by Burke Davis
Jackson carried an infantry brigade of 380 men and one battery of guns. He saw that the bluecoats had brigades beyond counting. Jackson sent three of his cannon to the rear and placed Stuart and the cavalry on the flank.
The Federals soon left their woodland cover and charged. Jackson's skirmishers fired, falling back, and gave fatal inspiration to the green Federal troops. There was a pell-mell charge down a crowded roadway toward Jackson, whose artilleryman, the Rev. W. N. Pendleton, boasted four guns named Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Pendleton raised his hand and closed his eyes as one gun was made ready: "Aim low, men, and may the Lord have mercy on their souls!" The gun cleared the road with terrible slaughter.
Jackson's men retreated slowly before the Federal force. The enemy found the camp and tore up more than 150 tents, enough to support claims of victory.7
But the little skirmish was not over. Stuart could not contain himself on the flank. His riders clashed with bluecoat cavalry, and fighting spread through the wooded country. Stuart found himself alone within sight of an enemy company in a field behind a rail fence. Jeb rode near them.
"Take down those bars!" he ordered. The Federal soldiers jumped to do his bidding, misled by his blue coat and the old U. S. trousers. When the fence was down Stuart shouted, "Throw down your arms, or you are all dead men!"
The astounded bluecoats imagined the woods filled with their enemy. "They dropped their arms, fell upon their faces, and were all captured," Stuart said.
He marched gaily back into his lines with them, forty-nine in all, the entire Company 1 of the 15th Pennsylvania Volunteers.
This put Stuart's staid commanders into something like ecstasy. Jackson: "Colonel Stuart and his command merit high praise, and I may here remark that he has exhibited those qualities which are calculated to make him eminent in his arm of the service." Johnston praised Jackson and Stuart and asked Richmond: ".. . that Colonel Jackson be promoted without delay to the grade of Brigadier-General, and Lieutenant-Colonel Stuart to that of Colonel."
Stuart could not accept the retreat at Falling Waters. He left his prisoners and escorted his apprentice troopers to the front to further their education. Private Eggleston thought "the most natural thing to do" was to fall back with the infantry to Winchester, and when Stuart led the riders toward the river, men in the ranks muttered that the colonel was insane.
Eggleston could not forget the experience: "He marched his handful of men right up to the advancing lines and ordered us to dismount. The Federal skirmish line was coming toward us at a double-quick.
"He waited until the infantry was within about two hundred yards of us, we being in the edge of a little grove, and they on the other side of an open field. Then Stuart cried out, 'Backwards— march! Steady, men—keep your faces to the enemy!' And we marched in that way through the timber, delivering our shotgun fire slowly as we fell back toward our horses."
They mounted with the Federals almost upon them and went away at a slow trot, which Stuart would not let them speed up. The colonel led them into a road not far away and lectured:
"Attention. Now I want to talk to you, men. You are brave fellows and patriotic too, but you're ignorant of this kind of work, and I'm teaching you. I want you to observe that a good man on a good horse can never be caught. Another thing: Cavalry can trot away from anything, and a gallop is a gait unbecoming to a soldier, unless he is going toward the enemy. Remember that. We gallop toward the enemy, and trot away, always. Steady now! Don't break ranks!"
While Stuart spoke a shell whistled over their heads.
"There," he said. "I've been waiting for that, and watching those fellows. I knew they'd shoot too high, and I wanted you to learn how shells sound."
Stuart kept these men in the Federal lines for two or three days, "shelled, skirmished with, charged and surrounded scores of times, until we learned to hold in high regard our colonel's masterly skill in getting into and out of perilous positions." Within a week or so the troopers began to feel something "closely akin to worship" for this laughing madman on horseback.
