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of
Sharpsburg, that
Longstreet and
Jackson were made lieutenant-generals, and the whole army was definitely organized into corps.
Some improvement was also made in our armament by the guns and rifled muskets captured during the Seven Days, and my reserve ordnance train was enlarged.
Lines of light earthworks were constructed, protecting Chaffin's Bluff batteries on the
James River, and stretching across the peninsula to connect with the lines already built from the
Chickahominy to the head of
White Oak Swamp.
Gen. D. H. Hill also constructed lines on the south side of the
James, protecting Drury's Bluff and
Richmond from an advance in that quarter; and
Gen. French at
Petersburg, as already mentioned, threw lines around that city, from the river below to the river above.
Just at the beginning of the Seven Days Battles,
President Lincoln had called from the
West Maj.-Gen. John Pope, and placed him in command of the three separate armies of
Fremont and
Banks, in the
Valley of Virginia, and
McDowell near
Fredericksburg.
The union of the three into one was a wise measure, but the selection of a commander was as eminently unwise.
One from the army in
Virginia, other things being equal, would have possessed many advantages, and there was no lack of men of far sounder reputation than
Pope had borne among his comrades in the old U. S. Army.
He had spent some years in
Texas boring for artesian water on the
Staked Plains, and making oversanguine reports of his prospects of success.
An army song had summed up his reputation in a brief parody of some well-known lines, ‘Hope told a flattering tale,’ as follows:—
Pope told a flattering tale,
Which proved to be bravado,
About the streams which spout like ale
On the
Llano Estacado.
Pope arrived early in July and began to concentrate and organize his army.
A characteristic ‘flattering tale’ is told in an address to his troops, July 14, dated ‘Headquarters in the Saddle’:—
‘Let us understand each other.
I come to you from the West where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose ’
