page 485 Brigadier General Alpheus Williams took on the duties of commanding Banks's Corps while the injured Waltham general was a convalescent.   By August 16, Banks was walking without trouble and ready to resume his duties.1   It would be a short stay at the new base camp in Culpeper.  The bad news on August 18 that the entire Virginia Confederate force was moving toward Washington caused an immediate evacuation to the rear.   The large barrier provided by the Rappahannock River, a fourth of the way to the capital, was their destination.2   The wagon trains left first, followed closely by the soldiers.3   The Union march did not go unobserved from Clark Mountain, the high outcropping just south of Cedar Mountain.   Robert E. Lee did not have all his cavalry available and thereby lost the opportunity to take advantage of the strung-out miles of wagons.  The Union line of march was especially vulnerable to disaster if they failed to cross the river before Lee's arrival.   By late night on the 19th almost all Pope's army was across the Rappahannock after a grueling march and removal of multiple bottlenecks on the narrow roads.  The vanguard of the Rebel army arrived opposite the river the following day. In this new position, Pope put Banks's battle-damaged corps in reserve.  The two armies began an artillery duel across the river.  The Yanks repulsed several Confederate forays across the river.  General Lee sidled his men upriver to the north. Lee wanted to move the scene of conflict as far to the north and west as possible.   McClellan's reinforcements would be arriving well downriver, and Lee's only hope for success involved keeping the Union forces separate.  To the great consternation of the Union leaders in Washington, McClellan was not 1. N. P. Banks to Mary Banks, Aug. 16, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 5. 2. Although this river was the largest body of water in the area, men can often wade it at fords in dry periods. 3. OR, I, 12, pt. III: 598.

page 486 making serious efforts to forward his men from the peninsula.  Pope understood as well as Lee did the importance of his uniting with McClellan's men. While Lee feigned a serious crossing of the Rappahannock, Stonewall Jackson took his men out on another history-making march.  Using the adjacent group of small mountains as a screen, Jackson filed his men through an unguarded gap into the Union rear area located north of Bull Run.  Stonewall's men did massive damage to the Union supply storage area and severed the telegraph and railway connection to Pope.  Jackson's corps then reversed course, moving toward Bull Run from the north.  Lee moved Longstreet's corps in Jackson's direction with the intent of forming a junction.  Jackson suffered heavy casualties in his defensive position near Groveton on the first day of full-scale battle.  On the second day, Lee arrived to provide a concentrated artillery fire on the Union flank there, followed by an infantry attack.   As the day ended, a Confederate army—under Longstreet—was once again pursuing retreating Federals through Bull Run. Pope's performance was abysmal, allowing Jackson to flank him, and then failing to unite his men for a coordinated attack.   Worse yet, Pope had initially issued dispatches that proclaimed a great victory.   Mary Banks wrote from New York City after reading these that "we judge you are whipping the enemy severely."4   Very few of McClellan's men got to the scene of the battle.  The retreat was a better organized repeat of the First Bull Run debacle, with the Union army now pulling back to the Washington suburbs. When a true picture of the situation at Bull Run emerged, Lincoln asked McClellan to command the entire Virginia army again.  Most soldiers were more than happy to see the bombastic hero of Island No. 10 gone and Little Mac back in the saddle.  Pope had brought the army, in their view, nothing but defeats.  They were not aware of McClellan's delays returning from the Yorktown peninsula that contributed to the outcome. During the fighting, Pope had detailed Banks's corps as wagon and railroad guards at Bristoe Station, southeast of Bull Run.  As the battle was deteriorating, he ordered Banks's corps to Warrenton Junction, then sent word to destroy the trains and government stores.5   The burning of the railroad bridge leading to Washington by the Confederates had stranded miles of railroad cars.   The soldiers obediently burned 148 railroad cars and five locomotives and some of Banks's personal baggage as well.6    The corps then 4. Mary T. Banks to N. P. Banks, Aug. 31, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 4. 5. OR, I, 12, pt. II: 944; Ibid., pt. I: 210; staff order to destroy public property, Aug. 30, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 23. 6. Williams, Ibid., p. 109; diary entry, Aug. 31, 1862; John Oppell Foering papers, Coll. # 1761, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

