Long Shadows at Ball’s Bluff

By Cowan Brew

For all his great political skills, Abraham Lincoln was a man who made few close personal friends. He was both too private and too ambitious to court a large number of intimate acquaintances. One man, however, impressed Lincoln so much that he became almost a hero to the Illinois lawmaker. That man was Edward Baker, a transplanted Englishman who worked and campaigned alongside—and sometimes against—Lincoln for more than two decades in their adopted homeland in southwestern Illinois.

In many ways, Baker was Lincoln’s exact opposite—a handsome, vain, outgoing individual who was a natural-born politician. Gifted (like Lincoln) with a prodigious memory, Baker could effortlessly recall names and faces, an invaluable skill for anyone interested in frontier-style politics. Born in England in 1811, Baker immigrated to the United States with his Quaker parents at the age of four. Settling eventually in Carrollton, Illinois, he became a lawyer at the precociously young age of 19 and married a wealthy widow with two children. In 1835, Baker moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he met another up-and-coming young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

Baker and Lincoln became members of the local Whig Party “Junto,” a combination political group and social club that met weekly in the office of the Sangamon Journal, a Whig newspaper owned by town leader Simeon Francis, whose wife would help Lincoln reconcile romantically with his future wife, Mary Todd. The Junto, whose members were young lawyers, worked and planned to ensure a Whig majority in Sangamon County. Baker and Lincoln shared office space on the third floor of the Tinsley Building at Sixth and Adams Streets in Springfield. Lincoln liked his new friend well enough to name his second son after Baker. When the boy died at the age of three, both father and godfather were devastated.

In 1843, the two men became friendly rivals for the newly open congressional seat in the Seventh District of Illinois. Baker was the favorite, thanks in part to his superior oratorical skills. His voice, said one admirer, was “not full or sonorous, but sharp and clear. It was penetrating rather than commanding, and yet when touched by his ardent nature, it became sympathetic and even musical.” Lincoln, by contrast, had an almost comically high-pitched voice for one so tall. Baker augmented his speaking skills with a bit of crowd-pleasing theatrics, appearing on stage with a pet eagle chained to an iron ring. When Baker described how the Democrats had brought ruin to the country, the eagle would droop its head into its wings. When he promised that the Whigs would restore the nation to its former glory, the bird would spread its wings and crow.

Thanks in part to his eagle trick, Baker won election to Congress. Lincoln followed two years later. During the Mexican War (which Lincoln opposed), Baker led a volunteer militia regiment and was wounded severely at the Battle of Cerro Gordo by a piece of grapeshot through the lungs. Recovering, he was re-elected to Congress, but moved to California in 1852 after failing to receive a cabinet post from President Zachary Taylor. In 1859, a delegation of Republican Party leaders invited Baker to move to Oregon and run for the United States Senate. He agreed. The next year, he was elected to the Senate. While he was out West, Baker and Lincoln kept in touch, and Baker became one of Lincoln’s strongest supporters when the “Rail Splitter” won election to the White House in 1860. As an indication of Lincoln’s appreciation, Baker was invited to ride in the president-elect’s carriage and personally introduce him at his inauguration.

After the Civil War began, Baker took to the floor of the Senate to defend Lincoln against charges that the president was being dictatorial in his actions. “I want sudden, bold, forward, determined war,” said Baker, “and I do not think anybody can conduct war of that kind as well as a dictator.” Whether or not Lincoln fully appreciated being called a dictator, even by an old friend, he offered Baker a much sought after appointment as a major general in the Army. Baker delayed accepting the appointment—it would mean having to resign his much-loved seat in the Senate—and instead raised a regiment of volunteers, dubbed the “California Regiment” because it initially included a company of men who had lived in California. There were not enough West Coast enlistees to fill out a full regiment, so Baker had his former law partner, Isaac Wistar, recruit more volunteers in Pennsylvania. Officially, the new regiment was designated the 71st Pennsylvania Infantry, but throughout its existence it was known informally as the California Regiment. Baker was chosen the regiment’s colonel; Wistar was his lieutenant colonel. Also serving as regimental officers were Baker’s brother, son, and nephew.

