Charles Carleton Coffin

July, 1861.

At noon, on the 17th of July, the troops under General McDowell took up their line of march toward Fairfax, without baggage, carrying three days' rations in their haversacks. One division, under General Tyler, which had been encamped at Falls Church, marched to Vienna, while the other divisions, moving from Alexandria, advanced upon Fairfax Court-House.

It was a grand pageant, the long column of bayonets and high-waving flags. Union men whose homes were at Fairfax accompanied the march. "It does my eyes good to see the troops in motion at last," said one. "I have been exiled seven weeks. I know nothing about my family, although I have been within a dozen miles of them all the time. I came from the North three years ago. The Secessionists hated me, they threatened to hang me, and I had to leave mighty sudden."

The head of General Tyler's column reached Vienna at sunset. The infantry turned into the fields, while the artillery took positions on the hills. Near the railroad was a large woodpile, behind which the South Carolinians took shelter, when they fired upon the Ohio boys on the cars. It was convenient for bivouac fires, and the men helped themselves willingly. There I received instructions from Captain Alexander, of the engineers, an old campaigner in Mexico, which, during the four years of the war, I have never forgotten.

"Always sleep on the lee side of your bivouac fire," he said. "The fire dries the ground, the heat envelopes you like a blanket; it will keep off fever and ague. Better endure the discomfort of the smoke, better look like a Cincinnati ham, than to feel an ache in every bone in the morning, which you will be likely to feel if you spread your blankets on the windward side, for then you have little benefit of the heat, but receive the full rush of the air, which chills you on one side, while you are roasting on the other." It was wise counsel, and by heeding it I have saved my bones from many an ache.

It was at this place that a very laughable incident occurred. One of the citizens of Vienna had a bee-house well stocked with hives. A soldier espied them. He seized a hive and ran. Out came the bees, buzzing about his ears. Another soldier, thinking to do better, upset his hive, and seized the comb, dripping with honey. Being also hotly besieged, he dropped it, ran his hands through his hair, slapped his face, swung his arms, and fought manfully. Other soldiers seeing what was going on, and anxious to secure a portion of the coveted sweets, came up, and over went the half-dozen hives. The air was full of enraged insects, which stung men and horses indiscriminately, and which finally put a whole regiment to flight.

The Southern newspapers at this time were "firing the Southern heart," as they phrased it, by picturing the vandalism of the North. Beauregard, on the 5th of June, at Manassas, issued a manifesto addressed "to the people of the counties of Loudon, Fairfax, and Prince William." Thus it read:—

"A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil. Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints, has thrown his abolition hosts among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property, and committing other acts of violence and outrage too shocking and revolting to humanity to be enumerated.

"All rules of civilized warfare are abandoned, and they proclaim by their acts, if not on their banners, that their war cry is 'Beauty and Booty.' All that is dear to man,—your honor, and that of your wives and daughters,—your fortunes and your lives, are involved in this momentous conflict."

In contrast to this fulmination of falsehoods, General McDowell had issued an order on the 2d of June, three days previous, directing officers to transmit statements on the following points:—

"First. The quantity of land taken possession of for the several field-works, and the kind and value of the crops growing thereon, if any. Second. The quantity of land used for the several encampments, and the kind and value of the growing crops, if any. Third. The number, size, and character of the buildings appropriated to public purposes. Fourth. The quantity and value of trees cut down. Fifth. The kind and extent of fencing destroyed. These statements will, as far as possible, give the value of the property taken, or of the damage sustained, and the name or names of the owners."[1]

A portion of the troops bivouacked in an oat-field, where the grain was standing in shocks, and some of the artillerymen appropriated the convenient forage.

The owner was complaining bitterly of the devastations. "They have taken my grain, and I want my pay for it," he said to me.

"Are you a Union man?" I asked.

"I was for the Union till Virginia seceded, and of course had to go with her; but whether I am a Union man or not, the government is bound to respect private property," he replied.

At that moment General Tyler rode past.

"Say, General, ain't you going to pay me for my property which your soldiers destroyed?"

"There is my quartermaster; he will settle it with you."

