Original subtitles

We called to them,

tried to tell them there was no danger,

called them to stop, implored them to stand.

We called them cowards, denounced them in the most

offensive terms, put out our heavy revolvers and threatened

to shoot them, but all in vain;

a cruel, crazy, mad, hopeless panic possessed them,

and communicated to everybody about in front and rear.

The heat was awful, although now about six;

the men were exhausted, their mouths gaped,

their lips cracked and blackened with the powder of

the cartridges they had bitten off in battle,

their eyes starting in frenzy; no mortal ever saw such a mass

of ghastly wretches.

Thus reported Ohio Congressman Albert Riddle,

after witnessing the rout of Union forces at the First

Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861.

This first major conflict of the war went badly for the

north, shaking the confidence of northern leaders as it

strengthened the resolve of those in the south.

After the fall of Fort Sumter three months earlier,

tens of thousands of men answered Lincoln's call for

90-day enlistments to defend the nation

from internal threat.

But by mid-July 1861, their enlistments were nearly

expired, and these men were looking to go home.

President Lincoln felt the pressure of those coming

expirations, not to mention the growing number of

Confederate troops on the other side of the Potomac

from Washington, D.C.

Even more, the public was demanding action.

Editorials in northern papers clamored for General in Chief

Winfield Scott to strike for the capital

of the Confederacy.

"On to Richmond!" they cried.

Lincoln hoped a more limited attack,

at the Confederate forces gathered in Manassas,

Virginia, would be able to accomplish what he wanted most

a quick end to the insurrection,

without doing irreparable harm to the South.

And so, Brigadier General Irvin MacDowell was sent to

lead his unseasoned troops into battle with P.T.

Beauregard's equally unseasoned Confederate troops

near the vital rail junction in Manassas.

"You are green, it is true," Lincoln told McDowell,

"but they are green also..."

But a series of problems for the north resulted in the

green Confederates under Beauregard,

assisted by troops under General Joseph E.

Johnston, whipping the short-timers under McDowell.

An orderly retreat turned into a panicked rout as Union

troops threw aside their guns and equipment in desperation.

The Union suffered almost five hundred dead and twenty-five

hundred wounded, captured, or missing.

In comparison, the Confederate troops lost almost four

hundred dead, sixteen hundred wounded,

and a handful missing.

To those in the north who had expected an easy victory,

defeat came as a shock.

New York attorney George Templeton Strong

wrote in his diary:

Today will be known as

BLACK MONDAY.

We are utterly and disgracefully routed,

beaten, whipped by secessionists.

The First Battle of Bull Run,

or the First Battle of Manassas,

as it was called by the Confederates,

had long-reaching effects.

Beauregard was promoted for his actions that day,

and Brigadier General Thomas Jackson

earned his famous nickname, Stonewall.

Meanwhile, McDowell was soon replaced by Major General

George B. McClellan, as Commander of the

Army of the Potomac.

Though much smaller than some battles that would occur later

in the war, at the time, Bull Run was the largest battle

in American history.

The Confederate victory in this fight led many in the

south to think that they had all but won the war.

But despite the sense of humiliation and despair among

many in the north, the defeat at Manassas actually served to

strengthen Union forces.

General Benjamin Butler recognized this in a letter to

Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General.

We have heard the sad news from Manassas,

but are neither dismayed nor disheartened.

It will have the... good effect...

to teach us wherein we are weak and they are strong,

and how to apply the remedy to our deficiencies.

Lincoln seemed to see the same lesson

in the defeat.

The day after the rout at Bull Run,

Lincoln signed a bill calling for the enlistment of five

hundred thousand volunteers, these to serve three years

rather than three months.

Just three days later, he signed a bill

raising that to one million.

Many of these men would form the Army of the Potomac.

Over the next two months, McClellan would take these raw

undisciplined troops and train them into a fine army.

By October he had one hundred twenty thousand men

in his army.

By November, one hundred sixty eight thousand.

Along the way, he would build near-impregnable

fortifications around the city of Washington.

Scores of forts and hundreds of big guns defended the

capital from Confederate forces

just across the Potomac.

But the war did not wait for McClellan to ready his forces.

To the west, Missouri was in the middle of its own internal

civil war, with Unionist and Secessionist guerilla bands

fighting back and forth for control of the state.

Just after Bull Run, General John C. Fremont arrived in

Missouri to take command of the Western Department.

