Recollections of a Private, Part I

Before the war had really begun I enlisted. I had read the papers, and attended the flag-raisings, and heard orators declaim of "undying" devotion to the Union." One speaker to whom I listened declared that "human life must be cheapened," but I never learned that he helped on the work experimentally. When men by the hundred walked soberly and deliberately to the front and signed the enlistment papers, he didn't show any inclination that way. As I came out of the hall with conflicting emotions, feeling as though I should have to go finally or forfeit my birthright as an American citizen, one of the orators who stood at the door, glowing with enthusiasm and patriotism, and shaking hands effusively with those who enlisted, said to me "Did you enlist ?" "No," I said. "Did you ?" "No; they wont take me. I have got a lame leg and a widowed mother to take care of." Another enthusiast I remember, who was eager to enlist -- others. He declared the family of no man who went to the front should suffer. After the war he was prominent among those in our town who at town meeting voted to refund the money to such as had expended it to procure substitutes during the war. He has, moreover, been fierce and uncompromising toward the ex-Confederates since the war closed, and I have heard him repeatedly express the wish that all the civil and general officers of the late Confederacy might be court-martialed and shot.

A soldier of 1861, 14th New York

"Cold chills" ran up and down my back as I got out of bed after the sleepless night, and shaved, preparatory to other desperate deeds of valor. I was twenty years of age, and when anything unusual was to be done, like fighting or courting, I shaved. With a nervous tremor convulsing my whole system and my heart thumping like muffled drum-beats, I stood before the door of the recruiting-office, and, before turning the knob to enter, read and re-read the advertisement for recruits posted thereon, until I knew all its peculiarities. The promised chances for "travel and promotion" seemed good, and I thought I might have made a mistake in considering war so serious, after all. "Chances for travel!" I must confess now, after four years of soldiering, that the "chances for travel" were no myth. But "promotion" was a little uncertain and slow.

I was in no hurry to open the door. Though determined to enlist, I was half inclined to put it off awhile; I had a fluctuation of desires; I was faint-hearted and brave; I wanted to enlist, and yet --. Here I turned the knob, and was relieved. I had been more prompt, with all my hesitation, than the officer in his duty; he wasn't in. Finally he came, and said: "What do you want, my boy?" "I want to enlist," I responded, blushing deeply with upwelling patriotism and bashfulness. Then the surgeon came to strip, and examine me. In justice to myself, it must be stated that I signed the rolls without a tremor. It is common to the most of humanity, I believe, that, when confronted with actual danger, men have less fear than in its contemplation. I will, however, make one exception in favor of the first shell I heard uttering its hoarse anathema and its blood-curdling hisses, as though a steam locomotive were traveling the air. With this exception I have found danger always less terrible face to face than on the night before the battle.

My first uniform was a bad fit: my trowsers were too long by three or four inches; the flannel shirt was coarse and unpleasant, too large at the neck and too short elsewhere. The forage cap was an ungainly bag with pasteboard top and leather visor; the blouse was the only part which seemed decent; while the overcoat made me feel like a little nib of corn amid a preponderance of husk. -- Nothing except "Virginia mud" ever took down my ideas of military pomp quite so low.

After enlisting I didn't seem of so much consequence as I expected. There was not so much excitement on account of my military appearance as I deemed justly my due. I was taught my facings, and at the time I thought the drill-master needlessly fussy about shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms. The musket, after an hour's drill, seemed heavier and less ornamental than it had looked to be. The first day I went out to drill, getting tired of doing the same things over and over, I said to the drill-sergeant: "Let's stop this fooling and go over to the grocery." His only reply was addressed to a corporal: "Corporal, take this man out and drill him like h-1; " and the corporal did. I found that suggestions were not as well appreciated in the army as in private life, and that no wisdom was equal to a drill-master's "Right face," "Left wheel," and "Right, oblique, march." It takes a raw recruit some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. Some never do learn. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough. Yet I doubt if my patriotism, during my first three weeks' drill, was quite knee high. Drilling looks easy to a spectator, but it isn't. Old soldiers who read this will remember their green recruithood and smile assent. After a time I had cut down my uniform so that I could see out of it, and had conquered the drill sufficiently to see through it. Then the word came: On to Washington!

