CHAPTER VIII
A CHRISTENING
Imboden had been joined by the Rockbridge Artillery and the Alexandriaand Loudoun batteries. A little later there came up two of the NewOrleans guns. All unlimbered in front of the pine wood where was couchedthe First Brigade, trained the sixteen guns upon the Mathews Hill andbegan firing. Griffin and Ricketts and Arnold answered with Parrotts andhowitzers, throwing elongated, cylindrical shell that came with thescreech of a banshee. But the Federal range was too long, and the fusesof many shells were uncut. Two of Rockbridge's horses were killed, acaisson of Stanard's exploded, scorching the gunners, a lieutenant waswounded in the thigh, but the batteries suffered less than did theinfantry in the background. Here, more than one exploding horror wroughtdestruction. Immediately in rear of the guns were posted the 4th, the27th, and the 65th. To the right hand was the 5th, to the left the 2dand the 33d. In all the men lay down in ranks, just sheltered by thefinal fringe of pines. The younger officers stood up, or, stepping intothe clearing, seated themselves not without ostentation upon pinestumps, to the laudable end that the enemy should know where to findthem. Jackson rode back and forth behind the guns.
The thundering voices grew louder, shaking the hills. The First Brigadecould not see the infantry, swept now from the Mathews Hill and engagedabout the turnpike and the stream. By stretching necks it saw a roof ofsmoke, dun-coloured, hiding pandemonium. Beneath that deeper thunder ofthe guns, the crackling, unintermittent sound of musketry affected theear like the stridulation of giant insects. The men awaiting their turnbeneath the pines, breathing quick, watching the shells, moved theirheads slightly to and fro. In front, outdrawn upon a little ridge, stoodthe guns and boomed defiance. Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria,and New Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were somethingancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beardless,powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and steady of eyeand hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, showed in the vanof Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe-quelling Hector might say"They will do well."
General T. J. Jackson on Little Sorrel went up and down between thespeaking guns and the waiting infantry. The men, from their couch uponthe needles, watched him. Before their eyes war was transfiguring him,and his soldiers called him "Old Jack" and made no reservation. Theawkward figure took on a stalwart grace, the old uniform, the boots, thecap, grew classically right. The inner came outward, the atmospherealtered, and the man was seen as he rode in the plane above. A shellfrom Ricketts came screaming, struck and cut down a young pine. Infalling, the tree caught and hurt a man or two. Another terror followedand exploded overhead, a fragment inflicting upon a bugler of the 65tha ghastly wound. "Steady, men, steady!--all's well," said Old Jack. Hethrew up his left hand, palm out,--an usual gesture,--and turned tospeak to Imboden, whose profanity he had apparently forgiven. As in anyother July hour a cloud of gnats might have swum above that hill, so, onthis one summer day, death-dealing missiles filled the air. Somesplinter from one of these struck the lifted hand. Jackson let it fall,the blood streaming. Imboden uttered an ejaculation. "It's nothing,"said the other; then, with slow earnestness, "Captain Imboden, I wouldgive--I will give--for this cause every drop of blood that coursesthrough my heart." He drew out a handkerchief, wrapped it around thewound, and rode on down the right of his line.
Up to meet him from the foot of the hill, out of the dun smoke hidingthe wrestle, came at a gallop a roan horse bearing a rider tall and wellmade, black-eyed and long-haired, a bright sash about his waist, aplumed hat upon his head. Panting, he drew rein beside Little Sorrel. "Iam Bee.--General Jackson, we are driven--we are overwhelmed! My God!only Evans and Bartow and I against the whole North and the Regulars! Weare being pushed back--you must support.--In three minutes the battlewill be upon this hill--Hunter and Heintzleman's divisions. They're hotand huzzaing--they think they've got us fast! They have, by God! if ourtroops don't come up!" He turned his horse. "But you'll support--wecount on you--"
"Count only upon God, General Bee," said Jackson. "But I will give themthe bayonet."
