by Mark Nesbitt
If Pope was having trouble with subordinates attacking, so was Lee. A third time Lee requested Longstreet to attack, but was disappointed. A small-scale fight took place with some of Hood’s troops in the dusk. Nightfall ended the fighting of August 29.
Sometime that night Pope received a message that his cavalry had spotted numerous regiments of Confederates marching through Gainesville toward the battlefield, but for some reason, he dismissed it. Jackson was his obsession and he would continue his attacks the next day.
Before noon on August 30, Pope began to receive erroneous reports that Jackson was in retreat. By early afternoon he had convinced himself that all he needed to do was pursue and destroy a retreating column of Confederates. As his troops advanced toward the railroad bed, they were met by volleys from the enemy, obviously not in retreat but as determined as ever to hold their position. Fighting was particularly fierce in the lowest section of the railroad embankment known as the “Deep Cut,” and Federals nearly broke through a gap in the Confederate line at a place called “The Dump,” where the defenders ran out of ammunition and hurled rocks at the Union troops.
While Jackson’s men doggedly resisted Pope’s onslaught, Longstreet still held off on his attack. In the meantime, McDowell mistakenly withdrew a portion of the Union troops in front of Long-street, leaving a lone unsupported battery of artillery to defend the Federal flank.
Lt. Charles Hazlett, the commander of the battery, realized the extreme danger and sent an aide to find some troops. Two infantry regiments, the 10th New York and the 5th New York, dressed in their gaudy Zouave uniforms—red pantaloons, white gaiters, and tasseled fezzes—hurried to their doom. They arrived in position just in time to face Longstreet’s massive assault.
Twenty-eight thousand Confederates bore down on the New Yorkers, approximately 1,000 strong. In five minutes the 5th New York lost 123 men. After all the horror and slaughter of the Civil War was finally tallied, the Zouaves held the grisly record: They lost the highest number of killed in any infantry regiment in any battle of the entire war.
Longstreet’s men pushed on toward Henry Hill, landmark of the first battle of Manassas in 1861. Atop the hill were two brigades of the Pennsylvania Reserve Division, Gen. John F. Reynolds commanding, and two more brigades and other assorted troops. Reynolds, who would meet his death in less than a year at Gettysburg, ordered the Reserves forward.
The opposing lines met at the Sudley Road. The Yankees seized the washed-out depressions as cover. More troops from both sides arrived and the Union troops, after having stalled Longstreet’s attack, began to withdraw. Finally, mercifully, sunset brought an end to the fighting.
Casualties were high. According to the National Park Service, of the 70,000 Union troops present, 1,750 were killed, 8,450 wounded, and 4,250 missing; the 55,000 Confederates engaged lost 1,550 killed in action, 7,750 wounded, but only 100 missing in action.
Undeterred by the 9,400 casualties, Lee turned his army’s marching columns northward and began his first invasion of the enemy’s territory.
Manassas Ghosts
With two bloody battles occurring on the same ground, surely Manassas would be the site of numerous ghost stories. During the first battle, the newly recruited soldiers marched into their initial fight as if going to a picnic; death, in all its hideous forms, took them by surprise. One paranormal theory as to why ghosts linger at one spot is that death comes too quickly for a person to even realize he is dead. Another theory is that a person, even after death, cannot believe that the state he is in is death. Both of these could apply to the naive soldiers of First Manassas.
Second Manassas, on the other hand, was a battle of hardened veteran soldiers who slugged it out, toe-to-toe, and knew the risks and sudden consequences of combat all too well.
The Headless Zouave
I can’t remember the first time I heard the story about the headless Zouave, who has been seen in the area where the unfinished railroad crosses the battlefield of Manassas. It was most likely in the mid-1970s, when I was a ranger at Gettysburg and would visit friends at Manassas.
