September 7, 1862

September 7, 1862:  Gen. Bragg and the Army of Tennessee are bivouacked in Sparta, Tennessee, when Bragg learns that Gen. Buell and the Federal army have begun moving North, heading to Bowling Green, which is Bragg’s destination as well. 

---His army now all in Maryland, mostly bivouacked in and near Frederick, Maryland, Gen. Lee writes to Pres. Davis about the necessity of being provided with sufficient cash to pay for supplies, so as not to put off the Marylanders from the Confederate cause.  Lee makes plans to move into Pennsylvania and head to Harrisburg.

Confederates paused in the streets of Frederick

 

---Although the decision to invade the North is controversial amongst Southerners, Pres. Jefferson Davis maintains that the strategy is a sound one, in a letter to his commanders: that “we are driven to protect our own country by transferring the seat of war to that of an enemy, who pursues us with a relentless and, apparently, aimless hostility; that our fields have been laid waste, our people killed, many homes made desolate, and that rapine and murder have ravaged our frontiers; that the sacred right of self-defense demands that, if such a war is to continue, its consequences shall fall on those who persist in their refusal to make peace.”  He asks Lee, Kirby-Smith, and Bragg to issue proclamations to the populace to that effect.

Pres. Jefferson Davis

---The city of Clarksville, Tennessee is recaptured by Union troops of the 71^st Ohio Infantry, 11^th Illinois Infantry, and the 5^th Iowa Cavalry Regiments.

---George Templeton Strong of New York City records in his journal a very savvy and perceptive strategic assessment—tinged with real emotional alarm—of the Union’s military fortunes at this time:

The country is turning out raw material for history very fast, but it’s an inferior article.  Rebellion is on its legs again, East and West, rampant and aggressive at every point.  Out lines are either receding or turned, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.  The great event now prominently before us is that the South has crossed the Potomac in force above Washington and invaded Maryland and occupied Frederick, proclaimed a provisional governor, and seems advancing on the Pennsylvania line.  No one knows the strength of the invading column.  Some say 30,000, and others five times that.  A very strong [Union] force, doubtless, has pushed up the Potomac to cut off the rebel communications.  If it succeed, the rebellion will be ruined, but if it suffer a disorganizing defeat, the North will be at Jefferson Davis’s mercy.  I dare not let my mind dwell on the tremendous contingencies of the present hour. . . .

     The nation is rapidly sinking just now, as it has been sinking rapidly for two months and more, because it wants two things: generals that know how to handle their men, and strict military discipline applied to men and officers.  God alone can give us good generals, but a stern and rigorous discipline visiting every grave military offence with death can be given us by our dear old great-uncle Abe, if he only would do it.  With our superiority in numbers and in resources, discipline would make us strong enough to conquer without first-rate generals, unless an Alexander or Napoleon should be born into Rebeldom.

September 6, 1862

September 6, 1862:  Eastern Theater, Maryland Campaign - As Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia invades Maryland, they have several political and military goals.  The hope is that a Southern victory on Northern soil---and even threatening an industrial center such as Baltimore or Washington---would demonstrate the viability of the Confederacy, at the tail of a string of impressive victories, and perhaps prompt one of the European powers to weigh in with an alliance and a call for a mentored peace process.  Lee and Pres. Davis also see that taking the war to the North will give Virginia a rest right at harvest time from the famished hordes of three armies.  Lee also hopes that such an invasion and a convincing battlefield victory for the South would sway Maryland, a slave state, to join the Confederate cause, and allow recruiting as well as isolate Washington. 

Meanwhile, Gen. McClellan puts his troops into shape to move west to intercept Lee.  His return to command is controversial amongst capital circles.  Lincoln offers this argument in favor of reinstating Little Mac:  “"We must use what tools we have. There is no man in the Army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops of ours into shape half as well as he. If he can't fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight."  The Young Napoleon organizes six corps made up of 16 divisions, most of which come from Pope’s army and other smaller theater troops, making altogether about 86,000 men; he leaves over 70,000 to guard the defenses of Washington.  Charges brought by Pope against Generals Porter, Franklin, Griffin, and others are suspended for the present crisis.

