to the front the men might rally round them. I gave the order, which was executed. The soldiers advanced, and the line was formed."

It was a position much higher than the ground on which McDowell was forming for an advance, and the Confederate artillery could send a plunging fire upon the Union troops.

It is two o'clock Sunday afternoon. The Union troops began their march at midnight, have come twelve miles, have only nibbled a little hard bread and bit of meat, and are weary and thirsty. A scorching sun has beaten upon them. The lines are growing thin. There is little discipline. Soldiers leave to get water, and do not return. I stand upon the roof of a house overlooking the field and see the brigades of Sherman, Franklin, Wilcox, and Porter advancing towards the houses of Mr. Robinson and Henry; Burnside is resting on the ground from which the Confederates have been driven; Howard's brigade is moving towards the turnpike by Dogan's house; Keyes's brigade is near the stone bridge. There are parts of fourteen Union regiments advancing to assail the Confederate line.

At this moment nearly every Confederate brigade is hastening towards the spot, where the uproar is going on, with a quicker cannonade and livelier volleys of musketry. There are twenty-two Confederate cannon pouring a heavy fire upon the advancing men in blue, and twelve regiments delivering their volleys, only three of which, with six cannon, belong

HOWARD

WILCOX

BURNSIDE

Road

ran

BULL RUN

Dogan

Stone House

FRANKLIN

11.00

Robinson

Henry

JACKSON

Warrenton

Turnpike

KEYES

DD

PORTER

693

9 & China

SMITH

199

NGSTREET

CONFEDERATE POSITION 5 P.M.

The batteries of Griffin and Ricketts are on the plateau east of Dogan's. They have been nobly served, and the Confederates have all been driven southward. Young's Branch General McDowell at this moment commits another error: he orders the batteries to go across the stream in advance of the infantry. Ricketts does not like the order, but he is a soldier in the regular army, and believes in obeying commands. The battery moves down the road, crosses the stream, ascends the hill towards the Henry house, and opens fire at close range. The Confederate sharp-shooters behind the picket-fence and under the peach-trees begin to pick off his horses, but he rains canister upon them and riddles the house with shells. Mrs. Henry, old and feeble, is killed, and the sharp

shooters are compelled to retreat. Griffin comes, with his horses upon the gallop, across the stream, and takes position to the left of Ricketts. Major Barry, chief of artillery, has brought him the order to take this position. He, too, has objected, not having any infantry supports.

"The Zouaves will support you," says Barry.

"Why not let them go in advance until I get into position? then they can fall back."

"It is McDowell's order for you to go."

"That settles it; but mark my words, the Zouaves will not support me." A ball has lodged in one of the guns and it cannot be used. The other five open, and with Ricketts's deliver a destructive fire.

From my position I can see a dust-cloud in the west rising above the tree-tops. A little later a regiment comes out of the woods south of the turnpike and west of the road leading to Manassas. The men are in

gray, as are several of the Union regiments. They climb over a rail-fence. The colonel walks along the ranks as if saying something to them. Griffin sees them, believes them to be Confederates, and wheels his guns to mow them down with canister. The cannon are loaded, and the gunners stand ready to send the double-shotted charges into the line.

We have arrived at a turning-point in the history of our country. "Don't fire!" It is Major Barry, commanding the artillery, who shouts it.

"They are rebels," Griffin replies.

"No, they are your supports."

The Fourteenth New York Regiment has gone up into the woods, to the right of Griffin's battery, and Major Barry makes a mistake in supposing that the men in gray, which have just come out of the wood, are those who a few moments ago entered it.

"Sure as the world, they are rebels!" Griffin shouts again.

"I know that they are your supports.'

Griffin wheels his guns in the other direction towards the Henry house, and opens fire once more. The officer addressing the men in gray has finished his speech, and now faces them to the left, marches a few rods, faces them to the right, as deliberately as if at drill in camp, advances steadily towards Griffin, then comes to a halt. The men bring their guns to a level, and take aim. There is a flash, a white cloud, a roll of musketry. The air is filled with leaden hail. Men and horses go down. Hardly one of the gunners that is not killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. The horses plunge madly down the ravine. The Zouaves in rear of Griffin behold the spectacle in amazement, then break, and stream over the field

towards Dogan's house, a few only remaining to fire parting shots. In vain the efforts of the officers to rally them.

The men in gray that have given this deliberate volley are the troops of General E. Kirby Smith, the last of Johnston's army. They left the cars at the point where the railroad crosses the Warrenton turnpike, and have come upon the run down the pike and through the fields, guided by the sound of the cannon and the white cloud rising above the tree-tops. Without orders from Beauregard, Johnston, or any one, Smith has poured in his volley, changing the tide of affairs.

Five minutes ago, and the fortunes of the hour were setting against the Confederates. Five minutes ago, and Griffin and Ricketts, if they had done what they were about to do, would have cut Smith's brigade to pieces. One round from those eleven guns, double-shotted, would have made great gaps in those ranks, and have sent the living a routed rabble to the rear.

