise, and that he would not deprive me of the division.

The reversal on the eve of his departure would turn out to be the first in a litany of wrongs McClellan would level against the Lincoln Administration for the eventual failure of the Peninsula Campaign, and which will still throw Civil War scholars into a tizzy trying to debate McClellan's legacy. At the time, though, McClellan took the news in stride. After stating his regret at the transfer, "first because they are excellent troops" (a controversial statement itself) and second "because I know they are warmly attached to me", McClellan assured Lincoln he understood. "I fully appreciate, however, the circumstances of the case, & hasten to assure you that I cheerfully acquiesce in your decision without any mental reservation."

In his memoirs, he would harshly scold Lincoln, saying "the commander-in-chief has no right to order what he pleases; he can only order what he is convinced is right. And the President had already assured me that he knew this thing to be wrong..." But in his reply at the time, he told Lincoln:

Recognizing implicitly as I ever do the plenitude of your power as Commander in Chief, I cannot but regard the tone of your note as in the highest degree complimentary to me, & as adding one more to the many proofs of personal regard you have so often honored me with.

Again, in his memoirs he warned the result of withdrawing Blenker would be catastrophic:

I replied that I regretted the order and could ill-afford to lose 10,000 troops who had been counted upon in arranging the plan of the campaign. In a conversation the same day I repeated this, and added my regret that any other than military considerations and necessities had been allowed to govern his decision.

And once again, his note to Lincoln said something quite different:

I shall do my best to use all the more activity to make up for the loss of this Division, & beg again to assure you that I will ever do my very best to carry out your views & support your interests in the same frank spirit you have always shown towards me.

Whichever was closer to McClellan's real attitude, he had to make the arrangements. So he sent a message to Blenker's corps commander, Edwin Sumner, who was at Warrenton Junction with Richardson's and Blenker's divisions after chasing the Confederates back to the Rappahannock. Somehow the message got garbled and Sumner went ballistic. The normally reserved officer's reply seethes anger. In its entirety, it read:

I would respectfully ask to be informed what I am to understand by the withdrawal of the two principal divisions [Sedgwick's and Richardson's] from my army corps, and leaving me the German division only, which, in my opinion, is the least effective division in the whole army.

Sumner did not share McClellan's soft spot for the boisterous Eastern European troops (the "German" was often used as something of a epithet for non-Western Europeans, and Sumner certainly meant it that way), who only showed discipline (or were disciplined, for that matter) during one of Louis Blenker's frequent parades. McClellan, who already had his hands full with the administration, was in no mood to deal with Sumner too. He wrote to him directly at ten til 9:00 in the evening, condescendingly explaining everything:

By order of the President Blenker's division is to join General Fremont. I shall replace it by a division under General Mansfield [to be created from troops stationed at Fort Monroe that were not McClellan's to command]. The purpose of withdrawing the two divisions of your corps is to concentrate your corps in the field of active operations under your personal command. You will receive further instructions tomorrow. In the mean time please have Richardson's division ready to move back in the morning.

Sumner temper probably improved when he learned that he was accompanying Richardson to the Peninsula and not Blenker to the Valley and beyond. McClellan's probably did not improve, even as he joined his staff on the steamer Commodore in Alexandria harbor on the morning of April 1. Before he could finally leave he had to settle the defense of Washington, to satisfy the terms the President had set before approving the Peninsula Campaign.

For McClellan it was a toss-up between two political generals to leave in charge of defending the capital. Brig. General James Wadsworth was the military governor of the District of Columbia and Maj. General Nathaniel Banks was the head of the fifth corps of the Army of the Potomac, currently commanding in the Valley. McClellan had more confidence in Banks, who he had worked with over the winter, and left the primary responsibility of defense to him.

Banks had six brigades grouped into two divisions to work with. One brigade, McClellan supposed (prematurely), was already at Warrenton Junction. A second was marching that direction and at White Planes. But McClellan had decided to rob from Wadsworth and ordered him to send a brigade of the troops within the District of Columbia's forts directly to Manassas Junction, and then two more brigade over the course of the next week. That would be nearly all of the (poorly trained) soldiers within the fortification line. Banks should move his remaining division to Staunton at the top of the Upper Valley, to control the fertile farmland down below.