Bee struck spur into the roan and galloped across the plateau. Out ofone of the furrowing ravines, a sunbaked and wrinkled trough springingfrom the turnpike below and running up and across the Henry Hill towardthe crest of pine and oak, came now a handful of men, grey shadows,reeling, seeking the forest and night. Another followed--another--then astream, a grey runlet of defeat which grew in proportions. A momentmore, and the ravine, fed from the battle-ground below, overflowed. Thered light shifted to the Henry Hill. It was as though a closed fan, laidupon that uneven ground, had suddenly opened. The rout was not hideous.The men had fought long and boldly, against great odds; they fled nowbefore the storm, but all cohesion was not lost, nor presence of mind.Some turned and fired, some listened to their shouting officer, andstrove to form about the tossed colours, some gave and took advice. Butevery gun of the Federal batteries poured shot and shell upon thathilltop, and the lines of blue had begun to climb. The disorderincreased; panic might come like the wind in the grass. Bee reached thechoked ravine, pulled up his great roan. He was a man tall and large,and as he rose in his stirrups and held his sword aloft, standingagainst the sky, upon the rim of the ravine, he looked colossal, abronze designed to point the way. He cried aloud, "Look! Yonder isJackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!" As hespoke a shell struck him. He fell, mortally wounded.
The eyes of the men in the cleft below had followed the pointed sword.The hilltop was above them, and along the summit, just in advance of apine wood, ran a stone wall, grey, irregular, touched here by sunlight,there by shadow, and shrouded in part by the battle smoke. Some one hadplanted upon it a flag. For a full moment the illusion held, then thewall moved. A captain of the 4th Alabama, hoarse with shouting, foundvoice once more. "God! We aren't beaten! Talk of Birnam wood! The stonewall's coming!"
Up and out of the ravine, widening like an opening fan, pressed thedisordered troops. The plateau was covered by chaos come again.Officers, raging, shouted orders, ran to and fro, gesticulated withtheir swords. A short line was formed, another; they dissolved before athird could be added. All voices were raised; there was a tumult ofcries, commands, protestations, adjurations, and refusals. Over allscreamed the shells, settled the smoke. Franklin, Willcox, Sherman, andPorter, pressing the Federal advantage, were now across the turnpike.Beneath their feet was the rising ground--a moment more, and they wouldleap victorious up the ragged slope. The moment was delayed. With arending sound as of a giant web torn asunder, the legions of Hampton andCary, posted near the house of the free negro Robinson, came into actionand held in check the four brigades.
High upon the plateau, near Jackson's line, above the wild confusion ofthe retreating troops, appeared in the blaze of the midday sun, hatless,on steeds reeking from the four miles' gallop from that centre where thebattle did not join to this left where it did, the generals Johnston andBeauregard. Out of the red lightning, the thunder, the dust and thesmoke, above the frenzied shouting and the crying of the wounded, theirpresence was electrically known. A cheer rushed from the First Brigade;at the guns Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleanstook up the cry, tossed it with grape and canister across to theopposite hill. Bee, Bartow, and Evans, exhausted, shattered, waveringupwards toward the forest, rest, cessation from long struggle, heard thenames and took fresh heart. The two were not idle, but in the crucialmoment turned the scale. Black danger hemmed their cause. The missingbrigade of the Shenandoah was no man knew where. At Mitchell's andBlackburn's fords, Ewell, D. R. Jones, Bonham, and Longstreet wereengaged in a demonstration in force, retaining upon that front theenemy's reserve. Holmes and Jubal Early were on their way to theimperilled left, but the dust cloud that they raised was yet distant.Below the two generals were broken troops, men raw to the field,repulsed, driven, bleeding, and haggard, full on the edge of headlongflight; lower, in the hollow land, McDowell's advance, filling thelittle
valley, islanding the two fighting legions, and now, a mountingtide, attacking the Henry Hill. At Beauregard's order the regimentalcolours were advanced, and the men adjured to rally about them. Fiery,eloquent, of French descent and impassioned, Pierre Gustave ToutantBeauregard rose in his stirrups and talked of _la gloire_, of home, andof country. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana listened,cheered, and began to reform. Johnston, Scotch, correct, military, theRegular in person, trusted to the hilt by the men he led, seized thecolours of the 4th Alabama, raised them above his grey head, spurred hiswar horse, and in the hail of shot and shell established the line ofbattle. Decimated as they were, raw volunteers as they were, drawn frompeaceful ways to meet the purple dragon, fold on fold of war, the troopsof Bee, Bartow, and Evans rallied, fell into line, and stood. The 49thVirginia came upon the plateau from Lewis Ford--at its head Ex-GovernorWilliam Smith. "Extra Billy," old political hero, sat twisted in hissaddle, and addressed his regiment. "Now, boys, you've just got to killthe ox for this barbecue! Now, mind you, I ain't going to have anybacking out! We ain't West P'inters, but, thank the Lord, we're men!When it's all over we'll have a torchlight procession and write to thegirls! Now, boys, you be good to me, and I'll be good to you. Lord,children, I want to be proud of you! And I ain't Regular, but I knowOld Virginny. Tom Scott, you beat the drum real loud, and James, youswing that flag so high the good Lord's got to see it!--Here's the WestP'inters--here's the generals! Now, boys, just see how loud you canholler!"
