Civil war scholar james morgan discusses the battle of balls bluff that occurred in virginia. Five during the first year of the war, he argues this union was loss was due to misinformation and miscommunication among the officers. This event was part of pamplin historical parks big battles, small battles, big results symposium. Are forced speaker today is james morgan. Long civil war enthusiast and current president of the new fort sumter civil war roundtable in charlston and recently joined the border of the fort sumter historical trust. Jim was also a cofounder and chairman of the friends of falls isff, his tactical study widely considered to be the definitive work on that subject. Lets welcome james morgan. [applause] good morning. Everybody hear me ok . Im going to be moving around. We are good on the sound . Ok. Topic is smallur battles and large results. Balls bluff meets that criteria. A very small battle. 1700 men on each side. The numbers were almost dead even. Makes it amusing to read the officers reports because on both sides they insist they were outnumbered by the other side. The numbers were dead even. Not even the total number, every point of contact during the day as those numbers are increasing up to the ultimate 1700 or so. The numbers are close. That is just kind of fun to read the after action reports. Small battle. General charles stone, the Union Division commander after the the first to one of historian chroniclers of the war. He said balls bluff was like a morning skirmish. That is pretty much what it was. There were battles that signed her to day. In 1861. Uff was fought im going to emphasize that several time. Youve got to understand the early war context. I will get into that in several ways. Before we do anything else, go over your maps. I do not have a powerpoint presentation. I like paper maps. Just tot one, this is get you oriented. How many of you have been to balls bluff . Nevermind. Youve got it. [laughter] to see that. Surprised. This is just an area matt. You can see washington, d. C. , leesburg, balls bluff is right there. This is prefirst manassas. Thats not important for us. This is just orientation. You can see maryland and virginia, the dividing line, and West Virginia in the corner. Is loud andap county. It is easy to recognize because it is shaped like a big fat l. You can see what is important is it brings it in a little bit closer. Weve got the road intersection. They runs east and west, alexandria to winchester turnpike. These are modern roads. Alexandria to winchester, important because it went into the shenandoah valley. That is important right in downtown leesburg by the 15 called is about the old carolina road. From rock chester all the way down to raleigh, north carolina. At the time that was the interstate. That is a major thoroughfare. It was an invasion route. Road. Ely significant that intersection mattered. You also have, as you can see, the locations of the forts that had been built to defend the approaches, which is still there. It is owned by a company that has its headquarters in leesburg. Toy are a publicly committed preserving fort evans. I like to give them props for that. It shows businesses and the Preservation Community do not have to be at loggerheads with each other. Beauregard, that no longer exist. There is a subdivision there. And then those two are on high ground. Anyone coming from the east would have gone between a very nice artillery crossfire. Caught right in the middle. Those are very well situated. You have fort johnston, which is about half there. Its on private property. People dont like you climbing around it. Its pretty much gone. Youve got that. Roads, about 15, 62 miles north of leesburg through gettysburg. Its the same road. All right. The third map, this is the one that really is the best map of the battlefield on the day of the battle. You will find all kinds of maps that purport to be of the battlefield of balls bluff. Some of them in newspapers not too long after the battle. Those are second hand drawn by journalists. Somebody said i was there. This is what it looked like. The shape of the field is all over the place. It is round, diamond, rectangular, all signs of shades. The size changes. Acres to 20m two acres. This is the map of the battlefield on the day of the battle. This was drawn by captain William Francis bartlett. He was on the field from before dawn until after dark. He was not under fire until midafternoon. He had plenty of opportunity to see the field. He drew this map three days after the battle. He included it in a letter to his mother. This map is accurate. He does not include any dimensions. This is what the field looked like. We always like to use this. Other maps, in newspapers, or they appear in memoirs or various sources. Theres your maps. We will refer to those. All right. Early in the war. You have to understand how early this battle was. Its october of 1861. Write in the middle of the organizational year, the first year of the war. Thenapril in sumter and shiloh and the battles around richmond, theres not a lot going on. You all understand this. Theres the u. S. Army. Youve got both sides trying to create these massive armies that are going to meet later in the war. They dont exist. Does nottical tail exist. It has to be created. That is what you are starting to do. Youve got in the American Experience prior to the war, the largest army we had ever put into the field was Winfield Scott in mexico. Vary a little bit, about 12,000 men. 12,000 men is one division at the beginning of the civil war. In 1860, youve got nothing. The u. S. Army is only 16,000 men. Country. All over the the upper command structure consists of four generals. What is about to be created, these huge armies, we have no experience with that. No idea. Where do you start . You are a captain out west somewhere. You need a few horses for your company. You go to a rancher. You buy them and do a