With Porter’s repulse comes Lee’s opportunity, the opening for which he has so coolly waited the better part of two days. Longstreet, anticipating the order to advance, throws forward his whole wing in one of those overwhelming attacks for which he became famous. At first there seems to be almost nothing to oppose the avalanche. Pope has just ordered Reynolds’s division to the right of the pike to aid in protecting Porter’s withdrawal, although more than half the army was bunched together there in the centre, and Meade’s and Seymour’s brigades and Ransom’s battery have taken the new position. Colonel G.K. Warren, of Sykes’s division, without waiting for orders, seeing Hazlett’s battery, which was well advanced on the pike, uncovered by Reynolds’s movement, has just hurried his little brigade of two regiments, 5th and 10th New York, over to the left of the road to support the battery, when the storm bursts upon him. Furiously assailed in front, masses of the enemy come swarming through the woods on his left and rear, and it is only by breaking to the rear that any escape capture. His loss is four hundred and thirty-one, but the few minutes he holds back the enemy saves the guns. Reynolds’s remaining brigade, under Anderson, with three batteries, in the act of moving to the right as ordered, is suddenly assailed with fury and forced to turn and fight where it stands, and now bears the brunt of the onslaught. Under cover of the woods, the enemy has completely turned the flank of all the Union positions, as Reynolds had told Pope only an hour before, and now strikes them with heavy masses of infantry on both front and left. After a gallant resistance Anderson is forced back, with the loss of four guns of Kerns’s battery and the caissons of Cooper’s. McLean, who sees with amazement Reynolds’s division move away, leaving him to hold the hill alone, at once deploys his brigade, facing westward, and receives the attack. He now changes front to the left, and in a magnificent charge drives back the flanking forces of the enemy, but has to offer his right in the movement to the deadly enfilade fire from his former front, and he, too, bravely struggling, is borne back over the Chinn Hill. Meantime the generals in the centre are making frantic efforts to hurry troops over to the left. General Zealous B. Tower, distinguished for his gallantry in the Mexican war, one of the ablest officers of the army, leads the two reserve brigades of Ricketts across the pike and up the Chinn Hill, where McLean is being overborne; but, before he can reach a good position, his men are falling by scores, he is stricken down with a severe wound,—disabled for life and his career in the field closed,—and ere long his brigades are driven back. Colonel Koltes, of Sigel’s corps, leading his brigade to the same position, is killed, and his troops, too, are forced back. General Schenck, leading reinforcements to McLean, is wounded. The enemy have driven the last defenders from the Chinn Hill and plateau, and their exultant lines go sweeping on to complete the victory. But Reynolds, with Meade’s and Seymour’s brigades, and Milroy with his brigade, are now formed in line upon the slope of the Henry Hill, along or near the Sudley road, and throw back the charging Confederates with deadly fire, and soon Sykes’s regulars, Buchanan’s and Chapman’s brigades, and Weed’s battery reinforce the hard-pressed and struggling line, extending it farther to the left and rear. The enemy cannot break it, but his fire fast thins its ranks, and his flanking movement and deadly enfilade still continue. At last night is at hand, and the fury of his attack abates. The defenders, spent with heavy loss and the hard struggle, now fall back; but General Reno has just led his second brigade and Graham’s battery up the hill, and forms his three regiments, 21st Massachusetts, 51st Pennsylvania, and 51st New York, around its crest in a thin line facing both the Chinn Hill and the woods on the left, with the guns in the intervals between the regiments. In this position he repulses after dark two attacks of Wilcox’s troops, the last efforts of Longstreet’s mighty onslaught. After nine o’clock, after the fighting had ceased, he quietly retires from the hill and marches to Centreville.
In the centre Jackson’s right followed up Porter’s retreating troops sharply; but the fire of the numerous guns searching all the open ground there, and the firm attitude of our troops, kept them at bay. But when the Chinn Hill was lost, and the enemy’s fire from there smote the troops of Sigel holding the centre near the pike, they were forced to fall back to the ridge, where they took up a new position behind the Sudley road.