Our company was quartered at a large hotel near the railway station in the town in which it was recruited. Bunks had been fitted up within a part of the hotel but little used. We took our meals at the regular hotel table, and found fault with the style. Six months later we should have considered ourselves aristocratic to have slept in the hotel stables with the meal-bin for a dining-table. There was great excitement one morning at the report that we were going to be sent to the front. Most of us obtained a limited pass and went to see our friends for the last time, returning the same night. All our schoolmates and home acquaintances "came slobbering around camp," as one of the boys ungraciously expressed it. We bade adieu to our friends with heavy hearts, and lightly as I may here seem to treat the subject, it was no light thing for a boy of twenty to start out for three years into the unknown dangers of a civil war. Our mothers -- God bless them! -- had brought us something good to eat, -- pies, cakes, doughnuts, and jellies. It was one way in which a mother's heart found utterance. Our young ladies (sisters, of course) brought an invention, generally made of leather or cloth, containing needles, pins, thread, buttons, and scissors, so that nearly every recruit had an embryo tailor's shop -- with the goose outside. One old lady, in the innocence of her heart, brought her son an umbrella. We did not see anything particularly laughable about it at the time, but our old drill-sergeant did. Finally we were ready to move; our tears were wiped away, our buttons were polished, and our muskets were as bright as emery-paper could make them. How our buttons and muskets did shine! We were brilliant there, if nowhere else.

"Wad" Rider, a member of our company, had come from a neighboring state to enlist with us. He was about eighteen years of age, red-headed, freckled-faced, good-natured, and rough, with a wonderful aptitude for crying or laughing from sympathy. Another comrade, whom I will call Jack, was honored with a call from his mother, a little woman, hardly reaching up to Jack's shoulder, with s sweet, motherly, careworn face. At the last moment, though she had tried hard to preserve her composure, as is the habit of New England people, she threw her arms around her boy's neck, and with an outburst of sobbing and crying, said: "My dear boy, my dear boy, what wili your poor old mother do without you? You are going to fight for your country. Don't forget your mother, Jack; God bless you, God bless you! " We felt as if the mother's tears and blessing were a benediction over us all. There was a touch of nature in her homely sorrow and solicitude over her big boy, which drew tears of sympathy from my eyes as I thought of my own sorrowing mother at home. The sympathetic Wad Rider burst into tears and sobs. His eyes refused, as he expressed it, to "dry up," until, as we were moving off, Jack's 'mother, rushing toward him with a bundle tied like a wheat-sheaf, called out, in a most pathetic voice, "Jack! Jack! you've forgotten to take your pennyroyal." We all laughed, and so did Jack, and I think the laugh helped him more than the cry did. Everybody had said his last word; we were on the cars and off. Handkerchiefs were waved at us from all the houses we passed, and we cheered till we were hoarse, and then settled back and swung our handkerchiefs. Handkerchiefs did double duty that day. Just here let me name over the contents of my knapsack, as its contents were a fair sample of what all the volunteers started with. There were in it a pair of trowsers, two pairs of drawers, a pair of thick boots, four pairs of stockings, four flannel shirts, a blouse, a looking-glass, a can of peaches, a bottle of cough-mixture, a button-stick, chalk, razor and strop, the "tailor's shop" spoken of above, a Bible, a small volume of Shakspere(sic), and writing utensils. To its top was strapped a double woolen blanket and a rubber one. It was boiling over, like a ripe cotton-pod. I remember, too, many other things left behind because of lack of room in or about the knapsack. We would have packed in a portable cooking-stove each had there been room. [Ed. Note: It is said by a member of the Monticello Guards, a Confederate organization that took part in the Battle of Bull Run, that most of its members started to the front with an abundant supply of fine linen shirts.] On our arrival in Boston we were marched through the streets -- the first march of any consequence we had taken with our knapsacks and equipments on. Our dress consisted of a belt about the body, which held a cartridge-box and bayonet, a cross-belt, also a haversack and tin drinking-cup, a canteen, and, last but not least, the knapsack strapped to the back. The straps ran over, around, and about one, in confusion most perplexing to our unsophisticated shoulders; the knapsack giving one constantly the feeling that he was being pulled over backward. We marched along the streets, my canteen banging against my bayonet, both the tin cup and bayonet badly interfering with the butt of my musket, while my cartridge-box and haversack were constantly flopping up and down -- the whole jangling like loose harness and chains on a runaway horse. I felt like old Atlas, with the world on his shoulders and the planetary system suspended around him. We marched into Boston Common, and I involuntarily cast my eye about for a bench. But for a former experience in offering advice, I should have proposed to the captain to "chip in" and hire a team to carry our equipments. Such was my first experience in war harness. Afterward, with hardened muscles, rendered athletic by long marches and invigorated by hardships, I could look back upon those days and smile, while carrying a knapsack as lightly as my heart. That morning my heart was as heavy as my knapsack. At last the welcome orders came: "Prepare to open ranks! Rear, open order, march! Right dress! Front! Order arms! Fix bayonets! Stack arms! Unsling knapsacks! In place, rest!"

