We lost fifty per cent more men than did the enemy, [in the battle of Fredericksburg] and yet there is sense in the awful arithmetic propounded by Mr. Lincoln. He says that if the same battle were to be fought over again, every day, through a week of days, with the same relative results, the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, the Army of the Potomac would still be a mighty host, the war would be over, the Confederacy gone, and peace would be won at a smaller cost of life than it will be if the week of lost battles must be dragged out through yet another year of camps and marches, and of deaths in hospitals rather than upon the field. No general yet found can face the arithmetic, but the end of the war will be at hand when he shall be discovered.
William O. Stoddard, secretary to President Lincoln
THE AWFUL ARITHMETIC: VOLUME 1
INTRODUCTION
No other period of American history invokes the passion that the Civil War continues to generate. Almost a hundred fifty years after the last surrender, the war has not yet begun to lose its allure for readers, students, historians, researchers, tourists, collectors, re-enactors, or audiences of visual media presentations.
Anthropologists still comb the sites of battles, sifting the very soil for any remnants of equipment or even bones that may still somehow be discovered; historical investigators still pore through the records of museums, private collections, and any other location where documents might be found which will lend new insights to the actions of warriors, generals, politicians, even presidents, in their conduct of the war; readers at every level of interest thirst for the latest output about the war, both non-fiction and fiction, and each generation inherits this infatuation from those that preceded.
How long can those enamored of the Civil War, at all levels of expertise, from casual to historian, expect to find new material, either to read and view or to write about and discover? This is a common question that looms over any human endeavor, from historical study to scientific research, and the answer is not as simple as might appear. The immediate urge is to say that when all facts have been uncovered, nothing new will emerge. In science, this is far from true because much of the work of scientists is to convert what is known into a deeper understanding of what is not known. Einstein, as an example, was not an experimenter. Most of the information he used and worked with involved observation of natural phenomena rather than data found through experimental actions, yet he discovered powerful natural principles by mathematical arrangement of data.
The point is that much of the discovery of scientific fact does not come with the physical discovery of information but rather from the piecing together of what is known and the interpretation of what that collected and analyzed data informs the investigator, which in turn leads to new knowledge and understanding, which can then be employed by other investigators.
The same can be true of historical investigation. More examples from science can be found in paleontology and archeology: the physical work of finding clues, in the form of bones or of pottery, furniture, and so on, bear fruit only when the accumulated evidence is pieced together and analyzed by teams of investigators.
In the case of the physical sciences, long after the last information from a site is taken away and laid out in rooms and on tables, reconstructed where possible, further understanding of the subject will emerge; as more and more investigators obtain access to what may originally be a limited amount of evidence, even more understanding can emerge.
In the case of a historical event such as the Civil War, long after all the information, in the form of documentation, equipment from battle sites, photographs, and so on that relate to the event have been uncovered, investigators will continue to interpret more about the war.
The question asked above, of how long new material will be available for historians, writers, investigators concerning the Civil War should more properly be phrased: how long can new discoveries, interpretations, understandings, and facts about the Civil War be derived from the information already available and from information still hidden away, before the war will be known to the absolute most perfect degree that human beings are capable of achieving?
No one knows that answer because if it were known, the point would have already been reached when that best approximation of perfect knowledge had been achieved.
The simple conclusion to be drawn from this is that the Civil War remains and will continue to remain, for as far into the future as anyone knows, a viable subject of discussion, investigation, and study, with humans seeking what humans seek about all things: the closest approximation to the total truth that may ever be achieved.
Beyond understanding and interpreting everything possible about such things as battles and decisions, another part of the process of discovering all the knowable truths about the Civil War is the need to answer many key questions which remain unanswered to complete satisfaction, or not answered at all. Even as simple a question as that of why the South lost the war has not been resolved to the full satisfaction of most. Some contend that the industrial might of the North foreordained victory; others claim the failure of war planning by the Southern leadership doomed the Confederacy; others still blame the manner in which the commanders in the field conducted the war; and always, high on the list of reasons proposed for the victory by the North was the quantity of manpower available to the Union compared to the Confederacy.
No proof exists that any single one of those causes led to victory by the North/loss of the war by the South.
Some of those causes interlink, such as the fact that the way the South conducted the war hastened the exhaustion of their manpower. Such is the case for numerous key questions yet unsatisfactorily answered about the Civil War.
The goal of current and future research, or current and future writing about the war should point toward unraveling such questions and bringing the world as many further steps as possible toward the most complete possible truth about every aspect of the Civil War. The present volume is dedicated to that goal.
Part I: The Cause and Beginning of the War
Introduction to Part I
On a hot July day in 1861, Union General Irwin McDowell led his men through the town of Centreville, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, toward a stream called Bull Run.
After an unsuccessful thrust against the Confederate defensive line holding the west bank of Bull Run, McDowell saw a better way, turning his men to march along a road that paralleled the stream in its northward trend. At Sudley Ford, McDowell led his men across the water, turning them almost directly south.
At the outset, McDowell had planned to hit the Confederate left flank, but because of the repulse and the march far to the north, he was now in a much more desirable position, having disappeared from the enemy’s sight and hearing beyond a screening grove of trees, only to suddenly reappear from an unexpected direction, behind the Confederate army.
Beauregard’s main force continued to focus toward the east, the last place the bulk of McDowell’s army had been seen, and where still, a smaller force carried out a diversionary presence, occupying Beauregard’s attention, on the other side of Bull Run.
Marching southward, up and over a pair of low hills, McDowell’s army approached an enemy brigade spread out along a stone bridge, and not until the moment the westernmost of that force detected the rear attack and turned to exchange long-range shots with the oncoming federals, on that day, July 21, 1861, did the Civil War truly begin.
The Civil War did not begin in South Carolina, and it did not begin as a physical war per se anywhere, on April 12, 1861, despite rhetoric that continues to present day stating the contrary. It is true that outrage and indignation fueled a desire and a call for war on the South after Fort Sumter, but war fury, and at the same time war fears had been building since seven states had seceded, claiming independence from the Union, months prior to the firing on Fort Sumter.
The war did not begin on April 12 because it could not. Two key facts made war impossible. One of those facts is well known if often overlooked but the other is more subtle and complex, and is not generally pointed out in discussions of the war.
Despite these realities, on April 12, 2011, the media across the nation commemorated that date as the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.
While it makes little difference now, when the beginning of the Civil War is marked, an accurate recording of the war ought to make note of the fact that actual fighting was impossible for weeks and did not reach the level of true war until Bull Run, over three months after the firing on Sumter. Most histories or discussions of the war pass over this three month period, ignoring several key events which occurred in the interim, and those events changed the very fabric of the war before it even began, and predestined it to be a long, horrific struggle lasting four years. Had the war in fact begun in South Carolina in mid-April, it might have lasted only months, perhaps no more than a year or two and hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared and the acrimony that followed the war for decades would have been avoided. The United States of today might be quite different than it is, had the Civil War had literally begun at Fort Sumter and lasted only months.
The first of the two reasons the war was impossible in April of 1861 is the fact that neither side had an army with which to conduct a war at that time and for weeks afterward. Had war begun, it would have consisted not of battles but of skirmishes between small units and would not have settled anything.
Based on the US army’s historical record, at the time of the Fort Sumter incident, the federal army consisted of only about 16,000 men. That was a peacetime force, a force down-sized since the Mexican War, because no serious threats existed that required a large standing army. Those 16,000 men were more than enough to quell what small troubles bothered the nation, such as local rebellions over laws or taxes, or disquiet caused by interactions between settlers and Native American tribes, and some unrest in California.
During the Revolutionary War, 16,000 men would have been a formidable army; it would have overwhelmed the 5,000 man militia of South Carolina, as far as numbers are concerned, although other states in the South would have rushed their own militias into play and changed the balance of power.
The figure of 16,000 is illusory, however. Due to Machiavellian schemes perpetrated by the outgoing Buchanan administration, which will be explained herein at the appropriate time, those 16,000 men were scattered all over the American territories of the continent, from Texas to California, in small groupings that could not have been pulled together into one unit in time to affect events at Charleston. Additionally, this army was shrinking rapidly, as those men sympathetic to the South either left the army or chased away those within it who were loyal to the Union, destroying entire units at a time. In simple terms, no viable army existed on the side of the federal government in mid-April of 1861.
That was the less subtle reason the war could not have begun with the firing of Southern guns on Fort Sumter, whether in Charleston or anywhere else.