page 487 moved back towards Washington.  The Waltham general's only contribution to the battle seems to have been the forwarding of needed ammunition. Critics would note that Pope should not have kept Banks's men out of the battle.   Pope would open court-martial proceedings against those commanders who failed to follow his confusing orders.7   General Fitz John Porter was to be the focus of Pope's court-martial charges, but all the other generals were sucked into the ugly vortex of incriminations in one way or another.   Being left out of Pope's battles in late August may have been a blessing in disguise for the Massachusetts general. The real damage from this battle was the personal loss Banks suffered when one of Jackson's men shot his brother Hiram through the head.  Nathaniel had been a teenager when brothers Hiram and Gardner were born.  Carpenter Gardner Banks was commissioned as a captain in the Massachusetts 16th Regiment the previous summer.  Younger brother Hiram, a customs house clerk, received his second lieutenant's commission while Nathaniel was marching up the Shenandoah.  They were assigned to different companies, but both first "saw the elephant" of combat during McClellan's Seven Days Battles on the peninsula.8   Nathaniel had helped Gardner get his commission, claiming that he had given "many years practice and study to military subjects."9 Colonel Gardner Banks 7.  Pope's headquarters messages during the battle as found today in the Banks papers were written on thin, mustard-colored paper that provided poor contrast with the writing, adding to the difficulties of interpretation. These seem to be press copies of originals. 8. Mass. Adjutant Genl., Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailor and Marines in the Civil War, vol. II, p. 263. 9. N. P. Banks to Adj. Genl. William Schouler, July 10, 1861, William Schouler papers, 1840-1872, Mass. Historical Society.

page 488 On the first day of Pope's full-scale attack against Jackson at the Groveton plateau (August 29), the 16th Massachusetts was part of Joseph Hooker's division.   Brigadier General Cuvier Grover headed one brigade composed mostly of Bay State soldiers.  Grover's men that day would reprise Samuel Crawford's accomplishment, breaking through Stonewall Jackson's defensive line for the second and last time during the war.  Many of Jackson's men were holed up inside a long railway cut, a wide, ready-made trench, which construction workers had intended instead for railway tracks at one time.  Grover's attack smashed through a brigade of Georgians, the same men who had ended Crawford's long flanking action at Cedar Mountain.  Grover's breakthrough received no support from the feuding Union commanders.  Attacked from three sides, he had to pull his dejected men back to Union lines.  The 16th Massachusetts was in the second row of assaulters and engaged in unusual hand-to-hand combat, just as Crawford's men had earlier.  The brigade sustained heavy casualties on the 29th, with the 16th Massachusetts losing 110 men.10 Gardner had a promotion to major at the end of July, and after the bloody assault at Groveton he became a lieutenant colonel, then in November a full colonel.11   Cuvier Grover would become one of Banks's key subordinates at the end of the year. Nathaniel seemed ambivalent about Hiram's death, describing him as "strangely attractive...a wayward boy" whose "temper repelled us often."  Yet he had been planning to add him to his staff, an act of nepotism common among senior generals.12   This is the same Hiram described by his sister Susan as " the most truthful and upright person I ever knew...We knew always he would rather die than do a mean or base thing."13 Hardly had this piece of bad news passed on, word came that his baby brother, William Hazlett ("Billy") Banks, an unmarried New York City customs clerk with "a winning sweetness of disposition," had died in New Jersey during a quack water treatment.14   Billy earlier in the year had been distributing bulletproof vests to his brothers.15   Billy had also written several months earlier 10. Hennessy, Return to Bull Run: The Campaign and Battle of Second Manassas, pp. 249-58. 11. Adjutant General, Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Civil War, vol. II, pp. 253, 263. 12. N.P. Banks to Mary Banks, Sep. 4, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 6. 13. Susan P. Banks to N. P. Banks, Feb. 23, 1863, Ibid., box 7. 14. Susan P. Banks to N. P. Banks, Sep. 28, 1862, Ibid., box 7.  Also Frank W. Shepherd (his former roommate) to N. P. Banks, Sep. 30, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, ALPL, box 1; [unnamed health practitioner] to N. P. Banks, undated, Ibid., box 6.  The practitioner indicated Billy went into a febrile coma after treatment for long-standing "paralysis of the rectum." 15. W. H. Banks to N. P. Banks, Apr. 13, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, ALPL, box 1.

