The original country roads had passed into disuse; and, the fences being destroyed, only the curious parallel lines of straggling bushes and trees that grew beside them remained to mark their course. Necessity and convenience had struck out new roads winding at will over the fenceless farms. We crossed thinly wooded barrens, skirted old orchards, and passed now and then a standing chimney that marked the site of some ruined homestead; up-hill and down-hill, rocking, rattling, jolting, and more than once nearly upsetting. I remember not more than three or four inhabited houses on our route. In a wild field near the shelter of some woods was a village of half-ruined huts, interesting as having served in wartime as Rebel winter-quarters. At last, eight miles north from the Junction, we reached the scene of the first battle of Bull Run.
This was the plateau, from which our almost victorious forces had driven and re-driven the enemy, when Johnston’s reinforcements, arriving by the railroad which runs obliquely towards the Junction on the west, changed what was so nearly a triumph for our arms into a frightful disaster. The ground is well described in Beauregard’s official report. “It is enclosed on three sides by small watercourses which empty into Bull Run within a few rods of each other, half a mile to the south of Stone Bridge. Rising to an elevation of quite one hundred feet above Bull Run at the bridge, it falls off on three sides to the level of the enclosing streams in gentle slopes, but which are furrowed by ravines of irregular direction and length, and studded with clumps and patches of young pines and oaks.”... “Completely surrounding the two houses before mentioned are small open fields of irregular outline, and exceeding one hundred and fifty acres in extent. The houses, occupied at the time, the one by Widow Henry, the other by the free negro Robinson, are small wooden buildings densely embowered in trees and environed by a double row of fences on two sides. Around the eastern and southern brow of the plateau an almost unbroken fringe of second growth of pines gave excellent shelter for our marksmen, who availed themselves of it with the most satisfactory skill. To the west, adjoining the fields, a broad belt of oaks extends directly across the crest, on both sides of the Sudley road, in which, during the battle, regiments of both armies met and contended for the mastery. From the open ground of this plateau the view embraces a wide expanse of woods and gently undulating open country of broad grass and grain fields in all directions.”
Such was the appearance of the battle-field on that memorable twenty-first of July, four years before my visit. In its external features I found it greatly changed. Many of the trees had been cut away. Every fence had disappeared. Where had waved the fields of grass and grain, extended one vast, neglected, barren tract of country. The widow’s humble abode had been swept away. The widow herself was killed by a chance shot on the day of the battle. A little picket fence surrounding her grave was the only enclosure visible to us in all that region. Close by were the foundations of her house, a small square space run up to tallest weeds. Some of the poor woman’s hollyhocks still survived, together with a few scattered and lonesome-looking peach-trees cut with balls. The hollyhocks were in bloom, and the peaches were ripe: a touching sight to me, who could see the haunting figure of the poor widow looking at the favorite blossoms from her door, or returning from the trees to the house with her apron full of the fruit, which appeared duly year after year to comfort her, until at last she was no longer there needing earthly comfort. We were not past that material necessity, however; and the poor woman’s peaches comforted us this year.
Within a few yards of the spot where her house was, on the summit of the eminence, stands a pyramidal monument of rough red sandstone, bearing this inscription:—
IN
MEMORY
OF THE
PATRIOTS
WHO FELL AT
BULL RUN