The 49th went into line upon Gartrell's right, who was upon Jackson'sleft. Beauregard paused to speak to that brigadier, advanced upon LittleSorrel in front of the 65th. An aide addressed the latter's colonel."General Bee christened this brigade just before he fell. He called it astone wall. If he turns out a true prophet I reckon the name willstick." A shell came hurtling, fell, exploded, and killed under himBeauregard's horse. He mounted the aide's and galloped back to Johnston,near the Henry House. Here there was a short council. Had the missingbrigade, the watched for, the hoped for, reached Manassas? Ewell andEarly had been ordered up from Union Mills. Would they arrive upon thishill in time? What of the Stone Bridge, now left almost undefended? Whatof Blackburn and Mitchell's fords, and Longstreet's demonstration, andthe enemy's reserves across Bull Run? What best disposition of thestrength that might arrive? The conference was short. Johnston, thesenior with the command of the whole field, galloped off to the LewisHouse, while Beauregard retained the direction of the contest on theHenry Hill. Below it the two legions still held the blue wave frommounting.
Ricketts and Griffin upon the Mathews Hill ceased firing--greatly to theexcitement of Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and NewOrleans. The smoke slightly lifted. "What're they doing? They've gottheir horses--they're limbering up! What in hell!--d'ye suppose they'vehad enough? No! Great day in the morning! They're coming up here!"
Ricketts and Griffin, cannoneers on caissons, horses urged to a gallop,thundered down the opposite slope, across Young's Branch and theturnpike. A moment and they were lost to sight, another and thestraining horses and the dust and the guns and the fighting men aboutthem showed above the brow of the Henry Hill. Out they thundered uponthe plateau and wheeled into battery very near to the Henry House.Magnificence but not war! They had no business there, but they had beenordered and they came. With a crash as of all the thunders they openedat a thousand feet, full upon the Confederate batteries and upon thepine wood where lay the First Brigade.
Rockbridge, Staunton, Loudoun, Alexandria, and New Orleans, wet withsweat, black with powder, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing,did well with the bass of that hill-echoing tune. A lieutenant of theWashington Artillery made himself heard above the roar. "Short range!We've got short range at last! Now, old smoothbores, show what you aremade of!" The smoothbores showed. Griffin and Ricketts answered,Jackson's sharpshooters took a part, the uproar became frightful. Thecaptain of the Rockbridge Artillery was a great-nephew of EdmundPendleton, a graduate of West Point and the rector of the EpiscopalChurch in Lexington. He went back and forth among his guns. "Fire! andthe Lord have mercy upon their souls.--Fire! and the Lord have mercyupon their souls." With noise and a rolling smoke and a scorching breathand a mad excitement that annihilated time and reduced with athunderclap every series of happenings into one all-embracing moment,the battle mounted and the day swung past its burning noon.
The 11th and 14th New York had been pushed up the hill to the support ofRicketts and Griffin. Behind them showed in strength other climbingmuskets. In the vale below Hampton and Cary had made diversion, had heldthe brigades in check, while upon the plateau the Confederates rallied.The two legions, stubborn and gallant, suffered heavily. With many deadand many wounded they drew off at last. The goal of the Henry Hill layclear before McDowell.