page 489 that he would be a good chap to take the lead in a charge,16 but he never got the chance. During the Second Bull Run operation, Colonel John S. Clark emerged again as a valuable resource.  As they would do a year later at nearby Chancellorsville, the Federal commanders incorrectly concluded that Stonewall was leaving the area shortly before he swept around and attacked their rear or flank.  The person who spotted Jackson's rapid movement from the Waterloo Bridge signal station17 was Clark.  Stonewall's infantry, artillery and cavalry were participating, taking along at least thirty-five wagons, according to Clark.18   The colonel told David Strother at the time he thought they were headed for Pope's rear area.19  General Banks personally took the news to Pope, using up two horses in the process.20 Banks told Clark the government was indebted to him for saving the army.  In turn, Clark wrote home that he admired Banks more than any man he ever met.21 In his written dispatch, Banks said, however, that it seemed Jackson was headed west toward Front Royal with designs on the Shenandoah and Potomac.22  There was even confirmatory news of fresh Confederate activity in the valley from the Federal outpost at Winchester.  Pope asked General McDowell to get more information to clarify where Jackson went.  There would be no more information, just the news in several days of a disastrous attack on Pope's rear area. After the victory at Bull Run, Confederate General Robert E. Lee on September 4 crossed the Potomac River into Maryland.  The next morning Banks was at breakfast in Washington with the president's secretary, John Hay, and (former) General Francis Spinner, the treasurer of the United States.   A messenger brought news of Lee's bold action.   Hay recorded that the Waltham general raised his eyebrows in an obvious manner, but made no comment on the Confederate activity.   He did say that they should take the "most rigorous  16. W. H. Banks to N. P. Banks, Apr. 2, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, ALPL, box 5. 17. This bridge was between Warrenton and Springville. 18. OR, I, 12, pt. III: 654.  He provided details also in his diary entry, Aug. 25, 1862, John S.S. Clark papers, Cayuga Museum of History and Art. 19. Aug. 25, 1862 entry, Eby, Ibid., p. 88. 20. Diary entry, Aug. 25, 1862, John S. S. Clark papers, Cayuga Museum of History and Art.   He indicated Banks was a "straight-forward patriot," honest and someone with whom he agreed on principles. 21. John S. S. Clark to wife and family, Sep. 5, 1862, John S.S. Clark papers, Cayuga Museum of History and Art. 22. OR, I, 12, pt. II: 67.

page 490 measures" against the Rebels, proclamations having accomplished nothing.23   Whatever rigorous measures might ensue, Banks's superiors did not intend for him to be part of them. On September 7, before Banks's second brother died, George McClellan issued Special Order Number 4.24   This document temporarily relieved him of corps command and assigned him instead to command the defenses of the capital.  In addition to commanding the defenses, Banks now was also responsible for determining what the Confederates were doing in Virginia—thus a need once again for Colonel Clark's presence.   Before being ordered to the sidelines, Pope had wanted to retain Banks as a corps commander while firing Sigel and Burnside.25  This was no longer Pope's decision. Banks's new assignment did not originate from the war department.  General-in-Chief Halleck learned of it after the fact.26   McClellan wanted Major General Joseph K. L. Mansfield, the nervous, white-haired army inspector general (West Point, Class of '22), to take over Banks's corps temporarily.   McClellan liked to have regular army men holding his major battlefield commands.   By moving Banks to Washington, he renewed the earlier arrangement in which Banks commanded that part of Maryland that was not intended to be part of his main offensive.  There may have also been an impression that Banks was not recovered from his injury.  On September 9, the records show him unable to ride that day,27 but he had ridden earlier to bring Clark's news to Pope.   The only difficulty he reported to his wife on September 11 was a return of the previous month's diarrhea.28   General Heintzelman first recorded a visit of Banks to the field on September 30.29   The general moved into the very comfortable Washington home of friend Samuel Hooper, which was then being used by another friend, the former Massachusetts governor, George Boutwell.30     When Lee began moving into Maryland, it was not known if he might be targeting the Federal capital.   So Washington was not necessarily a rear-area 23. Burlingame and Turner, Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay, p. 39. 24. Sep. 7, 1862, OR, I, 19, pt. II: 202. 25. OR, I, 12, pt. III: 810. 26. Halleck to Banks, Sep. 8, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 23. 27. Telegram, Natl. Archives, RG 393, pt. I, entry 5379, Defenses of Washington, Telegrams Received. 28. N. P. Banks to Mary T. Banks, Sep. 11, 1862, N. P. Banks papers, LOC, box 5. 29. Diary entry of Sep. 30, 1862, Samuel P. Heintzelman papers, LOC, reel 7. 30. Boutwell, Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, vol. I, p. 309.

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