The Chain Bridge Defenses During the Maryland Campaign, Part I: Sigel and Company on the Move

This summer's Sesquicentennial calendar is crowded with observances of several key events.  We've just finished Second Manassas and are now headed into the Maryland Campaign and Antietam.  During such times, I start to think about my own little corner of Northern Virginia. What was happening here as the armies left behind the wreckage at Manassas and marched through Maryland on the way to a bloody encounter outside Sharpsburg?   Although far less dramatic than other events unfolding in September 1862, the ground around present-day McLean and North Arlington witnessed a build-up of Gen. Franz Sigel's army corps.  These men played a key role in manning the defenses of Washington while Gen. George B. McClellan hunted down Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Old Line State.

Born in Germany in 1824, Sigel rose to become a military leader in the Revolution of 1848.  He emigrated to the United States in the early 1850s and eventually settled in St. Louis.   When war broke out, Sigel helped to recruit German-Americans to the Union cause.  He first served out West at Wilson's Creek and Pea Ridge.  Sigel, favored by the Lincoln Administration for his ties to the German-American community, was appointed a major general of volunteers and sent East, where he was named commander of the First Corps of Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia in June 1862.  Sigel seemed a fitting choice to lead the new corps, whose ranks were filled with many German immigrants.   Sigel's men fought hard at Second Manassas (August 28-30, 1862) and helped to stem James Longstreet's massive counter-attack on the Union left. 

Maj. Gen. Franz Sigel (courtesy of Library of Congress).  German-Americans were recruited to the Union cause with the slogan, "I goes to fight mit Sigel."  The general had a less than stellar record on the battlefield and was later trounced at the Battle of New Market in 1864.

By September 2, Pope's defeated army had concentrated at Fairfax Court House.  The Union commander worried that his men were not up to the task of fighting Lee anytime soon and strongly suggested to general-in-chief Henry W. Halleck that his army return to the safety of Washington's defenses.  On mid-morning September 2, Halleck finally ordered Pope to "bring your forces as best you can within or near the line of fortification."  (OR, 1:12:3, 796-97.) 

The anxious and demoralized Pope wasted no time in carrying out Halleck's instructions.  He soon put his troops on the move towards the outskirts of Washington. Sigel's First Corps, along with Edwin V. Sumner's Second Corps, Army of the Potomac, and Fitz John Porter's Fifth Corps, Army of the Potomac, were told to march "via Vienna toward the Chain Bridge."  (OR, 1:12:2, 86.)*  The Chain Bridge, located above Georgetown, was one of three pivotal crossing points into the nation's capital from Virginia.  Pope cautioned the three corps to "keep well closed up and within easy supporting distance of each other."  (OR, 1:12:2, 86.) 

The men started out towards Chain Bridge with Porter in the lead.  Sigel followed, and Sumner brought up the rear.  (Armstrong 57; Powell 256; McClellan, Own Story, 537-38.)   J.E.B. Stuart, however, was not about to let the Federal troops have an easy time of it.   The Confederate general sent cavalry under Gen. Wade Hampton, along with Capt. John Pelham's flying artillery, to harass the Union column as the men snaked their way along the road towards Vienna and Langley.

McClellan, who was just recently restored to overall command, rode out in the afternoon towards Upton's Hill, where he greeted Irvin McDowell's corps arriving from Fairfax.  Pope and McDowell soon appeared.  While speaking with the two generals, McClellan noticed "rather heavy artillery-firing . . . in the distance."  (McClellan, Own Story, 537.)  Pope speculated that Confederates were likely shelling Sumner's rear guard and "intimated that Sumner was probably in a dilemma."  (McClellan, Own Story, 537.)  McClellan could not help but get in a dig at Pope in his post-war account:

[Pope] could give me no information, of any importance in relation to the whereabouts of the different corps, except in a most indefinite way; had evidently not troubled his head in the slightest about the movements of his army in retreat, and had coolly preceded the troops, leaving them to get out of the scrape as best they could.  He and McDowell both asked my permission to go on to Washington, to which I assented, remarking at the same time that I was going to that artillery-firing. They then took leave and started for Washington.  (McClellan, Own Story, 537.)

