Reveille in Washington

by Margaret Leech

  The correspondent of the London Times obtained a pass from General Scott, and set out on a hired horse to see the Virginia camps for himself. He noted the weakness of the rudimentary fortifications at the end of the Long Bridge; and marked the filth of the camps, the officers’ ignorance of company drill, and the different calibers of the artillery. The headquarters of the army consisted of four small tents pitched near Arlington House, and in front of one of them McDowell sat, studying plans and maps. He had been unable to procure a decent map of Virginia, and had no officer capable of conducting a reconnaissance.

  Russell also visited Fort Corcoran, the earthwork constructed and garrisoned by the Sixty-ninth New York at the Virginia end of the Aqueduct. The camp was neatly laid out inside the fort, with pine boughs sheltering the tents from the sun. There was a little door, like the entrance to an icehouse, half buried in the ground, which one soldier was showing to a friend. A sergeant came running. “Dempsey!” he called. “Is that you going into the ‘magazine’ wid yer pipe lighted?” Russell lost interest in Fort Corcoran, and rode hastily away. On a subsequent and more extensive tour of the camps, he flatly concluded that the Federal army was a rabble. The Northern newspapers which described it as a magnificent force, disciplined, equipped and effective, were grossly ignorant of what an army should be. The dispatches which Russell had written during his tour of the South had earned him some unpopularity in the Union, but he was not disturbed by it. He cared little for the eminent senators, who reminded him of a gathering of bakers or millers in “slop-coats and light-colored clothing and felt wide-awakes.” He cared nothing at all for the tradition of Lexington. He knew the world and its armies, and had won fame as a correspondent by writing the truth, as he saw it. As the London Times entertained small sympathy for the Union cause, he was untroubled by an incentive to write anything else.

  McDowell had worked hard on his fine paper plan. He was serious and painstaking, and he had welcomed the opportunity of distinguishing himself. Yet, in the hot days of early July his soldierly figure moved against the garish Washington scene—walking alone through streets filled with troops too careless or ignorant to salute him, in spite of the gold star on his shoulder straps—like a man under the compulsion of a tragic destiny. His friend, John Bigelow, visiting him at Arlington, saw that he was greatly depressed. “This is not an army,” McDowell said. “It will take a long time to make an army.” Bigelow pitied him as he had never in his life pitied any man.

  Over the telegraph, the news winged to the Union that at last there was going to be an advance. On July 8, the Star remarked that, as the subject had been aired in the Northern press, it might mention that General McDowell’s line would probably move in the course of the week. An attempt at military surveillance of the telegraph had been ineffectual, and Scott issued an order, confirmed by Secretary Cameron, that henceforward it would convey no dispatches concerning army operations which were not permitted by the commanding general. On the Government’s undertaking to publish prompt official accounts of all battles, the correspondents grudgingly consented to yield obedience to this order, but the bargain would be kept on neither side.

  Files of Northern newspapers were regularly sent from Washington to the headquarters of McDowell’s West Point classmate, Beauregard. The Confederate forces were not, however, obliged to depend for their information on newspaper stories, distorted by patriotic boasting, crazy rumors and bare-faced inventions. It was not hard to travel quietly between Washington and the enemy lines. There were plenty of people along the Potomac who were glad to serve as clandestine ferrymen. Around the departments, there were men who watched and listened. Military maps and plans sometimes unaccountably disappeared. The secessionist ladies of the capital were not all innocent sentimentalists of the old regime. There were resolute spirits among them, who would stop at nothing to aid the Southern cause. The most important of these was the elegant widow, Mrs. Rose O’Neal Greenhow, who was also the most persuasive woman in Washington, with a taste for politics and a talent for intrigue. During the Buchanan administration, she had known everyone of official consequence, and was regarded as a person of influence, to whom people went for help in getting introductions and appointments. Statesmen, soldiers and diplomats had mingled in her parlors. They dined at her table, escorted her on promenades, paid her evening—sometimes late evening —calls.

