CHAPTER XVII
THE FATAL VICTORY
On the banks of the Potomac General Scott had massed against Beauregard the most formidable army which had ever marched under the flag of the Union. Its preparation was considered thorough, its numbers all that could he handled, and its artillery was the best in the world. All the regular army east of the Rockies, seasoned veterans of Indian campaigns, were joined with the immense force of volunteers from the Northern States--fifty full regiments of volunteers, eight companies of regular infantry, four companies of marines, nine companies of regular cavalry and twelve batteries of artillery with forty-nine big guns.
In command of this army of invasion was General McDowell, held to be the most scientific general in the North.
To supplement Beauregard's weakness as a commanding General in case of emergency, Joseph E. Johnston was placed at Harper's Ferry to guard the entrance of the Shenandoah Valley, secure the removal of the invaluable machinery saved from the Arsenal, and form a junction with Beauregard the moment he should be threatened.
The movement of General Patterson's army against Harper's Ferry had been too obviously a feint to deceive either Davis or Lee, his chief military adviser. Johnston was given ten thousand men and able assistants including General Jackson.
On the tenth of July Beauregard, anxiously awaiting information of the Federal advance, received an important message from an accomplished Southern woman, Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She had remained in Washington as Miss Van Lew had in Richmond, to lay her life on the altar of her country. During the administration of Buchanan she had been a leader of Washington society. She was now a widow, noted for her wealth, beauty, wit and forceful personality. Her home was the meeting place of the most brilliant men and women of the old régime. Buchanan was her personal friend, as was William H. Seward. Her niece, a granddaughter of Dolly Madison, was the wife of the Little Giant of the West, Stephen A. Douglas.
Before leaving Washington to become the Adjutant General of Beauregard's army Colonel Thomas Jordan had given her the cipher code of the South and arranged to make her house the Northern headquarters of the Southern secret service.
Her first messenger was a girl carefully disguised as a farmer's daughter returning from the sale of her vegetables in the Washington market. She passed the lines without challenge and delivered her message into Beauregard's hands.
With quick decision Beauregard called his aide and dispatched the news to the President at Richmond:
"I have positive information direct from Washington that the enemy will move in force across the Potomac on Manassas via Fairfax Court House and Centreville. I urge the immediate concentration of all available forces on my lines."
The Southern commander began his preparations to receive the attack.
The house on Church Hill had not been idle. Richmond swarmed with Federal spies under the skillful guidance of Socola.
General Scott knew in Washington within twenty-four hours that Beauregard was planting his men behind the Bull Run River in a position of great strength and that the formation of the ground was such with Bull Run on his front that his dislodgment would be a tremendous task.
The advance of the Federal army was delayed--delayed until the last gun and scrap of machinery from Harper's Ferry had been safely housed in Richmond and Fayetteville and Johnston had withdrawn his army to Winchester in closer touch with Beauregard.
And still the Union army did not move. Beauregard sent a trusted scout into Washington to Mrs. Greenhow with a scrap of paper on which was written in cipher the two words:
"Trust Bearer--"
He arrived at the moment she had received the long sought information of the date of the army's march. She glanced at the stolid masked face of the messenger and hesitated a moment.
"You are a Southerner?"
Donellan smiled.
"I've spent most of my life in Washington, Madam," he said frankly. "I was a clerk in the Department of the Interior. I cast my fortunes with the South."
It was enough. Her keen intuitions had scented danger in the man's manner, his walk and personality. He was not a typical Southerner. The officials of the Secret Service Bureau had already given her evidence of their suspicions. She could not be too careful.
She seized her pen and hastily wrote in cipher:
"Order issued for McDowell to move on Manassas to-night."
She handed the tiny scrap of paper to Donellan.
"My agents will take you in a buggy with relays of horses down the Potomac to a ferry near Dumfries. You will be ferried across."
The man touched his hat.
"I'll know the way from there, Madam."
The scout delivered his message into Beauregard's hands that night before eight o'clock.
At noon the next day Colonel Jordan had placed in her hands his answer:
"Yours received at eight o'clock. Let them come. We are ready. We rely upon you for precise information. Be particular as to description and destination of forces and quantity of artillery."
She had not been idle. She was able to write a message of almost equal importance to the one she had dispatched the day before. With quick nervous hand she wrote on another tiny scrap of paper:
"The Federal commander has ordered the Manassas railroad to be cut to prevent the junction of Johnston with Beauregard."
The moment the first authentic information reached President Davis of the purpose to attack Beauregard he immediately urged General Johnston to make his preparations for the juncture of their forces.
