by John Keegan
There was no rational reason why McDowell’s army should have collapsed as it did. Beauregard had been reinforced during the course of the afternoon’s fighting, in part by a brigade brought by rail from the Shenandoah Valley, which had detrained directly onto the battlefield, an unprecedented event in warfare. The reinforcements had delivered counter-attacks into McDowell’s columns deploying from beyond the Bull Run. The two regular batteries had been severely shaken by the close-range musketry of a blue-clad Confederate regiment, mistaken by the gunners as belonging to their own side. Jeb Stuart had delivered an effective cavalry charge, which had driven off the New York Fire Zouaves and completely disorganised the marine battalion, unsurprisingly as its men were raw recruits.
Nevertheless, none of these episodes amounted to a decisive act; nor indeed did anyone take a decision. When the firing broke out around the Henry House, Johnston had ridden there, but on arrival he had not taken effective control. Nor had McDowell, when, rather later, he arrived at the same place. Beauregard led a counter-attack up Henry House Hill, turning back a Federal column, after which the Union retreat became general. Exactly why, no one could tell. Thousands of soldiers were in motion, milling about this way and that. As many as 12,000 Federals, it was estimated, had lost their regiments. Fewer Confederates had fallen into disarray. That was probably the reason for the Confederate success, unorganised as it was.
By late afternoon the Warrenton Turnpike, leading back towards Alexandria and Washington, was jammed with soldiers, horses, and military transport, struggling to leave the field; many of the fugitives were possessed by the belief that Stuart’s cavalry, any sort of cavalry, was at their heels. Intermingled with the soldiers were many civilians, who had come out by carriage that morning, with picnic lunches, to watch the battle, expecting a sort of pageant to unfold. They included at least ten congressmen and six United States senators. By evening they were anxious for supper, in safety. Civilian carriages found themselves wheel to wheel with artillery limbers and ammunition caissons in the press to get out of danger.
The Confederates were in scarcely better state. Many of their regiments had lost cohesion and individual soldiers were wandering about the rear of the battlefield in crowds, bereft of officers and not knowing what to do. Jefferson Davis, who had come up by train from Richmond, believed at first that he had arrived at the scene of a Southern defeat, and began trying to rally stragglers. The first man on his own side he met who believed a victory had been won was Stonewall Jackson, getting a minor wound dressed at a field hospital. “We have whipped them,” he shouted. “They ran like sheep. Give me five thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington City tomorrow!”7
Jackson, uncharacteristically ebullient, exaggerated. Beauregard’s army had not won a notable victory. It had merely avoided defeat, and by a comparatively narrow margin. It retained no capacity to pursue McDowell’s shaken forces and none at all to take Washington. The line of the Potomac and the bridges over it were as secure in the aftermath of the battle of Bull Run as they had been on its eve. The line of metropolitan defence, indeed, lay farther forward. Centreville, a grandiose place-name for a collection of clapboard shacks, was garrisoned by several intact brigades under Colonel Theodore Runyon and were soon reinforced by unbroken elements of the Bull Run army, Blenker’s brigade and Major George Sykes’s battalion of regulars. Beauregard was anxious to get past Centreville. He never would.
Bull Run had substantially damaged both armies. Although a quarter of McDowell’s army had escaped action during the day, and about a third of Beauregard’s, 460 Northerners had been killed, 1,100 wounded, and more then 1,300 taken prisoner; the Confederates had lost 400 dead and 1,500 wounded, though almost no prisoners, the real token of their success. Bull Run was not only the first major battle of the war. It was also the first episode in an entirely new way of warfare, a struggle between beliefs fought by populations quite untrained to fight. Its result, so ambiguous militarily, served to strengthen passions on both sides. In Richmond and throughout the South, the news of Manassas, as it would be called there, was taken as that of a major victory, and so as encouragement to persist. Ordinary Southerners believed that their own inferior numbers had defeated a greatly superior force, a portent for the future and of eventual victory. In the North, the news dashed hopes but also stiffened resolve. An opening setback would, patriots thought, soon be succeeded by triumph. The justice of the Union’s cause was a guarantee in itself that rebellion must be defeated.
