Army of Virginia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  On the 26th of June 1862, by General Orders Number 103, a new Union army came into existence in the middle of a war that was going badly for the North. The Army of Virginia was assembled from four existing departments scattered across the Virginia theater, placed under a single commander, and sent into some of the most punishing fighting of the entire Civil War. Its life would last less than three months.

  How does an army of over 50,000 men simply cease to exist? What made this force different from its rival Union counterpart, the Army of the Potomac? And why did Radical Republicans in Congress see its creation as something far more than a military reorganization? The answers trace through the mountains of western Virginia, the banks of Cedar Mountain, and the smoke-choked fields around Bull Run.

• 2. Built from Four Departments

  ›

  Major General John C. Fremont's Mountain Department was the first of four existing Union commands folded into the new army. Alongside it came Major General Irvin McDowell's Department of the Rappahannock, Major General Nathaniel P. Banks's Department of the Shenandoah, and a brigade from the Military District of Washington under Brigadier General Samuel D. Sturgis. Out of these pieces, Major General John Pope built his three corps.

  Three corps from Major General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac were later attached for combat operations, swelling the force considerably. Franz Sigel commanded what became the I Corps, drawn from Fremont's old Mountain Department. Nathaniel Banks led the II Corps, formerly the Department of the Shenandoah. Irvin McDowell took the III Corps, rebuilt from the Department of the Rappahannock. Each of these corps would carry numerical designations that overlapped with those already in use by the Army of the Potomac, a source of confusion that later required redesignation during the Maryland Campaign.

• 3. A Political Army

  ›

  Radical Republicans in Congress and the Cabinet watched Pope's new command with particular interest. They saw the Army of Virginia as the vanguard of a broader war, one aimed not just at battlefield victory but at transforming Southern society. The senior officers of the army were more committed advocates of abolishing slavery than their counterparts in the Army of the Potomac.

  The officer corps also had a smaller proportion of West Point graduates than the contemporary Army of the Potomac. That distinction mattered to the Radicals, who were suspicious of professional soldiers they viewed as insufficiently committed to the wider goals of the conflict. Pope's army was, in their eyes, a force with the right instincts for a harder kind of war.

• 4. Cedar Mountain

  ›

  Banks's II Corps met Stonewall Jackson's forces at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, and for a time the Union troops had the advantage. The initial momentum shifted, however, when a Confederate counterattack led by A.P. Hill drove Banks's men back and secured the field for Jackson.

  The defeat at Cedar Mountain was a preview of what the full army would face. Pope had consolidated a large force and given it political backing, but the Confederate commanders opposing him in the Virginia theater were operating with speed and coordination that his organization had not yet matched. George Bayard commanded the Cavalry Brigade attached to the army throughout this period, providing reconnaissance that could not prevent the reversal at Cedar Mountain.

• 5. Second Bull Run and Dissolution

  ›

  Jackson, Longstreet, and Lee combined to administer a thorough defeat to the Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run. The army withdrew to the defensive lines around Washington, D.C., shattered and unable to mount further independent operations.

  The Battle of Chantilly followed, fought mostly by Army of the Potomac troops, though elements of Pope's force were engaged. By the 12th of September 1862, less than three months after the army's creation, all of its units were merged into the Army of the Potomac. The Army of Virginia was never reconstituted. Its corps were redesignated: Sigel's I Corps eventually became the XI Corps of the Army of the Potomac, Banks's II Corps became the XII Corps, and McDowell's III Corps reverted to the I Corps designation it had previously carried.