The race to Second Manassas was on. Clark’s Mountain would soon be forgotten, and the intelligence gathering that had served Pope so well would fail miserably. Nevertheless, the events surrounding Clark’s Mountain are instructive because they bring to light the enormous value of Union intelligence operations when conducted effectively, as well as providing a perfect example of why the writings of Civil War generals are not always to be trusted.

Taking Pope’s report at face value, it is easy to see how a misconception could arise. The report says that ‘the cavalry expeditions sent out on the 16th in the direction of Louisa Court House captured the adjutant-general of General Stuart, and was very near capturing that officer himself. Among the papers was an autograph letter of General Robert E. Lee to General Stuart, dated Gordonsville, August 13, which made manifest to me the position and force of the enemy and their determination to overwhelm the army under my command….’

It is this paragraph that historian Edwin C. Fishel, in his work The Secret War for the Union, describes as ‘the clearest example Civil War history ever produces of a general’s use of a cover story to protect a piece of espionage.’ According to Fishel, Pope himself admitted the deception in a postwar letter to Harter in which Pope said the former spy had been the first person to give him the vital information concerning Lee’s plan.

While Pope’s report was printed in the Official Records, both the records of Harter’s service and Pope’s letter to him remained unpublished and unexamined, as did the accounts of the 2nd Maryland’s raid. The absence of those accounts made the prominence of the captured order understandable. However, relying on the story of the captured order is troublesome, since it gives a false picture of Pope’s conduct in the Second Manassas campaign. It makes it seem as if he was blissfully going along when a sudden stroke of luck provided him with the information he needed to save his army. That could not be farther from the truth. While Pope may not have been aware of the precise location of the Confederate army until the morning of August 18, the fact that they were nearby probably did not surprise him too much. He had long suspected that the Confederates would seek to attack him on the left of his line, and he had been receiving reports, as he himself stated, since August 12 that Lee was being reinforced and was moving to confront him from that direction. Both Pope and his superiors in Washington rightly felt that with McClellan’s withdrawal from the Virginia peninsula, Lee would be reinforced and move against Pope’s left.

Pope’s order to Reno of August 17, which sparked the mission of the 2nd Maryland and the scout of the 1st Michigan and 5th New York, mentioned that exact scenario and was designed to try to avoid it if at all possible. Far from being ignorant of potential danger, Pope used every means at his disposal to keep watch on his vulnerable left flank: a cavalry scout, an infantry scout, spies and lookouts on Thoroughfare Mountain. While the lookouts failed to see the advancing Confederate army, the other three produced valuable intelligence.

A quick survey of current titles on the campaign and Battle of Second Manassas reveals how widespread the story of the captured order is, but this has not always been the case. Several historians came close to blowing Pope’s cover story before Fishel. One was Douglas Southall Freeman in his Pulitzer Prize­winning biography of Lee. He mentioned all three possible sources of intelligence, giving prominence to the captured order, then mentioning the 2nd Maryland’s raid: ‘To his [Lee's] disappointment over his inability to strike Pope in his exposed position…there was added on the 18th a fear that the enemy had discovered his presence despite his efforts to conceal the army. He learned that at daylight the Federals had raided a signal station that Jackson had established on…Clark’s Mountain….There was no way of telling what the enemy had seen before he had been driven back, or what records he had found.’ Freeman also mentioned in passing the report of Thomas Harter, citing McDowell’s official report as his source.

Another historian, Charles F. Walcott, mentioned the 2nd Maryland’s report in his History of the 21st Massachusetts: ‘A strong cavalry expedition…which captured an important dispatch from General Lee to General Stuart, and a gallant reconnaissance by our 2nd Maryland regiment on the night of the 17th, disclosed not only General Lee’s determination to make short and decisive work with General Pope and his army, but also that a rebel force amply sufficient to crush us, masked by the hills across the river, was rapidly moving into position for an advance.’

Those two mentions of the 2nd Maryland’s raid are among the few accounts by historians that differ from the story of the captured order. Two additional accounts by members of the 2nd Maryland Infantry provide essential information about the timing of the arrival of the captured order and help establish approximate times for the report of the 2nd Maryland.

Benjamin F. Taylor, last commanding officer of the 2nd Maryland, wrote his own account of events, which makes a case for his regiment providing the information that saved Pope’s army. After telling the story of the raid, Taylor noted that ‘our Colonel [Duryee] reported to General Reno between seven and eight o’clock a.m. by courier and in person before 10 a.m.’ Drawing on Reno’s report of the unit’s action and Pope’s official report of the campaign, Taylor made a case for the importance of the raid. He presented first Reno’s report, then a lengthy portion of Pope’s report, the gist of which is that by the morning of August 18 Pope had become convinced that the newly reinforced Confederate army was assembling nearby.