Meanwhile, in Washington, Lincoln spent the aftermath of the battle contemplating means by which strategic ideals could be made into reality. He sketched out some bland desiderata—improving the training of troops at Fortress Monroe, strengthening the Federal occupation of Baltimore—and he outlined plans for offensive action against the South, by firmly securing the railroad at Bull Run and opening a front on the upper Mississippi. More significantly, he reemphasised the importance of strengthening the blockade; and he turned his mind towards change of command at the top. Although he had neither reproached nor quarrelled with McDowell, he had formed doubt about him—too cautious, insufficiently decisive. As a replacement his thoughts now focused on the only Union general to have as yet achieved any sort of success against the Confederate army, George McClellan, the victor of the little battles in West Virginia in early July. On July 22 he telegraphed McClellan to report to Washington.
It was no arbitrary matter that the first clash of arms in the Civil War took place on the seaward frontier of South Carolina, a spot where the armed force of a wholly secessionist state was confronted by the military power of the Union at Fort Sumter. Elsewhere, the confrontation was by no means so clear-cut nor division of opinion and people so pronounced. The battle lines were least clearly drawn in the border states, where slaves were least numerous if the state counted as a slave state, and votes for secession least concentrated and numerous. Some border states such as Kansas, Missouri’s western neighbour, were not secessionist at all, though Southern immigrants had brought slaves into the state during the troubled 1850s. Virginia, almost a northern state geographically, was secessionist by majority, but the northwestern counties were only thinly slaveholding and could not be relied upon to support the state government in a vote to remain within or leave the Union. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri were obviously divided, containing fair-sized slave populations but few large slave owners among their electorates. Maryland was thought to be Southern in sentiment but was not wholly a slave state. Tiny Delaware, though containing slaves, was too overshadowed by its Northern neighbours to risk secession.
The crux of the border state dilemma—whether to hold firm to the Union or to follow its slave-owning factions South—lay in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Tennessee, whose eastern half was solidly proUnion, was led into secession by its governor on June 8; it nevertheless provided the Union with large numbers of volunteers and was one of the states which had named regiments in both armies. Lincoln was particularly tender towards Tennessee, and his strategy in the western theatre was to be heavily influenced by his desire to restore the state to the Union. Kentucky was perhaps the most divided of all the states, so much so that the governor, Beriah Magoffin, declared neutrality, as if the state were a sovereign entity beyond the United States (as, of course, extreme secessionists held to be the case throughout the country), and negotiated with Washington and Richmond as long as he could. In the end Richmond overplayed its hand and invaded Kentucky, which prompted the legislators to ask for the Union’s protection. It thereby remained within the Union, though a Richmond-sponsored state government maintained a precarious existence throughout the war, allowing secessionists to count the state as part of the Confederacy. Kentuckians volunteered for both armies, though in the war’s aftermath citizens of the state began to display a curious sympathy for the Southern cause, prompting the judgement that Kentucky “seceded after the war was over.”
The secessionist crisis took its worst form in Missouri, since there i
t broke into open warfare of a costly and vicious sort. The low-level prewar bickering in Kansas, which had resulted in so many killings between neighbours, had bled over into Missouri before 1861, leaving a legacy of local hatreds, which became entangled with pro- and anti-slavery sentiment, since Missouri was a cotton state with a sizable slave population. Kansas-style raiding and killing began again in Missouri on news of Fort Sumter. (Lincoln had appointed the fort’s commander, Robert Anderson, to command the Union militia in Kentucky after his return from Charleston.)