McClellan dashed off with an aide and three orderlies to investigate what was happening along the road to Langley.  He first encountered Porter's men after dark.  The soldiers let out a rousing cheer upon recognizing Little Mac and crowded around their beloved commander.  By this time, "the firing had ceased, with the exception of perhaps a dropping shot occasionally."  (McClellan, Own Story, 537.)  McClellan nevertheless continued onward in the moonlight, until he came to Sigel's corps.  As McClellan described the remainder of his excursion:

I . . . soon satisfied myself that Sumner was pursuing his march unmolested, so I sent on to inform him that I was in command, and gave him instructions as to his march. I then returned by the Chain bridge road, having first given Sigel his orders; and at a little house beyond Langley I found Porter, with whom I spent some time, and at length reached Washington at an early hour in the morning.  (McClellan, Own Story, 538.)

Pope, meanwhile, seemed less than troubled by the Confederate action against the retreating Federal column.  He told Halleck:

The whole army is retiring in good order, without confusion or the slightest loss of property. . .  Three army corps pursue the route via Vienna to Chain Bridge, covered by all the effective cavalry.  (OR, 1:12:2, 87.)

 At 7:10 p.m., upon arriving near Washington, Pope sent an update to Halleck:

Command coming in on the road without much molestation. Some artillery firing on the road through Vienna to Chain Bridge, but nothing of a serious character, so far as I can learn.  (OR, 1:12:2, 87.)

Pope was not far off the mark in his assessment.  The 71st Pennsylvania under Col. Isaac Wistar, along with the 1st Minnesota, was protecting Sumner's rear.  Wistar's overall view was that the enemy's shells did "little damage" that night, although stragglers greatly complicated matters for the retreating army corps. (Wistar 48.)  As it was, the narrow road was already crowded with "thousands of disorganized troops and fragments of commands; disorderly wagon trains; guns without officers; caissons without guns."  (Wistar 46.)  However unfairly, Wistar singled out stragglers from Sigel's command for getting in the way of his regiment's rear guard duty:

Many hundred perhaps thousands of Germans from the routed Division of Siegel [sic], had abandoned their colors, thrown away their arms, and deliberately gone to sleep around fires kindled in the woods, a spectacle most exasperating to our men, since these stragglers could have no other design than to be taken prisoners after the passage of the rearguard. The soldiers in ranks begged to be let loose on these 'coffee-boilers,' promising there should be none left for the enemy; but the integrity of the rearguard was of too much importance to permit risking it, even for that just vengeance. Nevertheless, such stragglers did not all go unwhipt of  justice. Unfortunately, the Adjutant's horse being killed and no Major present, the only mounted regimental officers were Lieut.-Col. [William] Jones and myself, who, when otherwise unoccupied, busied ourselves with charging into these sleeping squads of loafers, to the intense delight of the gallant fellows of the hard-worked rearguard.  (Wistar 48-49.)

During the night of September 2 and early morning hours of September 3, Federal soldiers streamed through Lewinsville and entered Langley, only a handful of miles from the Chain Bridge over the Potomac.  (OR, 1:12:2, 87; Wistar 50.)**  Sumner's men took some time to recover from their march, but later on September 3, the Second Corps crossed the Potomac at Chain Bridge and headed to Tennallytown, northwest of Washington City.  They were joined by soldiers from the Second Corps, Army of Virginia (soon to be re-designated as the Twelfth Corps, Army of the Potomac).  Porter's men soon took up a position around Hall's Hill (near current-day US-29 and N. Glebe Rd. in Arlington).  Sigel's corps encamped closest to Chain Bridge, including the area around Ft. Ethan Allen.***  Sigel also kept pickets at Langley. 

As the Union Army sat within Washington's defenses, Lee prepared to invade Maryland.  Before long, the Army of Northern Virginia was fording the Potomac upriver from Washington.  The bulk of McClellan's force would soon be on the move, but not everyone would join in the chase.  After all, someone had to ensure that the nation's capital remained safe while the main body of the army was away. 

Notes

*For a Union Army map of Northeastern Virginia in 1862, click here.  The general route taken by the three army corps from Fairfax Court House through Vienna to Lewinsville, Langley, and Chain Bridge can be traced on this map in detail.  I unfortunately could not post the desired portion of the map at a level of magnification that was satisfactory enough for viewing.

**Precise arrival times are difficult to ascertain. Some elements reached the area around Chain Bridge on the evening of September 2, while the rear guard arrived in Langley "about daylight" on September 3.  (OR, 1:12:2, 466; McClellan, Own Story, 537-38; Wistar 50.)

***The exact placement of Sigel's corps on September 3-4 is unclear.  Sigel received dispatches on September 4 at Ft. Ethan Allen, so presumably most of his men were encamped in that general vicinity.  (OR, 1:51:1, 785).  A history of the 27th Pennsylvania, a regiment in Sigel's corps, indicates that around the same time the unit "was for several days engaged in picket duty" at Langley. (Bates 388.)