And at once the President received confirmation of his fears of his General-in-Chief. Johnston delayed and began a correspondence of voluminous objections.
July 17, on receipt of the dispatch to Beauregard announcing the plan to cut the railroad, the President was forced to send Johnston a positive order to move his army to Manassas. The order was obeyed with a hesitation which imperiled the issue of battle. And while on the march, Beauregard's pickets exchanging shots with McDowell's skirmish line, Johnston began the first of his messages of complaint and haggling to his Chief at Richmond. Jealous of Beauregard's popularity and fearful of his possible insubordination, Johnston telegraphed Davis demanding that his relative rank to Beauregard should be clearly defined before the juncture of their armies.
The question was utterly unnecessary. The promotion of Johnston to the full grade of general could leave no conceivable doubt on such a point. The President realized with a sickening certainty the beginning of a quarrel between the two men, dangerous to the cause of the South. Their failure to act in harmony would make certain the defeat of the raw recruits on their first field of battle.
He decided at the earliest possible moment to go in person and prevent this threatened quarrel. Already blood had flowed. With a strong column of infantry, artillery and cavalry McDowell had attempted to force the approaches to one of the fords of Bull Run. They were twice driven back and withdrew from the field. Longstreet's brigade had lost fifteen killed and fifty-three wounded in holding his position.
The President hastened to telegraph his sulking general the explicit definition of rank he had demanded:
Richmond, July 20, 1861.
"General J. E. Johnston,
"Manassas Junction, Virginia.
"You are a General of the Confederate Army possessed of the power attached to that rank. You will know how to make the exact knowledge of Brigadier General Beauregard, as well of the ground as of the troops and preparation avail for the success of the object for which you coöperate. The zeal of both assures me of harmonious action.
"Jefferson Davis."
As a matter of fact the President was consumed with painful anxiety lest there should not be harmonious action if Johnston should reach the field in time for the fight. His own presence was required by law at Richmond on July 20, for the delivery of his message to the assembled Congress. It was impossible for him to leave for the front before Sunday morning the 21st.
The battle began at eight o'clock.
General McDowell's army had moved to this attack hounded by the clamor of demagogues for the immediate capture of Richmond by his "Grand Army."
Every Northern newspaper had dinned into his ears and the ears of an impatient public but one cry for months:
"On to Richmond!" At last the news was spread in Washington that the army would move and bivouac in Richmond's public square within ten days. The march was to be a triumphal procession. The Washington politicians filled wagons and carriages with champagne to celebrate the victory. Tickets were actually printed and distributed for a ball in Richmond. The army was accompanied by long lines of excited spectators to witness the one grand struggle of the war--Congressmen, toughs from the saloons, gaudy ladies from questionable resorts, a clamoring, perspiring rabble bent on witnessing scenes of blood.
The Union General's information as to Beauregard's position and army was accurate and full. He knew that Johnston's command of ten thousand men had begun to arrive the day before. He did not know that half of them were still tangled up somewhere on the railroad waiting for transportation. Even with Johnston's entire command on the ground his army outnumbered the Southerners and his divisions of seasoned veterans from the old army and his matchless artillery gave him an enormous advantage.
With consummate skill he planned the battle and began its successful execution.
His scouts had informed him that the Southern line was weak on its left wing resting on the Stone Bridge across the river. Here the long drawn line of Beauregard's army thinned to a single regiment supported at some distance by a battalion. Here the skillful Union General determined to strike.
At two-thirty before daylight his dense lines of enthusiastic men swung into the dusty moonlit road for their movement to flank the Confederate left.
Swiftly and silently the flower of McDowell's army, eighteen thousand picked men, moved under the cover of the night to their chosen crossing at Sudley's Ford, two miles beyond the farthest gray picket of Beauregard's left.
Tyler's division was halted at the Stone Bridge on which the lone regiment of Col. Evans lay beyond the stream. He was ordered to feign an attack on that point while the second and third divisions should creep cautiously along a circuitous road two miles above, cross unopposed and slip into the rear of Beauregard's long-drawn left wing, roll it up in a mighty scroll of flame, join Tyler's division as it should sweep across the Stone Bridge and together the three divisions in one solid mass could crush the ten-mile battle line into hopeless confusion.
The plan was skillfully and daringly conceived.
Tyler's division halted at the Stone Bridge and silently formed as the first glow of dawn tinged the eastern hills.
The dull red of the July sun was just coloring the sky with its flame when the second and third divisions crossed Bull Run at Sudley's Ford and began their swift descent upon the rear of the unsuspecting Southern army.
