General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191

Title

General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191

Date

1862

Creator

["Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807-1870."]

Place

["Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland, United States"]

Local Call Number

VC.6

Document Details

Title

General Robert E. Lee's Special Order 191

Date

1862

Creator

["Lee, Robert E. (Robert Edward), 1807-1870."]

Rights

All rights held by the State Archives of NC. Permission to publish must be obtained from the registrar in writing.

Description

In early September of 1862, following the Confederate victory at Second Manassas, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee moved into Maryland at Frederick. There General Lee wrote out his plans in great detail. On September 9 Lee issued Special Order 191 giving strategic information on the division of units at the beginning of his Maryland campaign. A copy was sent to General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, who in his own hand made a copy that he sent to General D. H. Hill. Hill kept the order with his papers, which were later deposited in the North Carolina State Archives by his family. When the Union Army moved into Frederick, an Indiana private found three cigars wrapped in another copy of Special Order 191, also addressed to General Hill. Controversy and mystery surround the story of how the orders came to be there. However, the dispatch was passed through the Union chain of command and gave General George B. McClellan advance notice of Lee's army's movements. Subsequently, Lee was defeated and driven back by McClellan's army at Sharpsburg (Antietam), Maryland, September 17, 1862. Later, stories of the "Lost Dispatch" appeared in newspapers, and D. H. Hill was largely blamed. In the aftermath of the Civil War, Hill carried on an extensive correspondence to discover the circumstances surrounding the misplaced order. Finally, in 1885, Hill conceded that "an order from Lee directed to me was lost, I do not now doubt," but he denied that he had received it. To this day, students of the Civil War, argue the questions of who lost the Special Order 191, how it happened, and what were the long-term implications.

Subject

["United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865","United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Campaigns","Military orders","North Carolina--History--Civil War, 1861-1865"]

Index Terms

Hill, D. H. (Daniel Harvey), 1821-1889| Jackson, Stonewall, 1824-1863

Local Call Number

VC.6

Place

["Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland, United States"]

Time Period

["(1860-1876) Civil War and Reconstruction"]

Digital Collections

["Treasures"]

Source Collections

["Vault Collection. State Archives of North Carolina"]

Format

["Orders (Military records)"]

Hosted By

["State Archives of North Carolina"]

Identifier

VC_6_Robert_E_Lee_Special_Order

Document Details

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Document Details

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