Sources

Aside from the citations to the Official Records above, the following sources were useful in compiling this post:

Marion V. Armstrong Jr., Unfurl Those Colors: McClellan, Sumner, & the Second Army Corps in the Antietam Campaign (2008); Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-1865, Vol. I (1869); Stephen D. Engle, Yankee Dutchman: The Life of Franz Sigel (1993); George H. Gordon, History of the Campaign of the Army of Virginia Under John Pope (1880); Bradley Gottfried, The Maps of Antietam (2012); Joseph L. Harsh, Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee & Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 (1999); John J. Hennessy, Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas (1993); George B. McClellan, McClellan's Own Story (1887); George B. McClellan, Report on the Organization and Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (1864); William H. Powell, The Fifth Army Corps (Army of the Potomac) (1896); "Franz Sigel (1824-1902)," Encyclopedia Virginia; Isaac Jones Wistar, Autobiography of Isaac Jones Wistar, 1827-1905, in Two Volumes, Vol. II (1914).

After Second Manassas: A Tour of Ox Hill and Other Sites

This past weekend I set out to explore some of the nearby sites in Fairfax County related to the tense days following Second Manassas.  I had long wanted to make this excursion, and the fast-approaching 150th anniversary of the battle provided the perfect opportunity.  The sites, which sit relatively close to one another, are easy to visit within a few hours and were a perfect compliment to my tour of the Second Manassas battlefield earlier this year.   

Ox Hill/Chantilly

I first stopped at Ox Hill Battlefield Park, which is located just off I-66 in the heavily developed Fair Lakes area of Fairfax.  The Battle of Ox Hill (or Chantilly in the North) was fought amidst a violent thunderstorm on September 1, 1862.  The engagement arose when Robert E. Lee attempted to cut off John Pope's line of retreat following the Union defeat at Second Manassas.  As Stonewall Jackson moved down Little River Turnpike (present-day US-50), however, Pope struck first.  Union divisions under Isaac Stevens and Philip Kearny attacked Jackson's much larger force at Ox Hill on the afternoon of September 1.  The short fight, which ended in a stalemate, cost both armies about 1,500 killed and wounded.  Stevens and Kearny were counted among the dead.  That night Union troops marched towards the safety of Washington's defenses.  Lee, meanwhile, had other ideas in mind, and within days his men were fording the Potomac into Maryland.

Little remains of the actual battlefield.  Residential and commercial development has tragically swallowed most of the landscape where the armies met.  Fortunately for us and future generations, men like Ed Wenzel fought hard to save a critical part of the battlefield from destruction.  The Fairfax County Park Authority now runs the 4.8-acre battlefield site.  As serendipity would have it, this same land happens to mark the spot where Stevens likely fell during the engagement.

The sign at the entrance to the battlefield along West Ox Road.  Note the commercial development and traffic congestion just outside the park boundary.

I was extremely impressed with Ox Hill.  The Park Authority has installed a series of interpretive markers along a stone loop trail.  The historical signage does a truly remarkable job of explaining and illustrating what happened there.  I found the maps on the markers particularly useful for understanding unit positions in relation to where I was standing.  I supplemented the markers with an excellent 25-minute audio tour that I downloaded to my iPod from the Park Authority website.  The recording features insightful commentary from Wenzel and other historians. 

A view across the field of the Union advance to the spot where Stevens was shot dead leading the 79th New York ("Highlanders") against the Confederate line at the edge of the woods.  After Stevens was killed, the Union soldiers pushed ahead and drove back Harry Hays' Louisiana Brigade.  A marker explains the attack and Stevens' death.

The Fairfax County Park Authority has recreated a cornfield and split rail fence that were located on the land at the time of the battle.  Kearny was killed when he accidentally rode into Confederate lines that stood in a part of the cornfield just outside the current park boundaries.

A white quartz stone and boulders marking the location of Stevens' death on the Ox Hill battlefield.  John Ballard, a Confederate veteran who owned the land after the Civil War, placed the markers here.  This photograph is taken from the area of the Confederate lines behind the split rail fence. 