The second reason that war was impossible for weeks, a reason virtually never cited in discussions of the war, is the fact that by April 12, only seven states had declared their independence and joined the Confederacy. Those states were South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. Notably missing were Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, among slave states reckoned to be part of the South. On a map of the United States, the gap between Washington, D.C., and South Carolina is striking. Two large states fill the space, and as of April 12, both were undecided whether to secede or remain loyal to the Union. Had one or both remained in the Union, federal armies, had they existed, could have passed through those states on their way to punish South Carolina, and then to carry on against the other rebellious states claiming to form the Confederacy.
On the other hand, had Virginia and North Carolina already declared their independence, federal armies could have “invaded” them, fighting whatever resistance consisting of home-grown militias the states might have brought forward to contest the invasion, probably joined by forces from the rest of the Confederacy in support. In that way, the war might have begun in the southern reaches of Virginia or upper North Carolina.
Because the two states did not make a decision about their loyalties for some time after Sumter, neither the Union nor the Confederacy would cross their borders with armies out of fear of pushing the states into the enemy camp.
This is the subtle fact that prevented war in April. Combined with the deteriorating, scattered federal army, this situation made it totally impossible for opposing armies of the North and South to reach each other and begin a war until those issues had been cleared up.
A flaw may seem to be detectable in part of this argument. One might argue that had federal forces existed, they might have been landed directly in South Carolina by ship. The answer to that begins with the fact that the very reason the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter resulted from the arrival of ships representing the federal government, ships dispatched to re-supply the garrison on the island fort, so that the men could remain in place indefinitely. The formidable shore batteries arrayed around Charleston Harbor prevented the ships from reaching the island, and had they been bringing the federal army, they would not have managed to land. If federal ships attempted to set armies on the shores elsewhere, the Union men would have been isolated from enemy armies by distance and terrain, and by the time they marched to a contact point, the Confederacy could have brought forward forces of its own too great for the small federal army to withstand.
No more need be said to demonstrate that the only war that actually began with the attack on Fort Sumter was a war of words. How and why the war was delayed until July 21, 1861 is an intriguing story of its own.
Chapter One
The answer to the question of why the Civil War was fought can be as complex as one wishes to make it. All the issues that led to a conflict between sections of the country could be folded into an account of the war, but to do so would be to fail doing justice to either subject, the war, or its root causes.
The question of why the Civil War was fought can and should be separated from what caused the war. The pressures in the nation leading to the war first led to the decisions by first seven and ultimately eleven states to declare independence. In most discussions of the war, this is considered sufficient to explain why the war came into being. The simple explanation is that the president and the nation could not permit the Union to be broken, that is, for states to leave the Union and form their own nation. That explanation makes for lively and noble rhetoric, but it does not fit the facts.
If it is not true that the war was fought to save the Union, to bring states back into the nation or conversely, to prevent their independence, one can set aside everything that led to the desire of those states for freedom, and this includes the issue of slavery, as proximate causes of the war.
Stating this is not to minimize those issues by any means. It is however meant to separate those issues, including secession, from the actual reason the war began. It is not proper to delve into the issues the war was fought over when the reasons it was fought at all are grand enough on their own.
To understand why the war was fought, the entry point for such a study should be the events that developed between Abraham Lincoln’s election and his inaugural address as president on March 4, 1861. Lincoln is key to the Civil War, not because his election was one of the issues pushing the Confederacy into secession, but because the war itself, its conduct and ultimate resolution were intimately tied in with Lincoln’s presence and actions as president over the whole period of the war.
To understand the beginning of the war, one must consider actions Lincoln, not as president but as president-elect, undertook during his rail journey from Springfield, Illinois, his adopted home, and Washington.
When Lincoln set out on his passage from Springfield to Washington, he remained a private citizen. The position of president-elect is not a position at all and confers no powers or duties upon the future president until he takes the oath of office on the day appointed for the changing of administrations, which in 1861 would be March Fourth.
Lincoln knew by December 22 that problems existed upon which he must make a beginning to resolve soon after arriving and taking up the office of president. Among those problems were threats to federal forts in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, and elsewhere, particularly in Florida, where federal troops were housed. The Confederacy intended to seize those forts and oust the troops, and if they did so, Lincoln would face, as president, a situation which would demonstrate whether he would fold up to Confederate demands, or confront them.
To the people, from the ordinary citizens across the land, to the already-elected, to the already serving personages of the government, and even to the press, Lincoln was a mystery. Worse, he was seen as a bumpkin, a naïve babe-in-the-woods who had no true conception of the mess, the nightmare, the fiasco he was about to inherit upon taking the oath of office. The fact that he lived farther away from the seat of government than any president before him only magnified concern that he was totally disconnected from the real world of national politics and issues.
That was the general attitude in the North. To the South, Lincoln was an onrushing monster, the enemy, the potential executioner of their way of life, and they already opposed him before he uttered his first official word. Nothing he might say would appease them, and that fact was one of the concerns that worried the Northern people: that Lincoln did not realize he could not get through to the South, could not touch them, could not win them over by any means other than war. Fear existed that he would not face up to the fact that only independence would satisfy the South, or conversely, that upon realizing that, Lincoln would give in to them without a fight.
This same public was totally unaware that already this supposedly naïve president had initiated what would be today called “back channel” contact with elements of the Buchanan administration in its lame duck period.
Unlike modern government, no such thing as a “transition team” existed in the United States up to the 1860’s to interface with the government and outgoing administration so the incoming president would be completely prepared to handle the gravest issues affecting the nation the moment he swore the oath of office. In modern times, such a team will also set up all the personnel and communication channels for the new administration and overall pave the way for just what the name implied—a smooth “transition” between administrations.
An incoming president in 1861 had only what resources were in his hands to prepare him to take over at the moment of his inauguration. Only what friends and connections he already possessed or could develop on his own were available to him until he reached Washington.
In modern times, a president-elect will be provided with Top Secret briefings and meetings with key military, intelligence, and other elements of the existing government, in order to be fully prepared to handle national emergencies or merely the day-to-day business of the Executive Branch from the moment of swearing in. What the new president, on Day One may not personally have time to deal with, his staff will be in place to handle for him, until the rounds of parties and other social events of inaugural day are passed. That staff will have been in place and ready for weeks before the big day.
No such process existed in 1861.
One of Lincoln’s confidants was Congressman Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, and through Washburne, while still in Springfield, on December 22, 1860, Lincoln passed along a letter of introduction to Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, the highest uniformed military officer in the army. Scott held the post of General-in-Chief under President Buchanan, a position equivalent to the modern day Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Lincoln requested of Washburne, “Tell him confidentially, I shall be obliged to him to be as well prepared as he can, to either hold or retake the forts, as the case may require, at and after the inauguration.”
Speaking of President Buchanan, Lincoln had stated to his aides that if the forts in Charleston Harbor were allowed to be taken, Buchanan ought to be hanged.
What Lincoln also knew was that while he requested Scott to prepare what action he could, the general would be operating at the disadvantage already well described, the lack of an army to act in the manner Lincoln desired.
Had the Northern public known of this bit of foresight on Lincoln’s part, they might have begun to relax over the capabilities of their new president.
Due to the absence of an army, not only was Scott in no position to actually carry out Lincoln’s request, never mind punishing the South for previous outrages, such as siezing federal property, he lacked the power to oppose any new acts of belligerence by the South prior to Lincoln’s arrival in Washington.
In this period, from December 22, up to and through his journey to Washington, Lincoln spoke as little of possible of his plans, or of what he knew, what he thought, what he understood of the situation facing him as president, or what he had already undertaken and would yet undertake as a private citizen. For any other president, this would be accepted as prudent reticence, but for a nation shaking with uncertainty about its future, this mystery man was all they had to count upon, and what they saw and heard did not instill much confidence.
When placed in the position of having to make a speech, or to speak off the cuff to those who button-holed him, Lincoln, as the president-elect, said as little as he could get away with, and still remain civil and pleasant.
What must be realized is that whatever the public of the North, including the press, may have thought or felt about Lincoln in this period had no bearing on anything. He was the duly elected president, he would serve as president, and the nation had no choice but abide with their fears until he either demonstrated those fears were warranted or Lincoln acted to soothe them.
Lincoln could not concern himself with the attitude of the public during that time. He must weigh all his options and make what plans he was able to in order to deal with the same national concerns that plagued the nation, North and South.
With regard to policy, Lincoln could do nothing, no matter his desires to act, until he was sworn in. The situation in the nation was fluid and volatile, thus it was impossible to know what exact scenario would exist when he reached Washington and took the oath of office. All he could do was prepare a list of options and write an inaugural address to outline what he knew of the situation and what he was prepared to do as a result.
That address could and must say much more, however. It must allay the fears of naïvete, of Lincoln’s innocence of the situation, and it must appeal to the South in the most
careful and friendly way possible under the circumstances while at the same time, making clear that Lincoln would not be pushed around.