First, some historical background: Zouave units were formed at the very beginning of the American Civil War. In the mid-nineteenth century, anything and everything French was in vogue, from women’s garments to military style. The common kepi headgear, used by both sides, was of French design. Some military units took the fashion statement to extremes and outfitted themselves, head-to-toe, with the uniform of the French forces in northern Africa. With Middle Eastern influence, the uniforms featured ballooning pantaloons tucked into gaiters; short, waist-length jackets with looping embroidery; waistbands that were yards long; and, to top it all off, tasseled, turbaned fezzes. The worst part, at least to soldiers who would do much of their fighting in woods and fields, is that the uniforms were brightly colored—red sashes or jackets, yellow piping, and blue-striped pantaloons—making them perfect targets.
Others claim to have seen the ghost of a Zouave at or near the New York Monument on New York Avenue. The headless Zouave I had always heard about had been seen near the unfinished railroad.
Stories abound of out-of-place sounds, intense cold spots, and weird smells like rotten eggs and a smoky odor of something “charred.”
Sullivan Ballou and the “Charred” Smell
L. B. Taylor Jr., in his Civil War Ghosts of Virginia, may have an explanation for the “charred” odor that people smell at Manassas. Taylor recounts a story printed in Washington Magazine in the early 1990s that refers to people on the battlefield reporting the smell of black powder and burning flesh, as well as localized cold spots. A park ranger confirmed that visitors have randomly reported the weird, out-of-time smells. Taylor wrote about the ranger’s explanation of the smells.
One of the more moving moments in Ken Burns’s classic series The Civil War was when a letter from Maj. Sullivan Ballou to his wife in Rhode Island was read. In flowery, Victorian prose he promises if he should die in the coming battle (First Manassas) that he will return to her as a ghost and watch over her. While the sentiment is beautiful, reality is far more brutal.
After he was wounded, Ballou and a colonel were taken to Sudley Church, where they died and were buried in shallow graves nearby. In the spring of 1862, the Confederate army left the area and orders came down from the governor of Rhode Island to locate and recover the bodies of the two heroes. As the parties were digging near the church, a local girl told them that the Confederates had already emptied the graves and took the body of the higher-ranking officer to a ravine, mutilated it for ghastly souvenirs, and burned it. The exhumation party located the decapitated remains. But she was wrong about the identity of the body: It wasn’t the colonel but Major Ballou whose body had been partially cremated. Could this then be the source for the consistent reports of the “charred” smell? Could it be the soul of Major Ballou calling out from the desecrated grave he once occupied?
The Stone House
The Stone House is a battlefield landmark with a sordid past and mysterious happenings associated with it. Literary references to the Stone House go back to 1866, when Confederate veteran and novelist John Esten Cooke referred to it in his book Surry of Eagle’s Nest. Cooke referred to it as “The Old Stone House of Manassas,” or more ominously, “The Haunted House.” After the turn of the twentieth century, a story emerged of a curse put on the house and the family that lived there after the war. The family lost at least six of its members to death in a relatively short time.
The pre-Civil War history of the house is checkered. It was once a tavern and inn for western traders on their way to Washington. According the National Park Service’s brochure, it was never a fancy place but catered, rather, to rough-and-tumble, liquor-drinking cattlemen and teamsters. Park historians have documented that, as well as a private home, the building was used as a parole station and as a hospital during both battles. Wounded men left their names carved in the woodwork of the house.
David Roth, in Blue & Gray M
agazine’s Guide to Haunted Places of the Civil War, wrote about the negative energy in the house that is felt by many people. In a story dated 1986, he wrote that visitors sometimes feel a distinct pressure from invisible hands pushing them down the stairs from the second floor.
Witnesses claim to have seen the Stone House at Manassas National Battlefield Park disappear and then reappear.
I received a letter in July 1994 from a gentleman who wrote of his similar experience at the Stone House. He recounted what he had heard about the house’s history as a tavern with hard drinking and fistfights. The day was hot, but while he was walking through the house he became the victim of one of those inexplicable cold spots. As he was leaving, he was “hit hard” from behind and fell out of the house to the ground, injuring his knee. In physical pain, he was also upset, because coming from the house he heard laughter, as if a group of people were gloating over his being thrown to the ground. He turned to ask for help only to find that no one was inside or outside of the house. He was alone.