He found himself in the middle of a bloody struggle between

groups who had been trading shots for months.

About a month before the assault on Fort Sumter,

the Missouri Constitutional Convention voted 98 to 1 that

the state would remain in the Union but would not contribute

arms or men to either side if war broke out.

But a week after Sumter, a secessionist mob overran the

arsenal in Liberty, Missouri, making off with a thousand

rifles and muskets.

Union commanders were right to be concerned.

Despite Missouri's official position,

Governor Claiborne Jackson was working with Confederate

President Jefferson Davis to arrange bringing Missouri

into the Confederacy.

The Confederates smuggled a shipment of artillery to

Jackson, who in turn moved it to a military encampment a few

miles out from St. Louis.

On May 9, the howitzers, siege guns,

and five hundred muskets arrived in the camp.

Jackson had organized a pro-secession militia to

practices maneuvers there, and they were now ready

to move on the arsenal.

Governor Jackson was able to get the legislature to approve

a new Missouri State Guard.

Led by Major General Sterling Price,

the Guard's purpose was to resist invasion by federal

troops, and to squash rebellion.

Rebellion, in this case, meant Missourians

who had joined the Union forces.

Nathaniel Lyon was promoted to Brigadier General and put in

charge of Union forces in Missouri.

On June 11, 1861, he met with Governor Jackson to negotiate

a treaty between their two sides.

That proved impossible.

Over the next few weeks, the two sides fought

a series of skirmishes.

Meanwhile, the Missouri Constitutional Convention

appointed a new governor, Hamilton Rowan Gamble,

a man loyal to the Union.

Then, on August 10, at the Battle of Wilson's Creek,

Union forces suffered a significant defeat.

General Lyon and his force of about six thousand men were

camped in Springfield.

Approaching them were twelve thousand men from the combined

forces of the Missouri State Guard,

Arkansas militia, and Confederate regulars under

Brigadier General Benjamin McCulloch.

Lyon planned to hit the Confederates in surprise

attack, then withdraw to seek reinforcement and supplies.

So at 5 a.m. on the tenth, he split his force in two,

planning to strike the larger Confederate force

in a pincer movement.

But in the confusion of the battle,

the two Union forces were unable to communicate

and coordinate movement.

General Lyon was killed in the battle,

and Major Samuel Sturgis was forced to lead the Union

troops in an organized retreat.

With the loss at Wilson's Creek,

the Union lost control of Southwest Missouri.

General John C. Fremont, the new commander in the west,

had to find a way to turn things around.

Militarily, he failed to do so.

Secessionist guerillas roamed across the state.

The Confederate troops under Sterling Price moved north,

and by September 20th they had captured the city

of Lexington as well.

In August, Fremont tried a completely different approach.

He declared martial law in Missouri.

Any Confederate guerillas would face the death penalty.

And all slaves belonging to Confederates would be freed.

This order outraged the border states,

which Lincoln was struggling to maintain within the Union.

In the early stages of the war, relatively few northerners saw

their goal as freeing the slaves.

The northern armies fought to preserve the Union,

not to end slavery.

But individuals, such as Fremont,

took steps early on that moved the Union

closer to emancipation.

General Benjamin Butler, in Virginia,

May 1861, made the decision that he would not return

fugitive slaves to their southern masters.

Those states, he argued, could not secede from the Union and

then demand that their rights to human property under the

Fugitive Slave Law be protected

by the federal government.

Butler declared that these slaves were contraband of war,

and put them to work for the Union forces.

He did not arm them, but every job completed by a contraband

freed a white soldier to fight.

And within a few months he had almost a thousand contrabands.

Harriet Tubman, the famed conductor of the Underground

Railroad, joined General Butler's forces,

to help organize and care for the contrabands.

In August 1861, Congress passed,

and Lincoln signed, the First Confiscation Act,

which made this policy official.

When Fremont issued his personal emancipation

proclamation in Missouri, Lincoln directed him to

modify it to comport with the Confiscation Act.

That is, rather than freeing all slaves belonging to

Confederates, Fremont could only declare free those slaves

who had been used to support the Confederacy.

When Fremont refused to make these changes,

Lincoln was forced to overrule the general

and remove him from office.

This decision helped Lincoln maintain the loyalty of the

border states, but drew a harsh reaction

from radical Republicans.

Frederick Douglass in particular had praised

Fremont's action, and was angered by Lincoln's move.

