第13章 THE CLASH: 1861(12)

"The fight was just then hot enough to make him feel well. His eyes fairly blazed. He had a way of throwing up his left hand with the open palm towards the person he was addressing; and, as he told me to go, he made this gesture. The air was full of flying missiles, and as he spoke he jerked down his hand, and Isaw that blood was streaming from it. I exclaimed, 'General, you are wounded.' 'Only a scratch--a mere scratch,' he replied; and, binding it hastily with a handkerchief, he galloped away along his line."Five hundred yards apart the opposing cannon thundered, while the musketry of the long lines of infantry swelled the deafening roar. Suddenly two Federal batteries of regulars dashed forward to even shorter range, covered by two battalions on their flank.

But the gaudy Zouaves of the outer battalion lost formation in their advance; whereupon "Jeb" Stuart, with only a hundred and fifty horsemen, swooped down and smashed them to pieces by a daring charge. Then, just as the scattered white turbans went wildly bobbing about, into the midst of the inner battalion, out rushed the Thirty-third Virginians, straight at the guns. The battery officers held their fire, uncertain in the smoke whether the newcomers were friend or foe, till a deadly volley struck home at less than eighty yards. Down went the gunners to a man;down went the teams to a horse; and off ran the Zouaves and the other supporting battalion, helter-skelter for the rear.

But other Federals were still full of fight and in superior numbers. They came on with great gallantry, considering they were raw troops who were now without the comfort of the guns. Once more a Federal victory seemed secure; and if the infantry had only pressed on (not piecemeal, by disjoined battalions, but by brigades) without letting the Confederates recover from one blow before another struck them, the day would have certainly been theirs. Moreover, they would have inflicted not simply a defeat but a severe disaster on their enemy, who would have been caught in flank by the troops at the Stone Bridge; for these troops, however dilatory, must have known what to do with a broken and flying Confederate flank right under their very eyes. Premonitory symptoms of such a flight were not wanting. Confederate wounded, stragglers, and skulkers were making for the rear; and the rallied brigades were again in disorder, with Bee and Bartow, two first-rate brigadiers, just killed, and other seniors wounded.

Another ominous sign was the limbering up of Confederate guns to cover the expected retreat from the Henry Hill.

But on its reverse slope lay Jackson's Shenandoahs, three thousand strong, and by far the best drilled and disciplined brigade that either side had yet produced apart, of course, from regulars. Jackson had ridden up and down before them, calm as they had ever seen him on parade, quietly saying, "Steady, men, steady! All's well." In this way he had held them straining at the leash for hours. Now, at last, their time had come. Riding out to the center of his line he gave his final orders: "Reserve your fire till they come within fifty yards. Then fire and give them the bayonet; and yell like furies when you charge!" Five minutes later, as the triumphant Federals topped the crest, the long gray line rose up, stood fast, fired one crashing point-blank volley, and immediately charged home with the first of those wild, high rebel yells that rang throughout the war. The stricken and astounded Federal front caved in, turned round, and fled. At the same instant the last of the Shenandoahs--Kirby Smith's brigade, detrained just in the nick of time--charged the wavering flank. Then, like the first quiver of an avalanche, a tremor shook the whole massed Federals one moment on that fatal hill: the next, like a loosened cliff, they began the landslide down.

There, in the valley, along Young's Branch, McDowell established his last line of battle, based on the firm rock of the regulars.

But by this time the Confederates had brought up troops from the whole length of their line; the balance of numbers was at last in their favor; and nothing could stay the Federal recoil. Lack of drill and discipline soon changed this recoil into a disorderly retreat. There was no panic; but most of the military units "dissolved into a mere mob whose heart was set on getting back to Washington in any way left '''Open. The regulars and a few formed bodies in reserve did their best to stem the stream. But all in vain.

One mile short of Centreville there was a sudden upset and consequent block on the bridge across Cub Run. Then the stream of men retreating, mixed with clogging masses of panic-struck civilians, became a torrent.

Bull Run was only a special-constable affair on a gigantic scale.

The losses were comparatively small--3553 killed and wounded on both sides put together: not ten per cent of the less than forty thousand who actually fought. Moreover, the side that won the battle lost the war. And yet Bull Run had many points of very great importance. In spite of all shortcomings it showed the good quality of the troops engaged: if not as soldiers, at all events as men. It proved that the war, unlike the battle, would not be fought by special constables, some of whom first fired their rifles when their target was firing back at them. It brought one great leader--Stonewall Jackson--into fame. Above all, it profoundly affected the popular points of view, both North and South. In the South there was undue elation, followed by the absurd belief that one Southerner could beat two Northerners any day and that the North would now back down en masse, as its army had from the Henry Hill. A dangerous slackening of military preparation was the unavoidable result. In the North, on the other hand, a good many people began to see the difference between armed mobs and armies; and the thorough Unionists, led by the wise and steadfast Lincoln, braced themselves for real war.