[29.0] August 1862 (4): It's Another Bull Run, Sir

v1.1.2 / chapter 29 of 93 / 01 oct 09 / greg goebel / public domain

* John Pope's excitement at the prospect of bagging Stonewall Jackson and his men led to a violent clash on the old Bull Run battlefield at the end of August 1962. The result was another disaster for the Union. In the meantime, overseas the Confederacy scored another success by obtaining the commerce raider ALABAMA from British shipyards.

[29.1] SECOND BULL RUN, 29 AUGUST: BATTLE OF ATTRITION

* John Pope was at Centerville the evening of 29 August 1862 in his pursuit of Stonewall Jackson. Pope was delighted to hear of the fighting near Brawner's Farm, since it meant that Jackson had finally been located and so in principle could be destroyed. Pope had about 25,000 men at Centerville while McDowell was moving up the turnpike with about the same number, and the two could easily crush Jackson between them.

Or so Pope thought. The first problem was that McDowell wasn't where Pope thought he should be. In fact, McDowell didn't even know where he was himself; his column had taken a wrong turn in the dark and become thoroughly lost. That was an immediate problem. There was a much bigger problem, the unseen advance of Lee and Longstreet, of which Pope was almost completely unaware.

Pope's command was starting to unravel completely. In the dark hours of the morning, he sent a staff officer, Lieutenant Colonel David H. Strother, to Fitz-John Porter at Bristoe Station to order him to advance with his men to Centerville. Porter read the message, dressed, and ate breakfast while drafting marching orders for his divisions. He stopped writing for a moment and asked Strother: "How do you spell 'chaos'?" Porter did not move out until sunrise on Friday, the 29th. Pope was frustrated by the delays, in particular by the disappearance of McDowell: "God damn McDowell! He's never where I want him!" He sent out staff officers to find McDowell, but decided to attack with what he had.

* The sun had come up on Brawner's Farm to reveal to Jackson and his men the wreckage of the fight the night before. One of the rebel officers later wrote: "The bodies lay in so straight a line that looked like troops lying down to rest. On each front the edge was sharply defined, while towards the rear of each it was less so, showing how men had staggered backwards after receiving their death blow."

There wasn't time to linger over the scene. The Federals would be on them soon, so Jackson set up his men behind the railway embankment to await attack, and hopefully the arrival of Lee and Longstreet, who he knew were not far away. In fact, the Yankees started bombarding Jackson's men at daybreak, following with infantry assaults. Sigel and his 11,000 Germans charged repeatedly. Though they not only reached the embankment here and there but even drove off the defenders in places, the attack was futile, since Jackson's men outnumbered them and the railway embankment was a perfect fortress.

Sigel asked to pull his men back to rest and regroup, but Pope refused. Pope was simply mesmerized; he was so focused on preventing the rebels from completing their "escape" that he threw his forces in piecemeal, so fixated that even bothering to feed his men seemed unimportant. The soldiers had not been issued rations for days, but when a commissary captain told him that a trainload of provisions had arrived at Bristoe, Pope barked at him: "Return to your post. When I want rations I will send for them!"

Although Sigel's attacks were doomed, Jackson's men were still feeling the pressure. Around midmorning, the Confederates were appalled to see large numbers of unknown troops marching in towards their position from the south. A rider went out to investigate. He came back to announce triumphantly: "It is Longstreet!" About 10:30 AM, the rebel reinforcements started filing in to extend Jackson's position to the south, siting themselves across the Warrenton Turnpike along the western side of the battlefield. By noon they were in place.

By that time, Sigel had given up his doomed charges and was merely keeping up fire on Jackson's position. Then Union reinforcements arrived, in the form of Heintzelman's corps, with Kearny's and Hooker's divisions, along with divisions under Jesse Reno and Isaac Stevens, for a total of roughly 20,000 men. Unfortunately, Pope could still not get his disorderly army into the overwhelming mass that would be certain to overrun Jackson and his men. While both Porter and McDowell were also nearby, each with a corps, for various reasons they remained out of contact with both Pope and the Confederates.

Porter had been moving up from Manassas Junction in the south towards the battleground when he became aware that he was obstructed by large numbers of Confederates -- Longstreet's men. Porter was digesting this development when he was met personally by McDowell, who was carrying a message from General Buford describing the enemy force: "Seventeen regiments, one battery and five hundred cavalry passed through Gainesville."

