v1.1.2 / chapter 28 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain
* With Stonewall Jackson on the move in Northern Virginia and Lee and Longstreet close behind him, events were set for another major collision between the Union and Confederacy. That collision took place in the vicinity of the Bull Run battlefield, where the two sides had clashed the year before.
* Stonewall Jackson spent the 24th of August getting his men ready for march. They would travel light, without knapsacks. Ewell's division was to be in the lead, followed by A.P. Hill's division, with the late Winder's division, now under the command of Brigadier General W.B. Taliaferro, bringing up the rear. During the night, as preparations continued, Longstreet moved his artillery up to the fighting line to replace Jackson's and hopefully keep John Pope from becoming aware that anything had changed. Jackson's columns departed at sunrise on Monday, 25 August 1862. Federal lookouts promptly spotted and reported the movement up the chain of command. Pope concluded that Jackson was moving towards the Shenandoah Valley, but was puzzled as to why. It did not occur to him that Jackson was actually circling around him.
At first, Jackson's men, who knew no more about their ultimate destination than the Federals did, also thought they were going back to the Shenandoah Valley. In any case they marched hard, covering 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the town of Salem, well-shielded behind the Bull Run Mountains. Though the locals were hospitable, offering food and cool water to the soldiers as they passed, it was a rough march along hot, dusty roads, and many of the men were barefoot, leaving bloodstains in the dirt. When they finally halted to rest it was well into night, and many of the men simply dropped to the ground and feel asleep.
They were roused before dawn on Tuesday, 26 August, and continued their march like sleepwalkers, but instead of turning west towards the valley, they continued their curve around the mountains to turn eastward through Thoroughfare Gap, into the rear of Pope's forces. The pass was a narrow cut with steep, rocky sides, and if the Federals were holding it they would be very hard to dislodge, but Jackson had moved both swiftly and silently. When his troops had begun to cheer him at the end of the first day's march, he had ordered them to be quiet. Such precautions were prudent but proved unnecessary. Pope, now certain that Jackson was going to the Valley, had not thought to send even a few men to keep an eye on the pass.
The rebel's initial target was Bristoe Station on the Broad Run. Burning the railroad bridge there would cut the O&A; Pope would neither be able to receive supplies and reinforcements nor easily send men up the rail line to chase after Jackson.
Jeb Stuart and his troopers caught up with Jackson in mid-afternoon. Lee had set them off the night before, and they had ridden hard to catch up Jackson's fast-moving infantry. The cavalrymen fanned out to the south to shield the columns from Pope's army. By sunset, Jackson's soldiers were extremely ragged and weary, many had passed out in the heat or were hobbling along in pain, but looking forward to a fight on their own terms.
They reached Bristoe Station, 56 miles (90 kilometers) from their starting point. They quickly overpowered the guards, only to hear a train chugging northwards toward them. They threw ties on the railroad track and tried to pull loose a rail, but there wasn't time. The train plowed through the ties and went on to give warning up the line. However, the rebels learned that this was the hour when all the empty trains were sent back to Manassas and Alexandria, and several more would soon follow. The rebels pulled up a rail and the next train got a nasty reception, falling off the track while the rebels fired a volley into it. The engine and cars piled up in a noisy and satisfying fashion. Another train came after that, to collide with the cars left on the rails to the equal amusement of Jackson's soldiers, but the engineer in the next train behind it was more alert, slammed on the brakes, and steamed backwards out of the trap as fast as he could. The fun was over. Now the alarm was sure to be spread on both ends of the line.
It was time to get to work, anyway. Jackson set his men to burning the Broad Run bridge and personally began to interrogate one of the captured engineers by the light of a fire. A Federal civilian who had been on one of the trains and had suffered a broken leg in the wreck was lying nearby. On hearing that the famous Stonewall Jackson was just across the fire from him, he asked his captors to lift him up so he could see. What he saw was a dingy-looking, stoop-shouldered fellow in a dirty uniform. The civilian stared for a while, hardly believing that this raggedy person could be the Stonewall Jackson of legend, and then said with disgust: "Oh, my God! Lay me down!" The story circulated through the ranks quickly, as such stories do. From that time on, every time Jackson's men took the short end of the stick, the response was the same: "Oh, my God! Lay me down!" Of course, Jackson never understood the joke, if he even noticed it.