Anticipating those orders going through, McClellan ordered Richardson's division to Alexandria and Blenker's to Strasburg. Then he summarized everything for the War Department. There would be 7,780 men defending Warrenton, 10,859 at Manassas Junction, 35,467 based on Staunton in the Valley, and 1,350 replacing Hooker's Division in Charles County. A total of 55,456 men to defend the capital, plus about 18,000 men, he estimated, under Wadsworth within the fortifications of the District. McClellan probably did not realize how consequential the memo would become.

With everything completed, the steamer carrying McClellan finally pulled away from its moorings.

As soon as possible after reaching Alexandria I got the Commodore under weigh & "put off"--I did not feel safe until I could fairly see Alexandria behind us...I feared that if I remained at Alexandria I would be annoyed very much & perhaps be sent for from Washn. Officially speaking, I feel very glad to get away from that sink of iniquity...

But he had not gotten away. Not in the least.


Print Sources:

• Sears, 219-223

Sent to Humbug

Wherein we observe intelligence collection, Civil War style

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For some of his very finest work, see All Not So Quiet on the Potomac's spectacular accounts of the Pennsylvania Reserves being left out and Alexandria during the boarding of the Army of the Potomac. Seriously, read the Alexandria piece, even if it means you don't read anything below.

Centreville (top) and Manassas Junction (bottom) in March 1862 (Harper's Weekly)

For over two weeks Brig. General James Ewell Brown Stuart--better known as Jeb--had provided invisibility to the Confederate Army of the Potomac under General Joe Johnston. Unlike 2012's March, the weather of 150 years ago had been more typical of the capital region, alternating frenetically between gorgeous, blustery sunshine and miserable, pounding rain. Throughout it, rain or shine, Stuart's Confederate horsemen had screened the army, allowing the Northerners only the ability to know for certain where Johnston was not.

But Stuart was concerned, because while his constant skirmishes with Union cavalry and occasionally infantry was denying information to his enemy, it was also making it impossible for him to gather his own information. Sympathetic citizens of Alexandria had steadily reported that the Northern generalissimo George McClellan (it's unclear whether the Southern leadership had yet confirmed McClellan's demotion) was boarding large numbers of men on transports. It was likely enough--after all they had already launched amphibious attacks that had seized Port Royal, South Carolina and Hatteras Island, North Carolina--but where was this next expedition headed? Pensacola? New Orleans? Galveston? [In fact, all three would be in Union hands by the fall]

Stuart and many of his loyalists would later claim that the famous cavalier predicted McClellan's intention to shift his Union Army of the Potomac to Fort Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula and march on Richmond. But the contemporary record suggests that at best then Stuart kept the supposition close to the chest. More likely, the Confederacy's most famous horseman was preoccupied trying to determine whether or not their Army of the Potomac was marching in force right after his Army of the Potomac. If it was so, then Johnston needed to solidify his new defensive position south of the Rappahannock River and prepare for battle. If not, he could reinforce Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley and John Bankhead Magruder at Yorktown, both of whom were under pressure from advancing Union forces.

In other words, Stuart was the eyes and the ears of the army, and his commanding general was counting on him to tell him the location of the Northern army.

***

Edwin Sumner

Things were not quite working out the way "Bull" Sumner had assumed they would after President Abraham Lincoln had made him commander of the Second Corps. He was supposed to be the third most senior commander in the mighty Army of the Potomac, at last awakened from its slumber and marching on Richmond up the Virginia Peninsula in a brilliant flanking maneuver that would catch the Confederates completely by surprise. Sumner had spent over 40 years in the U.S. Army, entirely in field units (and almost exclusively in the cavalry). Fighting and leading men in fights was what he did and did well.

Probably no one was surprised when McClellan had asked Sumner to continue pressing Johnston's retreating army with his two divisions of the Second Corps (the third, under John Sedgwick, was near Harper's Ferry), while the rest of the Army of the Potomac boarded ships to head to the Peninsula. Under orders from the President, McClellan could not begin his Peninsula Campaign until the capital was safe and Manassas Junction occupied, which meant Sumner had to make sure the Confederates were across the easily defensible Rappahannock River. But what it meant was that other officers--Irvin McDowell, the staffer, Sam Heintzelman, the sometimes quartermaster, and Erasmus Keyes, the career brown-noser--would be the first to lead corps on the Peninsula and into the pages of history.

On March 24, the day one of McClellan's favorites, Brig. General William F. "Baldy" Smith, sailed off for the Peninsula from Alexandria, Sumner was camped with the unruly division of German, Polish, and Eastern European immigrants commanded by Luis Blenker at Fairfax Court-House. Sumner was itching to send Blenker's men back to Alexandria to meet up with Sedgwick's and have the preponderance of the Second Corps on the way to Fort Monroe, so he could go too. His final division, that of Brig. General Israel B. Richarson, would probably take a few days longer, since one of its brigades was as far away as Manassas Junction, with the other two at Union Mills Ford [halfway between VA28 and Hemlock Overlook, down Bull Run].