  After the outbreak of hostilities, Mrs. Greenhow’s Southern sympathies had not prevented her enjoying the society of Union officers. She was not estranged from her friends among the Republican leaders. She still received Secretary Seward, and commented that she found him convivially loquacious after supper. Senator Wilson of Massachusetts was frequently a guest in her little house across from St. John’s Church. That plebeian abolitionist had none of Mr. Seward’s social grace, but he was a powerful figure in the Senate. He was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs.

  Mrs. Greenhow later avowed that her relations with the Republicans had been prompted by a desire to learn their plans, in order to make herself useful to the South. “To this end I employed every capacity with which God had endowed me,” she wrote, “and the result was far more successful than my hopes could have flattered me to expect.” In May she had been approached by a friend, Captain Thomas Jordan of the United States Army, on the subject of sending information to the Confederate forces. Jordan had lingered in the capital long after his allegiance was given to the rebellion. Before he changed his blue coat for a gray one and went off to become colonel and adjutant general in Beauregard’s army, he provided Mrs. Greenhow with a cipher code. Behind his earthworks at Manassas, the little Creole general had reason to appreciate the happy foresight which Jordan had shown before departing from Washington.

  Because of the recent death of one of her daughters, Mrs. Greenhow was not going out in society that spring and summer; but she continued, as usual, to receive her good friends. She entertained callow aides and clerks, who blabbed the Government’s secrets in her sympathetic ear; and conferred with the Washington secessionists, many of whom, in spite of Republican replacements, still remained in the executive departments. Among the items which Mrs. Greenhow claimed that she forwarded to the Confederates was the map used by the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, with red dotted lines showing the proposed route to Manassas.

  According to General Beauregard, it was about July 10 when he received his first message from Mrs. Greenhow concerning the Federal advance. It was delivered by a Washington girl, Miss Bettie Duvall, to the South Carolinian, General M. L. Bonham, at Fairfax Court-House. Bonham saw in Miss Duvall the beautiful spy of romance, with glossy black hair and dark, sparkling eyes. On the preceding day, she had crossed the Chain Bridge in a market cart. At the house of Virginia friends, she had changed her “peasant dress” for a neat riding costume, and posted off to Fairfax on a borrowed horse. Admitted to Bonham’s headquarters, Miss Duvall took out her tucking comb, and from beneath the tumbling masses of her hair drew a package the size of a silver half-dollar, sewn up in black silk. It contained the information that the Federals would advance by way of Fairfax Court-House and Centreville, and that an attack might be expected by the middle of July. This news was confirmed by other reports and by newspaper accounts, and it also verified statements made by a Federal prisoner, a regular soldier who had been engaged in compiling the army returns in McDowell’s adjutant general’s office. Beauregard immediately began to prepare for the attack, and dispatched an aide to Richmond to advise the Confederate authorities.

  July 9 had been the date set for McDowell’s movement, but it was only by great exertion that he was able to get his army under way a week later. Meanwhile, the country was electrified by the news that in western Virginia young Major-General George B. McClellan—lately an Army captain of engineers, who had resigned to go into railroad management—had inflicted defeats on the rebel forces. The loyal section beyond the Alleghenies was reclaimed for the Government; and, assured by the press of the superlative effe
ctiveness of McDowell’s army, the Union looked with exultant expectation toward the campaign in eastern Virginia.

  On the morning of Tuesday, July 16, there was intense excitement in Washington. For the last two days, troops and wagon trains and ambulances had been going across the Potomac. They were still going on the day the army marched. At the Navy Yard, the Seventy-first New York cheered its marching orders, and through hurrahing crowds started for Virginia with other last-minute additions to an army already in movement. For transport, McDowell had only ambulances and munition wagons. Tents and baggage and rations would have to follow later.

  The extension of the Federal pickets had interfered with the underground communication between the Confederates and their friends in Washington. During the night of July 15, a man named Donellan was secretly ferried across the Potomac at a point below Alexandria, and in the morning he entered the capital, rumorous with the army’s advance. Donellan knew the city well, for until recently he had been a Government clerk, and he had no trouble in finding “a certain house . . . . within easy rifle-range of the White House,” in General Beauregard’s phrase. The credentials which he handed to Mrs. Greenhow consisted of a small scrap of paper on which the words, “Trust bearer,” were written in Colonel Jordan’s cipher. Mrs. Greenhow, in the same cipher, wrote nine words, “Order issued for McDowell to march upon Manassas tonight.” By her own account, she had been able to obtain a copy of the order.

