by Bruce Catton
6. Cox, McClellan in West Virginia, 130-31; O.R., Vol. II,
208-9.
7. O.R., Vol. n, 201, 206; Cox, op cit, 132.
Scott's message of congratulations is in O.R., Vol. II, 204. McClellan's message to his troops, 236.
John Beatty, Memoirs of a Volunteer, 1861-1865, 21, 23, 31; McClellan's Own Story, 59; Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 743-44.
10. Jed. Hotchkiss, Virginia, Vol. HI, Confederate Military
History, 61-62.
11. Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 296.
12. Charles Leib, Nine Months in the Quartermaster's Depart-
ment, 33-35.
13. Ibid, 126-27.
14. Jed. Hotchkiss, Virginia, Vol. HI, Confederate Military
History, 59-60; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents,
323-24.
2. The Laws of War
1. Murat Halstead in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, July
1, 1861.
2. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 2.
3. Letter from T. J. Bamett to S. L. M. Barlow, May 27,
1861, in the Barlow Papers, at the Huntington Library.
4. Adam Gurowski, Diary, Vol. I, 63-64, 66.
5. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 4-5;
Rhodes, Vol. Ill, 441.
6. Basler, Vol. IV, 421-41.
7. For the speeches and general debate in both houses of
Congress, the writer has relied on the extensive verbatim reports
in the American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 232, 234-36, 239-42,
244.
8. Morse to Dr. James Wynne, May 2, 1861: from the
Samuel F. B. Morse Papers, Library of Congress: notes from Allan Nevins.
9. Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, 54, 97,
130.
10. Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 246-50.
3. A Head Full of Fire
1. Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 43; New York
Herald, July 4, 1861.
2. D.A.B., Vol. Xn, 429-31.
Diary of Betty Herndon Maury, entry for July 10, 1861, in the Library of Congress; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Diary, 21; N.O.R., Vol. TV, 566-67.
Notes by W. G. Cobb, in the Cameron Papers, Library of Congress; mss Recollections of C. D. Fishburne, in the Southern Historical Collection.
"Letters of Francis Parkman," edited by Wilbur R. Jacobs, Vol. I, 163.
6. Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, 282-83.
Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 272-75.
Davis to Johnston, July 13, 1861, in the Joseph E. Johnston Papers at the Huntington Library.
Letter of John S. Manning to Mrs. Manning, July 7, 1861, in the WUliams-Chesnut-Manning Papers, Southern Historical Collection.
James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Confederacy, Vol. IT, 34-38, 40.
Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, First Session, Appendix, with report of the Secretary of the Navy, 7-9.
National Intelligencer, July 9, 1861, quoting a letter from Vicksburg dated June 16, 1861.
For a thorough examination of the Confederacy's economic weakness, see Charles W. Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy. He concludes (p 103) that the "industrial weakness of the South was one of the decisive factors in its defeat. . . . The colonial economy which had been so characteristic of Southern business before the war had left the country without sufficient fluid capital or coin to sustain the currency." Even more pointed is the verdict of John Christopher Schwab (The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865: a Financial and Industrial History of the South During the Civil War, 2-3): "The North was industrially much more advanced, its manufactares were vastly more extensive, its urban population was more numerous, its trade more advanced, its transportation system more highly developed—in a word, its resources were far superior to those of the South, and were the cause of the final overthrow of the Confederate government." The editor of the Cologne Gazette, in Germany, wrote shortly after the outbreak of the war that "the poverty-stricken Don Quixotes of the Southern plantations gave battle to the roaring windmills and smoking chimneys of the wealthy North," and remarked that the Confederacy was "in arms against the spirit of the century." (Quoted in Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 265-66.)
14. Not long before the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the
British correspondent William Howard Russell dined with the
Confederate commissioners in Washington and wrote: "Mr.
Lincoln they spoke of with contempt; Mr. Seward they evidently
regarded as the ablest and most unscrupulous of their enemies;
but the tone in which they alluded to the whole of the Northern
people indicated their clear conviction that trade, commerce,
the pursuit of gain, manufacture, and the base mechanical arts,
had so degraded the whole race, they would never attempt to
strike a blow in fair fight for what they prized so highly in
theory and in words." (My Diary, 31)
15. American Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861, 157.
4. The Road to Bull Run
O.R., Vol. II, 77-82, 93-97; Joseph B. Carr, Operations of 1861 about Fort Monroe, B. & L., Vol. II, 150; Felix Gregory De Fontaine, "Shoulder to Shoulder," Century Magazine, No. VI, Vol. I, 443; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. I, Documents, 360-61.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. JV, 319-20; New York Tribune, June 26, 1861; Adam Gurowski, Diary, Vol. I, 56.
