Coming Fury, Volume 1

by Bruce Catton

  At last McDowell’s line moved forward. There were four brigades in line, and yet the assault was made by separate regiments, rather than by one solid mass; try as they would, McDowell’s officers seemed unable to bring their brigades in as co-ordinated units. To stiffen the attack, McDowell sent those two regular batteries forward, instructing their commanders, Captains J. B. Ricketts and Charles Griffin, to get onto the high ground just south of the Henry house and pound the Confederate line at close range. Ricketts and Griffin did as they were told, but they got ahead of the line of infantry and were exposed to a deadly fire of musketry, some of which came from infantrymen who huddled behind the Henry house, which stood near the brow of the hill. The Federal gunners fired a few rounds at the house to dislodge them; in the process they killed eighty-four-year-old Mrs. Judith Henry, mistress of the house, who lay a helpless invalid in one of the bedrooms and who died when shells crashed through the walls and exploded in her bedroom.11

  Federal infantry was sent forward to support the batteries, Ellsworth’s famous Fire Zouaves and a battalion of United States Marines, but Jeb Stuart had brought his Virginia cavalry regiment down from the valley and he led a hot charge along the turnpike, crashing straight through the Fire Zouaves and scattering them. The marine detachment was composed wholly of recruits who had been in service no more than three weeks, and when Confederate fire hit them, they broke and ran for the rear. Gruff Heintzelman tried to rally the fleeing Zouaves and marines but could not; he wrote afterward that the men would run a hundred yards, turn around and fire wildly toward the front, and then run some more, their discipline wholly gone. A Confederate regiment in blue uniforms came close to the Federal guns, which held their fire, thinking these men were Northerners; the Confederates fired a volley at close range, and a Union officer watching the business from afar through field glasses wrote that “it seemed as though every man and horse of that battery just laid right down and died right off.”12

  McDowell himself was on the hill top now, climbing to the upper floor of the Henry house for a better view. His men crossed the plateau, were driven back, reformed, tried it again. Off to the west new Union brigades crossed the turnpike and marched up the valley to outflank the Confederate line, and it seemed as if Union victory might be at hand. But the attack was much less solid than it looked. A Confederate officer coming to the front met a friend and asked how things were going, and was given the confident answer: “Them Yankees are just marchin’ up and bein’ shot to hell.” A newspaper correspondent in the Confederate ranks scribbled that “for one long mile the whole valley is a boiling crater of dust and smoke,” and in this murky fog the Union advance wholly lost its cohesion. Strong Confederate reinforcements came up on the left: Jubal Early’s brigade, from Beauregard’s right, and a brigade from Johnston’s army led by Edmund Kirby Smith, just off the train. These got on the flank of the Federal advance and crumpled it. Beauregard led a counter-attack across the Henry house hill, the Federal batteries were overrun—and suddenly the whole Union army was in retreat, heading for the fords and safety.13

  McDowell and his officers did their best to reorganize the men and make a stand, but the effort was hopeless. These untrained regiments had simply been used beyond their capacity and they had fallen apart. One officer estimated that by this time there were more than 12,000 Federals on the field who had entirely lost their regimental organization; they could no longer be handled as troops because men and officers were not together. Captain D. P. Woodbury, of the Corps of Engineers, noted the profound difference between veterans and raw recruits: “An old soldier feels safe in the ranks, unsafe out of the ranks, and the greater the danger the more pertinaciously he clings to his place. The volunteer of three months never attains this instinct of discipline. Under danger and even under mere excitement he flies away from his ranks and looks for safety in dispersion.” The vast majority now was looking for safety, and there was nothing McDowell or anyone else could do but try to herd the disorganized crowd back out of range.14

  As a matter of fact, much the same sort of thing had happened to a good part of the Confederate army. Porter Alexander, riding to the rear just after the moment of victory, wrote that he found so many panicky stragglers behind the lines that he would have believed the Confederates had been defeated if he had not already seen them winning. President Jefferson Davis came up from Richmond, reaching Manassas and leaving the cars just about the time when the tide was turning, and he got the same impression. To a mounted aide he remarked grimly that “fields are not won where men desert their colors as ours are doing,” and as he rode through a dense throng of displaced soldiers near a field hospital, he undertook to rally the men, crying: “I am President Davis! Follow me back to the field!” Stonewall Jackson was near by, getting a wound in his hand dressed. His doctor told him what the President was saying, and Jackson shouted: “We have whipped them! They ran like sheep! Give me 5000 fresh men and I will be in Washington City tomorrow!”