Word of the attacks on the rail line finally reached John Pope on the evening of 26 August. He was at Warrenton Junction, down the O&A near the Federal lines on the Rappahannock, when he received a telegram with the news. Pope figured it was just another cavalry raid, but when he sent a regiment up the line on a train to investigate they came back in a hurry, providing reports that began to rouse Pope out of his complacency: the rebels were operating in force in the Union rear. Pope immediately sent orders to McDowell, who had three divisions as well as Sigel and his corps; Pope had a low opinion of Sigel and had put him under McDowell's command. McDowell was to move north to Gainesville, which was roughly between Thoroughfare Gap and Manassas.
Lee had been harassing the Federals facing him across the Rappahannock with artillery barrages through the morning of that day in hopes of keeping Pope's attention away from Jackson's fast-moving column, but once it became apparent that the Federals were pulling out, Lee decided it was time to head north in support of Jackson's forces. Lee conferred with Longstreet and offered him the choice of advancing straight up the Warrenton Turnpike, or following Jackson's roundabout route behind the Bull Run Mountains. Longstreet preferred the roundabout route, and that afternoon his men moved out, five divisions and 32,000 men strong, leaving a single division to hold the line on the Rappahannock.
* In the meantime, Jackson's interrogation of his captives revealed that Pope's supply base at Manassas, four miles (6.4 kilometers) away, was lightly guarded, but with the alarm sounded he would have to move fast before the Federals reacted. Brigadier General Isaac Trimble, one of Ewell's officers, volunteered to lead his two regiments up the line in the dark, and Jackson sent Stuart and his cavalry along to support him. The rest of the rebels got a weary night's sleep.
Trimble's men hit the supply depot about midnight. The Federals managed to get off one salvo from their artillery batteries but were overrun before they could reload. A Yankee artillery officer said: "Give 'em another round, boys, it's only some damned guerrillas!" -- and then found himself staring down the muzzle of a pistol. A Georgia private replied: "I reckon, Colonel, you have got in the wrong crowd."
When the sun came up the next morning, Wednesday 27 August, Jackson took Hill's and Taliaferro's divisions up the line, leaving the remainder of Ewell's division as a rear guard at Broad Run. When they got to Manassas, the rebels could hardly believe their eyes. Crowded into a square mile there were warehouses full of food, clothing, weapons, ammunition; more than a hundred boxcars similarly loaded up; and, most tempting of all, a row of sutler's wagons, crammed full of inconceivable luxuries. Jackson had with proper foresight instructed Trimble to put his men on guard around the supplies so that the other hungry rebels would not dissolve into an undisciplined riot of looting. Unfortunately, Trimble had only two regiments, and while Jackson's men were disciplined fighters, that wasn't the same as saying they were perfectly obedient, and they surged right through Trimble's men.
The party the rebels had at Banks' supply depot in Winchester was nothing in comparison. There was food and trinkets and saddles and clothes and every other thing good to have and to eat. Jackson had wisely foreseen that whiskey would be the most sought-after prize, saying: "I fear that whiskey more than I do Pope's army." -- and barrels of it had been smashed on his orders. The soldiers got on their hands and knees and scooped it off the ground. The sutlers' wagons were full of particular prizes, from canned lobster to Rhine wines. One of the privates would recall decades later: "It makes an old soldier's mouth water now just to think of it."
A Federal battery fired on the rebels from the east and a Confederate battery was sent off to deal with it. Then a report came in that Yankee infantry was moving towards them across the Bull Run railroad bridge, marching in as if on parade, to the astonishment of the rebels on the southern side of the bridge. Most of Hill's division was sent off to deal with them, to encounter a New Jersey brigade under Brigadier General George W. Taylor advancing forward to attack. Taylor had only been ordered to save the bridge, but he didn't understand what he was up against and decided to attack. The New Jersey men advanced while Hill's men picked them off at long range. Jackson admired their courage, saying later it was an action "made with great spirit and determination under a leader worthy of a better cause."
