The conduct of General Pope’s army after his receipt of the captured despatch was good, especially his plans and orders for the 27th and 28th. The error was his failure to ride with his working columns on the 28th, to look after and conduct their operations. He left them in the hands of the officer who lost the first battle of Manassas. His orders of the 28th for General McDowell to change direction and march for Centreville were received at 3.15 P.M. Had they been promptly executed, the commands, King’s division, Sigel’s corps, and Reynolds’s division, should have found Jackson by four o’clock. As it was, only the brigades of Gibbon and Doubleday were found passing by Jackson’s position after sunset, when he advanced against them in battle. He reported it “sanguinary.” With the entire division of King and that of Reynolds, with Sigel’s corps, it is possible that Pope’s campaign would have brought other important results. On the 29th he was still away from the active part of his field, and in consequence failed to have correct advice of the time of my arrival, and quite ignored the column under R. H. Anderson approaching on the Warrenton turnpike. On the 30th he was misled by reports of his officers and others to believe that the Confederates were in retreat, and planned his movements upon false premises.
Jackson’s march to Bristoe and Manassas Junction was hazardous, or seemed so, but in view of his peculiar talent for such work (the captured despatch of General Pope giving information of his affairs), and Lee’s skill, it seemed the only way open for progressive manœuvre. The strength of the move lay in the time it gave us to make issue before all of the Army of the Potomac could unite with the army under General Pope. His game of hide-and-seek about Bull Bun, Centreville, and Manassas Plains was grand, but marred in completeness by the failure of General A. P. Hill to meet his orders for the afternoon of the 28th. As a leader he was fine; as a wheel-horse, he was not always just to himself. He was fond of the picturesque.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MARYLAND CAMPAIGN.
General Lee continues Aggressive Work—From Foraged Fields of Virginia into a Bounteous Land—Longstreet objected to the Movement on Harper’s Ferry—Lee thinks the Occasion Timely for Proposal of Peace and Independence—Confederates singing through the Streets of Fredericktown—McClellan’s Movements—Cautious Marches—Lee’s Lost Order handed to the Federal Chief at Frederick.
| “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat.” |
As our columns approached Leesburg, “Maryland, my Maryland” was in the air, and on the lips of every man from General Lee down to the youngest drummer. Our chief could have safely ordered the ranks to break in Virginia and assemble in Fredericktown. All that they would ask was a thirty minutes’ plunge in the Potomac to remove some of the surplus dust, before they encountered the smiles of the winsome lasses of Maryland. Yet he expressed doubt of trusting so far from home solely to untried and unknown resources for food-supplies. Receiving his anxious expressions really as appeals for reinforcement of his unexpressed wish, but warm to brave the venture, I related my Mexican War experiences with Worth’s division, marching around the city of Monterey on two days’ rations of roasting-ears and green oranges, and said that it seemed to me that we could trust the fields of Maryland, laden with ripening corn and fruit, to do as much as those of Mexico; that we could in fact subsist on the bounty of the fields until we could open communication with our organized base of supplies.
As factors in the problem, important as Lee’s masterly science and Jackson’s great skill, stood the fortitude and prowess of the Confederate soldiers, and their faith in the friendship and generosity of their countrymen. Hungry, sparsely clad, worn with continuous bivouac and battle since the 26th of June, proud of their record from the First to the honors of the Second Manassas, their cheery smiles and elastic step told better than words of anticipations of welcome from friends in Maryland, and of new fields of honor for their solid ranks,—of the day when they should be masters of the field and of a new-born republic.