The weakness and imbecility of the

letter of the President, condemning that proclamation,

have thus far characterized the whole war.

But Lincoln believed that people in the north were

not ready to make this war about abolishing slavery.

What Lincoln - and many in the north -

felt was lacking in this war,

was actual fighting by those now splendidly-trained and

equipped troops under McClellan.

McClellan had no interest in freeing the slaves.

He wrote to influential fellow Democrat Samuel Barlow:

Help me to dodge the nigger -

we want nothing to do with him.

I am fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union and the

power of the Government - and no other issue.

To gain that end we cannot afford to mix up the negro

question - it must be incidental and subsidiary.

McClellan had done an excellent job training the

new Army of the Potomac, as well as preparing the defenses

of Washington.

But he was showing himself to be overcautious

as a military commander.

Again and again, when pressed by Lincoln for action,

he would insist that Confederate forces outnumbered his own.

This despite the fact that in October he had one hundred

twenty thousand men, facing just forty-five thousand

Confederates across the Potomac.

In October there was one minor skirmish,

but once again it turned out badly for the Union.

Colonel Edward Baker, who was a Senator from Oregon and a

personal friend of Lincoln's was attempting to dislodge

Confederate forces from Leesburg, Virginia.

Instead, he and his men were surrounded by Confederates,

at a place called Ball's Bluff.

Baker was killed in the fighting,

and his men were driven back, over the edge of the bluff in

a panicked rout.

As many men died of drowning as of bullet wounds,

and hundreds more were captured by the rebels.

This debacle did not encourage McClellan into action.

As the fall wore on, finally becoming winter,

the Army of the Potomac sat.

As historian James M. McPherson has noted,

"McClellan excelled at preparation,

but it was never quite complete.

The army was perpetually almost ready to move - but the

enemy was always larger and better prepared."

In early 1862, a fighting general did emerge,

in the western theater of the war.

General Ulysses S. Grant led assaults on important

southern river forts.

On February 6, he led two divisions in the capture of

the undermanned Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River.

The fort was taken with minimal losses,

and Grant moved quickly over land to assault Fort Donelson,

on the Cumberland River.

Grant faced stronger resistance at Donelson.

But after a series of attacks and counterattacks between the

two sides, by February 16, Grant's command of the field

was so clear that the Confederate commanders,

Brigadier General John Floyd and his second in command,

Brigadier General Gideon Pillow, panicked.

Buckner was an old acquaintance of Grant's,

going back to their years at West Point

and service in the army.

Perhaps Buckner thought this would mean better terms of

surrender for him and his men.

If so, he was proven wrong.

In response to Buckner's request to discuss terms,

Grant sent the following message:

Yours of this date, proposing armistice

and appointment of Commissioners to settle terms

of capitulation, is just received.

No terms except an unconditional and immediate

surrender can be accepted.

I propose to move immediately upon your works.

Buckner replied that circumstances compelled him to

accept Grant's "ungenerous and unchivalrous terms."

The capture of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson were the first

major victories by Union forces,

and they were celebrated wildly.

Ulysses S. Grant became known throughout the north as

"Unconditional Surrender Grant."

Over twelve thousand Confederate soldiers were

captured, setting up another - much bloodier - Union victory

months later at Shiloh.

The Battle of Shiloh, in southwestern Tennessee,

April 6-7, 1862, was very nearly a Union defeat.

Grant had developed a reputation for focusing more

on his own plans than on the enemy's actions.

This contributed to significant losses on April 6,

when his men were encamped at Pittsburg Landing

along the Tennessee River.

Grant was criticized later for failing to have his men

prepare adequate fortifications at Shiloh.

He responded, in his memoirs:

Up to that time the pick and spade had been but little

resorted to at the West.

Besides this, the troops with me,

officers and men, needed discipline and drill more than

they did experience with the pick, shovel and axe.

Reinforcements were arriving almost daily,

composed of troops that had been hastily thrown together

into companies and regiments -

fragments of incomplete organizations,

the men and officers strangers to each other.

Under all these circumstances I concluded that drill and

discipline were worth more to our men than fortifications.

Nonetheless, the lack of fortifications made it

all the easier for Albert Sydney Johnston and P.T.

Beauregard to strike the Union troops

in a bloody surprise attack.

Grant, nursing an ankle that had been badly injured when

his horse had fallen days earlier,

had not expected an attack,

and was miles away in Savannah.