This was a surprising remark coming from Jackson, who had made his "kill them all" attitude explicit well before. Even more uncharacteristically, he told his men to stop firing and rode out in front of his own lines, waving a handkerchief and shouting that the Federals should surrender and be spared extermination. In response, the Yankees fired on him. There being nothing more in good conscience to be done, Jackson rode back to his men and ordered them to start shooting again. The fire cut through the Union soldiers like a scythe, and they broke and scattered. Hill pursued them and captured a number of Yankees, but the Federals got off lightly under the circumstances, with a little more than 300 casualties, the majority of them taken prisoner. Taylor was mortally wounded, pleading with his men as he died: "For God's sake ... prevent another Bull Run."
Jackson ordered the Bull Run railroad bridge burned and led his prisoners back to the depot, where the looting had finally been more or less brought under control. He had his ambulances and ammunition wagons loaded up with such valuables, mostly medical supplies, as they could carry, and then turned his men loose to loot as they pleased before the warehouses and everything around them were put to the torch.
Reports from Ewell indicated that the Federals were massing south of Bristoe Station, and that Ewell was pulling out as per instructions. Jackson would have to get going by nightfall. He ordered his forces to march north to Stony Ridge, on the edge of last year's Bull Run battlefield. However, Jackson was vague about the route that the different elements of his command should take, and Taliaferro, Ewell, and Hill all set out by different routes. On top of the confusion, the soldiers had stuffed themselves to the full extent that their normally-starved stomachs could tolerate, and were bogged down with treasures they had liberated from the Yankees. It was an accomplishment that Jackson was able to conduct a march at all.
* By that time, the authorities in Washington were becoming aware that something was seriously wrong. The rebels were behind Pope's army in force -- the savaging Taylor's brigade had suffered was proof enough for that -- and had cut the rail and telegraph lines to Pope. Nobody in Washington knew where Pope was or what was happening to him. Two Ohio regiments were guarding the O&A north of the Bull Run; somewhere south of them was a big rebel force that could reach out and swat them at any time. All this was particularly disturbing because the defenses of Washington had been stripped to support Pope, and there were only a few thousand men to hold the ring of fortifications McClellan had built around the city. New recruits were pouring in, but they were so raw as to be useless for the moment.
That Wednesday morning, Colonel Herman Haupt was rowed out to McClellan's ship and asked the general to come ashore to confer with him. They left together and went to Haupt's office. Haupt briefed McClellan on what was known of the military situation, and then asked the general for help. Haupt had a plan to get the railroads open to Pope again and needed a little military muscle to back it up.
Haupt had repair trains standing by with their steam up, as well as train full of forage and supplies. He wanted to send a train of flatcars carrying a few hundred soldiers and a battery of artillery to lead the way for the other two trains. Haupt had wired Halleck earlier for permission, and Halleck had passed the buck: "If you can see Gen. McClellan, consult him. If not, go ahead as you propose."
Haupt was too obedient to make an idle gesture of finding McClellan and then go ahead on his own, instead looking up the general. McClellan refused, saying it was too dangerous. Haupt pointed out that if they ran into rebels in force, the trains could move back swiftly, but McClellan simply refused again and left, seeming very unwell. Haupt smoldered in frustration, since if he hadn't found McClellan the trains would have been on their way by now.
Haupt spent the rest of the day trying to get his repair mission under way while fending off complaints from railroad operators about the snarl building up around Washington. Finally, at about sundown Haupt decided he would go ahead on his own, and sent a message to McClellan informing him of that decision and asking for an escort of two hundred soldiers. If he didn't get the soldiers, he would proceed without them. Haupt might have been no more than a railroad bureaucrat in uniform, but the Army of the Potomac would have been the better for more generals with as much spine. Midnight came with no answer from McClellan. Haupt got on his horse and went out to scrounge up some soldiers himself. Luckily, he found Winfield Scott Hancock, who listened to Haupt and immediately got him the men for the repair mission. The trains went puffing off into Virginia before sunrise.
* Pope was not at all discouraged about finding out that Stonewall Jackson and his men were raising hell in the Union rear. Pope figured he had the rebels right where he wanted them and should be able to capture them all. This was the right kind of attitude, but it remained to be seen if it could be backed up by any military competence.