As soon as Longstreet’s attack was well in progress, all the rebel guns upon the high ridge were turned upon our right, for they dared not continue firing upon the left and centre for fear of injuring their own troops now swarming onward against the Union positions, and the concentric fire of forty guns now pounded with a perfect hail of shot and shell the Union troops and batteries on that wing. The men there lay hugging the ground in rear of the guns, partially sheltered by the low ridges, while the artillery fired with its utmost rapidity upon the rebel lines of battle emerging over the distant ridge and advancing down the slope until lost to view in the woods, or beneath the smoke which now hung over the lower ground. They swept onward in splendid order, not in one or two long lines, but regiment after regiment, separately, with blood-red colors proudly borne aloft and pointed forward, like wave after wave of ocean after a storm, rolling onward with resistless majesty and power. From the great battery in our centre belched a mighty and continuous roar and volume of thunder, and dense clouds of dusky, sulphurous smoke rolled over the landscape in front; while beyond it, on the left, but apparently beneath its folds, rose the incessant clatter and crackle of musketry, with now and again the heavier, sharper noise of great volleys, telling of the dreadful struggle raging there. Surely there are no sights and sounds more terrible than those of a great battle.
When this scene of pandemonium was at its height, General Stevens quietly remarked to General Ricketts, as they stood near one of our batteries watching the fight on the left front: “If we can hold the right here, the enemy must be repulsed, for General Pope has nearly all his troops over there, and can certainly repel any attack on his left.”
Soon after this General Reno was standing with General Stevens near the same point. The battery had ceased firing, for the enemy’s infantry were no longer visible. Suddenly a tall young fellow, in a Union sergeant’s uniform, came running up the slope from the woods two hundred yards in front, and cried out, “Don’t fire on that regiment; it is the 26th New York. It has been in the woods, and is just coming out. Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” All looked, and there, at the edge of the woods, was a line of troops in blue uniforms just forming. General Reno turned to General Stevens, as if in doubt; but Captain Stevens, knowing that the enemy’s skirmishers held the edge of the woods ever since ours were drawn in, impulsively called out to the battery, “Fire! They are rebels! Fire!” The guns instantly fired upon them, and as quickly they disappeared, melted, into the woods. The sergeant, too, had disappeared, when we turned to find him, having made good use of his long legs to rejoin his companions when his bold ruse failed.
A little later, when the great struggle on the left was still raging, a mounted officer came galloping at high speed down to the line and delivered an order from General Pope to retreat. “General Pope orders the right wing to fall back at once. The enemy has turned the left, and if it remains half an hour longer, it will be cut off and captured.” With this, back he raced, faster, if possible, than he came. Very deliberately and quietly General Stevens gave the necessary orders, cautioning his colonels against haste or flurry. One by one the guns ceased firing, and were limbered up and taken to the rear. When the last one had gone, the infantry rose to their feet, and marched back in usual marching column. Out of the woods in front the enemy were swarming like angry bees in clouds of skirmishers, and beginning to push up the slope. By the time our troops had moved two hundred yards back from the little ridge or roll of ground they had just left, the enemy came pouring over it in considerable numbers. But General Stevens had thrown his two rear regiments in line, and they opened with a well-aimed volley, which instantly cleared the ridge of the pursuers. The regiments promptly resumed the retreat, and four hundred yards farther back filed past two more of General Stevens’s regiments, which in like manner stood in line ready to repel too hot a pursuit. At this moment General Kearny came from the right at the head of a small force, apparently a regiment, passing along the rear side of a point of woods which extended to near where General Stevens’s line stood. Just then the enemy began firing out of this cover. Instantly Kearny fronted his scanty force into line and dashed it into the woods; but quickly a sharp volley resounded in the timber, and his men came running out, and continued to the rear, pursued by the enemy’s skirmishers in equal disorder. Upon these the waiting line poured a deliberate volley, and back they went running into the woods. The troops, after administering this sharp rebuff, filed off to the rear unmolested, and moved over a prominent ridge a thousand yards back, along the crest of which was drawn up in line a part of Ricketts’s division, apparently a brigade. It was now fast growing dark. General Stevens, knowing that the pike would be crowded with retreating troops, wished to cross Bull Run somewhere above the bridge, and sent for Major Elliott, of the Highlanders, who was at the first battle of Bull Run, and might know of some practicable ford. This proved to be the case; and after some little delay the division, guided by Major Elliott, crossed at Locke’s or Red House Ford, and moved by a cross-road to the pike, where, finding the main road jammed full of troops and artillery flowing past in a dense column, General Stevens bivouacked till morning, when he moved to Centreville.