After Nathaniel Lyon saved the St. Louis arsenal, there was an attempt to avert civil war in Missouri, one of many being made at several points on the borders, and indeed within the South, at the time. The Union commander, the Southern-born brigadier general William S. Harney, negotiated an agreement by which General Sterling Price agreed not to use his troops in any way that would exacerbate tensions. Price, an officer of volunteers, had volunteered his services to Governor Jackson. Lyon and Congressman Francis Blair at once decided to view the Price-Harney agreement as likely to accelerate secession and not deter it, and, with presidential authorisation, Lyon quickly removed Price from command, which he assumed himself. He and Blair then met Governor Jackson and General Price in St. Louis to agree on terms for the government of the state. Lyon demanded the right of free movement for Union troops throughout Missouri. The governor refused and the conference dissolved into quarrelling. In the aftermath Jackson sent for Confederate troops from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Their arrival stimulated the clashes between pro- and anti-secessionists which had already broken out across the state. In early July, the Unionists of two counties in the north of the state had been driven from their homes; Jayhawkers, anti-slavery activists, from Kansas appeared in western Missouri to attack secessionists. Lyon now sponsored a state convention which declared the governorship and other state offices vacant and installed a firmly Unionist governor in power, and moved the state capital from Jefferson City to St. Louis.
This brought the simmering civil war in Missouri to a head. Both sides began to concentrate troops. Lyon marched out to challenge Price at Wilson’s Creek, near Springfield, Missouri, in early August. What followed, though trivial as a military engagement and contributing very little to the outcome of the war as a whole, was nevertheless highly significant, since it displayed features which were to mark battles in the Civil War wherever and whenever they were fought. It was bitterly fought, leaving high casualties on both sides, and wounding many who escaped death; yet despite its cost in human life, it was militarily inconclusive, leaving the issue of whether North or South dominated the state of Missouri to be decided in the future. Wilson’s Creek was both a typical Civil War battle and the precursor of many to come.
Lyon, who commanded the concentration of Union troops, had been campaigning about Missouri, fighting skirmishes here and there when he encountered the enemy. He had now identified the main rebel body near Springfield, and determined to attack it in its encampment near Wilson’s Creek. His troops numbered 6,200, 500 of which were Home Guards with almost no training and deficient in equipment. Better trained and better armed were the rest, organised into three brigades. The first was composed of regular soldiers of the 1st Infantry and a battalion of the 2nd Missouri Infantry, and the second of regular soldiers of the 2nd U.S. Infantry and some local recruits. The third, commanded by Colonel Franz Sigel, a political appointee but one with experience of European warfare, consisted of Missouri volunteers. The little army also contained several companies of regular U.S. cavalry and several batteries of artillery, including the regular Battery F of the 2nd U.S. Artillery. When deployed for action in the first day of battle at Wilson’s Creek, August 10, 1861, Sigel counted his men to number 1,118 with six pieces of artillery.
The enemy considerably outnumbered the Union forces, numbering about 10,175 with fifteen pieces of artillery, organised as two divisions, including regiments from Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, mainly infantry but some cavalry. The whole was commanded by Brigadier General Ben McCulloch, assisted by Major General Sterling Price. The countryside was rolling hills, broken in places by ravines, with Wilson’s Creek running between high banks. There was a sprinkling of trees, which in places grew thick.
Lyon advanced his troops to within sight of the enemy encampment during the evening of August 9, while Sigel led his men on a circuitous flank march to arrive in the enemy’s rear by daylight on August 10. The weather was mild but drizzly. Lyon’s plan was to mount a pincer attack on the Confederates. He would attack against their camp from the north, Sigel from the south. Though the Confederates greatly outnumbered the Unionists, they were almost wholly untrained and very poorly equipped. Most carried only fowling pieces or old flintlock muskets, while most of the Union men had percussion rifles.
Lyon waited until the sound of firing from the south and the flash of rifle and artillery fire signalled that Sigel had opened his attack. Lyon then advanced down the west side of Wilson’s Creek, driving off a Confederate cavalry force, which retreated to a ridge that would become known as Bloody Hill. When Lyon’s men reached the crest of the ridge, however, they were taken under fire by the Pulaski artillery, located on a ridge across the creek. This intervention allowed Price to organise a firing line on Bloody Hill.
