You could argue the South lost the Civil War on Sept. 13, 1862. That was the day Corporal Barton Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers found a paper wrapped around three cigars at a campsite near Frederick, Maryland. The camp had been used by the Army of Northern Virginia a few days earlier. Unlike a typical soldier, Mitchell did not simply crumple up the paper and smoke the cigars. Instead he read the paper and immediately started its journey up the chain of command. At one step, the signature on the document was recognized as that of Robert E. Lee’s adjutant. With this authentication, it reached Gen. George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac. The notoriously cautious and slow Union commander had in his hands Lee’s Special Order #191. Lee was in the process of invading the North, hoping for a decisive victory on Northern soil. McClellan was playing catchup and there is every reason to believe Lee would have been victorious when they met. However, the “Lost Order” presented McClellan with Lee’s game plan. It outlined where the various parts of his army were going and where they would rendezvous. McClellan: “Here is a paper with which , if I cannot whip Bobby Lee, I will be willing to go home.” He ended up going home because even with this miracle, he still managed to botch the Battle of Antietam and allow Lee to escape back into Virginia. The war went on for another three bloody years. However, at least it ended with the Union preserved, which might not have happened if someone (we still don’t know who) had not left a copy of Order #191 abandoned at a camp site. If Lee had won the battle, England and France might have supported the Confederacy and it might have gotten its independence. By the way, although the incompetent McClellan only managed a bloody tie in the Battle of Antietam, it was enough for Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
– Whitcomb 241 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Order_191
0 Comments