A friend and former park ranger told me the story of a couple of other rangers who were working in the basement of the locked Stone House. As they paused from their work, they heard footsteps on the floor above their heads. Thinking that somehow a visitor had gotten into the house, they went upstairs to find all the doors still locked.
Taylor also quotes a ranger as saying that people driving through the park at night report seeing lights on in houses that have been torn down long ago. The antecedent to that story was told to me in September 2010 by a young woman who lived near Manassas and was familiar with her “neighborhood.” One night she was driving to an appointment and passed through the intersection where the Stone House sits. She was astounded. The house wasn’t there. She almost panicked. Was there some calamity that forced the park service to tear the historic building down? Had there been a recent fire that she hadn’t heard about? Before she could comprehend what could have happened to the famous old building, she was through the intersection and on her way. After her appointment, she returned the same way, perhaps thinking she might be able to stop and examine whatever remains of the structure were left. As she approached the intersection, she was struck by one incredible thing: The house was there again.
Later she related the story to some friends. They were silent just a little too long. When she asked if they thought she was crazy, they answered that the same thing had happened to them. The old Stone House had vanished only to reappear a while later.
In paranormal studies there is a phenomenon known as a warp, defined as a rip in the fabric of time wherein a percipient sees into the past and looks at a scene that was once at that spot but has changed. Is there some sort of warp in the area of the Stone House that occasionally allows us to see the site before the house was built in 1828? Is there a rip in time there that opens and closes according to some as yet unknown natural—or should I say, unnatural—law?
Broken Machinery
After a speech about ghosts I had given once, a man approached me and said that he was working for a consulting firm in Manassas that was helping with construction around the area. The project was halted because they had discovered human remains, which they determined had come from one of the battles there. He was working with the machinery to exhume what was left of the soldiers after many years in the soil. Suddenly, as they were about to unearth the remains, the machinery broke down. They had to stop and send the machine back to the shop for repairs.
They scheduled another time to begin to remove the soldiers. Again they were working at the site when the backhoe broke down. Chalking it up to bad luck, they again returned to the shop for repairs.
Once again they were on site, continuing where they’d left off before. It’s plausible to blame bad luck for a mechanical breakdown twice. But once the repairs are done, there should no longer be a problem—unless there’s something else involved, like in this case.
A third time the hoe broke down. This time they covered the remains and gave up.
EVP Findings
A brief visit I made to the unfinished railroad in September 2011 yielded several recordings of EVP. In the first I asked if would the highest-ranking officer would speak with me and what is your name? At 4 seconds I heard the word “DeHeiser” or “DePeyster.” Interestingly enough, there was a Union officer, a Maj. J. Watts De Peyster Jr. on the staff of Maj. Gen. Philip Kearny. Kearny’s division made an attack on the Confederate line at the unfinished railroad on August 29, 1862.
A second recording was made at 2:49 P.M. First, there’s some loud noise that cannot be recognized as words; then, at 10 seconds, a voice says, “Most definitely.” At 14 seconds there is a strange “clink,” sounding like a railroad spike being hit with a sledge hammer, that could not have come from any piece of equipment or clothing I had. With EVP this is not unusual: clinks, raps, clicks (like fingers snapping), bits of song, roars, and whispers are often heard in the background. Where the “clink” in this recording came from is a mystery. Finally, at 16 seconds, very quietly, as if they do not want me to hear, a voice says, “You can’t talk to him.”
A final recording was made that day at 2:57 P.M. I say “Men of the 63rd you can talk to me.” At 10 seconds a quiet voice says, “He can hear us.”
Shiloh
Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston was held in high esteem by his president Jefferson Davis. “If Sidney Johnston is not a general,” Davis said in defense of him, “we had better give up the war, for we have no general.” But because of the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson in February 1862, Johnston’s reputation had suffered, and he was forced to abandon Kentucky and much of middle and western Tennessee. He concentrated his 42,000-man army at the major rail junction of Corinth, Mississippi. From there he and his commanders planned an offensive to retake the important state of Tennessee.