He had brigades enough for the advance that should set all the bells ofWashington ringing for victory. His turning column at Sudley Ford hadnumbered eighteen thousand men. But Howard was somewhere in the vaguedistance, Burnside was "resting," Keyes, who had taken part in theaction against Hampton, was now astray in the Bull Run Valley, andSchenck had not even crossed the stream. There were the dead, too, thewounded and the stragglers. All told, perhaps eleven thousand menattacked the Henry Hill. They came on confidently, flushed with victory,brilliant as tropical birds in the uniforms so bright and new, in theblue, in the gold, in the fiery, zouave dress, in the Garibaldi shirt,in the fez, the Scotch bonnet, the plume, in all the militia pomp andcircumstance of that somewhat theatrical "On to Richmond." With gleamingmuskets and gleaming swords and with the stars and stripes above them,they advanced, huzzaing. Above them, on that plateau, ranged beneath thestars and bars, there awaited the impact six thousand and five hundredConfederates with sixteen guns. Three thousand of the troops were fresh;three thousand had been long and heavily engaged, and driven from theirfirst position.
Rockbridge and New Orleans and their fellows worked like grey automataabout their belching guns. They made a dead line for the advance tocross. Ricketts and Griffin answered with their howling shells--shellsthat burst above the First Brigade. One stopped short of the men inbattle. It entered the Henry House, burst, and gave five wounds to thewoman cowering in her bed. Now she lay there, dying, above the armies,and the flower-beds outside were trampled, and the boughs of the locusttrees strewn upon the earth.
Hunter and Heintzleman mounted the ridge of the hill. With an immensevolley of musketry the battle joined upon the plateau that was but fivehundred yards across. The Fire Zouaves, all red, advanced like a flameagainst the 4th Alabama, crouched behind scrub oak to the left of thefield. The 4th Alabama fired, loaded, fired again. The zouaves broke,fleeing in disorder toward a piece of woods. Out from the shadow of thetrees came Jeb Stuart with two hundred cavalrymen. The smoke was verythick; it was not with ease that one told friend from foe. In theinstant of encounter the _beau sabreur_ thought that he spoke toConfederates. He made his horse to bound, he rose in his stirrups, hewaved his plumed hat, he shouted aloud in his rich and happy voice,"Don't run, boys! We are here!" To his disappointment the magic fellshort. The "boys" ran all the faster. Behind him, a trooper lifted hisvoice. "They're not ours! They're Yankees! Charge them, sir, charge!"Stuart charged.
Along the crest of the Henry Hill the kneeling ranks of the FirstBrigade fired and loaded and fired again. Men and horses fell around theguns of Ricketts and Griffin, but the guns were not silenced. Rockbridgeand Loudoun and their fellows answered with their Virginia MilitaryInstitute six-pounders, with their howitzers, with their one or twoNapoleons, but Ricketts and Griffin held fast. The great shells camehurtling, death screaming its message and sweeping the pine wood. Thestone wall suffered; here and there the units dropped from place.Jackson, holding up his wounded hand, came to the artillery. "Get theseguns out of my way. I am going to give them the bayonet." The bugler putthe bugle to his lips. The guns limbered up, moving out by the rightflank and taking position elsewhere upon the plateau. Jackson returnedto his troops. "Fix bayon
ets! Now, men, charge and take thosebatteries!"