little paperwork. You are good to go. Years later, 1861, you are now charged somewhere, i need 10,000 horses now. 10,000 more next month and after that. Where do you start . Well, this is what happens the first year of the war. They are starting they building the Procurement Offices to create the sinews of war. Youve got to have a Procurement Office to disburse money. Congress has to authorize that money. These people have to go out and contract, lets talk about horses. These people who are your disbursing officers go out and contract to gather these horses. Theyve got to bring them somewhere. A the time they get them to certain location, you have to have facilities. You have to have barnes built and staples. You have to have a water source. For and to provide grain. You have to create a veterinary service. Tens of thousands of horses. All of this has to start from scratch. That is why in the first year of the war, theres not a lot going on. Youve got first manassas and it is small by later standards. That is part of the reason why balls bluff stood out. It is right in the middle of this organizational year. Fort sumter three months later. First manassas is the big battle. Then everybody stops. What just happened . Wed better catch our breath. From that point until the spring of 1862, not much. Balls bluff is in the middle of that. And also balls bluff is fought north of the national capital. Geographically north of washington. This battle is north of the capital. Throws people off. Youve got a couple of other things. Theres a United States senator who was killed. I will get into senator baker and mader. That is the basic idea. All of these things on happening. The army is being created. Things,ouple of other uniforms, Everybody Knows about first manassas, yanks in gray, the same at balls bluff. There are problems with that. The names of the armies, the original name of the union army was the army of northeastern virginia. That changes to the army of the potomac. To Confederate Army changes the army of northern virginia. They swap names basically. Guard the army of the potomac. Youve got that. Its very early in the war. Other things. ,he level of command experience youve got four generals. And the westit point grants go south. You still have to find somebody with highlevel command experience. Youve got Winfield Scott, but he is past his prime. Youve got all these guys who are suddenly generals who were lieutenants the last time. Fightingu count indians, which is a different dynamic. After the war someone said at the beginning of the war i knew everything there was about commanding 50 troops. That is pretty much the level of command experience you had. This is onthejob training. Youve got to keep that in mind. Everything is bubbling up like that. Weve gone over the maps. Itself. Luff what is going on . 1861. T first manassas the confederates win. They are every bit as beat up as the federals are. You hear sometimes people will say why did the confederates sweep into d. C. . They were in no shape to do that. They fall back. They fall back to bull run itself which flows into the potomac. They have a water line of defense. The federals are using the potomac which becomes a moat to protect washington, even though the federals on the south side around d. C. Youve got these water lines of defense about 30 miles apart. People are pretty much leaving each other alone. The odd cavalry patrol bumps into somebody. The confederates are maintaining outposts. They are keeping and i on it. They are mostly in the washington, d. C. Area. On the high ground. Where the pentagon is. They are looking down. You have seen the unfinished dome of the capital. The confederates can see that. They are keeping an eye on what the yanks are going to do. Theres one other outpost, that is leesburg. That is because of the road intersection on your map. Northsouth the road. With thene that road fact of the Potomac River is right there. , in that 25river mile stretch between virginia and maryland, is easy to cross. There are a lot of places to cross. There had been bridges, three bridges. They were burned. Troops across. In that 25 miles, there are 19 usable for its. Militarily usable. The water is shallow. Sinkagons arent going to when you get them down there. And the banks of the rivers are laidback so you can get down. If you have 19 of them, you can cross troops at several places and they will be within supporting distance of each other. Combine that, e crossing the river, with that highway, at that time, both sides are watching the other side. You could argue at that point after manassas, into the fall of 61, Loudoun County was the single most important piece of ground in north america. Because that road gave each side access to the flanks of the other army. Whoever controls those River Crossings, you could go north and you are in the flank of the opposing army. Balls bluff mattered. In 1861. That is why they had troops there. Who is there . The confederates had a small brigade, 3000 men. Maybe a few less. The numbers were always bad about how many troops were there. General stone thought they had about 4000. If you do the math, if you look at the records, its about 3000. The federals had 7000. Augmented in early october by a large brigade. Another 5000 men. On the confederate side, you had regimens, infantry regiment. You had the eighth virginia which was a local Loudoun County unit. That is the home team. Those guys knew that area. They had some artillery. The First Company was there. They were authorized for six guns. Early october they get a fifth gun, an iron rifle gun. I dont know what that was. Five pieces of artillery. Which the confederates did not use at balls bluff. They had some calvary. About 300 men divided into five companies. All of which became the fourth or sixth virginia cavalry. Man brigade. 