---Gen. Pope is issued orders to proceed to Minnesota and take care of the Dakota uprising that is still sowing panic in Minnesota.

---A committee of prominent Kentuckians in Congress calls upon Pres. Lincoln to address concerns about the Confederate invasion of Kentucky and protecting loyal citizens.

 

---At Capacon Bridge, Virginia, Confederate troops under Col. John Imboden attack troops under a Col. McReynolds, who put the rebels to flight and capture their artillery and vehicles. 

---Olathe, Kansas is sacked and raided by William Quantrill and his guerillas, resulting in several civilians being murdered.

 

---Captain Walter Waightstill Lenoir, a Confederate officer in Company A of the 37th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, writes home to his brother Rufus Lenoir of his wounds at the Battle of Chantilly:

I lost my right leg below the knee in the heavy skirmish on Monday 1st inst. and am now at Middleburg, Loudoun County, Va. at the residence of Mr. Richie, a methodist minister, who lives not far from the Episcopal Church where the Hospital of Branch’s Brigade has been established under charge of Dr. Gibbon. The Drs. say my wound is doing just right, and I can say that I feel a perceptible improvement in my condition but Oh Brother I have had a hard fight with death, and my vital & nervous energies are for the present almost overcome. I can say now, though, that I hope to recover, though I feel how slight a cause might prevent it. Tom Norwood is with me, shot through the [heel?] with a minie ball. He fought as only heroes fight, firing twenty firm rounds after he was wounded. My company had dwindled to 15 going into action of wherein only three came out without being wounded, none was killed.

September 5, 1862

September 5, 1862: Eastern Theater, Maryland Campaign - Gen. Halleck pens orders for McClellan, insisting that no one can doubt any longer that the Rebels are crossing north over the Potomac in force.


—The C.S.S. Alabama captures its first legitimate prize, the whaler Oemulgee, which Semmes orders burned.

CSS Alabama, near Cape Town

—General John Pope is told that all of his troops, now within the defenses of Washington, DC, are under McClellan’s command. He writes to Gen. Halleck in frustration:

ARLINGTON, September 5, [1862] - 12.05 p. m.
Major-General HALLECK,

General-in-Chief:
I have just received an order from General McClellan to have my command in readiness to march with three days' rations and further details of the march. What is my command, and where is it? McClellan has scattered it about in all directions, and has not informed me of the position of a single regiment. Am I do take the field and under McClellan's orders?

Jno POPE,
Major-General.

To this, Halleck answers, somewhat cryptically:
WASHINGTON, D. C., September 5, 1862.
Major-General POPE, Arlington:

The armies of the Potomac and Virginia being consolidated, you will report for orders to the Secretary of War.

H. W. HALLECK,
General-in-Chief.

Maj. Gen. John Pope

—General Bragg, having conducted a dance of deception and innuendo in eastern Tennessee, finally decides to strike north with Kirby-Smith, rather than strike at Nashville. General Buell, with his Federal Army of the Ohio, is trying to find out what Bragg’s intentions are, and is pulling most of his troops into the vicinity of Nashville—just in case.


—Henry Adams, son and secretary of the American Ambassador in London,. Charles Francie Adams, Sr., writes to his brother, Charles, Jr., who is an officer in the cavalry:

Firmly convinced as I am that there can be no peace on our continent so long as the Southern people exist, I don’t much care whether they are destroyed by emancipation, or in other words a vigorous system of guerilla war carried on by negroes on our side, or by the slower and more doubtful measures of choaking them with their own cotton. Perhaps before long we shall have to use both weapons as vigorously as we are now using the last. But one thing is clear to my mind, which is that we must not let them as an independent state get the monopoly of cotton again, unless we want to find a powerful and bitterly hostile nation on our border, supported by all the moral and social influence of Great Britain in peace; certain in war to drag us into all the European complications; sure to be in perpetual anarchy within, but always ready to disturb anything and everything without; to compel us to support a standing army no less large than if we conquer them and hold them so, and with infinite means of wounding and scattering dissension among us. We must ruin them before we let them go or it will all have to be done over again. And we must exterminate them in the end, be it long or be it short, for it is a battle between us and slavery.

