At dawn, Russell put on an outfit he had worn in India, and gathered up a revolver, an assortment of flasks, and a paper of stale ham and sausage sandwiches put up for him by his German landlady. The gig, with a driver who felt great reluctance for the expedition, and the Kentucky nag, ridden by a Negro boy, were punctually on hand; but the other member of the party, an attaché of the British legation, was not an early riser, and they were late in starting. “You’ll find plenty of congressmen on before you,” said the sentry at the Long Bridge, with a grin.
In the tranquil loveliness of the summer morning, the army of the sight-seers crossed the silver Potomac, and drove through the wooded hills, the deserted farms and the ripening cornfields of the Virginia countryside. The gentlemen were dressed in thin summer clothing. They carried spyglasses, rifles and revolvers. In their comfortable carriages, they had stowed rich lunches, bottles of wine and flasks of Monongahela and bourbon. There were a few adventurous ladies among them. Negroes looked from the doors of their cabins, as they jolted over the road plowed up by artillery and army wagons. The muffled pounding of artillery began to be heard in the distance, growing heavier and louder as the carriages rolled toward Fairfax. Out of a cloud of dust came a shambling body of troops, with carts laden with baggage and chairs and tables. They were the men of the Fourth Pennsylvania. Their time was up, and with the Eighth New York Battery, they had been discharged at Centreville the day before. Talking and laughing, they hurried on to Alexandria, with the battle roaring at their backs.
Among the senators on the road to Centreville were some of the Republican leaders who had been loudest in their demand for an advance—Henry Wilson and Ben Wade and Zach Chandler. The holiday mood of the partisans was enriched by the anticipation of seeing the rebels run for Richmond. Congressman Albert G. Riddle of Ohio had a sentimental duty to his constituents. He had promised “our Grays” that, if a battle were fought near Washington, he would join them and share their fortunes on the field. It was as simple and informal as that. Another congressman, the Honorable Alfred Ely of New York, also felt an obligation to the soldiers of his district—the Thirteenth New York from Rochester. In a white linen coat, Ely set off in high spirits with his party of friends. He had paid twenty-five dollars for a carriage for the day, and the price impressed him, but it was a double carriage with fine horses, and he was satisfied.
Matthew Brady, the fashionable photographer, drove to Centre-ville, lugging his huge camera and plateholder. He was a bushyhaired little Irishman, with a pointed beard and a big nose, and he wore a long, light duster and a straw hat. His wagon was shrouded with black cloth and fitted with chemicals, for Brady was obsessed with the idea that he could do something which no man had ever done before—make a photographic record of a battlefield.
In a thin black suit, a straw hat, low-cut shoes and white stockings, Andrew J. Clement, a boy from Chelsea, Massachusetts, jogged out in an army wagon. He had a brother in the First Massachusetts, enlisted for three years. On arriving in Washington with a box of dainties from home, Andrew had been crest-fallen to discover that the army had started on the march to Richmond. He had eagerly snatched at an opportunity to go along, too. Filled with innocent excitement over his trip to the Confederate capital, Andrew did not reflect that this was a highly unsuitable day on which to go in search of a soldier at the front.
On the hill at Centreville which overlooked Bull Run, the carriages were drawn up like those of spectators at a country race. There was one lady with an opera glass. It was not possible to make out what was happening on the thickly wooded plain, clouded with dust and smoke; but a battle was certainly taking place, with deafening artillery and rolling musketry, and the Federal soldiers, by all reports, were driving the enemy back.
Meantime, in Washington, the Sunday streets were quiet. There was a feeling of strong suspense, but no alarm. A quiet throng stood all day in front of the Treasury, listening to the dull rumbling of the distant guns. After church, Mr. Lincoln studied the unofficial telegrams that were coming in from the vicinity of the battlefield. He went to call on General Scott, and aroused the veteran from an afternoon nap. Scott still expressed confidence of success, and composed himself to sleep again.
Later in the afternoon, a reassuring report was received at Scott’s headquarters. The dispatches all declared that the Federals were pressing forward; and, with a feeling of relief, the President ordered his carriage. He had not returned from his drive when at six o’clock Mr. Seward came to the White House, haggard and hoarse-voiced. He asked the private secretaries where the President was, and whether they had any late news. They had the reports of a Federal success. “Tell no one,” Mr. Seward said. “That is not true. The battle is lost. The telegraph says that McDowell is in full retreat, and calls on General Scott to save the capital. . . .”
At first, Scott received the adverse news with incredulity, but it was confirmed by a dispatch from McDowell himself. The President and the Cabinet gathered in Scott’s quarters. They sat gravely in their black coats among the old pedantic War Department generals and the fledgling staff officers with brass spurs and rakish kepis. Orderlies ran across from the War Department with the telegrams. The acting Adjutant General, Colonel E. D. Townsend, sat near the door to receive them, and read them aloud. Once he faltered—after the words, “Colonel Cameron.” Townsend looked for a moment at the Secretary of War, whose brother was at the front with his Highland regiment; then he whispered the rest of the sentence, “was killed.”
At first, McDowell declared his intention of holding Centreville. In a later dispatch, he said that he would try to make a stand at Fairfax. At last, word came that he was forced to fall back on the Potomac. Retreat, retreat, the telegraph reiterated, the day is lost—save Washington—the routed troops will not re-form. Soldiers and civilians listened with white faces. Above the hissing of the gas jets, louder than the murmur of Townsend’s voice, another sound seemed to fill the bare little room—the roar of a mob in flight.
Since eight o’clock, people had been returning who had seen something of the action early in the day. Those who had left in mid-afternoon were convinced of a Federal victory. Still, in anxiety for definite news of the outcome, the Washington crowds, many women among them, lingered abroad. Before Willard’s blazing windows, the pavement was packed, and every arrival was closely scanned and questioned. Hundreds went to the War Department, but no bulletin was issued. Late-comers gave vague or guarded answers to questions about the battle. The traffic on the Long Bridge was growing heavy. The night air was cool after the burning day, as the sight-seers clattered home in the moonlight to the capital. A few soldiers came. With his face wrapped in a bloody handkerchief, David Hunter was carried in a wagon, attended by a little escort. Ambrose Burnside galloped in without a hat, dashed up to Willard’s and dismounted. Thurlow Weed was standing at the curb. He asked no question—it was not necessary. His shrewd old eyes were skilled in reading faces, and disaster was written on Burnside’s.
All those who returned toward midnight had been in the tumult and dust and terror of the retreat, the smashing, tumbling torrent of carriages, army wagons, sutlers’ teams and running soldiers. Some people who had driven out in the morning did not come back that night because their carriages had been wrecked, or commandeered to carry the wounded. Mr. Russell’s gig had departed without him while he was off having a look at the battle, and he had been obliged to ride all the way to Washington. “Stranger, have you been to the fight?” called the soldiers at the city end of the Long Bridge. A crowd surrounded his horse, and cheered his opinion that the army had fallen back on Centreville to reorganize for a new attack.
Russell had formed an attachment for the black Kentucky nag, and determined to buy it, regardless of expense. The proprietor of the livery stable knocked a hundred dollars off the price. He was in good heart, he explained, because twenty thousand Union soldiers had been killed and wounded.
Ben Wade and Zach Chandler drove into Washington with set and a
ngry faces. Near Fairfax, their carriage and Congressman Riddle’s had blocked the road and stopped the rush of panic-striken soldiers. Ben Wade had threatened the runaways with his rifle. He and Chandler made straight for the White House.
Back came the other Republicans: Senator Trumbull, feeling dreadfully mortified; Senator Wilson, who had been obliged to mount a stray army mule; Senator Grimes, who had escaped capture by less than a minute, and resolved that this was the last battlefield he would ever visit voluntarily. Congressman Riddle returned, shaken by a knowledge of the depths of his own nature. Examining the body of a dead Union soldier, he had discovered in himself “a brutish desire to kill.” He would gladly have plunged into the fight with his Remingtons, but the battle had moved on, and no rebel was in sight. He was a teetotaler, but he admitted that he took a long drink of whisky.
Back came Congressman Ely’s expensive carriage and his friends who had started out in such fine spirits that morning; but Congressman Ely was not with them. While taking shelter from the firing behind a tree, he had been seized by Confederate soldiers, and that night, in his linen coat, he lay shivering on the filthy floor of a barn near Beauregard’s headquarters. Ely’s wife had often admonished him that breaking the Sabbath would surely bring disaster, and his wife had proved to be right.
Rumors of catastrophe were sweeping through the streets. Hour after hour, the crowds stood around, worried, waiting. Congressman G. W. Julian of Indiana, called from bed by the calamitous news, found the Avenue solidly packed from the Capitol to the Treasury. In the small hours of the morning, they were still there; the population of a doomed city, listening for the thundering guns, the pounding cavalry, the shouts of the victorious rebel army.
On a lounge in his office, the President received the spectators of the battle. Some thought that the soldiers had been infected with panic by the frightened sight-seers, some thought the civilian teamsters were to blame. Others cursed the want of morale among the three months’ men, who were thinking only of getting home. All decried the volunteer officers who had deserted their commands and run to save their necks. Lincoln listened in silence. He did not go to bed all night. Clouds swirled across the face of the moon, the sky darkened, and a sullen morning dawned in a drizzle of rain; and with daylight came the soldiers—not the victorious rebel army, but the defenders of the Union. Across the Long Bridge and the Chain Bridge and the Aqueduct, they scrambled back to Washington; to safe, familiar streets, to shops and houses, to a place where they had had rest and rations and letters from home.
By six o’clock, the tramp and splash of their feet and the murmur of their voices rose loudly above the drumming of the rain. Awakened by the noise, Russell looked out on the Avenue, then threw on his clothes and ran downstairs. A pale young officer, who had lost his sword, told him that the army was whipped, and that he was going home, for he had had enough fighting to last his lifetime. “I saw the beaten, foot-sore, spongy-looking soldiers,” Russell wrote, “officers and all the debris of the army filing through mud and rain, and forming in crowds in front of the spirit stores. Underneath my room is the magazine of Jost, negociant en vins, and he drives a roaring trade this morning. . . .”
Occasionally, a regiment marched in order. The men still bore their arms, and had the look of soldiers. Most of the groups were conglomerations of squads, broken companies and stragglers, mingled in disorder. They did not appear to be soldiers, said an excellent observer, Frederick Law Olmsted, so much as “a most woe-begone rabble, which had perhaps clothed itself with the garments of dead soldiers left on a hard-fought battle-field.” Their bright militia uniforms were smoke-stained, muddy and sopping. Guns, coats, caps, shoes, and haversacks had been lost or thrown away. Some wore black grins, sketched in cartridge powder across their faces. Many had walked forty-five miles in thirty-six hours, without counting the action on the battlefield. They staggered through the staring city like sleepwalkers, dropped on the steps of houses, crumpled on the curbstones with their heads against the lampposts, stretched full-length in the flooded gutters. Artillerymen and officers slept on their horses, as they rode.
There were many slightly wounded men in the streets, and more were lying strewn along the road from Fairfax Court-House. A hospital had been set up in Alexandria, and Andy Carnegie had got a sunstroke superintending the transport of the wounded on the cars, but ambulance-loads were coming into Washington, as well. A little wagon drove along the Avenue, with Judge Daniel McCook in the driver’s seat. In the back he had the body of his son, Charles, a boy of seventeen, who had enlisted in the Second Ohio. Before Mrs. Parris’s boardinghouse, across from Brown’s Hotel, a sympathetic crowd gathered, while they carried the body in. Two years later, the old judge himself would fall in a skirmish in the West.
Henry Villard, a clever young German-American, who was acting as correspondent for several newspapers in different cities, all at the same time, had trotted into the capital at dawn. Two other correspondents were still-sound asleep at Centreville. They arrived later in the day, much elated at the adventure of having found rebel officers on the veranda when they came down for breakfast. Mr. Matthew Brady came forlornly back to his photographic studio on the Avenue. He had lost everything—wagon, camera, equipment. His duster was badly wrinkled, and under it he wore a sword which he had been given by some Fire Zouaves who had found him lost in the woods near Bull Run.
In his summer suit and straw hat, Andrew J. Clement limped along the Avenue. He was glassy-eyed with fatigue, and there were blood blisters on his feet, but he was carrying a musket which a Union soldier had thrown away. Just as he had planned, Andrew had found his brother, but it had not been an easy matter; for the First Massachusetts had been in action on Sunday morning, lying in the woods, supporting a battery. Andrew had crawled around in the woods, shaking hands with about a hundred Chelsea boys whom he had known all his life. On his way back to Centreville, he had been caught in the retreat. He had eaten a fine supper of roast chicken and sweet biscuits and sherry wine—the first wine he had ever tasted—from an abandoned sutler’s wagon along the way; and over a road paved with muskets, mess kettles and knapsacks, he had stumbled back to Washington. He went to his hotel and had a hot bath, and fell into bed. The defeat had not discouraged Andrew. Not all the soldiers had run, he told people. He would enlist for the duration, when he got home to Chelsea.
All day, McDowell’s army streamed into Washington. They stood in the wet streets around smoldering fires built of boards pulled from the fences, and told fearful stories of masked batteries, black horse cavalry and regiments cut to pieces. A gaudy handful of men, grouped in front of the Treasury, claimed to be the only survivors of the Fire Zouaves. General Mansfield opened many of the buildings where regiments had previously been quartered. The National Rifles filled their armory in Temperance Hall with stragglers. Soldiers were begging for food at the doors of the houses. Ladies stood in the rain, handing out sandwiches and coffee. Citizens sent their carriages across the river to carry wounded and exhausted men into town.
Washington’s secessionists, on the other hand, made no pretense of concealing their sympathies. The Star said that their exultation at the Federal defeat was undisguised. They loudly claimed that they would be in possession of the city in twenty-four hours; and exhibited “inhuman joy” at the sufferings of the wounded, as they passed through the streets. Among those unable to hide their satisfaction was “a person named Roberdeau.” He tantalized patriotic ladies standing before the mansion of the late Senator Douglas, by removing his hat and giving three cheers for the rebels. “Who’ll hoist your stars and stripes now!” he shouted. “Seventeen thousand of your party killed!” A wounded Rhode Island lieutenant seized his pistols, and ran after the fellow. But he escaped into a house near by, and the females shut the door in the Rhode Island officer’s face.
As evening drew in, the shopkeepers looked with alarm at the mob on the Avenue. Some of Mr. Russell’s visitors thought it dangerous to move abroad. He was assured th
at the whole contest was over, but he reflected that the gentlemen of Washington had Southern sympathies. When at length he locked his door and sat down to write his story, he was distracted by the uproar in the streets. Soldiers interrupted him, begging for drink and money; and it was three o’clock before he handed the messenger the dispatch which was destined to earn for him the sobriquet of Bull Run Russell, and the envenomed hatred of the Union.
Helplessly stretched in the mud, Washington awaited capture in the morning; but no invasion came. The rebel army, too, was made up of volunteers. They had been as disorganized as the Federals by their unexpected victory. Across the Long Bridge came only the wagon trains which had slowly disputed the narrow road from Centreville—white-covered supply wagons, boxlike ambulances, country carts and sutlers’ vans. By noon on Tuesday, the Long Bridge was solidly blocked from end to end. The cries of the wounded could be heard above the shouts of the drivers.
A large part of the army had retreated in fair order to the camps across the Potomac. At Mansfield’s and Scott’s headquarters, an effort was made to assemble the demoralized soldiers at rendezvous appointed for the various regiments. Scott’s aides tried to round up the officers who were “doing duty at the Washington hotels.” As mounted patrols cleared the streets, the great exaggeration of the Union losses was apparent. Some regiments had seen hard fighting and had suffered casualties, but none was cut to pieces. On Arlington Heights, Colonel Sherman had his brigade well in hand. Colonel Corcoran, with his narrow face and drooping mustaches, was missing, and the Sixty-ninth New York was more mutinous than ever. On every train the three months’ militia were taking their departure from Washington. In their torn and smoke-stained uniforms, they hurried home to tell their fearful stories and receive the welcome of heroes.
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