Manassas I

Today is the 150^th anniversary of the first battle of Manassas, the first major land engagement of the War Between the States.

In the summer of 1861, politicians and journalists were rabid about crushing the rebels; “On to Richmond!” was repeated frequently and fervently. Lincoln was under tremendous pressure to make a show of force and, of course, end the war at a single stroke. Forget “over by Christmas”; the expectation was pretty much “over by Independence Day”.

Keep in mind that the two enemy capital cities were about 100 miles apart. It’s like Miami being only 90 miles from Cuba, only with the armies being roughly the same and no Atlantic Ocean to act as a barrier. The perception on both sides was that if you took the other’s capital you’d basically win the war.

So on 21 July, Union forces under Brigadier General Irvin McDowell faced off against Confederates commanded by Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, about 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C. (Yes, he’s known as P.G.T Beauregard; but I’ve got to get that full name in somewhere.)

Washington society were so certain that their troops would lick the Rebs that they drove out in carriages, ladies and gentlemen with picnic baskets and opera glasses, expecting an afternoon’s entertainment.

If you’ve never experienced a D.C. summer, you can’t imagine the kind of heat and humidity that struck the forces on both sides. Soldiers in those days wore wool uniforms & carried maybe 60 pounds of kit. On the march out towards the town of Manassas, many Union troops drank all their water just getting there.

The mostly inexperienced soldiers on both sides went back and forth, basically holding their own. At one point the Confederate line faltered & Brigadier General Barnard Bee urged his troops, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians!”

The Jackson he referred to was Colonel Thomas J. Jackson, a rather strange former instructor of philosophy at the Virginia Military Institute; his students called him “Tom Fool”. But that day his unit held.

(Although there is some thought that Bee was pissed off by the fact that Jackson was holding his position instead of moving forward to support him, and that what he actually said was, “There stands Jackson like a damned stone wall!” We’ll never know exactly because Bee was mortally wounded that day.)

Anyhow, as the afternoon wore on, Federal lines began to break, first in small units and then en masse. The soldiers threw away their rifles and equipment and began running to the rear. The society crowd was engulfed and had to fight for road space for their carriages against the retreating troops.

There was tremendous fear that the Confederates would chase everyone all the way back to D.C., but Beauregard wasn’t the pursuing kind of commander. The loss was a tremendous shock to people all over the North. And in both North and South, folks began to realize that the war was not going to be a short, victorious one.

McDowell was the scapegoat for the loss, although he’d been pressured heavily to go into battle with very green troops. He was replaced by Major General George B. McClellan, a commander who was much better at dressing up and drilling armies than using them in actual, you know, warfare. (Jackson, who was thereafter known as Stonewall, went on to wage a brilliant campaign against a variety of Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. Beauregard was eventually replaced by General Robert E. Lee, of whom you may have heard.)

So we were seriously in for the long haul. A long, bloody, costly haul that we're still paying for.

And, in 13 months, the two armies would be back at Manassas.