September 4, 1862

September 4, 1862: On this date, the first of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia crosses the Potomac River into Maryland, thus beginning the Confederacy’s first invasion of the North. Many Southerners are conflicted over this move, since they swore that the South only wanted to defend her own. Scouting reports from Union scouts along the Potomac report the passing of large numbers of Confederate troops under Gen. Longstreet through Leesburg, and that the scouts have "counted sixty pieces of artillery." Gen. D. H. Hill begins crossing his division over the Potomac into Maryland on this date, near Edwards Ferry and Balls Bluff.

　

—The Governor of Kentucky, James F. Robinson, is concerned about the Confederate invasion, and asks Gen. Horatio Wright to send troops to protect Frankfort, the capital of the state. But Wright replies that the "true principle" at this moment is Concentration: his priority is to gather as many troops together as possible to meet the Rebel armies.

　

—The Cruise of the CSS Florida: Ever since being commissioned, the Florida has been finding refuge in Cuban ports, her crew being ravaged by the Yellow Fever, including her captain, John Newland Maffitt. To get help and more crew, on this date, Maffitt, nearly prostrate with fever himself, runs the Florida through a storm of Federal shot and shell and past the Yankee blockade into Mobile Bay, and is protected by the guns of Fort Gaines.

C.S.S. Florida

　
—The Richmond Daily Dispatch publishes news about the battle at Manassas (Bull Run) with some errors as to McClellan’s involvement:
Battle of Manassas.

Triumph of our forces over the combined armies of McClellan and Pope.
Our information is such as to give encouragement to the hope that the sacred soil of Virginia will soon be rescued from the hands land divested of the polluting tread, of the Yankee invader. The great battle of Saturday last, fought on the memorable and classic ground of Manassas, resulted in the overthrow of the combined armies of the Federal Government, with a loss that is perhaps unequalled in the annals of the present war. We write without particulars; but the dispatches received by the President, and now given to the public, warrants the belief that our triumph is complete and glorious, and that the Confederate army is probably to-day within hauling distance of the Federal capital.

The first dispatch received yesterday morning represented that the enemy had made several attempts to break through our lines, which intercepted their retreat towards Alexandria, but were repulsed each time with heavy loss. No mention of the casualties on our side was made, except that Gens. Ewell and Trimble were badly wounded, but not mortally, and Gen. Taliaferro slightly wounded.--A large number of prisoners were said to have been captured by our troops. . . . Late in the afternoon, a dispatch was received by the President from Gen. Lee, conveying information which left no grounds to question the glorious success of our arms. This dispatch stated that on Thursday Gen. Jackson's corps repulsed Gen. Pope; Gen. Longstreet repulsed McClellan on Friday, and that on Saturday Gen. Lee attacked the combined forces of McClellan and Pope, utterly routing them with immense loss. Our army, it was stated, was still pursuing them, but in what direction we did not learn. . . .
　
—Gen. John Pope reports to the President, and reads his report to Pres. Lincoln and Sec. of the Navy Gideon Welles. Later that day, Lincoln meets with Stanton and other Cabinet members to review whether or not McClellan is the man to depend on. On this occasion, Secretary Welles notes in his journal:
When with the President this A.M., heard Pope read his statement of what had taken place in Virginia during the last few weeks, commencing at or before the battle of Cedar Mountain. It was not exactly a bulletin nor a report, but a manifesto, a narrative, tinged with wounded pride and a keen sense of injustice and wrong. The draft, he said, was rough. It certainly needs modifying before it goes out, or there will be war among the generals, who are now more ready to fight each other than the enemy. No one was present but the President, Pope, and myself.
　
—George Templeton Strong writes in his journal about the news that McClellan is restored to command:
It is certain now that the army has fallen back to its old burrows around Washington. It will probably hibernate there. So, after all this waste of life and money and material, we are at best where we were a year ago. McClellan is chief under Halleck. Many grumble at this, but whom can we find that is proved his superior? He is certainly as respectable as any of the mediocrities that make up our long muster roll of generals. The army believes in him, undoubtingly; that is a material fact. And I suppose him very eminently fitted for a campaign of redoubts and redans, though incapable of vigorous offensive operations.
　
—Stephen Minot Weld, an officer in the 18^th Massachusetts Inf. Regiment, and clearly a McClellan partisan, has a somewhat different view of McClellan and the recent campaign:
Headquarters 5th Army Corps,
Camp at Hall’s Hill, Va., Sept. 4, 1862.