Monuments to Stevens (l) and Kearny (r).  The plaque on the Kearny stone erroneously indicates that the general was killed on this spot, when in fact he fell 100 yards to the west (right of the photograph), outside the current park boundary. Two sons of the slain generals, Hazard Stevens and John Watts Kearny, attended the dedication ceremony in October 1915.  The monuments are probably the best known feature of the Ox Hill battlefield.  The white quartz stone and boulders are visible to the right, just beyond the monuments and the marker.

I felt moved to stand on the very ground where Stevens lost his life.  Readers may remember that I have written extensively about the Battle of Lewinsville.  On September 11, 1861, then-Colonel Stevens led the 79th New York and other Federal units on a reconnaissance of the neighborhood around Lewinsville, Virginia (present-day McLean).  A smaller Confederate force under J.E.B. Stuart attacked the Union troops as they prepared for the return to camp.  Stevens successfully withdrew his men under the cover of artillery fire.  I couldn't help but think that a little short of a year later and less than twenty miles from Lewinsville, Stevens would lose his life while bravely rallying the Highlanders in an attack on the Confederate lines at Ox Hill.   

St. Mary of Sorrows/Fairfax Station

The second part of my tour focused on Union efforts to treat and evacuate the wounded in the wake of Second Manassas and Ox Hill.  The Union Army sent thousands of wounded soldiers to Fairfax Station on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad.  The men were laid on the ground around St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church and on the hillside near the railroad tracks.  Here the injured soldiers awaited transportation from Fairfax Station to the hospitals in Washington and Alexandria. 

The War Department asked for volunteer nurses to help with the large number of causalities at Second Manassas.  The roads and rails to the front were soon clogged with citizens responding to their country's call.  Unfortunately, many of the would-be Good Samaritans were more interested in drinking the supplies of medicinal alcohol than in helping the wounded.  Clara Barton, however, was anything but a pretender.  After procuring a load of supplies from the Sanitary Commission, the Patent Office clerk and future founder of the American Red Cross boarded a train on August 31, 1862 and headed to Fairfax Station.  Over the next few days, she and her fellow volunteers tirelessly cared for the wounded soldiers.  On September 2, 1862 Barton climbed aboard the last train of wounded to leave Fairfax Station.  As Barton described her narrow escape:

The conductor stood with a torch which he applied to a pile of combustible material beside the track. And we rounded the curve which took us from view as we saw the station ablaze, and a troop of [Confederate] cavalry dashing down the hill. (in Epler 46.)

The picturesque St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church was my first stop after leaving Ox Hill.  During the late 1850s, Irish Catholic immigrants came to this part of Fairfax to work on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad.   Priests traveled all the way from St. Mary's in Alexandria and said Mass for local Catholics in boxcars.  The need for a permanent church building soon became apparent, and in 1858, the Bishop of Richmond laid the cornerstone for St. Mary's.  Railroad workers helped to build the church, which was dedicated in September 1860.  As I strolled through the now peaceful churchyard, I imagined Barton and her band of volunteers moving about and comforting the wounded soldiers.

St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church.  The original church, a one-room, clapboard building, was enlarged in the late 19th century.  After Second Manassas, Union surgeons operated on the wounded inside St. Mary's.  Soldiers who died from their injuries while in the Fairfax Station area were buried in the churchyard, but later moved to Arlington National Cemetery.

Historical marker at the entrance to St. Mary's commemorating Clara Barton's service there after Second Manassas and Chantilly.

I next drove a short distance to the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, which is housed in the former railroad station.  Erected in 1903, the building sits across the street from its original location next to the railroad tracks. The first station, built in 1852, fell victim to the Second Manassas Campaign.   The Union Army rebuilt the depot after Antietam.  Other stations followed in 1873, 1891, and 1903.  The railroad closed the station permanently in 1973.  Unfortunately the museum is only open on Sundays so I could not check out the history displays and model trains.  I took the time to read a Civil War Trails marker in front of the station and talked with a history intern from George Mason who was preparing for an upcoming Sesquicentennial event at the museum.  A return trip, however, is in order.

The Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, located in the 1903 train station.  A Civil War Trails marker in front of the station describes Barton's feelings on arriving at Fairfax Station in August 1862: "We were a little band of almost empty-handed workers, literally by ourselves, in the wild woods of Virginia, with 3000 suffering dying men crowded upon a few acres within our reach."  The station at the time of the Civil War was a two-story building.  Union soldiers wrote about surgeons performing amputations on the station's first floor.