0 at the time he was a colonel. West point, class of 1848. Shanks. Icknamed shanks is there. He was a tough soldier. He had been involved in handtohand combat in indian combat. You look at photos of him, it looks like hes insane. Hes got the general sherman eyes. Hes got these eyes you do not want to mess with. Also drank a lot. He got into trouble for it. He was accused of being drunk at balls bluff. I will say, if he was, it did not hurt. He did what he needed to do. You have to think of grant in that regard. His troops are drinking. When he was working a military campaign. That is the confederate force. The union force on the maryland brigades, 7000 men. The troops we need to be concerned about are mostly the york, neither new of which was a brigade. We were independent regimens. You often see them listed as being a part of one brigade. They were not. Menu had three actual brigades. , i that contained units think the first minnesota, the 20th massachusetts, you had the seventh michigan. Units, the 34th, they were at edwards ferry, down the road. Then you also had some artillery and they had brought some guns to cross over. Only one of them got there. You had a couple of mountain houses which belong to the units. State militia they had one company dedicated to artillery. They eventually broke off and become a separate battery. No cavalry to speak of. They had it on the union side. Got these forces, spending the summer following first manassas, watching each other. Getting along pretty well. The men on both sides, very quickly came to make localized truces. Shot forould not get nothing. Its one thing to dine a battle. Its another thing find yourself dead on picket duty. They did not want to do that. Dont shoot at me, i wont shoot at you. Ok. Works for me. They had these truces. They got along nicely. They did all the usual fraternization. Ive got newspapers, ive got tobacco, we will switch. All the stuff. It was a pleasant time actually. The civilians on both sides treated so soldiers well. One Union Officer later on wrote about his time during that summer and fall around leesburg and montgomery county. He described it as a very civil war. [laughter] the fighting, at the end of this very civil war, everything starts to change in october. Stone getse, general a reinforcement of 5000 men. Its called the california brigade. Consisting of four regimens. Men were from pennsylvania. The fact they were called californians was what colonel edward baker, who is also a u. S. Senator, the recruitment effort for this he called a pious fraud. The idea was shortly after fort sumter, three weeks, baker, who was a u. S. Senator from the new state of oregon had been associated with california for much of the 1850s. He was a wellknown public figure. He was a senator from oregon. Hes back doing his senate thing. He ended bunch of other people want to california regimen. They want to get west coast states tied to the union. There were succession movements. No guarantee those states were going to stick. The concern was not they would join the southern confederacy but that they would break away and form a Pacific Coast republic. It was important they stay with the union. The idea was weve got to get california troops. Was bigger and more important. Then as it is now. That will tie the west coast to the union and all of that will be good for the union. How are we going to get california troops . California is the far side of the moon. No railroads. To do . E you going it would take months to ride horses. Or you get on a ship. You are looking at at least five months before you can get california troops. The war will be over by then. What is the point . You dont worry about that. Said and some other folks lets recruit the california regimen. We will pretend. We are looking for guys who lived in california. Youve been to disneyland or something. You had some california connection. We are going to organize this. They really didnt care. They just wanted the name. Starts getting organized in new york. Recruiterdiscover the says i know philadelphia better than new york. Im going to move to philadelphia. He does. Really good to be a recruiter. He wants 1000 men. He gets 5000. Suddenly they dont have a regimen. They have a full brigade. There were some technicalities and glitches. I have not seen a concise explanation. What was going to be the fourth california never got organized. They had these men and they divvied them up. 15 companies each. 1500 men. The second and fifth were standard sized. 5000 men. They show up in general stones area. They bumped his numbers up to about 5000. Excuse me, 700012,000. You are the confederate commander. Youve been looking at 7000 yankees. Then theres 12,000. You are going to notice that. He begins to wonder, what is going on. A few days later another 12,000 men across the river at chain bridge near d. C. Into virginia and get on the georgetown pike and work their way up to langley and establish a camp on top of ciahighest hill where the headquarters are today, for the same reason. High ground. Visibility. All that. Youve got 12,000 union trips across the river, 12,000 in langley. Its connected by a good road. Wellmaintained. About halfway to leesburg and it intersects with route seven basically. That is a good road all the way. Where are the confederates . In fairfax andwn manassas. They are 30 miles away, not connected by good roads. All of a sudden, you are thinking, wait a minute. A week ago i had 7000. Now theres 12,000 in striking distance. He begins to worry. Hes concerned about getting gobbled up. Himthen upriver from theres a skirmish involving up all kindso pops of places. In Harpers Ferry the confederates had been gathering some foodstuff and supplies. They had a wagon train basically. He crosses over. Theres some fighting about that. It doesnt really amount to a lot. It gets shanks evans attention. Hes thinking ive got yankees, all these guys across and down river. A threes imagining prong development. That is what he thought was going to happen. A lot