General Lee's "Lost Order" # 191

[Bruce Vail]

I found McClellan's War to be very good and it gave me a new perspective on McClellan. Rafuse presents a convincing argument. I am also looking forward to the new book.

I have always contended that McClellan was not as bad a general as his critics claim nor as great as his defenders assert. His Peninsula Campaign was as close as the Union came to victory in the east until June 1864 and was actually the best chance either side had during the war to break the stalemate that characterized the war in the east. I also think McClellan did a better job in Maryland than most will admit. The army was in chaos and 3 weeks later he won a victory. But he was less aggressive than his political bosses wanted, and his open relationship with the Democratic party made him a liability to a Republican administration.

Yes, I tend to think that McClellan's worst errors were political, not military. If one is inclined to give McClellan the benefit of the doubt here and there, his record stacks up well compared to other senior Union commanders.

 

[WJC]

Well, since the website holds that McClellan was generally capable, I assume that means "he didn't" .

Thanks for your response.
No. You questioned my statement, "[McClellan] had ample opportunity to prove the naysayers wrong."
I referred you to Mr. Griffith, who, like virtually everyone discussing McClellan's record, agrees on some basic information: McClellan was Commander of the Military Division of the Potomac, and later, the Army and Department of the Potomac from July 26, 1861 to November 9, 1862.
He had command for roughly 470 days: 470 days of opportunity. 470 days to "prove the naysayers wrong."

 

[Bruce Vail]

I think I found the original source. It is indeed Battles & Leaders in an article written by D.H. Hill - here: https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/battles/vol2/559
https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/battles/vol2/569

"About 3: 30 P. M, the advance of Longstreet's command arrived and reported to me---one brigade under Colonel G. T. Anderson and one under General Drayton. They were attached to Ripley's left, and a forward movement was ordered. In half an hour or more I received a note from Ripley saying that he was progressing finely; so he was, to the rear of the mountain on the west Side. Before he returned the fighting was over, and his brigade did not fire a shot that day. | The Federal commander intrusted to General Burnside the management of the fight, but under his own eyes; Burnside ordered a general advance on both sides of the pike. The First Corps, under Hooker, was to attack on the north side of the National road, while the Ninth Corps, under Reno, was to move forward, as before, on the south side. Hooker's corps consisted of 3 divisions, 10 brigades, or 42 regiments, With 10 batteries of artillery and a battalion of cavalry. General Meade, a division commander, had under him the brigades of Seymour, Magilton, and Gallagher, containing 13 regiments with 4 batteries attached. General Hatch, division com- mander, had under him the brigades of Doubleday, Phelps, Patrick, and Gibbon---17 regiments and 4 batteries. General Ricketts, division com- mander, had under him the brigades of Duryea, Christian, and Hartsuff---12 regiments and 2 batteries. From the nature of the ground, none of the artillery of Hooker's corps could be used, except that which went directly up the pike with Gibbon's brigade and one battery (Cooper's) on the enemy's right."

It seems that Longstreet was paraphrasing Hill.

Thanks.

I have a printed copy of Hill's 1886 Century article on South Mountain that contains this language.

Also, Hill's official report on the Maryland campaign states that at South Mountain "...Ripley did not draw trigger; why, I do not know."

Neither of these documents is especially focused on Ripley's Brigade, or particularly vituperative about Ripley personally.

 

[WJC]

There is a chapter about this in Stotelmyer's forthcoming book.

However, indeed McClellan found post-Antietam he could barely subsist his army. Lincoln detailed the Assistant Secretary of War, Thomas Scott, to look into McClellan's claims that supplies were not reaching his army. He found McClellan's claims accurate, and that all the supplies issued to the Army of the Potomac had been issued to the depots of the Washington Defences rather than the army in the field. They never publicly apologised or recanted their accusations, but quietly unblocked the supplies which started to move mid-October (the first supplies started arriving at Hagerstown on 14th October). McClellan once resupplied launched the Loudoun Valley campaign at the end of October.