After touring Fairfax Station, I grabbed lunch in the City of Fairfax and then visited a few sites associated with other periods during the Civil War.  (More to come in future posts!)  Overall, I would recommend that visitors add Ox Hill, St. Mary's, and Fairfax Station to any itinerary involving Second Manassas.  The tour gave me a real feel for the days following the battle.  Ox Hill alone tells the powerful story of an engagement that resulted in the deaths of two rising stars in the Union Army.  The park also teaches an important lesson about battlefield preservation.  St. Mary's and the land around Fairfax Station speak to the hardships endured by ordinary Union soldiers, as well as the sacrifices of Barton and other courageous volunteers.  Although more obscure compared to places like Manassas National Battlefield, these sites certainly merit a detour in their own right.

Sources

Aside from the websites referenced in the main text, the following sources were useful in compiling this post:

David H. Burton, Clara Barton: In the Service of Humanity (1995); Percy H. Epler, The Life of Clara Barton (1915); Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (1987); Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (1983).

The books on Clara Barton provide incredibly moving descriptions of the conditions of the wounded at Fairfax Station and explain Barton's role in greater detail. I'd recommend reading these accounts before touring St. Mary's and the Fairfax Station area.

Additional Tourist Information & Sesquicentennial Events

Hyperlinks to the websites for Ox Hill Battlefield Park, St. Mary's Church, and the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum can be found in the main text above.

There are several upcoming Sesquicentennial activities related to Ox Hill and the aftermath of Second Manassas:

Ox Hill Battlefield Park will be holding an all-day commemorative event on Saturday, September 1, the 150th anniversary of the engagement.  More information can be found here.

This upcoming weekend, the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum will be hosting an event to commemorate the medical treatment and evacuation of the wounded after Second Manassas.  The focus on Civil War medicine and Clara Barton should make this an interesting event.  See here for more details.

St. Mary of Sorrows is holding a candlelight memorial service in memory of those soldiers killed and wounded at Second Manassas and Ox Hill.  Information on this unique event can be found on the church's homepage.

A Visit to the Battlefield of Second Manassas

As we approach the 150th anniversary of Second Manassas, I wanted to share a few impressions of a trip that I took a few months ago.  Each year of the Sesquicentennial, I have a goal of visiting a few sites associated with the events that took place in the corresponding year during the Civil War.  This past April I decided to tour the battlefield of Second Manassas, a short 30 minute drive from home.  I picked up my friend, Rufino, at a nearby Metro station and headed out I-66 to Manassas National Battlefield Park.  A little music from the 2nd S.C. String Band set the mood as we drove west.

Based on some initial research I had done on visiting the battlefield, I decided to take the audio driving tour.  I've gravitated towards this method of touring ever since a childhood trip to Gettysburg.  My Dad was a big fan, and I suppose his fondness rubbed off on me.  I purchased the audio tour and guidebook at the Henry Hill Visitor Center.  The package is produced by a private company known as "Travel Brains," but don't let the name fool you.  Overall, the tour was worthwhile and provided detailed information to supplement the National Park Service (NPS) brochure and the markers on the battlefield.  Those Civil War enthusiasts with extensive knowledge of the battle may find the tour a tad too basic.  I haven't read much on Second Manassas, so I appreciated the refresher.  The CD also gave useful, on-the-scene interpretations of what I was seeing on the battlefield.

A tour of the Second Manassas battlefield requires driving on some busy area roads.  As we headed down U.S.-29 (Lee Highway), I noticed tailgaters pressuring me to move faster.  Such behavior made my visit a little less pleasurable and prevented a more careful study of the surrounding terrain.  Pulling in and out of some tour stops also proved a bit dicey.  Needless to say, I am glad to hear that a by-pass of the battlefield is in the works.

The audio tour for some odd reason does not include the Brawner Farm, Tour Stop 1 on the NPS brochure.  Whatever you do, however, don't miss going to the Brawner Farm.  The NPS opened the site in 2007 after restoring the post-Civil War farmhouse and installing an Interpretive Center on Second Manassas.  Despite the old-school technology, the electric map in the farmhouse offers an excellent overview of troop positions over the course of the three-day engagement.  A variety of exhibits place the battle in a larger context and cover such topics as the court-martial of Gen. Fitz John Porter, a scapegoat of the Union defeat at Second Manassas.

The restored farmhouse at the Brawner Farm site.  The present structure was built after the Civil War and was enlarged in 1905.  John Brawner and his family moved to this site in 1857.  He leased the property and worked as a tenant farmer.  The original house was damaged during Second Manassas, and the Brawners moved away not long after the battle.

