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Mistakes That Helped Shape U.S. into What it Is Today

Khalid Elhassan October 16, 2019 34 min

38. The Misplaced Papers That Changed the Course of the Civil War

Copy of Special Order No. 191, displayed at Crampton’s Gap, Maryland. Wikimedia

The fall of 1862 was a low point for the US government and for the Union. The year had started promisingly enough, with a campaign that sought to capture Richmond, but a series of mistakes (see entry 16, below) turned that into a fiasco. Then the Confederates under Robert E. Lee dealt the federals a humiliating defeat at the Battle of Second Bull Run, and early in September, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia invaded Maryland.

Things were looking bleak, with Britain and France on the verge of recognizing the Confederates’ independence, when the Union caught a lucky break. On September 13^th, as the Army of the Potomac hurried to catch up with the rebels, Union Corporal Barton Mitchell arrived at a campsite recently vacated by the enemy, and found an envelope with three cigars wrapped in some papers. The papers turned out to be Special Orders No. 191, in which Robert E. Lee spelled out the movements of his forces.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.