Porter now had no doubts that he was facing fully half of the Army of Northern Virginia, and uneasily told McDowell that he did not think he could advance without provoking a battle. McDowell replied: "I thought that was what we came here for." -- though he did agree with Porter that they might be facing more trouble than they could handle. Porter took counsel of his fears and decided to sit on his hands; McDowell was less passive and took a division by a roundabout route to join Pope. Both their forces were effectively off the board for the moment. Worse, McDowell failed to rush news of the arrival of Lee and Longstreet to Pope.

* Longstreet was doing nothing to attract attention to himself. When Lee offered a suggestion: "Hadn't we better move our line forward?" -- Longstreet replied: "I think not." Longstreet had a certain conservativeness in how he liked to fight battles; in this case he didn't like the terrain, didn't have all his forces in place, and was nervous about the Federal troops coming up towards the turnpike. A little reconnaissance revealed that there were divisions of blue infantry there, Porter's men, and they would be on Longstreet's flank if he advanced. Longstreet stayed where he was. Longstreet also apparently had an intuition that he should wait for a good opportunity. Pope had demonstrated an inclination to hand out such opportunities generously, and the odds that he might make even bigger blunders were worth betting on.

The piecemeal Federal attacks on Jackson's position continued into the afternoon. Around 3:00 PM, elements of Hooker's division attacked, found a gap in the railway embankment, and poured through the rebels' first line of defense. A Yankee officer wrote later: "Many of the enemy were bayonetted in their tracks, and others were struck down by the butts of pieces." The Federals broke the second rebel line of defense as well, but as they pressed on the third line of defense their lack of support began to tell. As the Confederates threatened to swallow them up, they fell back under fire to their own lines. The brigade that made this attack lost a third of its 1,500 men.

Other scattered attacks were made by Hooker's and Reno's men. Then, about 5:00 PM, Phil Kearny moved up the turnpike towards the Bull Run in an attempt to outflank Jackson's men by an attack through the woods. He rode up his lines, encouraging his men in his usual enthusiastic style: "Fall in here, you sons of bitches, and I'll make major generals of every one of you!" They went forward aggressively and fell on a South Carolina brigade, part of A.P. Hill's command. This brigade had been attacked six times that day and was now forced to fall back under pressure to a knoll well behind the railway embankment, but when the Federal charge weakened the South Carolinans rallied and threw it back.

One more attack seemed like it would be more than the rebels could take. They were low on ammunition, and used the lull in the fighting to loot the cartridge boxes of the wounded and dead of both sides. Hill send an aide to warn Jackson that his men would stand and fight, but he doubted that they could hold out for very long. The usually imperturbable Jackson was troubled by this, meaning the seriousness of the situation was extremely obvious. When Hill showed up personally, Jackson told him: "General, your men have done nobly; if you are attacked again you will beat the enemy back." Firing erupted from the front lines. "Here it comes!" Hill said, and rode off to the battle on his horse. "I'll expect you to beat them!" Jackson shouted after him.

Regiments from Virginia and North Carolina joined the South Carolinans and countercharged the Yankee assault, some men fighting only with the bayonet since they had no ammunition for their rifles. The Federal charge was repulsed. Hill sent a staff officer to Jackson to tell him: "General Hill presents his compliments and says the attack of the enemy was repulsed." Jackson gave the man a smile, something he rarely did, and replied: "Tell him I knew he could do it." The crisis had passed for the moment.

Federal dead and wounded littered the slope in front of Jackson's men, but they had made the rebels pay. In some units all the senior officers had been shot. It had been a terribly long day. One survivor remember "praying that the great red sun, blazing and motionless overhead, would go down. For the first time in my life I understood what was meant by 'Joshua's sun standing still on Gibeon', for it would not go down."

* The sun was finally low in the sky when Porter, confronted by Longstreet's men, received an order from Pope that had been drafted earlier in the afternoon: "Your line of march brings you in on the enemy's right flank. I desire you to push into action at once." It was about 6:30 PM, there wasn't much daylight left, and Pope was completely ignorant of the presence of Longstreet's forces. Porter was not. Getting to Jackson's right flank by marching through half of Lee's army didn't seem very practical, and after giving the matter some thought, Porter decided to stay where he was.

