FIRST BLOOD Part Six

I think it was William Tecumseh Sherman who best described Bull Run as, “one of the best-planned battles, but one of the worst fought.” And Sherman knew, since he was a Colonel in General Tyler's division, a spectator on the north side of the stone bridge while the battle raged south of the muddy meandering Bull Run. The fighting began about 9:30 that Sunday morning, 21 July, 1861, as the first federal soldiers wadded across Sudley Springs ford. They were the Second Rhode Island regiment, commanded by the tall, pleasant and amiable 38 year old Ambrose Burnside (above), an example of the Peter Principle a century before its enumeration. Brave, jovial, bright and easy going, he seemed a natural choice for command, but doubted his own competence, and proved it by becoming “obstinate and unimaginative” when given responsibility His men scrambled up the high southern bank of Bull Run in exactly the right place and moment to make Colonel Burnside a general.

Thirty minutes earlier the 1,000 men of General “Shanks” Evans battalion had been guarding the Warenton Turnpike where it crossed over that stone bridge at the northern base of Henry House hill.   Now they were over a mile to the northwest, trying to throw out a skirmish line on the forested northern slope of Mathews' House hill.

Unable to see more than a few yards in any direction, the zouaves of the First Louisiana Volunteers regiment, under Major Chatham Wheat, took a volley of friendly fire from another rebel unit, killing 3 men. Many of these “Tigers” had been “filibusters” in William Walkers' 1857-58 attempt to establish a slave state in Nicaragua. Armies from Costa Rica, Salvador and Honduras had eventually crushed the slavers, and Walker had been hanged in Honduras in September of 1860. But even now the filibusters remained true believers in slavery, and were reforming behind a split rail fence just as Burnside's men moved out of the trees at the top of the embankment.

The first volley fired by Evan's brigade was “A perfect hail storm of bullets, round shot and shell “, according to Rhode Island Private Sam English. But Burnside's men held (above), and after a five minute fire fight, they drove the rebels fell back. Twice more, Evens led his men forward, using the brush and a corn field to disguise his meager force.

After about fifteen minutes, Colonel John Slocum led a New Hampshire and a New York regiment in a general assault. The 5,000 federal troops pushed Even's 1,000 man brigade off the hill top. The retreat was stopped at the bottom  by the shallow creek called Young's branch, or the Chinn Branch.

From atop Henry House Hill, and seeing Major Evans preparing his men for a fourth assault, General Bernard Bee sent a note urging Evans to fall back. Instead Evans asked for help. General Bee gave into the impulse, and ordered his 2,000 man brigade forward, across the Warrenton Pike, splashing through the shallow Young's Branch, and alongside Even's brigade, up Mathew's House hill yet again. “Here is the battlefield,” he told his men, “and we are for it.”

The two sides stood within yards of each other, firing, reloading and firing again, the rebel assault blunted by more of McDowell's left hook climbing up from Sudley Springs ford. There were now close to 10,000 men battling on the Mathews' House Hill, the majority federal. And then, without warning, the rebels found themselves caught in a crossfire as federal troops suddenly appeared at their backs.

During the morning, Colonel William T. Sherman, a spectator on the north side of Bull Run, had seen a Confederate officer easily crossing Bull Run at a spot he noted. It was the hidden Farm ford. Just before noon, when General McDowell authorized Tyler's division to make an assault over the stone bridge (above), Sherman used his initiative to launch his regiment unresisted over his newly discovered ford. When Sherman's men fired into their backs, the rebel line crumpled, the survivors falling back to the crest of Henry House hill. General McDowell now arrived on Mathews' House hill, and ordered his artillery units to begin shelling the rebel positions, while his two divisions reformed for an assault on Henry House hill.

It was at this moment that Generals Beauregard and Johnston arrived on Henry House hill. The “Little Napoleon” began rallying Evan's exhausted soldiers at the crest, while Johnston rode toward the rear, to speed up the arrival of the rest of his Shenandoah battalions. At the same time, Thomas Jackson's 5 Virginia regiments arrived. But instead of forming on the crest of the hill with the others,  Jackson formed his men just behind the crest and ordered them to lay down. Using the hill to protect his men from the federal cannon fire, was a trick the Duke of Wellington had used to defeat the real Napoleon at Waterloo.

