Featured in the Savas Beatie Newsletter.

This interview appeared in the October 2023 SB newsletter. Enjoy!

5 Questions with Author Alex Rossino

This month, our Five Things column features author Alex Rossino of Calamity at Frederick. This book will be released soon. Here, Alex shares five facts he discovered while working on this book. Take it away, Alex… 1. Robert E. Lee assumed his army could operate in Maryland until winter. Writing in his official campaign report that at the outset of the Maryland Campaign he believed his army was “strong enough to detain the enemy upon the northern frontier until the approach of winter should render his advance into Virginia difficult, if not impracticable,” General Lee revealed that he had crossed the Potomac thinking it would take Washington weeks if not months to field another effective fighting force against him. Lee based his assumption in part on the fact that he had just witnessed the defeated Union Army of Virginia flee the field in disarray after the Battle of Second Manassas. In addition, however, news about the arrival of 60,000 new recruits in D.C. also influenced Lee’s opinion because he thought it would take time to train these men for active service. George B. McClellan’s efficiency as an organizer, and the confidence he inspired in his men as a commander, quickly surprised Lee when the newly reconstituted Army of the Potomac began moving toward Frederick City on Sept. 8. These developments shattered Lee’s expectations underlying the campaign within a matter of only a few days. 2. Planning for the operation against Harpers Ferry began on Sept. 8, not on Sept. 9. News arrived on the morning of Sept. 8 that the Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry had not evacuated north to Pennsylvania as General Lee expected it would. Lee admitted in writing that his belief in Harpers Ferry’s evacuation was based on a rumor circulating at the time. On that same morning, Lee also learned that McClellan’s army was moving toward him. These two developments forced the general to develop a plan with Stonewall Jackson for capturing the Harpers Ferry garrison before turning to face the pursuing Army of the Potomac. Following the conference with Jackson, and with James Longstreet, who stumbled onto the meeting by accident, Lee took another twenty-four hours to develop the final instructions that became Special Orders No. 191. 3. Lee never distributed Special Orders No. 191 as a ten paragraph document. When General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865, Federal forces captured the headquarters “order book” also known as the “letter book.” This book contained a master record of all orders, dispatches, and circulars issued to the army during the war, including a full, ten paragraph version of Special Orders No. 191. Written in the handwriting of Capt. Arthur Mason, an aide on Lee’s staff, the ten-paragraph document is the version of the orders that later appeared in series 1, volume 19, part 2 of the Official Records. The appearance of this document in the OR has long led scholars to assume that Special Orders No. 191 must have contained ten paragraphs. This, however, was not the case. Lee dictated an eight-paragraph draft labeled Special Orders No. 190 to his aide Charles Marshall on the morning of Sept. 9. Special Orders No. 190 contained paragraphs three through ten. A second draft labeled Special Orders No. 191 dictated by Lee contained paragraphs one and two. We know this because an endorsed, official copy of the two paragraph Special Orders No. 191 addressed to General Samuel Cooper in Richmond is held by the U.S. National Archives. The draft Special Orders No. 190 is not official because it does not bear an official countersignature and it is not addressed to anyone; yet it is this draft that served as the template for distribution. We know this because the two extant copies of the orders – the headquarters version addressed to D. H. Hill and the copy made by Jackson for Hill – both contain paragraphs three through ten and the content of those copies matches the content in Special Orders No. 190. Why General Lee chose to do things in this manner is a mystery. It is also a mystery why Lee had the eight paragraph Special Orders No. 190 distributed as Special Orders No. 191. We also do not know why the two orders were later combined under the number 191 instead of being put into the headquarters order book as separate documents. 4. Robert H. Chilton probably did not write the lost copy of Special Orders No. 191. The appearance of Chilton’s name at the bottom of the lost copy of Lee’s orders, and its alleged confirmation as Chilton’s authentic signature by Lt. Samuel Pittmann of Union General Alpheus Williams’s staff has long led scholars to conclude that Chilton wrote the lost copy of the orders. Months of detailed handwriting analysis, however, leads to the conclusion that Chilton neither signed nor wrote the lost copy. It appears instead that General Lee’s military secretary, Col. Armistead L. Long, wrote it. Why he would have written out a copy of the orders is a mystery, although I present a hypothesis in Calamity at Frederick why he might have done so. In any case, it appears that Chilton did nothing to merit the criticism he has faced since the orders were lost. 5. General Lee (or Robert Chilton) employed Maj. Walter H. Taylor’s older brother, Maj. Richard C. Taylor, as the copyist of the distributed Special Orders No. 191. Temporarily attached to Lee’s headquarters staff at the beginning of the Maryland Campaign, Maj. Richard C. Taylor acted as an aide-de-camp for Lee until the army left Frederick on Sept. 10. At that point, the elder Taylor returned to Virginia on the trail of his younger brother.