The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 1 of 2

The battle was brought about not in answer to any consideration of military propriety but solely in response to ignorant but irresistible popular clamor. The people of this country knew nothing of modern war or of the conditions that govern success or failure in it. The latest national recollection of war was of the unequal conflict with Mexico nearly a decade and a half before. The American people had never seen assembled in their name and behalf an army half so great as that with which their patriotism had now responded to the country's call. In front of Washington and in the near-by valley of Virginia they had between fifty and sixty thousand men, while their adversaries could muster there only a little more than half as many.

Knowing little of the difference between uniformed men with arms in their hands and seasoned soldiers, the people at the North grew violently impatient of the delay. They had furnished their Government twice as many armed men as the enemy could count, and they could not understand why the double force thus created should not go on at once to make an end of what they regarded as the "nonsense down there in Virginia."

So confident had been the conviction at the North that this was a petty outbreak to be suppressed easily and quickly, that a large part of the enlistments were for no more than three months. That period seemed to them more than adequate to the task in hand, and it had been deemed needless to take young men away from their homes and their employments for a greater length of time.

It is plain enough that the administration at Washington at first shared this conception of the case. Otherwise it would neither have called for nor accepted three months volunteers.

But the three months were now nearly expired, and nothing had been done to make an end of the "nonsense." The terms of service of many regiments were soon to expire and there seemed to be no general disposition on the part of the men composing them to enter into new enlistments. It was obvious that unless the "army" at and near Washington should go forward at once, crush Beauregard's greatly inferior force, march on to Richmond and make an end of the difficulty, new levies must be called for and a new strain put upon the endurance and the patience of the people.

All this impatience found daily and often intemperate expression in the newspapers, whose rivalry in clamor fanned the flame of discontent among the people. Desk strategists who knew nothing of war's conditions had an easy task in figuring out with their blue pencils an absolutely certain victory for the Federal arms, if only the Federal generals could be persuaded or compelled by public opinion to avail themselves of their matchless opportunity. "Are not two more than one? And have not we the two to our enemy's one? What dullards and laggards our generals must be to delay for a day or an hour!" So ran the editorial argument, and that argument seemed to the people conclusive and convincing, for the reason that the people generally were as ignorant as the strategists of the editorial rooms themselves concerning the conditions that govern battle and the training necessary to convert civilian volunteers into soldiers fit to face a fire of musketry and cannon.

The military men knew better, of course. Except the superannuated commander-in-chief, General Scott, not one of them had ever commanded so much as a brigade in battle, but at least they had been taught in a military school and many of them had seen fighting. They knew the peril of hurling ill-organized regiments of utterly untrained and undisciplined civilians upon the chosen positions of an armed foe, even when that foe's forces were in a like condition of undisciplined inefficiency. The arithmetical argument in no degree deceived them. They knew that with such men as they had under their command strength could not be safely reckoned by a mere numerical count, that under certain easily imagined conditions, indeed, strength must often be in inverse ratio to numbers. They perfectly knew that for them to advance against the Confederates with an army in such condition as theirs was at that time was to take a fearful risk of defeat, disastrous and demoralizing to the army and dangerously discouraging to the country behind the army.

But the demand on the part of press, pulpit and people for an immediate advance was too insistent, too clamorous, and was rapidly becoming too angry to be longer resisted. It was reinforced by an almost equally insistent demand on the part of the civilian authorities at Washington, whose ignorance of military conditions was scarcely less pronounced than that of the excited editors and orators of the country.

It was decided therefore to advance the army and bring on the hazardous battle against the better judgment of every trained military man at Washington.

General Scott was still in supreme command of the army, but he was much too old and too feeble to conduct the perilous enterprise in person. General Irwin McDowell was chosen to plan the battle and fight it. He had never commanded an army before or conducted a campaign, but neither had any other officer then available, and his technical knowledge of strategy was thorough. On this occasion his plan of battle was admirable, one of the best, General Sherman has said, that was formed at any time during the war. It was essentially identical with that afterwards adopted by General Lee at the Seven Days' Battles and again at Chancellorsville.

A reconnoissance in force was made against the Confederate lines along Bull Run on Thursday, the eighteenth of July, which disclosed the fact that the Confederates were fully entrenched in a strong position which commanded the crossings of the stream and the plateau over which it must be approached.

Having found out all this, General McDowell decided to bring on a battle on Sunday, July the twenty-first.

It is not the purpose of the present writer to tell the story of Manassas or that of any other battle in military detail. That has been done too often already, to the hopeless confusion of the civilian reader's mind. Only an intelligible outline is attempted here, with no effort to locate this or that division or brigade or regiment or battery upon the field or to follow out the details of any movement made by any of them.

Beauregard held his line along the stream known as Bull Run, over a space of several miles. This line had been established in defense of the railroad "junction" at Manassas where the line of the Orange and Alexandria railroad joined that of the Manassas Gap railroad. This position was suggested by the artificial geography of railroad construction. It was defended by the natural physical geography of Bull Run, which furnished the Confederates a comparatively good, though by no means a strategically satisfactory, line of defensive fighting.

McDowell's purpose was to assail the Confederates on their extreme right, there making a feint as if to force a crossing of Bull Run at that point which he did not at all intend; to march his stronger battalions to his own right along roads substantially parallel with Bull Run; here and there to divert a force to the Bull Run line and make fighting there by way of preventing Confederate concentration at any point and finally to hurl all his force with irresistible fury upon the extreme left of the Confederate line, which he intended and confidently expected to turn and overwhelm with his superior numbers.

It was McDowell's plan to deceive the Confederates as to his point of decisive attack, to keep them busy all along the Bull Run line and, late in the day, to envelop their left wing, crush it by superior force, capture the railroad and perhaps compel Beauregard's surrender for lack of a line of retreat.

The plan worked well for a time. The attacks of McDowell's divisions upon the Confederate right and center were stoutly and successfully resisted at every point, but they were made with determination and they served their purpose of deceiving the Southern commander or at least of preventing him from withdrawing heavy forces from that part of the field for the defense of his left against the final and crushing assault which McDowell intended to make there, and in preparation for which he was all day moving his heaviest columns in that direction along roads not visible from the Confederate lines.

When at last that assault was made, it found Beauregard inadequately prepared for it; but, with the determination and energy which were the dominant traits of his character, the Confederate general held his ground obstinately and hurriedly moved troops from the right to the left of his line.

The fighting raged furiously at this critical point and for a considerable time its result was in doubt, with the chances strongly in favor of the Federals. Three times the tide of battle ebbed and flowed across the disputed field, both sides fighting with a courage and obstinacy that were scarcely to have been expected of troops so little inured to the work of war.

When the struggle was at its fiercest, and at the moment when the promise of it seemed to be that the Federals would overwhelm and crush their sorely outnumbered adversaries, a strong detachment of Johnston's troops from the Valley, long delayed on their railroad journey, reached the field. Their orders were of the vaguest, but they plainly saw an overmastering Federal force pressing the Confederates very hard in their immediate presence. So, following the Napoleonic instruction to go to the point of heaviest firing the officers commanding the arriving Confederates went at once into the thick of the fight.

It was the work of a brief time for these fresh men to envelop the advancing Federal right wing and crush it to pulp.

In the meanwhile the sorely beset left wing of the Confederates had been enabled to hold its ground and save itself for a time from complete disaster, only by the obstinate courage of a brigade of Virginians under General Thomas Jonathan Jackson – a West Pointer who had long ago resigned from the old army to become a professor in the Virginia Military Institute, and who had now become a brigadier-general of Virginia volunteers. He had already so completely won the hearts and dominated the minds of his men that – raw volunteers as they were – they had no thought of faltering or flinching in the presence of any danger, so long as their chieftain bade them stand fast. One after another the battalions with which they had touched elbows were beaten back before a leaden hailstorm, or torn to shreds by cannon fire at murderously short range, or fairly forced to the rear by bayonet-armed phalanxes, while their own brigade line was steadily withering under the destructive fire. But they were under inspiration of a leader whom they loved and whose courage was inspired by a religious faith as unfaltering as that of any Mussulman fanatic, and so they stood steadfast in spite of all. They looked for their orders only to that great, calm, passionless leader, and from him alone they took their impulse. Scarcely at any time during a war that abounded in illustrations of heroism, was there, on either side, a more conspicuous example of the courage that endures, than that which was afforded by Jackson and his Virginians at that most critical moment of the first great battle. It excited admiration and inspired others with courage even in that hour of seemingly hopeless defeat. General Bee, who was destined a few minutes later to become a martyr to his own courage, seeing it, cried out to his wavering men: "There stands Jackson like a stone wall," and appealed to them to emulate the example of their comrades and "rally on the Virginians." From that hour to this the title "Stonewall" has clung to the fame and memory of Jackson more closely than his own proper name has done.

Under the fierce onset of Johnston's fresh men, supported by rallying brigades that had for a time faltered and yielded ground, and reinforced from the Confederate right, the Federal assailing column was quickly crushed and forced to retire, the Confederates pressing hotly upon their heels.

Then occurred that insane panic in the Federal army which has never been explained or accounted for except upon the insufficient ground that its victims were men without discipline and wholly unused to war. The explanation leaves much to be desired. The men who yielded to that panic impulse had already on that day proved themselves brave fellows, quite capable of doing soldiers' work right gallantly. They had fought with vigor, determination and high courage through long and bloody hours. They had been the assailants where assault required a greater courage than defense and they had done their soldierly work altogether well. They had been baffled of victory in the crowning hour of the battle, but they perfectly knew that their columns still outnumbered those of their adversary, and they must have known that in an orderly withdrawal from the scene of the conflict they were not in the least degree likely to be destructively assailed in their turn. Nothing was more unlikely indeed, than that the Confederates, having exhausted their freshness of vigor in the battle and having achieved their immediate purpose by repelling their enemy's assault, would in their turn advance upon that enemy, still outnumbering them, if he had withdrawn in good order and taken up a strong defensive position at Centreville, only a few miles away. Had the Federal Army done that, preserving its cohesion and presenting a determined front, it is indeed certain that the Confederates would not have cared to convert their successful defense into a more than doubtful offense; and even had that happened through Confederate over-confidence, the opportunity of the Federals to convert their own defeat into a conspicuous victory would have been as tempting as any that an army could desire.

Later in the war after the two armies had been molded into effectiveness by the stern discipline of service, some such course as this would undoubtedly have been pursued. But at Manassas the event was startlingly different. No sooner did the Federal troops that had fought so gallantly on the right of their line find their assault repelled and themselves forced back than all cohesion, all discipline, all soldierly qualities went out of them. They broke ranks and fled in a positively demented panic, which unfortunately proved to be instantly and universally contagious. The whole army fell into confusion. Even those parts of it which had successfully held their own in severe conflicts throughout the battle hours broke ranks and ran as an unorganized mob might at the advance of a force of regulars armed with bayonets.

The Confederates, flushed with unexpected victory achieved in the moment of defeat, pursued them with all the quick-moving forces available, chief among these being Stuart's small body of Virginia cavalry.

There was a report current in the Federal army that J. E. B. Stuart had under his command thirty thousand of the finest and most desperately daring horsemen that had been known in the world since the days of the Mamelukes. As a matter of fact, he had under his orders five or six hundred young Virginians. They knew how to ride their horses, they knew how to use their revolvers, and they knew in some degree at least how to handle their sabers. They had been trained to all that all their lives and perfected in it at the camp of instruction at Ashland. But beyond that they had no skill and no superiority and it was their constant wonder after the battle of Manassas, that during the chase they almost nowhere met the cavalry of the other side. They met and quickly dispersed artillery and infantry, but nowhere did they encounter men of their own arm of the service. They had met and fought horsemen in the Valley of Virginia – for Stuart had been with Johnston there – but they encountered none such now.

The simple fact is that the Union army was in an insane panic and utterly disorganized. The sole thought of every man in it was to escape with a whole skin if that should be in any way possible. The cavalry men having horses under them put spurs to their steeds and led instead of protectingly following a confused and confusing retreat upon Washington. Artillery men cut their horses out of their gun carriages and caissons, mounted them, and fled bareback at such speed as the horses could make.

At a little stream a caisson in mad flight was presently overturned, obstructing a bridge. A great cloud of panic-stricken soldiers and citizens seeking an avenue of flight was collected there almost in an instant. Then up came Kemper of the cannon, powder-grimed and weary but flushed with the victory. Using two guns he opened fire upon the confused crowd at short range, with an effect like that produced upon a flock of partridges when a charge of shot is fired into its midst. Then a little squad of Stuart's cavalry men – ten or a dozen in number – drew sabers and charged, and a minute later the creek was full of struggling and drowning men, but no organized force remained to be charged except a body of eighty infantry men fully armed, with bayonets fixed, who stood away on the left. Upon these the insignificant squad of cavalry men made a dashing charge, calling out as they galloped: "Throw down your arms or we'll put you to the sword!" And so completely demoralizing had the panic become that these eighty who could instantly have swept the little band of cavalry men off the face of the earth, not only dashed their arms to the ground but broke ranks and ran, every individual man seeking such escape as might be possible to him.

The men who were so panic-stricken on that fateful Sunday were not cowards. Many of them fought valiantly and stalwartly later in the war. They were simply victims of an insensate and highly contagious panic. They were not yet soldiers. They had not yet learned the first lesson of the soldier, namely, the imperative necessity of preserving organization, fighting every force encountered, and waiting for orders that must be obeyed at all costs, especially before giving way to the enemy. Their imaginations had been inflamed by the stories related at their camp fires respecting Stuart's mythical Mamelukes and their terrible skill in horsemanship.

In brief all courage, all cohesion, and all soldierly quality had completely gone out of the Federal army. Men who had fought courageously an hour before had become as hares fleeing from pursuing hounds, and their flight knew no halting until they had passed the long bridge into the streets of Washington, where they paused only to gather breath for a still further flight if such should become necessary.

In all this the confusion was increased and multiplied by the presence among the fugitives of a multitude of panic-stricken picnickers – Congressmen, civilians of every sort, and lavishly dressed women – who had gone out in carriages and carryalls to see the spectacle of a Federal army walking over the Confederates, and to follow the fleeing rebels all the way to Richmond, feasting meanwhile upon the champagne, the boned turkey, the sandwiches and the truffled game with which they had so lavishly supplied themselves that the Confederates fed fat for days afterwards upon the provisions that the picnickers abandoned in their flight.

The presence of these people within the lines of a fighting army was in itself a conspicuous illustration of the utterly unmilitary and undisciplined condition of that army. Imagine, if it be possible to imagine, such a horde of sightseers attempting to follow Grant into the Wilderness, or Sherman on his march to the Sea! But the war was very young when the battle of Manassas was fought, and so these people were permitted to be there, to add to the completeness of a rout that could never have been equaled in its insanity at any later period of the conflict.

As to the total number of men engaged on either side at Manassas, the statistics are varying and untrustworthy. It is certain that there was no very great or decisive disparity of numbers. The Federal army outnumbered that of the Confederates by only three or four thousand men. General Beauregard has estimated his total force, including the necessary garrison of the works, which of course was not actually engaged, at a total of 29,188 men. According to Dr. Rossiter Johnson, an unusually accurate and conscientious historian on the Northern side whose means of information are of the very best, McDowell's total force, including those detached to guard the line of retreat upon Washington, was about 34,000 men.

Exact statistics in such a case are of no moment. Where armed mobs, undisciplined, ill-organized, and unused to the strenuous work of war, meet in battle quite other things than numbers are apt to be decisive.

The Federal commanders reported a loss of 470 killed, 1,071 wounded and 1,793 missing – a total loss of 3,334 men. The Confederate loss was officially reported at 387 killed, 1,582 wounded and 13 missing, making a total of 1,982.

If greater attention is here given to this first important battle than to others of larger magnitude to be treated in future pages of this work, it is because of the extraordinary effect the battle had, as will be set forth in the next chapter, and because of the peculiar danger to which the Confederate victory for a time subjected the Federal cause.

CHAPTER XV

The Paralysis of Victory

On the evening of the twenty-first day of July, 1861, the Confederate army at Manassas rested upon one of the completest and most spectacular victories that had ever been won by any army over any adversary. The assailing army had not only been repelled – all possibility of resistance was gone from it. Not only had it been driven pell-mell from the field with every circumstance of demoralization that could add picturesqueness to its flight, but the uttermost link of cohesion that could hold its battalions together for any purpose of resistance was completely broken up and destroyed. Divisions were dissipated, brigades were broken into bits, regiments no longer existed and even companies were scattered to the winds. Only demoralized and panic-stricken fugitives, each madly seeking safety, remained. That which had been a most gallant "army with banners" at sunrise had become before nightfall a panic-stricken mob without possibility of cohesion or stamina and utterly without a sense of soldierly duty.

Then followed the strangest event of the war. This victory, the completest, the most picturesque, the most absolute that could be imagined, had the effect of paralyzing the winners of it to an extent to which even defeat could not have done.

The story is too strange and historically of too much import to be told otherwise than in its fulness.

Let us first consider the character and composition of the two armies that fought at Manassas. The Confederate volunteers were enlisted for twelve months. The term might have been made longer without the loss of a volunteer. For these young men, whatever their contract with the Government might stipulate, fully intended to remain in the service so long as the war should last. They felt it to be their own personal war and most of them had nothing else to do than fight it out to the end, however long it might endure. Indeed it was certain that so long as it lasted no young man of the South could long remain out of the army without incurring damning disgrace at home.

As a consequence, the organization of the Confederates when the battle of Manassas occurred was far more perfect and had far more of permanency in it than was the case with that of McDowell's forces. These consisted largely of men who had volunteered for no more than a three months' service, and the terms of many regiments were expiring or about to expire when the call to battle was issued. Many of those whose terms were at an end turned back on the very eve of battle —four thousand of them quitting on the day of battle itself. They refused to participate in the conflict because their time was up.

This was a manifestation of indifference to all patriotic and manly considerations such as was nowhere witnessed on the Southern side at any time during the war.

But let us not judge too harshly. These young men were civilians, not soldiers. They had enlisted only for a period of three months. They were callow youths unaccustomed to war. They had regarded a three months' service in the volunteers as a sort of exciting picnic excursion to the South. They had done their duty during the term for which they had agreed to serve, with very tolerable faithfulness. They had had their outing. Their frolic was over. Their contract was fulfilled. They very naturally wanted to return to their homes. When under such circumstances a fierce battle confronted them, with the enemy very manifestly in no "excursion" mood but bent upon all that was possible of slaughter, is it any wonder that these young men faltered and failed?