Following the Union debacle at Bull Run in June 1861, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan became commander of the Army of the Potomac. One of his first acts was to send a division of lightly trained troops to Poolesville, Maryland, eight miles northeast of Leesburg, Virginia, to guard the army’s right flank. Commanding the division was Brig. Gen. Charles P. Stone, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the Mexican War. Stone was well acquainted with one of his brigade commanders—Edward Baker—as well as Baker’s former partner, Isaac Wistar, whom he had met while Stone was running a bank in San Francisco in the mid-1850s. At Lincoln’s inauguration, Stone had commanded an armed guard of mounted troops that protectively surrounded the president-elect’s carriage as it made its way to the Capitol. Baker, riding in the carriage at the time, caught sight of Stone’s jingling spurs and unsheathed sword.

Across the Potomac from Stone’s men was a brigade of Confederate infantry comprising three Mississippi regiments and one Virginia unit, all under the command of South Carolina-born Colonel Nathan “Shanks” Evans, who had been a plebe at West Point when Stone was a fourth-year cadet. The balding, blue-eyed Evans was slightly built—hence his nickname—and had served as a captain in the elite 2nd Cavalry Regiment on the western plains prior to the Civil War. At Bull Run (or Manassas, as the Confederates called the battle), Evans had played a crucial role in the southern victory by reacting quickly to hold a vital stone bridge. In after-action reports, he was praised for his “dauntless conduct and imperturbable coolness … skill and unshakable courage.” He was known within both armies as something of a drinker.

Evans’s brigade, consisting of the 13th, 17th, and 18th Mississippi Infantry and the 8th Virginia Infantry, was augmented by three companies of Virginia cavalry and the 1st Company of the Richmond Howitzers. Stationed in Leesburg, a historic colonial-era village 25 miles northwest of Washington, the brigade was assigned to watch the various fords and ferries across the Potomac and to keep a close eye on the turnpike leading straight up the Catoctin Valley to Leesburg from Alexandria. There were a number of crossings in the vicinity, ranging from Noland’s Ferry, near the mouth of the Monocacy River; Spink’s Ferry, three miles farther downriver; and Conrad’s Ferry, near the northern tip of Harrison’s Island, which sat squarely in the middle of the Potomac. Directly west of the 500-acre island was Ball’s Bluff, a 100-foot-high cliff on the west bank of the Potomac. Evans posted his brigade two miles east of Leesburg, where the men threw up a 1½-acre scythe of breastworks that they dubbed Fort Evans. To confuse Federal scouts, he had his men throw up a number of empty tents in the surrounding farmland, giving the impression of a much-larger force.

A few miles away, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, Federal forces were also massing. Stone’s division, pointedly named the Corps of Observation, was assigned to watch the river between Point of Rocks, a well-known ford 10 miles north of Leesburg, and Edwards Ferry, five miles below Harrison’s Island. Stone’s division included infantry regiments from Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania as well as six cavalry companies and an artillery battery from Rhode Island. The best known units were Edward Baker’s California Regiment and the patrician 20th Massachusetts, which was filled with Harvard graduates, including future Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; 1st Lt. James Lowell, nephew of the famous poet James Russell Lowell; and Major Paul Joseph Revere, grandson of Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere.

Union and Confederate pickets patrolled the opposing shores. Desultory shots were exchanged at first, and one private in the 15th Massachusetts was wounded in the arm while washing dishes in the river. Both sides soon realized that “the shooting of pickets is all foolishness” and contented themselves with more or less good-natured taunts. At Edwards Ferry, some Union soldiers put up a swing and amused themselves within clear sight of the Confederates. As was common in the early stages of the war, the men frequently declared ad hoc truces and waded into the waist-deep water to meet and exchange coffee, tobacco, and newspapers—the Mobile Register for the Union troops and the Boston Herald for the southerners. When Stone learned of the fraternization, he quickly put a stop to it, dispatching an officer under a flag of truce to warn the Confederate commander that any Rebel forces caught on the eastern side of the river would be arrested and shot.