Otherwise, Lincoln could do no more of a political nature to prepare to take office.
In November of 1860, Lincoln had stated to his private secretary John Nicolay that the very existence of the government implied that it possessed the “legal power, right, and duty of maintaining its own integrity.” He added that it was the duty of a president to execute the laws and maintain the existing government. He did not add, “by any means,” but he did clearly imply force was one of the methods at the disposal of the president to save the nation. So much for the public’s fear of naïvete regarding his options, but of course those words and his attitude could not become public knowledge at that time, and thus could not inform the nation of his true opinion on the situation waiting for him.
In his thinking, planning, and the approach to the writing of the inaugural address, Lincoln did not regard that situation ahead of him as an issue of secession. He was not the only scholar in the nation who reckoned secession to be an impossible concept due to the fact that the Constitution did not provide a means for states to excuse themselves from the nation. While rhetoric across the land used the term secession as if it was a real and viable concept, and expected the president to cope with the separation of the seven states already claiming secession, Lincoln was able to effectively ignore those claims as having no legal merit and deal instead only with the actual actions undertaken by the states in the process of claiming to have seceded.
The key in his thinking fell out of his words to Nicolay, that it was the duty of a president to execute the laws and maintain the existing government. It was upon that concept that Lincoln would base his responses to the actions of the South. He would declare that the states claiming to have seceded, not in so claiming, but in seizing federal installations and weapons stockpiles, and in refusing to tender owed taxes and tariffs, had egregiously violated federal laws and in his capacity as chief executive of federal law, his job would be to put a stop to the lawlessness and to submit those states to federal authority.
In so doing, the question which would face Lincoln, both in his deliberations and in his future actions, was that of how much force would be required from the federal authority to bring those Southern states back under control. This is an important distinction: the issue was not to bring the states back into the Union—because the constitution provided no mechanism for states to leave the Union, Lincoln determined—the issue was to bring the states back under the authority of the Union, by executing all the federal laws pertaining both to their rebellious actions and to daily business of states as components of the national body.
If the necessary execution of the laws could be carried out by legal officers, such as marshals, that would have been an option available to Lincoln. If actual force were required, more force than armed officers or posses could bring to bear, that would mean military options would be called upon. Such had happened before. The John Brown mini-rebellion had been put down by military force, but the force had been small in number, proportionate to the threat. The same kind of response could be brought to bear in the South, if the threat remained small enough.
Lincoln recognized that the threat might reach a size too large for any armed forces available when he became commander in chief to control, however.
It is the actions Lincoln undertook during his journey to Washington, to prepare for his use a military force large enough to match the potential threat of escalated violence by the South, a force he could hand off to Winfield Scott in order to carry out Lincoln’s instructions, which are overlooked in most discussions of the war. Had the Northern people even a hint of what Lincoln would do in that respect, they would have sighed with relief, to know they had a president who was everything they could have hoped for.
Part II: The War Begins
Chapter One
The army that had been taken over by Beauregard remained at Manassas Station, or the area thereabouts, for weeks, building to a size that still seemed inadequate against what was known to be a forty thousand man force under McDowell.
As Patterson had been led to count upon, McDowell did in fact begin his forward motion out of Alexandria, toward Manassas, on July Sixteenth. The situation with regard to Washington, as a nest of spies at the time the Virginia militia under Wise began its movements in April, had not changed. This continued because the city of Washington was a Southern city, socially and culturally, and secessionist sympathizers abounded. As a result, nothing that a federal army could do would go unmarked on the other side of the line.
On July 15, one of the Confederacy’s spies passed word to Beauregard that McDowell would move forward out of Alexandria the next day. Unlike the intelligence about the Massachusetts unit on the way to Harpers Ferry that had spooked Wise then proved to be false, this information was correct. And whether it was or not, Beauregard would be foolish to ignore it.
It was this intelligence that caused Jefferson Davis to order Johnston to fix Patterson in place and hasten to join Beauregard before McDowell could engage.
This order became subject of negotiations between Beauregard, Davis, and Johnston, but the ultimate result was to set Johnston to the task of making his way to join Beauregard at Manassas in time to stand up against McDowell.
In failing to make his schedule of battle with Beauregard on July 16, McDowell found that nothing about the movement of his Army of the Potomac from Alexandria to Bull Run could be called smooth or rapid. The general had decried the lack of time to comprehensively train his men before going to war, and the results began to show immediately in the difficulties he and his officers faced in moving the army toward the enemy.
The problem could not be laid totally at the feet of the soldiers themselves, either. It was not just the soldiers, nor was it only the lower echelon officers who lacked experience, because that deficiency ran all the way to the top, stopping only below the level of older men such as Winfield Scott and Robert Patterson.
None of the younger generals had entered the war as generals, and none had led armies in the field. McDowell was a major quickly raised to the rank of general, and he would prove, in his first battle, to be on one hand too cautious and on the other, not cautious enough to maintain full control of his men. Some, perhaps a great deal of this, related to the quality of his officers. One might argue that the Union army had needed the same process of “decapitation” of unworthy officers that the Virginia militia had undertaken. Too many of the officers who would lead men in the battle of Bull Run had been elected from militia sources without any background or training to handle groupings of soldiers in the field.
This would be corrected in future but too late for the Union at Bull Run.
One officer who knew what he was doing, Colonel William T. Sherman, recorded the situation in his memoirs:
“In due season, about July 15th, our division moved forward leaving our camps standing; Keyes’s brigade in the lead, then Schenck’s, then mine, and Richardson’s last. We marched via Vienna, Germantown, and Centreville, where all the army, composed of five divisions, seemed to converge. The march demonstrated little save the general laxity of discipline; for with all my personal efforts I could not prevent the men from straggling for water, blackberries, or any thing on the way they fancied.”
(Sherman, ibid.)
The first night, the advanced elements camped east of the town of Fairfax Courthouse, about fifteen miles west of Washington and seven miles or so from Bull Run. According to James B. Fry, who was at the time of the battle a captain and assistant adjutant-general on McDowell’s staff, the general had already planned out the layout of his strength:
For the advance, McDowell asked “a force of 30,000 of all arms, with a reserve of 10,000.”
This is the first set of numbers which must be considered in understanding what followed in the battle. All along, the number 40,000 has been quoted as McDowell’s overall strength. According to Fry, McDowell estimated the size of the enemy in this way:
“If General J. E. Johnston’s force is kept engaged by Major-General Patterson, and Major-General Butler occupied the force now in his vicinity, I think they will not be able to bring up more than 10,000 men, so we may calculate upon having to do with about 35,--- men.” And as it turned out, that was about the number he “had to do with.”
But it must be kept in mind, this 35,000+ was McDowell’s estimate of what Beauregard’s strength would be when he was reinforced from armies south of his position, bringing his direct force at Manassas to the 35,000. In fact, Beauregard was not reinforced to anything approaching those number, and possessed a strength of about 23,000 effectives until reinforced by Johnston, who brought only 8,340 of his 11,000 plus from the Shenandoah Valley. Thus in fact, the maximum number McDowell faced at Manassas was around 31,340.
Based on McDowell’s official records, he had led out of Washington only 34,127 men, considerably less than the 40,000 that had been touted on paper as the strength of his army. The missing numbers included some of the 10,000 described as being reserves. How they were disseminated so as not to participate in the battle, and their purpose as reserves will be further examined.
The first drop-off was of Runyon’s division, about 5,500 men, seven miles short of the town of Centreville, which was just short of the stream called Bull Run. McDowell wanted this reserve unit to hold open the line of communications between the Alexandria and Orange Railroad and the town of Vienna. This was his army’s route in, its supply route, and the line must be kept open.
The next dispersal of reserves, McDowell made at Centreville itself, leaving the Fifth Division, not quite 6,000 men in place. He reported later that he had done this because he feared Beauregard would get men behind him to that point, cut him off from return to Washington and “destroy” his army.
As described above, McDowell did not reach Centreville to make these dispositions until July 18, despite leaving on the Sixteenth.
Fry described the physical layout as well as the tactical situation in this period, before the first contacts were made between the two enemies:
On the morning of the 18th his forces were concentrated at Centerville, a point about 20 miles west of the Potomac and 6 or 7 miles east of Manassas Junction. Beauregard’s outposts fell back without resistance. Bull Run, flowing south-easterly, is about half-way between Centerville and Manassas Junction, and, owing to its abrupt banks, the timber with which it was fringed, and some artificial defenses at the fords, was a formidable obstacle. The stream was fordable, but all the crossing for eight miles, from Union Mills on the south to the Stone Bridge on the north, were defended by Beauregard’s forces.
