76. Battle of Bull Run
By EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN (1861)
By the time I reached the top of the hill, the retreat, the panic,
the hideous headlong confusion,
were now beyond a hope. I was near the rear of the
movement, with the brave Captain Alexander, who
endeavored by the most gallant but unavailable exertions to
check the onward tumult. It was difficult to
[_]
The rout at Bull Run, July, 1861, was due to tile lack of time for drill and organization; on
the whole it
was a good thing for the North, for it compelled the country to face the necessity of large and
good armies.
believe in the reality of our sudden reverse. "What does it all
mean?"I asked Alexander. "It means defeat,"was his reply.
"We are beaten ; it is a shameful, a cowardly retreat! Hold up,
men!"he shouted, "don't be such infernal cowards!"and he
rode backwards and forwards, placing his horse across the
road and vainly trying to rally the running troops. The teams
and wagons confused and dismembered every corps. We
were now cut off from the advance body by the enemy's
infantry, who had rushed on the slope just left by us,
surrounded the guns and sutlers's wagons, and were
apparently pressing up against us. "It's no use, Alexander,"I
said, "you must leave with the rest.""I'll be d—d if I will,"was
his sullen reply, and the splendid fellow rode back to make his
way as best he could. Meantime I saw officers with leaves and
eagles on their shoulder-straps, majors and colonels, who had
cl~!serted their commands, pass me galloping as if for dear
life. No enemy pursued just then; but I sup. pose all were
afraid that his guns would be trained down the long, narrow
avenue, and mow the retreating thousands, and batter to
pieces army wagons and everything else which crowded it.
Only one field officer, so far as my observation extended,
seemed to have remembered his duty. Lieut.-Colonel Speidel, a
foreigner attached to a Connecticut regiment, strove against
the current for a league. I positively declare that, with the two
exceptions mentioned, all efforts made to check the panic
before Centreville was reached, were confined to civilians. I
saw a man in citizen's dress, who had thrown off his coat,
seized a musket, and was trying to rally the soldiers who came
by at the point of the bayonet. In a reply to
[_]
E. B. Washburne, later minister to France. Kellogg was a special friend of Lincoln.
a request for his name, he said it was Washburne, and I
learned he was the Member by that name from Illinois. The
Hon. Mr. Kellogg made a similar effort. Both these
Congressmen bravely stood their ground till the last moment,
and were serviceable at Centreville in assisting the halt there
ultimately made. And other civilians did what they could.
But what a scene! and how terrific the onset of that
tumultuous retreat. For three miles, hosts of federal troops-all
detached from their regiments, all mingled in one disorderly
rout-were fleeing along the road, but mostly through the lots
on either side. Army wagons, sutlers' teams, and private
carriages, choked the passage, tumbling against each other,
amid clouds of dust, and sickening sights and sounds. Hacks,
containing unlucky spectators of the late affray, were
smashed like glass, and the occupants were lost sight of ha
the débris. Horses, flying wildly from the battle-field,
many of them in death agony, galloped at random forward,
joining in the stampede. Those on foot who could catch them
rode them bare-back, as much to save themselves from being
run over, as to make quicker time. Wounded men, lying along
the banks—the few neither left on the field nor taken to the
captured hospitals— appealed with raised hands to those who
rode horses, begging to be lifted behind, but few regarded
such petitions. Then the artillery, such as was saved, came
thundering along, smashing and overpowering everything.
The regular cavalry, I record it to their shame, joined in the
melée, adding to its terrors, for they rode down
footmen without mercy. One of the great guns was overturned
and lay amid the ruins of a caisson, as I passed it. I saw an
artillery-man running between
the ponderous fore and after-wheels of his gun-carriage,
hanging on with both hands, and vainly striving to jump
upon the ordnance. The drivers were spurring the horses ; he
could not cling much longer, and a more agonized expression
never fixed the features of a drowning man. The carriage
bounded from the roughness of a steep hill leading to a creek,
he lost his hold, fell, and in an instant the great wheels had
crushed the life out of him. Who ever saw such a flight?
Could the retreat at Borodino have exceeded it in confusion
and tumult? I think not. It did not slack in the least until
Centreville was reached. There the sight of the reserve—
Miles's Brigade-formed in order on the hill, seemed somewhat
to reassure the van. But still the teams and foot soldiers
pushed on, passing their own camps and heading swiftly for
the distant Potomac, until for ten miles the road over which
the grand army had so lately passed southward, gay with
unstained banners, and flushed with surety of strength, was
covered with the fragments of its retreating forces, shattered
and panic-stricken in a single day. From the branch route the
trains attached to Hunter's Division had caught the contagion
of the flight, and poured into its already swollen current
another turbid freshet of confusion and dismay. Who ever
saw a more shameful abandonment of munitions gathered at
such vast expense? The teamsters, many of them, cut the
traces of their horses, and galloped from the wagons. Others
threw out their loads to accelerate their flight, and grain,
picks, and shovels, and provisions of every kind lay trampled
in the dust for leagues. Thousands of muskets strewed the
route, and when some of us succeeded in rallying a body of
fugitives, and
forming them in a line across the road, hardly one but had
thrown away his arms. If the enemy had brought up his
artillery and served it upon the retreating train, or had
intercepted our progress with five hundred of his cavalry, he
might have captured enough supplies for a week's feast of
thanksgiving. As it was, enough was left behind to tell the
story of the panic. The rout of the federal army seemed
complete.