The First Brigade rose from beneath the pines. It rose, it advancedbetween the moving guns, it shouted. The stone wall became an avalanche,and started down the slope. It began crescent-wise, for the pine woodwhere it had lain curved around Ricketts and Griffin like a giant'shalf-closed hand. From the finger nearest the doomed batteries sprangthe 33d Virginia. In the dust of the field all uniforms were now of oneneutral hue. Griffin trained his guns upon the approaching body, but hischief stopped him. "They're our own, man!--a supporting regiment!" The33d Virginia came on, halted at two hundred feet, and poured upon thebatteries a withering fire. Alas for Ricketts and Griffin, brave menhandling brave guns! Their cannoneers fell, and the scream of theirhorses shocked the field. Ricketts was badly wounded; his lieutenant Ramsaylay dead. The stone wall blazed again. The Federal infantry supportingthe guns broke and fled in confusion. Other regiments--Michiganand Minnesota this time--came up the hill. A grey-hairedofficer--Heintzleman--seated sideways in his saddle upon ahillock, appealing, cheering, commanding, was conspicuous for hisgallant bearing. The 33d, hotly pushed, fell back into the curving wood,only to emerge again and bear down upon the prize of the guns. The wholeof the First Brigade was now in action and the plateau of the Henry Hillroared like the forge of Vulcan when it welded the armour of Mars. Itwas three in the afternoon of midmost July. There arose smoke and shoutsand shrieks, the thunder from the Mathews Hill of the North's uncrippledartillery, and from the plateau the answering thunder of the Southern,with the under song, incessant, of the muskets. Men's tongues clave tothe roofs of their mouths, the sweat streamed forth, and the sweatdried, black cartridge marks were about their lips, and their eyes feltmetallic, heated balls distending the socket. There was a smell ofburnt cloth, of powder, of all heated and brazen things, indescribable,unforgettable, the effluvia of the battlefield. The palate savouredbrass, and there was not a man of those thousands who was notthirsty--oh, very, very thirsty! Time went in waves with hollows betweenof negation. A movement took hours--surely we have been at it since lastyear! Another passed in a lightning flash. We were there beneath thepines, on the ground red-breeched Zouaves and United States Marines,above us a noisy shell, the voice of the general coming dry and far likea grasshopper's through the din--we are here in a trampled flowergarden, beside the stumps of locust trees, in the midst of yells andtrampling, hands again upon the guns! There was no time between. The menwho were left of Ricketts and Griffin fought well; they were bravefighters. The 2d Wisconsin came up the hill, then the 79th and 69th NewYork. An impact followed that seemed to rock the globe. Wisconsin andNew York retired whence they came, and it was all done in a moment.Other regiments took their places. McDowell was making a frontal attackand sending in his brigades piecemeal. The plateau was uneven; lowridges, shallow hollows, with clumps of pine and oak; one saw at a timebut a segment of the field. The nature of the ground split the troops aswith wedges; over all the Henry Hill the fighting now became from handto hand, in the woods and in the open, small squad against small squad.That night a man insisted that this phase had lasted twelve hours. Hesaid that he remembered how the sun rose over the Henry House, and how,when it went down, it left a red wall behind a gun on the MathewsHill--and he had seen both events from a ring of pines out of which he,with two others, was keeping twenty Rhode Islanders.
Ricketts and Griffin, forty men upon the ground, twice that number ofhorses dead or disabled, tried to drag away the guns. Down upon themroared the 65th, no alignment, broken and fierce as a mountain torrent,as Thunder Run when the rains were out and the snows had melted. It tookagain the guns; it met a regiment from the Northwest, also starkfighters and hunters, and turned it back; it seized the guns and drewthem toward the pine wood. On the other side Howard's Brigade came intoaction, rising, a cloud of stinging bees, over the ridge. Maine andVermont fell into line, fired, each man, twenty rounds. The FirstBrigade answered at close range. All the Henry plateau blazed andthundered.
From headquarters at the Lewis House a most able mind had directed theseveral points of entrance into battle of the troops drawn from thelower fords. The 8th, the 18th, and 28th Virginia, Cash and Kershaw ofBonham's, Fisher's North Carolina--each had come at a happy moment andhad given support where support was most needed. Out of the southeastarose a cloud of dust, a great cloud as of many marching men. It movedrapidly. It approached at a double quick, apparently it had several gunsat trail. Early had not yet come up from Union Mills; was it Early?Could it be--_could it be from Manassas_? _Could it be the missingbrigade?_ Beauregard, flashing across the plateau like a meteor, liftedhimself in his stirrups, raised with a shaking hand his field-glasses tohis eyes. Stonewall Jackson held higher his wounded hand, wrapped in ahandkerchief no longer white. "It ain't for the pain,--he's praying,"thought the orderly by his side. Over on the left, guarding that flank,Jeb Stuart, mounted on a hillock, likewise addressed the heavens. "GoodLord, I hope it's Elzey! Oh, good Lord, let it be Elzey!" The 49thVirginia was strung behind a rail fence, firing from between the greybars. "Extra Billy," whose horse had been shot an hour before, suddenlyappeared in an angle erect upon the topmost rails. He gazed, then turnedand harangued. "Didn't I tell you, boys? Didn't I say that the oldManassas Gap ain't half so black as she's painted? The president of thatroad is my friend, gentlemen, and a better man never mixed a julep! Theold Manassas Gap's got them through! It's a road to be patronized,gentlemen! The old Manassas Gap--"
A hand plucked at his boot. "For the Lord's sake, governor, come downfrom there, or you'll be travelling on the Angels' Express!"