Pope had rushed up to Bristoe Station to find Hooker and his division
skirmishing with Ewell's men, just as darkness fell. Telegrams were sent to
Porter at Warrenton Junction to move his corps up the O&A; to Jesse Reno at
Greenwich, somewhat south of Gainesville, to send his three divisions; and,
with Pope becoming more excited later that night, to McDowell to add the
weight of his three divisions and Sigel's corps, the telegram saying:
IF YOU MARCH PROMPTLY AT THE BREAK OF DAWN UPON MANASSAS
JUNCTION, WE SHALL BAG THE WHOLE CROWD.
McDowell, having reached Gainesville, considered this information, and also a
report that he had received from General Buford, saying that Federal cavalry
had clashed the day before with advance elements of a large Confederate force
beyond Thoroughfare Gap. Buford had correctly reasoned that Lee and
Longstreet had been freed by the removal of the weight of the Federals along
the Rappahannock to follow the same route taken by Jackson a few days
earlier. McDowell sent two of his own divisions and Sigel's corps towards
Manassas Junction to comply with Pope's order, but on his own initiative he
sent a division under Brigadier General James Ricketts to guard Thoroughfare
Gap.
Lee and Longstreet were indeed setting up camp for the night at White Plains, just beyond Thoroughfare Gap. Lee had been getting regular messages by courier from Jackson, and found the news very pleasing. Even more pleasantly he had received a helpful response to a request for reinforcements from Jefferson Davis, who was sending the bulk of the defenders of Richmond, ten brigades and 17,000 strong, to help in the offensive.
* Fire and explosions lit the sky to the north of the Federals during the night, convincing Pope that the rebels were still there. He was wrong. When the sun rose on Thursday, 28 August, and the Federals advanced to fall on the rebels, reaching Manassas Junction at noon, the Confederates had vanished. All that was left were the ashes and ruins and the scattered cast-offs of "the recent rebel carnival", as a Federal officer put it, and added:
BEGIN QUOTE:
On the railroad tracks and sidings stood the hot and smoking remains of what had recently been trains of cars laden with ordnance and commissary stores for our army. As far as the eye could reach, the plain was covered with boxes, barrels, cans, cooking utensils, saddles, sabers, muskets, and military equipment generally; hard bread and corn pones, meat, salt, and fresh beans, blankets, clothes, shoes, and hats ...
END QUOTE
Nobody had the least idea of where Jackson and his men had gone. Some said one way, some said another, and the reports that were trickling in were vague and contrary. Although Jackson had been sloppy in coordinating the march of his separate columns, their confused motions had succeeded in completely bewildering the Federals. Pope came to the conclusion that the rebels had gone to Centerville to the north of the Bull Run and sent out orders directing the converging Federal columns there. However, when the Yankees got there at sunset, the Confederates were nowhere to be seen. In fact, A.P. Hill had been there, though not by intent. He had taken a wrong turn on the way to Stony Ridge, ended up in Centerville and had been forced to backtrack.
* If Robert E. Lee had hoped that doing the unexpected would befuddle John Pope, Lee was now being proved correct. Pope's confusion was being greatly magnified by the fact that the forces he led contained many sources of confusion in themselves. Pope's command, disjointed to begin with, was not becoming more cohesive by the haphazard addition of units of McClellan's army, under corps commanders whose relationship with their new commander was one of mutual distrust and dislike. Pope had no confidence in Heintzelman, and Porter had never made any secret of his low opinion of Pope. Pope in turn described Porter as exhibiting "listlessness and indifference."
In some fairness to Pope, even he admitted he had more than he could handle, and had been for some time operating under the assumption that his increased responsibility was a temporary thing. Halleck was the general in charge, after all, and Pope believed that when McClellan's forces completed their movement up the Potomac, Pope and McClellan would head the two wings of the army while Halleck led them to victory. This was a reasonable scenario, but like much else Pope believed it had no relation to the facts. Halleck was too busy handling paperwork and sending telegrams to want to lead an army in the field.
