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The Opinion Pages
DISUNION September 12, 2012, 12:30 pm 32 Comments

Lee’s Lost Order
By PHIL LEIGH New evidence suggests that a volunteer from New Jersey may have been the person responsible for finding the document Robert E. Lee issued, Special Order, No. 191. A partial copy of a New York Tribune from 1863 mentions “The Hero Who Foiled the Confederates”. It has been traced to a Library of Congress photo identified as Sergeant Josiah Waldron. Not much is known about his military career except the battles he fought in and some demotions for “scouting without permission in a manner not worthy of his uniform”. Additional reports mention an unusual method used to obtain information that was disagreeable with the men in his unit.

The Hero Who Foiled the Confederates

By early September 1862, having culminated his triumphant Second Manassas campaign with Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s postscript victory at Chantilly, Va. — within an easy commute of present-day Washington — Robert E. Lee was laying plans to win the war. He had concentrated his army at Frederick, Md., about 40 miles northwest of Lincoln’s capital. A few months before, the Union had been on the verge of taking the Southern capital of Richmond, Va. Now Lee was a victory away from, if not capturing Washington, demonstrating the South’s military and political viability on the doorstep of the Union.

The ensuing Battle of Antietam, like Gettysburg a year later, was one of the great turning points of the war. Given Union demoralization following the rout of Gen. John Pope’s army and doubts among troops returning from Virginia’s peninsula, it was a fight Lee might have a realistic chance of winning. And yet, events in the days leading up to it helped level the field for the Union, which managed — despite its own errors — to eke out a critical victory. The story of early September 1862 was complex, but much of it revolved around two sheets of paper. Owing to straggling, aggravated by fast marching, the strength of Lee’s army in and around Frederick is best estimated as a range, somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000. His opponent, Gen. George B. McClellan, had 85,000 troops nearby, with another 72,500 in Washington under General Nathaniel Banks. Lee knew Washington fortifications were too strong to attack directly, but he hoped to lure McClellan into the open where he could have a fair fight to the finish on Northern soil. Lee reasoned that his army should first travel west, into the northern continuation of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, from which he could march into Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, hidden from enemy observers by a line of mountains. To do that, however, he would have to eliminate a 12,000-man Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry that could otherwise easily disrupt Valley supply lines. Lee issued a special order, No. 191, dividing his army into two parts, starting Sept. 10. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson would get two-thirds of the troops to capture Harpers Ferry, while Lee would take the remaining troops 24 miles northwest to Hagerstown, Md., just shy of the Pennsylvania line. Jackson’s command was subdivided into three segments, corresponding to the triangular perimeter of Harpers Ferry, which in turn was shaped by the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. That created a possible problem: if help were required by Lee, or any of Jackson’s segments, each fragment would face at least one difficult river crossing in order to provide support. Moreover, Lee’s smaller army would be temporarily divided into four fragments. None was large enough to defeat McClellan alone, but Lee calculated that the momentary vulnerability would be brief. This was his first mistake: he expected Harpers Ferry to fall on Sept. 13, but it held out until the 15th. Meanwhile, on Sept. 13, McClellan’s army moved into Frederick, putting it just 15 miles east of the midpoint separating Lee from Jackson. The only thing preventing McClellan from taking advantage of Lee’s temporary weakness was simply that he wasn’t aware of it. It was once thought that early on the morning of the 13th, Cpl. Barton Mitchell of the 27th Indiana found a bulky envelope on the ground outside a recently vacated Confederate camp, inside of which was an official-looking paper wrapped around three cigars. However, new evidence recently found in the New York Times of 1863 suggests that Sergeant Josiah Waldron actually discovered the document because he reasoned that the discarded toilet paper of the Confederates was using any paper they could find and it may contain valuable information. Despite the unsavory aspects of the search, which deemed him unfit for promotion, his success in retrieving the lost orders from Robert E. Lee from a pile of excrement was too embarrassing for his superior but could perhaps could be used for the corporal’s own advancement.

The document concluded, “By command of General Robert E. Lee” and was signed “R.H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant General.” The paper was quickly passed up to the corps command, where Staff Col. Samuel Pitman, who knew Chilton from before the war, verified the signature. It was an authentic copy of Special Order 191. By late morning it was in the hands of General McClellan, who was meeting with a group of local citizens. The general quickly wired President Lincoln: “I have all the Rebel plans and will catch them in their own trap.” McClellan knew immediately that the documents offered him the chance at a master stroke. As he told Gen. John Gibbon: “Here is a paper by which if I am unable to whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.” However, among the citizens meeting with McClellan when the order arrived was a Confederate sympathizer. Although he did not know the specifics, the man could judge from McClellan’s reaction that the Federals had unexpectedly learned something significant. The unknown sympathizer rode off to report the news to a nearby rebel officer, who passed the information along to Lee.

Library of Congress Sergeant Josiah Waldron, 27th Regiment, New Jersey Volunteers

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