  Donellan was sped in a buggy, with relays of horses, down the eastern shore of the Potomac to a Confederate ferry in Charles County, Maryland, a district of slaveholding planters strongly secessionist in sentiment. On the Virginia side, the message was handed to a cavalry courier, and galloping relays carried it to Manassas. At nightfall, Beauregard had the nine words which Mrs. Greenhow had written—momentous words to him. Within half an hour, he had ordered his outpost commanders to fall back before the enemy to already designated positions. Next morning he sent an urgent telegram to Richmond, asking that General Joe Johnston’s forces in the Valley be permitted to join him, and was promptly assured that not one army, but two would confront the Federals at Manassas.

  Mr. Russell had gone on a trip to Fort Monroe, and, returning on the train from Annapolis on the evening of July 16, he was surprised to see General McDowell alone on the platform, looking anxiously into the cars. He was in search of two batteries of artillery, and was obliged to look after them himself, for his small staff was engaged at his headquarters. “You are aware I have advanced?” he asked. The general offered Russell a seat in his carriage. He spoke confidently, but did not seem in good spirits. He was having great trouble in getting any information about the enemy, and observed that they had selected a very strong position.

  The appearance of General Scott at the President’s levee that evening was hailed with much enthusiasm. When it was whispered in the East Room that he was there, everyone rushed to see him. Many people still believed that the old man was about to take the field in person. He left early, to the sound of handclapping, and huzzas greeted him outside the mansion.

  On Wednesday, the army straggled into Fairfax Court-House, and twenty-four hours later into Centreville. In its wake followed visitors who had been attracted to the county capital by the interesting prospect of a battle. Parties on horseback and in carriages succeeded in making their way to the head of the advancing column. As the rebel outposts fell back, Northern newspapers exulted over a Confederate retreat. On to Fairfax! On to Centreville! The soldiers were as joyous, said the Boston Transcript, as if bound on a clambake. Civilians, once more in a majority on the Washington streets and in the bars and offices of the hotels, collected to listen to stories of desperate fighting. “I was rather amused,” wrote Russell on Wednesday, “by hearing the florid accounts which were given in the hall of Willard’s by various inebriated officers, who were drawing on their imagination for their facts, knowing, as I did, that the entrenchments at Fairfax had been abandoned without a shot on the advance of the Federal troops.” Though all were confident of success, one observer thought that the civilians were taking a serious attitude toward the war. Even among the drinking crowds, there was less bluster and hilarity than usual. Some facetious fellow told that Beauregard had sent for a thousand barrels of tar and was going to dip his soldiers into it so that they would stick. The joke fell flat, turning into a perplexing rumor that the Confederates had ordered tar for some incomprehensible military purpose.

  At Centreville, McDowell’s force faced the main army of Beauregard, which was entrenched beyond Bull Run, a winding, sluggish stream bordered by steep, wooded banks. On the hot morning of Thursday, as the London correspondent went into the department headquarters on the Avenue, Mansfield dashed out of his room. “Mr. Russell, I fear there is bad news from the front.” “Are they fighting, General?” “Yes, sir. That fellow Tyler has been engaged, and we are whipped.” Messengers and orderlies, aides and civilians were running in and out of the departments, the Executive Mansion and the Capitol. On the Avenue, an Army officer shouted as he rode, “these confounded volunteers have run away.” From the Capitol, smoke could be seen rising in Virginia, and people thought it came from cannon, though it was evidently from burning houses and campfires.

  Senator Sumner was radiant with the assurance of a great success, and spoke of taking Richmond by Saturday night. There were other smiling faces on the Avenue, but they were all secessionists. Ladies were exchanging meaningful little nods and smiles with the tradespeople, as they sauntered past their shops. “Beauregard has knocked them into a cocked hat,” one shopkeeper cried. “Believe me,” said his wife, “it is the finger of the Almighty is in it. Didn’t he curse the niggers, and why should he take their part now with these Yankee abolitionists, against true white men?” They had their own underground railway, they said, for getting information from Virginia.