The dust rose higher; there came out of it a sound, a low, hoarse din.Maine and Vermont, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, New York and RhodeIsland, saw and heard. There was a waver as of grain beneath wind overthe field, then the grain stood stiff against the wind, and all themuskets flamed again.
The lost brigade of the Army of the Shenandoah, seventeen hundredinfantry and Beckham's Battery swept by the Lewis House, receivedinstructions from Johnston in person, and advanced against the enemy'sright flank. Kirby Smith led them. Heated, exhausted, parched withthirst, the regiments came upon the plateau. Not till then did they seethe enemy, the awaited, the dreamed-of foe, the giant whose voice theyhad heard at Manassas. They saw him now, and they yelled recognition.From a thousand dusty throats came a cry, involuntary, individual,indescribably fierce, a high and shrill and wild expression of angerand personal opinion. There was the enemy. They saw him, theyyelled,--without premeditation, without cooperation, each man forhimself, _Yaai, Yai ... Yaai, Yaai, Yai.... Yaai!_ Thatcry was to be heard on more than two thousand battlefields.It lasts with the voice of Stentor, and with the horn of Roland.It has gone down to history as the "Rebel yell."
As they reached the oak woods Kirby Smith was shot. Desperately wounded,he fell from his horse. Elzey took command; the troops swept out by theChinn House upon the plateau. Beckham's battery unlimbered and came,with decisive effect, into action.
McDowell, with a last desperate rally, formed a line of battle, agleaming, formidable crescent, half hid by a cloud of skirmishers. Outof the woods by the Chinn House now came Jubal Early, with Kemper's 7thVirginia, Harry Hays's Louisianians, and Barksdale's 13th Mississippi.They took position under fire and opened upon the enemy's right. As theydid so Elzey's brigade, the 10th Virginia, the 1st Maryland, the 3dTennessee, the 8th and 2d South Carolina, the 18th and 28th Virginia,and Hampton's and Cary's legions charged. The First Brigade came downupon the guns for the third time, and held them. Stuart, standing in hisstirrups and chanting his commands, rounded the base of the hill, andcompleted the rout.
The Federals turned. Almost to a man their officers did well. There weremany privates of a like complexion. Sykes' Regulars, not now upon theHenry Hill, but massed across the branch, behaved throughout the daylike trained and disciplined soldiers. No field could have witnessedmore gallant conduct than that of Griffin and Ricketts. Heintzleman hadbeen conspicuously energetic, Franklin and Willcox had
done their best.McDowell himself had not lacked in dash and grit, nor, to say sooth, instrategy. It was the Federal tactics that were at fault. But all thetroops, barring Sykes and Ricketts and the quite unused cavalry, wereraw, untried, undisciplined. Few were good marksmen, and, to tell thetruth, few were possessed of a patriotism that would stand strain. Thatvirtue awoke later in the Army of the Potomac; it was not present inforce on the field of Bull Run. Many were three-months men, their termof service about to expire, and in their minds no slightest intention ofreenlistment. They were close kin to the troops whose term expiring onthe eve of battle had this morning "marched to the rear to the sound ofthe enemy's cannon." Many were men and boys merely out for a lark andalmost ludicrously astonished at the nature of the business. NewEnglanders had come to battle as to a town meeting; placid farmers andvillage youths of the Middle States had never placed in the meadows oftheir imaginations events like these, while the more alert and restlessfolk of the cities discovered that the newspapers had been hardlyexplicit. The men of the Northwest had a more adequate conception; therewas promise in these of stark fighting. To all is to be added a rabbleof camp followers, of sutlers, musicians, teamsters, servants,congressmen in carriages, even here and there a congressman's wife, allthe hurrah and vain parade, the strut and folly and civilian ignorance,the unwarlike softness and the misdirected pride with which these Greekshad set out to take in a night that four-years-distant Troy. Now aconfusion fell upon them, and a rout such as was never seen again inthat war. They left the ten guns, mute enough now, they gave no heed totheir frantic officers, they turned and fled. One moment they stood thatcharge, the next the slopes of the Henry Hill were dark blue withfugitives. There was no cohesion; mere inability to find each anunencumbered path crowded them thus. They looked a swarm of bees, butthere was no Spirit of the Hive. The Confederate batteries strewed theirpath with shot and shell, the wild and singular cry, first heard uponthat field, rang still within their ears. They reached the foot of thehill, the Warrenton turnpike, the Sudley and Newmarket road, and themarshy fields through which flowed