Union general Ulysses S. Grant was sent to Pittsburg Landing on the Tennessee River, there to expect reinforcements of some 35,000 men that would bring his army to 75,000. From there the Federals would launch an attack on Johnston at Corinth. The Confederates beat them to the punch.
In spite of delays in their march from Corinth toward Pittsburg Landing, the Confederates arrived on April 5, 1862. Johnston was warned by his subordinates that Grant may have already been reinforced (which he hadn’t been yet) and that he should call off the attacks scheduled for the next morning. Johnston summed up his fighting spirit by telling them, “I would fight them if they were a million.”
Grant, too, would show his aggressiveness by refusing to have his men construct breastworks, reasoning that they might lose their fighting spirit if they were put to work digging defensive works. Besides, his plan was to attack the Confederates at Corinth. Offensive thinking on the part of Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, commanding a division in Grant’s army, in this case courted disaster.
Sherman was told more than once by front-line officers that something was brewing in front of their position. Sherman dismissed it merely as pickets firing. On the morning of April 6, he would see how wrong he was.
Heavy skirmishing preceded the main Confederate attack past a small country church called Shiloh, whose name in Hebrew, ironically, meant “place of peace.” But Sherman was finally convinced a Confederate offensive was underway when a Confederate volley ripped through his camp, killed his orderly, and wounded him in the hand. He finally conceded, “My God, we’re attacked!”
Grant heard the firing nine miles away at his headquarters in Savannah, Tennessee. He immediately boarded a boat and steamed to disembark at Pittsburg Landing by 9:00 A.M. But even Grant’s presence on the field did little to stem the panicked retreat of his inexperienced soldiers.
Luckily for Grant, the Confederates were just as green. In spite of their success, there were Southern units that retreated in disorganization. Grant rode the battlefield, organizing a defensive line along a ridge west of the landing. Johnston, too, was at the front, rallying and organizing his men. Bullets clipp
ed his uniform and tore a sole off a boot. At about 2:15 P.M., Tennessee governor Isham G. Harris, acting as a volunteer aide, rode up to Johnston and thought he appeared unusually pale. Harris asked Johnston if he had been wounded. “Yes,” replied the Confederate army commander, “and I fear seriously.”
Johnston had been struck by an Enfield rifle ball in the back of the right knee. The .577-caliber, soft-lead projectile opened an artery, but Johnston apparently didn’t feel it at the time. He had been shot in a prewar duel that caused some loss of feeling. Within a few minutes, Albert Sidney Johnston, who had sent his personal surgeon to help some wounded Union prisoners, bled to death. Afterward, a potentially life-saving surgeon’s field tourniquet was found in his pocket. Aides wrapped his body so the soldiers wouldn’t know they had lost their commander. Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard of Fort Sumter and Manassas fame took over command of the Confederate Army.
The modern reconstruction of Shiloh Church, the building from which the battlefield took its name.
While Northern troops continued to retreat, Grant ordered the troops in his center along what they later called the Sunken Road to hold the position “at all hazards.” Some 4,500 Federals held back a dozen Confederate assaults on their position along the road. From the point of view of the 18,000 rebels who advanced upon that Union position, it became “The Hornet’s Nest.”
Frustrated Confederate commanders ordered fifty-three cannon to concentrate their fire on the area. The half hour to forty-five-minute barrage silenced many of the Union cannon defending the Hornet’s Nest. Union troops on the left withdrew; then support on the right retreated, leaving the men in the Hornet’s Nest to fend for themselves. By 5:30 P.M., they were nearly surrounded and individual officers began to surrender their commands rather than have them slaughtered. Only 2,250 Federals remained to be captured after some six hours of tenacious fighting. But they bought time for the rest of the army, allowing Grant to establish a new line closer to the river under the protection of massed Union artillery and the huge cannons of the Union gunboats.