Despite their officers’ interference, military service in the Leesburg sector was pleasant duty. The fall weather was beautiful and the rolling countryside blazed with cultivated farmland and colonial-style, white stone fences. “Leesburg was at this time perhaps the most desirable post of our lives,” wrote Robert Stiles of the Richmond Howitzers, “on account of the character both of the country and its people. The latter were whole-hearted and hospitable, ready to share with us all they had. If ever soldiers had a more ideal time than we enjoyed at Leesburg, then I cannot conceive when or where it was.” Mississippi Private Robert A. Moore agreed, noting in his diary that “Leesburg can boast of as fair daughters as any other town in the state. The boys are very merry, some of them have a dance nearly ever night.”

The Union soldiers, not having the same recourse to local Virginia beauties, found their own entertainment where they could. British-born chaplain William G. Scandlin of the 15th Massachusetts acted as both regimental postmaster and librarian, dispensing hundreds of books to the men. Others, looking for more lively amusements, organized fiddle concerts and barn dances, or patronized itinerant daguerreotype photographers and whiskey peddlers. The drinking got so bad that Major Revere of the 20th Massachusetts led a raid on one local tavern, dumping its entire supply of liquor into the street. Two Maryland-owned slaves caught selling whiskey to the men of the 1st Minnesota Regiment were given a whipping at the order of Brig. Gen. Willis Gorman. In a related matter, Stone had to put an end to the abolitionist-minded 20th Massachusetts’ practice of sheltering runaway slaves in their camp. He directed the men “not to incite and encourage insubordination among the colored servants in the neighborhood of the camps.” It was an order that would come back to haunt Stone later.

In mid-October, the idyllic life in both camps was interrupted. Union Army commander George B. McClellan, in Washington, fretted constantly that the enemy was building up forces for a sudden assault across the Potomac toward Baltimore. “The main and real movement will be to cross the Potomac between Washington and Point of Rocks,” McClellan advised Secretary of War Simon Cameron. “His hope will be to move with a large force direct and unopposed on Baltimore.” Despite having twice as many men as Confederate General Joseph Johnston in northern Virginia, McClellan felt ill-equipped for such a movement. “The fate of the nation and the success of the cause in which we are engaged must be mainly decided by the issue of the next battle to be fought by the army under my command,” he said. He did not intend to be taken by surprise.

On October 6, a Union spy named Francis Buxton reported to McClellan’s headquarters that Confederate forces at Leesburg had grown to nearly 27,000 men—a ridiculous overestimation that nevertheless played on the general’s always jittery nerves. Stone reported that his own spy, “an intelligent mulatto teamster who deserted from the Thirteenth Mississippi Regiment near Leesburg,” had told him that Evans was preparing to evacuate the town altogether. McClellan wanted more proof. On October 19, he sent Brig. Gen. George McCall’s 13,000-man division to Dranesville, 12 miles south of Leesburg, with orders to monitor the developing situation. The next day, McClellan sent a message to Stone through his assistant adjutant general: “Gen. McClellan desires me to inform you that General McCall occupied Dranesville yesterday, and is still there. He will send out heavy reconnaissances today in all directions from that point. The General desires that you keep a good lookout upon Leesburg to see if this movement has the effect to drive them away. Perhaps a slight demonstration on your part would have the effect to move them.”

Acting immediately that afternoon, Stone took steps to implement McClellan’s order. He personally led Gorman’s brigade down to Edwards Ferry, where he had his artillery throw a few shells across the river. After the ineffectual bombardment, Stone directed Captain Charles Philbrick of the 15th Massachusetts to take 20 men and row over to Harrison’s Island. From there, they were to hike across the island and sneak across to the Virginia side, climb Ball’s Bluff, and take a quick look around. It took several hours for the order to move down the chain of command from Stone to regimental Colonel Thomas Devens to Captain Philbrick. Devens, Stone reported later with unconcealed irritation, had “gone to church or something of that sort,” and could not be located.