In any case, after the day's useless countermarching, Pope was beginning to become discouraged. His men already were. They had been marching along hot, dusty roads all day, and the people in charge hardly seemed to know where they were going or what they were doing. The Confederates were playing hide-and-seek and making fools out of the Yankees.
One of McDowell's regiments captured one of Jackson's men during their march that day, a straggler who had had enough of fighting and had surrendered casually to them. The rebel looked over the full packs carried by the Federal soldiers and observed: "You 'uns is like pack mules -- we 'uns is like race horses. All Old Jackson gave us was a musket, a hundred rounds, and gum blanket, and he druv us like hell."
Such an unequal race was frustrating, and on top of that, Pope had done much to make the men think the worst of him. They weren't necessarily happier about some of their own generals, particularly McDowell. While McDowell was a professional soldier, he had absolutely no ability to inspire the men he led, and made no effort to do so. His remarkable lack of consideration and tact, even by military standards, inspired dislike and contempt, and his astonishing gluttony at the dinner table inspired disgust. An officer reported with some amazement watching McDowell eat an entire watermelon after an enormous meal and call it "monstrous fine". His men said they would rather shoot McDowell than Jackson, and they widely suspected for no reason other than simple detestation that he was working for the rebels. He had rigged up an odd sun-helmet out of cloth and bamboo, and they concluded that it was to warn the Confederates not to shoot him when he led his own men to prearranged destruction.
All of this was nothing to Pope. He was discouraged because he thought Jackson might give him the slip. Pope needn't have worried; Jackson was waiting for him.
* Jackson had finally managed to get his men reassembled at Stony Ridge by that afternoon, on 28 August. The ridge was in an extremely useful position above the old Bull Run battlefield. A map drawn that day of the immediate area would have showed the Manassas Gap railroad, running towards Thoroughfare Gap at the bottom. At Gainesville, the Warrenton turnpike crossed the railroad, running northwest through Groveton and then over the Bull Run on the Stone Bridge that had caused the Union so much trouble the year before. It was roughly ten miles (16 kilometers) from Gainesville to Centerville.
An unfinished railroad line to Gainesville cut diagonally across the northwest corner of the map. Stony Ridge was just beyond that railroad line. The embankment of the unfinished railroad line provided a natural fortress, while the rolling hills and trees of the area provided concealment.
Jackson's line faced at an angle the section of the Warrenton Turnpike bounded by Groveton and the Stone Bridge. The hill that the Henry House, long since demolished, had stood on was in the middle of this section of the turnpike, right by a road that intersected the turnpike at a right angle, running towards New Market and Manassas.
Jackson's men were hidden in the woods on the ridge just behind the railroad line. They had been ordered not to shout or otherwise raise a ruckus, and the regimental bands were quiet, but they were in fine spirits, having easily outfoxed the Yankees and made off with a fantastic haul of loot. There was something of a picnic atmosphere in the warm August afternoon among the men "packed like herring in a barrel" in the woods, all of them joking or playing cards or eating or inspecting some treasure they had liberated from the Federals, making the woods sound "like the hum of a beehive". Jackson himself settled down behind a fence and took a nap.
When he woke up, he rode to the top of the ridge to observe Federal columns, elements of McDowell's command, on the march from Gainesville and moving up the turnpike towards Centerville. Jackson watched their progress with frustration, "cross as a bear". Although Lee had warned him not to bring on a general engagement, Jackson knew from dispatches captured from a Union courier that Pope was consolidating his forces around Manassas, and if the Yankees managed to establish a strong defensive position then the whole campaign would have amounted to little more than a serious annoyance to the Federals.
Jackson was hardly trying to "get away", as Pope so thoroughly believed. Jackson really wanted to attack while there was still an opportunity, in hopes of inflicting some damage and creating more confusion in the Federal ranks. He ordered Ewell and Taliaferro to hide their divisions alongside the road and ambush an approaching Yankee column, but the column turned off towards Manassas and slipped out of the trap. Jackson became even more irritable.