  In the evening, an overheated, hurrying man crossed the Avenue, near the Treasury. It was Mr. Lincoln, “striding like a crane in a bulrush swamp among the great blocks of marble, dressed in an oddly cut suit of grey, with a felt hat on the back of his head, wiping his face with a red pocket-handkerchief.”

  At army headquarters, word had been received that the divisional commander, old Colonel Tyler, ordered to make a reconnaissance of the lower fords of Bull Run, had brashly exposed a large part of his force to heavy fire, under which the men had retreated in confusion. The major engagement had been postponed. McDowell remained at Centreville, seeking to obtain information about the difficult terrain, and to concentrate his half-organized command. There had been much burning and pillaging at Fairfax Court-House. The men were wearied by their march in the terrible heat, and shaken in spirit by Tyler’s blunder. On Thursday night, they were starving, for they had devoured or thrown away the rations in their haversacks, and commissary wagons did not reach Centreville until Friday morning.

  Stories of desperate fighting and immense losses continued to circulate in Washington on Friday; yet the confidence of the unionist population remained unshaken. With such an army as McDowell’s, the dislodgement of the Confederates from their works, said the Star, could only be a question of hours. There was a reassuring dispatch which described the skill with which Tyler had maneuvered his infantry; the men had wheeled back from the fire of the enemy’s batteries with the coolness and precision of a dress parade. Everyone was impatiently waiting for the action to be renewed. People gathered in the shade of the ailanthus trees on the Avenue, conjecturing what news was brought by the dusty orderlies coming in from Virginia. The July sun glared from a brazen sky. Early in the day, a troop of regular cavalry rode exhausted through the city, horses and men flagging in the heat. Some rebel prisoners were marched to General Mansfield’s headquarters, and sat down on the pavement and the steps, while Mansfield determined what to do with them. Laggard Federal soldiers wandered idly through the streets, without fear of arrest, and skulking officers were numerous in the barrooms and restaurants. In the evening, General McDowell a
nd two or three staff officers were ushered into General Scott’s quarters. McDowell had completed his reconnaissance, and the great battle would be fought on Sunday.

  Washington received the news with rejoicing. “Before the battle,” wrote “Sunset” Cox, a Democratic congressman from Ohio, “the hopes of the people and of their representatives are very elate and almost jocosely festive.” Already at Centreville, the carriages of the visitors gave the bivouacs “the appearance of a monster military picnic.” On Saturday, there was a great rush to obtain passes to Virginia for the fighting next morning. The day selected for the excursion was a scandal to the godly, but many churchgoers could not resist taking advantage of the unique opportunity. Republican senators were exhilarated by a dispatch stating that McDowell had carried Bull Run without firing a shot. The House adjourned, said Cox, with “jocund levity.” An exception was John A. Logan of Illinois, whose black hair and dark skin showed Indian blood. Logan had already gone to join the ranks of the Second Michigan.

  The demand for picnic lunches was tremendous. “The French cooks and hotel-keepers,” Russell wrote, “. . . have arrived at the conclusion that they must treble the prices of their wines and of the hampers of provisions which the Washington people are ordering to comfort themselves at their bloody Derby.” All the carriages, gigs, wagons and hacks in Washington had been hired at advanced rates. There was not a decent saddle horse to be had, for officers, cavalry and sutlers had bought up all the droves that came in.

  As a Britisher and the correspondent of an organ hostile to the Union cause, Russell enjoyed none of the facilities offered to the representatives of the American press, who were welcomed as guests of the officers in the field, and accompanied the army on horses and in wagons belonging to the Government. He was forced to make a day’s outing on Sunday, like any idle amusement seeker. He hired a gig with two horses, promising to pay their full value in case they were destroyed by the enemy; and at the last minute he also managed to rent a fiery black Kentucky saddle horse, which he planned to mount at Centreville. Russell did not sleep well that night. The moon shone brightly through the mosquito curtains of his bed, and once he started up and walked into the next room, where he fancied he saw General McDowell standing by the table in the light of the guttering candle.