  A Confederate battery drew up on the turnpike to hammer the retreating Federals. Riding along on one of the gun carriages was indomitable old Edmund Ruffin, who had hiked by himself all the way over from his post on the Confederate right, carrying his musket. When the first gun was unlimbered, the gunners asked the old man to fire it. He jerked the lanyard, and planted a shell in the middle of a flying tangle of Federal soldiers who were running madly for the rear.15

  6: Death of the Minute Man

  Probably it would not have been quite so bad if the battle had not been fought on a Sunday. Because it was Sunday a great many people in Washington had nothing to do, and numbers of these precious folk had taken carriages, packed lunches, and ridden down through Centreville to make a picnic where they could have the pleasure of watching a battle. They had been coming down all morning and they had planted themselves on the easy slopes between Bull Run and the little brook known as Cub Run, a mile or so east of the battlefield, and there they stayed through the long afternoon, unable to see much except for the rising billows of gun smoke and the casual coming and going of military traffic along the highway, hearing the great crash of battle and entertaining themselves with the exchange of groundless rumors. Among them were Union officers who, having in one way or another got lost from their commands, elected to stay here among the holiday-makers, offering portentous explanations of the goings-on from which they had disengaged themselves. Many ladies were present, in their brightest summer frocks. Also present, by the best estimate one can make, were six United States Senators and at least ten Congressmen.

  These holiday-makers were there, in substantial numbers, because it never occurred to the authorities to keep them from coming. They were there because curiosity and the strange notion that war was an exciting pageant had led them to suppose that it might be stimulating to watch (from a safe seat in the gallery) while young men killed one another. They were there, in short, because America did not yet know what it was all about; and because they were there they contributed mightily to the fact that an overstrained army driven from the field in defeat dissolved into a wild and disorderly rout which no man could stop.

  At first it was just a retreat—broken, out of control, dismaying to the eye of a regular soldier, but a retreat rather than a screaming runaway. The men who had been driven from the Henry house hill and from the wooded country to the west were so confused and disorganized that it was impossible to get them to do any more fighting, but they had not fallen into self-accelerating panic. They had simply had all they were going to take, and they wanted to get back to some place where people would no longer be shooting at them, some place where they could sort themselves out, get something to eat and drink, and, above all things, lie down for a while. Some of them waded Bull Run where Sherman’s brigade had crossed at noon, and the rest went up to the Sudley ford and came back roundabout, and they moved with an odd, beaten-up, almost casual briskness—not losing any time, but not exactly running, either. They had a rear guard—a regiment of regular inf
antry, a little cavalry, and a good battery—and the Confederates were not pressing them very hard. McDowell sent over to his far left, east of the little river, and brought up Louis Blenker’s brigade and other troops to keep the Rebels from surging over the stone bridge, and he believed that at Centreville he could perhaps pull things together and make a stand.1

  But although it was only three miles from the bridge to Centreville, they were very bad miles and bad things happened on them. The picnickers had been noticing that increasing numbers of stragglers were drifting back along the highway, and as late afternoon came, these clotted groups got bigger and thicker, grimy men slouching along with or without weapons, accompanied by lumbering caissons, battery wagons, guns, and drifting white-topped wagons, moving with a little more urgency, overflowing at times from the road into the fields. It began to occur to the spectators that it would be well to get home, and the holiday carriages came wheeling down from the hillsides to get into the road; and before long the highway was full and there was a fine traffic jam in the making. The jam came, at last, partly by enemy action and partly by spontaneous combustion. Exultant Confederates near the stone bridge were firing cannon now and then, and one shell—it may have been the one fired by old man Ruffin himself—came arching in over everything and wrecked a wagon in the middle of the little bridge by which the main highway crossed Cub Run.