About sundown, at 6:00 PM or so, Jackson finally got the opportunity he was looking for. Another column of Union soldiers appeared, heading for the Stone Bridge, and Jackson went down the ridge to scout them out personally. He appeared on a nearby hill, within rifle range if anyone had wanted to take a shot at him. He rode back and forth, back and forth, like a cat swishing its tail. Then he rode off.
The Federal column was an element of Brigadier General Rufus King's division, in specific the 4th Brigade, under the command of Brigadier General John Gibbon. Gibbon was a 35-year-old regular with a background in artillery, a West Pointer, and a Southerner, a North Carolinan who had been the best man at D.H. Hill's wedding. He had gone with the Union, while his three brothers had signed up for the Confederacy. His four volunteer regiments, about 2,100 men, were all from the West and were almost entirely green. They were called "strawfoots", from the custom of drilling the more ignorant recruits by tying straw to one boot and hay to the other so they could tell one foot from another. The 2nd Wisconsin had seen a little action, but the 6th and 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana had never fired a shot in anger.
Gibbon had an instinct for leadership, however, and the men were well drilled. Gibbon had a reputation for being "steel cold" and by his own admission believed that a good commander was a "despot", but his despotism was moderated by the fact that his men had, after all, volunteered and wanted to be good soldiers. He found that to such men carrots meant more than sticks, and to instill esprit he had issued them regular-army broad-brimmed black hats. They called themselves the Black Hat Brigade. They were eager for action, their excitement whetted by the rebel straggler they had captured earlier, the fellow who compared them to "pack mules" and his own to "race horses".
Gibbon's men had paid Jackson no mind, thinking him no more than a solitary rebel cavalry scout, but when Jackson's officers saw their commander return they felt a combination of excitement and dread. One of them said: "Here he comes, by God." Jackson rode up to them, halted, touched his cap, and said calmly, his frustration resolved: "Bring up your men, gentlemen."
The officers rode off towards their troops, who had been watching the scene themselves and knew exactly what was up. An observer said that "from the woods arose a hoarse roar like that from cages of wild animals at the scent of blood."
Gibbon's brigade was along a stretch of the turnpike not far from Groveton, just below a farm owned by a fellow named Brawner, when three batteries of rebel artillery rode out in the open and began to set up. Gibbon spotted them and, thinking they were just Jeb Stuart's light artillery playing at hit-and-run, ordered up his own battery, and then formed the 2nd Wisconsin and 19th Indiana into a skirmish line to drive the pests off. The skirmishers advanced up towards the ridge through Brawner's farm, and then the rebels emerged from the woods, six brigades, about 6,200 men to Gibbon's 2,100. The Confederates were only about 75 yards (70 meters) away, and they leveled a volley at the Federals that tore through their ranks.
If Jackson had hoped to panic the Yankees by surprise and superior numbers, which he would have believed all the more if he had known how green Gibbon's men were, he was thoroughly mistaken. The rookies returned the fire and, instead of falling back, advanced. The rebels had simply made them angry. Gibbon still recognized that he was in serious trouble and sent couriers off to get help from King's other brigades, which were along the road some distance before and behind him. Gibbon brought up his other two regiments to press the fight against the rebels.
The two sides slammed away at each other, for the most part the men standing upright, with no cover, just firing and loading and firing again at close range. General King was little help. Startlingly for a senior officer, he was an epileptic, had fallen with a seizure the day before, and was still extremely ill. However, two regiments belonging to the brigade of Brigadier General Abner Doubleday, lagging Gibbon's brigade down the road, moved up in line to pour their fire into Jackson's men.
This battle went on for an hour and a half. The firing was terrific, and many soldiers would later call it the loudest they ever heard. It only stopped when it was too dark to shoot any more. Nobody had given any ground; they had just stood there and shot each other. About a third of the 2,800 Federals involved in the battle had fallen. They had bloodied Jackson's men as badly, in fact worse. They had taken down Taliaferro, hitting him three times and putting him out of action for most of the rest of the year, as well as eccentric, courageous Dick Ewell, who on arriving on the firing line had been greeted by a cheer from his men that drew a storm of Yankee lead in response, killing gray soldiers in scores. Ewell's knee was shattered by a bullet and the leg would have to be amputated.
