To the victorious Confederates, it was the Battle of Leesburg. The badly beaten Federals named it for the imposing fortress-like rocky precipice on the northern side of the Potomac near Washington DC - Ball's Bluff. Fought three months to the day after First Manassas (Bull Run) and another in a long line of Federal defeats during the first year of the war - the battle was, as author James Morgan puts it, "a reconnaissance mission gone bad." Federal commander Gen. Charles P. Stone had planned a raid on a suspected Rebel camp, precipitating a skirmish between elements of his troops and those of Confederate Gen. Nathan "Shanks" Evans. As a series of skirmishes developed into a full-scale brawl involving some 1700 soldiers on each side, careless and costly decisions by one of Stone's commanders, Col. Edward D. Baker, led to Baker's death and a catastrophic finish, as hundreds of Union soldiers fell or threw themselves off the cliff. In the ensuing political uproar in the North, Stone became the convenient Federal scapegoat and his career was destroyed. A charter member of the volunteer Ball's Bluff guide group, Morgan, a former Marine, began to realize that the conventional battle narrative he and others were telling to visitors "just did not feel right." Further reading and more intensive study of the battlefield led him to delve deeply into primary materials to correct misconceptions and find the factual interpretation of events of this little and relatively unstudied battlefield. With the requisite keen understanding of the battlefield's terrain, Morgan has woven together a site-driven narrative in graceful style that is appropriately highlighted with participant's quotes. Featuring previously unused primary manuscript sources and a variety of first-hand accounts, this second volume in Ironclad's landmark Discovering Civil War America Series is highlighted by fine maps and numerous contemporary illustrations. A signature element of the series is the driving/walking tour of the sites, including the Ball's Bluff National Cemetery. This book is a must for all Civil War buffs, especially those interested in early clashes of the war and lesser-known battlefields
A lifelong Civil War enthusiast, Jim Morgan was born in New Orleans where his family eventually settled after moving from the destroyed Morganza Plantation some 40 miles upriver from Baton Rouge. He grew up in Pensacola, Florida, and now lives near Lovettsville, Virginia.
Jim is a past president of the Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable and a member of the Loudoun County Civil War Sesquicentennial Committee. He serves on the advisory boards of the Mosby Heritage Area Association and the Thomas Balch History and Genealogy Library in Leesburg. He also is a volunteer guide at Ball's Bluff for the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority.
As a reenactor he has done both Union and Confederate artillery and infantry impressions with several different units. Some years ago he wrote a brief artillery unit history titled "Always Ready, Always Willing: A History of Battery M, Second United States Artillery, From Its Organization Through the Civil War." His tactical study of Ball's Bluff, titled "A Little Short of Boats: the Civil War Battles of Ball's Bluff and Edwards Ferry, October 21-22, 1861," first published in 2004, was reissued in a revised, updated, sesquicentennial edition, in 2011. It is widely acknowledged as the definitive work on Ball's Bluff.
Jim's writings on Ball's Bluff appear on the websites of the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (www.nvrpa.org) and the Civil War Trust (www.civilwar.org). He also has written on a variety of topics for "Civil War Times," "America's Civil War," "Blue and Gray," and "The Artilleryman" among others.
Jim served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1969-71 and in the Foreign Service from 1980-86. He holds a master's degree in Political Science from the University of West Florida and a master's in Library Science from Florida State University. He currently works as the Acquisitions Librarian for the State Department's Office of International Information Programs in Washington, D.C.