Lee had similarly been prodding Longstreet to move in support of Jackson during the afternoon, but Longstreet had refused. Finally, about sundown, on a third prod from Lee, Longstreet replied that though there was little daylight left, he could sent a division up the turnpike to see if there was an opening. If one appeared, the rest of his forces could exploit it first thing in the morning.

Longstreet ordered Hood and his division to move out, where they ran into the division McDowell had marched around them, resulting in a brutal shoot-out. The clash was so confused that a Union major tried to rally a Mississippi regiment and was immediately taken prisoner. Darkness put an end to the fight. Hood reported back to Longstreet to recommend that his division be pulled back to its original position, since the enemy seemed too strong along the turnpike to make an assault their very profitable. Hood was given permission to pull back and did so in the darkness. That odd mix of skill and luck that had been paving the way for the Confederates ever since the start of the campaign continued to pay off dividends. Even this withdrawal, as it would turn out, would prove useful.

* By this time, the fog that had covered Washington seemed to be fading away a little. Early in the day reports came in of the sounds of a battle south of Centerville, and then Herman Haupt, who was monitoring the telegraphs that followed his rail lines, got an enthusiastic message from Pope, the first in 4 days, saying they were "driving the rebels handsomely."

McClellan ordered Franklin to move forward that morning, but then had second thoughts and ordered Franklin to halt. Haupt, in the meanwhile, had his railroad open as far as the Bull Run bridge and was moving supplies south as fast as he could, though Pope seemed unconcerned whether supplies were arriving or not. As far as Haupt could see, things seemed to be going well.

If Colonel Haupt felt ignored by the generals, one man who took him very seriously. Lincoln saw Haupt as one of the few officers who seemed to have any idea of what he was doing or what was going on. The President was regularly sending Haupt short telegrams asking him for the latest news on events. The news Lincoln obtained from other sources had its own enlightenments. That day, he jumped into the volley of messages going back and forth between Halleck and McClellan to ask for a situation report. The message he got back from McClellan was startling:

   I AM CLEAR THAT ONE OF TWO COURSES SHOULD BE ADOPTED:  1ST, TO 
   CONCENTRATE ALL OUR AVAILABLE FORCES TO OPEN COMMUNICATIONS 
   WITH POPE; 2ND, TO LEAVE POPE TO GET OUT OF HIS SCRAPE, AND 
   AT ONCE USE ALL OUR MEANS TO MAKE THE CAPITAL PERFECTLY SAFE.

Back along the day's battle line the cries of the wounded filled the night: "Water! For God's sake, water!" Both sides had fought to the limit of their endurance. Another day approached in which to continue the test.

BACK_TO_TOP

[29.2] SECOND BULL RUN, 30 AUGUST: DISASTER

* Pope's optimism for his chances in the battle were not borne out by the fighting on 29 August. The scattershot Federal attacks on Jackson's positions had failed, and Pope was still angry over the failure of McDowell and Porter to get their men into battle. Pope was certain that Porter had deliberately dragged his feet, and did not believe for an instant Porter's claim that he had been blocked by half the rebel army. Pope still grudgingly allowed Porter to move around this "supposed" obstacle in the dark hours of the morning to join the rest of Pope's army.

Despite the frustrations, Pope was in fine spirits at dawn on Sunday, 30 August 1862. He believed he had Jackson on the ropes, which was true as far as that went, and sent a message to Halleck describing the enemy as "badly used up". Though Pope conceded his own losses at 10,000, he described the rebel's casualties as "two to one" of his own, a gross exaggeration.

Shortly after sunrise, Pope inspected the front line from a knoll and saw only a smattering of rebel soldiers manning the railway embankment. It was clear to him that Jackson was now on the run and the Confederates before his own army were strictly a rearguard. Combined with the news that Hood's division had withdrawn down the turnpike during the night, Pope was convinced that victory was in his grasp. In reality, Jackson had simply pulled his men back from the firing line into the woods to let them replenish their ammunition and get some rest. Jackson thought that the Yankees had taken such a beating that they wouldn't be in any hurry to try it again.

Longstreet was definitely hoping they would try it again. Porter was no longer on his flank, and if Pope's army went forward against Jackson, Longstreet would be squarely on Pope's flank. It would be very good luck for Pope to be so clumsy, but the Federals still didn't seem to be aware of Longstreet's presence. Besides, the Confederates had been remarkably lucky so far and Pope's clumsiness seemed, if anything, to increase as time passed.