Dear Father, — We have at length, after fighting over a year, reached Washington, and are as badly off as we were a. year ago. Here we are encamped in the identical spot we were last March when we started off on our way to Richmond. And now what is this owing to? Simply to the interference of the Abolitionists and politicians with McClellan. They bothered him, and interfered with him until they compelled him to retreat from his near position to Richmond, and finally made him come up here, when he offered to take Richmond with 25,000 more men. He, however, pushed his troops on to Pope’s assistance with all the rapidity he could. . . .
　
 

September 3, 1862

September 3, 1862:  Gen. Robert E. Lee, eager to follow up his victories on the Peninsula and at Second Bull Run, writes to Pres. Davis, arguing for an invasion of the North---specifically of Maryland which, for most Southerners, is likely to turn Confederate with a little encouragement.  Now that Confederate troops occupy Fairfax, Dranesville, and Leesburg and thus control the key roads in northern Virginia, such a move is advantageous.  Lee writes:

MR. PRESIDENT: The present seems to be the most propitious time since the commencement of the war of the Confederate Army to enter Maryland. The two grand armies of the United States that have been operating in Virginia, though now united, are much weakened and demoralized. Their new levies, of which I understand 60,000 men have already been posted in Washington, are not yet organized, and will take some time to prepare for the field. If it is ever desired to give material aid to Maryland and afford her an opportunity of throwing off the oppression to which she is now subject, this would seem the most favorable.
    After the enemy had disappeared from the vicinity of Fairfax Court-House, and taken the road to Alexandria, and Washington, I did not think it would be advantageous to follow him farther. I had no intention of attacking him in his fortifications, and am not prepared to invest them. If I possessed the necessary munitions, I should be unable to supply provisions for the troops. I therefore determined, while threatening the approaches to Washington, to draw the troops into Loudoun, where forage and some provisions can be obtained, menace their possession of the Shenandoah Valley, and, if found practicable to cross into Maryland. . . .

    What occasions me most concern is the fear of getting out of ammunition. I beg you will instruct the Ordnance Department to spare no pains in manufacturing a sufficient amount of the best kind, and to be particular, in preparing that for the artillery, to provide three times as much of the long-range ammunition as of that for smooth-bore or short-range guns. The points to which I desire the ammunition to be forwarded will be made known to the Department in time. If the Quartermaster's Department can furnish any shoes, it would be the greatest relief. We have entered upon September, and the nights are becoming cool.
    I have the honor to be, with high respect, your obedient servant,

   R. E. LEE,
   General.

General Robert E. Lee, CSA

 

---Lee gives orders to Gen. Stonewall Jackson to put his corps in motion from Chantilly to Dranesville.  Within a few hours, Jackson’s troops are on the move.

 

Situation, Sept. 3, 1862, Virginia and Washington DC area

 

---Gen. Henry W. Halleck, commander of all U.S. armies, correctly guesses that Lee, certainly not foolish enough to attack Washington, will cross the Potomac upstream and invade Maryland.  Halleck gives direct orders to McClellan to immediately assemble a field army and have them provisioned and on the road in two days. 

 

---Col. Dixon Miles, the Federal commander of the garrison n at Harper’s Ferry, has ordered an evacuation of Winchester, Virginia, the main Federal base in the Shenandoah Valley.  Troops carry all the supplies they can and have come to Harper’s Ferry.  Miles has nearly 12,000 troops in Harper’s Ferry, and the addition of the Winchester evacuees brings it to 14,000.

---Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, considers the status of the Army and the war effort, and its head officers who are not suited to the exigencies of the day:

The army has no head. Halleck is here in the Department, a military director, not a general, a man of some scholastic attainments, but without soldierly capacity. McClellan is an intelligent engineer and officer, but not a commander to head a great army in the field. To attack or advance with energy and power is not in him; to fight is not his forte. I sometimes fear his heart is not earnest in the cause, yet I do not entertain the thought that he is unfaithful. The study of military operations interests and amuses him. It flatters him to have on his staff French princes and men of wealth and position; he likes show, parade, and power. Wishes to outgeneral the Rebels, but not to kill and destroy them. . . .