The Brawner Farm, of course, was the scene of Stonewall Jackson's attack on Union soldiers from John Pope's Army of Virginia on the evening of August 28, 1862.  Jackson intended to draw Pope into battle and prevent him from concentrating with the remainder of the Federal Army.  The fight is perhaps best known as the site of an encounter between two of the Civil War's most famous units--the Iron Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade.  Rufino and I took the Ranger-guided tour of the battle at Brawner Farm.  The Ranger re-traced the Union and Confederate lines and really helped us to visualize the brutal, close-range fighting that took place there.

View from the position of the Stonewall Brigade towards the area of the Union lines occupied by the Iron Brigade.

The Stone House (Tour Stop 3), at the junction of Sudley-Manassas Road (today's VA-234) and the Warrenton Turnpike (present-day U.S.-29).  The home is one of two pre-Civil War buildings that is still standing on the grounds of the national park.  During Second Manassas, the Stone House served a field hospital for the wounded.  Pope's retreating Federal troops passed by the house on the way back to the defenses of Washington.

The Unfinished Railroad (Tour Stop 6) made a lasting and haunting impression.  On August 29, 1862, elements of Pope's army launched a series of attacks against Jackson's men, who were positioned along the grade of an unfinished railroad.  Today, the tranquility of the quiet, wooded setting stands in sharp contrast to the savage killing that happened at the same spot 150 years ago.  Although a breeze gently blew through the trees, the air seemed strangely leaden.  I am not an overly supernatural person, but I somehow felt surrounded by the very spirits of those who had fought and died there.

Looking down the unfinished railroad cut.  Confederate defenders from Jame Archer's Brigade, A.P. Hill's Division, occupied the ground to the left.  Federal soldiers from Col. Daniel Leasure's Brigade of Isaac Stevens' Division of the Ninth Corps, Army of the Potomac attacked across the cut.  The bodies of Union dead and wounded covered the slope of the embankment.  A one-mile loop trail allows visitors to explore this truly hallowed ground. 

A few other stops on the battlefield also deserve top billing.  The Deep Cut (Tour Stop 7) witnessed a massive Federal assault on Jackson's right flank by Porter's Fifth Corps and part of Gen. Irvin McDowell's Third Corps on the afternoon of August 30, 1862.  At one point, Jackson's men, running low on ammunition, threw rocks at their attackers.  It is well worth the time to hike up the slope where the Union force advanced to the Confederate lines along the unfinished railroad bed.  The sweeping view from the top conveys a feeling for the vastness of the Union attack.  Chinn Ridge (Tour Stop 10) was the site of a Federal fight to delay Gen. James Longstreet's counter-attack on the afternoon of August 30.  Nearly 30,000 Confederates had surged forward and overwhelmed the Union left flank.  A desperate stand by Union troops on Chinn Ridge helped to prevent complete annihilation of Pope's army.  The placement of markers and artillery do a commendable job of interpreting the fighting that occurred there.

Looking up the slope towards the site of the Confederate line at the Deep Cut.  Porter's men advanced across this ground on August 30.  The Groveton Monument, erected by Union veterans after the war, is visible at the top of the hill to the center-right.

The unfinished railroad bed at the Deep Cut.  Confederates from William E. Starke's Division repulsed the Federal attack from this position.  I can't help but wonder whether some of the rocks were intentionally placed there to evoke images of the famous "stone fight."

Marker on Chinn Ridge indicating the position of the 73rd Ohio Infantry of Col. Nathaniel McLean's Brigade, First Division, First Corps, Army of Virginia, which fought to stem the tide of Longstreet's advancing Confederates on August 30.

Vantage point of a gunner with the 5th Maine Battery on Chinn Ridge.  Longstreet's men advanced across the field in front of the 12-pounder Napoleon.  The fighting here bought Pope additional time to mount a defense at Henry Hill.

As Rufino and I left the battlefield, I pondered why Second Manassas lives in the shadows of the much smaller battle that occurred there in July 1861.  The Park Ranger at Brawner Farm told me that around one in three tourists go to the Henry Hill Visitor Center, compared to just one in ten who stop by the Interpretive Center for Second Manassas.  The 1861 engagement looms large as the first major land battle of the war.  The exalted Stonewall Jackson won his nom de guerre there.  And we've all heard about the death of poor widow Henry or the congressmen and civilians who rode out to watch the battle.  The country, so the story goes, lost its innocence on the fields of Manassas and braced for a long, violent war.  This is the stuff of myth and legend. 