Interesting....
Did Scott report the results of his investigation to the Cabinet? Or to Lincoln? Or to the press?
How do we know them? Post-war memoirs?
Given the war and the political situation, how would Lincoln or Stanton publicly apologize? After all, they couldn't just bring the subject up at a televised press conference.
Supply SNAFUs are not uncommon in the military even today. I doubt that any recent administration- particularly a war-time administration- in a similar situation would publicly discuss them.

 

[Andrew]

Has anyone read George B. McClellan and Civil War History by Thomas Rowland? How does it compare to, say, Sears' and Rafuse's takes on McClellan?

 

[67th Tigers]

Has anyone read George B. McClellan and Civil War History by Thomas Rowland? How does it compare to, say, Sears' and Rafuse's takes on McClellan?

View attachment 141447

Sorry for the very delayed reply, I hadn't seen this.

Rowland was really taking aim at the idea that McClellan was particularly psychologically flawed. He demonstrated that McClellan's actions were generally quite sensible and that he was not paranoid, delusional etc.

He compares McClellan in this respect to Grant and Sherman, neither of whom come out well if treated in the same manner as McClellan has been.

 

[Saphroneth]

Did Scott report the results of his investigation to the Cabinet? Or to Lincoln? Or to the press?
How do we know them? Post-war memoirs?
Given the war and the political situation, how would Lincoln or Stanton publicly apologize? After all, they couldn't just bring the subject up at a televised press conference.
Supply SNAFUs are not uncommon in the military even today. I doubt that any recent administration- particularly a war-time administration- in a similar situation would publicly discuss them.

So to answer these questions:

1) Did Scott report the results of his investigation to the Cabinet? Or to Lincoln? Or to the press?

Lincoln, Halleck and Stanton.

The clamor over supplies caught Lincoln's attention, and he sent Col. Thomas A. Scott, former assistant secretary of war, on a fact-finding mission to evaluate McClellan's complaints firsthand at his headquarters near Harpers Ferry. "About the middle of October 1862," he recalled, "I had a conversation with Mr. Stanton, Secretary of War, and President Lincoln, in regard to the delay in the movement of General McClellan's army, and its reported condition of inefficiency to effect a movement without proper and greatly needed supplies." McClellan told Scott the matter did not require discussion—he would have one of his staff "show me the requisitions . . . for supplies, and also a statement of the amount received, and that I could draw my own inferences."

Scott verified a shortage of "shoes, clothing, and other necessaries for the men." Satisfied, Scott returned to Washington and reported his findings to Lincoln, Halleck, and Stanton:

Both Mr. Stanton and General Halleck then repeated their assurances that all General McClellan's requisitions had been met; and it was suggested that, as the troops in the forts around Washington constituted a part of the Army of the Potomac, the supplies that were intended for General McClellan's army in the field, instead of having been sent to him at Harper's Ferry, had by some means or other [emphasis added] been diverted for use of the troops in the fortifications, and thus had failed to reach him. This proved to be the explanation of the trouble.

Stotelmyer, Steven R.. Too Useful to Sacrifice: Reconsidering George B. McClellan's Generalship in the Maryland Campaign from South Mountain to Antietam (pp. 250-251). Savas Beatie. Kindle Edition.


2) How do we know them?

A letter of Scott's in 1880, though Stotlemyer identified several cases of corroborating evidence. Indeed, the evidence for there being a supply crisis is pretty overwhelming - my favourite is

18th October: McClellan complains about how he's not getting the clothes he asked for
18th October: Halleck (General in Chief) asks Meigs (the quartermaster general) about this
18th-25th October: special wagon trains ship about 50,000 pairs of boots and shoes to the Army of the Potomac
25th October: Meigs reports back "Yeah, there's no problem, the Army of the Potomac has loads of shoes, on the 20th and 21st they got tens of thousands of shoes"

So the proof there was no crisis is that Meigs put in huge effort to solve the problem after being pressed and then used the fact the problem had been solved as evidence it didn't exist in the first place.


