CHAPTER X.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 calledwhipped.”
“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 bytaking 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 housesbefore 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 thesummit of the eminence, stands a pyramidal monument of rough red sandstone, bearing this inscription:—
INMEMORYOF THEPATRIOTSWHO FELL ATBULL RUNJULY 21st, 1861.
INMEMORYOF THEPATRIOTSWHO FELL ATBULL RUNJULY 21st, 1861.
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 thisnation. 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 theouter 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, andageable 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!”