of what you read throughout the 20th century says thats what it was, pauls bluff was the result of a threepronged attempt to envelop leesburg. You even see maps and some of the sources with three black arrows and leesburg coming across. Its not. As you will see. Ok. Hanks evans he sees all this. He knows hes only got 3000 men. Hes not going to get help from the army. Basically he gets spooked because of this episode. He leaves. He patches his brigade up and head south. He goes a few miles to goose creek where the road crosses. What is odd about that, he does not get permission from anybody. He does it on his own. Message to general beauregard and says this is what im doing. Beauregard is not happy. By abandoning leesburg, he has crossing,r the river control of the river, the invasion route, he has given that to the union forces. If they had recognized what they intothey could have walked leesburg without firing a shot. So he leaves. He sends a message to general beauregard. E sends a message back politeery flowery, language. The general wishes to know why you have taken this decision as you have neglected to inform him. Read between the lines. Ok. Are you out of your freaking mind . Do you have any idea what youve done . Andets his wrists slapped he turns around and takes his men back to leesburg. Days. Akes two and a half move his men back up. The yanks havee, realized they are gone. We think. County was very much a divided county. About a third of the voting population. A third voted to stay in the union. The reason is in Loudoun County on the river, its a border county, the northwestern kind of byas divided some foothills. Mainly by culture. Many of the settlers in hadhwestern Loudoun County come down from pennsylvania. They are the descendents of pennsylvania dutch. Germans. They come down. Their families are there. North,connections to the the potomac is not hard to cross. It is part of the highway. Were a lot of prounion folks there. Some of them cross the river. This is the message general stone gets. What is he going to do . Hes not going to jump into this and send his men across the river on the word of a couple of civilians. Sends a message to general mcclellan. Everybody makes fun of mcclellan for being overly cautious. In this instance, he was right to be cautious. He suspected a trap. What evans did did not make military sense. Why would they give us this property . Mcclellan, rather than order general stone to cross the river , remember, a River Crossing is tricky anyway. Are talking about rookie troops early in the war. They dont have experience. We are not talking about marines or people who know how to cross water. They dont really know what they are doing. So mcclellan does not call in general stone. He calls on a division at langley. These are the guys who will become the pennsylvania reserve. You are 25 miles from leesburg. Take your division to janesville right on the Loudoun County line. And then you are to probe into leesburg. Are they on or not . What is going on. So he takes his division when theres no confederates and he starts moving them to janesville. Again, early in the war. Nothing like march discipline. Them two full days to go from 12 miles and then to start probing into leesburg. That, ande they do they get themselves organized, the confederates are back. Its very confusing. Mcclellan goes and meets with mccall. What is happening. Give me a briefing. He basically does not know what is happening. They are there. They are back. We have these reports they were gone. What do you want to do . Mcclellan does not like the smell of the thing. He says nevermind. Go back to langley. This is the evening of the 19th of october. Stay here tonight. First thing in the morning go back to your camp. One of the things ive been doing is making some roadmaps. Im not done. Can i have another 24 hours. He says thats fine. Only 24 hours. The next morning turn around and go back. The next morning is going to be the 21st of october. 21st, morning of the mccalls people turn around and leave. Because they know nothing about what is going on at pauls bluff. This is the 20th of october, he is making his roadmaps general mcclellan sends general stone, watch for him. Stone, i wouldal have interpreted that as mccall is coming. Watch for him. He continues this message. Perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them. Move the confederates out. Because they thought the confederates had left once anyway. Now they are back. , watch for him. If hes coming, and stone is making a demonstration on his etde, maybe that will g evans spooked again. The 20th,oon on general stone is doing things to make it look like hes about to cross the river. He puts boats in the river around edwards ferry. He leaves troops as if to get onto them, very visibly. He moves his artillery and fires a number of round on the virginia side to spook out any confederates. He makes it look like hes coming. It is all a feint. Confederates have not responded. The reason is because shanks evans recognizes this as a feint. He strained. He understands. Not a lot he could have done about it. He just watches. Goingsnt know mccall is to turn around and leave the next morning. 