Army of the Shenandoah (Confederate)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Confederate Army of the Shenandoah was born at Harpers Ferry in the spring of 1861, a makeshift force assembled from militia companies and volunteers streaming in from across the South. Its existence was brief. It fought in only one major engagement before being dissolved into a larger army. Yet the decisions made by its commanders during those few weeks shaped the outcome of the first great battle of the Civil War.

  Who built this army, and how did it reach the battlefield at Bull Run in time to matter? What role did a future legend of the Confederacy play before the war had barely started? And why did a cautious Union general give the Confederates the opening they needed? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Born at Harpers Ferry

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  Harpers Ferry, Virginia, was the spark that set the Army of the Shenandoah in motion. Confederate authorities sent militia and volunteer companies there to seize and hold the town, a strategically vital crossing point on the Potomac River. Virginia's state commander, Robert E. Lee, needed someone to impose order on this gathering mass of men, and he chose Thomas J. Jackson for the job.

  Jackson organized the raw companies into five infantry regiments and a battery of artillery. That nucleus would eventually become famous as the Stonewall Brigade, though neither Jackson nor his men knew that yet. On the 15th of May, Joseph E. Johnston arrived to replace Jackson in command, and Johnston set about expanding the force. Regiments continued flowing in from Confederate states throughout the spring, and Johnston eventually assembled four brigades of infantry. Riding at the head of the cavalry arm was Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, commanding the 1st Virginia Cavalry.

• 3. Patterson's Hesitation

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  In mid-June, Union forces from the Department of Pennsylvania, under General Robert Patterson, began pushing south toward Harpers Ferry. Johnston looked at the terrain around the town and concluded it could not be defended. He ordered the bridges destroyed and as much equipment as possible wrecked, then withdrew his army south to Winchester.

  Patterson did not pursue. He stayed near the Potomac River, and for weeks the two forces watched each other across a cautious distance, skirmishing only once, at Falling Waters on the 2nd of July. After receiving reinforcements and waiting for weeks along the river, Patterson finally advanced toward Winchester. He had covered only five miles when Stuart's cavalry screened Johnston's position and brought him to a halt. Patterson gathered his officers. Their advice was caution, and he listened. Several of his regiments were also approaching the end of their enlistment terms and refused to serve longer. Together, these pressures convinced Patterson to call off the advance entirely, a decision that would prove fateful within days.

• 4. The March to Manassas

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  On the 18th of July, Johnston received orders to move his army east and reinforce General P. G. T. Beauregard's Army of the Potomac at Manassas Junction. The transfer began that same evening. Each brigade marched to the station at Piedmont and boarded a train on the Manassas Gap Railroad. Because only one train was available, the brigades arrived at Manassas one at a time rather than as a cohesive force. The artillery and cavalry had no train to ride; they marched the entire distance overland.

  The final units of Johnston's command reached Manassas Junction on the afternoon of the 21st of July. They had arrived just as the battle was beginning to decide itself.

• 5. Henry House Hill

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  Because Johnston outranked Beauregard, he held overall command once he reached Manassas. Before Johnston's arrival, Beauregard had drafted an attack plan against the Union army of General Irvin McDowell, targeting the Federal forces across Bull Run. Johnston approved the plan and allowed Beauregard to issue orders in his name. Those orders turned out to be vague and contradictory, and the brigade commanders could not make sense of them. The Confederate attack never happened.

  Instead, on the morning of the 21st of July, McDowell struck first, hitting the Confederate left wing. As fighting spread across Matthews Hill and Henry House Hill, brigades from both Johnston's and Beauregard's commands were pulled to the left flank to hold the line. All four of Johnston's brigades eventually committed to the fighting in that area, along with four of Beauregard's eight brigades. It was on Henry House Hill, while his brigade refused to break, that Thomas Jackson received the nickname "Stonewall" that would follow him for the rest of the war.

• 6. Aftermath and Dissolution

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  After the Confederate victory at Bull Run, Johnston's and Beauregard's forces were consolidated into the Department of Northern Virginia. Their merged force took the name "Army of the Potomac," and the Army of the Shenandoah ceased to exist as a separate command. Johnston retained overall command of the new combined army. Beauregard served as his second in command until being transferred to the western theater.

  Among the officers who had served under the Army of the Shenandoah's banner at Manassas, several had paid a heavy price. Brigadier General Barnard Bee of the Third Brigade was killed in the fighting. Colonel Francis Bartow of the Second Brigade also fell. The 6th North Carolina's Colonel C. F. Fisher was killed. Brigadier General Edmund Kirby Smith of the Fourth Brigade was wounded, as was Jackson himself. J. E. B. Stuart, whose cavalry regiment had screened Johnston's army from Patterson's hesitant advance, rode away from Bull Run with his reputation intact, ready for the campaigns that lay ahead.