How Samuel E. Pittman validated Lee's "Lost Orders" prior to Antietam: a historical note.

WHAT WAS ARGUABLY THE MOST INCREDIBLE STRING OF COINCIDENCES that occurred during the American Civil War took place on the morning of September 13, 1862.

The extraordinary events of that day began between 9:00 and 10:00 A.M. when Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana sought some shade in which to rest as his regiment completed a march to Frederick, Maryland. His unit, like much of General George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac, was in pursuit of General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia, which had crossed the Potomac River and entered Maryland several days earlier. As Mitchell stretched out under a tree alongside a fencerow, his eye caught sight of a foreign object nearby: a rather bulky envelope lying in the grass not far from where he was resting. (1) His curiosity prompted him to pick the envelope up, and inside he found a sheet of paper wrapped around three cigars. The heading on the paper read:

(Confidential)

Hd Qrs Army of Northern Va Sept 9th 1862

Special Orders No 191

The document was nothing less than Lee's detailed marching orders for the Maryland campaign. They were addressed to "Maj Gen D. H. Hill Comdg Division" and were signed:

Command of Gen R. E. Lee

R. H. Chilton

A A General (2)

Corporal Mitchell alerted his first sergeant, John M. Bloss, and they carried the orders, and the cigars, to the company commander, Captain Peter Kopp. Captain Kopp sent the two men at once to the regiment's commander, Colonel Silas Colgrove, who in turn promptly headed off with the document to Twelfth Corps headquarters. As Colonel Colgrove subsequently related in an article published in the Century Magazine in 1886, "General A. S. Williams was in command of our division. I immediately took the order to his headquarters, and delivered it to Colonel S. E. Pittman, General Williams's adjutant-general."

At this moment, the series of coincidences surrounding Lee's "Lost Orders" took perhaps their most extraordinary turn. "The order was signed by Colonel Chilton, General Lee's adjutant-general, and the signature was at once recognized by Colonel Pittman, who had served with Colonel Chilton at Detroit, Michigan, before the war, and was acquainted with his handwriting," Colgrove wrote. "It was at once taken to General McClellan's headquarters by Colonel Pittman," he added. (3)

McClellan knew full well what had fallen into his hands: Lee's detailed plans for the Maryland campaign, giving the line of march for the various units of his army, orders that had been fully authenticated by a Union officer who could say without question that the document was genuine. "I have all the plans of the Rebels and will catch them in their own trap if my men are equal to the emergency," McClellan telegraphed President Abraham Lincoln at noon on September 13. "Will send you trophies." (4) The bloodiest single day of the Civil War was soon to follow along the banks of Antietam Creek.

Colgrove's tale of the discovery and verification of the "Lost Orders" remained the standard version of these events well into the twentieth century. (5) Not until Stephen W. Sears published his essay "Last Words on the Lost Order" in 1999 were some critical elements in Colgrove's 1886 account called into question by a prominent historian. "As Colgrove remembered their conversation, Pittman said he had served with R. H. Chilton in the old army in Michigan before the war and recognized his handwriting, but Colgrove's recollection was faulty," Sears wrote. "Pittman had entered the army only in September 1861, six months after Chilton resigned his U.S. commission to join the Confederacy." Citing evidence gleaned from Pittman's pension record and an 1886 article in a Detroit newspaper, Sears went on to say that according to "Pittman's own postwar recollection, he simply recognized Chilton's name as the army paymaster stationed in Detroit when he had lived there." (6) As James M. McPherson has noted recently in his Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam, Sears conclusively refuted Colgrove's assertion that Pittman had served with Chilton in the United States Army before the war, but a final question remained: "Sears ... does not specify how Pittman or anyone else validated the genuineness of the orders," McPherson observes. (7)

That last piece of the puzzle can now be definitively fitted into place. Documents in the Samuel E. Pittman Papers, a recent gift by Pittman's descendants to the Chapin Library of Williams College, provide a detailed description of how the authentication took place on that remarkable morning back in September 1862. (8)

The critical information emerges from a postwar exchange of correspondence between Pittman and Ezra A. Carman, a Union army veteran of the battle at Antietam who served as the "Historical Expert" of the Antietam Battlefield Board in the 1890s and who was planning to write a comprehensive account of the battle and the events leading up to that fateful day. (9) "I am anxious to know the hour of the day Sep 13 1862, that Gen Lee's lost order No 191 was handed to you by Col Colgrove and at what hour it was delivered to Gen McClellan or to his headquarters," Carman wrote Pittman on May 3, 1897. "I am compiling a history of the Maryland campaign and the information is important to me." (10)