As the sun burst above the hills, a circle of white smoke suddenly curled away from a cannon's mouth above the Stone Bridge and slowly rose in the still, clear morning air. Its sullen roar echoed over the valley. The gray figures on the hill beyond leaped to their feet and looked. Only the artillery was engaged and their shots were falling short.
The Confederates appeared indifferent. The action was too obviously a feint. Colonel Evans was holding his regiment for a clearer plan of battle to develop. From the hilltop on which his men lay he scanned with increasing uneasiness the horizon toward the west. In the far distance against the bright Southern sky loomed the dark outline of the Blue Ridge. The heavy background brought out in vivid contrast the woods and fields, hollows and hills of the great Manassas plain in the foreground.
Suddenly he saw it--a thin cloud of dust rising in the distance. As the rushing wall of sixteen thousand men emerged from the "Big Forest," through which they had worked their way along the crooked track of a rarely used road, the dust cloud flared in the sky with ominous menace.
Colonel Evans knew its meaning. Beauregard's army had been flanked and the long thin lines of his left wing were caught in a trap. When the first rush of the circling host had swept his little band back from the Stone Bridge Tyler's army would then cross and the three divisions swoop down on the doomed men.
Evans suddenly swung his regiment and two field pieces into a new line of battle facing the onrushing host and sent his courier flying to General Bee to ask that his brigade be moved instantly to his support.
When the shock came there were five regiments and six little field pieces in the Southern ranks to meet McDowell's sixteen thousand troops.
With deafening roar their artillery opened. The long dense lines of closely packed infantry began their steady firing in volleys. It sounded as if some giant hand had grasped the hot Southern skies and was tearing their blue canvas into strips and shreds.
For an hour Bee's brigade withstood the onslaught of the two Federal divisions--and then began to slowly fall back before the resistless wall of fire. The Union army charged and drove the broken lines a half mile before they rallied.
Tyler's division now swept across the Stone Bridge and the shattered Confederate left wing was practically surrounded by overwhelming odds. Again the storm burst on the unsupported lines of Bee and drove them three quarters of a mile before they paused.
The charging Federal army had struck something they were destined to feel again on many a field of blood.
General T. J. Jackson had suddenly swung his brigade of five regiments into the breach and stopped the wave of fire.
Bee rushed to Jackson's side.
"General," he cried pathetically, "they are beating us back!"
The somber blue eyes of the Virginian gleamed beneath the heavy lashes:
"Then sir, we will give them the bayonet!"
Bee turned to his hard-pressed men and shouted:
"See Jackson and his Virginians standing like a stone wall! Let us conquer or die!"
The words had scarcely passed his lips when Bee fell, mortally wounded.
Four miles away on the top of a lonely hill sat Beauregard and Johnston befogged in a series of pitiable blunders.
The flanking of the Southern army was a complete and overwhelming surprise. Johnston, unacquainted with the ground, had yielded the execution of the battle to his subordinate.
While the two puzzled generals were waiting on their hill top for their orders of battle to be developed on the right they looked to the left and the whole valley was a boiling hell of smoke and dust and flame. Their left flank had been turned and the triumphant enemy was rolling their long line up in a shroud of flame and death.
The two Generals put spurs to their horses and dashed to the scene of action, sending their couriers flying to countermand their first orders. They reached the scene at the moment Bee's and Evans' shattered lines were taking refuge in a wooded ravine and Jackson had moved his men into a position to breast the shock of the enemy's avalanche.
In his excitement Johnston seized the colors of the fourth Alabama regiment and offered to lead them in a charge.
Beauregard leaped from his horse, faced the troops and shouted:
"I have come to die with you!" The first of the reserves were rushing to the front in a desperate effort to save the day. But in spite of the presence of the two Commanding Generals, in spite of the living stone wall Jackson had thrown in the path of the Union hosts, a large part of the crushed left wing could not be stopped and in mad panic broke for the rear toward Manassas Junction.
The fate of the Southern army hung on the problem of holding the hill behind Jackson's brigade. On its bloody slopes his men crouched with rifles leveled and from them poured a steady flame into the ranks of the charging Union columns.
Beauregard led the right wing of his newly formed battle line and Jackson the center in a desperate charge. The Union ranks were pierced and driven, only to re-form instantly and hurl their assailants back to their former position. Charge and counter-charge followed in rapid and terrible succession.
The Confederates were being slowly overwhelmed. The combined Union divisions now consisted of an enveloping battle line of twenty thousand infantry, seven companies of cavalry and twenty-four pieces of artillery, while behind them yet hung ten thousand reserves eager to rush into action.
