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3. “Five Times Our Colors Fell”: Second Bull Run and Antietam
- The University of Alabama Press
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3 “Five Times Our Colors Fell” Second Bull Run and Antietam The Union’s manpower advantage virtually guaranteed that the Army of Northern Virginia would have no time to rest on its laurels. Three armies still confronted Lee’s forces. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, totaling more than 100,000 men; Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s small 10,000-man unit, which had just returned from a successful expedition along the coasts of North Carolina ; and Maj. Gen. John Pope’s Army of Virginia, 40,000-strong, all posed a serious threat to the Confederates in the Old Dominion.1 The Southern commander decided to move first against Pope’s Army of Virginia. He did this to maintain the strategic initiative, to prevent Lincoln from consolidating his three armies, and to counter a threat to the Confederate supply lines. This decision proved popular with the Rebel soldiers, who were incensed at Pope’s reported mistreatment of Southern civilians. In fact, a lot of people, in both armies, despised the Union commander. Pope “was a difficult man to like,” according to historian John S. Salmon.“If possible, Pope was even more full of himself than McClellan—pompous, impetuous, abrasive, loudmouthed , and a braggart. Given to windy proclamations, he allegedly datelined his pronouncements ‘headquarters in the saddle.’ Both Union and Confederate wags quickly joked that his headquarters were where his hindquarters ought to be, and he didn’t know one from the other.”2 Lee divided his army, sending Stonewall Jackson’s wing to damage the Federal supply line and draw the enemy into battle. Jackson accomplished both goals, in spades. After a bloody engagement at Cedar Mountain, Jackson’s troops pillaged, then burned, the major Union supply depot at Manassas Junction , before taking cover in an abandoned railroad cut near the old Bull Run battlefield.3 30 / Chapter 3 Pope’s obsession to “bag” Jackson resulted in a case of tunnel vision that blinded him to all else. While the Yankee general threw division after division against Jackson’s entrenched line on August 29, Lee and Longstreet fought their way through Thoroughfare Gap, taking a position on Pope’s exposed left flank. On the afternoon of August 30, Longstreet’s wing of Lee’s army crashed into Pope’s Army of Virginia, sending the bluecoats into headlong flight before the gray battle line. “Pope, facing disaster, patched together a makeshift defense, trying to get his army safely off the field.” The Federal defenders held long enough to allow the rest of Pope’s troops to escape, but the Union commander had been tried in battle and found wanting.4 In the first battle of the combined Florida brigade, the three units received extravagant praise from Roger Pryor, but they failed to earn the tributes. The Floridians took a few casualties from artillery fire, but otherwise they were not actively engaged. Apparently, Pryor and Brig. Gen. W. S. Featherston held their units in the safety of Groveton Woods throughout the fight. In his after-action report,Pryor enthused:“The Fifth and Eighth Florida regiments,though never under fire before, exhibited the cool and collected courage of veterans.” Seton Fleming of the Second Florida watched as the battle played out across the fields near Bull Run, later confiding to his mother: “Our brigade was not fought, but was held in reserve during the fight. Though several times we were under a heavy fire of grape and shell, a few of our men being killed and some wounded. I was not hurt.”5 Pryor’s men may have missed the fighting, but they engaged wholeheartedly in scavenging the battlefield the following morning. Fleming recounted, with obvious glee: “Several hours next morning, after the fight, were spent examining knapsacks that we had captured, and appropriating what we wished of their contents. I have a Yankee sword, canteen, and several other things; the paper, pen, ink, and portfolio that I use in writing this letter, were all taken in battle.”6 Gen. Lee sent Jackson after the fleeing Federals, but a vicious fight at Chantilly , during a pouring rain, ended the Confederate pursuit. Current estimates put total casualties for Lee’s and Pope’s armies at more than 22,000 men, but few were from the southernmost state.7 Fresh from the triumph at Second Manassas, Lee convinced Pres. Davis that the time was ripe to take the war into enemy territory.The rapidity of the Confederate commander’s new campaign forced Pres. Lincoln to...