Young's Branch. Up to this momentcourtesy might have called the movement a not too disorderly retreat,but now, upon the crowded roads and through the bordering meadows, itbecame mere rout, a panic quite simple, naked, and unashamed. In vainthe officers commanded and implored, in vain Sykes' Regulars tookposition on the Mathews Hill, a nucleus around which the broken troopsmight have reformed. The mob had neither instinct nor desire for order.The Regulars, retreating finally with the rest, could only guard therear and hinder the Confederate pursuit. The panic grew. Ravens in theair brought news, true and false, of the victors. Beckham's battery,screaming upon the heels of the rout, was magnified a hundred-fold;there was no doubt that battalions of artillery were hurling unknown anddeadly missiles, blocking the way to the Potomac! Jeb Stuart wasfollowing on the Sudley Road, and another cavalry fiend--Munford--on theturnpike. Four hundred troopers between them? No! _Four thousand_--andeach riding like the Headless Horseman with terror in his hand! Therewas Confederate infantry upon the turnpike--a couple of regiments, alegion, a battery--they were making for a point they knew, this sideCentreville, where they might intercept the fleeing army. It behoved thearmy to get there first, to cross Bull Run, to cross Cub Run, and toreach Centreville with the utmost possible expedition. The ravenscroaked of the Confederate troops four miles down Bull Run, at the lowerfords. They would cross, they would fall upon Miles and Tyler, theywould devour alive the Federal reserves, they would get first toCentreville! That catastrophe, at least, the mob did its best toprevent. It threw away its muskets, it dropped its colours, it lighteneditself of accoutrements, it fled as if each tired and inexperienced greysoldier behind it had been Death in the Apocalypse. Each man ran forhimself, swore for himself, prayed for himself, found in Fate a personalfoe, and strove to propitiate her with the rags of his courage. The menstumbled and fell, lifted themselves, and ran again. Ambulances, wagons,carriages, blocked the road; they streamed around and under these.Riderless horses tore the veil of blue. Artillery teams, unguided,maddened, infected by all this human fear, rent it further, and behindthem the folds heard again the Confederate yell. Centreville--Centrevillefirst, and a little food--all the haversacks had been thrownaway--but no stopping at Centreville! No! Beyond Centreville thePotomac--Washington--_home_! Home and safety, Maine or Massachusetts,New York or Vermont, as the case might be! The sun went down and left thefleeing army streaming northward by every road or footpath which itconceived might lead to the Potomac.
In the summer dusk, back at the Lewis House, a breathless courierbrought to Beauregard a circumstantial statement. "From Major Rhett atManassas, general! The Federal Reserves have been observed crossingbelow MacLean's. A strong column--they'll take us in the rear, orthey'll fall upon Manassas!" That McDowell would use his numerousreserves was so probable a card that Bonham and Longstreet, started uponthe pursuit, were recalled. Ewell and Holmes had just reached thebattlefield. They were faced about, and, Beauregard with them,double-quicked back to MacLean's Ford--to find no Miles or Richardson orRunyon for them to attack! It was a mistake and a confusion of identity.The crossing troops were Confederates--D. R. Jones returning from theposition he had held throughout the day to the southern bank of BullRun. The dark had come, the troops were much exhausted, the routed armyby now at Centreville. Beauregard did the only thing that could bedone,--ordered the men to halt and bivouac for the night in the woodsabout the stream.
Back upon the Sudley Road Stuart and his troopers followed for twelvemiles the fugitive army. There was a running fight; here and there theenemy was cut off; great spoil and many prisoners were taken. Encumberedwith all of these, Stuart at Sudley Church called off the chase andhalted for the night. At the bridge over Cub Run Munford with a handfulof the Black Horse and the Chesterfield Troop, a part of Kershaw'sregiment and Kemper's battery meeting the retreat as it debouched intothe Warrenton turnpike, heaped rout on rout, and confounded confusion. Awagon was upset upon the bridge, it became impassable, and Panic foundthat she must get away as best she might. She left her congressmen'scarriages, her wagons of subsistence, and her wagons of ammunition, herguns and their caissons, her flags and her wounded in ambulances; shecut the traces of the horses and freed them from pleasure carriage, guncarriage, ammunition wagon, and ambulance; with these horses and afoot,she dashed through the water of Cub Run, and with the long wail of thehelpless behind her, fled northward through the dusk. A little later,bugles, sounding here and there beneath the stars, called off thepursuit.