Beauregard's combined forces defending the hill were scarcely seven thousand men. At two o'clock the desperate Southern commander succeeded in bringing up additional regiments from his right wing. Two brigades at last were thrown into the storm center and a shout rose from the hard-pressed Confederates. Again they charged, drove the Union hosts back and captured a battery of artillery.
The hill was saved and the enemy driven across the turnpike into the woods.
McDowell now hurried in a division of his reserves and re-formed his battle line for the final grand assault. Once more he demonstrated his skill by throwing his right wing into a wide circling movement to envelop the Confederate position on its left flank.
The scene was magnificent. As far as the eye could reach the glittering bayonets of the Union infantry could be seen sweeping steadily through field and wood flanked by its cavalry. Beauregard watched the cordon of steel draw around his hard-pressed men and planted his regiments with desperate determination to hurl them back.
Far off in the distance rose a new cloud of dust in the direction of the Manassas railroad. At their head was lifted a flag whose folds drooped in the hot, blistering July air. They were moving directly on the rear of McDowell's circling right wing.
If they were Union reserves the day was lost.
The Southerner lifted his field glasses and watched the drooping flag now shrouded in dust--now emerging in the blazing sun. His glasses were not strong enough. He could not make out its colors.
Beauregard turned to Colonel Evans, whose little regiment had fought with sullen desperation since sunrise.
"I can't make out that flag. If it's Patterson's army from the valley--God help us--"
"It may be Elzey and Kirby Smith's regiments," Evans replied. "They're lost somewhere along the road from Winchester."
Again Beauregard strained his eyes on the steadily advancing flag. It was a moment of crushing agony.
"I'm afraid it's Patterson's men. We must fall back on our last reserve--"
He quickly lowered his glasses.
"I haven't a courier left, Colonel. You must help me--"
"Certainly, General."
"Find Johnston, and ask him to at once mass the reserves to support and protect our retreat--"
Evans started immediately to execute the order.
"Wait!" Beauregard shouted.
His glasses were again fixed on the advancing flag. A gust of wind suddenly flung its folds into the bright Southern sky line--the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy!
"Glory to God!" the commander exclaimed. "They're our men!"
The dark face of the little General flashed with excitement as he turned to Evans:
"Ride, Colonel--ride with all your might and order General Kirby Smith to press his command forward at double quick and strike that circling line in the flank and rear!"
There were but two thousand in the advancing column but the moral effect of their sudden assault on the rear of the advancing victorious men, unconscious of their presence, would be tremendous. A charge at the same moment by his entire army confronting the enemy might snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.
Beauregard placed himself at the head of his hard-pressed front, and waited the thrilling cry of Smith's men. At last it came, the heaven-piercing, hell-quivering, Rebel yell--the triumphant cry of the Southern hunter in sight of his game!
Jackson, Longstreet and Early with sudden rush of tigers sprang at the throats of the Union lines in front.
The men had scarcely gripped their guns to receive the assault when from the rear rose the unearthly yell of the new army swooping down on their unprotected flank.
It was too much for the raw recruits of the North. They had marched and fought with dogged courage since two o'clock before day--without pause for food or drink. It was now four in the afternoon and the blazing sun of July was pouring its merciless rays down on their dust-covered and smoke-grimed faces without mercy.
McDowell's right wing was crumpled like an eggshell between the combined charges front and rear. It broke and rushed back in confusion on his center. The whole army floundered a moment in tangled mass. In vain their officers shouted themselves hoarse proclaiming their victory and ordering them to rally.
Wild, hopeless, senseless, unreasoning panic had seized the Union army. They threw down their guns in thousands and started at breakneck speed for Washington. With every jump they cursed their idiotic commanders for leading them blindfolded into the jaws of hell. At least they had common sense enough left to save what was left.
The fields were covered with black swarms of flying soldiers. They cut the horses from the gun carriages, mounted them and dashed forward trampling down the crazed mobs on foot.
As the shouting, screaming throng rushed at the Cub Run bridge, a well directed shot from Kemper's battery smashed a team of horses that were crossing. The wagon was upset and the bridge choked.
In mad efforts to force a passage mob piled on mob until the panic enveloped every division of the army that thirty minutes before was sweeping with swift, sure tread to its final victorious charge.
Across every bridge and ford of Bull Run the panic-stricken thousands rushed pellmell, horse, foot, artillery, wagons, ambulances, excursion carriages, red-jowled politicians mingling with screaming women whose faces showed death white through the rouge on their lips and cheeks. For three miles rolled the dark tide of ruin and confusion--with not one Confederate soldier in sight.
It was three o'clock before the train bearing the anxious Confederate President and his staff drew into Manassas Junction. He had heard no news from the front and feared the worst. The long deep boom of the great guns told him that the battle was raging.