The man received a voucher for whatever had been taken. The column took up its line of march, passed through a narrow belt of woods, and reached a hill from which Fairfax Court-House was in full view. A Rebel flag was waving over the town. There were two pieces of Rebel artillery in a field, a dozen wagons in park, squads of soldiers in sight, horsemen galloping in all directions. Nearer, in a meadow was a squadron of cavalry on picket. I stood beside Captain (since General) Hawley of Connecticut, commanding the skirmishers.

"Let me take your Sharpe's rifle," said he to a soldier. He rested it on the fence, ran his eye along the barrel, and fired. The nearest Rebel horseman, half a mile distant, slipped from his horse in an instant, and fell upon the ground. It was the first shot fired by the grand army on the march towards Manassas. The other troopers put spurs to their horses and fled towards Fairfax, where a sudden commotion was visible.

"The Rebels are in force just ahead!" said an officer who had advanced a short distance into the woods. "First and second pieces into position," said Captain Varian, commanding a New York battery. The horses leaped ahead, and in a moment the two pieces were pointing toward Fairfax. The future historian, or the traveller wandering over the battle-fields of the Rebellion, who may be curious to know where the first cannon-shots were fired, will find the locality at Flint Hill, at that time the site of a small school-house. The cannon were on either side of the building.

"Load with shell," was the order, and the cartridges went home in an instant.

Standing behind the pieces and looking directly along the road under the shadow of the overhanging trees, I could see the Rebels in a hollow beyond a farm-house. The shells went screaming towards them, and in an instant they disappeared, running into the woods, casting away blankets, haversacks, and other equipments.

The column moved on. The occupants of the house met us with joyful countenances. The good woman, formerly from New Jersey, brought out a pan of milk, at which we took a long pull.

"I can't take pay; it is pay enough to see your countenances," she said.

Turning from Fairfax road the troops moved toward Germantown, north of Fairfax,—a place of six miserable huts, over one of which the Confederate flag was flying. Bonham's brigade of South Carolinians was there. Ayer's battery galloped into position. A shell was sent among them. They were about leaving, having been ordered to retreat by Beauregard. The shell accelerated their movements. Camp equipage, barrels of flour, clothing, entrenching tools, were left behind, and we made ourselves merry over their running.

Those were the days of romance. War was a pastime, a picnic, an agreeable diversion.

A gray-haired old negro came out from his cabin, rolling his eyes and gazing at the Yankees.

"Have you seen any Rebels this morning?" we asked.

"Gosh a'mighty, massa! Dey was here as thick as bees, ges 'fore you cum; but when dat ar bumshell cum screaming among 'em, dey ran as if de Ole Harry was after 'em." All of this, the flight of the Rebels, the negro's story, was exhilarating to the troops, who more than ever felt that the march to Richmond was going to be a nice affair.

On the morning of the 18th the head of the column entered Centreville, once a thrifty place, where travellers from the western counties found convenient rest on their journeys to Washington and Alexandria. Its vitality was gone. The houses were old and poor. Although occupying one of the most picturesque situations in the world, it was in the last stages of decay.

A German met us with a welcome. Negro women peeped at us through the chinks of the walls where the clay had fallen out. At a large two-story house, which in former days reflected the glory of the Old Dominion, sat a man far gone with consumption. He had a pitiful story to tell of his losses by the Rebels.

Here we saw the women of Centreville, so accomplished in the practice of snuff-dipping, filling their teeth and gums with snuff, and passing round the cup with one swab for the company!

Richardson's brigade turned towards Blackburn's ford. Suddenly there was a booming of artillery, followed by a sharp skirmish, which Beauregard in his Report calls the first battle of Manassas. This was in distinction from that fought on the 21st, which is generally known as the battle of Bull Run.

It was a reconnoissance on the part of General Tyler to feel the position of the enemy. It might have been conducted more adroitly, without sacrifice. Under cover of skirmishers and artillery, their positions would have been ascertained; no doubt their batteries could have been carried if suitable arrangements had been made. But the long cannonading brought down hosts of reinforcements from Manassas. And when too late, three or four regiments were ordered down to the support of the Union troops.