Seeing McDowell pushing forward almost 9,000 men toward Henry House hill, a desperate General Bee urged Jackson to advance his brigade forward. But unlike Bee, Jackson stayed right where he was.

Bee complained to his staff, “Look, there stands Jackson.  Like a stone wall”. Without Jackson's support the rest of the rebel flank began to give in the face of the advancing federal infantry. 

Then, just before stepping into effective musket range, McDowell ordered his men to halt, and brought forward two batteries of cannon, the 5^th U.S. artillery under Major Charles Griffin and the 1^st U.S. artillery under James Ricketts, to blast the rebel line, point blank.

The gunners positioned themselves with blue coated infantry to guard their flanks. As the 11 federal guns began firing across 300 yards at the 13 cannon supporting Jackson's brigade, the blue coated troops on one of the federal gunner's flank suddenly let loose a murderous volley on the gunners. (above) They were in fact 250 blue coated men of Arthur Cumming's 33^rd Virginia regiment, part of Jackson's brigade. At Cumming's command, his troops then charged the federal guns. Almost 50 of the rebels died in the assault, and almost half were wounded. But the federal battery was captured and turned on the federal line when Jackson's entire brigade stood and began returning the federal volleys. The federals charged, retook the guns, then lost them again, then retook them a third time. But the rebel battle line had stabilized alongside Jackson.

Rushing back and forth across his weakening battle line, Beauregard kept his men shooting. Then he saw the end approaching – more federal troops coming in on his left. General Beauregard was about to order a general retreat.

But the advancing troops were in fact the final Shenandoah brigades, part of Kirby Smith's battalion, and Jubal Early's from over on the rebel left. Together they were able to outflank the federal troops, and Beauregard ordered a general advance.

Under pressure across the line, the federal left began to crumble, and with Tyler refusing or unable to feed any more troops over the narrow stone bridge, General McDowell ordered a withdrawal.

The federal retreat was brilliantly handled at first. There was some panic when a rebel artillery shell landed on the bridge over Chub Run, and among the Washington elite who had gone forward to watch the fight, but in truth the image of a panic (above) has been greatly exaggerated. The exhausted federal troops could not be stopped at Centerville, but that was because the reserves were too weak to protect the retreating men. But the federal army largely stayed in good order, covered by Colonel Sherman's regiment. And the rebels were in no condition themselves to make the bad federal position, any worse.

It had been the bloodiest day in American history to date. There were 460 federal soldiers dead on the field, and over 1,100 wounded, many of whom would later die. Worse, there were 1,300 missing or taken prisoner. Confederate losses were about 390 killed, 1,500 wounded and just 13 missing. In terms of blood, the battle had been pretty much a draw. And by later battles the cost had been low. But this was only the first blood, the first major battle of a war that was too soon dwarf  the effort this day. 

The hero of the battle was clearly Colonel Thomas Jackson (above),  hereafter known as “Stonewall Jackson”. The accusation became an honor in large part because General Bee, who uttered it, was dead on Henry House hill.

On the federal side the villain was equally clear – General Robert Patterson (above). He was supposed to have held Johnston's men in the Shenandoah Valley. He did not. It could have been he could not. But as early as 19 July, the day after the “battle” of Blackburn's ford, and two days before the battle of Bull Run, Winfield Scott had ordered Patterson back to Harpers Ferry, and relieved him of command. Scott already knew, and McDowell already knew on that date,  that Johnston's 10,000 men were heading for Manassas Junction. But the approaching loss of the 90 day militia made the battle of Bull Run mandatory. And the north had come very close to winning it despite Johnston's reinforcement of Beauregard

The “Little Napoleon”, General Gustave Toutant Beauregard (above), was hailed as the hero of the Battle of Manassas Junction – Confederates always named their battles after the nearest town, the union after the nearest river. But within a few weeks Beauregard had so insulted President Jefferson Davis and his fellow officers, the Little Napoleon would be transferred first to the west, and later out of the war entirely. The man who sent the warning of the federal flanking movement, Captain Edward Porter Alexander, would come to command all artillery in the rebel Army of Northern Virginia, and conduct the largest bombardment of the war, on the afternoon of the third day at Gettysburg, preparing the way for the doomed Picket's charge.