The delay prevented Philbrick’s scouting party from getting under way until dark. It then took Philbrick several hours to traverse the underbrush on the island, row across the river, climb the steep side of Ball’s Bluff, and creep within 130 yards of the Confederate camp outside Leesburg. The captain reported back that he had seen neither camp fires nor Rebel sentries guarding the camp. Stone accepted the surprising report on face value. “It seemed to me,” he said later, “precisely one of those pieces of carelessness on the part of enemy that ought to be taken advantage of.” He ordered Devens (presumably returned by then from church) to take five companies of men, 300 in all, across the Potomac and destroy the enemy camp. Another 100 men from Colonel William Lee’s 20th Massachusetts would cross behind Devens and take up positions atop Ball’s Bluff to safeguard the line of advance.

Devens set out on the raid at midnight on October 21. The Potomac was swollen from recent rains; the current was swift and dangerous. To carry his men from Harrison’s Island to Ball’s Bluff, Devens could find only two flatboats and a ramshackle skiff. It took four hours for the men to cross, 25 at a time, and climb a narrow sheep path to the top of Ball’s Bluff. From there, guided by Philbrick, they crept forward in the darkness to the outskirts of the Confederate camp at Leesburg. At least, it was supposed to be a Confederate camp—as it turned out, Philbrick had mistaken a shadowy line of trees atop a low ridge for enemy tents, of which there were none. Devens, perplexed, sent a messenger hurrying back to Stone to report that there was no sign of the enemy anywhere in the vicinity.

Stone should have been alarmed by the sudden absence of Confederates. (Evans had taken his brigade down to Dranesville to ambush McCall’s division, leaving only a company of the 17th Mississippi to keep watch on Ball’s Bluff.) Instead, sensing the opportunity to secure a major beachhead on the Virginia side of the river, Stone sent a small force of infantry and cavalry from Gorman’s division across the river at Edwards Ferry to scout the vicinity below Leesburg. At the same time, he sent for Colonel Baker, meeting him on the towpath of the C&O Canal at the ferry on the morning of the 21st. It was a meeting destined to have life-changing consequences for both men. Stone told Baker about the developing tactical situation across the river and put Baker in charge of the operation. As it turned out, he was the worst possible man for the job.

Stone, who had already given Devens somewhat confusing orders to alternately observe, force or secure the approaches to Leesburg, gave similarly muddled directions to Baker. He told the colonel to push more troops across the river, but “left it to Baker’s discretion, after viewing the ground, to retire the troops from the Virginia shore under cover of his guns and the fire of the large infantry force, or to pass over reinforcements in case he found it practicable and the position on the other side strong and favorable.” Stone emphasized that he “wished no advance unless the enemy were in inferior force.” Besides Baker’s own regiment, Stone gave him command of the 42nd New York (Tammany Regiment) and the 15th and 20th Massachusetts. It was clear to Stone, if not to Baker, that the trans-Potomac movement was to be tentative and cautious—exactly the wrong instructions for a man who had worn his full military uniform onto the Senate floor and slammed his sword down on his desk for rhetorical emphasis. Baker wanted glory, not scraps of information.

Thinking like the lawyer and politician he was, Baker asked Stone to put his orders into writing. Stone hastily scribbled on a sheet of paper: “Colonel: In case of heavy firing in front of Harrison’s Island, you will advance the California regiment of your brigade or retire the regiments under Colonels Lee and Devens upon the Virginia side of the river, at your discretion, assuming command on arrival.” Baker stuffed the paper into his hat and galloped down the towpath to take charge of the literally fluid situation. It was about 9:30 when he left.

To support the Union beachhead at Ball’s Bluff, Stone had ordered Lt. Col. George H. Ward of the 15th Massachusetts to take the regiment’s remaining companies and occupy Smart’s Mill, a solid stone building half a mile north of the bluffs. From there, Ward could protect Baker’s right flank and provide a fall-back position for Devens, who was already encountering heavy fire on the western side of the hill. Devens sent a messenger, Lieutenant Church Howe, to tell Stone that he was under attack. En route, Howe encountered Colonel Lee atop Ball’s Bluff and informed him of the developing situation. The 57-year-old Lee, considered the oldest regular colonel in the Army, gave Howe an extra message to deliver. “Tell Stone,” he said, “that if he wants to open a campaign in Virginia, now is the time.” Howe, who seems to have stopped every time he ran into a superior officer, saw Ward preparing to cross the river at Harrison’s Island. Howe told him that Devens was “in a tight place” and needed his support. In contradiction to direct orders from the commanding general, Ward decided to go to Devens instead of occupying Smart’s Mill. It was a fateful decision.

Next, Howe passed Baker, who was coming down the towpath to the embarkation site on the western side of the island. The indefatigable lieutenant explained, as best he could, the situation at Ball’s Bluff. “I am going down immediately with my whole force to take command,” Baker said, putting spurs to his horse and tearing off. When Howe finally reached General Stone with the original message he was supposed to have delivered an hour earlier, Stone was unworried. “Colonel Baker is at that place and can arrange things to suit himself,” said Stone. That was the problem—or soon would be.

While the Union chain of command was alternately strung out, snarled, and looped around itself in the person of young Lieutenant Howe, the Confederate commander was taking personal charge of the rapidly developing battle around Ball’s Bluff. After receiving reports that Federal forces had crossed the river at both the bluffs and Edwards Ferry, “Shanks” Evans turned his division around and reoccupied his works at Leesburg. Keeping calm from the two-directional threat, Evans sent reinforcements to Ball’s Bluff, where he decided (correctly) that the main enemy thrust would take place. He ordered Colonel Eppa Hunton of the 8th Virginia to move up and support Lt. Col. Walter Jenifer, who was rushing to the front with 70 of his cavalry and two companies of the 18th Mississippi Infantry. Jenifer had served with Evans in the 2nd Cavalry Regiment out West, and Evans trusted him to bring his Indian-fighting experience to bear on the Union forces as well. Feeling more and more confident by the minute, Evans told Hunton to “drive the enemy to the river.”

The combined weight of the Confederate attack forced Devens back to Ball’s Bluff, where he linked up with Lee and dispersed his men behind a thick rail fence. There they hunkered down to wait for Baker. It would be a long wait.

Instead of crossing the river and immediately taking command of the worsening situation on the bluffs, Baker wasted valuable time manhandling troops—sometimes literally—onto a makeshift armada of flatboats, ferryboats, and skiffs for their brief transit across the river. For more than an hour, Baker personally supervised the raising of a sunken boat from the C&O Canal and attempted to stretch a towline from the Maryland shore to Harrison’s Landing. Colonel Milton Cogswell of the Tammany Regiment, arriving as ordered to reinforce the Federal troops at Ball’s Bluff, could scarcely credit the disorganization on the island. “There were no guards at any of the landings,” he recalled. “No boats’ crews had been detailed, and each command as it arrived was obliged to organize its own. No guns were placed in position to protect the passage. Had the full capacity of the boats been employed, more than twice as many men might have crossed in time to take part in the action.”

Back at headquarters, Stone was beginning to get worried. He had heard nothing from Baker in nearly three hours. At 11:50 am, he dispatched another message to the wayward senator: “Colonel: I am informed that the force of the enemy is about 4,000, all told. If you push them, you may do so as far as to have a strong position near Leesburg, if you can keep them before you, avoiding their batteries. If they pass Leesburg and take the Gum Spring road you will not follow far, but seize the first good position to cover that road. Their design is to draw us on, if they are obliged to retreat, as far as Goose Creek, where they can be reinforced from Manassas and have a strong position. Report frequently, so that when they are pushed Gorman can come in on their flank.”

As usual, Stone’s wording was imprecise and confusing, as was Baker’s answer. “I acknowledge your order of 11:50, announcing their force at 4,000,” Baker responded at 1:30 pm. “I have lifted a large boat out of the canal into the river. I shall, as soon as I feel strong enough, advance steadily, guarding my flanks carefully. I will communicate with you often. As you know, I have ordered down my brigade and Cogswell, who will cross as rapidly as possible. I shall feel cautiously for them. I hope that your movement below will give advantage. Please communicate with me often.”

The two messages, taken together, were masterpieces of obfuscation. Stone’s message overestimated the Confederate force and misstated the enemy’s intention, while continuing to send mixed signals to Baker about whether he should attack, entrench, or retreat. Baker’s reply did not indicate whether or not he had crossed over the river, what assessment he had made of the situation, how many troops he had landed, or what he intended to do with them once they got there. Despite promising each other that they would “communicate often,” neither Stone nor Baker ever heard from the other again.

Finally, at 2:15 pm, Baker crossed the Potomac, remounted his horse, and rode to the top of Ball’s Bluff. He was in high, even manic, spirits. Encountering Lee, who had been fighting off Confederate attacks for several hours, Baker called out jauntily, “I congratulate you, sir, on the prospect of a battle.” More matter-of-factly, Lee said simply, “I suppose you assume command.” Baker did, with pleasure, calling out to the newly arriving troops of the 20th Massachusetts, “Boys, you want to fight, don’t you?” Assured that they did, Baker responded, “Then you shall have a chance.” It was the most accurate thing he said all day.

Baker also met with Devens, who came back from the front lines after he heard that Baker had reached the battlefield. “Thank Heaven he has come,” Devens told Major John Kimball of his staff. “We have been waiting eight hours.” Baker fiddled with the lines, moving Devens and the 15th Massachusetts from their fortified position to the extreme right and placing the 20th Massachusetts, California Regiment, and Tammany Regiment alongside them, from right to left. To Cogswell, a no-nonsense officer in the Regular Army who had graduated from West Point a year after Stone, Baker joked, quoting Sir Walter Scott’s poem, “The Lady of the Lake”: “One blast upon your bugle horn/Is worth a thousand men.” Cogswell, who had promised upon taking command of the New York regiment that “no inefficient officers would lead the men into the field,” could not make the same guarantee about those at a higher pay grade.

Baker located his friend, Lt. Col. Isaac Wistar, and showed him the message from Stone estimating the Confederate numbers at 4,000 men. “We are certainly outnumbered in front,” Wistar agreed. “Yes, that is a bad condition of things,” said Baker, asking Wistar to “come and go around with me and look at my dispositions and plans, and say what you think of them.” Wistar had no particular opinion, except to ask if he could extend his own regiment to the left. “I throw the entire responsibility for the left wing upon you,” said Baker airily. “Do as you like.” Baker also asked Lee and Cogswell what they thought of his plans, but ignored Cogswell’s cogent observation that the wooded hill beyond their lines on the left could, if seized by the Confederates, command the entire field. Instead of permitting Cogswell to occupy the hill, Baker told him to take command of the artillery—a baffling order, given the circumstances. Twenty minutes later, the 8th Virginia took the hill and commenced to rain gunfire down onto the Federals.

Confederate sharpshooters soon picked off all the artillerymen on the Union left, and Baker, Cogswell, and other officers attempted to handle the rifled 6-pounder, but quickly gave it up as a poor job. They wandered over to the infantry lines, where they found the twice-wounded Wistar with blood streaming down his face into his beard. “The bullets are seeking for you but avoiding me,” Baker told him with scant sympathy. Seconds later, a third bullet smashed into Wistar’s right elbow, completely shattering the bones and joint. His unsheathed sword dropped to the grass. “What, Wistar, hit again?” Baker cried. He helped his old partner put his sword back into its scabbard, then sent him to the rear with a passing private. “Here, my man,” Baker commanded, “catch hold of Colonel Wistar and get him to the boat somehow, if you have to carry him.”

Bullets continued to whistle through the air, but Baker refused an intelligent suggestion from the men of the 20th Massachusetts to lie down alongside them. “No, my son,” he told one Bay Stater, “and when you get to be a United States senator, you will not lie down either.” Men were falling on all sides. Lt. Col. Ward of the 15th Massachusetts was blasted sideways by a rifle ball that shattered his leg, and 1st Lt. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was shot in the chest by a bullet that passed completely through his body. Semi-conscious, Holmes was helped down to the bluff and put onto the skiff to be transported back across the Potomac. He would survive his wound and two others during the war to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Contrary to established practice, no standing orders had been given to the men before the battle not to leave their posts to take their injured buddies to the rear. As Captain Francis Young, an aide on Baker’s personal staff, remembered later; “A great many of our men became disheartened and frightened and whenever anyone was hit, six or seven would take hold of him and carry him away.”