Eggleston noted: "He could never be still. He was rarely ever in camp at all, and he never showed a sign of fatigue. He led almost everything."8
William Blackford won Stuart's heart one July day. His company was on a scout with Stuart near the enemy, quietly watching for a chance to attack. They waited in an apple orchard half a mile from the Federals. Horses grazed in the sunshine and all was peaceful until a "Union man" from a nearby farm betrayed them to the blue-coats. The enemy sent out a column. Stuart ordered his men to the rear.
Before the troopers cleared the orchard, shells burst about them. Blackford's company, he said, was the only one that went off in perfect order; he rode in the rear and herded the men to safety. When they reached cover, Blackford discovered that he had lost his pistol in the orchard. He knew that he must have dropped it as his fine horse, "Comet," soared over a fence.
Blackford explained to Stuart, and asked permission to ride into the open, under fire, for his pistol. Stuart looked at him "with a surprised and pleased expression" and nodded. The pistol was easily found, and the enemy shells flew high; the battery was not enough to frighten Blackford. Stuart marked this man for promotion.9
The Federal high command now moved to strike Johnston's army near Winchester, so that it could not go to the rescue of Beauregard at Manassas, where McDowell planned to attack in late July. But troubles developed. Old Winfield Scott, the ailing Federal commander-in-chief, was impatient with the timorous General Patterson.
While Patterson marched, Stuart's riders probed his lines on every side. Patterson seemed confused, for on July seventeenth Scott telegraphed him:
Do not let the enemy amuse you and delay you with a small force in front whilst he re-enforces the Junction [Manassas] with his main body.
McDowell had already begun his move from Washington, and expected to crush Beauregard within a day or two.
Near midnight of July eighteenth a telegram from Richmond called Johnston to action: Beauregard was under attack at Manassas. The Army of the Shenandoah must move immediately to his aid.
Johnston ordered Stuart to deceive Patterson, while the infantry marched eastward. Stuart would follow after he had blinded the enemy. The exchange of Federal telegrams of the day pointed out Jeb's success:
Patterson to Scott, one thirty A.M.:
To attack . . . against the greatly superior force at Winchester is most hazardous. Shall I attack?
Scott to Patterson:
I have certainly been expecting you to beat the enemy. If not, to hear that you had felt him strongly, or, at least, had occupied him by threats and demonstrations. You have at least his equal and, I suppose, superior, numbers. Has he not stolen a march and sent reenforcements toward Manassas Junction?
Patterson to Scott:
The enemy has stolen no march upon me. I have kept him actively employed, and by threats and reconnaissance’s in force caused him to be reenforced.10
At the moment General Patterson wrote, while Stuart's riders were cowing his pickets, Johnston's army was moving rapidly eastward. Officers shouted to the hurrying Rebels at the rare rest periods: "The commanding General hopes that his troops will step out like men and make a forced march to save the country!" Jackson's brigade was beginning to earn its title, "Foot Cavalry." By nightfall the army was on the Blue Ridge and forded the Shenandoah not long after. Colonel Jackson alone stood picket at two A.M. when they rested. By early morning they had reached the railroad, and by midafternoon were joining Beauregard at Manassas.
Stuart hung in the rear, shaking a phantom screen before Patterson, disguising his force as an entire army. He kept a line of horsemen in his rear, cutting all communication with the Valley, and the bulk of his force followed on the heels of the infantry. Captain Blackford had a night of it.
Infantry and artillery filled the road and forced the cavalry into the fields. All night they jumped ditches and fences and dodged infantrymen who fell out
to sleep, sprawling everywhere. The troopers rode over some of them in the dark.
The cavalry's supply wagons did not catch up for a day or so, and the hungry troopers ate what they could find. Blackford dined on a bullfrog, legs and all, and found it delicious.
When the horsemen came onto the plain of Manassas more than 60,000 men faced each other, in armies of almost equal size.
Troops were spilling out of trains along miles of track, and marching into lines along Bull Run, six miles away. Big wagon trains of food and ammunition moved among them, and through the crowds drivers whipped their teams and cursed delays; couriers, orderlies and officers lashed horses through the melee. A yellow dust cloud boiled above everything.