3. O.R., Vol. LI, Part One, 338-39, 369-70, 387.
O.R., Vol. H, 718-21; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 322-24; E. D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War in the United States, 55-57.
O.R., Vol. II, 158-59, 163, 166-69, 187, 661, 691-96. This dreary exchange of messages is confusing enough to the modern student, and it is easy to see how it confused its authors. In his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Patterson makes it clear that he precisely obeyed what he understood Scott's orders to be, and it is hard to feel that he alone was responsible for the fact that he never quite grasped what Scott wanted him to do. (Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part II, 1863, Bull Run, 5-7, 104). There is a sketch of Patterson's career in D.A.B., Vol. XIV, 306-7.
6. O.R., Vol. n, 485, 923; Vol. LI, Part Two, 688. For a sharp critique of Beauregard's plan, see T. Harry Williams, Beauregard, 75-80. The New York Tribune, particularly in its issues of July 17 and 18, 1861, appears to have given about all the information regarding McDowell's plans that Beauregard could have needed, and although the feminine spies in Washington are sometimes credited with having had a decisive influence on the battle of Bull Run it does not seem to this writer that their romantic activities really made very much difference. (It ought to be remembered, in this connection, that no part of the plans which Beauregard is said to have drawn up as a result of the information thus received was ever actually put into operation.) In his July 17 message to Davis announcing that a major engagement was imminent. Beauregard simply said, "The enemy has assailed my outposts in heavy force," making no mention of the supposedly all-important messages received 24 hours earlier from Washington. (Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 90). McDowell's advance was so heavily publicized all around that Beauregard would have had to be exceedingly stupid (which he decidedly was not) to have remained in ignorance of it.
O.R., Vol. II, 472, 686, 691, 901.
B. & L., Vol. I, 122-23.
9. Rev. A. M. Stewart, Camp, March and Battlefield; or,
Three Years and a Half with the Army of the Potomac, 15; O.R.,
Vol. II, 168.
10. O.R., Vol. n, 303-5.
11. George Wilkes, The Great Battle, 6-7; Francis F. Meagher,
Last Days of the 69th in Virginia, 6; D. G. Crotty, Four Years
Campaign in the Army of the Potomac, 20. McDowell's report
on the battle of Bull Run recites the
difficulties of the march,
and asserts that the men were more wearied by the obstacles in
the road and the slow pace set than by the distance covered. Mc-
Dowell adds that the men were "unaccustomed to marching,
their bodies not in condition for that kind of work, and not used
to carrying even the load of 'light marching order'." (O.R., Vol.
II, 323-24.) Cf Colin R. Ballard, The Military Genius of Abra-
ham Lincoln, 56: "The Federals were really defeated by their
own exhaustion."
12. Meagher, op cit, 10.
13. Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 74-75; B. & L., Vol. I, 203.
5. Dust Clouds Against the Sky
George Wilkes, The Great Battle, 17-19; Edmund C. Sted-man, The Battle of Bull Run, 15-17.
O.R., Vol. H, 318-19, 326, 559; E. Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, 30-31; Joseph Mills Hanson, Bull Run Remembers, 4.
Elisha H. Rhodes, The First Campaign of the Second Rhode Island Infantry, 18-19; Martin A. Haynes, A History of the Second Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, 23-24.
Mss diary of Samuel Heintzelman, Library of Congress, 36-37.
O.R., Vol. H, 319, 349, 369, 559; Hanson, loc. cit; Francis F. Wilshin, Manassas, 11-12.
Alexander, Military Memoirs, 33-35; Johnston's report, O.R., Vol. II, 474-75.
McHenry Howard, Recollections of a Maryland Confederate Soldier and Staff Officer under Johnston, Jackson and Lee, 34-38; W. W. Goldsborough, The Maryland Line in the Confederate States Army, 19-20; Alexander, 32-33.
Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 9, 1861; letter of Gen. Beauregard to the editors of the Century Magazine, Aug. 1, 1884, in the Palmer Collection, Western Reserve Historical Society. Porter Alexander, whose account of the fight on the Henry House plateau is especially vivid, remarks: "New troops going into action are very prone to 'fire and fall back'—to touch and let go —as one handles a piece of hot iron when uncertain how hot it may be." (Military Memoirs, 33.)
9. Alexander, 35; Richmond Enquirer, Aug. 9, 1861.
T. B. Warder and James W. Catlett, Battle of Young's Branch, or Manassas Plain, 74-76.
John W. Imboden, Incidents of the First Bull Run, in B. & L., Vol. I, 234-35; Hanson, 5.
Edwin S. Barrett, What I Saw at Bull Run, 20-21; Hanson, 6; O.R., Vol. H, 347-48, 391-92, 403; Alexander, 39; Col. William W. Averell in Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part n, 1863, 216.
Hanson, 6-7; Wilshin, 14-15; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. n, Documents, 95; Charles Minor Blackford, in Susan Leigh Blackford's Letters from Lee's Army, 25.
14. McDowell's report, O.R., Vol. H, 319-20; Captain Wood-
bury, ibid, 334. After telling how the discipline of the Union troops collapsed during the retreat, Woodbury remarks: "We cannot suppose that the troops of the enemy had attained a higher degree of discipline than our own, but they acted on the defensive, and were not equally exposed to disorganization."
15. Alexander, 41-42; Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 349-50; Mss Diary of Edmund Ruffin, Library of Congress; Avery Craven, Edmund Ruffin, Southerner, 230. There are different versions of Jackson's remark about the need for a speedy pursuit. T. Harry Williams is inclined to skepticism, and Frank Vandiver (Mighty Stonewall) says that "caution must be used" regarding it. The remark does seem to be wholly in character with Jackson's aggressive attitude.
6. Death of the Minute Man
McDowell's report, O.R., Vol. II, 321. W. T. Sherman (ibid, 370-71) wrote that "there was no positive order to retreat, although for an hour it had been going on by the operation of the men themselves," and Brig Gen. Robert C. Schenck reported (360) that the retreat "seemed to me to be occasioned more by the fears of frightened teamsters, and of hurrying and excited civilians (who ought never to have been there) than even by the needless disorder and want of discipline of straggling soldiers." The classic account of the picnic and the rout is of course William Howard Russell's. His story of his own adventures at Bull Run begins on page 163 of My Diary.
Sarah Ellen Blackwell, A Military Genius: Life of Anna Ella Carroll, Vol. I, 77-79; Russell, 168-70; Albert Gallatin Riddle, Recollections of War Times, 48-51.
O.R., Vol. II, 316.
Ibid, 747-53.
Beauregard's report, ibid, 497; report of M. L. Bonham, 519; Davis to Adjutant General Cooper, 987; Roman, Military Operations, Vol. I, 111.
Roman, Vol. I, 114; Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 352-53; Alexander, 49. Alexander was present at the conference; he identifies the staff officer as Major R. C. Hill, adding: "Nothing that he had ever done had justified his nickname, but it arose from something peculiar in his eye, tones and manner, all suggestive of suppressed excitement."
This writer is strongly inclined to agree with Johnston's conclusion (Narrative of Military Operations, 60-61): "Considering the relative strength of the belligerents on the field, the Southern people could not reasonably have expected greater results from their victory than those accomplished: the defeat of the invasion of Virginia, and the preservation of the capital of the Confederacy." In the autumn of 1861 Johnston wrote to Davis listing the reasons why his army did not advance on Washington: "The apparent firmness of the U.S. troops at Centre-ville, which checked our pursuit—The strong forces occupying the works near Georgetown, Arlington & Alexandria—The certainty, too, that General Patterson, if needed, would reach Washington with his army of more than 30,000 sooner than we could— & the condition & inadequate means of the army in ammunition, provision & transportation, prevented any serious thoughts of advancing against the capital." (Letter to President Davis, Nov. 10, 1861, in the Joseph E. Johnston Papers, Manuscript Department, Duke University Library.) In this explanation Johnston, to be sure, greatly overstates the "firmness" of the Federals at Centre-ville and the size of Patterson's army, but the other obstacles were very real. Jubal Early wrote after the war that "it was utterly impossible for any army to have captured Washington by immediate pursuit," pointing out that even if a pursuit had been made "it would have been very difficult to cross the Potomac at all." (Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War between the States, 40.)
