The morning of the 30th dawned. The pickets of the two armies were within a hundred yards of each other. The air was calm, the sky clear, and the morning as bright and beautiful as that Sabbath when the first great battle of the war was fought.
The Rebel line was crescent-shaped. Its left under Jackson reached from Sudley Springs to a point near the turnpike, about a mile and a half west of Groveton. Longstreet commanded the right wing, which extended from Jackson's command far to the southwest, stretching beyond the Manassas Gap Railroad.
This point was the center of the Rebel line. It was a high knoll or ridge of land which commanded two thirds of Lee's front. Here were forty-eight pieces of artillery. It was a very strong position. From this knoll eastward, the Rebel artillerymen looked down a long slope broken by undulations, the ground partitioned by fences, dividing it into fields, pastures, and wooded hills and hollows.
Pope had about forty thousand men, who stood face to face with the army which had driven McClellan from the Chickahominy, and which met him a few days later at Antietam.
The troops which had come from the Army of the Potomac were worn and dispirited. Hooker's and Kearny's divisions had been in nearly all the battles of the Peninsula. Almost alone they had fought the battle of Williamsburg. They were at Seven Pines, in skirmish after skirmish on the Chickahominy, and at Glendale and Malvern. Hooker on this morning of the 30th had but two thousand four hundred and forty-one men—so sadly had disease and battle thinned the ranks.
Porter came up tardily. He had twelve thousand men, but they did not like General Pope. They believed that General McClellan had been cruelly sacrificed by the government. There was no hearty co-operation by the officers of Porter's command with General Pope. Griffin's and Piatt's brigades took the road to Centreville, either by mistake or otherwise, and were not in the battle.[51] Instead of twelve thousand, Porter brought but seven thousand to the field. Sigel's troops were mainly Germans, wanting in discipline, vigor, energy, and endurance. Pope's army was a conglomeration, wanting coherence. He had, besides the troops from the Army of the Potomac, McDowell's, who had been an army by themselves; Sigel's, who had served under Fremont, whom they idolized; Reno's, who looked upon Burnside as the only commander who had achieved victories. General Pope was from the West. He was unacquainted with his troops, and they with him. He had issued an order
permitting them to forage at will, which had produced laxity of discipline and demoralization. Yet with all these things against him, he felt it to be his duty to offer battle to Lee.
Porter arrived with his seven thousand about nine o'clock, more than twenty-four hours late. He came into position in front of Sigel on the turnpike. Pope's line was thus complete. Hooker on the right at Sudley; Kearny and Reno next reaching to the turnpike; Porter next, with Sigel in rear; and McDowell commanding Reynolds's, King's, and Ricketts's divisions on the left, near the ground where the Rebels made their last stand in the first battle of Manassas.
Had General Pope awaited an attack, the battle might have had a different ending, but his provisions were exhausted, and he could not wait. He must fight at once and win a victory or retreat.
He had sent to Alexandria for provisions. General McClellan was there. The Army of the Potomac, when it arrived there, was in the department commanded by General Pope, and was therefore subject to his orders, which left McClellan without a command. Franklin and Sumner, with thirty thousand men, were moving out and could guard the trains. At daylight, while General Pope was forming his lines, endeavoring to hold at bay the army before which McClellan had retired from the Chickahominy, Savage Station, Glendale, and Malvern, General McClellan informed General Pope that the supplies would be loaded into cars and wagons as soon as Pope would send in a cavalry escort, to guard the trains!