20, nothing is happening except troops have moved around. Stone calls all of his people back. His demonstration is over. Findhen stone says lets out what has been going on. Is there any result of all of this. He gets in touch with 15th massachusetts. A big island. About a quarter of a mile wide. A lot of these big islands. They were farms. One side or the other was going to be on them to get food from farms. Message. Ds a charles devens. He goes on after the war. Hes a division commander. He does not do well. He goes on to become the attorney general under president rutherford b hayes. Ratherfraud as hes often called. Give me the recon. Ive got a few guys. Pauls bluff is a terrible place to launch a major attack. It is 100 feet high. It goes down into the ravines. Its a great place for recon. S is to what deven organize. He gets one of his captains and he says take a few men over. He had done this before. He says take a few men over, go to balls bluff and take a look at what is going on on this night. He gets about 20 volunteers. They cross the river. Dark, theyis getting work their way up the bluff. They do not scale the bluff. You will read a number of the union accounts of this. We scaled the bluff. Makes it sound like normandy. It is not normandy. There a path. Where it is way up not 100 feet high. Its about 30 feet. It is a steep path. And it had been raining. Everything is muddy and slippery. They do not scale the bluff. The opposite is at the end of the day after the confederates route the federals, reports about driving the yankees over the bluff. You have this image of these guys doing swan dives into the river. They did not do that. The route took place down at the not 100 end where it is feet high. You have to watch those reports. This recon patrol, 20 guys, they go over and they get over onto the virginia side. Which is actually an impressive thing to do. It had been raining. Almost every day. ,ou look at the daily reports they almost all and was something like, still raining. River up another six inches. More rain. This kind of stuff. Almost every day it is raining. They get over there. They do this in a couple of skiffs. Its dark, they dont know, they are crossing the virginia channel of the river. Which means the current is faster. Its dark. But they get across. To do thisorders are recon. Philbrick takes his men. If you look on the third map, they go through the opening, through the woods, and then off the map into an area that is now the subdivision. Moon. S almost a full there had been a full moon a couple of nights before. Theres a lot of shadows. Troops. Enced this patrol gets into where the subdivisions and they look in a distance and they see confederate camp. A bunch of tents. Lets tell general stone. They dont check it out. Inexperienced kicks in. Is the tops of tents. It is a row of trees. Of the trees, branches like this, so you get that same appearance in the distance. They go check it out. Report, therend is a confederate camp over there. But we did not see any guards. We did not see any campfires. We did not hear any horses. None of the things you would expect. Somebody playing the fiddle. They did not hear that. Stone, presented with this faulty information, says if true, weve got a situation in which theres an enemy camp that unguarded, or it is abandoned which means all this movement is actually having an effect. Maybe they are gone. Weve got to check it out. Right there in the middle of the night general stone turns to the messenger, back and say i want him to send half of his regimen over the river right now. Morning, go out and raid the camp. Gets the information. He has to go. Going to be his first combat operation. Its going to be in the dark. In an unknown area. All wet and muddy. He does. And startsm together to cross his 300 men. Remember what i set about the river and the current. They push out from harrisons island in a bow. One guy brings the boat back. It is a slow shuttle bus service. It takes all night. Up i 100 menowed from the 20th massachusetts who go over to watch their back door. The 15th massachusetts is going to be a Raiding Party. The other guys are going to stay behind and watch the back door. Guys are going to go raid the camp and come back. That is what is supposed to happen. Very nice idea. , whicht across the river is impressive considering the darkness and the speed of the current and all that. It is light enough to see. The Raiding Party goes out to where the recon patrol was. They discover a mistake. Oops. Now what do we do . You get all sorts of speculation. Devens could have said lets go home. Turn around and go back. Had he done that, no battle. He says, we are here. [laughter] nobody knows we are here. I can see leesburg. Kind of quiet. He deploys his men in a tree line, which today is where the culdesac is, where the entrance to the park is. Line, is pretty much the same today as it was in 1861. That is where he places his men. He says you guys wait. Send a messenger back to tell general stone the information. Its not what we thought. There is no camp, but we are here. Send me some orders. , 23 years old. Really cool looking guy. Theres a photo of him in the book. One of those head shots you see. Hes got his head turned off to the side. Got these great side whiskers. General burnside would love them. You think of this guy were in the military today, he would be a fighter. Anyway, hes an accountant. Probably really boring guy. Hes here. Hes the messenger. Tell general stone about the new information. Fieldshas to go from the about three fourths of a mile inland. Down the bluff, crossed on a boat, get on harrisons island, on foot, get in another boat and cross maryland, get on the horse, three miles down to edwards fairy, find general stone, report, and then bring them back. Theres a time lack here. Time lag here. He does this. The lieutenant gets to general stone at 8 00 in the morning. Sir, heres the deal. What do you want to do . You go back and tell colonel devens im going to send the other half of his regimen. A are going to turn this into reconnaissance. Leesburg, i am giving him more fairy firepower. This is not an attack on leesburg. Simply go forward and see what you do. Recon and come back and tell me what we have. Yes, sir. A way he goes down the river. He goes back to report. While in transit, who should camp but Edward Dickinson baker. Baker is virtually forgotten today. Unless you are for oregon. Mount baker and baker county, and a city. Oregon, you know baker. Aeryone else knew he was, former congressman from illinois. Best friends of abraham lincoln. They knew each other as Young Lawyers in springfield. Their wives were