The Warrenton Turnpike, passing through Centerville, leads nearly due west, crossing Bull Run at the Stone Bridge The direct road from Centerville to Manassas crosses Bull Run at Mitchell’s Ford, half a mile or so above another known as Blackburn’s Ford. Union Mills was covered by Ewell’s brigade, supported after the 18th by Holmes’ brigade; McLean’ Ford, next to the north, was covered by D. R. Jones’ brigade; Blackburn’s Ford was defended by Longstreet’s brigade, supported by Early’s brigade; Mitchell’s Ford was held by Bonham’s brigade, with an outpost of two guns and an infantry support east of Bull Run; the stream between Mitchell’s Ford and the Stone Bridge was covered by Cocke’s brigade; the Stone Bridge on the Confederate left was held by Evans with 1 regiment and Wheat’s special battalion of infantry, 1 battery of 4 guns, and 2 companies of cavalry.
McDowell was compelled to wait at Centerville until his provision wagons arrived and could issue rations. His orders having carried his leading division under Tyler no farther than Centerville, he wrote that officer at 8:15 A. M. on the 18th, “Observe well the roads to Bull Run and to Warrenton. Do not bring on an engagement, but keep up the impression that we are moving on Manassas.” McDowell then went to the extreme left of his line to examine the country with reference to a sudden movement of the army to turn the enemy’s right flank. The reconnaissance showed him that the country was unfavorable to the movement, and he abandoned it. While he was gone to the left, Tyler, presumably to “keep up the impression that we were moving on Manassas,” went forward from Centerville with a squadron of cavalry and two companies of infantry for the purpose of making a reconnaissance of Mitchell’s and Blackburn’s fords along the direct road to Manassas. The force of the enemy at these fords has just been given. Reaching the crest of the ridge overlooking the valley of Bull Run and a mile or so from the stream, the enemy was seen on the opposite bank, and Tyler brought up Benjamin’s artillery, 2 20-pounders rifled guns, Ayres’s field battery of 6 guns, and Richardson’s brigade of infantry. The 20-pounders opened from the ridge and a few shots were exchanged with the enemy’s batteries. Desiring more information than the long-range cannonade afforded, Tyler ordered Richardson’s brigade and a section of Ayres’ battery, supported by a squadron of cavalry, to move from the ridge across the open bottom of Bull run and take position near the stream and have skirmishers “scour the thick woods” which skirted it. Two regiments of infantry, 2 pieces of artillery, and a squadron of cavalry moved down the slope into the woods and opened fire, driving Bonham’s outpost to the cover of intrenchments across the steam. The brigades of Bonham and Longstreet, the latter being reenforced of the occasion by Early’s brigade, responded at short range to the fire of the Federal reconnoitering force and drove it back in disorder. Tyler reported that having satisfied himself “that the enemy was in force,” and ascertained “the position of his batteries,” he withdrew. This unauthorized reconnaissance, called by the Federals the affairs at Blackburn’s Ford, was regarded at the time by the Confederates as a serious attack, and was dignified by the name of the “battle of Bull Run,” the engagement of the 21st being called by them the battle of Manassas. The Confederates, feeling that they had repulsed a heavy and real attack, were encouraged by the result. The Federal troops, on the other hand, were greatly depressed. The regiment which suffered most was completely demoralized, and McDowell thought that the depression of the repulse was felt throughout his army and produced its effect upon the Pennsylvania regiment and the New York battery which insisted (their terms having expired) upon their discharge, and on the 21st, as he expressed it, “marched to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.” Even Tyler himself felt the depressing effected of his repulse, if we may judge by his cautions and feeble action on the 21st when dash was required.
The operations of the 18th confirmed McDowell in his opinion that with his raw troops the Confederate position should be turned instead of attacked in front. Careful examination had satisfied him that the country did not favor a movement to turn the enemy’s right. On the night of the 18th the haversacks of his men were empty, and had to be replenished from the provision wagons, which were late in getting up. Nor had he yet determined upon his point or plan of attack. While resting and provisioning his men, he devoted the 19th and 20th to a careful examination by his engineers of the enemy’s position and the intervening country. His men, not soldiers, but civilians in uniform, unused to marching, hot, weary, and footsore, dropped down as they had halted and bivouacked on the roads about Centreville. Notwithstanding Beauregard’s elation over the affairs at Blackburn’s Ford on the 18th, he permitted the 19th and 20th to pass without a movement to follow up the advantage he had gained. During these two days, McDowell carefully examined the Confederate position, and made his plan to manoeuver the enemy out of it. Beauregard ordered no aggressive movement until the 21st, and then, as appears from his own statement, through miscarriage of orders and lack of apprehension on the part of subordinates, the effort was a complete fiasco, with the comical result of frightening his own troops, who, late in the afternoon mistook the return of one of their brigades for an attack by McDowell’s left, and the serious result of interfering with the pursuit after he had gained the battle of the 21st.
But Beauregard, though not aggressive on the 19th and 20th, was not idle within own lines. The Confederate President had authorized Johnston, Beauregard’s senior, to use his discretion in moving to the support of Manassas, and Beauregard, urging Johnston to do so, sent railway transportation for the Shenandoah forces. But, as he states, “he at the same time submitted the alternative proposition to Johnston that having passed the Blue Ridge, he should assemble his forces, press forward by way of Aldie, north-west of Manassas, and fall upon McDowell’s right rear,” while he, Beauregard, “prepared for the operation at the first sound of the conflict, should strenuously assume the offensive in front.” “The situation and circumstances specially favored the signal success of such an operation,” says Beauregard. An attack by two armies moving from opposite points upon an enemy, with the time to attack for one depending upon the sound of the other’s cannon, is hazardous even with well-disciplined and well-seasoned troops, and is next to fatal with raw levies. Johnston chose the wiser course of moving by rail to Manassas, thus preserving the benefit of “interior lines,” which, Beauregard says, was the “sole military advantage at the moment that the Confederate possessed.”
The extensive citing of Fry’s description of the set-up of the battle is deemed necessary for a couple of reasons. For one, it clears up issues that have been mis-stated in other reports about this stage of the battle, such as whether Tyler’s reconnaissance to Blackburn’s Ford was authorized by McDowell or not. And some accounts do not report accurately that McDowell himself made a reconnaissance that convinced him to give up the notion of attacking Beauregard’s right, in favor of pulling out of the immediate area and traversing north.
From the Confederate side, as written by Beauregard about the buildup to Bull Run, he first referred to the spy network in Washington, then described what he believed about the federal forces coming after him:
In the several ways, therefore, I was almost as well advised of the strength of the hostile army in my front as its commander, who, I may mention, had been a classmate of mine at West Point. Under those circumstances I had become satisfied that a well-equipped, well-constituted Federal army at least 50,000 strong, of all arms, confronted me at or about Arlington, ready and on the very eve of an offensive operation against me, and to meet which I could muster barely 18,000 men with 29 field-guns.
It is obvious then that the information available to him was faulty to the high side regarding the size of McDowell’s army. This refers to a period prior to Beauregard’s receiving reinforcements raising his own army to the 23,000 range.
Beauregard again:
My view of such import had been already earnestly communicated to the proper authorities; but about the middle of July, satisfied that McDowell was on the eve of taking the offensive against me, I dispatched Colonel James chestnut of South Carolina a volunteer aide-de-camp on my staff who had served on an intimate footing with Mr. Davis in the Senate of the United States, to urge in substance the necessity for the immediate concentration of the larger part of the forces of Johnston and Holmes at Manassas, so that the moment McDowell should be sufficiently far detached from Washington, I would be enabled to move rapidly round his more convenient flank upon his rear and his communications, and attack him in reverse, or get between his forces, then separated, thus cutting off his retreat upon Arlington in the event of his defeat and insuring as an immediate consequence the crushing of Patterson, the liberation of Maryland, and the capture of Washington.
This is fascinating, because it describes both the idea of rushing Johnston to Beauregard’s aid, and the threat he intended toward Washington, behind McDowell, once he was committed to reach Manassas. And this then in turn connects to the precautions McDowell made by dropping off forces to cut off the very lane of rear-attack that Beauregard describes above. When read in Beauregard’s own words, the plan to attack Washington is no longer as grandiose and absurd as when considered in other contexts. In fact, when the ending of Bull Run is later considered, the notion of attacking Washington rears its head and in fact will appear to have been so close to practicality that only McDowell’s good sense in leaving key reserves might have saved the capital.
