ed Confederate
supplies, and do the northward scouting.

The situation of the rival armies on the night of the twenty-seventh
forms one of the curiosities of war. Jackson was concentrating
round Manassas Junction. Lee was following Jackson's line of march,
but was still beyond Thoroughfare Gap. Between them stood part of
Pope's army, the whole of which occupied an irregular quadrilateral
formed by lines joining the following points: Warrenton Junction,
Bristoe Station, Gainesville, and Thoroughfare Gap. Thirty miles
northeast were the twenty thousand Federals who joined Pope too
late. Thirty miles southeast the rear of McClellan's forces were
still massing at Aquia. In Pope's opinion Jackson was clearly trapped
and Lee cut off.

But when Pope began to close his cumbrous net the following day
Jackson had disappeared again. Orders and counter-orders thereupon
succeeded each other in bewildering confusion. McClellan could
be left out: and a very good thing too, thought Pope, who wanted
the victory all to himself, and whose own army greatly outnumbered
Lee's and Jackson's put together. But Washington was nervous again;
it contained the reinforcements; and it had suddenly become
indispensable to Pope as an immediate base of supplies now that the
base at Manassas had been so completely destroyed. Pope's troops
therefore mostly drew east during the twenty-eighth, forming by
nightfall a long irregular line, facing west, with its right beyond
Centreville and its extreme left held by Banks's mauled divisions
south of Catlett's Station. Meanwhile Jackson had slipped into
place in the curve of Bull Run, facing southeast, with his left
near Stone Bridge, his back to Sudley Springs, and his right open
to junction with Lee, who was waiting for daylight to force the
Gap against the single division left there on guard.

During the afternoon, while Jackson's tired men were lying sound
asleep in their ranks, Jackson himself was roused to see captured
orders which showed that some Federals were crossing his front.
Reading these orders to his divisional commanders he immediately
ordered one to attack and another to support. If the Federals concerned
were exposing an unguarded flank they should be attacked at a
disadvantage. If they were screening larger forces trying to join
the reinforcements from Washington or Aquia, then they should be
attacked so as to distract Pope's attention and draw him on before
the Federal union became comple