For more than two hours, heavy firing took place all along the western side of Ball’s Bluff. Baker, alternately described as “cool and gallant” or “much excited,” continued to direct the Union defense. When an aide warned that Confederates were moving up the ravine on the left, Baker refused to believe it. “No doubt they are General Gorman’s men coming up from Edwards Ferry,” he said. By 5 pm, however, Baker had seen enough to be concerned. He ordered Young to “go down to Stone and tell him we are fixed.” That would have been news to Stone, who believed the battle was well in hand and had even telegraphed commanding general George McClellan: “There has been sharp firing on the right of our line, and our troops appear to be advancing there under Baker. The left, under Gorman, has advanced its skirmishers nearly one mile, and, if the movement continues successfully, will turn the enemy’s right.”

In any event, Young did not make it back to the rear to deliver his message. He was halfway down the rear side of Ball’s Bluff when he heard someone shout, “Colonel Baker is killed!” It was true. Baker had been walking in front of the lines on the extreme Union left when a small group of Confederate skirmishers burst out of the tree line and opened fire. One large, red-headed Rebel in shirt sleeves fired point-blank at Baker with his pistol, striking the colonel squarely in the middle of his handsome forehead and killing him instantly. Frederick Harvey, adjutant of the California Regiment, cried out, “For God’s sake, boys, are you going to let them have the general’s body?” Several Federal officers rushed forward to retrieve Baker’s remains, and Captain Louis Beirel of the California Regiment shot and killed Baker’s assailant. Young, who had returned to the top of the bluff, helped Baker’s nephew, 2nd Lt. Edward Jerome, carry the senator’s body down the far side of the hill, placing it in a boat loaded with other dead or wounded soldiers that was bound for Harrison’s Island.

Soon, the rest of the Union forces on Ball’s Bluff began to follow suit. At dusk, a bayonet charge by the 8th Virginia and 17th and 18th Mississippi Regiments cleared the front of Federals, who began a panicky rout—it could scarcely be called a retreat—to the bottom of the cliff. The pursuing Confederates unleashed volley after volley on their beaten foes. “A kind of shiver ran through the huddled mass upon the brow of the cliff,” one Confederate wrote. As he watched, the Federal troops “gave way, rushed a few steps, then in one wild, panic-stricken herd, rolled, leaped, tumbled over the precipice.” The descent was so steep that the men had to slide down the side, wearing the bluff smooth by the sheer number of men who were sliding down it. The water in the river was lashed by so many bullets that the surface roiled “as white as in a great hail storm,” one Union survivor recalled.

Screaming in terror and throwing aside their weapons as they ran, the Federal troops stumbled down to the banks of the river below Ball’s Bluff. Many simply dove into the chilly water and swam for Harrison’s Island. Others tried to climb aboard the over-crowded flatboats, swamping the boats and sending their wounded passengers flailing helplessly into the water beside them. “Large numbers rushed on board, trampling upon the wounded, until they all sank together,” wrote a Confederate watching from the bluff. “Colonels and captains had deserted their commands, and, throwing off their clothing, escaped by swimming; at one time the river seemed covered with heads, and when, being ordered back, refusing to return, nearly all were shot by our men.” “We are a little short of boats,” Stone reported to McClellan with unintended irony.

By 7 pm, the Confederate victory was complete, and Evans ordered his brigade to withdraw from Ball’s Bluff to Leesburg. With them they took 553 Union prisoners; another 207 enemy troops lay either killed or wounded on either side of the hill. For days after the battle, the bodies of drowned Union soldiers were recovered downriver as far as Washington. Confederate casualties were relatively light: 36 dead, 117 wounded and two missing. It would prove to be one of the most lopsided victories of the entire war.

In Washington, as was his custom, Abraham Lincoln had been monitoring reports as they came into McClellan’s headquarters on Jackson Square. At 6:45, he was handed a telegram from Stone by one of the clerks: “Colonel Baker has been killed at the head of his brigade. I got to the right at once.” Stunned, the president stood without moving or speaking for several minutes. Then he crossed the room, bent his head to pass through the door, and stepped into the street. He stumbled down the front steps and nearly fell, but quickly righted himself and walked down the sidewalk alone, his chest heaving and tears rolling down his face. The North had lost another battle, and Lincoln had lost his best friend.

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