The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville

by Shelby Foote

  Either way, it was brilliant. The flanking column made a rear attack and forced the surrender of the detachment, which in turn rendered Garnett’s positon on Laurel Hill untenable; he retreated northward and, having got the remnant of his army across Cheat River, was killed with the rear guard at Carrick’s Ford, the first general officer to die in battle on either side. By mid-July the “brief but brilliant campaign,” as McClellan called it in his report, was over. He telegraphed Washington: “Our success is complete, and secession is killed in this country.” To his troops he issued an address beginning, “Soldiers of the Army of the West! I am more than satisfied with you.” It was indeed brilliant, just as the youthful general said, and more; it was Napoleonic. The North had found an answer to the southern Beauregard.

  In Lincoln’s mind, this western Virginia campaign also served to emphasize a lack of aggressiveness nearer Washington. Patterson had taken Harpers Ferry. Down on the James peninsula Ben Butler at least had shown fight; Big Bethel was better than nothing. But McDowell, with his army of 35,000 around Washington, had demonstrated no such spirit. In late June, responding to a request, he had submitted a plan to General Scott. While Patterson held Johnston fast in the Valley, McDowell proposed “to move against Manassas with a force of thirty thousand of all arms, organized into three columns, with a reserve of ten thousand.” Though he warned that his new regiments were “exceedingly raw and the best of them, with few exceptions, not over steady in line,” he added that he believed there was every chance of success “if they are well led.”

  Thus far, nothing had come of this; the old General-in-Chief did not believe in what he called “a little war by piecemeal.” Lincoln, however—aware that the time of the three-month volunteers was about to expire before any more than a fraction of them had had a chance to fire a shot at anything in gray—saw in the plan exactly what he had been seeking. At a cabinet meeting, called soon afterwards, General Scott was overruled. McDowell was told to go forward as he proposed.

  At first he intended to move on Monday, July 8, but problems of supply and organization delayed him until Tuesday, eight days later, when he issued his march order to the alerted regiments. “The troops will march to the front this afternoon,” it began, and included warnings: “The three following things will not be pardonable in any commander: 1st. To come upon a battery or breastwork without a knowledge of its position. 2d. To be surprised. 3d. To fall back. Advance guards, with vedettes well in front and flankers and vigilance, will guard against the first and second.”

  So they set out, fifty regiments of infantry, ten batteries of field artillery, and one battalion of cavalry, shuffling the hot dust of the Virginia roads. This marching column of approximately 1450 officers and 30,000 men, the largest and finest army on the continent, was led by experienced soldiers and superbly equipped. All five of the division commanders and eight of the eleven brigade commanders were regular army men, and over half of the 55 cannon were rifled. Light marching order was prescribed and Fairfax Courthouse was the immediate march objective, thirteen miles from Arlington, the point of departure. The start had been too late for the army to reach Fairfax that first day, but orders were that it would be cleared by 8 a.m. Wednesday, Centerville being the day’s objective, another nine miles down the road and within striking distance of Manassas Junction, where the Confederates were massing.

  Perhaps because the warning in the march order had made the leaders meticulous and over-ambush-conscious, and certainly because of the inexperience of the troops, no such schedule could be kept, Accordion-action in the column caused the men to have to trot to keep up, equipment clanking, or stand in the stifling heat while the dust settled; they hooted and complained and fell out from time to time for berry-picking, just as they had done on practice marches. It was all the army could do to reach Fairfax Wednesday night, and at nightfall Thursday the column was just approaching Centerville, 22 miles from the starting point after two and one-half days on the road, stop and go but mostly stop. Then it was found that the men did not have in their haversacks the cooked rations McDowell’s order had said “they must have.” Friday was spent correcting this and other matters; Saturday was used up by reconnaissance, studying maps and locating approaches to and around the enemy assembled at Manassas. Beauregard thus had been presented with two days of grace, by which time McDowell heard a rumor that Johnston, out in the Valley, had given Patterson the slip and was at hand. He took the news with what calmness he had left, forwarded it to Washington, and set about completing his battle plan. Johnston or no Johnston, the attack was scheduled for first light, Sunday morning.