The tendency of raw soldiers is to overload themselves on their first march. Experience only can teach them its disadvantages, and the picture I have attempted to draw is not exaggerated. On the first long march the reaction sets in, and the recruit goes to the opposite extreme, not carrying enough of the absolutely necessary baggage, and thereby becoming dependent upon his obliging comrades when a camp is reached. Old soldiers preserve a happy medium. I have seen a new regiment start out with all the indescribable material carried by raw troops, sometimes including sheet-iron stoves, and come back after a long march covered with more mud than baggage, stripped of everything except their blankets, haversacks, canteens, muskets, and cartridge-boxes. These were the times when the baggage of the new recruits was often worth more than their services.

During that afternoon in Boston, after marching and countermarching, or, as one of our farmer-boy recruits expressed it, after "hawing and geeing" around the streets, we were sent to Fort Independence for the night for safe-keeping. A company of regulars held the fort; guards walked their post with a stiffness and uprightness that was astonishing. They acted more like pieces of mechanism than men. Our first impression of these old regulars was that there was a needless amount of "wheel about and turn about, and walk just so," and of saluting, and presenting arms. We were all marched to our quarters within the fort, where we unslung our knapsacks. The first day's struggle with a knapsack over, the general verdict was "got too much of it." At supper-time we were marched to the dining-barracks, where our bill of fare was beefsteak, coffee, wheat bread, and potatoes, but not a sign of milk or butter. It struck me as queer when I heard that the army was never provided with butter and milk.

The next day we were started for Washington, by rail and boat, and the following morning we took breakfast in Philadelphia, where we were attended by matrons and maidens, who waited upon us with thoughtful tenderness, as if they had been our own mothers and sweethearts instead of strangers. They feasted us and then filled our haversacks. God bless them! If we did not quite appreciate them then, we did afterward. After embarking on the cars at Philadelphia, the waving of handkerchiefs was less and less noticeable along the route. We arrived in Baltimore late at night and marched through its deserted streets silently, as though we were criminals instead of patriots. On our arrival in Washington the next morning, we were marched to barracks, dignified by the name of "Soldiers' Retreat," where a half loaf of "soft-tack," as we had already begun to call wheat bread, was issued, together with a piece of "salt junk," about as big and tough as the heel of my government shoe, and a quart of coffee, -- which constituted our breakfast. Our first day in Washington was spent in shaving, washing, polishing our brasses and buttons, and cleaning-up for inspection. A day or two later we moved to quarters not far from the armory, looking out on the broad Potomac, within sight of Long Bridge and the city of Alexandria. We were at the front, or near enough to satisfy our immediate martial desires.

The weather was so mild in that February, 1862, that many of us used the river for bathing, and found its temperature not uncomfortable. Here and there the sound of a gun broke the serenity, but otherwise the quiet seemed inconsistent with the war preparations going on around us. In the distance, across the wide bay, we could see the steeples and towers of the city of Alexandria, while up stream, on the right, was the Inspecting a pass at the Long Bridge

Long Bridge. Here and there was to be seen the moving panorama of armed men, as a regiment crossed the bridge; a flash of sunlight on the polished muskets revealed them to the eye; while the white-topped army baggage-wagons filed over in constant procession, looking like sections of whitewashed fence in motion. The overgrown country village of that period, called Washington, can be described in a few words. There were wide streets stretching out from a common center like a spider's web. The Capitol, with its unfinished dome; the Patent Office, the Treasury, and the other public buildings, were in marked and classic contrast with the dilapidated, tumble-down, shabby look of the average homes, stores, groceries, and groggeries, which increased in shabbiness and dirty dilapidation as they receded from the center. Around the muddy streets wandered the long-faced, solemn-visaged hog, uttering sage grunts. The climate of Washington was genial, but the mud was fearful. I have drilled in it, marched in it, and run from the provost-guard in it, and I think I appreciate it from actual and familiar knowledge. In the lower quarter of the city there was not a piece of sidewalk. Even Pennsylvania Avenue, with its sidewalks, was extremely dirty; the cavalcade of teams, artillery caissons, and baggage-wagons, with their heavy wheels stirred the mud into a stiff batter for the pedestrian.