Of the union veterans of Bull Run – the federal fight – William T. Sherman (above) would end the war, having carved his name across the deep south, all the way from Atlanta, Georgia, to North Carolina. 

Ambrose Burnside would lend his name to the fuzz on his cheeks – sideburns- and had already designed the standard cavalry carbine used during the last 2 years of the war, although he would not profit from it. But promoted to the his level of incompetence, over all commander of the federal Army of the Potomac, he would be most remembered as man who pointlessly sacrificed thousands of federal lives at Fredricksburg. 

And Major Charles Griffin (above), the man who lost his battery at Bull Run, would rise to the rank of Major General, and be a witness at Appomattox Court House when Robert E. Lee would surrender the rebel army of Northern Virginia , and end the war.

Rose O'Neal Greenhow, the pro-slavery fanatic, would be arrested in Washington for betraying McDowell's plans. At the end of May 1862 she would be handed over to the Confederacy.  Jefferson Davis welcomed her in Richmond, and credited her with winning the battle, in part because it downplayed Beauregard's efforts. But then what to do with her? He shipped her to Europe, where she attempted to convince the Europeans that slavery was not evil. Much of the royalty, who did not think much of their own people, welcomed her. But the disapproval of the working classes prevented the blue bloods from doing more than inviting her to parties, and buying her book.

In September 1864, the lady was returning home. Outside of Wilmington, North Carolina, the last open harbor in the rebel south, her ship ran aground, and Rose insisted on setting out for shore in a row boat. The boat over turned and Rose Greenhow, the queen of antebellum Washington society, disappeared beneath the waves. Her body washed up on shore the next morning. She had been pulled under by the $2,000 in gold she had carried sewn into her dress, earned for her white-washed defense of the indefensible

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FIRST BLOOD Part Five

 

I would have thought the bubble for the flamboyant General Gustave Toutant Beauregard would have popped just after five, on Sunday morning, 21 July, 1861, when a federal artillery shell smashed into his headquarters, It had been hit 3 days before, by federal guns covering the union retreat from Blackburn's ford, ruining Beauregard's dinner. And now another 12 pound ball crashed his breakfast, almost killing his Spanish valet. This second shot ought to have proved two things to Beauregard – first, that it was past time to move his headquarters, and second, that federal troops were no longer passively waiting for Beauregard's coup de main. But in spite of this second rude warning, the little general retained his surplus of self confidence.

It had been a very busy year for Beauregard. In January, “The Little Napoleon” had been named superintendent of West Point. Five days later,when the appointment was withdrawn, Beauregard took offense, even tho there was never a chance he would stay in the job. He spent the next two years trying to get the government he had just betrayed to reimburse him for the train ticket to New York he had never used. Beauregard was again offended when he was not named commander of his native Louisiana's new Confederate army. In a snit he enlisted as private in “The Orleans Guards”, an aristocratic militia unit. Confederate President Jefferson Davis rescued Beauregard from his own ego, by making him Confederate commander of Charleston, South Carolina.

His many admirers said the 42 year old Beauregard worked so tirelessly to strengthen the harbor defenses that his hair turned white. Others, who knew him well, suggested the hostilities had cut off his supply of hair dye. But in April it was Beauregard who accepted the surrender of Fort Sumter, and he became a hero to the entire Confederacy. July found “Old Borey”, as the 21,000 men under his command called him, doing his very best to live up to his growing reputation for arrogance and to give his savior an ulcer.

Amazingly, after scaring the entire Confederate chain of command with a mere twitch on  18 July, Irwin McDowell's 35,000 man federal army at Centerville went somnambulant for 48 hours, oblivious while trains carrying the lead units of Joe Johnston's 10,000 man army staggered into Manassas Junction. By the morning of Sunday,21 July, 1861, the numerical odds in northeastern Virginia were just about equal. Despite this, Jeff Davis thought Beauregard's planned offensive, little short of insane.

The Little Napoleon intended on throwing half his army (12,000 men) across Bull Run at Union Mill, to drive past McDowell's left, and fall upon Centerville, isolating the federal army, and dictating peace terms from Arlington Heights, overlooking Washington, D.C.. President Davis did not know that McDowell had already dealt with that threat, on 19 July, sending 5.500 men back to Fairfax Court House, where they could easily out flank Beauregard 's out flanking maneuver. But Davis did know the Confederates had just enough ammunition for one big fight, and no logistics to support an advance. Davis tried to discourage Beauregard without offending the famously easily offended creole.  Unfortunately, Beauregard already despised Davis. "The curse of God must have been on our people when we chose him...” Beauregard wrote of his superior and savior. Despite his breakfast clue of a cannon ball, Beauregard still insisted upon launching his assault.

General Richard Ewell got the first of his 5 Virginia regiments across Union ford on the rebel right, as the federal artillery was opening fire. General David Jones was ready to follow with 3 more regiments, and behind him was General Longstreet with 4 more. The Virginians shoved aside the cavalry skirmishers, and pushed north on the empty road. McDowell was duly informed of the assault, and glad to hear of it. By the time Ewell got to the west bound road leading to Centerville, the federal army would be in Manassas Junction. Luckily for Beauregard, orders for Ewell to halt and withdraw arrived within half an hour of his crossing Bull Run. .The only problem was, no correction arrived for General Jones, who kept going and found himself on the north side of Bull Run, advancing all by himself.

The new orders had been issued by Joe Johnston (above), who was junior to Beauregard, but twice as smart and half as arrogant. And when he saw reports from Longstreet saying that Federal General Daniel Tyler's division seemed to be getting ready to attack the north side of the stone bridge that carried the Warrenton Turnpike over Bull Run, Johnston had ordered Ewell to get back south of Bull Run, fast. General Beauregard was suspicious at first, but held off countermanding the order until he received an appraisal of Tyler's intentions from the observation post 358 feet up Signal Hill knob. And that delay gave Beauregard enough time to become a military genius.

At about 8:45 that Sunday morning, to the west of Manassas Junction on the rebel right, Captain Edward Porter Alexander (above)  was watching through a spy class Tyler's movements 8 miles to the north, on the rebel left. It was obvious to him that Tyler had no real intention of launching an assault. But before he could tell Beaurgard that,  out the corner of his eye,  Alexander saw a glint of a brass cannon in the sunlight, and the sparkle of thousands of muskets moving toward Sudley Springs, further beyond the rebel left. Alexander sent a flag message to his operator at the Stone Bridge, “Look out for your left, your position is turned." He then followed that up with a note alerting Beauregard: “I see a body of troops crossing Bull Run about two miles above the Stone Bridge...I can see both infantry and artillery.”

Federal muskets were glinting in the sun only because McDowell's army had not yet learned how to march on a battle field. At 2:30 that morning a battalion each under Generals David Hunter and Samuel Heintzelman, 12,000 men in all,  marched south on the Warrenton Pike from Centerville. In the predawn blackness, just after crossing a bridge over Cub Run, they ran into the rear of General Tyler's 8,000 man division, which was stumbling forward to threaten the stone bridge over Bull Run. What followed was an exhausting two hours of standing, marching and counter marching before the flanking battalions could reach the Sudley Springs cross roads, and get clear of the mess. The delay meant Tyler's men were demonstrating for 3 ½ hours in front of the Warrenton Pike stone bridge, before Hunter's division even began crossing Bull Run at Sudley Springs at about 9:30. Which left them out in the open to be seen from Signal Hill by Captain Alexander.

The left flank of the rebel army rested on the stone bridge carrying the Warrenton Turnpike over Bull Run. It consisted of 1,000 men and a battery of artillery, commanded by the hard drinking, knock-kneed General Nathan “Shanks” Evans (above). And after reading Alexander's message, and matching it with his own assessment, Evans acted boldly. 

