1862 August 31 Fairfax county, Va.


              Upton’s Farm, Fairfax Co., Va., Aug. 31, 1862.
     All day yesterday a cannonading was
kept up in the direction of Manassas, and
in the afternoon it sounded terrible in the
extreme.  Hard fighting took place, but
who got the better of it, is not yet known.
The report was circulated today that
Stonewall Jackson with 18,000 of his
men was captured, but the story sounds
too incredible.  Jackson is too wary a fox
to allow himself to be bagged so early.
The report was, that our forces were in
his front, and rear, and that he was
thus ‘hemmed in,’ but this sounds so little
like Jackson’s policy, that we await a
confirmation of these reports before believing _
     The campaign in Eastern Virginia has,
thus far, been far from encouraging, and
what little we have gained, has been
mostly abandoned or retaken.  Washington
must have been menaced, and our army reduced
to straits, when we were obliged to abandon the Peninsular.
What avails those noble lives sacrificed in battle or by
disease on the Peninsular, and who is to blame for gross mismanagement?

[transcript by Mary Roy Dawson Edwards]

MSS 13925

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