[Note.—General Halleck has not told that committee, what his own letters and telegrams conclusively prove, that the principal delay of those reinforcements was due to his own wilfully false telegrams to Generals McClellan, Burnside, and Porter, and that he also prevented General Franklin and the Sixth Army Corps from reaching Pope from Alexandria by refusing to provide transportation. The next question and answer fixes the blame directly upon Halleck himself]:
“Question. Had the Army of the Peninsula [i. e., the army under McClellan, which embraced both Porter’s and Franklin’s corps] been brought to co-operate with the Army of Virginia [under the command of Pope] with the utmost energy that circumstances would have permitted, in your judgment as a military man, would it not have resulted in our victory instead of our defeat?
Answer. I thought so at the time, and still think so.”
And this is the opinion of all military critics who have pronounced judgment in the case. It is also certainly true that Halleck’s own orders and telegrams prove that he himself, and apparently purposely, prevented such co-operation, and it throws a peculiar significance on Pope’s charge in his letter to Halleck, dated November 20, 1862, before quoted, “It is quite certain that my defeat was predetermined, and I think you must now be conscious of it.”[26]
The consequences which followed the defeat of Pope were not immediately and fully appreciated at the time in the North, on account of the censorship of the press, nor do they seem to be so at this day. Orders were given to prepare for the evacuation of Washington; vessels were ordered to the arsenal to receive the munitions of war for shipment northward; one warship was anchored in the Potomac, ready to receive the President, the Cabinet and the more important archives of the Government: Secretary Stanton advised Mr. Hiram Barney, then Collector of the Port of New York, to leave Washington at once, as communication might be cut off before morning;[27] Stanton and Halleck assured President Lincoln that the Capital was lost.
Singularly enough the designs against Washington in the East were at the same time and in the same manner being duplicated against Cincinnati, then the “Queen City of the West.”
On August 30, while Pope was fighting the second Bull Run battle in Virginia, the Confederate Major-General, E. Kirby Smith, was fighting the battle of Richmond, Ky. In his report to General Braxton Bragg, Smith says:
“The enemy’s loss during the day is about 1400 killed and wounded, and 4000 prisoners. Our loss is about 500 killed and wounded. General Miller was killed, General Nelson wounded, and General Manson taken prisoner. The remnant of the Federal force in Kentucky is making its way, utterly demoralized and scattered, to the Ohio. General Marshall is in communication with me. Our column is moving upon Cincinnati.”
On September 2, Lexington was occupied by Kirby Smith’s infantry. He reports to General Cooper that the Union killed and wounded exceed 1000; “the prisoners amount to between 5000 and 6000; the loss—besides some twenty pieces of artillery, including that taken here (Lexington) and at Frankfort—9000 small arms and large quantities of supplies.” The Confederate cavalry, he reports, pursued the Union forces to within twelve miles of Louisville; and, he adds: “I have sent a small force to Frankfort, to take possession of the arsenal and public property there. I am pushing some forces in the direction of Cincinnati, in order to give the people of Kentucky time to organize. General Heth, with the advance, is at Cynthiana, with orders to threaten Covington.”
This invasion of Kentucky was due to Halleck, as was proved before the military court appointed “to inquire into and report upon the operations of the forces under command of Major-General Buell in the States of Tennessee and Kentucky, and particularly in reference to General Buell suffering the State of Kentucky to be invaded by the rebel forces under General Bragg,” etc.