Blenker's division, though, only had to wait as long as it took for a division from the Fifth Corps of Maj. General Nathaniel P. Banks to arrive in Centreville from Winchester. It was to Banks that McClellan intended to leave the responsibility for defending Washington while he took the Army of the Potomac elsewhere, which meant that McClellan viewed fulfilling the President's order to control Manassas Junction as a problem for Banks, primarily. Fortunately, the famous "Stonewall" had proved a push-over, and it was decided that only one brigade would be needed to hold the Valley. Sumner's relief was on the way.

Or had been on the way, at least. In reality, on March 24 while McClellan was assuring his superiors that all was pacified, the Union forces in Winchester were counting bodies and collecting wounded from the largest battle in the east since Bull Run. Jackson had come roaring back the day before in an insane attack on a force twice his size just south of Winchester, in a village called Kernstown. McClellan was aware only that the commander at Winchester had asked for reinforcements and one brigade from the division being sent to Centreville had been ordered back to the Valley.

"On Sunday the enemy, who had returned towards Winchester, were engaged within three miles of that place by General Shields and completely routed..." McClellan wrote to Sumner on March 26, after he was finally briefed on the battle. Details of the battle were confused--in a large part deliberately by Shields, who puffed up the victory he had had no part in while lying wounded in a hospital bed, in order to promote his own legend--and McClellan reported Jackson's losses up to three times the actual number.

The rebels in full retreat. Banks in pursuit. Was last night 5 miles south of Strasburg. It is said that the rebels expect reinforcements near Mount Jackson to the amount of 30,000 men. This is not probably, but it will be well for you to keep well on the lookout in front and on your right, and be cautious, while vigorous.

Sumner probably didn't see it at the time, but he should have had a sinking feeling reading McClellan's communication. All the hallmarks are there: the overblown declaration of victory, the wildly inaccurate troop strengths (even though he doubts it, he passes it on as a possible course of events), the order insisting on caution with a contradictory lip-service to fighting. Perhaps the warrior did question his engineer superior. They would question each other soon enough.

***

"I am much surprised that I have not heard one word from you today," McClellan chided Brig. General Edwin Sumner from his new headquarters at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria [still on the corner of Quaker Lane and Seminary Road] on March 28.

Unless I have constant information from the commanders of all detachments and corps it is impossible for me to arrange general movements. My instructions to you were to report when you reached Warrenton Junction [Calverton]. I learn from other sources that you reached there at 8:30 am on the 27th, yet I have nothing from you. I must insist upon it that I have full information of everything that transpires.

McClellan had spent nearly every day supervising activity on the wharf at the Alexandria waterfront. His formidable brain had been pushed to its limits the day before when he loaded Darius Couch's division of the Fourth Corps, George Sykes division of regular U.S. Army infantry reserves, two brigades of Sedgwick's division, the reserve artillery, and a large amount of cavalry. It had been a herculean feat of logistics, and he had pulled it off.

It also had been a poor use of his time. As he already had for almost a year, and as he would for the remainder of his time in the army, McClellan had become absorbed in a task that would have better been left to one of his subordinates. Across the river in Washington, would-be usurper Irvin McDowell had the responsibility of securing the theater strategic support needed from the Administration and the Navy to make the Peninsula Campaign succeed. In the Valley, political crony Nathaniel P. Banks was chasing down Jackson, the man who had bloodied McClellan's nose and thrown a wrench in his departure schedule. On the Peninsula, middle-of-the-road Samuel Heintzelman commanded almost double the troops of his Confederate opponents, but was easily losing the fight to keep them from reinforcing behind their strong fortifications.

And somewhere near Warrenton Junction, Edwin Sumner sat with a single division of his corps, chasing the Confederates away from a place they could threaten the capital--the one thing that Lincoln had consistently asked McClellan to do.

McClellan was drafting up plans to load the next division as soon as the transports returned.

***

Sumner had indeed reached Warrenton Junction on March 27, and in addition to McClellan's "other sources" the Confederates knew it. Warrenton Junction was called such because it was where a rail spur leading from Warrenton joined with the main trunk of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. Control of it would control Warrenton and the approaches to Front Royal and the lower Shenandoah Valley, as well as making Manassas Junction more secure.