* Astoundingly, Pope still wasn't aware of Longstreet's presence. Despite the fact that Porter had reported the fact and McDowell had finally passed on Buford's message, Pope had by some wishful arithmetic concluded that there was no way for Lee and Longstreet to reach the battleground for another 24 hours. Confusion had kept the warning from him for almost two days, and once it reached him he dismissed it without further thought, not even bothering to send out scouts to check.

General John Reynolds was in the battle, having been sent North on a prisoner exchange after having been literally "caught napping" by the rebels at Gaines' Mill. Reynolds led his division of Pennsylvania volunteers into accidental contact with Longstreet's men in the early afternoon. He galloped off to headquarters to give warning: "General Pope, the enemy is turning our left!" Pope blandly replied: "Oh, I guess not." Reynolds went back to his division in a fury.

Pope was going to take all the time he needed to organize the assault that would mop up Jackson for good. It would not a fight in drips and drabs this time, but an avalanche that would sweep over the rebel position. The preparations took all morning. At 2:00 PM Pope set the attack in motion, and just before 3:00 PM Union blue came at the railway embankment in three waves. Jackson's men came running from the woods back to their positions in time to receive the blow, and found themselves hard-pressed up and down the line.

The Federals were surprised to find that the rebels hadn't left after all. McDowell was rattled enough to order Reynolds to move his division up to the firing line and help out Porter, leaving the army's flank almost completely exposed. About the only thing left there was a battery of artillery under Lieutenant Charles Hazlett. Hazlett found his position extremely insecure, reached out for any help he could get, and found it in the form of an understrength New York brigade under Colonel Governeur K. Warren. Warren deployed his men just below Hazlett's six guns. The brigade had only two regiments, the 5th and 10th New York, and so there were only about 1,000 men to face the full force of Longstreet's divisions.

Meanwhile, back on the firing line, the fighting was tremendous. A Confederate observer watched Porter's men advance toward them: "The march had scarce begun when little puffs of smoke appeared, dotting the field in rapid succession just over the heads of the men, and as the lines moved on, where each little puff had been lay a pile of bodies. But still the march continued with thinned but unshaken ranks until within pistol-shot of our lines." Then the rebels fired a volley into the Union ranks. "Through a bursting cloud of light blue smoke gleamed a deadly flash of flame. The first line of the attacking column looked as it if had been struck by a blast from a tempest and had been blown away."

The Federals pressed on. A Union private wrote later: "I have almost reached a ditch, when a stunning blow seems to tear me in two and I find myself doubled up on its dry bed. Like a dream in which minutes are ages, I dimly see the shifting changes of the fight. The ditch is deep with the wounded and the dead, the living seek its shelter. Our Colonel, cool as on parade, walks along its edge."

A rebel soldier recollected: "Their men were falling fast. Our ammunition was failing, men were taking it from the boxes of dead and wounded comrades. The advance of the enemy continued. By this time they were at the bank; they were mounting it. Our men mounted too; some with bayonets fixed, some with large rocks in their hands."

Amid all the fury, Major Andrew Barney of the 24th New York spurred his white horse on top of the railway embankment, holding up his sword to rally his men. Confederates, astonished at his courage, called out: "Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" But Barney was hit by a hail of bullets and was swept off the embankment, dead in an instant.

Every Confederate unit in the fight began to call back for reinforcements. When even the Stonewall Brigade sent a messenger to ask for help, Jackson replied to the man: "Go back. Give my compliments to them, and tell the Stonewall Brigade to maintain her reputation."

They all fought on until rifle barrels got too hot to handle and men were reduced to fighting with bayonets, clubbed muskets, and stones. While the Federals had been startled to find that the rebels hadn't retreated after all, the effect was to make the Yankees angry, possibly more at their own inept leaders than at the Confederates they were actually fighting. An officer accosted a wounded soldier limping back from the battle: "Sergeant, how does the battle go?"

The sergeant replied: "We're holding our own, but McDowell has charge of the left."

The officer shot back: "Then God save the left!"

Jackson's line wavered on the edge of collapse, and he finally did something he had never done before: he called up the chain of command for help. Lee recommended that Longstreet go to Jackson's aid with a division. Longstreet, always calm, replied: "Certainly, but before the division can reach him, the attack will be broken by artillery."