While I was at breakfast...

heavy firing was heard in the direction of Pittsburg

landing, and I hastened there...

On reaching the front... about eight A.M., I found that

the attack on Pittsburg was unmistakable...

Captain Baxter, a quartermaster on my staff,

was accordingly directed to go back and order General Wallace

to march immediately to Pittsburg by the road

nearest the river.

Miscommunications resulted in General Lew

Wallace not arriving where and when Grant needed him,

and Wallace's troops would not take part

in the first day of fighting.

The Battle of Shiloh took its name from what Grant called a

"log meeting-house" two to three miles

from the Pittsburg landing.

This point was the key to our position

and was held by Sherman.

His division was at that time wholly raw,

no part of it ever having been in an engagement;

but I thought this deficiency was more than made up

by the superiority of the commander.

Grant's faith in General William Tecumseh

Sherman was complete, and would remain so

throughout the war.

In the Battle of Shiloh, Sherman proved himself

deserving of Grant's trust.

Grant described the first day of battle.

During the whole of Sunday I was continuously

engaged in passing from one part of the field to another,

giving directions to division commanders.

In thus moving along the lines, however,

I never deemed it important to stay long with Sherman.

A casualty to Sherman that would have taken him from the

field that day would have been a sad one for the troops

engaged at Shiloh.

And how near we came to this!

On the sixth Sherman was shot twice,

once in the hand, once in the shoulder,

the ball cutting through his coat and making a slight wound,

and a third ball passing through his hat.

In addition to this he had several horses shot

during the day.

The Confederate assaults were made with such a disregard of

losses on their own side that our line of tents soon fell

into their hands.

The ground on which the battle was fought was undulating,

heavily timbered with scattered clearings,

the woods giving some protection to the troops

on both sides.

A number of attempts were made by the enemy to turn our right

flank, where Sherman was posted,

but every effort was repulsed with heavy loss.

But the front attack was kept up so vigorously that,

to prevent the success of these attempts to get on our

flanks, the National troops were compelled,

several times, to take positions to the rear

near Pittsburg landing.

When the firing ceased at night the National line was

all of a mile in rear of the position it had occupied

in the morning.

Both sides had taken shockingly high casualties,

the highest seen in the war to that point.

The Confederates had indeed lost over eight thousand men

that first day.

Among them was the commander of the Confederate forces.

With Johnston's death,

General P.T. Beauregard took command.

Beauregard sent a telegram that night

to President Jefferson Davis, that read:

"A COMPLETE VICTORY."

Unfortunately for him, his assessment was premature.

Many later criticized Beauregard for calling a halt

to the attack at dusk, feeling that if he had continued to

push then perhaps a COMPLETE VICTORY

would have been possible.

But his men were exhausted, and there was less than an

hour of daylight remaining.

And Beauregard did not know what was happening

in the Union camp.

Grant's forces had been reinforced by fifteen thousand

men in Major General Don Carlos Buell's army.

And General Lew Wallace's division of five thousand men

were also fresh troops, having not seen major fighting

on the first day.

With these additional Union forces,

and the loss of troops on the Confederate side,

Beauregard would find himself outnumbered on April 7,

when Grant and Buell counterattacked.

Shiloh was a Union victory, but a terribly costly one.

Union forces lost over 1,750 killed,

8,400 wounded, and almost three thousand

captured or missing.

The numbers on the Confederate side were similar,

except for a much smaller number captured or missing.

The willingness of the Confederate army to take such

losses worked to change Grant's understanding of how

victory could be accomplished.

I saw an open field, in our possession on the second

day, over which the Confederates had made repeated

charges the day before, so covered with dead that it

would have been possible to walk across the clearing,

in any direction, stepping on dead bodies,

without a foot touching the ground...

Up to the battle of Shiloh I, as well as thousands of other

citizens, believed that the rebellion against the

Government would collapse suddenly and soon,

if a decisive victory could be gained over any of its armies.

Donelson and Henry were such victories...

Up to that time it had been the policy of our army,

certainly of that portion commanded by me,

to protect the property of the citizens whose territory was

invaded, without regard to their sentiments,

whether Union or Secession.

After this, however, I regarded it as humane to both

sides to protect the persons of those found at their homes,

but to consume everything that could be used to support

or supply armies.

Grant took a lot of heat in the north

for the Union losses.

There were false reports of him being drunk,

and criticisms of his lack of fortifications.

Some wanted him removed from command,

to which Lincoln replied, famously,

"I can't spare this man; he fights."

This in contrast to his premier general in the east,

George McClellan.

Yet McClellan, finally, was preparing to move.

He planned an invasion of Virginia by water,

taking his army down the Chesapeake Bay,

near the mouth of the James River.

They would land at Fort Monroe,

seventy miles southeast of Richmond,

and then move toward the Confederate capital.

Whether or not this plan was sound,

the execution was problematic.

After landing on the Virginia Peninsula,

in early April, McClellan and fifty-five thousand troops

laid siege to Yorktown.

Defending the site were just thirteen thousand Confederate

soldiers, commanded by Major General John Magruder.

Though McClellan had an overwhelming numerical

superiority, he was convinced that Magruder

had far more men.

This was aided by Magruder's theatrics,

in which he moved men about quickly to create the sense of

greater numbers.

Though pressed by Lincoln to attack,

McClellan dug in and lay siege for a month.

During that time, Johnston's forces

moved in to support Magruder.

And in the end, all of the Confederate forces fell back

toward Richmond, before McClellan could finally make use

of his heavy artillery.

A month spent, and almost nothing gained.

Battle finally occurred in Williamsburg,

where thirty-two thousand Confederates,

under Major General James Longstreet,

fought a delaying action against forty-one thousand

Union troops under Brigadier General Joseph Hooker.

The Union troops were eventually able to push back

the Confederates, and claim victory.

But the fighting in Williamsburg had allowed the

bulk of the Confederate forces to reach Richmond in time to

defend it against the invading forces.

By late May, McClellan's Army of the Potomac had advanced

to the outskirts of Richmond.

At a little spot just south of the Chickahominy River,

known as Seven Pines, his forces would be temporarily

halted by the bloodiest battle to date

in the eastern theater of the war.

Confederate General Joseph Johnston developed a complex

plan in which fifty-one thousand of his men would

strike McClellan's second and third Corps,

about thirty three thousand troops.

Implementation of the plan proved difficult,

and though the Union advance was slowed,

the Confederates took heavy casualties.

Both sides claimed victory, though both suffered

significant losses.

The Union took five thousand casualties - including almost

eight hundred killed, thirty-six hundred wounded,

and over six hundred missing or captured.

But the Confederates were hit even harder,

with almost an thousand killed and almost five thousand

wounded, plus four hundred captured or missing.

McClellan spent the next three weeks entrenching and

regrouping, settling in for a long siege of Richmond.

On the Confederate side, General Johnston had been

wounded in action, and a new leader

of the southern forces emerged.

A man whose aggressive tactics were the precise opposite of

McClellan's excessive caution, and who would build a name for

himself that would long survive the war,

and all its participants.

A man named Robert E. Lee.

While McClellan spent the next weeks preparing

to lay siege, Lee spent the time preparing to strike.

From June 25 to July 1, 1862, there was a brutal series of

battles outside of Richmond, which brought McClellan's

Peninsular Campaign to an ignominious end.

On the 25th, the Union gained a pyrrhic victory in the

Battle of Oak Grove, where they gained a mere six hundred

yards of ground at the cost of almost seventy dead and five

hundred wounded, versus a similar death toll but fewer

wounded among the Confederates.

This minor battle was the only actual offensive strike

against Richmond during the campaign.

Over the next several days, Lee's army

struck at McClellan repeatedly.

In battles at Beaver Dam Creek,

Gaine's Mill, Garnett and Golding's Farm,

Savage's Station, and Glendale,

Lee's assaults had limited success in damaging

McClellan's forces, but they did succeed in pushing the Army of

the Potomac back and back, further from Richmond.

The final fight occurred on July 1,

at the Battle of Malvern Hill.

Union forces that day were commanded

by Major General Fitz John Porter.

Lee had prepared another complex plan of attack,

but muddy roads and poor maps prevented the coordinated

effort that was required to succeed.

General Porter later described the action of that day.

About 10 A.M. the enemy's skirmishers

and artillery began feeling for us along our line;

they kept up a desultory fire until about 12 o'clock,

with no severe injury to our infantry,

who were well masked, and who revealed but little of our

strength or position by retaliatory

firing or exposure.