According to Beauregard, in the passage that follows, a startling proposal existed in the halls of the Confederate capital that would have resulted in a radical change to the entire strategic situation if it had been carried out:
Furthermore, Colonel Chestnut came back impressed with the views entertained at Richmond,-as he communicated at once to my adjutant-general,-that should the Federal army soon move offensively upon my position, my best course would be to retire behind the Rappahannock, and accept battle there instead of at Manassas. In effect, it was regarded as best sever communications between the two chief Confederate armies, that of the Potomac and that of the Shenandoah, with the inevitable immediate result that Johnston would be forced to leave Patterson in possession of the Lower Shenandoah Valley, abandoning to the enemy so large a part of the most resourceful sections of Virginia, and to retreat southward by way of the Luray Valley, pass across the Blue Ridge at Thornton’s Gap and unite with me after all, but at Fredericksburg, much nearer Richmond than Manassas. These views, however, were not made known to me at the time, and happily my mind was left free to the grave problem imposed upon me by the rejection of my plan for the immediate concentration of a materially larger force,- i. e., the problem of placing and using my resources for a successful encounter behind Bull Run with the Federal army, which I was not permitted to doubt was about to take the field against me.
Had the Confederate army surrendered the entire field by pulling Johnston down to regroup with Beauregard at Fredericksburg, fifty miles or so to the rear, the Civil War would have taken on an entirely different character, whether the Confederates were victorious there or not. So much that followed in the next year in the Virginia theater would have been changed if the federal army had been able to establish a foothold much closer to Richmond, which it ought to have been able to do. This account will not delve more deeply into the possibilities but the fact that according to Beauregard, such a retreat as considered, prior to the first battle of the Civil War, is fascinating.
The plans of the two commanders leading to the “affair” at Blackburn’s Ford, are subject to confusion. Some accounts describe the plans as that of both armies intending to turn each other’s left flanks, and others the opposite. The only clear source of the truth has to be the accounts of the two generals, McDowell and Beauregard.
The following is Beauregard’s own description of the situation after McDowell reached Centreville but before the action at Blackburn’s Ford:
Shortly afterward the enemy was reported to be advancing from Centreville on the Warrenton Turnpike, and at half-past 5 o’clock as deploying a force in front of Evans. As their movement against my left developed the opportunity I desired, I immediately sent orders to the brigade commanders, both front and reserves, on my right and center to advance and vigorously attack the Federal left flank and rear at Centreville, while my left, under Cocke and Evans with their supports, would sustain the Federal attack in the quarter of the Stone Bridge, which they were directed to do the last extremity.
Some of the confusion, in which the original plans by the two generals to attack each other’s left flanks might be attributed to the fact that Beauregard intended to employ his own right to attack McDowell’s left, which might have been misinterpreted as an attack on McDowell’s right. And it is clear Beauregard believed the initial intention of McDowell was to turn his left, but in the direct vicinity of Bull Run, not in his rear, as McDowell later decided to do:
As reported to you in my letter of the 19th ultimo, my personal reconnaissance of the roads to the south had shown that it was not practicable to carry out the original plan of turning the enemy’s position on their right. The affair of the 18th at Blackburn’s Ford showed he was too strong at that point for us to force a passage there without great loss, and if we did, that it would bring us in front of his strong position at Manassas, which was not desired.
Our information was that the stone bridge over which the Warrenton road crossed Bull Run to the west of Centreville was mined, defended by a battery in position, and the road on his side of the stream impeded by a heavy abatis. The alternative was, therefore, to turn the extreme left of his position.
It is probable that some accounts only used this passage, failing to describe it as the alternative to McDowell’s original plan, because it was the final plan. The problem with this is that this secondary plan, to turn the Confederate left, was not a localized attack in the area of the Stone Bridge, it was a description of the much larger leftward move, three miles upstream, which was the ultimate operation carried out.
The overall scenario, when sorted out, had McDowell, as he left Centreville, intending to hit Beauregard on the right, where he was stretched out along Bull Run, in hopes of cutting off the railroad that would be used by oncoming Johnston. McDowell sent a reconnaissance force under Tyler, but Tyler permitted himself to become engaged in a fight, which was unauthorized but served even so to let McDowell know Beauregard had too strong a force on his right to be turned.
Therefore, McDowell ordered the rest of Tyler’s division to fake an attack straight at the Stone Bridge as a diversion, although with the capability to convert it to a full attack if necessary, to hide the fact that McDowell changed his plan to that of marching two divisions all the way around Beauregard, north of Manassas, at Sudley Springs, where he could ford Bull Run uncontested, then to drive nearly straight south, which was the operation that was in fact carried out.
The “affair at Blackburn’s Ford” was the unwanted contact between Tyler’s force and Beauregard, which to the federal side was a lesser event, while the Confederates labeled it as the actual Battle of Bull Run, the later, larger battle, which they called Manassas.
The following, part of McDowell’s report, describes the plan that resulted in the movement of the two main divisions to the north, to Sudley Springs:
Reliable information was obtained of an undefended ford about three miles above the bridge, there being another ford between it and the bridge, which was defended. It was therefore determined to take the road to the upper ford, and, after crossing, to get behind the forces guarding the lower ford and the bridge, and after occupying the Warrenton road east of the bridge to send out a force to destroy the railroad at or near Gainesville, and thus break up the communication between the enemy’s forces at Manassas and those in the Valley of Virginia before Winchester, which had been held in check by Major-General Patterson.
Brigadier-General Tyler was directed to move with three of his brigades on the Warrenton road, and commence cannonading the enemy’s batteries, while Hunter’s division, moving after him, should, after passing a little stream called Cub Run, turn to the right and north, and move by a wood road around to the upper ford, and then turn south and get behind the enemy; Colonel Heintzelman’s division to follow Hunter’s as far as the turning-off place to the lower ford, where he was to cross after the enemy should have been driven out by Hunter’s division; the Fifth Division (Miles’) to be in reserve on the Centreville ridge.
Another source of confusion revolves around the question of what McDowell knew his army was facing. Here is how Fry described the arrival of Johnston’s army:
Yet Johnston’s army, nearly nine thousand strong, joined Beauregard, Bee’s brigade and Johnston in person arriving on the morning of the 20th, the remainder about noon on the 21st.
This implies that the “remainder” reached the battlefield at noon on July Twenty-First. In fact, those forces were already on the field but in a different position and their “arrival” was in fact a rapid transfer from one part of the field to the other. Primary among those forces was Jackson’s and Bee’s commands as will be described further shortly.
This is how Fry described the information made available to McDowell on that same day, July Twenty First:
Although the enforced delay at Centerville enabled McDowell to provision his troops and gain information upon which to base an excellent plan of attack, it proved fatal by affording time for a junction of the opposing forces. On the 21st of July General Scott addressed a dispatch to McDowell, saying: “It is known that a strong reenforcement left Winchester on the afternoon of the 18th, which you will also have to beat. Four new regiments will leave to-day to be at Fairfax Station to-night. Others shall follow to-morrow - twice number if necessary.” When this dispatch was penned, McDowell was fighting the “strong reenforcement” which left Winchester on the 18th. General Scott’s report that Beauregard had been reenforced, the information that four regiments had been sent to McDowell, and the promise that twice the number would be sent if necessary, all came too late - and Patterson came not at all.
This is how Beauregard described the arrival and disposition of Johnston’s army:
General McDowell, fortunately for my plans, spent the 19th and 20th in reconnoissances; and, meanwhile, General Johnston brought 8340 men from the Shenandoah Valley, with 20 guns, and General Holmes 1265 rank and file, with 6 pieces of artillery, from Aquia Creek. As these forces arrived (most of them in the afternoon of the 20th) I placed them chiefly so as to strengthen my left center and left, the latter being weak from lack of available troops.
The Shenandoah forces were placed in reserve - Bee’s and Bartow’s brigades between McLean’s and Blackburn’s fords, and Jackson’s between Blackburn’s and Mitchell’s and Mitchell’s fords. This force mustered 29,188 rank and file and 55 guns, of which 21,923 infantry, cavalry, and artillery, with 29 guns, belonged to my immediate forces, i. e., the Army of the Potomac.
This confirms that Jackson and Bee were not just arriving from the Shenandoah Valley, they had already been placed in positions on the field before noon, when their arrival is described by Fry. That arrival was in fact their movement from the above described positions, to their left to bolster Evans, who was the first to encounter McDowell’s main thrust from the Sudley Ford straight south.
With these background factors set, the chain of events forming the battle of Bull Run can be developed more fully.
First, however, because Joseph Johnston’s movements will merge with the story of the coming battle, it is important to follow his army’s progress from its last position in the area of Winchester.
Chapter Two
The Blue Ridge Mountains screen off the Shenandoah Valley from the rest of Virginia on the east, while the Appalachians and Alleghenies serve the same function on the west. To call any of the uplands of the state of Virginia mountains is an exaggeration. People who live in the Western part of the United States would only admit at best that the “mountains” of Virginia are no more than hills.