Officers in tinsel and gold lace were so thick on Pennsylvania Avenue that it was a severe trial for a private to walk there. The salute exacted by officers, of bringing the hand to the visor of the cap, extending the arm to its full length, then letting it drop by the side, was tiresome when followed up with the industry required by this horde. Perhaps I exaggerate, but in a half-hour's walk on the avenue I think I have saluted two hundred officers. Brigadier generals were more numerous there than I ever knew them to be at the front. These officers, many of whom won their positions by political wire-pulling at Washington, we privates thought the great bane of the war; they ought to have been sent to the front rank of battle, to serve as privates until they had learned the duties of a soldier. Mingled with these gaudy, useless officers were citizens in search of fat contracts, privates, "non-com's," and officers whose uniforms were well wom and faded, showing that they were from the encampments and active service. Occasionally a regiment passed through the streets, on the way to camp; all surged up and down wide Pennsylvania Avenue.

This was shortly before the battle of Fort Donelson; and the first Bull Run, being the only considerable pitched battle up to that time, was still a never-failing topic of discussion and reminiscence among the men. When we fell in with soldiers who had been in the fight, we were inquisitive. Before enlisting, and while on a visit to a neighboring town, I was one evening at the village store, when the talk turned upon the duration of the war. Jim Tinkham, the clerk of the grocery store, announced his belief in a sixty days' war. I modestly asked for more time. The older ones agreed with Jim and argued, as was common at that time, that the Government would soon blockcade all the Rebel ports and starve them out. Tinkham proposed to wager a supper for those present, if the Rebels did not surrender before snow came that year. I accepted. Neither of us put up any money, and in the excitement of the weeks which followed I had forgotten the wager. During my first week in Washington, who should I meet but Jim Tinkham, the apostle of the sixty-day theory. He was brown with sunburn, and clad in a rusty uniform which showed service in the field. He was a veteran, for he had been at the battle of Bull Run. He confidentially declared that after getting the order to retreat at that battle, he should not have stopped short of Boston if he had not been halted by a soldier with a musket, after crossing Long Bridge.

"They were enlisting a regiment for three months in our town," he said, "and I thought I'd come out with the rest of the boys and settle the war. Our regiment was camped near Alexandria, and the whole of us, the recruits, grew impatient to end the war and get home to see the folks. I tell you, we were glad when we were told to get ready for a march. We left our knapsacks and heavy luggage in camp with a few old fellows and sick ones, who grieved because they couldn't go on the excursion and help the Secesh out of Virginia.

"They gave us rations of salt junk, hardtack, sugar, and coffee. Each man carried his rubber and woolen blanket, forty rounds of cartridges, a canteen, his gun and equipments, and most of us a patent drinking tube. I threw away the salt junk and hardtack, and filled my haversack with peach-pie, cakes, and goodies. I hadn't been on the march an hour before I realized that it might not be such fun, after all. There was a thirty-two-pound gun mooring on the road, with sixteen or eighteen horses to pull it. Finally, two or three companies were detailed to help the horses. The weather was scorching hot, but the most trying thing was the jerky way they marched us. Sometimes they'd double-quick us, and again they'd keep us standing in the road waiting in the hot sun for half an hour, then start us ahead again a little way, then halt us again, and so on. The first day we marched until after sundown, and when we halted for the night , we were the tiredest crowd of men I ever saw.

"The next day was the 17th of July. I had eaten up all my pies and cakes and was hungry, so I stopped at a house and asked if they would sell me something to eat. There were three negro girls, a white woman, and her daughter, in the house. The white folks were proud and unaccommodating. They said the Yankees had stolen everything -- all their 'truck,' as they called it; but when I took out a handful of silver change, they brought me a cold Johnny-cake and some chicken. As I was leaving the house, the daughter said: ‘You'n Yanks are right peart just now, but you'ns'll come back soon a right smart quicker than yer'r going, I recken!' -- a prophecy we fulfilled to the letter.

"We marched helter-skelter nearly all night without orders to stop, until, just before daylight, we halted near a little building they called a church (Pohick Church). I kept up on the march with my company, though my feet were blistered and my bones ached badly.

