The First Battle of Bull Run

This series has four easy 5 minute installments. This first installment: Union Army Moves South.

Introduction
This battle was the first large scale clash between North and South in the American Civil War. Generalship on both sides was mediocre. The South won the battle when reinforcements from the Shenandoah arrived by train during the fighting.

This battle did not have to constitute the entire campaign of 1861. As Lincoln observed, the northern troops were green but the southern troops were, too. They were all green together. Three years later, after a setback in the Battle of the Wilderness, Grant led this same army straight back to another battle at Spotsylvania Court House the next day. Of course, the army emerged from The Wilderness Battle intact while this one was routed. Still, they could have been rallied and went back on the offensive.

On the southern side, their victorious army could have followed up and either assaulted Washington, D.C. or at least besieged the place. During this early time in the war, fortifications were still being built.

This selection is from The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, Volume 1 by Horace Greeley published in 1864. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Horace Greeley (1811-1872) was the editor of the New York Tribune, the foremost newspaper in America during this era.

Time: 1861
Place: Manassas Junction, Virginia

The movement of the Union Grand Army, commanded in the field by General Irvin McDowell, but directed from Washington by Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, began on Tuesday, July 16th. General Royal O. Tyler’s column, in the advance, bivouacked that night at Vienna, four and a half miles from Fairfax Court House. It rested next night at Germantown, two miles beyond Fairfax; and, on Thursday, at 9 A.M., pushed on, to and through Centerville, the Confederates retiring quietly before it. Three miles beyond that village, however, they were found strongly posted at Blackburn’s Ford, on Bull Run, and, on being pressed, showed fight. This was at 1.30 P.M. A spirited conflict, mainly with artillery, resulted, the Confederates being in heavy force, under the immediate command of General James Longstreet. The Unionists, more exposed, as well as outnumbered, finally drew back. The losses were nearly equal: eighty-three on our side; sixty-eight on the other. Sherman’s battery, Captain Romeyn B. Ayres, did most of the actual fighting, supported by Colonel Israel B. Richardson’s brigade, consisting of the First Massachusetts, Twelfth New York, and Second and Third Michigan. Regarded as a reconnaissance in force the attack might be termed a success, since the result demonstrated that the main Confederate army was in position along the wooded valley of Bull Run, half-way between Centerville and Manassas Junction, and purposed to remain.

General McDowell’s army was moved up to and concentrated around the ridge on which Centerville is situated during the 18th and 19th, with intent to advance and attack the enemy, posted along Bull Run and between that stream and Manassas Junction, on Saturday, the 20th. But delay was encountered in the reception of adequate subsistence, which did not arrive till Friday night. On Saturday three days’ rations were distributed and issued, and every preparation was made for moving punctually at two o’clock next morning. Meantime General P. T. Beauregard, maintaining an absolute quiet and inoffensiveness on his front, and fully informed by spies and others of every movement between him and Washington, had hastily gathered from every side all the available forces of the Confederacy, including fifteen thou sand, or nearly the full strength, of General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of the Shenandoah, and had decided to assume the offensive and attack our forces before General Robert Patterson could come up to join them. Had the advance been made on Saturday, as originally intended, it would have encountered but two-thirds of the force it combated; had it been delayed a few hours longer, the Federal troops would have stood on the defensive, with the immense advantages of knowing the ground and of choosing the positions whereon to fight.

Such are the casualties and fatalities of war. Bull Run is a decent mill-stream, fordable in summer at intervals of half a mile to a mile. Its immediate valley is generally narrow and wooded, enclosed by bluffs, neither high nor very steep, but affording good positions for planting batteries to command the roads on the opposite side, so screened by woods and brush as to be neither seen nor suspected until the advancing or attacking party is close upon them. This fact explains and justifies General McDowell’s (or Scott’s) order of battle. This was, briefly: to menace the enemy’s right by the advance of our First division on the direct road from Centerville to Manassas Junction, while making a more serious demonstration on the road running due west from Centerville to Groveton and Warrenton, and crossing Bull Run by the Stone Bridge; while the real or main attack was to be made by a column fifteen thousand strong, composed of the Second (David Hunter’s) and Third (Samuel P. Heintzelman’s) divisions, which, starting from their camps a mile or two east and southeast of Centerville, were to make a consider able detour to the right, crossing Cub Run, and then Bull Run, at a ford known as Sudley Spring, three miles above the Stone Bridge, thus turning the enemy’s left, and rolling it up on the center, where it was to be taken in flank by our First division (Tyler’ s) crossing the Stone Bridge at the right moment, and completing the rout of the enemy. The Fifth division (D. J. Miles’s) was held in reserve at Centerville, not only to support the attacking columns, but to guard against the obvious peril of a formidable Confederate advance across Blackburn’s Ford to Centerville, flanking our flank movement, capturing munitions and supplies, and cutting off the line of retreat. The Fourth division (Runyon’s) guarded communications with Alexandria and Arlington; its foremost regiment being about seven miles from Centerville.

The movement of the Federal army was appointed for 2.30 A.M., and the battle should have been opened at 6 A.M.; but the raw troops never had been brigaded before this advance, and most of their officers were without experience; so that there was a delay of two or three hours in the flanking divisions reaching the point at which the battle was to begin. General Tyler, in front of Stone Bridge, opened with his artillery at 6.30 A.M., eliciting no reply; and it was three hours later when Hunter’s advance, under Colonel Ambrose E. Burnside, crossed at Sudley Spring; his men, thirsty with their early march that hot July morning, stopping as they crossed to drink and to fill their Canteens.

Every movement of the Federal forces was revealed by Beauregard, watching them from the slope two or three miles west, by the clouds of dust that rose over their line of march; and regiment after regiment was hurried northward by him to meet the imminent shock. No strength was wasted by him upon, and scarcely any notice taken of, the feint on his right; but when Burnside’s brigade, after crossing at Sudley, had marched a mile through woods down the road on the right of Bull Run, and come out into a clear and cultivated country, stretching thence over a mile of rolling fields down to the Warrenton turnpike, he was vigorously opened upon by artillery from the woods in his front, and, as he pressed on, by infantry also.

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