BULL RUN.
Taking the train at Washington, and crossing the long railroad bridge
which spans the Potomac, I entered again a portion of Virginia rendered
celebrated and desolate by war.
Running down to Alexandria, and making a short stop there, we rattled on
towards Manassas. All the names throughout that region are historical,
stamped and re-stamped upon the memory of America by the burning brand
of war. The brakeman bawls in at the door of the car words which start
you with a thrill of recollection. The mind goes back through four fiery
years of conflict to the campaign of ’61, until it grows bewildered, in
doubt whether that contest or this journey is unreal,—for surely one
must be a dream! That first season of disaster and dismay, which
associated the names of Fairfax Court House, Centreville, Bull Run,
Manassas, with something infinitely horrible and fatal, had passed away
like a cloud; the storm of the subsequent year, still more terrible,
except that we had grown accustomed to such, had also passed, dissolving
in thin vapor of history; and one would never have guessed that such
things had been, but for the marks of the wrath of heaven, which had
left the country scathed as with hailstones and coals of fire.
Yes, those skirmishes and dire contests were realities; and now this
quiet journey, this commonplace mode of travel into what was then the
“enemy’s country,” with hot-blooded Virginians (now looking cool enough)
sitting upon the seats next us, and conversing tamely and even
pleasantly with us when we accosted them,—no murderous masked batteries
in front, no guerrillas in the woods waiting to attack the train; in
short, no danger threatening but the vulgar one of railroad disasters,
of late become so common; this too was a reality no less wonderful,
contrasted with the late rampant days of Rebel defiance.
From Alexandria to Manassas Junction it is twenty-seven miles. Through
all that distance we saw no signs of human industry, save here and there
a sickly, half-cultivated cornfield, which looked as if it had been put
in late, and left to pine in solitude. There were a few wood-lots still
left standing; but the country for the most part consisted of fenceless
fields abandoned to weeds, stump-lots, and undergrowths.
“Manassas Junction!” announced the brakeman; and we alighted. A more
forbidding locality can scarcely be imagined. I believe there were a
number of houses and shops there before the war, but they were
destroyed, and two or three rum-shanties had lately sprung up in their
place. A row of black bottles, ranged on a shelf under a rudely
constructed shed, were the first signs I saw of a reviving civilization.
Near by a new tavern was building, of so fragile and thin a shell, it
seemed as if the first high wind must blow it down. I also noticed some
negroes digging a well; for such are the needs of an advancing
civilization: first rum, then a little water to put into it. All around
was a desolate plain, slightly relieved from its dreary monotony by two
or three Rebel forts overgrown with weeds.
A tall young member of the Western press accompanied me. I went to a
stable to secure a conveyance to the battle-field; and, returning, found
him seated on the steps of one of the “Refreshment Saloons,” engaged in
lively conversation with a red-faced and excitable young stranger. The
latter was speaking boastingly of “our army.”
“Which army do you mean? for there were two, you know,” said my friend.
“I mean the Confederate army, the best and bravest army that ever was!”
said he of the red face, emphatically.
“It seems to me,” remarked my friend, “the best and bravest army that
ever was got pretty badly whipped.”
“The Confederate army never was whipped! We were overpowered.”
“I see you Southern gentlemen have a new word. With us, when a man goes
into a fight and comes out second best, the condition he is in is
vulgarly called _whipped_.”
“We were overpowered by numbers!” ejaculated the Rebel. “Your army was
three times as big as ours.”
“That’s nothing, for you know one Southerner was equal to five Yankees.”
“And so he is, and always will be! But you had to get the niggers to
help you.”
“What are a few niggers? They would always run, you know, at sight of
their masters, while of course such a thing was never known as their
masters running from them!”
The unhappy member of the “overpowered” party flushed and fumed a while,
not knowing what answer to make, then burst forth,—
“It was the foreigners! You never would have beaten us if it hadn’t been
for the foreigners that made up your armies!”
“What!” said my friend, “you, an American, acknowledge yourself beaten
by foreigners! I am ashamed of you!”