I cannot relieve my mind from the belief that to him, in a great degree, and to his example, influence, and conduct are to be attributed some portion of our late reverses, more than to any other person on cither side. His reluctance to move or have others move, his inactivity, his detention of Franklin, his omission to send forward supplies unless Pope would send a cavalry escort from the battle-field, and the tone of his conversation and dispatches, all show a moody state of feeling. The slight upon him and the generals associated with him, in the selection of Pope, was injudicious, impolitic, wrong perhaps, but is no justification for their withholding one tithe of strength in a great emergency, where the lives of their countrymen and the welfare of the country were in danger. . . .

---The U.S.S. A.B. Terry, an improvised gunboat, runs aground on Duck Shoals on the Tennessee River, and is captured by Rebel guerillas.  Among the prisoners are three free blacks, whom their captors immediately sell into slavery.

---A heated battle at Grieger’s Lake, Kentucky features 600 Rebel irregular cavalry under attack by a numerically inferior Federal force of cavalry under Col. Shackleford.  The Federals rout the Rebels, who re-form and counterattack.  After an extended firefight, the Federals are running out of ammunition, and so Shackleford leads a saber charge and drives the Rebels out again.

Prisoner excange cartel at Aiken Landing, Virginia

 

September 2, 1862

September 2, 1862:  In Washington, despite the efforts of Sec. of War Stanton and Sec. of the Treasury Chase to get McClellan sacked, Pres. Lincoln decides not to remove the Young Napoleon from his command.  At a Cabinet meeting on this date, Stanton presents the letter that he and Chase have been circulating amongst the Cabinet members.  He argues how McClellan had withheld reinforcements from Pope, and points that when he asked Gen. Halleck, the general-in-chief said, “was not obeyed with the promptness I expected and the national safety, in my opinion, required.”  However, Lincoln responds that he has decided to keep McClellan in command of the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Virginia combined.  He and Halleck have already agreed that McClellan was the man of the hour, and that his skills as an engineer and at organizing the army would be most needed now, to counter what the Confederates will do next.   

 

---Sec. of the Navy, Gideon Welles, records some of the events of this Cabinet meeting:

September 2, Tuesday. At Cabinet-meeting all but Seward were present. I think there was design in his absence. It was stated that Pope, without consultation or advice, was falling back, intending to retreat within the Washington intrenchments. No one seems to have had any knowledge of his movements, or plans, if he had any. Those who have favored Pope are disturbed and disappointed. . . . The general conviction is that he is a failure here, and there is a belief and admission on all hands that he has not been seconded and sustained as he should have been by McClellan, Franklin, Fitz John Porter, and perhaps some others. Personal jealousies and professional rivalries, the bane and curse of all armies, have entered deeply into ours.

    Stanton said, in a suppressed voice, trembling with excitement, he was informed McClellan had been ordered to take command of the forces in Washington. General surprise was expressed. When the President came in and heard the subject-matter of our conversation, he said he had done what seemed to him best and would be responsible for what he had done to the country. Halleck had agreed to it. McClellan knows this whole ground; his specialty is to defend; he is a good engineer, all admit; there is no better organizer; he can be trusted to act on the defensive; but he is troubled with the “slows” and good for nothing for an onward movement. . . . There was a more disturbed and desponding feeling than I have ever witnessed in council; the President was greatly distressed. . . .

Gideon Welles

---Gen. Robert E. Lee sends this letter, along with Gen. Kearney’s body, through Union lines:

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA,
September 2, 1862.
Major General JOHN POPE, U. S. Army:
SIR: The body of General Philip Kearny was brought from the field last night and he was reported dead. I send if forward under a flag of truce, thinking the possession of his remains may be a consolation to his family.
I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,

R. E. LEE,
General.

---1^st Lieut. William Penn Lloyd, of the 1^st Pennsylvania Cavalry records in his diary his assessment of what went wrong for the Federals during the late campaign:

Tuesday 2nd

Marched through Alexandria, and encamped near the Long Bridge. We are safe I suppose now from the pursuit of the enemy, who has driven us 80 miles [?] the last 20 days, as we are huddled beneath the forts which surround Washington. It is enough to arrose the honest indignation of not only the soldier, who has born the privations of the fruitless campaign; but of every loyal citizen, to see the present condition of an army and know the cause from which it resulted.