friend. The lincolns second son was edward bacon baker lincoln. Baker and lincoln were tight. They were brothers. California becomes a state. Baker decides im going to california. War, to that, the mexican they had the only political difference of their lives. Lincoln was against the war. He commanded them briefly. With some credit, he did a decent job. He got written up because he was part of a brigade consisting of the third and fourth illinois and a single unit from new york called the new york regimen. These three regimens were part of a brigade commanded by james shields, who will later go on to utt kicked by stonewall jackson. Cerro gordon, at that battle, shields takes a wound in the chest. Baker takes over the brigade and continues and is mentioned in the dispatches as having done a very good job. Baker has military experience. Briefly. All right. Baker shows up. He is in command of this and he goesrigade to general stone and says i know theres been a lot going on. Can i help you . Do you want to give me a briefing . Stone says heres what weve got. Told him about the Bad Information, the new orders that are going to 10 this into reconnaissance. He says go to the crossing point at balls bluff. Go on over and evaluate the situation. Its your call. If you want to send troops, you can. You make the call. Neither baker nor stone knows about the time the messenger had been reporting to general stone nothing was going on, colonel devens had tangled with a part of 17th mississippi. Fighting had started. Getting more bad, outdated information. This whole mission is based on Bad Information again. Baker says i will take over. He heads up river. Hes working his way up. The messenger has gotten back to colonel devens. Devens says thats fine. Except everything is different. We made contact with the enemy. Weve had a skirmish. A 15 minute firefight. Says your information is no good. Go back again to general stone. Make this a long track and update him and find out what we are going to do. Lieutenant, im sure he says, yes, does not complain. Goes on back to do this. Way to tellis general stone, baker is on his way upriver. These guys run into each other. Lieutenant updates baker. Baker knows theres been fighting. He says i will cross with all my men. The lieutenant proceeds to general stone and says heres the new deal. Theres fighting. General baker is going across with his men. Except he doesnt. Sees theres a lot of sure what isnot going on on the others of the river. He knows theres been fighting. Proceedactually does is to organize the search for boats to cross the river. This is not planned. Nobody had planned a major River Crossing. They dont have a lot of boats handy. The Brigade Commander organizes the search for more boats. The job he should have given to a lower officer, a competent man. He should have gotten cross river and taken command of the troops there. He did not do that. He sends troops across. Get across the river. He gives them no orders as to what to do once they are there. Nobody is in overall command on the virginia side. Youve got dribs and drabs of units. Youve got colonel william r lee, youve got some of these other troops, the first california goes over. They are commanded by isaac wister, ok. Youve got some kernels in lt. Col. s. And lt. Col. s. Baker is trying to find boats. The title of the book is a reflection of general stone writing to Mcclellan Denny says we are doing this and that. Ive got troops. We are short of boats. Mcclellan comes back and says, keep me posted. He does not seem concerned at first. All right. Searching for boats. How are we doing on time . Are we ok . They are searching for boats. You had this initial skirmish at about 8 00 in the morning. They fall back. There is a delay. Some more troops come. They dont have the time lag now because they are in leesburg. They come and about the time this happens, these first reinforcements, they show up thinking they are going to expand reconnaissance and find themselves in a fight. Theres a second skirmish. 15, 20 minutes, everybody falls back again. Everybodys trying to figure out what is going on. This takes on a life of its own. It was not planned. As i said, you often read earlier accounts that say this was a preplanned attempt to take leesburg. It was nothing of the sort. An accident. This, whent of general stone decided to order this Raiding Party, he also got in touch with one of his calvary officers, a former first sergeant. Was a good buddy of john buford. Hes now a major in the third new york calvary. Stone says im going to give you a chance to mix it up with the confederates. Ive got this Raiding Party. Take some guys from your calvary unit, crossover, go down the noise, get them looking at you so we can do the raid. Without attracting too much attention. Then they can fall back. Ok, good idea. Firstes 30 guys from the new york calvary and the crossover the river. Troops acrosson the river at falls bluff and mccall has not turned around to leave yet. You are shanks evans. Heres the threepronged attack youve been expecting. Here it is. As far as he can tell. He does not immediately send a lot of troops. He thinks the biggest part of the assault is going to come at edwards ferry. It makes more sense. The terrain works there. He keeps most of his people watching. Twoends the eighth virginia balls bluff to reinforce the guys. Theres a third skirmish. Union troops are arriving. Baker has been telling everybody to get across the river. These guys are showing up a boatload at a time. Is as allird part these reinforcements arrive, they deploy along the bluff. The 15th massachusetts is doing all the fighting. The other union troops who can hear the shooting stay on the bluff. The senior guy, the closest thing to a commander, william lee, he is asked later, why didnt you go out to support the other troops . I did not have any orders to do that. Come on, man. You are a colonel. Its ok to