The First Massachusetts received the hottest of the fire. One soldier in the thickest of the fight was shot; he passed his musket to his comrade, saying, "It is all right, Bill," and immediately expired. The soldier standing next to Lieutenant-Colonel Wells, received two shots in his arm. He handed his gun to the Colonel, saying, "Here, I can't use it; take it and use it." A great many of the soldiers had their clothes shot through. One had three balls in his coat, but came out unharmed.

As it is not intended that this volume shall be a history of the war, but rather a panorama of it, we must pass briefly in review the first great battle of the war at Bull Run, and the flight to Washington.

The day was calm and peaceful. Everywhere save upon the heights of Centreville and the plains of Manassas it was a day of rest.

"I'll tell you what I heard that day,—
I heard the great guns far away,
Boom after boom!"

Long before sunrise the troops of the attacking column rose from their bivouac and moved away towards the west. The sun had but just risen when Benjamin's batteries were thundering at Blackburn's ford, and Tyler was pressing upon the Stone Bridge. It was past eight o'clock before the first light ripple of musketry was heard at Sudley Springs, where Burnside was turning the left flank of the Rebels. Then came the opening of the cannonade and the increasing roar as regiment after regiment fell into line, and moved southward, through the thickets of pine. Sharp and clear above the musketry rose the cheers of the combatants.

"If you whip us, you will lick ninety thousand men. We have Johnston's army with us. Johnston came yesterday, and a lot more from Richmond," said a prisoner, boastfully.

Onward pressed the Union troops, success attending their arms. The battle was going in our favor. It was a little past three o'clock, when, standing by the broken-down stone bridge which the Rebels had destroyed, I had a full view of the action going on near Mrs. Henry's house. The field beyond the Rebel line was full of stragglers.

Ladies working for the Army.

A correspondent of the Charleston Mercury thus writes of the aspect of affairs in the Rebel lines at that moment:—

"When I entered the field at two o'clock the fortunes of the day were dark. The regiments so badly injured, or wounded and worn, as they staggered out gave gloomy pictures of the scene. We could not be routed, perhaps, but it is doubtful whether we were destined to a victory."

"All seemed about to be lost," wrote the correspondent of the Richmond Dispatch. There was a dust-cloud in the west. I saw it rising over the distant woods, approaching nearer each moment. A few moments later the fatal mistake of Major Barry was made.[2] Griffin and Ricketts could have overwhelmed the newly arrived troops, less than three regiments, with canister. But it was not so to be. One volley from the Rebels, and the tide of affairs was reversed; and the Union army, instead of being victor, was vanquished.

A few moments before the disaster by Mrs. Henry's house, I walked past General Schenck's brigade, which was standing in the road a few rods east of the bridge. A Rebel battery beyond the run was throwing shells, one of which ploughed through the Second Ohio, mangling two soldiers, sprinkling their warm blood upon the greensward.

While drinking at a spring, there was a sudden uproar, a rattling of musketry, and one or two discharges of artillery. Soldiers streamed past, throwing away their guns and equipments. Ayer's battery dashed down the turnpike. A baggage wagon was hurled into the ditch in a twinkling. A hack from Washington, which had brought out a party of Congressmen, was splintered to kindlings. Drivers cut their horses loose and fled in precipitate haste. Instinct is quick to act. There was no time to deliberate, or to obtain information. A swift pace for a half-mile placed me beyond Cub Run, where, standing on a knoll, I had a good opportunity to survey the sight, painful, yet ludicrous to behold. The soldiers, as they crossed the stream, regained their composure and fell into a walk. But the panic like a wave rolled over Centreville to Fairfax. The teamsters of the immense wagon train threw bags of coffee and corn, barrels of beef and pork, and boxes of bread, upon the ground, and fled in terror towards Alexandria. The fright was soon over. The lines at Centreville were in tolerable order when I left that place at five o'clock.

Experience is an excellent teacher, though the tuition is sometimes expensive. There has been no repetition of the scenes of that afternoon during the war. The lesson was salutary. The Rebels on several occasions had the same difficulty. At Fair Oaks, Glendale, and Malvern we now know how greatly demoralized they became. No troops are exempt from the liability of a panic. Old players are not secure from stage fright. The coolest surgeon cannot always control his nerves. The soldiers of the Union in the battle of Bull Run were not cowards. They fought resolutely. The contest was sustained from early in the morning till three in the afternoon. The troops had marched from Centreville. The heat had been intense. Their breakfast was eaten at one o'clock in the morning. They were hungry and parched with thirst, yet they pushed the Rebels back from Sudley Springs, past the turnpike to the hill by Mrs. Henry's.

