The Long Roll
upon the guns for the third time, and held them. Stuart, standing in his
stirrups and chanting his commands, rounded the base of the hill, and
completed the rout.
The Federals turned. Almost to a man their officers did well. There were
many privates of a like complexion. Sykes' Regulars, not now upon the
Henry Hill, but massed across the branch, behaved throughout the day
like trained and disciplined soldiers. No field could have witnessed
more gallant conduct than that of Griffin and Ricketts. Heintzleman had
been conspicuously energetic, Franklin and Willcox had done their best.
McDowell himself had not lacked in dash and grit, nor, to say sooth, in
strategy. It was the Federal tactics that were at fault. But all the
troops, barring Sykes and Ricketts and the quite unused cavalry, were
raw, untried, undisciplined. Few were good marksmen, and, to tell the
truth, few were possessed of a patriotism that would stand strain. That
virtue awoke later in the Army of the Potomac; it was not present in
force on the field of Bull Run. Many were three-months men, their term
of service about to expire, and in their minds no slightest intention of
reenlistment. They were close kin to the troops whose term expiring on
the eve of battle had this morning "marched to the rear to the sound of
the enemy's cannon." Many were men and boys merely out for a lark and
almost ludicrously astonished at the nature of the business. New
Englanders had come to battle as to a town meeting; placid farmers and
village youths of the Middle States had never placed in the meadows of
their imaginations events like these, while the more alert and restless
folk of the cities discovered that the newspapers had been hardly
explicit. The men of the Northwest had a more adequate conception; there
was promise in these of stark fighting. To all is to be added a rabble
of camp followers, of sutlers, musicians, teamsters, servants,
congressmen in carriages, even here and there a congressman's wife, all
the hurrah and vain parade, the strut and folly and civilian ignorance,
the unwarlike softness and the misdirected pride with which these Greeks
had set out to take in a night that four-years-distant Troy. Now a
confusion fell upon them, and a rout such as was never seen again in
that war. They left the ten guns, mute enough now, they gave no heed to
their frantic officers, they turned and fled. One moment they stood that
charge, the next the slopes of the Henry Hill were dark blue with
fugitives. There was no cohesion; mere inability to find each an
unencumbered path crowded them thus. They looked a swarm of bees, but
there was no Spirit of the Hive. The Confederate batteries strewed their
path with shot and shell, the wild and singular cry, first heard upon
that field, rang still within their ears. They reached the foot of the
hill, the Warrenton turnpike, the Sudley and Newmarket road, and the
marshy fields through which flowed Young's Branch. Up to this moment
courtesy might have called the movement a not too disorderly retreat,
but now, upon the crowded roads and through the bordering meadows, it
became mere rout, a panic quite simple, naked, and unashamed. In vain
the officers commanded and implored, in vain Sykes' Regulars took
position on the Mathews Hill, a nucleus around which the broken troops
might have reformed. The mob had neither instinct nor desire for order.
The Regulars, retreating finally with the rest, could only guard the
rear and hinder the Confederate pursuit. The panic grew. Ravens in the
air 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 and
deadly missiles, blocking the way to the Potomac! Jeb Stuart was
following on the Sudley Road, and another cavalry fiend--Munford--on the
turnpike. Four hundred troopers between them? No! _Four thousand_--and
each riding like the Headless Horseman with terror in his hand! There
was Confederate infantry upon the turnpike--a couple of regiments, a
legion, a battery--they were making for a point they knew, this side
Centreville, where they might intercept the fleeing army. It behoved the
army to get there first, to cross Bull Run, to cross Cub Run, and to
reach Centreville with the utmost possible expedition. The ravens
croaked of the Confederate troops four miles down Bull Run, at the lower
fords. They would cross, they would fall upon Miles and Tyler, they
would devour alive the Federal reserves, they would get first to
Centreville! That catastrophe, at least, the mob did its best to
prevent. It threw away its muskets, it dropped its colours, it lightened
itself of accoutrements, it fled as if each tired and inexperienced grey
soldier behind it had been Death in the Apocalypse. Each man ran for
himself, swore for himself, prayed for himself, found in Fate a personal
foe, and strove to propitiate her with the rags of his courage. The men
stumbled 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 behind
them the folds heard again the Confederate yell. Centreville--Centreville
first, and a little food--all the haversacks had been thrown
away--but no stopping at Centreville! No! Beyond Centreville the
Potomac--Washington--_home_! Home and safety, Maine or Massachusetts,
New York or Vermont, as the case might be! The sun went down and left the
fleeing army streaming northward by every road or footpath which it
conceived might lead to the Potomac.
