George H. Gordon, From Brook Farm to Cedar Mountain

It will be remembered that on the 8th Siegel received orders from Pope to march immediately from Sperryville to Culpeper, a distance of about twenty miles. Instead of obeying these orders, he sent a note (which the latter received after night on the 8th), dated at Sperryville at 6.30 P. M., asking by what road he should march to Culpeper Court House. This delay of Siegel's detained him until too late for the action,--“delayed him,” as Pope says,¹ “by the singular uncertainty of what road he ought to pursue.” Nor was this all. At this vital hour, at four o'clock in the afternoon of the ninth of August, Siegel's corps had not yet arrived at Culpeper, and, worse than that, when it did arrive, the men were hungry as well as jaded, for they were without rations. “I had given notice,” says Pope, “that the whole army of Virginia should always be ready to move at the shortest notice, and should habitually keep two days rations in their haversack;” and this Pope seems to have thought sufficient to assure, beyond peradventure, the arrival of Siegel at Culpeper with food at all events on the day of the battle of Cedar Mountain. But not so SiegeL His corps had not a cracker nor a ration of pork; and his men could not march without them. So provisions were procured from McDowell's command and cooked, at Culpeper Court House. While Siegel's corps, between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, were getting their dinners to be in readiness to move forward between five and seven miles to aid in fighting the battle Pope intended to fight with his whole army, the principal events which I have recorded were transpiring.

“It was intended,” testifies McDowell, in the Court of