Pittman replied at once. "My recollection is that it was somewhat earlier than noon that Colgrove appeared with the Lee order, it certainly could not have been later," he wrote on May 7. "I did not take the order myself as we were momentarily expecting orders to move forward, which expectation was heightened by the importance of the paper so opportunely falling into our possession," he added. "I could not be spared to personally carry the paper to General McClellan and General Colgrove was in error on this point, but I sent the order at once with an injunction [to the courier] to ride fast, and it was promptly delivered at General McClellan's headquarters." (11)

Carman pressed for more details. "Is there likelihood of any other members of Williams' staff having recollection of the matter?" he asked on May 9, and he followed up this query with a further communication to Pittman twelve days later. "Since yours of the 7th inst I have received a letter from Gen Nathan Kimball, Ogden, Utah, who says he carried the order 191 of Gen Lee to McClellan and delivered it to him personally, and that the time was not later than 9:30 A.M." Since Pittman had written in his May 7 letter that he had not personally delivered the lost orders to McClellan, Carman wondered if perhaps Kimball had done so. (12)

Carman's May 21 letter prompted Pittman to give a much fuller account of the events of September 13, 1862. Pittman's reply on May 24 filled in many of the details of the receipt of the document at General Williams's headquarters, but it was not quite the final word:

   I have often recalled the occasion now under our notice, and nothing
   has ever come up to shake my sense of accuracy as to circumstances
   connected with the famous Special Order No. 191.

   As I wrote you I thought the hour earlier than noon, and from 9 to
   10 A.M. has always been in my memory.

   At the time the paper came to us the entire command was drawn out as
   usual ready for marching in such direction as might be given by the
   commanding general, and General Williams, myself and escort, with
   some general or field officers present, as was often the case, at
   the head of the Division that was to be the leading one. Genl
   Williams directed me to send the paper to Genl McClellan, and I am
   sure I suggested taking it personally, but the General could not
   spare me. I began a copy of it, regarding it of so much value, but
   the General objected to even that much delay, and the paper was
   immediately enclosed to Genl McClellan's address and forwarded by
   a trusty orderly, according to my recollection, and as I say,
   nothing has ever turned up to disturb such recollection. From what
   Genl Kimball writes you it would appear that the paper never came
   into either Genl Williams hands or mine, so that some strange mist
   must have clouded Genl Kimball's memory.

In answer to Carman's question about who was present when Colgrove rode up with Lee's order, Pittman noted that he, "Col [Clermont] Best as Chief of Artillery and Ben Morgan as Provost Marshall" had been with General Williams at that moment. (13)

"Yours of 24th received," Carman replied on May 26. "I confess that I was somewhat surprised at Kimball's assertion that he handed the lost dispatch to McClellan in person and made no reference to Gen Williams and yourself." Carman admitted that Kimball "is a very old man, in failing health and liable, as you say, to be a bit 'misty' in his recollections." But there was one final thing Carman wanted to know: How had Pittman authenticated the lost orders? "I have seen it somewhere stated, or I have heard it that you were at one time, prior to the war, a clerk to Col R. H. Chilton, Lee's A. A. G and recognized his signature as genuine &c Am I correct or [is] this an error?" Carman concluded this letter with an apology. "I am sorry to trouble you so much," he wrote, "but I am digging for facts." (14)

Civil War historians have reason to commend Carman for his diligence. His persistence in "digging for facts" led Pittman, in a letter dated May 28, 1897, to give a full account of how he was able to identify Chilton's signature:

   I did at once pronounce the signature genuine, but from as follows,
   viz; That Chilton, a few years before the war, was on duty at
   Detroit as a Paymaster of the U.S. Army, at which time he kept his
   Bank account with the Michigan State Bank, and at the time I was
   teller of that Bank, thus paying thousands (probably) of his checks
   over the Bank counter--that my tellers experience qualified me
   somewhat to judge of signatures, and that the signature on Order No.
   191 was surely Chilton's. (15)

Pittman, as a young bank teller in Detroit, had thus been responsible for verifying Chilton's signature "thousands (probably)" of times, and he had drawn on that familiarity, and his "tellers experience," at the critical moment in September 1862 when so much was hanging in the balance. He could say without hesitation or qualification "that the signature on Order No. 191 was surely Chilton's." (16)

Pittman's word had been enough for his commanding officer. On the morning of September 13, 1862, Brigadier General Alpheus S. Williams scribbled out a hasty note to McClellan to accompany the precious document:

   General

   I enclose a General Special Order of Genl
   Lee Commanding Rebel forces which was found
   on the field where my Corps is Encamped.

