The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (17 page)

When Johnston arrived with the van of his army on the Manassas Gap Railroad, he solved two of Beauregard’s problems. Johnston assured Beauregard that the reinforcements from the valley would be present and ready for action on July 21. He also agreed with Beauregard that the Confederates must attack as soon as possible. And even though he outranked Beauregard, Johnston agreed to let Beauregard plan and execute the battle. This seemed logical since Beauregard was more familiar with the local situation.
²⁷

Accordingly, the Hero of Sumter retired to his room on the evening of July 20 to construct his attack order. The document he produced is a model of military obfuscation. The over-all concept was fine: the Southern army was supposed to converge upon Centreville from three directions and crush the enemy. But when Beauregard tried to fill in the details, his mind miscarried. His instructions were confusing at best; he wrote of “divisions and corps,” which did not exist in his army, an amalgam of brigades. Beauregard’s staff completed the necessary copies of the order at 4:30
a.m
. on July 21 and awakened Johnston to sign them. The General was not so sleepy that he overlooked Beauregard’s errors; but he signed the document anyway in hopes that the attack would take place at dawn and that Beauregard had a firmer grasp of the situation than his orders indicated.
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Fortunately for the Confederates, they never had to execute Beauregard’s order. A Federal artillery shell crashed into the McLean kitchen while messengers were still trying to distribute the order. The shell interrupted Beauregard’s breakfast and his attack. McDowell’s army was on the march. The Federals first feinted at the stone bridge on the far left of the Southern line, then appeared in strength on the near side of Bull Run beyond the Confederate left flank. McDowell had struck the Southerners where they were weakest and by late morning was threatening to overrun the Confederate position.

Beauregard and Johnston did the only thing they could do. As rapidly as possible they dispatched brigades “to the sound of the firing.” By 11:30 Johnston could stand the suspense no longer. “The battle is there!” he said gesturing toward the noise. “I am going!” Beauregard followed, and the two generals arrived at the scene of the action at about 12:30, just in time to have their worst fears confirmed.
²⁹

Remnants of two broken brigades were milling around behind a pitifully thin rank of Confederate troops on a low plateau just south of Bull Run. Beyond the Southern line were large numbers of the enemy. In command of those Confederates engaged in the fight was Thomas J. Jackson, late of the faculty at Virginia Military Institute. Although no one knew it at the time, Jackson had just earned the sobriquet “Stonewall” when Bernard E. Bee, commander of one of the shattered brigades, attempting to rally his men by pointing to Jackson, coined his famous simile, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.” Bee was mortally wounded soon after, and the first task undertaken by Johnston and Beauregard was to restore order to his confused troops. The commanding generals waded into the mob, found officers to lead the men, and in time stabilized the situation on the plateau.
³⁰

During the momentary lull, Beauregard asked Johnston to leave him in charge of the Confederate left wing and retire to a safer command post. Johnston, who was apparently a bit confused about whether he was responsible for the Confederate effort or, more precisely, whether he wanted to be, complied with his subordinate’s request after some discussion. As he rode back down the Confederate line, Johnston issued more orders moving troops from the right to the threatened left.

For Beauregard the day seemed to go from bad to worse. Each time he was able to send in troops to bolster his left, more Federals appeared on that flank. As the afternoon lengthened, the Confederate battle line bent, and by two o’clock the Southerners were about a mile behind the position in which Beauregard had found them. The battle raged over the slope of Henry House Hill. Judith Henry had refused to evacuate her home, and the old lady lay dead in her bed while the fighting went on in her front yard.

Between two and four o’clock the Southerners pretty well held their own on Henry House Hill. The day had been unbearably hot and humid. The adrenaline of battle sustained the men for a time, but as the afternoon wore on and the heat intensified, more soldiers showed the effects of their hot work. Beauregard dashed along the line trying to save his battle; in the process he had a horse killed under him.