  The bridge was blocked. Drivers on the Centreville side of it whipped up their horses to get out of danger, and drivers on the Bull Run side incontinently did the same, getting guns and wagons and carriages into a complete tangle, with horses rearing and kicking, teamsters swearing, ladies from Washington beginning to scream, the press of civilian vehicles constantly feeding in new elements which killed any faint hope that this traffic jam could be resolved. Some carriages trundled down to the little stream, lurched up on the far side, and made off for Washington as fast as maddened horses could take them. Here and there a mounted officer took fire along with all the rest and tried to ride through everything at a bucketing gallop. People who were moving on foot began to run, and off to the rear frightened men were yelling that Confederate cavalry was coming up to kill and maim—and, all at once, utter panic descended on everybody in sight.

  The great drifting mass of fugitive soldiers, already out from under what little discipline they had ever known, moved faster and faster and became a wild, frantic, scrambling mob which generated its own unendurable pressure. Teamsters cut their horses loose and scrambled on their backs to ride to safety, leaving guns, caissons, and military supplies for anyone who cared to pick them up. Ambulances carrying wounded men to hospitals were left by the roadside. Soldiers who had thought they were too exhausted to do more than put one heavy foot in front of another found they could run very nimbly, and they dropped whatever they were carrying-muskets, haversacks, canteens, anything—so that they could run even faster. It was gabbled up and down the wild rout that armed Rebels were close behind; for some odd reason, the pursuing Confederates, believed to be as ruthless as Cossacks, were all thought to be riding black horses and frightened men were forever shouting: “Black horse cavalry! Black horse cavalry!”2

  McDowell still had troops fit for service. Colonel Theodore Runyon’s division, 5000 men or more, had been held in reserve east of Centreville, and it was brought forward to this little town and posted on the hill there, along with twenty guns. Blenker’s brigade, bringing up the rear, was in good order, and there were other usable formations from what had been the extreme left. Major George Sykes came in with his battalion of regulars, men dead on their feet but still in good order. A little before six in the evening McDowell sent a wire to Washington, explaining that he had been driven from the battlefield and adding that “we have now to hold Centreville until our men can get behind it.” But the men who got behind Centreville refused to stop, and a little later McDowell was compelled to report: “The larger part of the men are a confused mob, entirely demoralized. It was the opinion of all the commanders that no stand could be made this side of the Potomac.” Still later he had to admit that efforts to pull the army together at Fairfax Court House had failed; “many of the volunteers did not wait for authority to proceed to the Potomac but left on their own decision.” There was nothing for it, he confessed, but to fall back all the way to Arlington and dig in to hold the Potomac River bridges.3 By far the bigger part of his army had simply gone out of existence and it would be days before it could be reconstituted.

  In Washington, General Scott sent word to McDowell that he was getting reinforcements and wrote stoutly: “We are not discouraged.” But the dimensions of the disaster were visibly expanding, and the old general became genuinely alarmed. The navy was asked to send a warship over to Alexandria to command the Potomac with its guns. Authorities in New York and Pennsylvania were urged to send troops forward as quickly as possible. The commander of troops at Baltimore was alerted, lest that city rise in open revolt. To McClellan, far off in the Virginia mountains, went an order to move over into the Shenandoah Valley at once “and make head against the enemy in that quarter.” This was countermanded, a few hours later, and McClellan was told to stay where he was until further notice; reinforcements would be sent to him from Ohio. Then, at two o’clock in the morning, a third wire went to McClellan: “Circumstances make your presence here necessary. Charge Rosecrans or some other general with your present department and come hither without delay.” McDowell’s defeat was beyond remedy. The government wanted a winner.4