   It is a document of interest & is no
   doubt genuine. (17)

The absence of "doubt" in General Williams's assessment rested on the assurances of one man: his thirty-one-year-old aide-de-camp, Samuel E. Pittman. (18)

Not the least of the surprises of September 13, 1862, was the ever-cautious McClellan's acceptance of the lost orders as genuine, but accept them he did. Pittman noted in a "Ladies Evening" talk he gave to the Michigan Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, in 1903 that some initial doubts had arisen about the lost orders on the day they had been found--that perhaps the document "was a ruse de guerre." "I was able to confidently assert that I was thoroughly familiar with Col. Chilton's signature and that this was genuine," he told his audience on this occasion. Perhaps Pittman conveyed this information verbally to the "trusty courier on duty at our headquarters" before he sent the soldier galloping off to find McClellan. (19) If so, Pittman failed to mention this possibility, either in his correspondence with Carman in 1897 or in his comments made at the "Ladies Evening" in 1903. But McClellan, like General Williams, had no doubts. "An order from General R. E. Lee, addressed to General D. H. Hill, which has accidentally come into my hands this evening--the authenticity of which is unquestionable--discloses some of the plans of the enemy," McClellan telegraphed Major General Henry W. Halleck on the evening of September 13. (20)

Lieutenant Samuel E. Pittman, erstwhile teller at Detroit's Michigan State Bank, had played a critical role in one of the most remarkable days in Civil War history.

(1) This account of the finding of the "Lost Orders" is based on the descriptions in Stephen W. Sears, "Last Words on the Lost Order," in his Controversies and Commanders: Dispatches from the Army of the Potomac (Boston, 1999), 113-15, and James M. McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam (New York, 2002), 107-8.

(2) The original copy of the "Lost Orders" is in the George B. McClellan Sr. Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), microfilm, reel 31.

(3) Silas Colgrove, "The Finding of Lee's Lost Order," in Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, eds., Battles and Leaders of the Civil War ... (4 vols.; New York, 1887-1888), II, 603.

(4) George B. McClellan to Abraham Lincoln, telegram, September 13, 1862, in Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence. 1860-1865 (New York, 1989), 453.

(5) See Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army (1951; reprint, Garden City, N.Y., 1954), 217-19; James V. Murfin, The Gleam of Bayonets: The Battle of Antietam and the Maryland Campaign of 1862 (New York, 1965), 132-33, 331-32; Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam (New Haven, 1983), 112-14, 349-50; and Joseph L. Harsh, Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862 (Kent, Ohio, 1999), 237-38.

(6) Sears, "Last Words on the Lost Order," 114-15 (quotations), 128-29n9.

(7) McPherson, Crossroads of Freedom, 175n26.

(8) Samuel E. Pittman Papers (Chapin Library, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.).

(9) For Carman's key role in assembling documentary evidence of the Antietam campaign, see Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 373.

(10) E. A. Carman to S. E. Pittman, May 3, 1897, Pittman Papers.

(11) Pittman to Carman, May 7, 1897, Pittman Papers.

(12) Carman to Pittman, May 9, 21, 1897, Pittman Papers.

(13) Pittman to Carman, May 24 1897, Pittman Papers.

(14) Carman to Pittman, May 26, 1897, Pittman Papers.

(15) Pittman to Carman, May 28, 1897, Pittman Papers.

(16) At least one other researcher, Wilbur D. Jones Jr., has noted that Pittman's experience as a bank teller at the Michigan State Bank had led to the verification of Chilton's signature, but Jones used sources that are less definitive than Pittman's firsthand account. See Jones, Giants in the Cornfield: The 27th Indiana Infantry (Shippensburg, Pa., 1997), 231,286n7. Also see Joseph Greusel, General Alpheus S. Williams (Detroit, 1911), 17.

(17) The original copy of General Williams's September 13, 1862, note is in the McClellan Papers, reel 31. Stephen W. Sears, a fine historian and normally an extremely careful scholar, seriously misreads the last sentence in Williams's hurriedly written note. Sears quotes the sentence as reading "It is a document of interest & is also thought genuine." See his "Last Words on the Lost Order," 115. Obviously, there is a significant difference between the wording of the actual note and the reading Sears gives, and the stronger phrasing--"...is no doubt genuine"--is what was transmitted to McClellan on the morning of September 13.

(18) In his May 28, 1897, letter to Ezra Carman, Pittman might have added one more correction to Colgrove's 1886 Century article. He was not a colonel when Colgrove handed him the lost orders in September 1862. A document signed by General Williams on September 30, 1862, notes that "1st Lieutenant Samuel E. Pittman, 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry, aide de camp, is hereby appointed Acting Assistant Adjutant General at these headquarters--he having acted in that capacity since 4th September inst.... " Order signed by General A. S. Williams, September 30, 1862, Pittman Papers.

(19) Samuel E. Pittman, "Story of the Famous Lost Dispatch," March 5, 1903, "Ladies Evening," Michigan Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, typescript, Pittman Papers.

(20) George B. McClellan to H. W. Halleck, telegram, September 13, 1862, in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (70 vols. in 128; Washington, D.C., 1880-1901), Ser. I, Vol. XIX, Pt. II, 281.

MR. Dew is Ephraim Williams Professor of American History at Williams College.