The Blue Ridge is actually made up of a series of virtually separate peaks with “gaps” between, through which rail lines and roads allow transportation in and out of the valley. To be fair, however, whether truly mountains or not, the raised land masses of the region in which the Civil War was fought could not be crossed at will by armies, and thus constituted powerfully significant defensive works, or contrarily, barriers to offensive operations, depending upon one’s viewpoint.
Several times, the Blue Ridge would serve to block the view of armies that were in fact only miles from each other on either side, thus the term “screen” is used to describe how the Blue Ridge, and in fact other similar ranges in the area were used by commanders to their advantage.
To leave the Shenandoah Valley and make haste to Manassas, Joseph Johnston did not have his choice of routes. Not all the “gaps” between mountain masses were accommodating to armies.
Initially, Johnston anticipated marching his men the entire way from Winchester to Manassas, but he gave up the idea in disgust when the men treated the venture as too much of a frolic, rather than what it was, a crucial race against time. (McDowell would have sympathized with this problem.)
Upon passing out of Ashby Gap, reaching the town of Piedmont, Johnston made the decision to board his men on the Manassas Gap railroad and speed them directly to Manassas Station, where they would only then be a short stroll from scene of the looming battle.
The choice of using a train over waiting for men to walk the distance from Piedmont to Manassas junction would seem obvious, but in the 1860’s, traveling by train could be dangerous, and boarding thousands of men was a massive undertaking fraught with perils.
Certainly, when all went well, there was no escaping the fact that moving men, artillery, horses, and all their supplies would be far speedier on trains than even the best marching pace could achieve. Johnston’s use of trains was a radical new vision of the concept of interior lines, and although trains had been used to a limited degree by both sides already in transferring soldiers in this buildup to war, Johnston’s maneuver would mark the first use of trains to carry an army directly into battle on the American continent, and it would hardly be the last. Indeed, beginning with Manassas, trains would be used to upset the balance of power in battles over the course of the entire war, and in so doing, transformed war itself.
Prior to the arrival of Johnston’s men, Beauregard had his forces spread along Bull Run from Union Mills, where the railroad crossed the stream to the south, all the way up to just north of the Stone Bridge on the Warrenton Pike. In this arrangement, Beauregard was set up to face McDowell’s attack from the east, with only Evans unwittingly deployed in a position to face the eventual approach of the bulk of McDowell’s army from the north and behind. As it will be seen, had Johnston’s army not arrived, the Confederate army would have been hit hard from behind, and Tyler’s diversionary force on the east, demonstrating at the stone bridge, could have converted to the second jaws of a pincer movement.
On the route down which McDowell was approaching, after crossing Bull Run and completing his grand turning maneuver southward, two local prominences rose in turn, Matthews and Henry House hills by name. While the “hills” were really hardly more than uplifts in rolling farmland, such small variations in the “ground” where a battle must be fought could have great impact on the action. Indeed, some of the great battles to come would be decided by such minor differences in local elevation.
Robert Lee was the senior Confederate officer actually wearing a uniform, but he was not present at Bull Run. The second ranking officer in the entire army was Joseph Johnston, just arrived from Winchester. Technically, this placed Johnston above Beauregard in command, and by protocol, he could have taken overall control of the combined forces at Manassas from the moment he arrived.
Johnston, a combat engineer, was not satisfied that he knew the “ground” on which the battle was shaping, nor did he know the overall situation, such as the size of relative forces, their disposition, the condition of the men already present, and what had taken place up to his arrival. There was no time for him to make up the deficit in knowledge before the battle opened, so he ceded overall command to the general who was already present, Beauregard.
Beauregard expressed the situation thus:
General Johnston was the ranking officers, and entitled, therefore, to assume command of the united forces; but as the extensive field of operations was one which I had occupied since the beginning of June, and with which I was thoroughly familiar in all its extent and military bearings, while he was wholly unacquainted with it, and, moreover, as I had made my plans and dispositions for the maintenance of the position, General Johnston, in view of the gravity of the impending issue, preferred not to assume the responsibilities of the chief direction of the forces during the battle, but to assist me upon the field. Thereupon, I explained my plans and purposes, to which he agreed.
The key point in this passage is the last line, in which Beauregard declares that Johnston agreed to his dispersal of forces against McDowell.
By five in the morning, Beauregard still planned his “wheel” motion on his right against McDowell’s left, unaware that the bulk of McDowell’s army had left the area heading north.
Meanwhile, about half-past 5 o’clock, the peal of a heavy rifled gun was heard in front of the Stone Bridge, its second shot striking through the tent of my signal-officer, Captain E. P. Alexander; and at 6 o’clock a full rifled battery opened against Evans and then against Cocke, to which our artillery remained dumb, as it had not sufficient range to reply. But later, as the Federal skirmish-line advanced, it was engaged by ours, thrown well forward on the other side of the Run. A scattering musketry fire followed, and meanwhile, about 7 o’clock, I ordered Jackson’s brigade, with Imboden’s and five guns of Walton’s battery, to the left, with orders to support Cocke as well as Bonham; and the brigades of Bee and Bartow, under the command of the former, were also sent to the support of the left.
It need be noted that the adjustment Beauregard called for by Bee’s, Bartow’s, and Jackson’s commands was only along the same line fronting Bull Run, to the left to where Tyler of McDowell’s army was “demonstrating” against Evans at the Stone Bridge from across Bull Run. Not yet did Beauregard have any intimation of the attack coming from the north and behind him.
At half-past 8 o’clock Evans, seeing that the Federal attack did not increase in boldness and vigor, and observing a lengthening line of dust above the trees to the left of the Warrenton Turnpike, became satisfied that the attack in his front was but a feint, and that a column of the enemy was moving around through the woods to fall on his flank from the direction of Sudley Ford. Informing his immediate commander, Cocke, of the enemy’s movement, and of his own dispositions to meet it, he left 4 companies under cover at the Stone Bridge, and led the remainder of his force, 6 companies of Sloan’s 4th South Carolina and Wheat’s battalion of Louisiana Tigers, with 2 6-pounder howitzers, across the valley of Young’s Branch to the high ground beyond it. Resting his left on the Sudley road, he distributed his troops on each side of a small copse, with such cover as the ground afforded, and looking over the open field and a reach of the Sudley road which the Federals must cover in their approach. His two howitzers were placed one at each end of his position, and here he silently awaited the enemy now drawing near.
This reaction was strictly by the initiative of Evans. Some accounts, including the Park Service which administers the battle field, claim that Joseph Johnston saw that Beauregard had misaligned his forces by ignoring his rear and as his men moved off the trains and filtered into position, he corrected that alignment with his own men. By the description of the participants, this was not the case.
According to Longstreet:
The brigades of Bee and Bartow,—commanded by Bee,—and Jackson’s, had been drawn towards the left, the former two near Cocke’s position, and Jackson from the right to the left of Mitchell’s Ford. They were to await orders, but were instructed, and intrusted, in the absence of orders, to seek the place where the fight was thickest. About twelve o’clock that splendid soldier, Bernard E. Bee, under orders to find the point of danger, construed it as calling him to Evans’s support, and marched, without other notice than the noise of increasing battle, with his own and Bartow’s brigades and Imboden’s battery.
This intimates that Johnston’s forces were only shifted to the left, but in the same area where the rest of Beauregard’s own forces were set up, along the Run, from which they were to have wheeled left against McDowell. The only orders Longstreet describes was that Bee and Jackson were to flow to the heaviest fighting, wherever it was. When Evans recognized the true attack line, McDowell’s main force driving south after having made the Sudley crossing of Bull Run, Bee and Jackson made for positions to support Evans on their own.
Beauregard confirms this:
General Bee, of South Carolina, a man of marked character, whose command lay in reserve in rear of Cocke, near the Stone Bridge, intelligently applying the general order given to the reserves, had already moved toward the neighboring point of conflict, and taken a position with his own and Bartow’s brigades on the high plateau which stands in rear of Bull Run in the quarter of the Stone Bridge, and overlooking the scene of engagement upon the stretch of high ground from which it was separated by the valley of Young’s Branch.
In any event, Evans, strung out along the Warrenton Pike, on the Stone Bridge, as well as north of it, was occupied on his right by Tyler’s feint, but looking north, saw dust beyond the forest and perceived an attack from that direction and made adjustments in order to prepare for the onslaught coming from this new direction.
To set up the battle proper, it is important to described the topography between where Evans and Bee were waiting, and the route McDowell’s army marched into attack.
McDowell described it this way:
The ground between the stream and the road leading from Sudley Springs south, and over which Burnside’s brigade marched, was, for about a mile from the ford, thickly wooded, whilst on the right of the road for about the same distance the country was divided between fields and woods. About a mile from the ford the country on both sides of the road is open, and for nearly a mile farther large rolling fields extend down to the Warrenton turnpike, which crosses what became the field of battle, through the valley of a small water-course, a tributary of Bull Run....