In the summer dusk, back at the Lewis House, a breathless courier
brought to Beauregard a circumstantial statement. "From Major Rhett at
Manassas, general! The Federal Reserves have been observed crossing
below MacLean's. A strong column--they'll take us in the rear, or
they'll fall upon Manassas!" That McDowell would use his numerous
reserves was so probable a card that Bonham and Longstreet, started upon
the pursuit, were recalled. Ewell and Holmes had just reached the
battlefield. They were faced about, and, Beauregard with them,
double-quicked back to MacLean's Ford--to find no Miles or Richardson or
Runyon for them to attack! It was a mistake and a confusion of identity.
The crossing troops were Confederates--D. R. Jones returning from the
position he had held throughout the day to the southern bank of Bull
Run. The dark had come, the troops were much exhausted, the routed army
by now at Centreville. Beauregard did the only thing that could be
done,--ordered the men to halt and bivouac for the night in the woods
about the stream.
Back upon the Sudley Road Stuart and his troopers followed for twelve
miles the fugitive army. There was a running fight; here and there the
enemy was cut off; great spoil and many prisoners were taken. Encumbered
with all of these, Stuart at Sudley Church called off the chase and
halted for the night. At the bridge over Cub Run Munford with a handful
of the Black Horse and the Chesterfield Troop, a part of Kershaw's
regiment and Kemper's battery meeting the retreat as it debouched into
the Warrenton turnpike, heaped rout on rout, and confounded confusion. A
wagon was upset upon the bridge, it became impassable, and Panic found
that she must get away as best she might. She left her congressmen's
carriages, her wagons of subsistence, and her wagons of ammunition, her
guns and their caissons, her flags and her wounded in ambulances; she
cut the traces of the horses and freed them from pleasure carriage, gun
carriage, ammunition wagon, and ambulance; with these horses and afoot,
she dashed through the water of Cub Run, and with the long wail of the
helpless behind her, fled northward through the dusk. A little later,
bugles, sounding here and there beneath the stars, called off the
pursuit.
* * * * *
The spoil of Manassas included twenty-eight fieldpieces with a hundred
rounds of ammunition to each gun, thirty-seven caissons, six forges,
four battery wagons, sixty-four artillery horses, five hundred thousand
rounds of small arm ammunition, four thousand five hundred sets of
accoutrements, four thousand muskets, nine regimental and garrison
flags, pistols, swords, musical instruments, knapsacks, canteens,
blankets, tents, officers' luggage, rope, handcuffs, axes, and
intrenching tools, wagons, horses, camp and garrison equipage, hospital
stores and subsistence, and one thousand four hundred and twenty-one
prisoners.
History has not been backward with a question. Why did not the
Confederate forces press the pursuit to the Potomac, twenty-five miles
away? Why did they not cross that river? Why did they not take
Washington? History depones that it was a terror-stricken city and that
it might have been stormed, and so, perhaps, the great war ended ere it
had well begun. Why did you not pursue from Manassas to Washington?
The tongue of the case answers thus: "We were a victorious army, but we
had fought long and hard. We had not many fresh troops. Even those which
were not engaged had been marching and countermarching. The enemy had
many more than we--heavy reserves to whom panic might or might not have
been communicated. These were between us and Centreville, and the night
had fallen. Our cavalry was the best in the land, but cruelly small in
force, and very weary by that midnight. We were scant of provisions,
scant of transportation, scant of ammunition. What if the Federal
reserves had not stood, but had fled with the rest, and we had in some
fashion achieved the Potomac? There were strong works at Arlington and
Alexandria, lined with troops, and in easy distance were Patterson and
his 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 with
strong earthworks and mounted guns. Being only men and not clairvoyants
we 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 few
weary regiments. We never saw the like in our own capital at any after
date, and we did not know. We were under arms from dawn until the stars
came out, we had fought through the heat of a July day in Virginia, we
were hungry, we were thirsty, we were drunk with need of rest. Most of
us were under twenty-four. We had met and vanquished heavy odds, but we
ourselves, like those who fled, were soldiers all untried. Victory
disorganized us, as defeat disorganized them. Not in the same measure,
but to the extent that all commands were much broken, men astray in the
darkness, seeking their companies, companies calling out the number of
their regiments. Most of us went hungry that night. And all around were
the dead and wounded, and above us, like a pall, the strangeness of this
war at last. The July night passed like a fevered dream; men sleeping on
the earth, men seeking their commands, men riding to and fro, men
wandering with lanterns over the battlefield. At three came down the
rain. It was as though the heavens were opened. No one had ever seen
such a downpour. All day long it rained, and in the rain we buried our
comrades. There were two brothers, Holmes and Tucker Conrad, boys from
the University. Holmes was shot through the heart, just on the edge of a
ravine on the Henry Hill. Tucker, across the ravine, saw him fall. He
was down one side and up the other before a man could draw breath. He
lifted Holmes, and as he did so, he, too, was killed. We found them
lying in each other's arms, Holmes smiling, and we buried them so. We
buried many friends and comrades and kindred--we were all more or less