It was only a matter of time, Jeb Stuart knew, before the Union forces advanced to Warrenton Junction, regardless of their plans, making it a great place from which to determine just how many forces McClellan was throwing after Johnston. So he stationed the cavalry regiment he himself had raised, the 1st Virginia, there. The short, rumpled, un-soldierlike man who commanded the pickets that would first come into contact with any advancing force was the regiment's adjutant, Lieutenant John Singleton Mosby.

John Singleton Mosby

Mosby was originally from Central Virginia, but he had moved to Albemarle County when young. He was starkly different from his peers, who were mostly West Point educated, or from genteel families. Mosby was a problem child. Always frail and small, he nevertheless regularly picked fights (he insisted to stand up for his or other bullied children's honor) and lost all of them that adults didn't break up first, according to his editor. He managed to attend the University of Virginia, but was expelled when he shot a notorious town bully during one of his many altercations. While in prison for crimes related to the shooting, Mosby kept up a steady correspondence with the prosecutor that had put him away, and, when he was released, was invited to study law under him in Charlottesville. And that's how Mosby became a lawyer.

He met a girl from Tennessee and married her, and the two moved to Bristol, which he figured was a fair compromise between their two states since the line ran down the middle of town, and in which he happened to be one of only three lawyers. After very publicly backing Stephen Douglas in the election of 1860, and starting more than a few feuds with Bristol secessionists, Mosby reversed himself and signed up with William E. "Grumble" Jones' Virginia Volunteers mounted unit as a private. He arrived in time for Manassas, but really shown throughout the winter, when he discovered yet another unpredictable talent: scouting.

It was in this capacity he had met Jeb Stuart. Throughout the winter, the dashing cavalier had taken a shine to the scruffy Virginia lawyer, and instructed Mosby in the art of scouting. Combined with Jones' (who had taken over Stuart's 1st Virginia) sensible cavalry tactics, Mosby was becoming the peculiar blend of military prowess and daring innovator that would eventually make him the most famous partisan of the war.

The little man who loved a fight had been made adjutant by Jones in part to keep Stuart from stealing him for his staff. On March 27, he had volunteered for picket duty--unusual for every other adjutant in the army, but standard for Mosby--and so he and about a dozen men of the 1st Virginia sat on the south bank of Cedar Run, half way between Catlett's Station and Warrenton Junction.

The Virginians were dismounted and behind cover when a dozen or so Union cavalry pickets (probably from the 8th Illinois Cavalry) splashed across Cedar Run. Mosby waited until they dismounted to give their horses a break and wait for the rest of their squadron before ordering his men to open fire. In a panic, the Union men jumped back on their horses and raced across the creek. "We ceased firing, threw up our caps, & indulged in the most boisterous laughter," Mosby told a friend in a letter.

Mosby probably didn't stop laughing, but undoubtedly some of the other Virginians did. Pricked, Sumner deployed his infantry in line in the field on the other side of Cedar Run, including artillery that opened fire on the rest of the 1st Virginia behind Mosby's pickets. Jones had done his job. By deploying his men into their battle lines, Sumner had lost time, time that would be doubled when he had to shift them all back into columns for marching again. In that time, Jones could count their wagons and guns, and Stuart could make decisions about what to do next. The 1st Virginia let Sumner's gunner throw several shells, then rode off south of Warrenton Junction.

Stuart was writing Johnston about his decisions later that evening when Jones arrived and described the skirmish at Cedar Run. Stuart diligently passed it on, along with a more skeptical assessment of a report he had forwarded earlier from a captured drummer boy who said McClellan was planning to move with most of his army to attack Johnston wherever he stood to make a fight south of the Rappahannock.

Colonel Jones' has arrived, but brings nothing but confirmation of previous reports. He says the enemy seemed disposed to make a display, and marched so as to give him a review of 10,000 men at least. The circumstances of the drummer's arrest, since brought to light, throw some suspicion on his information, and it ought therefore to be received with allowance. He may have been sent over to humbug us.

So he could confirm there was at least a division following him, but Stuart still didn't know how many Union troops were behind them.

***

Brig. General Oliver Otis Howard was again the tip of Sumner's spear. A week earlier he had led a reconnaissance (like a scout, but bigger and with the intention of starting a fight) to Gainesville that had ascertained Jackson was not there or coming there (now a more ominous finding, since it meant he was preparing to strike back at Kernstown). When Richardson's division, with Sumner, had arrived in Warrenton Junction the day before after the delay at Cedar Run, Old Bull had asked Howard to lead a large force all the way to the Rappahannock, and ensure that the bridges were burned to keep the Confederates on the south bank.