Longstreet had prepared for this moment, siting 18 guns of an artillery battalion on a low ridge where they could fire up the Federal ranks advancing on Jackson's position. The gunners had been anxiously watching the Yankees hammer on their comrades for the better part of an hour. Now Longstreet gave them the order to fire, and solid shot rolled up the lines of Union soldiers. Longstreet later wrote: "Almost immediately, the wounded began to drop off Porter's ranks; the number seemed to increase with every shot; the masses began to waver. In ten or fifteen minutes it crumbled into disorder and turned towards the rear."

The Federal assault, absolutely unprotected from the bombardment, fell apart. The second and third ranks broke into confusion, and then began to retreat in haste. The first rank, deprived of support, wavered and fell back as well. The news of Longstreet's success reached Lee, and he had his signalmen flag a message to Jackson's headquarters:

   DO YOU STILL WANT REINFORCEMENTS?  

   NO.  THE ENEMY ARE GIVING WAY.  

Pope's watched the ranks of Confederate gray rolling onto his left flank with horror and shock. His dreams of victory had burst like a bubble, and now his entire army was in danger of total destruction. Warren's two regiments caught the full fury of Longstreet's attack, led by the tough Texas Brigade. The 10th New York simply disintegrated. The 5th New York Zouaves stood their ground as survivors fled past them. The Texans appeared, the Zouaves fired a volley at them, and then the rebels poured up to and around their position. One of the New Yorkers wrote: "Where the regiment stood that day was the very vortex of Hell."

Warren ordered them to fall back but could not make himself heard over the terrible racket. A Texas regiment, one of its soldiers reported, hit the Zouaves with "an enfilading fire which virtually wiped them off the face of the earth. I never could understand why this fine regiment would make the stand they did until nearly every one was killed." Cut to pieces, the Zouaves fled for their lives. They lost over two-thirds of the roughly 500 men in the regiment, with almost half the regiment killed outright.

The Texans continued their advance and encountered a battery of Pennsylvania artillery. The Union gunners had fled but the battery commander, Captain Mark Kerns, remained behind at a gun loaded with canister with his hand on the lanyard. The Texans told him to surrender. Instead, he pulled the lanyard and blasted a hole through their ranks. The others shot him and overran his battery. As Kerns lay dying he told them: "I promised to drive you back or die under my guns, and I have kept my word."

Jackson's men had been hard pressed by the Federal assault on their position, and were not able to immediately help in the pursuit of Pope's troops. This gave Pope time to shift his forces and cover a retreat. The critical terrain on the battlefield was the hills in the vicinity of the ruined Henry House that shielded the Federal route of withdrawal by the Stone Bridge over Bull Run.

An Ohio brigade held the line, but by 5:30 PM they were under extreme pressure. Then they were joined by four brigades and a battery of artillery. The Federals countercharged, resulting in a terrific collision. The Yankees broke, the Confederates dressed their lines and renewed the attack, slowly pushing the Federals back. The Iron Brigade, in the center of the Federal line, was stubbornly holding its ground. As Union soldiers streamed past them in terror, Gibbon ran forward, waving a pistol, shouting: "Stop those stragglers! Make them fall in! Shoot them if they don't!" It did no good, and soon the Black Hats found themselves in danger of complete destruction. Gibbon pulled them out and ran them back three-quarters of a mile under fire to a better position.

The Federals jammed the turnpike. It was absolutely necessary to hold back the rebels until the tangle could be sorted out and the army moved to relative safety on the other side of the Bull Run. By 6:00 PM, the Yankees were down to their last line of defense, at Henry House Hill. In the meantime, Jackson's men had recovered from the now-broken Union assault that afternoon and were adding their weight to the battle. If Pope lost Henry House Hill, he would lose everything.

Pope had used the time bought by the fighting that afternoon to bolster his defenses on Henry House Hill. Warren was there with the survivors of the 5th New York Zouaves, along with Brigadier General Robert Milroy and his brigade of Ohio and West Virginia men. They were joined by a regular division under General George Sykes, and John Reynolds with his division of Pennsylvania volunteers. Reno moved in south of the hill with a brigade, accompanied by Pope and his staff. Lieutenant-Colonel Strother described them as "under a bitter fire or artillery, the air shuddering with all the varied pandemoniac notes of shell, round shot, grape, rusty spikes and segments of railroad bars."

Rainclouds began to build up and as the sun set the clouds turned fiery red. The rebels advanced with their backs to the sunset and appeared to one Federal soldier as "demons emerging from the earth." The Federals had occupied a sunken road at the bottom of the hill, and fought back hard when the rebels made contact. The Yankees were still hard pressed and soon had to fall back up the hill.