make these march to the sounds of the guns, for sake, if nothing else. He was not a coward. He was not a soldier. He had attended west point but did not graduate and was a railroad guy for much of his career. You have this situation. Finally devens with his 15th , because heack knows there is other union troops back at the bluff, so they are going to hang on there. This is all very confused. The leadership is not concise, not doing really well, nobody really taking command. Baker is on the wrong side of the river, nobody knows what to do. This is onthejob training for all these people. There is only one west point or in the union command structure at balls bluff, cogswell. Stone, but stone was not at balls bluff. On the confederate side, only one west pointer, shanks sons, and he is in leesburg, there is no professional soldier doing this. Politicians,yers, teachers, farmers, dont really know what they are doing. Battle goes on, skirmish, lowell, skirmish, lull. In the afternoon, the fighting really begins. Advances toirginia a spot on your balls bluff map just about at the top of the map where the line of trees opens up and you see the curvature of the path that goes down. The eighth virginia shows up. Baker finally has shown up. He has decided, i better get across the river. About the same time devens has fallen back, because he has been hung out to dry, coincidentally baker crosses the river. He meets devens, says, you have done a good job. Iat he actually says is, congratulate you on the prospect of a battle. You have to wonder what is going through devens mind. What the hell are you talking about . I have been fighting all morning. Baker says, i want you to go catty corner, coming down into the field. Union troops with their backs to the river facing into the field. I want you to go across the field, form a right angle to those union troops. Now you have a defensive line by the union troops, the river is at their backs, another wing here in the tree line at this side. That path that comes down comes right down through, so any confederates who comment, and because of the rough terrain on either side and because these are early war 1861 troops, they are going to come right and through here, march into a crossfire. Only an idiot is going to march his men into a crossfire and the people were not inexperienced were not idiots. They were inexperienced. These union troops are in the open, these are hidden in the tree line so the confederates cant see them. Baker gets here and says, i need to find out how many are out there. He tells colonel west or, send a couple of your company is beyond the federal left. Go up toward where the parking lot is today and find out how many confederates are there. The eighth virginia is they are hunkered down. A couple of companies of the first california advance up the slope. The eighth virginia stands up and fire is all the and advance on each other. On that slope, basically the federal left, today the slope that goes down toward the cemetery, is first part of the continuous fighting that lasts all afternoon. Side, 180 guys on each part of the eighth virginia, part of the first california. It is handtohand, bayonets, small but nasty. Both sides eventually fall back. Having fallen back, there is another very brief lull and then everything opens up. From that point, fighting is almost continuous. I dont want to run over time, so im going to finish with saying it continues on. Baker is killed around 4 30 in the afternoon, the only u. S. Senator to ever die in battle. I have always thought we could come up with another name or to we would not mind that happening too, but we wont go there at this point. The only u. S. Senator ever to die in battle and nobody is in command. They talk about it. Colonel Milton Cogswell of the 42nd new york, you have him, you have lee, devens, wister, but only a lt. Col. You have the threefold birds the three full birds. Cogswell takes command. He has a nice story of his own if we have time later. Cogswell decides he wants to organize a breakout, the other two want to surrender. Cogswell says, if we can punch out, we can get out of here and work our way down to the open field and get back down to edwards very. He tries to organize this. It basically falls apart. Everyone is running out of water, running out of ammo. He is trying to organize something that really cant happen with these inexperienced troops. None of the union troops have been in battle before. Some of the confederate troops had been at first manassas. Finally at the end of the day, cogswell says, the fat lady has sung. Hold them off as long as you can, we will save as many of the wounded as we can. That works until another federate another confederate regiment shows up, fresh troops. They launch the climactic assault which breaks the union line. You have these guys running down the steep slope and get to the river. Of course, it is a river and 19thcentury people dont swim for recreation, so you have a lot of guys who drowned, a lot he simply surrendered because they did not want to try to hit the river. Some did make it. Finally it gets dark and the confederates cant see and the battle ends. And going to stop there take some questions. Sir . I thought it would be interesting to note that as you are giving your talk, they are doing the of balls bluff. Today is thed anniversary weekend, the anniversary is the 21st of october, so up that balls bluff they have begun the days long series of events to commemorate the battle. Did the union ever get the votes to come back . James what happens is when they got down there the question was did they ever get the boats they needed to get back across the river. A flatd three skiffs and boat they had schlepped over and were moving the troops to virginia. Was on,ime the rout the boats had gotten shot full of holes, had gotten loose and drifted down the river. The raft had a lot of wounded guys on it. You had a number