There is abundant evidence that the Rebels considered the day as lost, when Kirby Smith arrived.

Says the writer in the Richmond Dispatch, alluded to above:—

Smith had about seventeen hundred men instead of four thousand, but he came upon the field in such a manner, that some of the Union officers supposed it was a portion of McDowell's troops. Smith was therefore permitted to take a flanking position within close musket-shot of Rickett's and Griffin's batteries unmolested. One volley, and the victory was changed to defeat. Through chance alone it seemed, but really through Providence, the Rebels won the field. The cavalry charge, of which so much was said at the time, was a feeble affair. The panic began the moment that Smith opened upon Ricketts and Griffin. The cavalry did not advance till the army was in full retreat.

It is laughable to read the accounts of the battle published in the Southern papers. The Richmond Dispatch has a letter written from Manassas 23d July, which has throughout evidences of candor, and yet this writer says, "We have captured sixty-seven pieces of artillery," while we had only thirty-eight guns on the field. Most necromancers have the ability to produce hens' eggs without number from a mysterious bag, but how they could capture sixty-seven pieces of cannon, when McDowell had but thirty-eight, is indeed remarkable. The same writer asserts that we carried into action the Palmetto State and the Confederate flags.

Here is the story of a wonderful cannon-ball. Says the writer: "A whole regiment of the enemy appeared in sight, going at double-quick down the Centreville road. Major Walton immediately ordered another shot. With the aid of our glass we could see them about two miles off. There was no obstruction, and the whole front of the regiment was exposed. One half were seen to fall, and if General Johnston had not at that moment sent an order to cease firing, nearly the whole regiment would have been killed!" The half that did not fall ought to be grateful to Major Walton for not firing a second shot. The writer says in conclusion: "Thus did fifteen thousand men, with eighteen pieces of artillery, drive back ingloriously a force exceeding thirty-five thousand, supported by nearly one hundred pieces of cannon. We have captured nine hundred prisoners, sixty-seven pieces of cannon, Armstrong guns and rifled cannon, hundreds of wagons, loads of provisions and ammunition."

One writer asserted that thirty-two thousand pairs of handcuffs were taken, designed for Rebel prisoners! This absurd statement was believed throughout the South. In January, 1862, while in Kentucky, I met a Southern lady who declared that it must be true, for she had seen a pair of the handcuffs!

The war on the part of the North was undertaken to uphold the Constitution and the Union, but the battle of Bull Run set men to thinking. Four days after the battle, in Washington I met one who all his lifetime had been a Democrat, standing stanchly by the South till the attack on Sumter. Said he: "I go for liberating the niggers. We are fighting on a false issue. The negro is at the bottom of the trouble. The South is fighting for the negro, and nothing else. They use him to defeat us, and we shall be compelled to use him to defeat them."

These sentiments were gaining ground. General Butler had retained the negroes who came into his camp, calling them "contraband of war." Men were beginning to discuss the propriety of not only retaining, but of seizing, the slaves of those who were in arms against the government. The Rebels were using them in the construction of fortifications. Why not place them in the category with gunpowder, horses, and cattle? The reply was, "We must respect the Union people of the South." But where were the Union people?

There were some in Western Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri; but very few in Eastern Virginia. At Centreville there was one man in the seedy village who said he was for the Union: he was a German. At a farm-house just out of the village, I found an old New-Yorker, who was for the Union; but the mass of the people, men, women, and children, had fled,—their minds poisoned with tales of the brutality of Northern soldiers. The mass of the people bore toward their few neighbors, who still stood for the Union, a most implacable hatred. I recall the woebegone look which overspread the countenance of a good woman at Vienna on Sunday night, when, as she gave me a draught of milk, I made a plain, candid statement of the disaster which had befallen our army. Her husband had been a friend to the Federal army, had given up his house for officers' quarters; had suffered at the hands of the Rebels; had once been obliged to flee, leaving his wife and family of six children, all of tender age, and the prospect was gloomy. He had gone to bed, to forget in sleep, if possible, the crushing blow. It was near midnight, but the wife and mother could not sleep. She was awake to every approaching footstep, heard every sound, knowing that within a stone's throw of the dwelling there were those, in former times fast friends, who now would be among the first to hound her and her little ones from the place; and why? because they loved the Union!

