First Battle of Bull Run

Background

The war was three months old. After the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 militia, and the volunteers who answered had enlisted for only 90 days. Northern opinion demanded a march on Richmond, about 100 miles south of Washington, in the belief that one battle would end the rebellion. Winfield Scott, the 75-year-old general-in-chief, preferred to train the army and squeeze the South with a blockade and a campaign down the Mississippi, a scheme mocked as the "Anaconda Plan". Lincoln overruled him.

Command of the field army went to Irvin McDowell, a West Point graduate with little experience of command, promoted three grades to brigadier general with Salmon Chase's backing and given the army on 27 May. Facing him behind Bull Run, a stream west of Centreville, was P. G. T. Beauregard, guarding Manassas Junction, where two railways met on the best overland route to Richmond. In the Shenandoah Valley, Robert Patterson's Union force was to hold Joseph E. Johnston's Confederate army in place.

McDowell marched on 16 July with about 35,000 men. On 18 July Tyler's division was checked in a skirmish at Blackburn's Ford, and McDowell spent two days scouting a way round the Confederate left. Those days were decisive. Beauregard knew he was coming, helped by messages from the Washington socialite Rose O'Neal Greenhow. Johnston left Winchester around noon on 18 July, screened by J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry, while Patterson reported that he had kept Johnston at Winchester. Johnston's brigades marched to Piedmont Station and rode the single-track Manassas Gap Railroad to the junction, one trainload at a time, arriving between 19 and 21 July. The move is often called the first use of railways to carry troops to a battle.

The armies

McDowell's Army of Northeastern Virginia had five divisions: Tyler's four brigades (Schenck, Keyes, Sherman and Richardson), Hunter's two (Porter and Burnside), Heintzelman's three (Franklin, Willcox and Howard), Miles's two (Blenker and Davies) and Runyon's New Jersey regiments, left in the rear. Its return showed about 35,700 men, but only about 18,000 fought. Nearly all were 90-day volunteers, and the army was largely untrained above the level of the regiment; Porter's battalion of regulars was its steadiest infantry. Its artillery was mostly rifled, which served well at range but less well at the close quarters of Henry Hill.

The Confederates were just as green. Beauregard's Army of the Potomac, about 22,000 strong, held the fords from the Stone Bridge downstream in seven brigades, including Holmes's reserve. Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah, 10,000 to 12,000 men in the brigades of Jackson, Bee, Bartow and Kirby Smith, came in by rail. Johnston was the senior officer but left the battlefield to Beauregard while he forwarded reinforcements. Again, about 18,000 actually fought.

Neither side had settled its uniforms. Many men wore local or civilian clothing, some Confederates wore blue and some Federals grey, and the 11th New York wore Zouave fezzes and red trousers. In the smoke friend and foe were hard to tell apart, and the two sides' flags were also confused, which later gave rise to the Confederate battle flag.

The battle

CDB90 treats the day as a single engagement (171), from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Plans and the flank march (2.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m.). McDowell meant Tyler to demonstrate at the Stone Bridge, where the Warrenton Turnpike crossed Bull Run, and Richardson's brigade at Blackburn's Ford, while Hunter's and Heintzelman's divisions marched north to Sudley Springs Ford, crossed beyond the Confederate left and rolled up the line from behind. Beauregard, for his part, planned to attack from his right towards Centreville. The Union flank column set off at 2.30 a.m. but was held up behind Tyler's division on the turnpike, and its leading troops, Burnside's brigade, did not cross at Sudley until about 9.30. Union guns opened at first light: Richardson's fired across Mitchell's Ford at 5.15, some shells landing at Beauregard's headquarters, and a 30-pounder Parrott at the Stone Bridge at about 5.30 is usually counted as the opening shot. Beauregard's attack orders went astray. At about 9 a.m. the signal officer Edward Porter Alexander saw the flanking column and signalled Colonel Nathan Evans, who held the Stone Bridge with about 900 men, to look out for his left. Evans took most of his brigade north to Matthews Hill.

Matthews Hill (10 a.m. to 11.30 a.m.). Evans, helped by a spoiling attack from Wheat's Louisiana Tigers, met Burnside's New Englanders on Matthews Hill. Bee and Bartow brought up their brigades, raising the line to about 2,800 men, and the fight went on for nearly two hours, with regiments from eight states engaged. Sherman's brigade then found an unguarded ford above the Stone Bridge and struck the Confederate right. Shortly after 11.30 the Confederate line broke and fell back across the turnpike to Henry Hill. McDowell halted.