For a short time the contest goes on. The Thirty-third Virginia advances to seize the cannon, but are driven by the First Michigan of Wilcox's brigade. General Howard's brigade is advancing at the moment up the slope towards the Henry house. It delivers its volleys, holds its ground a while, but at last begins to melt away. Going over to the left near the Robinson house, we see Sherman's brigade, which has come across Bull Run, crossing Young's Branch, marching up the hill, pouring in a deliberate fire. At this moment the Confederate troops, animated by the destruction wrought by Smith's brigade of two thousand five hundred, redouble their energy. Men who a moment ago were faint-hearted, who were just ready to give way, take on fresh courage. Stragglers return, new troops arrive. On the other hand, the Union army has lost its aggressive energy. Under the disaster it begins to melt away. The troops fall back down the hill to the turnpike. There is no reserve behind which they can be rallied, and the tide drifts back over the ground wrested from the Confederates in the forenoon.

There are days when the air is calm, no breath rippling the placid waters-so calm that the aspen leaf ceases to be tremulous; but suddenly, we know not whence, there comes a gentle breeze, which catches up the finest dust, whirling it in widening circles, gathering straws and sticks and broken twigs, whirling faster, in larger circles, with louder noise and wild commotion, sweeping over field and plain, hill and dale, levelling fences and houses, twisting trees like withes, becoming the uncontrolled devastating tornado.

Such a whirlwind arises. Just where it begun it is not possible to say, but somewhere on the field men started to run. Why they ran it would

not be easy to say, for the Confederates were not in pursuit. A body of Confederate cavalry a little later rode towards the Union hospital; another company dashed across Bull Run near the bridge; and though the exploits of the Virginia Black Horse Cavalry, of which every horseman regarded himself as a "cavalier," were the themes of the hour, but there was no grand charge.

The panic was far greater among the teamsters and the crowd of sightseers that had gone out from Washington to see the battle than among the troops. The turnpike was crowded with army wagons. The teamsters stopped, not to inquire as to what had happened, but cut their horses loose, mounting one, handing the others over to the frightened Zouaves, and all dashing towards Centreville. Members of Congress had come from Washington in carriages, and the frightened drivers lashed their horses to a run. I was drinking at a spring near the stone bridge, a few rods south of the turnpike, when the whirlwind came sweeping across the stream. I had just left General Schenck's brigade. Captain Carlisle, commanding a battery, had taken the bits from the mouths of his horses and was feeding them when the Confederate Black Horse battalion came through the woods. Ayres's guns opened upon the cavalry, sending canister into their ranks, and scattering the force in an instant. Having done this, Ayres came tearing along the turnpike towards Cub Run, gaining the eastern bank, wheeling into position, and standing ready to hurl destruction upon the Confederates. Not so fortunate Carlisle, who was compelled to leave four of his guns because the bridge across Cub Run broke down. It would not be an accurate statement were I to say that all the troops were panicstricken; far otherwise. Many of the regiments left the field in good order, returning to Centreville by the route of the morning. There was disorder at Centreville through the incompetency of Colonel Miles, who after the battle was accused before a court-martial of being intoxicated. The only guns lost on the field were those of Griffin and Ricketts, the others were lost through the breaking down of the bridge at Cub Run.

General McDowell rallied the troops at Centreville, and thought of making a stand at that point, but decided to fall back to Washington; and so through the night the army which had marched to Centreville with. confident expectation of victory, which had been all but secured, made its weary way back to Alexandria and Arlington, leaving twenty-five of its cannon and nearly fifteen hundred men, killed and wounded, upon the plateau of Bull Run. The Confederate loss in men was greater; but Beauregard and Johnston had secured the prestige of victory almost at the moment of defeat.

"EV

CHAPTER VI.

THE CLOSE OF 1861.

VERY one believes," wrote one of the clerks at Richmond in his diary," that our banners will wave in the streets of Washington in a few days, and the Union army will be expelled from Maryland; that peace will be consummated on the banks of the Schuylkill." The people of the South were wild over the victory of Bull Run. Many thousands who had hesitated to join the Confederate army now hastened to enroll themselves. It was the universal belief that Jefferson Davis would soon be in the White House, and the flag of the Confederacy waving above the Capitol.

The people of the North had not dreamed of defeat, and the disappointment was very bitter; but as the lightning clears the murky air on a sultry summer day, so the defeat cleared the vision, and they comprehended that the war was to be a conflict vast in its proportions, and to be waged to the bitter end.

Cost what it might, the rebellion must be crushed, was the resolve of every loyal heart.

"Three hundred thousand men are called for to suppress the rebellion," was the message which flashed over the wires from Washington. People left their occupations—the farmer his plough, the mechanic his hammer, the joiner his plane, the salesman his yardstick, scholars their books. Men worth a million dollars enlisted as privates, ready to give life and fortune to their country. In every village drums were beating, soldiers marching.

They must be fed and clothed; they must have guns, cartridge-boxes, knapsacks, tents, and wagons. For the closing of the Southern seaports ships must be built. Never before was there such a commotion in the Northern States. Labor, which the slave-holder had despised, suddenly became a giant, and was getting ready to put forth its strength.

General Scott was too far advanced in life, and too feeble, to be commander-in-chief of the army; but there must be a commander, and General McClellan, who had won the battle of Rich Mountain, in West Vir