The darkness was filled with the moans of the wounded. Union soldiers tried to search the battlefield with lanterns held high, but rebels took pot shots at them and they were forced to search in the dark. Gibbon, Doubleday, and the ailing King had a conference around a fire to determine what to do next. Moving up to Centerville as they had been ordered seemed risky with Jackson nearby, all the more so because they had no idea where the other elements of Pope's army really were. However, remaining where they were when they were confronted with a clearly superior Confederate force seemed worse, and so they decided to withdraw to Manassas. They moved out in the dark, taking as many of their wounded as they could with them and leaving the worst off on the field.
From any practical viewpoint the battle had been senseless, resulting in no more than mutual bloodletting to no great advantage of either side. In a moral sense, however, it was a victory for the Federals. Rebels who were used to walking roughshod over Yankees had attacked a force no more than half their size under the impression they would throw the Union men off the battlefield -- and smashed into a brick wall that didn't budge an inch. From then on the rebels would call the 4th Brigade "them damned black-hat fellers" whenever they came up to the line, a strong compliment from an adversary. The Westerners would call themselves the "Iron Brigade" and few would dispute it. In a matter of hours they had gone from a gang of rookies to one of the toughest units in the US Army, and had paid for that distinction in streams of blood.
Still, from the strategic point of view it had served Jackson's purpose. If it had shown none of the brilliance that he was capable of, he had wanted to distract Pope, and the nasty fight at Brawner's farm was certainly enough to get John Pope's attention.
* That collision was not the only fighting that had taken place that evening, though it was certainly the most furious. That morning, Lee and Longstreet had roused their men to continue their march. Every indication showed that Thoroughfare Gap was still open and they would be able to pass through unhindered. That was true at the time, but when they got there by about 3:00 PM they found the Federals waiting for them. It was General Ricketts' division, which had arrived just moments before. If the Federals could not be dislodged, then Lee's big gamble would be a disaster for the Confederacy.
Longstreet, a hard man to rattle, was undisturbed. He kept up the pressure at the mouth of the gap while dispatching various units to climb the hills around it and attack Ricketts' men from the rear. It was a tough, hard climb and the Federals did their best to discourage it. Then, as the sun fell low in the sky, they all heard the sounds of firing to the east, building to a remote roar that indicated Jackson would need help quickly.
The rebels stepped up their efforts and came down the hills behind the Yankees. Ricketts knew it was getting too hot for him and decided to pull out. The Federals withdrew and fell back out of the path of the Confederate advance. Buford and his cavalry remained to keep up the fight as best as they could, but they hadn't the capability to do more than harass the rebels. Given the odds against Rickets his withdrawal was prudent, but he had made a mistake in the process. Early in the fight he had sent back news to Pope indicating that Longstreet had been decisively driven back, but when he withdrew he failed to notify Pope. Pope had no idea that Lee and Longstreet were moving to Jackson's aid and, in his fixation on destroying Jackson, had all but put them out of his mind.
* If Pope's vision was fuzzy, back up the road in Washington everything was pitch-black. With communications cut and snarled, nobody had any idea of where Pope was, much less Jackson or Lee. During the day, McClellan got reports of 120,000 rebels moving up the road from Centerville to capture Washington and Baltimore, just the sort of thing he was most inclined to believe. Halleck a little more rationally warned of the threat of a fast cavalry raid into the capital. As a precaution, McClellan sent four infantry regiments to Upton's and Munson's hills outside of Alexandria, where they could block a rebel move up the road from Centerville. Franklin's army corps had just arrived in Alexandria and were sitting there waiting for orders. Halleck and McClellan agreed they needed to be sent forward to help Pope, but nobody knew really where Pope was, and besides Franklin hadn't unloaded his horses and wagons from the transports.
Herman Haupt privately observed that Franklin's corps could have simply marched to the fortifications already built around Centerville with short-term supplies carried in their knapsacks. Wherever Pope was, that would put them closer to him, and regular supplies could be delivered by wagon as soon as Franklin got himself unloaded. Haupt doubted there was any rebel force that could threaten an entire army corps in the close vicinity of Washington, but nobody much cared what Haupt thought. McClellan and Halleck bickered through the rest of the day.