And the wagon arriving, he jumped into it with a laugh, leaving the
Southerner, not whipped of course, but decidedly “overpowered” in this
little contest of wit. It was quite evident that he was not equal to
five Yankees with his tongue.
“That young fellow you was talking with,” said our driver, “was one of
Mosby’s guerrillas. There are plenty of them around here. They are
terrible at talking, but that is about all.”
The wagon was an ambulance which had cost the government two hundred and
fifty dollars a few months before. The springs proving inferior, it was
condemned, and sold at auction for twenty-four dollars. “I paid a
hundred and twenty-five for it the next day,” said the driver; “and it’s
well worth the money.” It was a strong, heavy, well-built vehicle, well
suited to his business. “I was down here with my regiment when I got my
discharge, and it struck me something might be made by taking visitors
out to the battle-fields. But I haven’t saved a cent at it yet;
passengers are few, and it’s mighty hard business, the roads are so
awful bad.”
Worse roads are not often seen in a civilized country. “It makes me mad
to see people drive over and around these bad places, month after month,
and never think of mending ’em! A little work with a shovel would save
no end of lost time, and wear and tear, and broken wagons; but it’s
never done.”
The original country roads had passed into disuse; and, the fences being
destroyed, only the curious parallel lines of straggling bushes and
trees that grew beside them remained to mark their course. Necessity and
convenience had struck out new roads winding at will over the fenceless
farms. We crossed thinly wooded barrens, skirted old orchards, and
passed now and then a standing chimney that marked the site of some
ruined homestead; up-hill and down-hill, rocking, rattling, jolting, and
more than once nearly upsetting. I remember not more than three or four
inhabited houses on our route. In a wild field near the shelter of some
woods was a village of half-ruined huts, interesting as having served in
wartime as Rebel winter-quarters. At last, eight miles north from the
Junction, we reached the scene of the first battle of Bull Run.
This was the plateau, from which our almost victorious forces had driven
and re-driven the enemy, when Johnston’s reinforcements, arriving by the
railroad which runs obliquely towards the Junction on the west, changed
what was so nearly a triumph for our arms into a frightful disaster. The
ground is well described in Beauregard’s official report. “It is
enclosed on three sides by small watercourses which empty into Bull Run
within a few rods of each other, half a mile to the south of Stone
Bridge. Rising to an elevation of quite one hundred feet above Bull Run
at the bridge, it falls off on three sides to the level of the enclosing
streams in gentle slopes, but which are furrowed by ravines of irregular
direction and length, and studded with clumps and patches of young pines
and oaks.”... “Completely surrounding the two houses before mentioned
are small open fields of irregular outline, and exceeding one hundred
and fifty acres in extent. The houses, occupied at the time, the one by
Widow Henry, the other by the free negro Robinson, are small wooden
buildings densely embowered in trees and environed by a double row of
fences on two sides. Around the eastern and southern brow of the plateau
an almost unbroken fringe of second growth of pines gave excellent
shelter for our marksmen, who availed themselves of it with the most
satisfactory skill. To the west, adjoining the fields, a broad belt of
oaks extends directly across the crest, on both sides of the Sudley
road, in which, during the battle, regiments of both armies met and
contended for the mastery. From the open ground of this plateau the view
embraces a wide expanse of woods and gently undulating open country of
broad grass and grain fields in all directions.”
Such was the appearance of the battle-field on that memorable
twenty-first of July, four years before my visit. In its external
features I found it greatly changed. Many of the trees had been cut
away. Every fence had disappeared. Where had waved the fields of grass
and grain, extended one vast, neglected, barren tract of country. The
widow’s humble abode had been swept away. The widow herself was killed
by a chance shot on the day of the battle. A little picket fence
surrounding her grave was the only enclosure visible to us in all that
region. Close by were the foundations of her house, a small square space
run up to tallest weeds. Some of the poor woman’s hollyhocks still
survived, together with a few scattered and lonesome-looking peach-trees
cut with balls. The hollyhocks were in bloom, and the peaches were ripe:
a touching sight to me, who could see the haunting figure of the poor
widow looking at the favorite blossoms from her door, or returning from
the trees to the house with her apron full of the fruit, which appeared
duly year after year to comfort her, until at last she was no longer
there needing earthly comfort. We were not past that material necessity,
however; and the poor woman’s peaches comforted us this year.
