March 11, 1862

March 11, 1862: Gen. McClellan, with Gen. McDowell and some cavalry, ride out to the Confederate fortifications at Centreville and at Manassas Junction, and find the bases still burning from the fires the Rebels set before they retreated. Gen. McClellan and his staff note the extensiveness of the fortifications, their formidability, and the probably cost in casualties had the Yankee troops been compelled to assault them—but they do not mention anything about the ruse of the Confederate "Quaker guns"—the logs painted black that the Rebels had installed in the redoubts and embrasures, there plain to see, which had held off the Federal advance for so long.

—War Order No. 3, issued by Lincoln: the department in western Virginia and eastern Tennessee is taken from Gen. Rosecrans and given to Gen. John C. Fremont, and Buell’s army is put under Halleck’s overall command.

—Also, in Order No. 3, Lincoln relieves McClellan as General-in-Chief of the all of the armies, with no replacement.

—Winchester, Virginia: In the Shenandoah Valley, Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson, with only 4,600 men, faces three separate Union armies converging on him from west, north, and east. The approach of Gen. Banks from the north (Harper’s Ferry) is the greatest threat, and so Jackson quietly evacuates Winchester and heads south for parts unknown.

—Mary Boykin Chestnut of South Carolina notes the horrible destruction of the naval battle in Hampton Roads of 2 days previous: "This terrible battle of ships. All hands on board the Cumberland went down. She fought gallantly and fired a round as she sank. The Congress ran up a white flag. She fired on our boats as they went up to take off her wounded. [Actually not true.] She was burned. The worst of it is, it will rouse them to more furious exertions to destroy us. They hated us so before. How now?"


—Flag Officer Farragut and his naval squadron sail to the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi Delta, and succeed in getting their ships over the bar. They steam up the Mississippi River to Pilottown and establish a temporary base, waiting for David D. Porter and his mortar schooner flotilla to arrive.