The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, Vol. IV, 32-36. It should be borne in mind that although Whitman presented a graphic and apparently authentic account of the post-battle scene in Washington, he himself was not an eyewitness.
The figures are the best estimate this writer can make after examining the varying totals given in different sources. See Battles & Leaders, Vol. I, 194-195; O.R., Vol. II, 327, 570, and Vol. LI, 17-19; Thomas L. Livermore, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 77; Frederick Phisterer, Statistical Record of the Armies of the United States, 213.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. TV, 365-66; New York Tribune, July 21 and 22, announcing a great Union victory, and July 23 with editorial lamentations.
Horace Bushnell, "Reverses Needed. A Discourse Delivered on the Sunday after the Disaster of Bull Run, in the North Church, Hartford," 8.
Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 352-54; E. D. Townsend, Anecdotes of the Civil War, 58-59; John G. Nicolay, letters to Mrs. Nicolay dated July 21 and July 23, 1861, in the Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress.
O.R., Vol. II, 756; Nicolay & Hay, Vol. IV, 357, 368; Basler, Vol. IV, 457-58.
Stanton to Buchanan, July 26, 1861, in the Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Richmond During the War; Four Years of Personal Observation, by "a Richmond Lady" who seems to have been Mrs. Sallie A. Putnam, 63; Journal of the Congress of the Confederate States, Vol. I, 275-76; E. A. Pollard, The First Year of the War, 116; O.R., Vol. JJ, 574; Moore's Rebellion Record, Vol. II, Documents, ra.
Davis, Rise and Fall, Vol. I, 443; letter of Johnston to Davis, Aug. 3, 1861, in the Joseph E. Johnston Papers, Duke University; Mrs. Chesnut's Diary, 92.
R. E. Lee, in a letter to a relative, July 27; mss. on deposit in the Maryland Historical Society.
18. De Leon, Four
Years in Rebel Capitals, 123-24.
Mrs. Chesnut's Diary, 88; letter of T. R. R. Cobb, in Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XXVIII, 288.
Letter of Sullivan Bullen to Sarah Shumway Bullen, July 14, 1861, in the Chicago Historical Society.
Bibliography
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY for this volume, prepared by E. B. Long, consists of four parts. I. Resources. The libraries, historical societies, archives, colleges, universities, battlefields, forts, and other institutions that contributed to this volume. (Others will be named in later volumes.) Also this stands as grateful acknowledgment and recognition of the many persons who aided us in these places at the time of our visits. II. Primary manuscript collections made use of for this book. III. Newspapers. IV. Books, pamphlets, and periodicals.
SECTION I: Resources
The persons listed herein were those associated with these institutions at the time of our visit.
Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, Chicago, Ralph G. Newman,
Margaret April, and Richard Clark. Adjutant General's Office, State of Louisiana, Jackson Barracks,
New Orleans, La., Thomas Harrison. Alabama State Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Ala., Peter Brannon. Annan, David H., Chicago, 111., private collection. Arkansas History Commission, Little Rock, Ark., I. H. Atkinson,
Orville W. Taylor, Francis I. Gwaltney. Armstrong, Loring, Elmhurst, 111., private collection. Atlanta Historical Society, Atlanta, Ga., Allen P. Julian. Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Calif., Mrs.
Julia H. Macloed, Miss L. M. Ignacki. Eugene C. Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas,
Austin, Tex., Miss Winnie Allen. Beauvoir, Biloxi, Miss., home of Jefferson Davis. Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Mass., Miss Margaret Hackett. Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass., Rare Book Dept., Zoltan N.
Hardszti, John Alden, Louis Ugalde.
Brown University, John Hay Library, Providence, R.I., John
R. T. Ettlinger, Mrs. Norma Kacen. California Historical Society, San Francisco, Calif., James deT.
Abajian.
California, University of, Berkeley, Calif., Library, Henry N.
Smith, Frederick Anderson. California, University of, at Los Angeles, Library, Dept. of
