The beginning of Bruce Catton’s “Mr. Lincoln’s Army” has a great accounting of this campaign. (General Sturgis: “I don’t care for General Pope one pinch of owl dung”.) Pope was totally bewildered and buffaloed by the Confederates.
Great book. I learned a lot about Gen. McClellan from Catton’s in-depth look at the man. I only post from Catton’s earlier trilogy because it lends itself to timeline excerpting better than the AoP series does.