  Lincoln in Washington and Davis in Richmond, one hundred miles apart, now were exposed for the first time to the ordeal of waiting for news of the outcome of a battle in progress between the two capitals. The northern President took it best. When McDowell had asked for a little more time for training, Lincoln told him, “You are green, it is true; but they are green also. You are all green alike.” Now that the armies were arrayed and the guns were speaking, Lincoln kept this calmness. The Sunday morning news was reassuring; even old General Scott saw victory in the telegrams from Virginia. Lincoln attended church, came back for lunch and more exultant telegrams, and went for a carriage drive in the late afternoon, believing the battle won.

  Davis, being more in the dark, experienced more alarm. Beauregard’s wire on the 17th had told him, “The enemy has assailed my outposts in heavy force. I have fallen back on the line of Bull Run, and will make a stand at Mitchell’s Ford.” He spoke of retiring farther, possibly all the way to the Rappahannock, and closed with a plea for reinforcements for his 29 regiments and 29 guns, only nine of which were rifled. Davis sent what he could, including three regiments and a battery from Fredericksburg, and directed Johnston to move his army to Manassas “if practicable.” Johnston’s 18 regiments and 20 smooth-bore guns, even if they all arrived in time, would not bring Beauregard up to the reported strength of the Federals, for of the fifty regiments thus assembled to meet the fifty of the enemy, 1700 of the Valley soldiers—the equivalent of two regiments—were down with the measles. Presently, however, it seemed not to matter, or to be no more than a lost academic possibility. For that same Wednesday afternoon in Richmond another telegram arrived from Beauregard: “I believe this proposed movement of General Johnston is too late. Enemy will attack me in force tomorrow morning.”

  Thursday came and passed, and there was no attack. Then Friday came, and still the wire brought no word of battle. Davis kept busy, forwarding every corporal’s guard he could lay hands on. At noon Saturday Johnston reached Manassas with the van of his army, the rest coming along behind as fast as the overworked railroad could transport them. Sunday came and Davis, a soldier himself, could wait no longer. He took a special northbound train.

  In mid-afternoon, as it neared the Junction, there were so many signs of a defeat that the conductor would not permit the train to proceed, fearing it would be captured. But Davis was determined to go on. The engine was uncoupled and the President mounted the cab, riding toward the boom of guns and, now, the clatter of musketry. Beyond the Junction he secured a horse and continued north. Fugitives streamed around and past him, the wounded and the ones who had lost nerve. “Go back!” he told them. “Do your duty and you can save the day.” Most of the powder-grimed men did not bother to answer the tall, clean civilian riding into the smoky uproar they had just come out of. Others shouted warnings of disaster. The battle had been lost, they cried; the army had been routed. Davis rode on toward the front.

  First Blood; New Conceptions

  IRVIN MCDOWELL HAD COME A LONG WAY since he said to Sherman on the White House steps in April, “You should have asked for a brigadier general’s rank. You’re just as fit for it as I am.” Now perhaps not even Sherman, still a colonel, commanding a brigade in his fellow Ohioan’s army, would have replied as he did then. A West Pointer, in his early forties—he and Beauregard had been classmates—McDowell was six feet tall an
d heavy-set, with dark brown hair and a grizzled beard worn in the French style. He had attended military school in France and later spent a year’s leave of absence there, so that, in addition to wearing a distinctive beard, he was one of the few regular army officers with a first-hand knowledge of the classical tactics texts, mostly French. His manner was modest and friendly in the main, but this was marred from time to time by a tendency to be impulsive and dogmatic in conversation, which offended many people. Some were appalled as well by his gargantuan appetite, one witness telling how he watched in dismay while McDowell, after a full meal, polished off a whole watermelon for dessert and pronounced it “monstrous fine!” He had a strong will along certain lines, as for instance in his belief that alcohol was an evil. Once when his horse fell on him and knocked him out, the surgeon who tried to administer some brandy found his teeth so firmly clamped that they could not be pried apart, and McDowell was proud that, even unconscious, he would not take liquor.