The spasmodic, though sometimes formidable attacks

of our antagonists, at different points along our

whole front, up to about 4 o'clock,

were presumably demonstrations or feelers,

to ascertain our strength, preparatory to their engaging

in more serious work.

At about 5:30 o'clock, as column after column advanced,

only to meet the same disastrous repulse,

the sight became one of the most interesting imaginable.

The havoc made by the rapidly bursting shells from guns

arranged so to sweep any position far and near,

and in any direction, was fearful to behold.

Pressed to the extreme as they were,

the courage of our men was fully tried.

The safety of our army - the life of the Union -

was felt to be at stake.

In one case the brigades of Howe,

Abercrombie, and Palmer, of Couch's division,

under impulse, gallantly pushed after the retreating

foe, captured colors, and advantageously advanced the

right of the line, but at considerable

loss and great risk.

The brigades of Morell, cool, well-disciplined,

and easily controlled, let the enemy return after each

repulse, but permitted few to escape their fire.

I sent messages to the commanding general,

expressing the hope that our withdrawal had ended and that

we should hold the ground now occupied,

even if we did not assume the offensive.

It was now after 9 o'clock at night.

I received orders... to withdraw, and to...

move at specified hours to Harrison's Landing.

One should never forget that these battles took

place on roads, fields, and woods near the homes of

civilian families, trying to survive while the world

exploded around them.

Edward Neill was a chaplain with the First Minnesota

Volunteer Infantry Regiment, at the Battle of Malvern Hill.

He described one family's experience.

When night came, I slept on a sofa

in the West house.

The person who seemed to be the head of the household was

a gentle manly man, but greatly worried by the

eruption of an invading army, trampling down his crops.

Before the morning of... the first of July,

Sumner's Corps reached Malvern Hill from Glendale,

and was posted on the right of the Union army.

About eight o'clock.

Confederate artillery took position in a wheat field,

on the Poindexter farm, and opened fire,

the shells bursting near the West house.

The family, with some of their neighbors,

in consternation fled into the cellar,

to which there was access by a large outside door.

The Confederate assault at Malvern Hill failed

to gain ground against the Union troops,

whose position was nearly impregnable.

The rebels never got within two hundred yards

of the main Union line.

Union artillery tore the Confederates apart,

as wave after wave of rebels continued to attack.

Lee's men took over fifty-six hundred casualties,

compared with twenty-one hundred

for the Army of the Potomac.

However, despite achieving victory in the battle,

McClellan withdrew to Harrison's Landing on the

James River, where his army could be protected

by Union gunboats.

McClellan informed the President that Richmond could

not be taken at this time, and they returned north.

Once again McClellan had failed to deliver the

offensive strike that Lincoln was looking for.

McClellan himself blamed the failure on delays by Lincoln

and Halleck, in providing reinforcements,

but Lincoln was convinced, now,

that McClellan was not the man he needed

to lead the Union attack.

On June 26, 1862, President Lincoln reorganized the Union

forces, creating the Army of Virginia - not to be confused

with Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

Lincoln gave the command to Major General John Pope,

who had recently been highly successful

in the Western Theater of operations.

Lincoln's orders to the Army of Virginia were for it to

protect the capital, but also "in the speediest manner

attack and overcome the rebel forces..."

In other words, Lincoln wanted action.

Pope issued a number of orders that indicated that he would

take a harder approach against the rebels than McClellan

would have considered.

His General Order Number Five directed that his troops

"be subsisted on the country in which their operations

are conducted..."

In other words, the soldiers should take what they needed -

food, supplies, horses, mules -

from the citizens of rebel states.

A harbinger of things to come, under Generals Sheridan and

Sherman in 1864.

In mid-July, Pope led a force into Culpeper Court House.

By the end of the month, Pope had over forty thousand men

occupying the village.

Lee, ever the aggressive fighter,

was confident that McClellan would not attack - though he

was still camped near Richmond.

Lee sent Stonewall Jackson, with General A.P. Hill's

division, to head off Pope in Gordonsville.

On August 9th, Union and Confederate forces clashed at

the base of Cedar Mountain, eight miles south of Culpeper.

Pope's forces were moving south,

toward Gordonsville.

Jackson hoped to strike at the lead elements,

under General Banks, and defeat them before they could

merge again with the rest of the Union force.

Jackson was surprised by the force of the attack by Banks'

troops, and initially the Confederate general and his

men were pushed back.

But Jackson was able to rally his men,

especially the famous Stonewall Brigade,

and they were able to drive the Union forces

from the field.

Jackson was unable to shatter Banks' corps,

but the very presence of Jackson's troops made the

Union nervous.

Having once again been given the initiative,

Robert E. Lee would not waste it.

Lee needed to smash Pope's army before it was joined by

the Army of the Potomac.

On August 25th, Lee sent Jackson on a wide movement

around Pope's west flank, to strike in the rear

of Pope's forces.

Jackson's infantry was referred to as "foot cavalry,

for they moved faster on foot than most believed possible.

Jackson used his knowledge of the terrain to find unexpected

routes to and around the enemy,

and he had the ability to inspire his men to endure

long, hard marches.

Confederate Major General W.B. Taliaferro

described Stonewall Jackson's "Raid Around Pope."

Stonewall Jackson, with Ewell's and A.P. Hill's

divisions and his own old division under my command,

marched northward...

to cut Pope's communications and destroy his supplies.

Quartermasters and commissaries...

were left behind...

three days' meager rations had been cooked and stowed away in

haversacks and pockets; and tin cans and an occasional

frying-pan constituted the entire camp-equipage.

Jackson kept their destination known

only to a few, to ensure secrecy.

This extreme reticence was very

uncomfortable and annoying to his subordinate commanders,

and was sometimes carried too far;

but it was the real secret of the reputation for ubiquity

which he had acquired, and which was so well expressed by

General McClellan in one of his dispatches:

"I am afraid of Jackson; he will turn up where least expected."

Jackson marched his re-supplied men through the

night, toward the field where the South had earned its first

great victory: Manassas, near Bull Run Creek.

The Battle of Second Manassas, or Second Bull Run,

began on August 28, near the Brawner family farm.

After their long night march, Jackson and most of his men

were catching a few precious moments of sleep.

Then a captured Union message was brought to Jackson,

indicating that Pope intended to concentrate his forces

at Manassas Junction.

Taliaferro writes:

The captured dispatch aroused Jackson

like an electric shock.

He was essentially a man of action;

he rarely, if ever, hesitated; he never asked advice;

he did not seem to reflect, or reason out a purpose;

but he leapt by instinct...

to a conclusion, and then as rapidly

undertook its execution...

In this fight there was no maneuvering,

and very little tactics - it was a question of endurance,

and both endured.

Jackson did not achieve a decisive victory,

with both sides taking heavy casualties.

But he did succeed in getting General Pope's attention.

Pope had been looking for Jackson,

fearful of where and when he might crop up.

And now he'd found him.

But he miss-read the situation.

He believed that Jackson had been in retreat

when the forces clashed.

Pope knew that Longstreet was coming to reinforce Jackson,

but he thought that now he had "caught" Jackson before those

reinforcements could arrive.

The next day, August 29, Pope threw his forces at Jackson,

who had entrenched along an unfinished railroad grade.

Pope had the numerically superior force,

but Jackson's defenses were strong.

Again, casualties were high.

But the Confederates pushed the Union forces back

time and again.

Around noon on that day, Longstreet's force arrived,

marching out of Thoroughfare Gap to take position

on Jackson's right.

Pope ordered Major General Fitz John Porter to attack,

but Porter, seeing that he would be overwhelmed by

Longstreet's force, held firm.

The next day, August 30, Pope again ordered Porter's Fifth

Corps to attack.

He seemed oblivious to the fact that Longstreet's arrival

eliminated the Union's advantage in men.

Pope didn't realize it, but he was playing

into Robert E. Lee's hands.

Pope kept expecting the Confederates to retreat,

but Lee was hoping to be attacked.

Confederate artillery tore apart the attack by Porter's

Fifth Corps, and then Longstreet's twenty-five

thousand infantry crushed the Union left flank.

It was not the rout of First Manassas,

with terrified Union troops fleeing the field

in complete disorder.

But it was another embarrassing Union defeat.

Pope was removed by Abraham Lincoln,

and sent back west, on September 16.

Faced with his broken and disorganized army,

Lincoln now turned - no doubt reluctantly - to the man who

had rebuilt the Army of the Potomac after the first loss

at Bull Run: General George McClellan.

McClellan would get one more chance to create a highly

trained, professional army, and prove that he could then

lead that army to victory against the Confederacy's

greatest general.

For in the wake of another stunning victory

at Manassas, Virginia, Robert E. Lee was turning north.