Christie, Cox, Crook, Confusion, and the Burnside Bridge

George Crook

Sometimes, going down rabbit holes of research will lead you to unexpected places. Occasionally, they lead nowhere. But every once in a while, you get rewarded. Hence, the case of Lt. Samuel L. Christie of Jacob Cox's staff during the Maryland Campaign.

It all started by reading George Crook's Autobiography. “About ten a.m.,” Crook remembered, “Capt. Christ on Gen. Cox' staff came to see me, and said, ‘The General wishes you to take the bridge.’ I asked him what bridge. He said he didn't know. I asked him where the stream was, but he didn't know. I made some remarks not complimentary to such a way of doing business, but he went off, not caring a cent. Probably he had done the correct thing.”[i] This story of miscommunication and poor intelligence has always astounded me. How could Crook, who had two companies of the 11th Ohio Infantry overlooking the Burnside Bridge since 7:00 a.m., not know where the bridge was located? And how could a staff officer of corps commander Jacob Cox not know the location of Antietam Creek or have an answer to Crook’s query? Attempting to answer these questions is beyond this post (if they are even answerable) but my affinity for staff officers in Civil War armies forced me to look into this Capt. Christ.

In his after-action report of the Battle of South Mountain, Cox personally thanks S. L. Christie and one other staff officer “for the devotion and courage displayed by them in the laborious and hazardous duties of the day.”[ii] Crook got the name wrong in his autobiography, but not by much. Thanks to some Googling and searching through various books in my library, I was able to find a Samuel L. Christie, born in 1837 and listed as a Captain of the 1st Kentucky Infantry.[iii] Fold3 has all Kentucky’s Compiled Service Records (CSR) digitized; I obtained more information about Christie here.

Alfred Pleasonton's Intelligence Contributions to the Battle of South Mountain

Alfred Pleasonton

Brig. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton is rarely thought of as an able intelligence officer. But like any Civil War officer, his share of bad days were occasionally intermixed with good ones. The evening of September 13, 1862 and the morning of the next day was one of his better performances in gathering and effectively utilizing intelligence.

In the hours before dusk of September 13, Pleasonton's cavalrymen drove Confederate cavalry from Hagan's Gap in Catoctin Mountain west of Frederick and then likewise secured Middletown from the gray horsemen. Pleasonton requested support from Ambrose Burnside in his rear. In the meantime, he pushed his troopers to the base of Turner's Gap in South Mountain itself.

At the crossroads town of Bolivar, Pleasonton dismounted some of his cavalry and pushed them up South Mountain north of the National Road. This movement produced minor skirmishing. Standing at the base of Turner's Gap, where the National Road crossed South Mountain, Pleasonton recognized the strength of the position and the difficulty any Federal force would have seizing it. Thus, Pleasonton also authorized reconnaissance efforts while in the area, from which he learned that two roads, one north of and one south of Turner's Gap, reentered the National Road on the west side of South Mountain behind the gap. Pleasonton believed these roads "would assist us materially in turning the enemy's position on both flanks."