What had produced this bitterness? There could be but one answer,—Slavery. It was clear that, sooner or later, the war would become one of emancipation,—freedom to the slave of every man found in arms against the government, or in any way aiding or abetting treason. How seductive, how tyrannical this same monster Slavery!

Three years before the war, a young man, born and educated among the mountains of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, graduating at Williams College, visited Washington, and called upon Mr. Dawes, member of Congress from Massachusetts, to obtain his influence in securing a position at the South as a teacher. Mr. Dawes knew the young man, son of a citizen of high standing, respected not only as a citizen, but in the highest branch of the Legislature of the State in former times, and gladly gave his influence to obtain the situation. A few days after the battle Mr. Dawes visited the Old Capitol prison to see the prisoners which had been brought in. To his surprise he found among them the young man from Berkshire, wearing the uniform of a Rebel.

"How could you find it in your heart to fight against the flag of your country, to turn your back upon your native State, and the institutions under which you have been trained?" he asked. "I didn't want to fight against the flag, but I was compelled to."

"How compelled?"

"Why, you see, they knew I was from the North; and if I hadn't enlisted, the ladies would have presented me with a petticoat."

He expressed himself averse to taking the oath of allegiance. It was only when allusion was made to his parents—the poignant grief which would all but break his mother's heart, were she to hear of him as a soldier in the traitors' lines,—that he gave way, and his eyes filled with tears. He could turn against his country, his State, the institutions of freedom, because his heart was in the South, because he had dreaded the finger of scorn which would have cowed him with a petticoat, but he could not blot out the influence of a mother's love, a mother's patriotism. He had not lived long enough under the hot breath of the simoom to have all the early associations withered and crisped. The mention of "mother" made him a child again.

With him was another Massachusetts man, who had been South many years, and who was more intensely Southern than himself. Another young man, a South Carolinian, was a law student in Harvard College when his State seceded. He went home to enlist. "If it had not been for the war I should now be taking my degree," said he. He was rejoicing over the result of the battle.

Slavery is not only tyrannical, but it is corrupting to morals. The Secessionists of St. Joseph, Missouri, in their eagerness to precipitate a Kansas regiment to destruction, burned a bridge on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, a few miles east of St. Joseph. The train left the city at three o'clock in the morning, and reached the bridge before daybreak. The regiment was not on board, and instead of destroying a thousand Union soldiers, a large number of the citizens of St. Joseph,—with women and children, friends and neighbors of the Secessionists,—were plunged into the abyss!

The action of these Missouri barbarians was applauded by the Secessionists of Washington. A friend came into my room late one evening in great excitement. "What is the matter?"

"I am sick at heart," said he, "at what I have heard. I called upon some of my female acquaintances to-night. I knew that they were Secessionists, but did not think that they were so utterly corrupt as I find them to be. They are refined, intelligent, and have moved in the first society of Washington. They boldly declared that it was justifiable to destroy that railroad train in Missouri; that it is right to poison wells, or violate oaths of allegiance, to help on the cause of the South!"

The bitterness of the women of the South during the Rebellion is a strange phenomenon, without a parallel in history. For the women of Ireland, who in the rebellion of '98 cut off the heads of English residents, and chopped up their victims by piecemeal, were from the bogs and fens,—one remove only from the beasts; but these women of the South lay claims to a superior culture. It is one thing to be devoted heart and soul to a cause, but it is quite another to advance it at the cost of civilization, Christianity, and the womanly virtues.

The assertion that all women of the South thus gave themselves over to do wickedly, would be altogether too sweeping; a large portion may be included. Mrs. Greenhow and Belle Boyd have written out some of their exploits and machinations for the overthrow of the Union. With them, a false oath or any measure of deceit, was praiseworthy, if it would but aid the Secession cause. They are fair representatives of the females of the South.