Taylor continued with the rest of Pope’s rationale for the withdrawal: ‘On the 18th of August it became apparent…that this advanced position…was no longer tenable in the face of the overwhelming forces of the enemy. I determined, accordingly, to withdraw behind the Rappahannock….I directed Major General Reno to send back his trains on the morning of the 18th, by the way of Stevensburg, to Kelly’s or Barnette’s [sic] Ford, and…then follow with his whole corps.’

That passage makes it clear that Pope’s decision was made on the morning of the 18th, which is a key point, as it is unlikely that a large cavalry force traveling 13 or more miles deep into Confederate territory would have been able to return to Union lines before 10 a.m. According to Taylor, the captured order did not reach Pope until sometime after 3 p.m. on August 18.

As additional evidence, Taylor included a letter from A.N. Wood, a sergeant in the 6th New York Cavalry. Wood ‘was present when the report of the 2nd Maryland’s expedition was dictated and written, about ten a.m.,’ said Taylor. ‘Wood says the last sentence ‘The cavalry [Buford's] has not yet returned’ will ring in his ears through life. The clerk became a little mixed and the general had to repeat it. He also says the cavalry returned in the afternoon.

‘This statement [Wood's] taken with the reports of Reno and Pope…indicate clearly the information obtained by the Second decided the retrograde movements of the army, the wisdom of which was later confirmed by the cavalry when they returned with J.E.B. Stuart’s adjutant general and General Lee’s order for attack.’

In light of the available information on Harter and his report, Taylor was mistaken in his conclusion, but his account establishes the timing of the decision and the fact that the captured order did not arrive in time.

Another account, written by Jacob Eugene Duryee, provides additional details of the raid. According to Duryee, the detachment left camp at 1 a.m. on the morning of the 18th. ‘The night was cloudy and very dark,’ he wrote. ‘You could not see objects ten inches from you.’ After crossing the Rappahannock at Raccoon Ford, the men climbed over a fence and, avoiding a road near the river, headed up the side of Clark’s Mountain. ‘By avoiding the road we met with many obstacles, mostly consisting of fences, and it was with difficulty that we made the march up the side of the mountain,’ he wrote. The raiders had been ordered to attack the signal post at daylight, but it was sunrise when they captured it. By Duryee’s estimate, the time was 5:23 a.m. They spent about 20 minutes on the summit, and between 5:45 and 6 a.m. they began the march back to camp.

According to Duryee, their return journey went much more quickly than their march to the summit, since it was daylight and they found a ford that cut a mile off their march. ‘I am positive that the report of the engineer reached General Reno sometime before the detachment returned,’ wrote Duryee. ‘For shortly after leaving the signal station the great importance of the information he had obtained, I knew was being anxiously awaited for by Genl. Reno. I therefore sent him ahead with an escort to make all possible haste to the headquarters of the General….I feel sure that the engineer was present when Gen. Reno dictated this report and the time was about 7:30 a.m.’ He mentioned Taylor’s account and said that Taylor was incorrect in saying that he had reported to Reno by 10 a.m. ‘This should read 8 a.m. for about 10 a.m. the order from Gen. Pope had been issued for the retreat,’ wrote Duryee. In another letter he stated that he was sure that ‘the reports of Topographical Engineer and myself of the skirmish were in Gen. Pope’s hands before 8 a.m.’

When Taylor’s and Duryee’s accounts are merged with the reports and dispatches in the Official Records and with the facts of Harter and Montgomery’s reports, a completely different picture of Pope’s actions arises. The only workable chronology for the day’s events is that Harter provided the first intelligence of Lee’s army at an unknown time on the morning of August 18. Concurrently or soon after, news of the 2nd Maryland’s raid reached Reno’s headquarters at about 8 a.m., followed by Montgomery’s report on the evening of the 18th and the arrival of the captured order sometime between the afternoon of the 18th and August 22, which is when Pope reported to General Halleck that he had the captured letter.

For too long Thomas Harter’s and Richard Montgomery’s bravery in infiltrating the Confederate army and the story of the 2nd Maryland’s raid on Clark’s Mountain have been lost in the mists of history. Rather than a triumph of luck or the fortunes of war, it was instead a systematic use of intelligence-gathering through spies, signal corps operatives, cavalry and infantry reconnaissance that saved Pope at Clark’s Mountain. It was not blind luck, but skillful professionalism–an overriding factor in the entire outcome of the war.

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This article was written by John Lam and originally appeared in the July 1998 issue of America’s Civil War magazine.

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