"The first gun of the fight I heard," added Tinkham, "was when we were eight or ten miles from Centreville, on the afternoon of the 18th of July, the engagement at Blackburn's ford. We were hurried up at double-quick and marched in the direction of the firing until we reached Centreville, about eleven o'clock that night. It looked like war, and no mistake, in the morning. Batteries and stacked arms lined the roads; officers on horseback were everywhere; regiments were marching on to the field, and excitement and enthusiasm prevailed. On the 20th more Virginians came into camp, looking, as they said, for negroes, and complaining of our soldiers. We got new rations of beef and pork, and, very early on the morning of the 21st, we marched through Centreville up the turnpike road. Near Cub Run we saw carriages and barouches which contained civilians who had driven out from Washington to witness the operations. A Connecticut boy said: ‘There's our Senator!' and some of our men recognized Senator Wilson and other members of Congress. Every one of us expected to have our names in the papers when we got home. We thought it wasn't a bad idea to have the great men from Washington come out to see us thrash the Rebs.

"That day was the hottest one I ever experienced. We marched and marched and double-quicked, and didn't appear to get ahead at all. Every one of whom we inquired the distance to Manassas Junction said five miles, and after a while they would say ten miles instead of five, and we know now that that was under the truth. Then we began to throw away our blankets. After a while we turned off from the main road into a cart path which led through the woods and dry, dusty, worn out fields. At last we arrived at Sudley's ford and rested, while several regiments, under General Hunter, waded Bull Run. While here we could see shells bursting in little round clouds in the air far to the left of us down the Run. The dust rising on the roads ahead was said to be the Rebel army advancing tofight us. We were going to have a fight; there was but little doubt about it now!

"We soon followed the others across Bull Run and came to a field on a hill (near the Matthews house), where we saw dead and wounded men. It made me feel faint to look at them. A battery of the enemy had just left a position, in front of us. An officer here rode up, pointed toward the enemy, and said something which was not distinguishable to me, but the boys began exclaiming: ‘Hurrah, they are running!' -- ‘The Rebels are running!' -- 'It's General McDowell! He says they are running!' On the right of us was a battery, in the field, the guns of which were fired as fast as the men could load. One of the men on the battery told me afterward that they made the Rebel battery change position every fifteen minutes. We advanced to the crest, fired a volley, and saw the Rebels running toward the road below (the Warrenton turnpike). Then we were ordered to lie down and load. We aimed at the puffs of smoke we saw rising in front and on the left of us. The men were all a good deal excited. Our rear rank had singed the hair of the front rank, who were more afraid of them than of the Rebels.

"The next thing I remember was the order to advance, which we did under a scattering fire; we crossed the turnpike, and ascending a little way, were halted in a depression or cut in the road which runs from Sudley's ford. The boys were saying constantly, in great glee: ‘We've whipped them.' ‘We'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple-tree.' ‘They are running.' ‘The war is over.' About noon there wasn't much firing, and we were of the opinion that the enemy had all run away. There was a small wooden house on the hill, rising from the left-hand side of the road as we were going, where, we afterward heard, a Mrs. Henry, an invalid, had been killed in the engagement. [Ed. Note: Mrs. Judith Henry, bedridden from old age was living in the house with her children. When the battle opened near the Matthews house, a mile away, Mrs. Henry was carried for safety into a ravine on the left, below the Sudley road. A little later the house seemed to be the safest place, and she was carried back to her bed. For a time the house was in the line of artillery fire from both sides. Mrs. Henry received five wounds from fragments of shells and died two hours after the battle.] About one o'clock the fence skirting the road at the foot of the hill was pulled down to let our batteries (Griffin's and Ricketts's) pass up to the plateau. The batteries were in the open field near us. We were watching to see what they'd do next, when a terrible volley was poured into them. It was like a pack of Fourth-of-July fire-crackers under a barrel, magnified a thousand times. The Rebels had crept upon them unawares, and the men at the batteries were about all killed or wounded."

Here let me interrupt Tinkham's narrative to say that one of the artillery-men there engaged has since told me that, though he had been in several battles since, he had seldom seen worse destruction in so short a time. He said they saw a regiment advancing, and the natural inference was that they were Rebels. But an officer insisted it was a New York regiment which was expected for support, and so no order was given to fire on them. "Then came a tremendous explosion of musketry," said the artillery-man, "and all was confusion. Wounded men with dripping wounds were clinging to caissons, to which were attached frightened and wounded horses. Horses attached to caissons rushed through the infantry ranks. I saw three horses galloping off, dragging a fourth, which was dead.