While the division was waiting on the ridge behind Ricketts’s troops, they opened with a sudden volley, as startling as unexpected, in the darkness. The enemy, pursuing, were advancing up the hill when this volley stopped them, and, falling back to the foot of the ridge, they lay there all night. Ricketts’s brigade immediately moved off to the left by a farm road to a ford a short distance above the bridge, where they crossed. Soon after these troops had filed away in the darkness, General Stevens sent Lieutenant Heffron, one of his aides, to the crest which they had just left, telling him to observe, try if he could see or hear the enemy, and come back and report. After sufficient time had elapsed for Heffron to have performed the duty, he sent Captain Stevens on a similar errand, for his column was not quite ready to move; owing to delay in finding out about the ford, and there was nothing between it and the enemy. He, too, rode back to the crest, gazed into the darkness, listened intently, without catching sight or sound, and started to ride down the front of the ridge to make sure of the enemy’s position, when the reflection that Heffron had probably done that very thing and had not returned caused him to turn back and rejoin his command, the rear of which was just moving off. Heffron had ridden down the slope and into the enemy’s line at its foot, and was captured.
At this time two brigades of Kearny’s division, which, being more in rear than Ricketts’s, had moved back before him, were on or in front of the ridge, only a musket-shot to the left of the enemy lying at its foot, each force ignorant of the other’s presence, and remained there until ten P.M., when they retreated by the same route as Ricketts. Poe’s brigade, on the extreme right, fell back, and recrossed the run by the same ford as General Stevens’s division, and before it. Thus the troops of the right wing made good their retreat in perfect order and without loss, except that of some guns of Ricketts.[20]
General Pope in his report, after claiming that he repulsed the enemy at all points, states that he gave the order to withdraw to Centreville after eight o’clock at night. No doubt he did give such an order at that time, but he suppresses all mention of the orders he gave to retreat and fall back long before that time, when he saw his left being turned and overpowered, and, his presumptuous confidence knocked out of him, thought more of saving part of his army than of repelling the enemy. And then it was, about six P.M., that so many troops were hurried off the field in retreat to Centreville, among them Nagle’s brigade, of Reno’s division, two brigades of Hooker’s, King’s division, and some of Sigel’s troops in the centre, and the whole of the right wing; and then, too, it was that he dispatched the order to General Banks at Bristoe Station to destroy the public property and retreat to Centreville. At that time the head of Franklin’s corps of the Army of the Potomac was up to the stone bridge on its march to reinforce Pope, and might have been used to maintain his battle. But that commander already had more men on the field than he was capable of using. Under the leadership of a Sheridan, a Grant, a Meade, or a Thomas, his gallant army would never have retreated from the field, and might have inflicted a deadly blow upon its antagonist. How bravely and even desperately the Union troops fought is best attested by the Confederate reports, and the nine thousand Confederate losses in killed and wounded. The Union loss, including that of the 28th, amounted to fourteen thousand. That at the end of the battle there was disorder and demoralization among some commands it were idle to deny, but it has been grossly exaggerated.
Note.—General Pope’s reports are very erroneous and misleading; the histories of the battle, following his statements, scarce less so. He and they habitually speak of corps when only brigades were engaged, and give all his dispositions and movements an aspect of forethought and order the reverse of the fact. It is only by careful study of the reports of division, brigade, and regimental commanders, and of the dispatches on the field, that the shifting struggle can be traced out. War Records, vol. xii., Report and Testimony in Review of Fitz-John Porter Case.