On this Date in History – Corporal Barton Mitchell finds Robert E Lee’s Special Order 191! Did he save the Union??
Sometimes the course of human history is latered by the actions of men and women that are well-known to us, and then
Copy of Lost Order displayed at Crampton’s Gap, Maryland.
sometimes the person is someone who no one knows or little remembers. On September 13, 1862 Corporal Barton W. Mitchell,of the 27th Indiana Volunteers, part of the Union XII Corps, became one of the later. On that date, Mitchell discovered an envelope with three cigars wrapped in a piece of paper at a campground recently vacated by Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill, a subordinate of Gen. Stonewall Jackson. Mitchell realized the significance of the find and gave it to his Sargent John M Bloss. The papers went up the chain of command along the way an aide to Brig. Gen. Alpheus S. Williams….