According to Howard's somewhat self-serving memoirs, he was undermined by a fellow brigade commander, who had been senior than him in the old Army, but had been eclipsed when McClellan plucked the very young Howard up from obscurity to command a brigade.

In the morning General French told Sumner that he ran too great a risk, that my detachment by going so far from support would be captured, and surely that it was not wise to let one like me, with so little experience, go with raw troops so far away from the corps as the Rappahannock. Sumner called me in and said that he feared to let me make the reconnaissance. Instantly I begged him to try me. I showed my night work, my preparation, and my safe plan, and said: "General, you will never regret having trusted me."

In Howard's account, Sumner is passionately won over and declares "go! go!" to him. Sumner and French were both long dead when it was published (French was probably portrayed fairly, but the genteel Sumner probably did not exclaim much of anything outside of battle), but whatever the actual course of events, Howard did go, taking with him the 5th New Hampshire, 81st Pennsylvania, and 61st New York from his own brigade, as well as one additional infantry regiment from Thomas F. Meagher's Irish Brigade, the 8th Illinois Cavalry, and Battery C, of the 4th U.S. Artillery. The biggest problem was that it was almost noon before this large force stepped off.


Howard put out skirmishers in front and on his flank, in textbook fashion, showing off all the wisdom expected of a general who had graduated fourth in his class at West Point. The same year, Jeb Stuart had graduated thirteenth, though, and in textbook fashion he used his cavalry to confound the movements of his good friend from school in the same way Jones had at Cedar Run.

At about 2 miles' distance from this place the scouts of the enemy appeared a mile ahead. As we pressed on they discharged their carbines at my scouts and retired. My scouts and skirmishers returned their fire. Being beyond effective range, no harm was done on either side. As soon as the Parrott guns under Lieutenant Rundell reached a fair position, I had him open fire on about a company of the enemy just in the edge of some woods. They fled toward our left. This operation was repeated constantly during the march. Sometimes one squadron and sometimes as many as three squadrons appeared and disappeared on our front and flanks.

Meanwhile, back at Second Corps headquarters, Sumner was chomping at the bit to advance on the guns he could hear throughout the day. But McClellan had very explicitly forbid him from taking Richardson's division any further than Warrenton Junction, and a combination of the delay in transit of communications and McClellan's preoccupation with loading transports was preventing Old Bull from getting the permission he needed to support Howard. It must have occurred to him that the entire point of creating a corps was to have a force that could sustain itself independently, but McClellan's decision to assign divisions to corps nearly at random had deprived Sumner of a self-sufficient force for the semi-independent mission he had been assigned.

I should have much preferred to advance [on the Rappahannock Bridge] with my whole command... but as your orders of March 24 expressly directs me not to proceed beyond this place with the mass of my command I shall await here your further orders. I can take Warrenton without difficulty. Shall I do so?

Sumner chose to obey, so Howard carried on alone.

***

Jeb Stuart was watching Howard's slow advance from Bealeton Station, only a few miles from where the Orange and Alexandria Railroad crossed the Rappahannock. It was the fall-back position for the 1,100 cavalrymen he had alternating fighting and fleeing Howard's brigade and it contained 300 infantry men from the division of Fauquier County native Brig. General Richard Ewell.

I made disposition for defense, determined not to leave till his approach was so near as to make his intention to march to that point unmistakable. From the open ground about Bealeton, I commanded a fine view of the column advancing slowly, but steadily, using a caution very characteristic of the enemy, and which greatly facilitated a close observation of his movements, which opportunity I did not fail to improve. When within about a mile of Bealeton they formed a line of battle, and having delayed there as much as practicable by a show of resistance, I dispatched the infantry first slowly to the rear and kept part of the cavalry menacing his front, sending Colonel Robertson on the right and Colonel Jones on the left to threaten the enemy's flanks, with orders to carry it as far as compatible with safety, and then retire diagonally toward the railroad bridge.

But Stuart still didn't know if the brigade in front of him where the beginning of an army, or just part of the division Jones had observed across Cedar Run. And once he fell back across the Rappahannock there would be far fewer opportunities for Johnston to plan his defenses before he was threatened by a Union crossing on his flank--such as the one that had almost won the day via the undefended Sudley Ford at Manassas.