Sykes' regulars held a position below the crest of the hill, blocking the Confederate advance on the turnpike. Reno had led his brigade to the top of the hill, where Milroy was in an extreme state of excitement. The rebels had stopped to reorganize before continuing their assault. They would have to advance up the exposed slope of the hill, and so Reno told Milroy to get out of his way and had his own men lie down so they could not be seen.

The sun had gone down. The Confederates renewed their advance, coming up the hill under fire from Sykes' men. Reno walked calmly along his line, telling his men to stay down and keep perfect silence. He waited patiently and then ordered his men to stand up: "Give them about ten rounds, boys! Fire!" The blast smashed through the rebel line and drove it back. It was quiet again except for the cries and moans of the wounded. As darkness fell, a group of Virginians crept up on Reno's flank. They surprised a New York regiment and cut it up with a volley, but a Massachusetts regiment came to help and the Virginians were driven off.

It was about 8:00 PM and finally dark. A drizzle started to fall on the battlefield, while the Federals withdrew over the Stone Bridge. The last Confederate push had failed. Pope had managed to stave off complete disaster.

McDowell had been impressed by the Iron Brigade and put Gibbon in charge of the rearguard. Gibbon was to keep an eye on the rebels while the rest of the army fell back over the Stone Bridge, and then withdraw himself and blow the bridge. After McDowell left, Phil Kearny galloped up in a lather to Gibbon and said to him: "I suppose you appreciate the condition of affairs here, sir! It's another Bull Run, sir! It's another Bull Run!"

Gibbon replied calmly: "Oh, I hope not quite as bad as that, General."

Kearny said: "Perhaps not. Reno is keeping up the fight. He is not stampeded. I am not stampeded. You are not stampeded. That is about all, sir, my God, that's about all!"

* At midnight, Gibbon followed up the tail end of the army and blew up the bridge. The soldiers began to sort themselves out in the blackness, calling out their regiments in the night -- "3rd Maine!" "24th New York!". The confusion subsided, the men fell into order, and slowly the traffic jams were unsnarled and the columns moved away from the battlefield. A little over a year ago, men had joined the army in a chivalrous crusade to save the Union. Now they were cold, wet, dirty, tired, and depressed beyond all belief.

The collapse of Pope's forces at the Bull Run battlefield was oddly echoed by chaos in Washington. The cause there was not Robert E. Lee, but Secretary of War Stanton. On receiving reports of 10,000 casualties from Pope the evening before, Stanton realized that the shufflings of armies during the month had left their medical support in a state of confusion. There was nothing available to take adequate care of the multitude of Union and rebel wounded Pope had reported.

Stanton tended to be become hysterical under pressure, and he grabbed at a solution. He issued a public call for any able-bodied persons to volunteer as nurses and stretcher-bearers to help with the wounded, and then specifically ordered Haupt to make transport of these individuals to the battlefield his highest priority. Haupt protested, but orders were orders. By about 5:00 PM a crowd of would-be Good Samaritans had congregated in Alexandria. There were a few women there, but by and large they were rowdies. Haupt observed: "Generally it was a hard crowd, and of no use whatever on the field." The call for aid had specifically requested that they bring "stimulants". There had been a good deal of consumption of these "stimulants", and the result was a half-drunken mob.

Haupt realized that not only were these individuals disrupting his train schedules, but that they would be an insufferable nuisance once they got to the front line. He delayed sending them a train as long as he could. He finally brought in a freight train, crammed the mob into the boxcars, sent the lot off to Fairfax, then wired the officer in charge at Fairfax to meet the train and arrest all that were drunk. After dumping its load, the train returned to Alexandria. Though his orders told him to take the crowd down the line, they said nothing about bringing them back, and Haupt had better things to worry about.

There was a general mad scramble in Washington that evening to grab anything that could roll and anything with four legs that could pull it, load it up with whatever supplies that could be found, and send it off towards Centerville. The result was a mad snarl, making things worse than if nothing had been done at all. Known traitors used the opportunity to slip unnoticed through the lines in both directions.

BACK_TO_TOP

[29.3] SECOND BULL RUN: AFTERMATH / CHANTILLY

* That night, Lee obtained after-action reports from his officers by a campfire. While the Army of Northern Virginia had failed to destroy the Federal army, he was pleased with the day's actions, writing to Jefferson Davis: "This Army today achieved on the plains of Manassas a signal victory."

