At the general’s tent we found General Sherman, General Keyes, Wadsworth, and some others. Dinner was spread on a table covered by the flap of the tent, and consisted of good plain fare, and a dessert of prodigious water-melons. I was exceedingly gratified to hear every officer present declare in the presence of the general who had commanded the army, and who himself said no words could exaggerate the disorder of the route, that my narrative of Bull’s Run was not only true but moderate.
General Sherman, whom I met for the first time, said, “Mr. Russell, I can indorse every word that you wrote; your statements about the battle, which you say you did not witness, are equally correct. All the stories about charging batteries and attacks with the bayonet are simply falsehoods, so far as my command is concerned, though some of the troops did fight well. As to cavalry charges, I wish we had had a few cavalry to have tried one; those Black Horse fellows seemed as if their horses ran away with them.” General Keyes said, “I don’t think you made it half bad enough. I could not get the men to stand after they had received the first severe check. The enemy swept the open with a tremendous musketry fire. Some of our men and portions of regiments behaved admirably—we drove them easily at first; the cavalry did very little indeed; but when they did come on I could not get the infantry to stand, and after a harmless volley they broke.” These officers were brigadiers of Tyler’s division.
The conversation turned upon the influence of the press in America, and I observed that every soldier at table spoke with the utmost dislike and antipathy of the New York journals, to which they gave a metropolitan position, although each man had some favourite paper of his own which he excepted from the charge made against the whole body. The principal accusations made against the press were that the conductors are not gentlemen, that they are calumnious and corrupt, regardless of truth, honour, anything but circulation and advertisements. “It is the first time we have had a chance of dealing with these fellows, and we shall not lose it.”
I returned to Washington at dusk over the aqueduct bridge. A gentleman, who introduced himself to me as correspondent of one of the cheap London papers, sent out specially on account of his great experience to write from the States, under the auspices of the leaders of the advanced liberal party, came to ask if I had seen an article in the Chicago Tribune, purporting to be written by a gentleman who says he was in my company during the retreat, contradicting what I report. I was advised by several officers—whose opinion I took—that it would be derogatory to me if I noticed the writer. I read it over carefully, and must say I am surprised—if anything could surprise me in American journalism—at the impudence and mendacity of the man. Having first stated that he rode along with me from point to point at a certain portion of the road, he states that he did not hear or see certain things which I say that I saw and heard, or deliberately falsifies what passed, for the sake of a little ephemeral applause, quotations in the papers, increased importance to himself, and some more abuse of the English correspondent.
This statement made me recall the circumstance alluded to more particularly. I remembered well the flurried, plethoric, elderly man, mounted on a broken-down horse, who rode up to me in great trepidation, with sweat streaming over his face, and asked me if I was going into Washington. “You may not recollect me, sir; I was introduced to you at Cay-roe, in the hall of the hotel. I’m Dr. Bray, of the Chicago Tribune.” I certainly did not remember him, but I did recollect that a dispatch from Cairo appeared in the paper, announcing my arrival from the South, and stating I complained on landing that my letters had been opened in the States, which was quite untrue and which I felt called on to deny, and supposing Dr. Bray to be the author I was not at all inclined to cement our acquaintance, and continued my course with a bow.
But the Doctor whipped his steed up alongside mine, and went on to tell me that he was in the most terrible bodily pain and mental anxiety. The first on account of desuetude of equestrian exercise; the other on account of the defeat of the Federals and the probable pursuit of the Confederates. “Oh! it’s dreadful to think of! They know me well, and would show me no mercy. Every step the horse takes I’m in agony. I’ll never get to Washington. Could you stay with me, sir? as you know the road.” I was moved to internal chuckling, at any rate, by the very prostrate condition—for he bent well over the saddle—of poor Dr. Bray, and so I said to him, “Don’t be uneasy, sir. There is no fear of your being taken. The army is not defeated, in spite of what you see; for there will be always runaways and skulkers when a retreat is ordered. I have not the least doubt M‘Dowell will stand fast at Centreville, and rally his troops to-night on the reserve, so as to be in a good position to resist the enemy to-morrow. I’ll have to push on to Washington, as I must write my letters, and I fear they will stop me on the bridge without the countersign, particularly if these runaways should outstrip us. As to your skin, pour a little whiskey on some melted tallow and rub it well in, and you’ll be all right to-morrow or next day as far as that is concerned.”
I actually, out of compassion to his sufferings—for he uttered cries now and then as though Lucina were in request—reined up, and walked my horse, though most anxious to get out of the dust and confusion of the runaways, and comforted him about a friend whom he missed, and for whose fate he was as uneasy as the concern he felt for his own woes permitted him to be; suggested various modes to him of easing the jolt and of quickening the pace of his steed, and at last really bored excessively by an uninteresting and self-absorbed companion, who was besides detaining me needlessly on the road, I turned on some pretence into a wood by the side and continued my way as well as I could, till I got off the track, and being guided to the road by the dust and shouting, I came out on it somewhere near Fairfax Court, and there, to my surprise, dropped on the Doctor, who, animated by some agency more powerful than the pangs of an abraded cuticle and taking advantage of the road, had got thus far a-head. We entered the place together, halted at the same inn to water our horses, and then seeing that it was getting on towards dusk and that the wave of the retreat was rolling onward in increased volume, I pushed on and saw no more of him. Ungrateful Bray! Perfidious Bray! Some day, when I have time, I must tell the people of Chicago how Bray got into Washington, and how he left his horse and what he did with it, and how Bray behaved on the road. I dare say they who know him can guess.
The most significant article I have seen for some time as a test of the taste, tone, and temper of the New York public, judging by their most widely read journal, is contained in it to-night. It appears that a gentleman named Muir, who is described as a relative of Mr. Mure the consul at New Orleans, was seized on the point of starting for Europe, and that among his papers, many of which were of a “disloyal character,” which is not astonishing seeing that he came from Charlestown, was a letter written by a foreign resident in that city, in which he stated he had seen a letter from me to Mr. Bunch describing the flight at Bull’s Run, and adding that Lord Lyons remarked, when he heard of it, he would ask Mr. Seward whether he would not now admit the Confederates were a belligerent power, whereupon Maudit calls on Mr. Seward to demand explanations from Lord Lyons and to turn me out of the country, because in my letter to the “Times” I made the remark that the United States would probably now admit the South were a belligerent power.
Such an original observation could never have occurred to two people—genius concerting with genius could alone have hammered it out. But Maudit is not satisfied with the humiliation of Lord Lyons and the expulsion of myself—he absolutely insists upon a miracle, and his moral vision being as perverted as his physical, he declares that I must have sent to the British Consul at Charleston a duplicate copy of the letter which I furnished with so much labour and difficulty just in time to catch the mail by special messenger from Boston. ‘These be thy Gods, O Israel!’