  Now, indeed, marching at the head of an army whose fitness for testing under fire he himself had doubted, he had need to clamp his teeth still tighter and call on all his self-control. Since setting out, prodded into motion by a civilian President who discounted the unpreparedness by remarking that the men of both armies were “green alike”—which did not at all take into account that one of them (McDowell’s) would be required to execute a tactical march in the presence of the enemy—he had watched his fears come true. While congressmen and other members of Washington society, some of them accompanied by ladies with picnic hampers, harried the column with buggies and gigs, the troops went along with the lark, lending the march the holiday air of an outing. They not only broke ranks for berry-picking; they discarded their packs and “spare” equipment, including their cumbersome cartridge boxes, and ate up the rations intended to carry them through the fighting.

  Re-issuing ammunition and food had cost him a day of valuable time, in addition to the one already lost in wretched marching, and now as he spent another day with his army brought up short at Centerville while he explored the roads and fords leading down to and across Bull Run, where the rebels were improving their position, the worst of his fears was rumored to be fact: Johnston had reached Manassas, leaving Patterson holding the bag out in the Valley. As he rose before daylight Sunday morning, having completed his reconnaissance, issued the orders for attack, and eaten his usual oversized supper the night before, it was no wonder he was experiencing the discomfort of an upset digestion. Even McDowell’s iron stomach had gone back on him, cramping his midriff with twinges of pain and tightening the tension on his nerves.

  Despite the twinges as he waited for the roar of guns to announce that the attack was rolling, there was confidence in his bearing. He felt that his tactical plan, based as it was on careful preparations, was a sound one. A study of the map had shown a battlefield resembling a spraddled X. Bull Run flowed from the northwest to the southeast to form one cross-member; Warrenton Turnpike ran arrow straight, southwest-northeast, to form the other. The stream was steep-banked, dominated by high ground and difficult to cross except at fords above and below a stone bridge spanning the run where the turnpike intersected it. McDowell had planned to attack on the left, that flank affording the best approach to Richmond; but when reconnaissance showed that the fords below the bridge were strongly held by rebel infantry and artillery, he looked to his right. Upstream, out the western arm of the X, he found what he was seeking. Cavalry patrols reported good crossings lightly held in that direction: one at Sudley Springs, all the way out the western arm, and another about halfway out. Both were suitable for wheeled vehicles, the troopers reported, which meant that the main effort, launched by way of these two crossings, could be supported by the superior Federal artillery. Now McDowell had his attack plan, and he committed it to paper.

  Of his four divisions, each with about 8000 men, two would demonstrate against the run, while the other two executed a turning movement against the Confederate left flank. The First Division, under Brigadier General Daniel Tyler, would move “toward the stone bridge … to feint the main attack upon this point.” The Fourth Division, under Colonel D. S. Miles, would be held in reserve near Centerville, at the tip of the eastern arm of the X, but one of its brigades would make a “false attack” on Blackburn’s Ford, halfway down the eastern leg and midway between Centerville and Manassas. As the Second and Third Divisions, under Colonels David Hunter and S. P. Heintzelman, having made their turning movement and launched their attack, swept down the south bank of the stream, crumpling the Confederate line of battle, they would uncover the bridge and the fords, permitting the First and Fourth Divisions to cross the run and strengthen the main effort with fresh troops. This time there were no admonitions as to what would “not be pardonable”; the troops were to drive right through, with more of savagery than caution. Richmond lay beyond the roll of the southern horizon.