The Union soldiers trudged from their defeat through the rain up the turnpike to Centerville in a state of deep black depression. They had fought their best, but their leadership had not been worthy of them. Pope was slowly realizing just how badly he had been beaten. After retreating to Centerville, he had been optimistic that he could stand and fight and give the rebels a bloodying, but when the dawn came on Sunday, 31 August, his assurance began to fail. His men were clearly demoralized. Franklin's corps had come up during the night, in time to form a straggler line, with Sumner's corps right behind. Some of the newcomers called out jeers about Pope and mocked his demoralized soldiers.

The news of the disaster had by now finally made it to Washington. The public reaction was one of shock and hysteria. Citizens and stragglers milled around in the streets. Some of the "nurses" that had been bundled off to Fairfax showed up in town again, having obtained such transportation as they could find. President Lincoln had a simple view of things, telling his secretary, John Hay: "Well, John, we are whipped again, I am afraid."

Unnoticed amid the confusion in Washington was a white-faced fellow with a star on his shoulder-straps: Brigadier General Charles P. Stone. He had been released during the month from Federal prison with no more explanation on being set free than was given him when he was imprisoned, nine months earlier, without trial or even formal charges, on mere suspicion of treason. He still retained his rank, but he might as well have been a ghost. He had been trying to clear his name, but the Adjutant General couldn't review his case because there never really had been one. Halleck knew nothing of the matter, and the President dismissed him with a flimsy evasion. Stone was a nonperson, old news, not even interesting enough to be abused any longer, for there were new and greater "traitors" to be hunted down. As the crisis raged outside, he was of little interest either to those who had been his friends and those who had been his enemies.

* That same day, while Lee's men took care of the wounded, the dead, and Yankee prisoners, Lee considered what to do next. He hoped he could cut off the Federal retreat at Fairfax Court House and sent Jackson on a march north to do so. However, the roads were muddy, the rebels were exhausted, and Pope got wind of it the next day, Monday 1 September. Pope was finally paying attention to news of rebel movements and sent two divisions, one under Isaac Stevens and the other under Phil Kearny, north to deal with Jackson.

The two forces collided on the afternoon of 1 September while a cloudburst fell on them near an estate named Chantilly. The storm was so violent that the thunderclaps drowned out the artillery. It was a confused action. Jackson, who was in no good humor because of the delays, received a request from one of his colonels to break off action because cartridges were too wet to fire, and sent back a snappish reply to the effect that the enemy's ammunition was just as wet.

Kearny drove his men at the rebels, riding up and down his lines with the reins in his teeth as he waved his saber with his one arm. Stevens was inspired by Kearny and between them they fought Jackson to a standstill. The battle lingered on to the evening, increasingly bogged down in the rain and mud. The powder on both sides was in fact wet, and fighting in mud and a downpour so violent the soldier's couldn't even see sapped the aggressiveness of the fighters.

As the sun sank and darkness set in, Kearny found a Massachusetts regiment cowering at the edge of a cornfield. They told him in response to his orders to advance that the cornfield was full of the enemy, and produced two Georgia prisoners to prove it. Kearny roared at them: "God damn you and your prisoners!" -- and spurred his horse into the cornfield. There, in the thunder and rain, he came upon a group of soldiers, and barked at them: "What troops are these?!"

"49th Georgia!" was the reply. Instead of trying to brass it out, Kearny turned his horse and tried to ride away, hanging off the side of his horse Indian-style while the soldiers shouted: "That's a Yankee officer! Shoot him!" The Confederates fired a dozen shots at Kearny. One hit him in the ass and passed through his chest, throwing him off his horse and killing him instantly. He was 47 years old. The rebels found his body in the mud after the battle. A.P. Hill inspected the corpse and was disgusted at the way he had died: "Poor Kearny. He deserved a better death than that."

The fight slowed to a stop in the darkness. Stevens had also been killed, leading a charge while carrying a regiment's colors, and the leaderless Federals withdrew. The Confederates were in no condition to follow and pulled back themselves.

Even before the battle was over, Pope was calling it quits. He had wired Halleck to suggest withdrawal of his forces to the defenses of Washington, and to complain bitterly about the "unsoldierly and dangerous conduct of many brigade and some division commanders of the forces sent here from the Peninsula."

The next day Lee had Kearny's body sent back over Union lines under a flag of truce, "thinking that the possession of his remains may be a consolation to his family." Kearny's men wept openly at the death of their leader.

* That was the end of the Second Battle of Bull Run. One regimental historian later wrote that Pope:

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... had been kicked, cuffed, hustled about, knocked down, run over and trodden upon as rarely happens in the history of war. His communications had been cut; his headquarters pillaged; a corps had marched into his rear and had encamped with ease upon the railroad by which he received his supplies; he had been beaten or foiled in every attempt he made to 'bag' those defiant intruders; and in the end he was glad to find a refuge in the entrenchments of Washington, from which he had sallied forth, six weeks before, breathing out threatenings and slaughter.

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Nothing could cover up the humiliation and anger of Pope's men. The soldiers called out insults to Pope as they marched by him, one shouting: "Go west, young man! Go west!" McDowell got the same treatment, the soldiers jeering: "Traitor!" "Scoundrel!"

Federal casualties were about 14,500, including 4,000 prisoners. Confederate losses were about 9,500. The casualty ratio was not in the rebel's favor. The Yankees could bear such losses much more easily than the Confederates. But a simple body-count is a poor and contemptible measure of military accomplishment. Lee had driven a much larger force than his own off the field and reduced it to a state of disorganization and demoralization. The game was now in his court, and he had both the opportunity and the immediate need to exploit his advantage.

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[29.4] RAIDER ALABAMA TAKES TO THE SEA

* After James Bulloch had managed to obtain what became the raider FLORIDA for the Confederacy from British shipyards, he turned up the pressure for the completion of the mysterious #290. While Bulloch was taking every precaution to ensure that the ship would leave port unhindered, the Yankees were on to him and were doing everything in their power to ensure that it would not. American Consul Thomas Dudley was told by the foreman at the shipyard that the ship would carry eleven guns. She already had been fitted with waterproof ammunition magazines, and platforms were being installed for pivot guns. When this evidence was presented to the Liverpool customs board, they casually shrugged it off. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, concluding the customs board was pro-Confederate, asked the US Navy to have the warship TUSCAROSA be ready to intercept the #290 if the vessel tried to put to sea. He also took the case to the Judge Advocate of Her Majesty's Navy, Robert Porrett Collier, who unequivocally concluded the construction of the #290 was a blatant violation of neutrality laws.

Adams used this opinion to pry the Foreign Minister, Lord Russell, into taking action, and Russell responded in good faith, sending a request to the Queen's Advocate, Sir John Harding, for an immediate decision on the matter. Nothing happened for five days, and when Russell checked to see what the holdup was, he found out that Harding had been laid low by what appeared to have been a stroke. Russell gave immediate orders to detain the #290, but she had already put to sea on 29 July 1862, under the name ENRICA, without being caught by the US Navy.

* Raphael Semmes had gone to England after giving up the SUMTER, to be ordered back to the South in May. He had been intercepted in Nassau and promised command of the #290, and so had returned to Liverpool. He was a conspicuous figure, not only because he had achieved some notoriety as a raider but because he had taken to wearing an outrageous mustache, waxed to sharp points that shot out from the sides of his face. He spent his time discreetly collecting officers for the #290.

Semmes and his officers took a steamer to the Azores, where on 20 August they met the #290 and a ship carrying the raider's arms, ammunition, and other supplies. The raider was officially named the ALABAMA and departed for the open seas on 24 August.

The ALABAMA was 220 feet (100 meters) long and 32 feet (9.8 meters) in the beam. She displaced 1,000 tons (910 tonnes). She was armed with three 32 pounder (14.5 kilogram) guns on each side and two pivot guns: a large Blakely 110 pound (50 kilogram) rifled gun on a pivot forward, and an eight inch (20.3 centimeter) smoothbore amidships. That gave eight guns total, not the eleven that Dudley had been told of. She had two 300 horsepower (224 kW) steam engines and could make ten knots (18.5 KPH) on steam alone, but with the help of sails she could make almost 15 knots (28 KPH), which was very fast for a ship in those days. When traveling under sail alone to conserve her limited supply of coal, the two-bladed propeller could be hauled up into a well.

The Yankee whaling fleet was in the vicinity of the Azores at the time, providing targets near at hand. Semmes began a search for his first victims.

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