Within a few yards of the spot where her house was, on the summit of the
eminence, stands a pyramidal monument of rough red sandstone, bearing
this inscription:—
IN
MEMORY
OF THE
PATRIOTS
WHO FELL AT
BULL RUN
JULY 21st, 1861.
This shaft, another inscription tells us, was erected June 10th, 1865.
There it stands on the “sacred soil,” recalling to the proud sons of
Virginia many things. To them, and to all Americans, it has a grand and
deep significance beyond anything words can convey. There it stands, a
silent preacher, with its breast of stone, and its austere face of
stone, preaching inaudible stern lessons. Bull Run may be called the
Bunker Hill of the last revolution. It was the prologue of disaster to
the far-off final triumph. Well fought at first, we had almost won the
day, when, fresh troops pressing us, came the crushing defeat and
horrible panic which filled the whole loyal North with dismay and the
whole rebel South with exultation. Then how many a patriot heart fell
sick with despair, and doubtingly murmured, “Does God still live? and is
there after all an overruling Power?”
Look at that monument to-day. Where now is the triumph of the dark
cause? Where now is the haughty slave empire whose eternal foundations
were deemed established by that victory? Where is the banner of Freedom
trailed so low, all torn and blood-stained, in the dust? God lives!
There is an overruling Power that never sleeps; patient, foreseeing what
we cannot see, and, in sublime knowledge of the end, tolerating the
wrath of the unrighteous and the arrogance of the unjust. The day of
victory for freedom had not yet come; for triumph then would have been
but half triumph. Temporary success to the bad cause was necessary to
draw it irretrievably into the currents of destruction.
Moreover, struggle and long agony were needful to this nation.
Frivolous, worldly, imitating other nations; nourishing in the very
bosom of the Republic the serpent of a barbarous despotism; in our
heedlessness and hurry giving no ear to the cries of the oppressed; we
needed the baptism of blood and the awful lessons of loss to bring us
back to sanity and soberness. The furnace of civil war was indispensable
to fuse conflicting elements, and to pour the molten materials of the
diverse States into the single mould of one mighty and masterful Nation.
In order that it might take the lead of all the proud banners on the
globe, our flag must first be humbled, and win its way through dust and
battle-smoke to the eminence above all eminences of earthly power, where
it is destined at last to float.
There seems to have been something fatal to our armies in the mere name
of Bull Run. The visitor to the scene of the first disaster is already
on the field of the second. The battles of the subsequent year, fought
on a more stupendous scale, and sweeping over a vast area, included
within their scope the hills on which we were standing.
To reach the scene of the principal contest in 1862, however, an advance
of a mile or two had to be made. We rode on to a piece of woods, in the
shade of which we halted, surrounded by marks of shot and shell in the
timber, and by soldiers’ graves lying lonely among the trees, with many
a whitened bone scattered about or protruding. There, it being mid-day,
we partook of luncheon sauced with Widow Henry’s peaches.
On the west of us was a large stony field sloping up to a wood-crowned
height,—a field strown thick with dead in those sanguinary days of ’62.
The woods in which we were, extended around the north side of it also,
forming a connection with the woods beyond. Making the circuit of this
shady boundary, we reached the crest, which, strengthened greatly by an
unfinished railroad track cut through it, afforded the enemy their most
formidable position during the second Bull Run battle.
At the summit of the open field stands another monument, similar to that
we had first seen, dedicated to the “Memory of the Patriots who fell at
Groverton, August 28th, 29th, and 30th, 1862.” This inscription had been
mutilated by some Rebel hand, and made to read “Confederate Patriots”;
but my tall friend, arming himself with a stone, stepped upon the
pedestal, amid the black rows of shells surrounding it, and resolutely
ground the offensive word out of the tablet.
