"I avail myself of the re-establishing of telegraph to report my arrival. When I left the forks of the Little River turnpike and Columbia turnpike, where I had been for a couple of hours turning stragglers and parties of regiments upon this place and Alexandria, I received intelligence that the rear-guard, under Colonel Richardson, had left Fairfax Court House, and was getting along well. Had not been attacked. I am now trying to get matters a little organized over here.
"IRWIN MCDOWELL.
"Brigadier-General.
"E. D. TOWNSEND."
McDowell had unquestionably been repulsed, in his main attack, with his Right Wing, and much of his Army was badly demoralized; but, on the other hand, it may be well to repeat that the Enemy's plan of attack that same morning had been frustrated, and most of his forces so badly shattered and demoralized that he dared not follow up the advantage which, more by our own blunders than by his prowess, he had gained.
If the Union forces—or at least the Right Wing of them—were whipped, the Enemy also was whipped. Jackson himself confesses that while he had, at the last moment, broken our centre, our forces had turned both of his flanks. The Enemy was, in fact, so badly used up, that he not only dared not pursue us to Washington—as he would have down had he been able—but he was absolutely afraid McDowell would resume the attack, on the right of the original Bull Run line, that very night! For, in a letter to General Beauregard; dated Richmond, Virginia, August 4, 1861, Jefferson Davis,—who was on the ground at Bull Run, July 21st,—alluding to the Battle of Bull Run, and Beauregard's excuses for not pursuing the Union troops, says:
"I think you are unjust to yourself in putting your failure to pursue the Enemy to Washington, to the account of short supplies of subsistence and transportation. Under the circumstances of our Army, and in the absence of the knowledge since acquired—if, indeed, the statements be true—it would have been extremely hazardous to have done more than was performed. You will not fail to remember that, so far from knowing that the Enemy was routed, a large part of our forces was moved by you, in the night of the 21st, to repel a supposed attack upon our right, and the next day's operations did not fully reveal what has since been reported of the Enemy's panic."
And Jefferson Davis's statement is corroborated by the Report of Colonel Withers, of the 18th Virginia, who, after starting with other regiments, in an attempt to cut off the Union retreat, was recalled to the Stone Bridge,—and who says: "Before reaching the point we designed to occupy (near the Stone Bridge) we were met by another order to march immediately to Manassas Junction, as an attack was apprehended that night. Although it was now after sunset, and my men had had no food all day, when the command to march to Manassas was given, they cheerfully took the route to that place."
Colonel Davies, who, as we have seen, commanded McDowell's stubborn Left Wing, was after all, not far wrong, when, in his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, he declared, touching the story of the Bull Run Battle: "It ought to have read that we were victorious with the 13,000 troops of the Left Wing, and defeated in the 18,000 of the Right Wing. That is all that Bull Run amounts to."
In point of fact, the Battle of Bull Run—the first pitched battle of the War—was a drawn battle.
War was now fully inaugurated—Civil War—a stupendous War between two great Sections of one common Country; those of our People, on the one side, fighting for the dissolution of the Union—and incidentally for Free Trade, and for Slavery; those on the other side, fighting for the preservation of the Union—and incidentally for Protection to our Free Industries, and for the Freedom of the Slave.
As soon as the Republican Party controlled both Houses of Congress it provided Protection to our Free Industries, and to the Free Labor engaged in them, by the Morill Tariff Act of 1860—the foundation Act of all subsequent enactments on the subject. In subsequent pages of this work we shall see how the Freedom of the Slave was also accomplished by the same great Party.