As Stuart's cavalry passed General Johnston's headquarters, the commander came out and the staffs shook hands. The ist Virginia Cavalry was settled for the night in a field of tall broom sedge, where horses and men fell asleep after their thirty-six-hour ride. It was a soft starry night, and the rumble of Yankee preparations for battle kept no one awake.
Sunday, July twenty-first, was opened by distant cannon fire. Stuart scrambled to his feet, shouting, "Hello! What's that?" The staff roused itself. Musket fire broke out far to their left, near Sudley Mills. There were no orders for the cavalry. Stuart had the horses fed and got the regiment over Bull Run on a scout. The pickets fanned out, found a party of Federal skirmishers and fell back.
Stuart retreated across Bull Run without revealing the size of his force and spent the morning in waiting.
Stuart sat impatiently as the battle roared along the stream in the direction of Sudley Ford; the Confederates were slowly giving way. Now and then a shell burst above the woodland which screened his position opposite Stone Bridge, and the shifting wind occasionally swelled the sound of musketry. As battle neared them the horsemen saw Confederate infantry regiments moving into position; it became clear that fighting would soon center near the Stone Bridge.
Stuart rode restlessly. At each infantry movement he sent a courier to the commander, advising him that the ist Cavalry was ready to act on flanks, or wherever needed. He got no encouragement until late afternoon. He at last sent Blackford, who found Virginia infantry under Colonel Jackson, fresh from a fierce engagement on a hillside where Jackson had won from General Bee a new name: Stonewall.
Jackson had a finger wound, and was holding a bloody hand in the air as he led his men into position. Blackford gave him Stuart's message. "Good! Good!" Jackson replied absently. "Tell Stuart I will." Blackford returned to the waiting cavalry, as infantrymen were caught up in a spreading battle down the creek. Torrents of men broke out of the woods and fled to the rear: South Carolina troops, in panic. More reserves were thrown in, and firing grew. Blackford sketched the call of the cavalry to battle:
It was about two o'clock. Stuart was striding backwards and forwards in great impatience. Presently we saw a staff officer dash out of the woods and come spurring towards us. The men all sprang to their feet and began tightening their saddle girths. . . . The supreme moment had come at last. Colonel Stuart stepped forward to meet the officer. He reined up his horse and asked if that was Colonel Stuart and then, with a military salute, said, "Colonel Stuart, General Beauregard directs that you bring your command into action at once and that you attack where the firing is hottest."
The bugles crowed and Stuart led them through a valley filled with Rebel wounded, where arms and legs lay in great piles and screaming men were held on tables as the saws whined and blood-spattered doctors worked. The troopers leaned from their saddles and retched. When they came into sight of the action Stuart halted. A blue vapor hung over the struggling infantry, lifted and lowered by the wind. Guns roared and flamed in the hot landscape. It looked as if the Confederates were having the worst of it; the gray lines were sagging.
Stuart and Blackford rode at the head of the tiny column of horsemen, almost into the midst of a regiment of scarlet-uniformed infantry in Zouave dress.
Stuart shouted to them, "Don't run, boys. We're here."
He and Blackford looked more sharply; there was something strange about the red-clad soldiers. Stuart stopped. "Blackford, are those our men or the enemy?"
"I don't know. I heard Beauregard brought up some Zouaves from New Orleans."
At that moment a breeze fanned out the flag of the strange regiment—the Stars and Stripes. Stuart ordered a charge. The galloping column reminded Blackford of an arrow loosed from a bow.
The New York Zouaves fired a volley. There were a few casualties; riderless horses galloped off. Then the weight of Stuart's column struck and with clubbed carbines and sabers cut the red line to bits. There was a second charge as the Zouaves moved rearward, and the scarlet uniforms scattered rapidly over the field. Other Federal units began to run with them toward the rear. The Zouaves yelled as they ran, "The Black Horse!" The cry echoed over the field.