Groverton, which has given the field its name, is a little cluster of
three or four buildings lying out west of it on the turnpike.
There are two or three points of striking resemblance between the first
and second battles of Bull Run. At one time almost a victory, this also
proved at last a defeat; and again the North was filled with
consternation at seeing the barrier of its armies broken, and the
country laid open to the foe. After the first Bull Run, the Rebels might
have entered Washington almost without opposition. After the second,
they did invade Maryland, getting as far as Antietam. It is also a
circumstance worthy of note, that in each fight the victory might have
been rendered complete, but for the failure of an important command to
perform the part assigned it. General Patterson remained inert at
Winchester, while Johnston, whom it was his business to look after,
hastened to reinforce Beauregard and turn the scale of battle. At the
second Bull Run, General Porter’s neglect to obey the orders of General
Pope wrought incalculable mischief, and contributed similarly to change
the opening successes into final discomfiture.
Lastly the lesson taught by both disasters is the same: that the triumph
of a bad cause is but illusory and transient; while for the cause which
moves duly in the divine currents of human progress there can be no
failure, for, though tossed and buffeted, and seemingly wrecked, its
keel is in the eternal waters, the winds of heaven fill its sails, and
the hand of the Great Pilot is at the helm.
Returning, we stopped at the “stone house” near the first battle-field,
in hopes of getting some personal information from the inhabitants. They
were present during the fight, and the outer walls show enduring marks
of the destructive visits of cannon-shot. The house was formerly a
tavern, and the man who kept it was one of those two-faced farmers,
Secessionists at heart, but always loyal to the winning side. By working
well his political weathercock, he had managed to get his house through
the storm, although in a somewhat dismantled condition. The bar-room was
as barren as the intellect of the owner. The only thing memorable we
obtained there was some most extraordinary cider. This the proprietor
was too proud to sell, or else the pretence that it belonged to the “old
nigger” was nearer the truth than my tall friend was willing to admit.
At all events, the “old nigger” brought it in, and received pay for it
besides, evidently contrary to his expectations, and to the
disappointment of the landlord.
“Uncle, what sort of cider is this? how did you make it?” For neither of
us had ever tasted anything resembling it before, nor did we wish ever
to taste its like again.
Uncle, standing in the door, with one foot on the threshold, ducking and
grinning, one hand holding his old cap, and the other his knee, after
earnest urging, told us the secret.
“Dat cidah, sah, I made out o’ peaches and apples mixed, ’bout half and
half. Dat’s what makes it taste cur’us.”
“Oh, but that’s not all, uncle; you put water in it! You meant to cheat
us, I see, with your miscegenated cider and water!”
Uncle did not exactly understand the nature of this charge, but
evidently thought it something serious.
“No, no, gentlemen, I didn’t do it for roguishness! I put in de peaches
’case dar wasn’t apples enough. I pounded ’em up wid a pestle in a
barrel. Den I put a stake under de house corner wid rocks on to it for a
press. I put de water in to make de juice come easier, it was so dry!”
Having learned his method of manufacturing cider, we inquired his
opinion of the war.
“Didn’t you think, Uncle, the white folks were great fools to kill each
other the way they did?” said my friend.
“’Twouldn’t do for me to say so; dey was old enough, and ageable enough,
to know best; but I couldn’t help tink’n sah!”
Returning to the Junction, I saw a very different type of the Virginia
negro: an old man of seventy, who conversed intelligently, but in a
strangely quiet and subdued tone, which bespoke long suffering and great
patience. He had been a free man seven years, he told me; but he had a
brother who still served the man he belonged to.
“But he, too, is free now,” I said. “Don’t he receive wages?”
The old man shook his head sadly. “There’s nothing said about wages to
any of our people in this part of the country. They don’t dare to ask
for them, and their owners will hold them as they used to as long as
they can. They are very sharp with us now. If a man of my color dared to
say what he thought, it would be all his life was worth!”