of troops dressed really swimming trying to grab a hold of the raft. One guy describes it, it looked like a colony of bees where guys were hanging onto their backs and hanging onto their backs and it tips the thing over, so all the wounded guys are now in the river and they drowned. To 150re between 100 bodies eventually float down the river to d. C. And beyond in some cases. Not only are they in the water for several days, they have all gone over great falls, which makes it even more gruesome to the people to find these bodies. Somebody else . In a lot of trouble because of balls bluff, but he was never criminally charged although he spent a lot of time in prison. He had an interesting career after the war. Could you tell us about the charges . James got another hour we could talk . Stone got caught up in the politics of the thing. The hook on which his critics hung their criticism was the fact he lost a battle. That was not really the point. The point was a couple of things happened involving the joint committee on the conduct of the war, and that is the big result from this battle. The fight at balls bluff led directly to the creation of the joint committee on the conduct of the war. One of the first things they did was go after stone, not so much because he lost the battle. One of the things that happened is Lincoln Administration policy remember, maryland is a slave state but has not succeeded the policy was if you were a slave from a state in rebellion and you escape, you are free. But if you are a slave from a state in the union and you run away, you have to be returned. The federal fugitive state law was in effect, the maryland fugitive slave law was in effect. Lee Lincoln Administration had to do what was necessary to keep marilyn from seceding, and kentucky, and missouri. A month after the battle, a couple of slaves from a plantation in maryland show up in the camp of the 20th massachusetts. Stone says, you got to take them back. They take them back to their master. Massachusetts boys complained to governor john andrews and janitor and senator charles sumner. They get involved in criticism of stone and mcclellan and the officers of the 20th massey went along with this. Stone becomes the center of this whirlpool. Andets arrested in february they keep him in jail in isolation for six months without ever presenting charges. He begged for a courtmartial. The law said if you are an officer and you are arrested, you have to be shown charges within eight days of your arrest. He was in jail 168 days and never saw charges. Finally six months later they dont need him so they say, you can leave, thank you. Of course, his career is ruined. I love general stone, one of my favorite people. California regiments . Were there any special inducements to them to enlist . 5000 instead of 1000 . James just the fact that baker was a very wellknown public figure. Said, join all colonel bakers california regiment. He had been a colonel in the mexican war. There was a certain panache to that. It was cool. They figured, he is the best friend of the president , we get cool uniforms, the best weapons. But there was no special pay or anything. Thank you very much. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] announcer learn more about the people and events that shaped the civil war and reconstruction every saturday at 6 00 a. M. Eastern on the on American History tv here in cspan3. ,onight on real america afghanistan, the gallant struggle, a cia video produced for president Ronald Reagan describing the soviet Union Invasion of afghanistan in 1979. Here is a preview. Afghanistan remained through much of this century a neutral country, a geographical and ideological buffer between east and west. This tradition of nonalignment was to end violently and a communist military coup april 27, 1978. 2000 tos vary, but from 10,000 died in the communist takeover. They included per here mohammed and most members of his family. Daoud, who had ended the afghan monarchy and established the afghan republic five years earlier. The leadership was in the hands of the communist Peoples Democratic party headed by hamed to rocky. While the communist takeover did not appear to be conceived in the soviet union, by december moscow had exploited the situation, concluding a twentyyear treaty of friendship and cooperation. For the first time in sovietafghan history, the ussr apparently had reached its goals of ideological conformity and Strategic Alliance with its neighbor. Arms, a, and advisors quickly followed. Know that toraki within nine months of the moscow visit, his deputy would depose him. Had beenantime, toarki imposing communism at home. And socialnomic changes were pressed with a seal that alienated local tribal groups, religious leaders, and the urban middleclass. The problems were compounded by a shortage of trained personnel. Administrators from the former republic had been purged and in some cases, shot. Toraki even changed afghanistans flag. The islamic green flag was replaced with the red flag of , just as and a star with the soviet republics. As the jails filled, resistance grew and the insurgency took hold in the eastern provinces bordering pakistan. 1979, generalof resentment have spread through the country with religious leaders proclaiming jihad, a holy war, against the communist government. Announcer watch the entire cia film tonight at 10 00 eastern on our weekly series reel america. You are watching American History tv only on cspan3. Author jamesxt, carl nelson tells the story while discussing his book the polar bear expedition the heroes of americas forgotten invasion of russia, 1918 to 1919. This program was part of the 2019 National World war i museum and memorial symposium. Little bit talking a about stuff going on in russia. I feel like everything is relevant in the world today that connects back to world war i. Our next speaker is james carl nelson. He is the author of four books