  Meanwhile the jubilant Confederates were taking stock of their victory and were trying to see whether it could not be made even bigger. The last of the beaten Federals were driven from the field of battle, cavalry was ordered forward to harass the retreat, and from the extreme right, troops were told to move up to Centreville with all speed. Yet there was a good deal of confusion, most of it arising from the fact that to an untrained army, overwhelming victory can be almost as great a shock as overwhelming defeat. False reports of a Union counter-stroke caused the troops on the right to do a good deal of useless maneuvering, and when the misunderstanding was cleared up it was too late and too dark to do anything. On the main highway the “black horse cavalry” which had caused so much panic was not actually strong enough to overpower McDowell’s rear guard. The squadrons reached the site of the original traffic jam at Cub Run, seized the military booty which had been abandoned there, captured large numbers of stragglers (including one life-sized U. S. Congressman, who was sent off to Richmond), and in the end could do little more than speed the departing Federals on their way. At Johnston’s headquarters President Davis met with Johnston and Beauregard and other officers to appraise what had been gained and to see whether anything more could be done.

  The victory looked big enough, in all conscience. Mr. Davis wired the War Department that “our forces have won a glorious victory,” saying without exaggeration that “the enemy was routed and fled precipitately” with heavy loss. Beauregard recorded the capture of twenty-eight guns, thirty-seven caissons, a huge quantity of ammunition, and seemingly endless amounts of small arms, accouterments, blankets, hospital stores, haversacks, wagons, ambulances, and other valuable items. Something like 1300 prisoners had been taken. There were a great many dead Yankees on the field—close to 500 of them, it would develop, when all the returns were in—and there was something about the way in which McDowell’s offensive had collapsed which led the more hopeful to feel that Southern independence had been just about gained.5

  The high command was not deceived. Both Beauregard and Johnston knew that their army had had a very rough time of it; to organize, within an hour or two, an effective force that could drive on through the night in real pursuit seemed to them out of the question. Still, if the President ordered it, they would try it.

  Mr. Davis was disposed to order it. Around eleven o’clock a staff officer came in bearing a report from another officer who said that he had gone all the way to Centreville and who reported that the Yankees were rus
hing through that hamlet in a state of total panic; and Mr. Davis dictated an order for immediate pursuit. Then came second thoughts. Someone recalled that the officer who sent in this report was an old army man whose nickname had always been “Crazy”—an eccentric, given to wild excitement, not altogether to be trusted. The dictated order was not issued. It was agreed, finally, that at dawn infantry should be sent forward to make a reconnaissance in force, and the conference came to an end. The victorious army would rest. Later it could move on and occupy the territory which the Federals were so hastily abandoning.6

  There was much argument about this, later on. In the light of fuller knowledge it came to seem that the war might really have been won then and there if the routed Federals had been pressed vigorously. Stonewall Jackson had said that with 5000 fresh troops he could be in Washington by the next day, and although he went unheard at the time—and even if he had been heard, he then lacked the stature to make his words listened to—many Confederates eventually came to believe that inaction on the night of July 21 had wasted a glorious victory. In the end it was even held that it was President Davis who was chiefly responsible.

  The thing can be seen more clearly now, with much hindsight, than it could be seen then, and it appears that the Confederacy really lost very little. Washington was not actually open to a sudden easy capture by any force that could have been brought against it on July 22 or July 23. Most of McDowell’s army had indeed been blown apart, but even on the night of the disastrous retreat he still had close to 10,000 men who had fought little or not at all, who were still responsive to as much discipline as any volunteer army then possessed, and who had not given way to panic. The Potomac at Washington is wide and deep, and if Johnston’s army was to enter the capital, it would have to use the bridges. Enough troops were at hand to hold those bridges until reinforcements could come down from the North. Johnston could have had his army follow on McDowell’s heels, but almost certainly he could have done little more than he finally did do—occupy the Centreville ridge in force, build fortifications there, hold the place throughout the winter, and keep his outposts close enough to the Potomac so that on clear days they could see the unfinished dome of the Capitol building. The notion that the Confederate army could have walked into Washington within twenty-four hours will hardly bear analysis.7