Stuart sent for Mosby. As Mosby remembered it long after the war, Stuart had been very formal, perhaps reluctant to send him on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines.

As we met that morning, he said to me very earnestly--he seemed puzzled--"General Johnston wants to know if McClellan's army is following us, or if this is only a feint he is making." Evidently Stuart wanted me to find out for him, but did not like to order me. I saw the opportunity for which I had longed and said in a self-confident tone, "I will find out for you, if you will give me a guide."

Stuart did, along with two additional men for security, and the little scouting party rode north towards Warrenton [along today's US17], to get around Sumner's forces.

***

Howard continued to press on Bealeton throughout the afternoon, fighting his way through the pesky cavalry. At some point during the afternoon, he became aware of the infantry, though his account of their retreat differed from Stuart's.

Here a force of infantry was reported advancing at double-quick. I formed in order of battle; ordered the advanced guard forward into a good position. I soon ascertained that the remnant of the enemy's infantry on this side of the river was running for a train of cars nearer to me than themselves. As soon as possible Lieutenant Rundell fired in the direction of the train. As soon as this train had passed the Rappahannock bridge I heard a heavy explosion, much like the blasting of stone.

Howard moved Rundell's guns forward, protected by the 5th New Hampshire, whose aptly named Colonel Cross would later criticize Howard for not being more aggressive before the bridge was blown, saying "This was the instant we should have pushed on. If we had done so and made a vigorous attack, we might, with small loss, have cut off a train of cars and five or six hundred of the enemy." Rundell's guns engaged in a sharp exchange of fire with Ewell's batteries on the other side of the river, but the fighting was done for the day. The Confederates were across the Rappahannock, and the Second Corps' mission was complete. Howard moved all but a few of his men beyond cannon range and let them bed down for the night.

Not long after midnight, a messenger from Howard reached Sumner and gave him a full explanation of the day. Delighted, Sumner sat down and wrote McClellan's headquarters immediately. In his hurry, he failed to pass on the intelligence Howard had provided, and had to follow up with a 2:00 am addendum that two of Ewell's brigades occupied the south bank of the Rappahannock.

Dawn brought a return of bad weather and a return to marching for Howard's men, this time back to Warrenton Junction. But first, he dispatched scouts from his cavalry to check the other river crossings in the vicinity and ensure that they too were destroyed (they were, and what was left of the railroad to Warrenton Junction Howard's cavalry destroyed themselves). Sumner, meanwhile, again petitioned McClellan to let him advance on Warrenton itself, and this time managed to at least draw a curt reply from the adjutant that the commanding general would "in the course of the day instruct you on your dispatch."

The course of the day, though, brought no orders about Warrenton. Instead, McClellan instructed Sumner to send Blenker's division back to Manassas Junction in preparation for moving to the Peninsula, as well as instructions for handing over protection of the junction and the railroad to the one brigade from Banks' command (a second had been also ordered back to Winchester after the full extent of Kernstown became clear). Only at 9:00 pm did McClellan finally assent to the no-brainer mission of seizing Warrenton, and only then with the stipulation that it occur on March 30.

Still, northern Virginia was clear, and Sumner was clear to go to the Peninsula.

***

Mosby returned on the morning of March 29 through a fog and a steady drizzle, with a tale that delighted Stuart that he recounted again for his memoirs.

As we were behind the enemy, we soon discovered that an isolated body was following Johnston, and that it kept up no line of communication with Washington. It was clear that the movement was a mask to create a diversion and cover some operation. Of course, I was proud to have made the discovery, and I rode nearly all night to report it to Stuart. When we got near the river, we halted at a farmhouse, for there was danger of being shot by our own pickets if we attempted to cross the river in the dark. As soon as it was daylight, I started, leaving my companions asleep... I went on at a gallop and found Stuart with General Ewell... I told Stuart that there was no support behind the force in front and that it was falling back... In the rapture of the moment Stuart told me I could get any reward I wanted. His report confirms this statement about the information that was obtained--but I got no reward.

Howard had left the bulk of the 8th Illinois Cavalry behind as a screen for his brigade returning to Warrenton Junction. Excited by Mosby's news, Stuart ordered his horsemen forward to chase after Howard's, but only the 1st Virginia managed to catch up with the enemy, Mosby among them despite his adventurous night. Stuart explained to Johnston:

Believing the enemy to be already in retreat, I ordered all the cavalry to horse and proceeded immediately to follow in pursuit. Colonel Jones, First Virginia Cavalry, led the way and pressed the pursuit with great vigor and success--capturing about 25 officers and men, mostly cavalry, and wounding several--to the near vicinity of Warrenton Junction, where the enemy was encamped for the night.

