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Updated: May 16, 2025
It is 9 o'clock. Beauregard, as yet unaware of McDowell's new plan, sends an order to Ewell, on his right, to hold himself ready "to take the offensive, at a moment's notice," and directing that Ewell be supported in his advance, toward Sangster's cross-roads and the rear of Centreville, by Holmes's Brigade.
At present, we have decidedly the best of it. McDowell's plan has been, thus far, successful. Will that success continue? We shall see. As our re-enforcing brigades come up, on our right, and on our left, the Enemy falls back, more and more discouraged and dismayed. It seems to him, as it does to us, "as though nothing can stop us."
Near Groveton they struck the force they were going against King's division of McDowell's corps moving tranquilly toward Centreville. The long blue column Doubleday, Patrick, Gibbon, and Hatch's brigades showed its flank.
At last he made up his mind to send the remainder of McDowell's corps; not because he had changed his mind about covering Washington, but because the situation had become such that he expected to arrange this matter by other resources. The fight at Williamsburg took place on May 5.
The Comte de Paris, at page 241, vol. I. of his admirable "History of the Civil War in America," and perhaps other Military historians, having assumed and stated upon the strength of this passage in Sherman's Report that "the Military instinct" of that successful soldier had "discovered" this ford; and the impression being thus conveyed, however undesignedly, to their readers, that McDowell's Engineer corps, after spending two or three days in reconnaissances, had failed to find the ford which Sherman had in a few minutes "discovered" by "Military instinct;" it is surely due to the truth of Military history, that the Engineers be fairly credited with the discovery and mapping of that ford, the existence of which should also have been known to McDowell's brigade commanders.
As soon as the cavalry returned, I saw that an attempt on the road was frustrated, and accordingly have placed McDowell's brigade to our right front, guarding the pass of Snake Creek; Stuart's brigade to the left front, to watch the pass of Lick Creek; and I shall this morning move directly out on the Corinth road, about eight miles to or toward Pea Ridge, which is a key-point to the southwest.
On June 6, the day Jackson halted near Port Republic, McCall's division of McDowell's Army Corps, which had been left at Fredericksburg, had been sent to the Peninsula by water; and two days later McDowell himself, with the remainder of his force, was directed to join McClellan as speedily as possible overland.
Of course, we discredited the truth of the list; and Heintzehvan broke out in his nasal voice, "Boys, it's all a lie! every mother's son of you will be cashiered." We all felt he was right, but, nevertheless, it was true; and we were all announced in general orders as brigadier-generals of volunteers. General McClellan arrived, and, on assuming command, confirmed McDowell's organization.
He saw, what every man having any military knowledge at once recognized with entire certainty, and what every military writer has since corroborated, that the movement of Jackson had no value except as a diversion, that it threatened no serious danger, and that to call off McDowell's corps from marching to join McClellan in order to send it against Jackson was to do exactly that thing which the Confederates desired to have done, though they could hardly have been sanguine enough to expect it.
It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it, inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost.
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