Then, beyond the dust and smoke that circled the hill, Beauregard saw new clouds of dust to the rear of his left flank. Johnston saw them too from his headquarters. The dust indicated the approach of marching men, but neither general was quite sure whose men they were. If McDowell had been able to send a part of his army on a wide flanking march or if Patterson had followed Johnston’s army from the valley, the Confederates were in deep trouble. As men materialized out of the dust Beauregard anxiously turned his field glasses on the approaching column. A flag hung limply from its standard; it was red, white, and blue. The colors were common to both the stars and stripes and the stars and bars, however. Beauregard feared the worst and wrote out a request for Johnston to prepare intermediate defenses to cover the impending retreat. The courier was ready to gallop away with the message when a soft breeze unfurled the flag enough to reveal bars instead of stripes. Two fresh brigades, commanded by Jubal A. Early and Edmund Kirby Smith, were arriving on the Confederate left; debacle turned to victory.
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What happened next was both natural and incredible. As the arriving soldiers ran onto the battlefield, their weary comrades mustered the strength for one last effort. They charged. And as they charged they let go a piercing scream which afterward became the “rebel yell.” It was too much for the Federals. The Union battle line wavered, then broke. Here and there were significant pockets of resistance, but McDowell’s army generally melted into a fleeing mob of tired, scared men.
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For the most part the Southerners watched their enemies run. They were as tired and scared as their adversaries; had the fresh troops on the flank been Union, the Confederates would likely have run as their enemies were doing. Johnston ordered two fresh brigades from his right flank to pursue, but heat and confusion slowed the effort. Finally, darkness and thunderstorms halted the pursuit. The battle wound down, and the soldiers straggled back to the field to find their regiments, celebrate the victory, and bury their comrades.
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Meanwhile the Commander-in-Chief had arrived. President Davis had remained in Richmond on July 20 to open the reassembled Confederate Congress. On the day of the battle at Manassas, he boarded a train and went to find the action. Near Manassas Junction the engineer encountered the backwash of what looked like a defeated army and proceded farther only after pleas from his president. At last Davis reached headquarters, secured horses for himself and his aide, and set out to find his generals. Wounded men cheered him as he rode, and he in turn delivered romantic phrases about doing or dying. Only as he approached Johnston’s field headquarters did the President learn of the Federal rout.
³⁴

Eventually Beauregard made his way back to Davis and Johnston, and at about midnight the three discussed their options for pressing the Confederate advantage on July 22. The Southern army was a winner, but in terms of organization, supply, and armament, the Confederates were in no condition to march on Washington. The possibilities of marching on Baltimore or into the valley to defeat Patterson’s Federals existed but seemed remote. Ultimately the council of war agreed to shore up victory rather than risk defeat through recklessness; the torrential rain falling outside in the darkness reinforced the decision.
³⁵

Back in Richmond it had been an anxious day for a lot of people. The capital was empty of soldiers, and the fact that July 21 was a Sunday accentuated the ominous quiet. All day in the sultry heat little knots of people gathered and dispersed; every horseman entering the city from the north attracted requests for war news.

Across the street from the capitol in Mechanics Hall were the makeshift offices of the War Department. There Confederate officialdom assembled to wait out the suspense. The telegraph yielded nothing reliable. Secretary of War Walker damned his job and longed for action. The entire cabinet came and went, pacing and nervous. Howell Cobb, after sifting the fragmentary dispatches, announced that the battle at Manassas was a draw. Hot words followed, as men debated in complete ignorance. Night closed, and still the watch went on.

Then Judah Benjamin burst into the hall with real news. He had come from the Spotswood Hotel and a call upon Varina Davis. A telegram from the President had arrived, and Benjamin had memorized the text: “We have won a glorious but dear-bought victory; the night closed with the enemy in full flight, pursued by our troops.” Joy broke out. R. M. T. Hunter’s tense face relaxed into smiles, John Reagan’s eyes ceased to pop so far out from their sockets, and Benjamin simply glowed. The Confederacy had committed its fate to battle and won. The Southern nation was at last a reality; the cause was triumphant.
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On the night of July 21, 1861, the Confederate States of America was just about everything its founders had envisioned the Southern nation to be. In the minds of its citizens at least the Confederacy was the confirmed expression of Southern nationalism.

Radical means had yielded the conservative end. Secessions had led to confederation, and confederation to Constitution. That Constitution, if correctly construed, would preserve the Southern world and world view. The government of Jefferson Davis was the political expression of sensible Southerners; the old fire-eating radicals were by now mainly ornaments in the Confederate body politic. The administration had organized itself and conducted the confrontation in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter was a Confederate victory; not only was Charleston Harbor undefiled, but in the aftermath of the crisis the nation had reached its “natural frontiers.”

The victory at Sumter had committed the South to war, but perhaps the revolution had always required blood. The government had been equal to the challenge, and Southern soil and soul were intact. Indeed the most striking thing about the conduct of Confederate statecraft and warfare thus far was its quintessential Southern-ness.

Mobilization for war had been a sort of gathering of the clans, and Davis as warrior chieftain was present to lead them. He had moved his capital to the front and mapped his strategy. Then Davis had been on hand to preside over his victory at Manassas. Success in battle had covered over personal animosities and sins of military administration and supply. Beauregard was once again a hero, although he shared his mantle with lesser heroes such as Jackson and martyrs to the cause such as Bee.

Hindsight, of course, reveals that the Southern celebration following Manassas was premature. Even at the time the Southern soldiers involved in the victory knew better, having learned the hard way that war was no parade and that Yankees were not pasty-faced cowards. Confederate generals, too, had reservations about the victory; they had no illusions about the logistical weaknesses the campaign had revealed. More important, the battle had more or less “happened,” with precious little direction or control. The most significant order given all day had been the near-desperate command, “Go to the sound of the firing!” The battlefield had been broad beyond either Johnston’s or Beauregard’s comprehension, and the numbers of men involved had been too great for either general to control. If their enemies renewed the invasion—and Davis and his generals believed they would—the Confederate army would have to be more than a random collection of autonomous brigades. And commanders would have to do better than guess at the contents of each approaching cloud of dust. Naturally the success at Manassas softened the sting of the critique, but nagging doubts persisted even in the revel of victory.
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The vivid memories of pain and death that Confederate troops were suppressing and the awareness of failures that the Southern high command was rationalizing loomed small in the nation as a whole. The Richmond
Examiner
caught the spirit of the hour.

This blow will shake the Northern Union in every bone; the echo will reverberate round the globe. It secures the independence of the Southern Confederacy. The churches of this city should be open to-day and its inhabitants should render God their thanks for a special providence in their behalf; for yesterday morning the fate of Richmond, with many other fates, trembled in the balance.
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By the work of Sunday we have broken the backbone of invasion and utterly broken the spirit of the North. Henceforward we shall have hectoring, bluster and threat; but we shall never yet get such another chance at them again in the field.
³⁹

God was Southern, and the Confederacy would live. It was almost perfect. Even Edmund Ruffin had had a part in the triumph. The old man still belonged to the Palmetto Guards (Second South Carolina Infantry Regiment), and he had rejoined his regiment during the first week of July. With a cheese and a barrel of crackers, he appeared in their camp at Fairfax Court House one day and took up the rigors of soldiering. The troops were glad to see him, and he rejoiced that he was again serving the cause.
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Then on July 17 the war interrupted Ruffin’s pleasure. His regiment retreated at double-quick time to join the concentration at Bull Run. Ruffin held the pace for two miles and then fell back. Fortunately the Alexandria Light Artillery was passing, and the old man rode to the new position on one of its caissons, losing his cheese, crackers, and baggage in the process.

On the morning of the battle, Ruffin was back in the ranks, but the Palmetto Guards were on the Confederate right, and the action was on the left. After waiting almost all day while the battle went on without him, the aged “private” deserted his post and set out to find the war.