Stuart was always a generous superior, and seemed to take a special pleasure in praising his subordinates--officer and enlisted alike--in his reports, an honor that would help them gain promotion and rewards. But the praise in Stuart's report of the actions in the retreat to the Rappahannock are extreme, with 16 different individuals listed. The cavalier is clearly delighted at Mosby's unraveling of the intelligence puzzle that had plagued him to find that Sumner wasn't backed up by McClellan's army, mentioning him and his guide by name:

Adjutant Mosby and Principal Musician David Drake, of the First Virginia Cavalry, volunteered to perform the most hazardous service, and accomplished it in the most satisfactory and creditable manner. They are worthy of promotion and should be so rewarded.

Johnston was undoubtedly pleased too. But answering one question only gave rise to another. Where was McClellan going, if not across the Rappahannock?


Print Sources

• Ramage, 43-45.
• Beatie, 211-214.

Not Much Choice Between Them

Wherein corps and cracks are formed

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After the Two Weeks That Changed The War the two Armies of the Potomac began moving. Ron over at All Not So Quiet Along the Potomac has done some great stuff about the Confederate preparation and subsequent departure from Northern Virginia, which I will not attempt to duplicate, so make sure you stop over and read it.

 On March 8, 1862, Abraham Lincoln and his new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, made a momentous decision--they would overrule McClellan's armies and establish four corps d'armee. French for "body of the army", the grouping of divisions in "corps" had been popularized by the phenomenal success of Napoleon. The units were designed to be armies fully capable of operating independently, but which worked in conjunction within the same theater. But since the 14 divisions of the Army of the Potomac were each larger than any American army previously in existence, the idea was anathema to many Northern leaders.

As usual, the general-in-chief, Maj. General George B. McClellan, lay at the center of what had become a controversial discussion fueled by the Joint Committee for the Conduct of the War. In McClellan's earliest days in Washington, he had stated his intention to form his army into corps. But as part of his systematic effort to remake the U.S. Army in his own image, he had held off on grouping the divisions into corps without explanation. In the meantime, the Joint Committee had caught corps fever, and on February 25 at 8:00 pm, had met with Lincoln in the White House to urge their creation. According to the Committee's report published in 1863:

They made known to the President that, having examined many of the highest military officers of the army, their statements of the necessity of dividing the great army of the Potomac into corps d'armie [sic] had impressed the committee with the belief that it was essential that such a division of that army should be made...The President observed that he had never considered the organization of this army into army corps so essential as the committee seemed to represent it to be; still he had long been in favor of such an organization. General McClellan, however, did not seem to think it so essential, though he had at times expressed himself as favorable to it. The committee informed the President that the Secretary of War had authorized them to say to him that he deemed such an organization necessary.

Two Weeks That Changed the War

Wherein operations along the Potomac begin McClellan's downfall

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At the beginning of this week we looked at the first of two weeks that changed the American Civil War. The fall of Ft. Donelson on the Cumberland River to the obscure Brig. General Ulysses S. Grant had become a challenge to the general-in-chief of the Northern armies, Maj. General George B. McClellan. As Brig. General George Meade, commanding a brigade in McCall's Division (the Pennsylvania Reserves) put it on February 23 in a letter to his wife: "I fear the victories in the Southwest are going to be injurious to McClellan, by enabling his enemies to say, 'Why cannot you do in Virginia what has been done in Tennessee?'"

In the week that followed he had no choice but to begin an offensive motion with his Army of the Potomac, despite his long-laid plans to move it to the Rappahannock River and march on Richmond. The results of that decision changed the war.

February 24, Monday

Don Carlos Buell

The soldiers of Brig. General Don Carlos Buell reached the northern banks of the Cumberland River and looked across into an abandoned Nashville. McClellan's protege would occupy the city, despite the efforts of his (nominal) immediate superior Maj. General Henry Halleck to get Grant there first. Telegraphing his headquarters in St. Louis from Washington, McClellan told Halleck to "cooperate with [Buell] to the full extent of your power, to secure Nashville beyond a doubt." He said he would order Buell to next seize the nearby railroad junction and then "the next move should be either a direct march in force upon the rear of Memphis or else first upon the communications and rear of Columbus."