3) How would Lincoln or Stanton publicly apologize?

Presumably by the same means that McClellan was accused, including after Scott's report. The New York Tribune's front banner headline on October 24 (days after Scott reported) was No Foundation for the Complaint!

I would argue that there were certainly means to publicly apologize, but even if you're not doing that then the least you can do is to not continue making the accusations...


Of course, not firing McClellan would have gone a long way, given that one of the reasons Lincoln gave for the firing was the delay - the same delay which Scott's report indicated was partly due to the supply problems.


4) Supply SNAFUs are common and not publicly discussed

Yes, but it's hardly honest to publicly say there isn't one and that means that the general who hasn't been advancing must have no reason for not advancing, when in fact his reason is... the supply SNAFU. Simply not publicly discussing it doesn't mean it wasn't true.

 

[Hannover]

McClellan had three important tasks at Antietam.
1. Restore the AotP after the battering it took at Second Manassas.
2. Prevent Lee's Army from moving further north into Union territory in particular Pennsylvania.
3. To damage as far as possible the AoNV's offensive capacity
He succeeded with all three tasks. 1 and 2 are obvious, and as for 3....
AoNV lost the following: 3 of 9 Division Commanders (33.3%); 19 of 39 Brigade Commanders (48.7%) and 86 of 173 Regimental Commanders (49.7%). This left a staggering 48.9% of line commanders bearing a new higher level of responsibility after Antietam, with most having little training or no experience of what would be expected in these new roles. This effectively severed the head of the army's command and control structure from which it found it difficult to recover.
22 brigades did not have a single regiment headed by a full colonel and 6 of these brigades had nearly all of their regiments commanded by captains, they were the Stonewall brigade and the brigades of J.R. Jones, Trimble, Toombs, Ripley and Semmes. Of 173 regiments only 22 (12.7%) were now led by colonels. All of this left only 27 general officers to command all of the remaining infantry, cavalry and artillery. In terms of numbers alone, of 39 infantry brigades, 20 had less than 400 men each.
So if that is not success, I don't know what else he was supposed to do.
Cautious? Well he certainly could not be gung-ho and hurl his army that had been badly defeated weeks earlier. He quite honestly saved the Union by his actions. And his reward was basically to be vilified by many for what could only be described as 'political reasons'.
Lincoln and his quote of McClellan having an attack of the 'slows' is a patent lie and was done in an attempt to damage McClellan politically. You may not like McClellan's personality, you may think he was overcautious but give credit where credit is due, without him you may all be using Confederate currency today!

 

[Saphroneth]

Lincoln and his quote of McClellan having an attack of the 'slows' is a patent lie and was done in an attempt to damage McClellan politically.

As I've seen it said, Lincoln had the fasts!


But what's actually interesting to me is to compare the newspaper expectations in 1862 and 1864. In 1862, the expectations placed on the campaigning was that it would be one big battle with few casualties and then victory, and the newspapers decried any pause or hesitation; in 1864, it was much better understood and declared as such that it would take much time and endurance to win the war. The expectations were lower and so there was less disappointment when the war wasn't won in a week.


Considering Antietam in context, then what you have is -

- McClellan's army may or may not be stronger than Pope's army from Second Bull Run. (It's been reinforced, but took lots of casualties and left corps behind; a lot of the reinforcements are very green troops.)
- Lee's army is stronger than his army from Second Bull Run. (Lee has gained a reinforcement equal to half the army he had at Second Bull Run, took lighter casualties, and hasn't detached anything.)
- At Second Bull Run, the Union launched attacks until it ran out of fresh troops, and then Lee launched a counterattack which broke the Union army because there were no reserves.
- At Antietam, the Union launched attacks until it nearly ran out of fresh troops... and McClellan was considering throwing in the last fresh troops, but ultimately decided against it because the tactical benefit was not worth the strategic risk.

