The battle at Cedar Mountain, which Col. Andrews described as "about as great a piece of folly as I have ever witnessed on the part of incompetant general," was technically a draw. As at Winchester the previous May, Stonewall Jackson had done a great deal of damage but had failed to achieve a total victory against Banks. He had successfully driven the Federals from the battlefield with heavy casualties, but had gained not one inch of ground as a result, and the arrival of Sigel's 12,000 men during the night of August 9th, and the Division of Rufus King on the 11th, gave Pope a numerical advantage which compelled Jackson to retire across the Rapidan.

"The battle I do not consider a victory to either side," concluded Lt. Charles Morse. "We held our original position and they theirs."

Not surprisingly, the United States War Department was operating in a rose-colored haze, and a month after the battle, sent its congratualtions on a smashing victory. Chaplain Quint could only marvel at such audacity. "One brigade almost annihilated; another losing one third of its strength; all badly suffering; our forces driven from the field; the ground occupied by the enemy for two days, and then left at their pleasure; our dead unburied, and our wounded brought off at the sufferance of the enemy thirty-six hours after the fight; what a glorious victory!" Well, he concluded several years later, "that was the way they used to write history."

Fletcher Abbott, for one, never forgave Banks for the death of his brother. "Banks is guilty of manslaughter," he wrote angrily, hoping for the day when the former Governor of Massachusetts would be "court-martialled and kicked out of the service of the United States which he has so long disgraced." Abbott did not have long to wait for Banks to be removed from active field command.

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