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he decides on a reconnaissance in force across the Potomac at Leesburg—hoping this might cause the Confederates to shift troops away from their strong points.
Opposite Leesburg, at Poolesville, Maryland, Union Brigadier General Charles P. Stone is given instructions that “perhaps a small demonstration on your part would move them from Leesburg” thus precipitating the Battle of Ball’s Bluff. The day Stone crosses the Potomac is exactly three months to the day after the opening land battle of the Civil War, the Union debacle at Bull Run.
What follows on October 21, 1861, are a series of blunders at the bluffs of Ball’s Island by a poorly led Union force of 1720 men who are outfought by better entrenched and more seasoned Confederate soldiers. By the end of the battle 921 Union soldiers are casualties, including Sen. (Col.) Edward D. Baker, Abraham Lincoln’s best boyhood friend.
This death, combined with the defeat at Balls Bluff, and the earlier rout at Bull Run, leads to a serious political backlash on Capitol Hill against Lincoln’s conduct of the war: the formation of the Joint Committee of the Conduct of the War. This committee enables the Radical
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