 

[67th Tigers]

After Antietam, McClellan's intention was to cut Lee off. The focus of his operations was on a movement to Winchester. He intended to defend the line of the Potomac with Porter's wing of the 5th and 6th Corps, and march to Harper's Ferry with Burnside's wing (1st and 9th) and Sumner's wing (2nd and 12th), probably fortify HF with one of those, and move his remaining three corps to Winchester. He'd hopefully be reinforced with Heintzelman's wing (3rd and 11th Corps) there.

Whilst he started the movement, Halleck nixed it. During Halleck's entire tenure he was obsessed with keeping the Army of the Potomac between Lee and Washington. Thus any large turning movement was forbidden. I've long thought Halleck was the major factor hobbling the AoP. To win the war in the east, the AoP needed to be freed of Halleck. Even in 1864, Halleck outmanoeuvered Grant and stripped his army of two infantry corps (6th and 19th) and half of his cavalry to defend Washington, resulting in Grant being paralysed without enough forces to make any serious attacks, but wasting forces unnecessary for a strict defence.

 

[Hannover]

I agree 67th Tigers, you only have to read Halleck's Wikipedia entry to realise the jury is still out on Halleck.
Contradictions exist throughout the entry:

'a noted expert in military studies, he was known by a nickname that became derogatory: "Old Brains"'.

'the siege of Corinth in the spring of 1862, a Union victory which he conducted with unnecessary caution'.
His actions, I think it was the only time he had field command, basically allowed the Confederates to escape to fight another day!

'a cautious general who believed strongly in thorough preparations for battle' but does not get the flak that McClellan gets, yet was one of the chief critics of McClellan resorting to even spreading what were obviously lies about him.

'As general-in-chief he refused to give orders to his subordinate commanders, instead offering advice, but leaving the final decisions up to the generals in the field'. This is again somewhat economical with the truth to say the least! If anyone disagreed with his 'advice' I think Halleck had the reputation of 'making life difficult' for whoever.

Halleck did graduate third in the West Point class of 1839.
Top graduate was Isaac Stevens, extremely capable MG killed at Chantilly
2nd was Robert Butler who did not serve in the civil war, died in 1843
4th was Jeremy Gilmer Confederate for Atlanta's defences
5th was Henry L. Smith who I think worked on defences in Louisiana

So Halleck was in good company in his graduation but was the only one to rise to high command, on account of his political manoeuvring or affiliations?

I think both Halleck and Lincoln were more than ready to 'interfere' with command decisions on account of both their military positions, Halleck believing that he and only he had the intellect to make the 'correct' decision, Lincoln thinking as being Commander-in-Chief. Plus the political considerations, in that it was in Lincoln's own interest to get negative press about McClellan on account of him being in line for becoming the Democratic candidate in the forthcoming 1864 election.

 

[Saphroneth]

'As general-in-chief he refused to give orders to his subordinate commanders, instead offering advice, but leaving the final decisions up to the generals in the field'. This is again somewhat economical with the truth to say the least! If anyone disagreed with his 'advice' I think Halleck had the reputation of 'making life difficult' for whoever.

There's actually a fascinating example not long after Antietam, which is the reason why McClellan doesn't go on the offensive for a month - which is that Halleck relays Lincoln's instruction to go on the offensive, but specifies that McClellan must send in his plan for approval. Halleck is explicit that the President prefers but does not order that McClellan go east of the Blue Ridge.

McClellan submits a plan to go west of the Blue Ridge.


Crickets for weeks except for Halleck reiterating his previous instructions.


McClellan submits a plan to go east of the Blue Ridge.


Approved within the day.



So... McClellan wasn't ordered to go east of the Blue Ridge, he was just ordered to send his plans for approval and Halleck ignored any that didn't meet with what he (or Lincoln) wanted.

Halleck is at pains to specify that he hasn't ordered this - but he clearly wouldn't accept the alternative.

I actually suspect that this could be because he didn't want the blame if his preferred plan didn't work. If McClellan clearly "picked it himself" then - well, obviously you can't blame Halleck, right?

Right?

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

No mystery. The copy of the Lost Order was not encoded.

Correct.