He left 4 companies to guard the Stone Bridge (above), and led the rest of his brigade on a forced march to the north, first over Henry House Hill and then to Mathew's House hill. As always, Evens was accompanied by an aide, who carried on his back a small barrel of Even's favorite whiskey.

Even also sent word six miles back to Manassas Junction, demanding immediate reinforcement, where it found the rebel brigades from the Shenandoah Valley - the newly arrived 800 South Carolinans under General Bernard Bee, and the 1,000 Georgians under Colonel Francis Bartow. These two brigades began an immediate force march toward the Henry House Hill,  followed by Colonel Thomas Jackson's brigade of Virginians.

It was not yet 10 a.m., Sunday, 21 July, 1861, and the first great battle of the American Civil was about to begin in earnest. And having shown himself to be a delusional commander, Gustave Toutant Beauregard was about to prove to be a great leader.

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FIRST BLOOD Part Three

I think the most concise description of the problems General Irwin McDowell (above)  faced on the Tuesday, 16 July, 1861, as he began his 30 mile march from Alexandria and the Arlington Heights down to Bull Run creek, was given in Bruce Catton's, 1961 history of the war. Catton wrote, “Latter...when the troops knew how to march, and the generals and their staffs knew how to handle them, this (4 days) would have been more than time enough, but at this time no one knew anything: from general down to 90 day private, everybody was green...when the column started out the wagon trains that had to carry all of its supplies were still in process of getting organized...when the head began to move the tail of it was still being put together.” McDowell was unable to even start his 3 divisions, some 35,000 men - the largest single military force gathered in North America up to that time, and outnumbering the population of most Virginia counties - until after 2 in the afternoon.

“Coming down from Washington,” wrote Catton, “the Warrington Turnpike ran a little south of west, a dusty straight road (above) that passed through the looted Fairfax Courthouse, climbed the slopes around Centerville and then dropped to the valley of the Bull Run, where a brown river moved southeast in slow loops with a fringe of marshy underbrush, brier patches, and spindly trees on each bank. The turnpike crossed Bull Run on an arched stone bridge...”

William C. Davis tried to describe the march a century and thirty-one years later. “The three columns of Federals were in no hurry”, he wrote, “The men trekked through the thinly populated region of low rolling hills, with dense forests and cultivated fields, with many creeks, few bridges, and soft bottoms that bogged wagons to their axles...The soldiers dragged their feet, sang and bragged, chocked on dust, sweltered in the heat and humidity. The enlisted men casually broke ranks and stopped for drinks of water, or to wash the caked grime from their faces, or to forage for chickens...a kilted officer of the 79^th New York Highlanders went running after a pig...he leaped over a rail fence, presenting what a comrade called “such an exhibition of his anatomy as to call forth a roar of laughter...It was 10 p.m. Before most troops...were allowed to bivouac ( for the night). None had hiked more than six miles.”

Shelby Foote described it as a “...lark, lending the march a holiday air of an outing. They not only broke ranks for berry-picking; they discarded their packs and “spare” equipment, including their cartridge boxes and ate up their rations intended to carry them through the fighting... Re-issuing ammunition and food cost him ((McDowell) a day of valuable time, in addition to the one already lost in wretched marching...”  It was not until the second morning, says Davis, that the center division “began to trickle into Fairfax Courthouse around 10 o'clock.”  Nobody went any further.

That night McDowell ordered central division commander, General Daniel Tyler, to push right through Centerville on Thursday, 18 July, and threaten a direct attack on Manassas Junction. McDowell reminded Tyler “Do not bring on an engagement, but keep on the impression we are moving on Manassas”. McDowell expected the real work would be done by General Samuel Heintzelman's 10,000 men. They were marching directly down the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, aiming for Union Mills and the ford over Bull Run. Heintzekman's orders were then to brush past the rebels' right flank and cut the rail line south of Manassas Junction. If communications to Richmond were cut, McDowell believed, the rebels would retreat.

