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First Manassas Virginia's Manassas Battlefield Recalls the First Major Battle of a Long and Bloody Conflict—and the Birth of a Legend By Tom Huntington
On July 21, 1861, soldiers filled these woods, and the roar of cannon and crackling sheets of gunfire split the air. The Civil War was only two months old, and North and South both expected it to be short and relatively bloodless. Many illusions were shattered that day. It wouldn't be a brief and glorious war, as picnickers who rode out from Washington, D.C., to watch the fun learned when they were swept up by panicking soldiers from a beaten Union army. A year later greater forces would clash here, shedding even more blood. In the South the battles became known as First and Second Manassas after the nearby railroad junction. The North called them First and Second Bull Run after the creek that meanders along the battlefield. I've come here to explore the terrain of the first encounter, the one that anointed these otherwise unremarkable Virginia fields and forests with blood and the one where the eccentric, deeply religious and strong-willed General Jackson rallied his troops on Henry House Hill and gained the nickname by which he will always be remembered—Stonewall.
To get an overview of the fighting, I first take in the 15-minute slide show at the visitor center, then troop along with other visitors for a 25-minute tour of Henry House Hill with park ranger Becky Cumins. "You can read about it, you can watch documentaries on the History Channel, but until you walk along these fields you can't really understand it," she says of the battle, and she is right. As she describes the fighting and points out significant landmarks, I feel the pieces fall into place. I also realize how close the Union came to winning. In July 1861, the Union army was not ready for war, but a reluctant Brigadier General Irvin McDowell bowed to President Abraham Lincoln's wishes and began an offensive. He marched out of the Washington area on July 16, 1861. His initial objective was Manassas Junction, about 26 miles to the southwest, the intersection of two vitally important railroads. McDowell knew how unprepared he was. As Cumins tells us, he had never before commanded more than eight men at a time. Now he had 35,000 green troops wearing a confusing assortment of uniforms and knowing little of military matters. As brigade commander Colonel William T. Sherman remembered, "The march demonstrated little save the general laxity of discipline, for, with all my personal efforts I could not prevent the men from straggling for water, blackberries, or any thing on the way they fancied." Preparing to face McDowell was a friend and classmate from West Point, Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, the "Hero of Fort Sumter." He commanded 22,000 men. He also had a potential ace up his sleeve in Brigadier General Joseph E. Johnston, whose 12,000 men were positioned to the north in the Shenandoah Valley. Union Major General Robert Patterson was supposed to keep Johnston at bay, but Confederate cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel J.E.B. Stuart helped keep the timid Patterson from realizing that Johnston was packing his army aboard trains and heading south. It was the first time that troops in North America used trains to reach a battlefield. Beauregard took up a defensive posture along Bull Run, but McDowell had no intention of making a frontal assault. Instead, he started a diversionary skirmish at the Stone Bridge on the Warrenton Turnpike, then sent an attacking force north around the Confederates' flank. His troops crossed Bull Run at Sudley Ford and marched south to attack. Following Cumins's recommendation, I drive up to Sudley Church and find the shady path that leads to Sudley Ford. Bull Run is just as rustic as it was during the Civil War era. There are many more trees now, but the water still looks as "gritty and muddy" as it was when a Virginia soldier complained that drinking from it was "as hard to take as a dose of oil." One of my favorite photographs from the Civil War shows a troop of Federal cavalry at Sudley Ford, lined up neatly at water's edge, their faces invisible. As I approach the ford I get an eerie sensation. There's no one else around—just me, the rippling of the water, and the wind blowing through the trees—and I half expect to find those faceless Federal cavalrymen waiting for me around the next bend.
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