"For ten days I have not been able to change clothes and only now and then to wash my face--sleeping under trees or on the unsheltered earth-- and generally vagabonding up and down the Rappahannock."

 

A tired command tramps into bivouac past a Zouave outpost. Based on a drawing by Edwin Forbes.

     In the weeks following the Battle of Cedar Mountain, Williams was incommunicado. He desperately struggled, amid the confusion of Pope's army, to reorganize his ravaged command while simultaneously as temporary Corps Commander for the again absent Banks. The Lee's rebel army, having seized the initiative, out maneuvered the larger and better armed Union armies and brought them to defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29-30 and to near destruction at Chantilly on September 1, 1862. Williams' only letter in the period prior to Bull Run evinced his weariness and growing contempt for the pompous Pope.

     "I have not been able to write you for two good reasons. 1, I have had nothing to write on. 2, A general order has stopped all letters going out. I might add a third--that day and night we have been literally under arms, liable at any moment to be called into action or into a fatiguing march. If I ever get settled, I will give you a detailed history of the last week. I have had hard service and hard traveling, but I think the past week's experience puts all other labor and privations to the shame. All our baggage has been forty miles from us and we have been at times, officers and men, literally with [out] bread or meat. Every minute came a new order--now to march east and now to march west, night and day...

     "Where all this will end, I cannot guess. We are getting some reinforcements but nothing to what we should have. A few of us--my division reduced in the late battle to half its muster and almost without officers are compelled to do an immense duty, enough to kill iron men. We have been under fire of shells almost continuously and at times most incessant and tremendous. After hard labor and great losses of life we are back where we were when Gen. Pope published his famous order that we must look to no lines of retreat and that in his western campaigns he never saw the backs of his enemies. In short he boasted greedy, at which we all laughed and thought he would do better to stay where we then were till he got men enough to do half what he threatened. But I have room for no more....

     The assessment of Pope Following the events at Bull Run, Williams was ordered to retreat, with the rest of the Union Army, behind the defenses of Washington. As part of the Union force maneuvered out the battle his path took him around Manassas and thence into Alexandria. Writing later he describes the retreat...

     "Early the next morning Gen. Banks sent for me and showed me an order to burn all public property and march via Brentsville. The rail road bridge had been burned by the Rebels, leaving on the south side hundreds of our wounded and sick, besides miles of cars full of army stores and provisions. The wounded and sick we had taken off to Centerville by wagon, but the goods were there and the torch was soon applied and a tremendous bonfire, whose smoke went up high into the heavens, broke out for miles along the railroad. At the same time our ammunition wagons were set on fire and many of our ambulances. Explosions followed like salvos of artillery. I had for my headquarters carriage an ambulance and one wagon, which we had contrived to secure to carry our forage and food. These I determined to keep. I got them off safely and have them yet. Gen. Banks burnt up his private baggage almost wholly...

     There would be no rest for Williams and his weary command. Lee's triumphant army invaded Maryland on September 4 encamping near Frederick. Sent westward through Washington to confront the invasion force, Williams found himself encamped at Rockville, again in temporary command of the corps, and facing the difficulties of incorporating raw regiments with only a months' training into the corps.

     To make matters worse, Lee's army had disappeared behind the Blue Ridge. His weariness and frustration spills over in the following emotional passages penned on September 8 at the nadir of his war experiences and, perhaps, of the American Republics' as well.

     "All this is the sequence of Gen. Pope's high sounding manifestoes. His pompous orders issued in Washington and published in the daily telegraphs all over the country with great commendation of the press and apparently of the people greatly disgusted his army from the first. When a general boasts that he will look only on the backs of his enemies, that he takes no care for lines of retreat or bases of supplies; when, in short, from a snug hotel in Washington he issues after-dinner orders to gratify public taste and his own self-esteem, anyone may confidently look for results such as have followed the bungling management of his last campaign. A splendid army almost demoralized, millions of public property given up or destroyed, thousands of lives of our best men sacrificed for no purpose. I dare not trust myself to speak of this commander as I feel and believe. Suffice it to say (for your eye alone) that more insolence, superciliousness, ignorance, and pretentiousness were never combined in one man. It can with truth be said of him that he had not a friend in his command from the smallest drummer boy to the highest general officer. All hated him...

     "We are now within a few miles of where I began my service with the old brigade a year ago. What a contrast. The three regiments of that brigade (one has been transferred) are here yet in name, but instead of 3,000 men they number altogether less than 400 men present! Not a field officer nor adjutant is here! All killed or wounded! Of the 102 officers not over 20 are left to be present! Instead of hopeful and confident feelings we are all depressed with losses and disasters. Instead of an offensive position the enemy is now actually in Maryland and we are on the defensive. What a change! After such vast preparations and such vast sacrifices. This has been called a "brainless war." I can't tell you of the future. We are accumulating troops this way and shall doubtless have some severe conflicts. If we fail now the North has no hope, no safety that I can see. We have thrown away our power, and prestige. We may become the supplicant instead of the avenger....

     Little did Williams suspect that in five days he would have in his hands a seemingly insignificant piece of paper, found wrapped around three cigar, containing the location and plans of Lee's disappeared army.

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