Beyond the Warrenton road, and to the left of the road down which our troops had marched from Sudley Springs, is a hill with a farm house on it. Behind this hill the enemy had early in the day some of his most annoying batteries planted. Across the road from this hill was another hill, or rather elevated ridge or table land. The hottest part of the contest was for the possession of this hill with a house on it.
The first hill described above, south of the Warrenton Pike, the hill that was crowned with a house was known as Matthew’s Hill for the owner of the house. The second hill, farther south, was Henry House Hill, named after a “widow Henry.” This would become the center of the battle.
McDowell described the opening of the action, referring first to the “open space” about a mile from the crossing and another mile from Matthew’s Hill:
Shortly after the leading regiment of the First Brigade reached this open space, and whilst the others and the Second Brigade were crossing to the front and right, the enemy opened his fire, beginning with artillery and following it up with infantry.
The leading brigade (Burnside’s) had to sustain this shock for a short time without support, and did it well. The battalion of regular infantry was sent to sustain it, and shortly afterwards the other corps of Porter’s brigade and a regiment detached from Heintzelman’s division to the left forced the enemy back far enough to allow Sherman’s and Keyes’ brigades of Tyler’s division to cross from their position on the Warrenton road.
This open fire from the enemy was Evans, realizing the main attack was coming toward him. Beauregard describes the same action from the Confederate perspective:
The head of the column, Burnside’s brigade of Hunter’s division, at about 9:45 A. M. debouched from the woods into the open fields, in front of Evans. Wheat at once engaged their skirmishers, and as the Second Rhode Island regiment advanced, supported by its splendid battery of 6 rifled guns, the fronting thicket held by Evans’s South Carolinians poured forth in sudden volleys, while the 2 howitzers flung their grape-shot upon the attacking line, which was soon shattered and driven back into the woods behind. Major Wheat, after handling his battalion with the utmost determination, had fallen severely wounded in the lungs. Burnside’s entire brigade was now sent forward in a second charge, supported by 8 guns; they encountered again the unflinching fire of Evans’s line, and were once more driven back to the woods, from the cover of which they continued the attack, reenforced after a time by the arrival of 8 companies of United States regular infantry, under Major Sykes, with 6 pieces of artillery, quickly followed by the remaining regiments of Andrew Porter’s brigade of the same division. The contest here lasted fully an hour; meanwhile Wheat’s battalion, having lost its leader, had gradually lost its organization, and Evans, though still opposing these heavy odds with undiminished firmness, sought reenforcement from the troops in his rear.
General Bee, of South Carolina, a man of marked character, whose command lay in reserve in rear of Cocke, near the Stone Bridge, intelligently applying the general order given to the reserves, had already moved toward the neighboring point of conflict, and taken a position with his own and Bartow’s brigades on the high plateau which stands in rear of Bull Run in the quarter of the Stone Bridge, and overlooking the scene of engagement upon the stretch of high ground from which it was separated by the valley of Young’s Branch.
General Bee, of South Carolina, a man of marked character, whose command lay in reserve in rear of Cocke, near the Stone Bridge, intelligently applying the general order given to the reserves, had already moved toward the neighboring point of conflict, and taken a position with his own and Bartow’s brigades on the high plateau which stands in rear of Bull Run in the quarter of the Stone Bridge, and overlooking the scene of engagement upon the stretch of high ground from which it was separated by the valley of Young’s Branch.
Seeing that McDowell’s forces had arrived and were engaged, and with Evans shifting to this area of the battle, Sherman led a brigade forward into this area from the east, hitting the Confederates from behind. This, Beauregard describes:
Major Wheat, with characteristic daring and restlessness, had crossed Bull Run alone by a small ford above the Stone Bridge, in order to reconnoiter, when he and Evans had first moved to the left, and, falling on some Federal scouts, had shouted a taunting defiance and withdrawn, not, however, without his place of crossing having been observed. This disclosure was now utilized by Sherman’s (W. T.) and Keyes’s brigades of Tyler’s division; crossing at this point, they appeared over the high bank of the stream and moved into position on the Federal left. There was no choice now for Bee but to retire - a movement, however, to be accomplished under different circumstances than when urged by him upon Evans. The three leaders endeavored to preserve the steadiness of the ranks as they withdrew over the open fields, aided by the fire of Imboden’s guns on the plateau and the retiring howitzers; but the troops were thrown into confusion, and the greater part soon fell into rout across Young’s Branch and around the base of the height in the rear of the Stone Bridge.
This is how Longstreet developed the situation from his vantage:
Burnside was reinforced by Porter’s brigade, and afterwards by a part of Heintzelman’s division. Ricketts’s battery, and subsequently the battery under Griffin, pressed their fight with renewed vigor. The batteries, particularly active and aggressive, poured incessant fire upon the Confederate ranks, who had no artillery to engage against them except Imboden’s, far off to the rear, and the section of Latham’s howitzers. The efforts of the Federal infantry were cleverly met and resisted, but the havoc of those splendid batteries was too severe, particularly Griffin’s, that had an oblique fire upon the Confederates. It was the fire of this battery that first disturbed our ranks on their left, and the increasing pounding of that and Ricketts’s eventually unsettled the line. At this juncture two brigades of Tyler’s division, with General W. T. Sherman and General Keyes, crossed the Run at a ford some distance above the bridge and approached the Confederate right, making more unsettled their position. At the same time the attacking artillery and infantry followed up their opportunity in admirable style, pushed the Confederates back, and pursued down to the valley of Young’s Branch.
Bee, Bartow, and Evans made valorous efforts, while withdrawing from their struggle on the Matthews plateau, to maintain the integrity of their lines, and with some success, when General Wade Hampton came with his brigade to their aid, checked the progress of pursuit, and helped to lift their broken ranks to the plateau at the Henry House. The fight assumed proportions which called for the care of both General Johnston and General Beauregard, who, with the movements of their right too late to relieve the pressure of the left, found it necessary to draw their forces to the point at which the battle had been forced by the enemy. At the same time the reserve brigades of their right were called to the left. General Thomas J. Jackson also moved to that quarter, and reached the rear crest of the plateau at the Henry House while yet Bee, Bartow, Evans, and Hampton were climbing to the forward crest. Quick to note a proper ground, Jackson deployed on the crest at the height, leaving the open of the plateau in front. He was in time to secure the Imboden battery before it got off the field, and put it into action. Stanard’s battery, Pendleton’s, and Pelham’s, and part of the Washington Artillery were up in time to aid Jackson in his new formation and relieve our discomfited troops rallying on his flank. As they rose on the forward crest, Bee saw, on the farther side, Jackson’s line, serene as if in repose, affording a haven so promising of cover that he gave the christening of ” Stonewall" for the immortal Jackson.
“ There,” said he, “is Jackson, standing like a stone wall.”
Some controversy surrounds Bee’s state of mind when he made that famous and historic declaration, as well as exactly he meant. Some believed he was extolling Jackson’s calm, and others would say he was actually cursing Jackson for holding still while Bee’s men were being hammered. In the former version, Bee finished his declaration by crying out, “Rally around the Virginians!”
The alternate version has Bee shouting, “There is Jackson, standing like a damned stone wall!”
Another anecdote holds that in those moments while he waited for the right instant to act, someone rushed to Jackson in panic and shouted, “General, the day is going against us,” to which Jackson was reported to have calmly but a bit crossly replied, “If you think so, Sir, you had better not say anything about it.”
Still, what is known is that Jackson held his men in check, waiting for what he judged that sublime moment, when all else seemed to have failed. Now, when someone else rushed up yelling, “General, they are beating us back!” he responded, “Sir, we’ll give them the bayonet.”
Summoning his men from their positions, Jackson accompanied them on the charge, urging them to “Yell like furies,” and it is said this was the birth of the rebel yell.
In this period of the war, Johnston and Beauregard both moved into the area and arranged the defenders to align on Jackson’s men, then Johnston withdrew to a house nearby to continue coordinating the action, while Beauregard remained on the immediate scene.
Only now, according to Longstreet, did Johnston pull all the remaining forces still strung along Bull Run, and any who were arriving from various points in Virginia to move up to the center of the fighting, around Jackson. (By then, soon after making his declaration, Bee was killed.)
Fry describes this action leading up to the formation of forces around Jackson:
After Bee joined Evans, the preliminary battle continued to rage upon the ground chosen by the latter. The opposing forces were Burnside’s and Proper brigades, with one regiment of Heintzelman’s Federal side, and Evan’s, Bee’s , and Bartow’s brigades on the Confederate side. The Confederate side. The Confederates were dislodged and driven back to the Henry house plateau, where Bee had previously formed line and where what Beauregard called "the mingled of Bee’s, Bartow’s, and Evans’s commands" were re-formed under cover of Stonewall Jackson’s brigade to Johnston’s army.