Henry Hill (noon to 4 p.m.). Jackson's Virginia brigade, about 2,500 men, reached the hill around noon. While Hampton's Legion bought time, Jackson posted his five regiments on the reverse slope and 13 guns on the crest, and Johnston and Beauregard rallied the broken brigades around him. Here Bee, rallying his men, is said to have pointed to Jackson as standing like a stone wall; his words and meaning are uncertain (see Aftermath). Bee was mortally wounded soon after.

At about 2 to 2.30 p.m. McDowell ordered the batteries of Captains James Ricketts and Charles Griffin, 11 guns, forward onto Henry Hill, against their objections, to within about 300 yards of Jackson's guns. Judith Henry, an 85-year-old widow, was mortally wounded by Union fire at her house. At about 3 p.m. the 33rd Virginia, in blue, came at Griffin's flank; Union officers mistook it for their own and held fire, and two of Griffin's guns were overrun. Stuart's cavalry charged the 11th New York. McDowell fed 13 regiments into attacks on the hill, and Ricketts's guns changed hands three times.

Chinn Ridge and collapse (3 p.m. to 5 p.m.). Howard's brigade advanced on Chinn Ridge, the Union right, at about 3 p.m. At about 4 p.m. Jubal Early's brigade, brought over from the Confederate right, and Kirby Smith's brigade, among the last of Johnston's men to arrive and led by Arnold Elzey after Smith was wounded, struck Howard and crushed him, while two of Cocke's regiments drove the last Federals off Henry Hill. By 5 p.m. McDowell's army was dissolving.

The rout. The withdrawal began in order and turned into panic. A wagon overturned on the Cub Run bridge, and guns, among them the 30-pounder Parrott, and hundreds of prisoners were lost. Spectators from Washington, senators and congressmen among them, were caught in the stampede; Congressman Alfred Ely, who had strayed close to Bull Run, was captured by the 8th South Carolina. Stuart's small pursuit achieved little, and a thrust by Bonham and Longstreet towards Centreville was called off under fire from the Union rearguard. By daybreak on 22 July the army was back behind the Washington defences.

Aftermath

McDowell lost about 2,900 men (460 killed, 1,124 wounded and 1,312 missing or captured, in the usual count) and the Confederates about 1,980 (387, 1,582 and 13). It was the bloodiest American battle to that date. Bartow was killed, the first Confederate brigade commander to fall, and Bee died the next day.

On 22 July Lincoln signed a bill for 500,000 more men, enlisted for up to three years. Within a week McDowell was replaced by George B. McClellan, who began to build the Army of the Potomac, and a congressional committee later blamed Patterson's failure to hold Johnston. Jefferson Davis, who reached the field during the retreat and urged pursuit, wired Richmond of "a glorious but dear-bought victory"; Beauregard was made a full general. Ethan Rafuse sees the battle's main effect in convincing both sides that the war would be longer and costlier than they had expected; David Detzer calls it a wake-up call to optimists such as Seward and Lincoln.

The best-known legacy is an uncertain nickname. Bee left no account of his words, and versions differ. The admiring one, "Look, men, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall!", was in print in South Carolina by December 1861; another has Bee cursing Jackson for standing still while Bee's men were driven back. "Stonewall" stuck to Jackson and his brigade. The picnicking crowds of legend are also partly myth: most spectators stayed on Centreville Heights, about five miles away, and Judith Henry was the only civilian killed.

Wargaming it

First Bull Run is a one-day battle on a compact field: rolling, mixed farmland and woods west of Bull Run, cut by the Warrenton Turnpike, with Matthews Hill, Henry Hill and Chinn Ridge as the key heights and only the Stone Bridge and a few fords to cross by. It suits a brigade-level game with regiments as units; with about 18,000 men engaged on each side, the whole day fits an evening.

The rules should punish inexperience: slow and unreliable orders, regiments that halt or break easily, poor coordination above brigade. Uniform confusion is the signature mechanic: let units risk holding fire on an enemy they take for friends, as Griffin's gunners did with the 33rd Virginia, or firing on their own side, as befell the grey-clad 2nd Wisconsin. Rifled Union guns should be strong at range and lose their edge at close quarters.

The game is a race. The Union player must turn the flank and take Henry Hill before Johnston's trains deliver brigades to the field; make the Confederate reinforcements variable, with Kirby Smith's and Early's brigades arriving late against the open Union right. The Confederate player starts thin, with Evans's 900 men alone facing the flank column, and must trade ground for time.

What ifs: Patterson holds Johnston in the Valley; the flank march starts on time; Beauregard's attack towards Centreville goes in as planned; McDowell keeps his batteries back from Henry Hill; a vigorous Confederate pursuit. The retreat could make a short second scenario.

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