Sigel, hearing the sound of action, had meanwhile turned his artillery against the Confederate encampment and driven its occupants into panic-stricken rout. He then advanced northward to join in the battle for Bloody Hill. By 6:30 a.m. the fighting on Bloody Hill was bitter and intensifying. Nathaniel Lyon, mounted and in the heat of the action, ordered infantry under Captain Joseph Plummer to the east of Wilson’s Creek to protect the Union left flank. Plummer saw the effect the fire of the Pulaski battery was having on Plummer’s comrades and advanced to take it under fire themselves. McCulloch responded by sending two infantry regiments to reinforce the rebels in the centre of the battlefield. They engaged the enemy in a cornfield to the north of Bloody Hill. The Union troops retreated from the cornfield and retired across Wilson’s Creek, a move which allowed the Confederates to concentrate all their strength against the Union line on Bloody Hill. Sigel then suffered a calamitous setback when he mistook an advancing regiment of Louisiana troops for the Union 1st Iowa Infantry, which, as was common in this early stage of the war, was still wearing gray militia uniforms. Confused by the attack of what they took to be friendly forces, the Union party broke and ran. The Confederates now massed all their efforts against Lyon and his men on Bloody Hill. There were three Confederate attacks during the next two hours. Lyon, who displayed reckless courage throughout the battle, was slightly wounded early on and unhorsed, but remounted and continued to encourage his men, waving his hat and shouting orders. Then he was hit in the chest by a minié ball and killed. Soon after, Price, in overall Confederate command, organised his units, about 6,000 strong, into a single line a thousand yards long and advanced to engage the surviving Union troops. They were supported by artillery and came as close to the enemy as twenty feet, deluging them with continuous fire.
Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, 1861–65
Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States, 1861–65
General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, “The Sword of the Lord”
General George McClellan, commander of the Union armies, 1861–62
Former slaves, ca. 1862
Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, 1863
Zouave Company, 14th Pennsylvania Infantry
A Springfield percussion rifle-musket, ca. 1857
A cavalry repeating carbine, ca. 1855
Flag Officer (Admiral) David Farragut, the captor of New Orleans, 1862
Officers of the USS Monitor, posed before revolving turret
The Confederate ram Stonewall, 1865. A typical warship of the inland waterways.
Above: Improvised Union hospital, Savage’s Station, near Richmond, during the Seven Days’ Battles. Below: Basic amputation s
et of the type that would have been used in the field by the North.
Confederate dead in ditch at Antietam, right wing
Dead Confederate infantrymen in the Devil’s Den, aftermath of Gettysburg, July 1863. The photograph was probably posed.
The battle line by this stage was enveloped in a dense cloud of smoke, a common result of heavy musketry on Civil War battlefields, which explains why infantry continued to fire while under heavy fire themselves: they simply could not see the enemy and so were sheltered from the psychological effect of close-range musketry. The Union resisted so stoutly that despite the death of their heroic leader and the hail of musketry they pushed the Confederates back. Shaken and badly depleted in numbers, however, they were unable to consolidate their line and, as the Confederates disengaged to regroup, began to retreat to the north. They did not stop until they had reached Springfield.
By keeping possession of the ground, the Confederates could claim Wilson’s Creek as a victory. The intrepid Lyon and Sigel had, however, unhinged their position in Missouri, and the Union was able to retain possession of the state and its state government even though the Confederacy appointed a puppet regime and admitted a rump of representatives to the Confederate Congress.
The Union lost 223 killed, 721 wounded, and 291 missing, totalling 1,235, at Wilson’s Creek, out of 5,400 engaged, about 20 percent of those present. The Confederates lost 265 killed, 800 wounded, and 30 missing, a total of 1,095 out of 10,175 present, about 10 percent of those present. Compared to the bloodbaths of the east, such as Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, Wilson’s Creek was not a costly battle. As a human experience, however, it was horrifying, and it exhibited features which were to be repeated on many battlefields throughout the Civil War, including a high proportion of casualties among senior officers. Besides Lyon, the first Union general (he had just been promoted) to be killed in the war, the Union also had two colonels wounded; the equivalent Confederate figures were one colonel killed, one mortally wounded, one brigadier general and three colonels wounded.