Only five hundred riders had begun a panic; Stuart had lost nine men and eighteen horses. The troopers had broken to the rear after their charges, but Blackford reformed them in a woods and led them back. "Bully for you, Blackford!" Stuart shouted, and began working with a pair of guns he had borrowed from the infantry. Lieutenant James F. Beckham commanded these guns. He masked them in pine thickets and opened fire. Federal soldiers fell in windrows; the enemy retreat became faster and more widespread.
General Jubal Early, with infantry reinforcements, was just going into line through Confederate stragglers and skulkers nearby.
From his viewpoint the battle seemed lost; everywhere he saw Federals coming on:
"Affairs now wore a gloomy aspect... the day appeared to be going against us. As I approached, a messenger came galloping to me from Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, stating that the colonel said the enemy was about giving away, and if we would hurry up they would soon be in retreat."
Stuart sent another message, however: The enemy had only retired behind a ridge and was forming for attack. He warned Early to be careful.
Early said, "Stuart, who had been in position beyond our extreme left, had, by the judicious use of guns on his right flank, kept the enemy in check. It was mainly by the fire poured from Beckham's guns into the enemy that that column had been forced to retire."
Early watched as Stuart turned his guns on a new enemy regiment. The Federal line fell back. Early wrote:
"I immediately ordered my command forward. . . . On reaching the crest we came in view of the Warrenton turnpike and the plains beyond, and discovered the enemy in full retreat across and beyond the turnpike."
A pursuit followed and the bluecoats ran toward the rear, overrunning wagon trains and carriages of Congressmen and Washington society leaders who had come to see the slaughter of the Rebels.
Early thought that Stuart had perhaps won the battle:
"But for his presence there ... the enemy would probably have ended the battle before my brigade reached that point. Stuart did as much towards saving the battle of First Manassas as any subordinate who participated in it."11
Stuart's troopers rode twelve miles after the enemy before darkness fell. They turned back, lacking the strength to press even this demoralized army in the night. There was a holiday of looting among the abandoned wagons, but there were grisly scenes. Captain Blackford, suffering from thirst, sought along Bull Run a clean place to drink, but found everywhere Federal wounded who had crawled there, many of them dead with heads in the water; the creek literally flowed blood, but he forced himself to drink, and after protest his horse drank, too. Blackford captured prisoners from the broken Zouave regiment, and the enemy troops told him, "We had no cavalry that was worth a damn."
The Federal rout was evidently complete; scouts said McDowell's army had streamed back into Washington like a rabble. The Confederate army hoped to be moving forward to attack Washington soon.
The fame of Beauregard and Johnston grew by the day. Politicians, contractors and pretty women emerged from trains into the swarm at Manassas. Yet there was delay, and the
army only waited. Feuds in the high command became army gossip.
Stuart received no major credit for the victory at First Manassas except from Early. Jeb's own report, one of his staff members thought, was "brief and indefinite" to the point that he could make no claims. Thus it was not easy to state precisely his contributions to victory.
Colonel Jackson had mentioned him:
Apprehensive lest my flanks be turned, I sent orders to Colonels Stuart and Radford to secure them. Colonel Stuart, with that part of his command with him, deserve great praise for the promptness with which they moved to my left and secured the flank by timely charging the enemy and driving him back.
General Johnston wrote:
Colonel Stuart contributed to one of these repulses [of the enemy] by a well timed and vigorous charge on the enemy's right flank with two companies of his cavalry.
It was glory, of course, but by no means glory enough.
Stuart took his staff to Fairfax Court House for a few days; they ate in a village boarding-house, where officers under Stuart met General Longstreet. Blackford was unimpressed: "A man of limited capacity who acquired a reputation for wisdom by never saying anything." He could not remember hearing Longstreet say half a dozen words, beyond "yes" and "no."
After a few days, Stuart moved headquarters into the open country at Munson's Hill, from which he could see Washington itself; he slept there for weeks, expecting an order to advance. It never came.