He may have gotten Columbia's name wrong, but McClellan's orders set in motion the movement of armies that led to Shiloh, what would be the bloodiest single day in American history until McClellan himself surpassed it at Antietam, and the bloodiest multi-day battle in American history until Gettysburg. The ferociousness of the battle would play a significant role in undermining McClellan's plans for what would become the Peninsula Campaign.

Two Weeks That Changed the War

Wherein the reverberations of the capture of Ft. Donelson spur action

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After months of low-level activity between the two Armies of the Potomac that had resided in the Washington area since summer 1861, the last two weeks of February saw the beginning of a flurry of activity. Rapid-fire decisions led logically to other rapid-fire decisions that set the course of the war for long after both armies left the theater. This is a day-by-day look at those two weeks of decisions made in the Washington area that led to the beginning of the Civil War as we know it.

February 17, Monday

On the day Joe Hooker sat frustrated, waiting for general-in-chief George McClellan to provide the transports needed to make an attack from Liverpool Point in Charles County, Maryland, across the Potomac River to Evansport [Quantico], Washington City was electrified by the details of the surrender of Fort Donelson, on the Cumberland River. The fort had fallen the day before when its Confederate commander (and former U.S. Secretary of War) John Floyd and his second-in-command, Gideon Pillow, had fled on February 16, leaving a disgusted Simon Bolivar Buckner to surrender it that evening to the unknown Brig. General Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant could not say he was unknown on February 17, and all of Washington was titillated to learn that when Buckner had sent asking for terms of surrender, Grant had written back "unconditional and immediate surrender." For those in Washington already angry at Buckner's good pre-war friend McClellan for moving slowly, the contrast couldn't be starker. Grant's control of the fort made Nashville indefensible, McClellan's inaction kept the Confederates in Centreville. Lincoln sent Grant's nomination to major general of volunteers to the Senate that night.

Indisposed to Make It

Wherein Hooker and McClellan don't really help each other

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The noose was beginning to tighten around Maj. General George B. McClellan, general-in-chief of the U.S. Army, and commander of the Army of the Potomac. President Abraham Lincoln had clearly become unhappy with the course of the war, appointing a new Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, and using his commander-in-chief powers to issue a general order for all armies to begin operations by February 22. McClellan was uncertain if Lincoln himself--who McClellan called "the original gorilla" in private, a nickname invented by Stanton a few months before he joined the administration--was the source of the pressure, or if he was responding to the Radical Republicans in Congress, who had convened the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to drum out "traitors" from the war effort, a word they considered synonymous with "Democrats". They had already claimed their first victim, Charles P. Stone, who was imprisoned without charge in Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor, but McClellan knew that he was their real target.

In his own Army, there were generals conspiring to replace him. Brig. General Irvin McDowell, who had appeared to see his career as a commander of troops crushed with the loss at Bull Run, was experiencing a resurgence thanks to his willingness to tell the Joint Committee and Lincoln his proposal for a repeat attack on Manassas Junction. Another division commander, Brig. General Samuel Heintzelman, appeared to be in league with McDowell, ordering reconnaissances along his proposed lines of attack. On the distant right, the senior division commander, Maj. General Nathaniel P. Banks, was requesting McClellan allow him to march his division from Frederick, Maryland, to Winchester, Virginia, almost daily, insisting he could bounce the Confederate force under "Stonewall" Jackson out of the Shenandoah Valley with virtually no losses. To the right of Banks, Brig. General Frederick Lander had been making similar requests with such impertinence that McClellan ordered Banks (through whom his messages were routed) to tell him that the general-in-chief "might comment very severely on the tone of his dispatches, but abstain[s]."

And worst of all for McClellan, other generals were winning successes that he didn't seem able to convince Lincoln were thanks to McClellan's leadership in Washington. His old friend Ambrose Burnside had seized Roanoke Island in North Carolina, providing another base from which to threaten Gosport Shipyard [Norfolk Naval Shipyard], the home port for the new ironclad the Confederates had built out of the scuttled remains of the U.S.S. Merrimack. McClellan might have been due some credit for that operation, but the success in Tennessee against Fort Henry and Fort Donelson by troops under the ultimate command of McClellan's top rival, Maj. General Henry Halleck, looked ominous for Little Mack's tenure.

McClellan had to somehow satisfy Lincoln's insistence, without sacrificing his grand scheme to transport the Army of the Potomac to the Rappahannock and march on Richmond directly. He would need at least a month for the troop ships from Burnside's expeditions to return in order to ferry another army. For McClellan, Joe Hooker provided the solution.