Now that the enemy has fully accomplished his designs thus far, it is easy to see, by tracing his movements for the last few weeks, what his plan of operations were.

It is evident now that Jackson’s retreat from Cedar Mountain, was merely to draw our forces farther after him, and where he failed in this and advanced on us, and forced us to fall back beyond the Rappahannock, that he never intended crossing the river at the station; or the various fords at which he made the feints; but left a force along the river merely to draw our attention, and engaged us, while he marched with the main body of his army he pushed up the Culpepper and Luray pike, through Thoroughfare Gap and down to Manassas, in our rear, thus completely out witting our Generals.

---Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith and his Confederate army have marched into Lexington and taken possession of the city.  The governors of Ohio and Indiana send off panicked messages to Washington requesting artillery and troops.

Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith, CSA

---The Rev. Dr. Alexander Davis Betts, chaplain in the 30^th North Carolina Inf. Reg., writes in his journal of their march across the Bull Run battlefield this day:

Sept. 2 - Pass down to Groveton, where fearful fighting was done last week, August 28, 29 and 30. Horrid scenes! Many dead Federals still on the field, though a squad of their men, under flag of truce, has been some days caring for wounded and burying dead.

I found a wounded Federal sitting on the field - a broken thigh, a rifle ball through his arm and a bruised shoulder made him right helpless. His undressed wounds were sore. He asked me if I thought our surgeons would care for him. I assurred him they would. He said he had a wife and two little children in his northern home. His parents were pious and had raised him piously, but he had neglected his own soul. I said: "Brother, Jesus loves you. You came down here to kill my brothers, but I love you." He broke down and sobbed aloud: "You don't talk like one man that came here. He upbraided me." He told me our men had been very good to him during the three or four days he had been there. As one hurried by he would give him water and food, and raise him up to rest certain tired muscles. Another would stop to give him more food and water and lay him down.

They had just taken the last Confederate wounded from that part of the field. He was on the surgeon's table a few yards away. I trust this Federal was soon taken to that table. As I was about to hurry away to overtake my regiment he asked me to lay him down! How could I? Where could I take hold? I did the best I could. As I took him by the hand and commended him to God, I think my heart was as tender as it ever was. His bones may be in that field now. I hope to meet his soul in Heaven in a few years. Hurry on ten miles and overtake our regiment. Sleep cold and take cold. Frost next morning.

September 1, 1862

September 1, 1862:  Battle of Chantilly, Virginia – Gen. Lee sends Stonewall Jackson, once again, on a flank march around the Union right flank.  On Aug. 31, in a driving rain, Jackson’s corps moves in a wide arc to the north of Centreville, where Pope has established a strong line in anticipation of Lee attacking across Bull Run in a frontal assault (which Lee was not about to do). 

Northern Virginia, showing Centreville and the route of Jackson's march

 

Jackson’s plan is to take Germantown and Fairfax, and thus cut off Pope’s retreat route to safety in Washington’s fortifications.  Pope has placed troops---the IX Corps, now under command of Gen. Isaac Stevens---east of Centreville to hold the crossroads at Germantown.  On the morning of this date, Jackson finds Union cavalry harassing his right flank.  He stops at the crossroads hamlet of Chantilly, to wait for Longstreet to come up.  This allows Pope time to move the rest of his army back, but he does nothing for several hours.  Stevens puts 6,000 men into line for an assault on Jackson’s line on Ox Hill, 15,000 strong.  The Federals’ advance gets entangled, snarled and disorganized.  Stevens himself grabs the colors of his old regiment, the 79^th New York, and leads a charge; he is shot in the head and dies on the spot. 

General Isaac Stevens, killed at Chantilly

 

In the pouring rain, Gen. Philip Kearney brings up his division on Stevens’ left, and as he rides forward to inspect the enemy lines, he stumbles onto a Rebel position, and is shot, mortally wounded.  After sporadic fighting, where each side loses about 500 men, the Union troops retire.  But Pope realizes that he cannot stay in Centreville, and so marches his army to Fairfax.  Confederate Victory.

