CHAPTER V
The Battle of First Manassas—General Johnston
to the Rescue—Gen. Kirby Smith
Turns the Tide of Battle—The Rebel
Yell—The News of Victory—The
Enemy Not Pursued—Gathering
the Spoils
On Sunday morning, the 21st of July, quite early, on the left, up the run, the ball opened again, and "partners, to your places," was the order, or in army parlance, "Fall in!" "Attention!" The Yankee General, McDowell, stole a march on General Beauregard that morning.
Beauregard had planned to take the aggressive, by making an attack on McDowell's left near Centreville, and when General Johnston reached Beauregard about noon on the 20th, he approved the plan; accordingly orders were issued that night to begin the battle the next morning at sunrise. The right wing of the Confederate forces was to cross the run and attack the left wing of the Yankee army. McDowell had also been doing some planning himself, and as he got in the first lick, frustrated the Confederate general's scheme.
He, too, proposed to use his right arm in an attack on the Confederate left wing. McDowell put his army in motion before daybreak on the morning of the 21st of July, moving out from Centreville. A small column of infantry, artillery and cavalry, in battle array, marched out on the road leading to the stone bridge, the Confederate left, and at daylight formed line of battle and opened fire at long range, while the main body of the army was making a detour through the woods still higher up the run, and crossing at Sudley's Ford two miles above the stone bridge unopposed, marched down on the Confederate left flank and rear. As soon as General Evans, who was in command at the stone bridge, was apprised of this movement on the left, he changed front with a part of his brigade to meet the attack and sent for reënforcements. Generals Bee and Bartow first came to his relief, and in a short time the battle was raging fiercely. Generals Johnston and Beauregard hearing the firing to the left, and learning the extent and object of this movement of the enemy, at once abandoned their contemplated attack with their right wing, and bent every energy to resist the attack on their left. Beauregard went immediately to the front and displayed great gallantry, personally leading the troops in the charge, while Johnston remained back to direct the forwarding of the troops to reënforce the hard-pressed left.
Before sufficient reënforcements could reach the scene of conflict, the heavy columns of the enemy drove back the small forces confronting them. The position at the stone bridge being flanked by the enemy and abandoned by the Confederates, the Yankee column in front of this position crossed over and joined the flanking column of the enemy. Some desperate fighting was done here, and noble deeds of valor performed by men and officers never before in battle.
Bee and Bartow, two young generals from South Carolina and Alabama, won immortal fame, both giving their lives to the cause on that (to them) fateful day. Reënforcements were hurried forward as fast as possible, but still the Confederate lines were pressed slowly back, contesting every foot of ground, which was covered in many places with second-growth pines.
GENERAL JOHNSTON TO THE RESCUE
By preärrangement, of which none but the chief Confederate officers knew, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who was confronting a Yankee army in the Valley under General Patterson, who had orders to hold Johnston in the Valley while McDowell attacked Beauregard at Manassas, was to come to General Beauregard's support at the proper time. And if General McDowell stole a march on Beauregard on the morning of the 21st, General Johnston had on the 18th stolen a march on Patterson. On the 18th, about noon, Johnston got word from Beauregard that McDowell was in his front with an army much larger than his own, and that now was the time to help. Johnston, who was then at Winchester, at once put his army in motion up the Valley pike, then marching across towards the Blue Ridge to Piedmont, with Jackson's Brigade in the lead, which marched seventeen miles that afternoon. Jackson boarded the cars at Piedmont, and on the 20th by noon was at Manassas, the other troops following. Jackson, as before said, was placed in rear of the line along Bull Run as a reserve, and now, at a critical moment on the 21st, arrived on the battlefield, and noting the situation, remarked, so it was said, "We will give those people the bayonet," and forming his brigade in line of battle, stood firmly awaiting the propitious moment, as the Yankees were ascending the pine-covered hill on which he and his men stood. General Bee called on his broken and retreating men of the far South to "rally on the Virginians." "Look," exclaimed Bee to the South Carolinians and Alabamians, "see Jackson and his men standing like a stone wall!" Then and there the sobriquet of "Stonewall" was given to this demigod of war and his brigade, which will live forever.
As the Yankee line pressed up the hill, Jackson charged, driving them back in confusion, thus giving the first substantial check to the enemy, who had pressed back the Confederate lines for a mile or more.