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

Do you mean to snarkily imply that McClellan was slow, and if so how do you think a better general would have reacted? When?

As we've seen from 67th's cronology, McClellan "reacted" before he actually got the order - to be any quicker to react to the information would have required a time machine.


For some, I think, McClellan is the only reason for some that the war didn't end in 1862, which is a very strange thing to think about someone who was repeatedly denied the resources he had been promised and who nevertheless managed to get his army into a situation in mid-1862 it later took the entire bloody Overland Campaign to achieve again. (I speak of the situation of the Army of the Potomac, on the James, supplied by sea and able to move on Petersburg.)

It has been reviewed ad nauseum on this site about McClellan's slowness. The majority opinion is that he was slow as molasses.

 

[Saphroneth]

It has been reviewed ad nauseum on this site about McClellan's slowness. The majority opinion is that he was slow as molasses.

I was talking very specifically about McClellan's response to Special Order 191 in the post you quote. In what way could McClellan have reacted to SO 191 which would not have been "slow as molasses"?

 

[13 IL Cav & 64 GA Inf]

I was talking very specifically about McClellan's response to Special Order 191 in the post you quote. In what way could McClellan have reacted to SO 191 which would not have been "slow as molasses"?

If I, or anyone else, would create 3 or 4 hypothetical ways for McClellan to act, it would certainly be easy to poke tactical or logistical arrows in the alternatives. After all, one can defeat a hypothesis with a hypothesis, to no end.

 

[Saphroneth]

If I, or anyone else, would create 3 or 4 hypothetical ways for McClellan to act, it would certainly be easy to poke tactical or logistical arrows in the alternatives. After all, one can defeat a hypothesis with a hypothesis, to no end.

My point is rather that to blame McClellan for not being sufficiently swift in responding to Special Order 191 is to expect literal impossibilities, because his army was in motion hours before SO 191 was found. It confirmed things he'd already suspected, which was extremely useful, but McClellan's leading corps was already moving west and it was taking up the road out of Frederick.

 

[wausaubob]

I don't know what General McClellan planned, but I think he would have been amiss not to carefully confirm the information in the possibly planted order with on the ground observation.

 

[on again]

A young lieutenant in the 3rd N.C. didn't like Hill much either.

Lt. Edward Hall Armstrong, just 22 years old, wrote to his father shortly after Antietam to inform the folks back home that he had been arrested and faced a court martial.

Turns out that Gen. Hill had ordered that those soldiers in his division without proper shoes should be supplied with rawhide moccasains, which were then available because a herd of cattle had just been slaughtered for a beef ration. Observing the next day that a number of soldiers were still barefoot, he ordered the arrest of officers who had failed to carry out his orders.

Young Ned Armstrong was arrested, but the older officers in the regiment protested. Seems that the cowhides had been used up before all the soldiers were properly shod. Armstrong had followed orders, but the supply of cowhide was simply insufficient.

Hill relented, but not before Armstrong joked to his father that the older man might not receive many more letters from the son "because Gen. Hill may have me shot."

Hill, in addition to whatever other faults he may have had, was something of a martinet.

Captain Armstrong died of wounds 1864 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19098436/edward-hall-armstrong
The not proven General concenus is that Lost Order 191 was accidently lost by H.K Douglas a cigar smoker on Jackson staff

Who Lost The “Lost Order”? - Emerging Civil War

ECW welcomes back guest author Lloyd W. Klein General Robert E. Lee issued Special Order #191 on September 9, 1862. The order directed his corps commanders’ movements for the start of the Maryland Campaign. Soldiers of the Union army found a copy of the order on September 13, and it has...

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VMI Archives Photographs Collection

Staff officers, Stonewall Jackson, during Civil War. Starting at the top left and moving clockwise: Wells J. Hawks, Robert L. Dabney, William Allan, Sandie Pendleton, Joseph G. Morrison, D. B. Bridgford (sometimes spelled Bridgeford), H. Kyd Douglas, James Power Smith, Hunter McGuire, and...

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