Second Manassas, although a significant victory for Robert E. Lee, is sandwiched in between Lee's emergence at the Seven Days Battles and Antietam, the bloodiest single day in U.S. history.  The long-dominant Lost Cause school of interpretation had little use for Longstreet and his spectacular counter-attack, and the Northern victors of the war viewed Union commanders like Pope, McDowell, and Franz Sigel as less than heroic or else entirely forgettable.  Is it any wonder that the battle failed to inspire the popular imagination in the same way as First Bull Run?  Second Manassas, however, deserves more from us.  After all, the battle, which resulted in yet another crushing Union defeat, showcased the formidable fighting prowess of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and opened the way for the Confederate invasion of Maryland.  I hope that the 150th anniversary will focus more attention on this critical and fascinating battle.  And those looking for a perfect way to commemorate Second Manassas this year should consider heading to the battlefield and walking the very ground where the armies clashed.

For more information:

The National Park Service website for Manassas National Battlefield Park contains a wealth of information on visiting the battlefield of Second Manassas.

For more details on Second Manassas, check out the Civil War Trust's page on the battle.

The National Park Service is planning several days of Sesquicentennial-related activities from August 25-September 2, 2012.  More information can be found here. 

The City of Manassas and Historic Manassas, Inc. are also sponsoring 150th commemorative activities.  Check out the schedule here.

A Few Book Reviews

Publishing companies often contact Civil War bloggers to review their latest and greatest works on the nation's bloodiest conflict.  I enjoy seeing what's new in the world of Civil War publishing and welcome the opportunity to get the most recent releases.  And who am I to turn down a free book?  Of course, the books come with strings attached since I am supposed to write a review or at least spread the word.  Given how busy I am outside of my Civil War pursuits, I barely have enough time to read the books that I buy, let alone receive on a complimentary basis.  That being said, when I get a noteworthy book from a publisher, I like to follow through and write a review.  In today's post, I take a long overdue look at a couple of books that publishers have sent my way.

The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War by Margaret E. Wagner, Little, Brown and Company (2011): I'll admit it. I am a sucker for so-called coffee table books. As an avid bibliophile, I like to acquire, admire, and display attractive books. My collection naturally focuses on the Civil War. From the moment I received the The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War, I was hooked. The richly illustrated book, which marches through the war on an almost daily basis, draws from the extensive archives at the Library of Congress. More than a mere recitation of the war's chronology, the book offers a visual feast on each and every page. The author has chosen a striking array of photographs, engravings, maps, drawings, and other illustrations. Readers will find the usual suspects, but the book also contains a myriad of rare and previously unpublished images. The text, although necessarily concise, also benefits from a thoughtful use of quotations from primary source documents. 

E.B. Long's classic work, The Civil War Day by Day, presents a more comprehensive, in-depth chronology of the war than the Library of Congress book.  Wagner sometimes overlooks events, including aspects of the war in Northern Virginia during the second half of 1861 and the start of 1862.  Her book also skips entire days.  But the Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War more than compensates for these shortcomings with the quality of the writing and illustrations.  Long's massive book, although more detailed and better suited to research, is less captivating by comparison.  The Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War is the kind of book to browse through casually and enjoy.  Think of it as a printed companion to the Sesquicentennial, particularly for those with less knowledge on the history of the war.  All told, The Library of Congress Illustrated Timeline of the Civil War is a valuable, and handsome, addition to the world of Civil War reference books.  And it doesn't look bad on a coffee table either.

The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America by William G. Thomas, Yale University Press (2011):  This year I promised myself that I would read more about the economic and social history of the Civil War.  Being a bit of a train buff, I also wanted to dig a little deeper into the subject of railroads and the war.  The Iron Way was a perfect place to start.  William G. Thomas, a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, offers a sweeping and ground-breaking examination of railroads before, during, and after the Civil War.  He combines strong scholarship with a thoroughly readable style.  The book, incidentally, is paired with an excellent digital history project, Railroads and the Making of Modern America.

Thomas shows just how critical railroads were to regional identities in the antebellum period and dispels old myths about the South as an economic backwater. In fact, the region was building and expanding railroad networks at a rapid pace during the 1850s. Rail penetration continued to grow and in many instances approached the level in the Northern states. Thomas explains just how intimately connected slavery was to this spectacular development. Companies bought and rented slaves to help construct and maintain railroads. Ironically, the technological progress brought by the railroads also ensured the very survival and perpetuation of the peculiar institution. So much for the argument that modernization would lead to the demise of slavery. Meanwhile, the North's own views about free labor and the advance of American civilization were tied up with the expansion of the railroads to the West.

