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Colonel (afterward General) Torbert, wlio commanded the detachment leftat Fairfax Court House on August 30th, reports that about 8 o’clock on thenight of the 31st the enemy brought three pieces of artillery about threehundred yards from his pickets, and fired upon the trains then crowding theturnpike in his rear, causing great confusion. Torbert drove off the enemy’sartillery, reported to General Pope, and on the next morning was reenforcedby a brigade and two batteries. It appears from General J. E. B. Stuart’sreport of his operations that this attack was made by him. Had Colonel Tol-bert’s brigade not been present to defend this very vulnerable point, Stuart’scavalry would easily have been in rear of the army that night; the trainswould in all probability have been utterly destroyed, and another great dis-aster would have occurred. The wisdom of General McClellan ’s order, whichdirected me to guard General Pope’s communications with Alexandria, wasthus demonstrated.
SLAVE PEN.
IIEINTZEL.MAN’S HEADQUARTERS AT ALEXANDRIA. FROM A SKETCH MADE SEPTEMBER 3, 1862.
BY RICHARD B. IRWIN, LIEUTENANT-COLONEL AND ASSISTANT ADJUTANT-GENERAL, U. S. V.
“ rpHE 27th and 28th” [of August], writes Gen-J- eral F. A. Walker, in his admirable “ Historyof the Second Army Corps,” “ were almost days ofpanic in Washington.” These words mildly indicatethe state into which affairs had fallen at the close ofAugust and the opening of September, 1862, onthe heels of General Pope’s defeat in the SecondBull Run . Yet Washington was defended by notless than 110,000 men; for, in addition to thearmy which Pope was bringing back, beaten cer-tainly, but by no means destroyed, there stoodbefore the lines of Washington not less than
40,000 veterans who had not fired a shot in thiscampaign, and behind the lines 30,000 good menof the garrisons and the reserves of whom at leasttwo-thirds were veterans in discipline, though allwere untried in battle.
As General McClellan ’s staff rode in on themorning of the 2d of September, from their heart-rending exile on the Seminary heights, condemnedthere to hear in helpless idleness the awful thunderof Manassas and Chantilly, we made our waythrough the innumerable herd of stragglers,—mingled with an endless stream of wagons and