Battle of Chantilly: map by Robert Knox Sneden

---Gen. John Pope, in a letter to Gen. Halleck, complains of what he perceives as disloyalty and insubordination amongst the Army of the Potomac officers assigned to his command, giving a preview of the mood that will cause him to press charges, shortly:

. . . I think, it my duty to call your attention to the unsoldierly and dangerous conduct of many brigade and some division commanders of the forces sent here from the Peninsula. Every word and act and intention is discouraging, and calculated to break down the spirits of the men and produce disaster. One commander of a corps, who was ordered to march from Manassas Junction to join me near Groveton, although he was only 5 miles distant, failed to get up at all, and, worse still, fell back to Manassas without a fight, and in plain hearing, at less than 3 miles' distance, of a furious battle, which raged all day. It was only in consequence of peremptory orders that he joined me next day. One of his brigades, the brigadier-general of which professed to be looking for his division, absolutely remained all day at Centreville, in plain view of the battle, and made no attempt to join. What renders the whole matter worse, these are both officers of the Regular Army, who do not hold back from ignorance or fear. Their constant talk, indulged in publicly and in promiscuous company, is that the Army of the Potomac will not fight; that they are demoralized by withdrawal from the Peninsula, &c. When such example is set by officers of high rank the influence is very bad amongst those in subordinate stations.

    You have hardly an idea of the demoralization among officers of high rank in the Potomac Army, arising in all instances from personal feeling in relation to changes of commander-in-chief and others. These men are mere tools or parasites, but their example is producing, and must necessarily produce, very disastrous results. . . .

---David Schenk, a lawyer in North Carolina, exults in the Confederate victory at Manassas in his journal:

A cool autumn day ushers in the Fall the “summer is ended” and the Confederacy still survives the shock of war and the carnage of battle, and finds our armies in hot pursuit of the flying, lying braggart Pope who vaunted that he was “accustomed to look only on the backs of his foes and who wished to know the forward route and not the lines of retreat”. The classic plains of Manassas have again become historic and witnessed a grander victory than first covered our infant republic with glory. The particulars have not yet arrived by Gen. Lee, the greatest living hero of the age thanks God for another decisive victory on 28th and 29th Aug.

Providence has graciously sent us this great man in the hour of our most imminent peril and the man who, Scott said was worth 30,000 men, has well fulfilled the traitors prophecy to the traitors ruin. This news sheds gladness over the community and cheers our drooping spirits.

---George Michael Neese of the Confederate artillery writes in his diary of what he encountered on the Bull Run battlefield as his battery drove across it:

The first indications that I observed of a recently fought battle were hundreds and hundreds of small arms of all descriptions that had been gathered on the battle-field and piled up along the road. When we got to the part of the field where the struggle had been the most desperate and destructive the Federal dead still lay there by the hundreds. At one place I could distinguish where the enemy’s line of battle had been, by the many dead lying in line where they fell. Where their batteries had been in position dead horses lay thickly strewn around. A disabled gun and the wreck of blown-up caisson marked the spot where the fire of the Confederate batteries did its destructive work.

At one place I saw the guns of a Yankee battery that had been charged and taken by the Confederates, still in position. White flags were flying all over the field to-day, and the Citizens’ Relief Committee of Washington, with two hundred ambulances, were on the field burying the dead and gathering the wounded. I saw at one place where they were burying eighty men in one trench. Some have lain on the field four days and their upturned faces were as black as African negroes.

Neese then adds an episode of meeting a Yankee surgeon with the Washington Relief Corps:

As a couple of us were passing over the battle-field we met a well dressed, fine-looking man, probably he was a surgeon belonging to the Relief Corps. He stopped and in a snappish manner, remarked, “Well, you have defeated us again, and this is the second time on this field, but it will have to be tried over.” We replied, “All right, give us a fair shake and we will thrash you again.” That shot was a surpriser and silenced his mouth-piece.

He drove on then, looking as sour as if his mother-in-law had drenched him with double-proof crab apple vinegar for a month.