"The dead cannoniers lay with the rammers of the guns and sponges and lanyards still in their hands. The battery was annihilated by those volleys in a moment. Those who could get away didn't wait. We had no supports near enough to protect us properly, and the enemy were within seventy yards of us when that volley was fired. Our battery being demolished in that way was the beginning of our defeat at Bull Run," said this old regular.

"Did the volunteers fight well?" I inquired.

"Yes, the men fought well and showed pluck. I've seen a good deal worse fighting and I've seen better since. I saw the Rebels advance and try to drag away those eleven guns three times, but they were driven back by steady volleys from our infantry. Then some of our men tried to drag the guns away, but were ordered to take their places in the ranks to fight. They couldn't be spared!"

But, to return to Tinkham's recollections of the fight :

"It must have been four o'clock in the afternoon," he said, "at a time when our fire had become scattered and feeble, that the rumor passed from one to another that the Rebels had got reënforcements. Where are ours? we asked. There was no confusion or panic then, but discouragement. And at this juncture, from the woods ahead, on each side of the Sudley ford road, there came terrible volleys. The Confederates were in earnest. A wounded Southerner lying near me said earnestly and repeatedly: ‘Thank God, I die for my country!' Our men began to feel it was no use to fight without reënforcements. They fell back steadily, cursing their generals because no reënforcements were sent to them. The men had now in most cases been marching and fighting thirteen hours. The absence of general officers convinced us more than anything else that it was no use to fight longer. The enemy were pressing us, and we fell back. We didn't run!"

Complaint against the officers, like this by Tinkham, was common among the privates with whom I talked. Said another man to me:

"The fault was, "we were not well disciplined or officered. I noticed in the reports that several Rebel generals and commissioned officers were killed and wounded. You'll notice, on the other hand, that but very few of ours were. [Ed. Note: The official reports show the losses of officers to be -- Federal: killed, 19; wounded, 64; missing, 40; total, 123. Confederate: killed, 25; wounded, 63; missing, 1; total, 89. In view of these figures, it would seem that the Federal officers were at least as exposed to danger as the Confederates. That they were relatively to the enemy no less brave than their own men would appear from this table (from official records) of losses of enlisted men -- Federal: killed, 462, wounded, 947; missing, 1176; total, 2585. Confederates: killed, 362; wounded, 1519; missing, 12; total, 1893. The proportions of officers lost to men lost is, on the Federal side, 1 to 21; on the Confederate side, 1 to 21.27; too slight a difference upon which to formulate theories of bravery.] Companies, and in some instances regiments, were commanded by non-commissioned officers, on account of the absence of those of higher rank."

An old reguiar said to me regarding the stampede:

"That was the fault of the officers who allowed the baggage-wagons to come to the front, instead of being parked at Centreville. The stampede and confusion began among them first. Why, the men were so little frightened when they began to fall back in groups scattered through the fields that I saw them stop frequently to pick blackberries. Frightened men don't act in that way. At Cub Run, between the Stone Bridge and Centreville, the irresponsible teamsters, with the baggage-wagons, were all crowded together near the bridge, and were in a desperate hurry to cross. A Rebel battery began dropping shell in among them, and thus demolished some of the wagons and blocked the way. The confusion and hurry and excitement then began. The drivers on the south side, finding they couldn't cross with their wagons, now began to cut their traces and mount their horses and hurry away. Those who drove baggage-wagons on the safe side of Cub Run then began to desert them and cut the traces and shout and gallop off. The infantry, seeing this confusion and not understanding the cause of it, quickened their pace. Soon the narrow road became filled with flying troops, horses, baggage-wagons, and carriages. Then the volunteers began to throw away their muskets and equipments, so as to stand an even chance in the race. Here and there, all along the route, abandoned wagons had been overturned and were blocking the way. One white-headed citizen, an old man, looking very sorrowful, stood directing the soldiers on their way to Washington, saying: ‘You'd better hurry on, or the cavalry will cut off your retreat!' The houses all along the route were filled with wounded men, while the ambulances were filled with officers hastening to Washington. Soldiers here and there marched in groups, and sorrowfully discussed the situation and its causes. The expression heard on every side among them was: ‘Why were not the reserves brought up from Centreville to help us?' ‘Why didn't they bring up the troops from Fairfax Court House?'" -- questions, it seems to me, hard to answer, even if they did come from private soldiers running away from the field of Bull Run!