As the war descended on the country, railroads naturally played a pivotal role.  They transported troops and moved supplies.  But the railroads also served as avenues of destruction and violence.  Thomas explores the growth of irregular warfare along the rail corridors throughout the South as men like John Mosby and John Morgan targeted Union supply lines and the soldiers protecting them.  This fighting became increasingly brutal and contributed to the ruin of the very rail infrastructure that the South had built before the war.  Thomas's interpretation is a valuable addition to the current body of scholarship on guerrilla warfare as popularized in Donald Sutherland's A Savage Conflict.

Thomas also focuses on the evolution in strategic thinking about the railroads.  Both sides had to figure out how to assimilate the new technology and create what Thomas calls a "railroad generalship."  George B. McClellan, however unfairly, is singled out for his failure to grasp the importance of railroads during his 1862 Peninsula Campaign.  By contrast, Stonewall Jackson ranks among the military leaders who clearly understood the role that railroads could play in winning the war. 

Thomas reserves his highest praise for William T. Sherman, who mastered the art of railroad generalship.  The greater part of an entire chapter examines how Sherman incorporated the railroad into his campaign to take Atlanta and beyond.  As Thomas writes, "[t]he maneuvers were carefully planned reconfigurations of the southern landscape, aimed at crippling railroad networks and severing southern communities from one another."  (p. 157.)  The March to the Sea, moreover, "was another, even more elaborate maneuver to control the Confederacy's network of railroads."  (p. 158.)  The Union's successful application of railroad generalship resulted in the destruction of track, bridges, and other infrastructure throughout the South.  Ironically enough -- in a book filled with irony -- the Union military in Georgia and elsewhere helped to put the railroads back together again during and after the war.

Thomas shows convincingly that the railroads also played a key part in the African-American struggle for emancipation and civil rights.  Before the war even started, fugitive slaves like Frederick Douglas were riding the rails northward to freedom.  During the war, contrabands flocked to the Union lines around railroad centers.  Here the escaped slaves could find work on the rails or enlist in the Union Army.  In the post-war South, racists sought to undermine black advances and imposed segregation on the railroads.  Thomas tells the story of a brave African-American wash woman, Catherine Brown, who successfully challenged such segregation in court, but her story was the exception and not the rule.
 
The Iron Way amazingly covers a lot of ground in only 274 pages of text and endnotes. If you are looking for a purely military study on railroad strategy and tactics in the Civil War, or a history of the U.S. Military Railroads, Thomas's book is not the one for you.  However, for those readers seeking a comprehensive account of the social, economic, and military importance of railroads in the Civil War era, Thomas has put together a definitive work that will set a standard for years to come.

Little Mac, Whiskey, and French Royalty: A Play on Words

The other day I purchased an original copy of the New York Illustrated News from September 30, 1861.  I'll have more to say about the edition in a future post, but wanted to share something that I came across when reading through various articles, editorials, and advertisements in the paper.  The blurb brought a little smile to my face.   

In the fall of 1861, a few members of the French nobility-in-exile boarded a steamer for America.  Louis Philippe d'Orleans, the Comte de Paris; his brother Robert, the Duc du Chartres; and their uncle, Francois Ferdinand, the Prince de Joinville arrived in Washington after a stop in New York and toured the Union encampments around the nation's capital.  Gen. George B. McClellan soon offered them positions on his personal staff as aides-de-camp.  The Comte de Paris and Duc du Chartres gladly accepted and were appointed captains in the Regular Army.

Comte de Paris and Duc de Chartres in Union Army uniforms (courtesy of about.com, from Library of Congress)

Under the heading "Bourbon," the Illustrated News ran an item from the New York Times reporting that the Comte de Paris and Duc du Chartres had volunteered their services to the Union army.  The noblemen were from the House of Bourbon, which had ruled France on and off since the sixteenth century.  The paper, with a touch of cheekiness, added:

Some surprise has been expressed at General McClellan for thus allowing Bourbon spirit in the army.  His orders have been very strict against the use of whisky in general.  Sir! the Joinville Bourbon is not "old Bourbon!"

Perhaps the joke may elicit a groan or two from some readers, but I found the play on words amusing, particularly in light of Little Mac's disdain for drinking in the ranks.  This also gives me a good idea for a new whiskey brand.  I mean, after all, we have Burnside Bourbon!

Sources
For more information, see this post on the Civil Warriors blog.