  Sound as the plan was, it was also complicated, involving two feints by half the army and a flank attack by the other half, with the main effort to be made at right angles to the line of advance. McDowell knew that much depended on soldierly obedience to orders. Yet his commanders were regulars, and despite their clumsy performance on the long march, he felt that he could count on them for a short one. As a professional soldier he also knew that much would depend on luck, good and bad, but in this connection all he could do was hope for the former and guard against the latter. For one thing, to forestall delay he could order an early start, and this he did. The holding divisions were to leave their camps by 3 a.m. to open the demonstrations at Stone Bridge and Blackburn’s Ford, while the turning column was to set out even earlier, at 2 o’clock, in order to clear Sudley Springs by 7 at the latest.

  And so it was. The troops lurched into motion on schedule, some having had but very little sleep, others having had no sleep at all, and now again it was stop and go but mostly stop, just as on the other march, except that now there was the added confusion of darkness and bone-deep weariness as they stumbled over logs and roots and were stabbed at by branches in the woods, clanking as they ran to catch up or stood stock-still to breathe the thick dust of the “sacred soil.” About 9.30—two and one-half hours behind schedule—the head of the column reached Sudley Springs, where the men were halted to rest and drink. Away downstream, opposite the stone bridge and the ford, the guns of the other two divisions had been booming with false aggressiveness for more than three hours now.

  Beauregard at Manassas, midway between the straddled feet of the X, had no intention of awaiting his classmate’s pleasure. When Johnston had joined him Saturday with about half of his 9000 men, the rest being due to arrive in the night, the Creole general’s spirits rose. Now that his army was about to be almost equal to the enemy’s, he would attack. He made his dispositions accordingly, concentrating his regiments along the eastern leg of the X, from Stone Bridge down to Union Mills Ford, where the crossing would be made in force to envelop the Federal left and crush it while he marched on Centerville.

  Thus Beauregard and McDowell, on opposite sides of Bull Run, had more or less identical plans, each intending to execute a turning movement by the right flank to strike his opponent’s left. If both had moved according to plan, the two armies might have grappled and spun round and round, like a pair of dancers clutching each other and twirling to the accompaniment of cannon. However, this could only happen if both moved on schedule. And late as McDowell was, Beauregard was later.

  In the first place there was trouble on the railroad from Manassas Gap, and though some of Johnston’s men had been assigned a share in the forward movement, the remainder of them did not arrive that night. In the second place, the attack order was ambiguous and vague. There was to be an advance across the run, then an advance on Centerville, and though each section of the plan ended: “The order to advance will be given by the commander in chief,” it was not clear to the brigade commanders just which advance was meant. They took it to mean the advance on the crossing,
whereas Beauregard intended it to mean the second advance, after the crossing had been forced. Accordingly, early Sunday morning at Manassas, while Beauregard listened for the roar of guns, there was only silence from the right.

  Then there arrived from Mitchell’s Ford, two miles below Stone Bridge, a messenger who reported that the enemy had appeared in strength to the left front of that position; and as if to reinforce this information there came a sound of firing from the vicinity of the bridge. To guard against a crossing, Beauregard sent his reserve brigades, under Brigadier Generals Barnard Bee and T. J. Jackson, to strengthen the few troops he had stationed there, on the left flank of his army. All this time he listened for the boom of cannon to indicate that his attack was underway on the right. From that direction, all he heard was silence; but northward, from the direction of the bridge, the cannonade was swelling to a roar. At 8 o’clock Beauregard left his office at Manassas Junction to establish field headquarters on Lookout Hill, in the rear of Mitchell’s Ford.

  From there, of course, the roar of guns was louder, coming from both the left and right, Stone Bridge and Blackburn’s Ford, but still there were no signs of an advance across the run. By 9 o’clock Beauregard had begun to suspect that the Federal main body was elsewhere, probably on one of his flanks, preparing to surprise him. Just then, as if in substantiation of his fears, a message arrived from a signal officer: