While dressing his (Jackson's) wounded hand at the First Manassas, at the field hospital of the brigade near the Lewis house (Portici), I saw President Davis ride up from Manassas. He had been told by stragglers that our army had been defeated. He stopped his horse in the middle of the little stream, stood up in his stirrups, the palest, sternest face I ever saw, and cried to the great crowd of soldiers, "I am President Davis; follow me back to the field." General Jackson did not hear distinctly. I told him who it was and what he said. He stood up, took off his cap and cried, "We have whipped them—they ran like sheep. Give me 10,000 men and I will take Washington city to-morrow."
Maj.-Gen. James B. Fry, who at Bull Run was captain and adjutant-general on McDowell's staff, in an article in the Century Magazine,[1] describing this battle and what followed, says:
About half past three Beauregard extended his left to outflank McDowell's shattered, shortened and disconnected line, and the Federals left the field about half past four. Until then they had fought wonderfully well for raw troops. There were no fresh forces on the field to support or encourage them, and the men seemed to be seized simultaneously by the conviction that it was no use to do anything more, and they might as well start home. Cohesion was lost, the organizations with some exceptions being disintegrated, and the men quietly walked off. There was no special excitement except that arising from the frantic efforts of the officers to stop men who paid little or no attention to anything that was said. On the high grounds by the Matthews house, about where Evans had taken position in the morning to check Burnside, McDowell and his staff, aided by other officers, made a desperate but futile effort to arrest the masses and form them into line . . . but all efforts failed. Stragglers moved past guns in spite of all that could be done; . . . the men trooped back in great disorder across Bull run. There were some hours of daylight for the Confederates to gather the fruits of victory, but a few rounds of shell and canister checked all the pursuit that was attempted, and the occasion called for no sacrifices or valorous deeds by the staunch regulars of the rear guard. There was no panic, in the ordinary meaning of the word, until the retiring soldiers, guns, wagons, congressmen, and carriages were fired upon, on the road east of Bull run. Then the panic began, and the bridge over Cub run being rendered impassable for vehicles by a wagon that was upset upon it, utter confusion set in; pleasure-carriages, gun-carriages and ammunition wagons which could not be put across the run were abandoned and blocked the way, and stragglers broke and threw aside their muskets and cut horses from their harness and rode off upon them. In leaving the field the men took the same routes in a general way by which they had reached it. Hence when the men of Hunter's and Heintzelman's divisions got back to Centreville, they had walked about 25 miles. That night they walked back to the Potomac, an additional distance of 20 miles; so that these undisciplined and unseasoned men within thirty-six hours walked fully 45 miles, besides
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↑See "Battles and Leaders," Century Co., New York.