One more take on this section of the battle must come from none other than a man in the middle of it, Beauregard:
We arrived there just as Bee’s troops, after giving way, were fleeing in disorder behind the height in rear of the Stone Bridge. They had come around between the base of the hill and the Stone Bridge into a shallow ravine which ran up to a point on the crest where Jackson had already formed his brigade along the edge of the woods. We found the commanders resolutely stemming the further flight of the routed forces, but vainly endeavoring to restore order, and our own efforts were as futile. Every segment of line we succeeded in forming was again dissolved while another was being formed; more than two thousand men were shouting each some suggestion to his neighbor, their voices mingling with the noise of the shells hurtling through the trees overhead, and all word of command drowned in the confusion and uproar. It was at this moment that General Bee used the famous expression, "Look at Jackson’s brigade! It stands there like a stone wall" - a name that passed from the brigade to its immortal commander.
If Patterson had done his job, Johnston would not have arrived, thus there would be nothing to back up Evans’s brigade; they would have absorbed the brunt of McDowell’s main attack and should have been crushed, with the rest of Beauregard’s army forced to join in, all alone, against the two separate elements of the federal army, never mind the reserves who were back toward Centreville.
This could have been the way the Civil War came and went, one glorious charge by McDowell’s men, and disaster for the Confederacy. If Patterson had done his job, Johnston would have arrived with his men, at best, when the battle had come and gone, and would be left to either make a futile strike against the victorious federals or use discretion and preserve his army for another day.
Had that scenario carried out as designed, Patterson’s own army would have arrived shortly, either having followed Johnston’s through the Shenandoah Valley or by crossing through a pass such as the Vestal Gap and hopping a train of their own at Leesburg. By whatever route they arrived, Patterson’s men would have chimed in to produce an army large enough to sweep the field, including Johnston’s delayed army, wherever it ended up, then move directly on Richmond.
With no other major army anywhere to defend it, the Confederacy would be easily subdued as Lincoln had prescribed, with the victorious Union army advancing to take back the “places,” which would have signified the restoration of federal control over the rebellious South.
Patterson had not done his job, however, and Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah was indeed there, not yet spotted in their position behind the next hill down, Henry House Hill.
The battle swayed back and forth; at one point, Confederates wearing uniforms strikingly similar to Union outfits managed to infiltrate and take over artillery and turned it on the federals for awhile.
McDowell summed up the turn of the tide succintly, referring to the reinforcements Beauregard and Johnston filtered in at the key moment:
They threw themselves in the woods on our right, and opened a fire of musketry on our men, which caused them to break and retire down the hill-side. This soon degenerated into disorder, for which there was no remedy.
This was the beginning of the end. Beauregard’s vision of this turn:
Although the enemy were held well at bay, their pressure became so strong that I resolved to take the offensive, and ordered a charge on my right for the purpose of recovering the plateau. The movement, made with alacrity and force by the commands of Bee, Bartow, Evans, and Hampton, thrilled the entire line, Jackson’s brigade piercing the enemy’s center, and the left of the line under Gartrell and Smith following up the charge, also, in that quarter, so that the whole of the open surface of the plateau was swept clear of the Federals.
It was Jackson’s “piercing the enemy’s center” that followed his declaration, “Sir, we’ll give them the bayonet.”
Clearly, no matter the untrained state of his men or his own experience in leading men in combat, were it not for Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah, and most especially the Jackson Brigade, McDowell had come amazingly close to victory. Had only one or two elements of the battle gone his way, or had he poured in all his men instead of holding back so many, he almost certainly would have swept the Confederates from the field, despite even the presence of the Army of the Shenandoah. Instead, it was his army that was swept.
With his charge wrecked by Jackson’s Brigade, McDowell and his army never regrouped, and the federal assault began to fall apart.
Final Confederate reserves entered the fray, principally Kirby Smith and Jubal Early, the latter moving up from the southwest, and the battle turned into a rout. The Union officers who were supposed to have led or driven their men back into some semblance of order failed and the federal army fled the field.
If the situation were not bad enough, a congregation of government personnel and their families had driven by carriages and other conveyances all the way to Centreville to take in the first major battle as if it were a play or an athletic contest, picnicking, frolicking, and happily anticipating the spectacle of a federal grand victory.
Thus, when the rout developed, like their army, the spectators also turned to flee the scene and their presence clogged up bridges and roads, slowing the retreating soldiers, which might easily have led to utter defeat had the Confederates mustered a hot pursuit.
Concerning the “greenness” of the Union troops, conflicting stories developed. In one version, the men fought magnificently until the battle turned against them, after which they did not handle the adversity well, breaking in panic and beginning to flee back to Washington.
Contrarily, according to accounts of the men themselves, and others as well, their collapse was due to the failure of their officers, so much so that the men themselves claimed they had been betrayed and that their own leaders had been treasonous. As in most events, the truth was almost certainly a combination of the two. And whatever that truth might be, the bottom line was undeniable: when the Union collapse came in the Battle of Bull Run, it was total.
McDowell summed up the situation in his official report:
It is known that in estimating the force to go against Manassas I engaged not to have to do with the enemy’s forces under Johnston, then kept in check in the valley by Major General Patterson, or those kept engaged by Major-General Butler, and I knew every effort was made by the General-in-Chief that this should be done, and that even if Johnston joined Beauregard, it should be because he would be driven in and followed by General Patterson. But, from causes not necessary for me to refer to, even if I knew them all, this was not done, and the enemy was free to assemble from every direction in numbers only limited by the amount of his railroad rolling-stock and his supply of provisions. To the forces, therefore, we drove in from Fairfax Court-House, Fairfax Station, Germantown, and Centreville, and those under Beauregard at Manassas, must be added those under Johnston from Winchester, and those brought up by Davis from Richmond and other places at the South, to which is to be added the levy en masse ordered by the Richmond authorities, which was ordered to assemble at Manassas. What all this amounted to I cannot say; certainly much more than we attacked them with.
Much can be read into this, mostly of what McDowell had anticipated. Certainly it is clear he was bitter that Patterson had done nothing, thus allowing Johnston to arrive, without Patterson arriving as well. He found the army of Beauregard apparently larger than he had been led to believe, bolstered both by new volunteers and incoming Confederate forces from outside Virginia. The fact that he ultimately did not know the size of the army he was fighting is telling. This means at best that his intelligence failed him, and at worst that he attacked without adequate preparations for the force that opposed him.
No doubt part of his bitterness was attributable to being ordered to carry out a battle he did not believe should have been fought before his men were better trained.
In evaluating the battle, one can do worse than the assessment of Joseph Johnston:
“A large proportion of it [Beauregard’s army] was not engaged in the battle. This was a great fault on my part. When Bee’s and Jackson’s brigades were ordered to the vicinity of the Stone Bridge, those of Holmes and Early should have been moved to the left also, and placed in the interval on Bonham’s left—if not then, certainly at nine o’clock, when a Federal column was seen turning our left: and, when it seemed certain that General McDowell’s great effort was to be made there. Bonham’s, Longstreet’s, Jones’, and Ewell’s brigades, leaving a few regiments and their cavalry to impose on Miles’ division, should have been hurried to the left to join in the battle. 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. General McDowell would have made such a formation, probably, had he not greatly underestimated the strength of his enemy.”
Obviously, in Johnston’s opinion, in part due to Johnston’s own admitted mismanagement of aspects of the battle, had McDowell thrown all he had into the attack coming over Matthews and onto Henry House hills, despite the inexperience of his men, these “green” men, too little trained, in their first battle, the Army of the Potomac could as well have won Bull Run as lost it, even after bringing so few men onto the field and facing Johnston’s additional forces.
In this light, it is so obvious that had Johnston’s men been kept off the field by Patterson, or Patterson had arrived as well, or had McDowell thrown in even part of his reserves that never saw battle, it seems more than clear that he would likely have defeated Beauregard at Bull Run.
When the last shots had been fired, and the Union army had slunk back with its figurative tail between its legs into the security of its Washington defenses, what could not be denied any longer was that the Civil War had begun, more than three months after the firing on the flag at Fort Sumter. That being so, it must be insisted that until that day, that battle, had been fought, the war had yet to exist.
Bull Run was reckoned a terrible, massive battle, but when numbers of men engaged, and numbers of casualties are considered, it was actually little more than a skirmish, especially compared to battles to come. And what Bull Run did not do was to prepare the nation for the duration and the true horror of the war that had just begun.
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