From the car window he saw rising an ominous cloud of dust rapidly approaching the Junction. To his trained eye it could mean but one thing--retreat.
He sprang from the car and asked its meaning of a pale trembling youth in disheveled, torn gray uniform.
Billy Barton turned his bloodshot eyes on the President. His teeth were chattering.
"M-m-eaning of w-what?" he stammered.
"That cloud of dust coming toward the station?"
Billy stared in the direction the President pointed.
"Why, that's the--the--w-w-wagoners--they're trying to save the pieces I reckon--"
"The army has been pushed back?" the President asked.
"No, sir--they--they never p-p-ushed 'em back! They--they just jumped right on top of 'em and made hash out of 'em where they stood! Thank God a few of us got away."
The President turned with a gesture of impatience to an older man, dust-covered and smoke-smeared.
"Can you direct me to General Beauregard's headquarters?"
"Beauregard's dead!" he shouted, rushing toward the train to board it for home. "Johnston's dead. Bee's dead. Bartow's dead. They're all dead--piled in heaps--fur ez ye eye kin see. Take my advice and get out of here quick."
Without waiting for an answer he scrambled into the coach from which the President had alighted.
The station swarmed now with shouting, gesticulating, panic-stricken men from the front. They crowded around the conductor.
"Pull out of this!"
"Crowd on steam!"
"Save your engine and your train, man!"
"And take us with you for God's sake!"
The President pushed his way through the crowd.
"I must go on, Conductor--the train is the only way to reach the field--"
"I'm sorry, sir," the conductor demurred. "I'm responsible for the property of the railroad--"
The panic-stricken men backed him up.
"What's the use?"
"The battle's lost!"
"The whole army's wiped off the earth."
"There's not a grease spot left!"
The President confronted the trembling conductor:
"Will you move your train?"
"I can't do it, sir--"
"Will you lend me your engine?"
The conductor's face brightened.
"I might do that."
The engine was detached to the disgust of the panic-stricken men and the cool-headed engineer nodded to the President, pulled his lever and the locomotive shot out of the station and in five minutes Davis alighted with his staff near the battle field. By the guidance of stragglers they found headquarters.
Adjutant General Jordan sent for horses and volunteered to conduct the President to the front.
While they were waiting he turned to Mr. Davis anxiously:
"I think it extremely unwise, sir, for you to take this risk." The thin lips smiled:
"I'll take the responsibility, General."
The President and his staff mounted and galloped toward the front.
The stragglers came now in droves. They were generous in their warnings.
"Say, men, do ye want to die?"
"You're ridin' straight inter the jaws er death."
"Don't do it, I tell ye!"
The President began to rally the men. As they neared the front he was recognized and the wounded began to cheer.
A big strapping soldier was carrying a slender wounded boy to the rear.
The boy put his trembling hand on the man's shoulder, snatched off his cap and shouted: "Three cheers for the President! Look, boys, he's here--we'll lick 'em yet!"
The President lifted his hat to the stripling, crying:
"To a hero of the South!"
The storm of battle was now rolling swiftly to the west--its roar growing fainter with each cannon's throb.
The President, sitting his horse with erect tense figure, dashed up the hill to General Johnston:
"How goes the battle, General?"
"We have won, sir," was the sharp curt answer.
[Illustration: "'We have won, sir!' was the short, curt answer."]
The President wheeled his horse and rode rapidly into the front lines until stopped by the captain of a command of cavalry.
"You are too near the front, sir, without an escort--"
The President rode beside the captain and watched him form his men for their last charge on the enemy. He inspected the field with growing amazement. For miles the earth was strewn with the wreck of the Northern army--guns, knapsacks, blankets, canteens--and Brooklyn-made handcuffs! Their defeat had been so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming, it was impossible at first to grasp its meaning.
He passed the rugged figure of Jackson who had won his immortal title of "Stonewall." An aide was binding a cloth about his wounded arm.
The grim General pushed aside his surgeon, raised his battered cap and shouted:
"Hurrah for the President! Ten thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington to-night!"
The President lifted his hat and congratulated him.
The victory of the South was complete and overwhelming. Jefferson Davis breathed a sigh of relief for deliverance. Within two hours he knew that this victory had not been won by superior generalship of his commanding officers. They had been outwitted at every turn and overwhelmed by the plan of battle their wily foe had forced upon them. It had not been won by the superior courage of his men in the battle which raged from sunrise until four o'clock. The broken and disorganized lines of the South and the panic-stricken mob he had met on the way were eloquent witnesses of Northern valor.
His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout.
Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled.
The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse--the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy.
The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation.