Stonewall Jackson and the Midcourse Correction to Second Manassas: New Evidence On How Stonewall Jackson Eluded the Union Army Twice: First to Carry Out His Raid to Manassas Junction and Later to Avoid John Pope's Converging Union Forces

By Steven E. Condon

This book presents new evidence revealing how Stonewall Jackson was able to elude the Union army twice: first to carry out his raid to Manassas Junction and later to avoid General John Pope's converging Union forces. It is an account full of surprises including a mistaken mountain, a warning that never was, and Union General John Pope's real plan for entrapping Jackson. It is all part of the untold story of the important Second Manassas Campaign (a.k.a. Second Bull Run). Second Manassas was the second of two consecutive campaigns orchestrated by Robert E. Lee by means of which he shifted the center of conflict in the Eastern Theater from the gates of Richmond, Virginia to the threshold of Washington, D.C., opening the way for Lee's first invasion of the North. This double-barreled achievement formed perhaps Lee's greatest accomplishment of the war and one with few parallels in military history.

The Second Manassas Campaign did much to enhance the reputations of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It also created the legend of Union General John Pope, the man whom they defeated. According to this legend John Pope was an army commander who was prone to make one boneheaded mistake after another, a general who was totally outclassed by his renowned opponents, and a general who afterwards lied to cover up his own incompetence. One can't discuss the magnitude of Lee and Jackson's achievement in winning the Second Manassas Campaign without addressing the competence of the man whom they defeated. Because of the fact that their victory was achieved by beating a man who for all intents and purposes demonstrated himself to be a second-rate general, Lee and Jackson's achievementâ despite its far reaching consequencesâ has always attracted less attention than have Lee's campaigns that immediately preceded and followed it, The Seven Days and Antietam, respectively.

Recent research, however, reveals that John Pope was much more than a second-rate general, as is evidenced by a proper understanding of how he performed in the days immediately preceding the Second Battle of Manassas, days in which Stonewall Jackson's abilities shone brightly. This new and surprising research achieves two ends. First it provides the real explanation of how the great Stonewall Jackson accomplished one of his greatest feats. And secondly it demonstrates that Lee and Jackson defeated much more than a second-rate general, thus placing Lee and Jackson's victory in the Second Manassas Campaign in its true perspective and revealing it to be one of the greatest accomplishments achieved by this remarkable military duo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456608934

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2012

Acknowledgements

The arguments in this short book are based predominantly on primary sources, mainly the military dispatches, telegrams, and post-battle reports contained within War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, the 128-book compendium that was published by the U. S. Government in the 1880’s. Still this book would not have been possible without the detailed research and expert analysis concerning the participants and events of this campaign (and others) performed by the many dedicated and thorough historians who preceded me. This book is dedicated to those excellent historians.

I have been attempting to publish my discoveries, in one form or another, since August 2009 but with little luck. Although the shape of the composition, its length, and its outward theme have varied from submission to submission, the major arguments and pieces of evidence have changed very little over this time period. The one exception to this statement is the fact that unlike the current presentation, the earliest versions did not address any of Pope’s Disposition of Forces except for the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Some useful supplementary documentation, however, has accrued over time. Recently, for example, I added the third faulty intelligence report sent to John Pope about Jackson’s march as well as Pope’s second prodding of McDowell to send a cavalry reconnaissance.

I am indebted to the anonymous peer reviewers from The Journal of Military History for several of their criticisms of an essay recently submitted to that journal, an essay significantly smaller than this current book, and one that looked at my findings from a somewhat different angle although at the same time including many of the same arguments and much the same evidence. Among other things their objections helped me to recognize the need to justify for my readers’ benefit some conclusions that, because of my proximity to my subject matter, I had previously taken for granted. Stimulated by one objection, for example, I put down on paper for the first time the evolution of and evidence for what I call Pope’s Theory of Cavalry; I did so in order to validate Pope’s institution of the devolution of the responsibility for cavalry reconnaissance within his army.

Due to another objection I developed my arguments demonstrating that John Pope would be familiar with the marching distances related to the reputed path of the mysterious enemy column. And stimulated by yet another objection, I set forth my contention that because of Pope’s long years of experience as an army topographical engineer, he would be certain to notice the strategic topographic details related to Barber’s Cross Roads, features that fully vindicated the rationality of his tentative conclusion that the mysterious Confederate column (i.e., Jackson) might be a flank guard for a Confederate movement into the Shenandoah Valley. Previously I had argued that Pope knew these distances and noted these topographic details but had not made a strong case as to why I believed Pope in particular would do so.

Due to some misunderstandings expressed by these same reviewers, I have clarified some details about Pope’s decision to order out the 12th Pennsylvania Cavalry. As a result of one reviewer’s contention that Stonewall Jackson made his own luck, I dropped the name of that essay, Stonewall Jackson’s Secret Good Luck at Second Manassas, and instead adopted the current name of this book. At the same time, however, I also strengthened my arguments as to why no person can make all of his own luck. Thanks to another comment by a reviewer, a comment that I judged to signify an outright rejection of one of my theses—that of rehabilitating the military reputation of John Pope—I developed the all-important section entitled, Still a Second-Rate General?

But perhaps the most important criticism made by the peer reviewers was their assertion that my presentation was too aggressive. At first this surprised me because I had toned down my presentation significantly compared to a previous article that I suspected had been rejected by Civil War History for this very reason. But over time my reflection on this comment eventually led me towards the current, more tempered form found in this book.

Two points of which I believe I was previously conscious but upon which I had not hitherto focused, now came to the fore: (1) one can’t evaluate the magnitude of Lee and Jackson’s accomplishment in winning the Second Manassas Campaign without also addressing the competence of the man whom they defeated; and (2) by rehabilitating the reputation of John Pope, I actually do a great favor to those (including myself) who highly respect the military achievements of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, for I demonstrate that their victory was no walk over because they were not defeating merely a second-rate general, and as a result this new perspective raises the significance of the Second Manassas Campaign to its proper level by revealing the contestants to have been more evenly matched than previously thought.

I would also like to express my thanks to the following people who also made the current book possible:

• The telegraphers, staff officers, soldiers, and civilians, who wrote, copied, coded, decoded, and preserved the telegrams, dispatches, and reports that became the primary source material for much of the history of the Civil War; the soldiers and War Department staffers who after the war sorted and copied all the telegrams, dispatches, and reports and subsequently compiled the War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies ; and the people who had the foresight to preserve these documents and publish them in the Official Records.

• The topographical engineers and others who created the maps used during the Civil War as well as those who after the war created the maps for the atlas accompanying the Official Records .

• The staff members of the Library of Congress who provided me with research materials, particularly the staff members at the Manuscript Division who made available to me microfilms of the George Brinton McClellan Papers and—during a visit to the Manuscript Division—originals of the Fitz John Porter Papers (the microfilm then being unavailable).

• The staff members of the National Archives in Washington, DC for their valuable help.

• The (unfortunately anonymous) member of staff at the Archives II facility in College Park, Maryland who provided me with many full size photocopies of large Civil War era maps, most especially the large Army of Potomac map dated April 20, 1864 and signed by engineer J. C. Woodruff. This was the map on which I first spied Buck Mountain, a serendipitous event leading to what is perhaps the most significant discovery contained within this book. I am also grateful that this employee supplied me with a full size photocopy of the J. Schedler map, which covers an area slightly larger than the Woodruff map and immediately to the south of the Woodruff map’s area.

• The employees of the National Geographic Society for developing their excellent PC-based mapping application TOPO which permitted me to easily measure so many road and railroad