But McDowell had lost touch with Heintzelman's division during Tuesday, and was forced to ride out on Wednesday morning, looking for him. By the time he found his wayward subordinate, McDowell discovered the key division was so fouled up, it was unfit to launch an attack this day. So McDowell ordered Heintzelman to instead wheel to his troops to the right, and concentrate his men at the crossroads of Centerville.  Meanwhile, out McDowell's sight, General Tyler, thought he sniffed an opportunity down the Warrington Pike at Blackburn's and at Mitchell's fords across  Bull Run.

Daniel Tyler (above) was a civil engineer, the son of a Revolutionary War veteran, an 1819 West Point graduate, who had left the army in 1834 and made a fortune saving railroads on the brink of bankruptcy. And gazing through the summer haze from the high ground around Centerville, his old eyes could still see the smoke and flashes at Manassas Junction, just two miles beyond Bull Run. And he could not see many rebels between him and that tempting target. When a couple of artillery rounds fail to generate a response, Tyler sent a regiment of Massachusetts men to cross Bull Run at Blackburn's ford.

It might have worked too, if Tyler's opponent had not been General James Longstreet, one of the most competent soldiers in either army. Longstreet had concealed his men well on both sides of Bull Run, and when the Massachusetts men stepped into the open at the ford, the Virginians blasted them from three sides at once. Just as the firing was building, Captain Fry, McDowell's chief of staff arrived, and urged Tyler to pull back. Instead Tyler sent another regiment forward, this one of New York men. And these men were then hit by the reinforcements Longstreet had also rushed forward. After 30 minutes of this hailstorm of lead, the New Yorkers broke for the rear. And when Longstreet's men rushed across Bull Run, they pushed the Massachusetts regiment back with them. Tyler was forced to push his own reinforcements forward, and regroup behind the crest of the Centerville high ground.

At about four that afternoon, General McDowell arrived on the scene, and with the frustrations of the day, he unloaded on General Tyler. The proud businessman did not take the criticism well. By the numbers it had not been such a bad day.  The federal troops had suffered at the "battle" of Blackburn's ford (above) 19 dead, 38 wounded and 26 missing, while the rebels had 15 dead, 53 wounded and 2 missing. But the psychology was far more one sided. Captain Fry noted, “The Confederates...were encouraged. The federal troops, on the other hand, were greatly depressed.” And Tyler''s wounded pride would fester.

General McDowell spent the next day, Friday, 19 July, camped around Centerville (above) resting and resupplying his men's  “haversacks” with another 2 days ration of hard tack, which his men had eaten on the march down from Washington.  And he spent the day assessing the condition of his army. A Pennsylvania regiment and a battery of New York artillery had to be sent back because their 90 day enlistments were almost up, and they refused to remain. McDowell further weakened his force when by sending 5,000 men back to guard his supply lines through Fairfax Courthouse. On Saturday, 20 July, he sent engineers out to the west, checking the roads beyond the rebel left. It took until late afternoon before he knew the roads to Sudley Springs could support a flanking move by over 10,000 men.

On the Confederate side, the soldiers might be “encouraged”, as Captain Fry had noted, but on the night of 18 July, their commanders were worried.  Beaurguard knew, thanks to Rose Greenhow, that a federal division of 10,000 men was marching directly down the Alexandria and Orange railroad line on his right. He could not know, at this point, that they had been redirected to Centerville.  Beaurguard was still outnumbered , and he expected to be struck by the heavier force anywhere along the line from Union Mills to Blackburn's ford.  If pressed, he knew he could not hold.  He pleaded with Confederate President Jefferson Davis for reinforcements.

Davis had no men to send, except the soldiers under Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley (above). And as long as Patterson was still threatening Winchester, those men could not be spared. But after the skirmish on 16 July at Bunker Hill, the federals had stopped dead in their tracks, and on 17 July Patterson had moved sideways to Charles Town. Johnston was certain by the afternoon of 18 July that there was no chance of any further aggressive action from Patterson. That afternoon, when Jefferson Davis forwarded Beaurguard's urgent appeal, Johnston could now shift his men to the east.

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