1861.] THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 65 ally ordered a forward movement of their own. right wing; but as they saw the development of McDowell's plan they recalled that, and gradually strengthened their left to meet the onset. Hunter's attack, as his columns came down the road from Sudley Ford, was conducted with great skill and bravery, and was met with equal courage and skill. Hunter himself was wounded by a fragment of shell, and had to leave the field, his command then devolving on Andrew Porter. The brigades of Sherman and Keyes, which had struck the stream at the stone bridge, found it fordable half a mile. above, crossed there, and took part in the conflict. The battle-ground was a plateau, wooded and broken, crossed by a small stream that flowed into Bull Run. The enemy was steadily driven back for nearly a mile, but only retired step by step, and the fighting was constant and destructive. Every field-officer of the Fourth Alabama regiment was shot down, leaving it without a commander. General Bernard E. Bee, of South Carolina, who was killed later in the day, rallied his wavering men by appealing to them to follow the example of Jackson's brigade, "standing there like a stone wall"--which gave General Thomas J. Jackson the name by which he has since been known. As the Confederate line fell back, it gained higher and more defensive ground, and also received accessions from the right wing. At the same time, the National army as it advanced became separated and fought in detachments. Batteries were thrown forward, ambushed by sharp-shooters, 66 THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. [1861. taken, retaken, and lost again. The commander of one of them, James B. Ricketts, lay wounded under the guns while the fighting was going on above him and the battery changed hands three times. It is said that Capt. Charles Griffin's battery was surprised by the sudden apparition of a regiment marching down upon it from the right, as openly and regularly as if on parade. The guns were loaded with grape and canister, and could have annihilated the regiment, but Major William F. Barry, chief of artillery, thought it was the National regiment supporting the battery, and ordered the gunners not to fire. Griffin rode forward to ascertain the truth, but learned it too late. It was a Confederate regiment, and when it suddenly levelled its muskets and fired at pointblank range, the battery was completely disabled in an instant, and the surviving horses went dashing wildly down the hill with the caissons. Johnston says: "If the tactics of the Federals had been equal to their strategy, we should have been beaten. If, instead of being brought into action in detail, their troops had been formed in two lines with a proper reserve, and had assailed Bee and Jackson in that order, the two Southern brigades must have been swept from the field in a few minutes, or enveloped.” The better ground held by the Confederates, and the concentration of their troops, were already beginning to tell in their favor, when five thousand more of Johnston's men, brought to the Junction on the railroad, were hurried to the field and sent around to the left to form at right angles to the 1861.] THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 67 National right and fall upon it. This movement was executed promptly, about four o'clock in the afternoon, and was completely successful. The National right became broken and confused, and retreated in disorder. A panic arose, and the retreat became a rout, and the rout a race for Washington. Arms and accoutrements were thrown away, drivers of army wagons cut the traces, leaped upon the backs of the horses, and rode through the crowd of fugitives, and guns and trains were abandoned. Portions of the army, however, maintained their organization, and partly successful attempts were made to stop the flight. The Confederates had but little cavalry, and were in no condition to pursue. There was a black-horse regiment from Louisiana that undertook it, but came upon the New York Fire Zouaves, and in a bloody fight lost heavily. On the other side Jefferson Davis, riding to the field half an hour after the battle, saw such a stream of Confederate fugitives that he supposed the day had gone against them. "Battles are not won," he remarked, "where two or three unhurt men are seen leading away one that is wounded." Nevertheless, in that instance the battle had been won by an army whose rear presented exactly that appearance. General Grant remarks that a position among the stragglers and fugitives in the rear of an army is not a very good place to learn what is going on at the front. The loss of the Confederates was about one thousand nine hundred; that of the Nationals about one thousand five hundred in killed and wounded, and 68 THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. [1861. about as many more in prisoners. Among the officers killed were General Bee and Colonel Bartow on one side, and Colonel Cameron, of the New York Highland regiment, on the other. He was a brother of the Secretary of War, Simon Cameron. Among the prisoners taken to Richmond were many of the civilians that had come out in carriages to witness the contest, including the Hon. Alfred Ely, member of Congress. Colonel Corcoran, of the New York 69th, was a prisoner. A few of the abandoned guns were brought off the next night; but most of the arms, ammunition, and supplies left on the field and in the roads. were secured by the Confederates, who remained in possession of the battle-field for weeks. General Joseph E. Johnston, in many respects the best witness that has spoken on the Southern side, says: "All the military conditions, we knew, forbade an attempt on Washington. The Confederate army was more disorganized by victory than that of the United States by defeat. The Southern volunteers believed that the objects of the war had been accomplished by their victory, and that they had achieved all their country required of them. Many, therefore, in ignorance of their military obligations, left the army-not to return. Exaggerated ideas of the victory, prevailing among our troops, cost us more than the Federal army lost by defeat." In writing this passage, General Johnston probably took no account of the effect produced in Europe. The early narratives sent there, in which the panic of retreat was made 1861.] THE EFFECT IN EUROPE. 69 the principal figure, gave the impression that the result arose from constitutional cowardice in Northern men and invincible courage in Southerners. They also gave the impression that the Confederates were altogether superior in generalship; and the effect was deep and long-enduring. The most notable of these was by a correspondent of the London "Times," who had apparently been sent across the Atlantic for the express purpose of writing down the Republic, writing up the South, and enlisting the sympathies of Englishmen for the rebellion. In his second letter from Charleston (April 30th, 1861) he had written that men of all classes in South Carolina declared to him, "If we could only get one of the royal race of England to rule over us, we should be content." "The New Englander must have something to persecute; and as he has hunted down all his Indians, burnt all his witches, persecuted all his opponents to the death, he invented abolitionism as the sole resource left to him for the gratification of his favorite passion. Next to this motive principle is his desire to make money dishonestly, trickily, meanly, and shabbily. He has acted on it in all his relations with the South, and has cheated and plundered her in all his dealings, by villainous tariffs." Many an Englishman, counting his worthless Confederate bonds, and trying to hope that he will yet receive something for them, knows he would never have made that investment but for such writing as this and the accounts from the same pen of the battle of Bull Run. |