* * * * *
The spoil of Manassas included twenty-eight fieldpieces with a hundredrounds of ammunition to each gun, thirty-seven caissons, six forges,four battery wagons, sixty-four artillery horses, five hundred thousandrounds of small arm ammunition, four thousand five hundred sets ofaccoutrements, four thousand muskets, nine regimental and garrisonflags, pistols, swords, musical instruments, knapsacks, canteens,blankets, tents, officers' luggage, rope, handcuffs, axes, andintrenching tools, wagons, horses, camp and garrison equipage, hospitalstores and subsistence, and one thousand four hundred and twenty-oneprisoners.
History has not been backward with a question. Why did not theConfederate forces press the pursuit to the Potomac, twenty-five milesaway? Why did they not cross that river? Why did they not takeWashington? History depones that it was a terror-stricken city and thatit might have been stormed, and so, perhaps, the great war ended ere ithad well begun. Why did you not pursue from Manassas to Washington?
The tongue of the case answers thus: "We were a victorious army, but wehad fought long and hard. We had not many fresh troops. Even those whichwere not engaged had been marching and countermarching. The enemy hadmany more than we--heavy reserves to whom panic might or might not havebeen communicated. These were between us and Centreville, and the nighthad fallen. Our cavalry was the best in the land, but cruelly small inforce, and very weary by that midnight. We were scant of provisions,scant of transportation, sca
nt of ammunition. What if the Federalreserves had not stood, but had fled with the rest, and we had in somefashion achieved the Potomac? There were strong works at Arlington andAlexandria, lined with troops, and in easy distance were Patterson andhis unused men. There was a river a mile wide, patrolled by gunboats,and beyond it a city with how many troops we knew not, certainly withstrong earthworks and mounted guns. Being only men and not clairvoyantswe did not know that the city was so crazed with fear that perhaps,after all, had we ever gotten there we might have stormed it with a fewweary regiments. We never saw the like in our own capital at any afterdate, and we did not know. We were under arms from dawn until the starscame out, we had fought through the heat of a July day in Virginia, wewere hungry, we were thirsty, we were drunk with need of rest. Most ofus were under twenty-four. We had met and vanquished heavy odds, but weourselves, like those who fled, were soldiers all untried. Victorydisorganized us, as defeat disorganized them. Not in the same measure,but to the extent that all commands were much broken, men astray in thedarkness, seeking their companies, companies calling out the number oftheir regiments. Most of us went hungry that night. And all around werethe dead and wounded, and above us, like a pall, the strangeness of thiswar at last. The July night passed like a fevered dream; men sleeping onthe earth, men seeking their commands, men riding to and fro, menwandering with lanterns over the battlefield. At three came down therain. It was as though the heavens were opened. No one had ever seensuch a downpour. All day long it rained, and in the rain we buried ourcomrades. There were two brothers, Holmes and Tucker Conrad, boys fromthe University. Holmes was shot through the heart, just on the edge of aravine on the Henry Hill. Tucker, across the ravine, saw him fall. Hewas down one side and up the other before a man could draw breath. Helifted Holmes, and as he did so, he, too, was killed. We found themlying in each other's arms, Holmes smiling, and we buried them so. Weburied many friends and comrades and kindred--we were all more or lessakin--and perhaps, being young to war, that solemn battlefield loomed tous so large that it obstructed the view of the routed invasion nowacross the Potomac, out of Virginia. We held then and we hold still,that our generals that day were sagacious and brave, and we thinkhistory may take their word for it that any effective pursuit, lookingto the crossing of the Potomac, was a military impossibility. It is truethat Stonewall Jackson, as history reminds us, was heard to exclaimwhile the surgeon was dressing his hand, 'Give me ten thousand freshtroops, and I will be in Washington to-morrow!' But there were not theten thousand troops to give."