First Mannassass
Gotzendammerung: Invitation to the Dance
Perhaps the most famous Creole in American history, even better-known than Jean Lafitte, was Pierre Gustave Toutant. He was duly awarded a place at the United States Military Academy while in his late teens, and, callow youth that he was, upon his arrival, he took to signing his name "Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard," referring to the rather quandiloquently named plantation house in which he had been born and reared--Beauregard. The Army being was it is, he was obliged to use initials, but he was ever after P. G. T. Beauregard to the United States Army.
Beauregard he has been known to our history ever since. As was the case with Lee, McClellan and a host of others, he made a name for himself serving as a staff officer to Winfield Scott in the classic campaign from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico. He had graduated second in the class of 1838, and was an intelligent and capable man. After the war, he transferred to the Corps of Engineers, and, as did Lee before the war, he worked on the huge project which cleared the Mississippi river and opened it to large volume commercial traffic. In January, 1861, he was appointed Commandant at West Point, again as Lee had earlier served, but held the post for a record five days before being relieved--he was probably mistrusted as a Lousianian, and a son of slave-owners. In February, he offered his services to the Provisional government of the Confederate States, and his first assignment was the command of the water batteries which besieged Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. I made no particular mention of him earlier in recounting that event, as the batteries from which the fort was shelled had been laid out generations before, and no particular skill was required of the officer who conducted that bombardment. With the surrender of the fort in May, he was sent to command the "Alexandria line," taking up that post on June 2. This was a rather foolish military concept, as there was simply no way the Confederate States could hold the line of the Potomac in the face of the U.S. Army and Navy. Colonel Ellsworth of New York had been killed in Alexandria on May 24, and his death was immediately avenged by his Zouaves, who then occupied the city and imposed a harsh martial law. Cooler heads prevailed in Richmond, and Confederate forces were removed to a position south of Fairfax Court House. On June 20, Beauregard took command of what was now known (still rather unrealistically) as the Army of the Potomac.
In that same class of 1838 at the U.S.M.A. was
Irvin McDowell. He also served in the Mexican War; however, he served with General Wool in Zachary Taylor's army, serving with distinction at Buena Vista, but earning the suspicion of Winfield Scott, who did not employ him as he did so many other young officers. His other experience of large scale warfare was as the official U.S. Army observer attached to the army of Louis Bonapart, the
soi-disant Napoloen III, in his short, brutal and bloody campaign against the Austrians in northern Italy in 1859. At Solferino and Magenta, the French overcame the first-class and badly-lead troops of the Austrians by dint of heavy artillery bombardment and pig-headed frontal assaults by the French infantry. One wonders if the ham-handed manner which Napoleon III employed influenced McDowell (i'll comment later) in the conduct of his one major battle. He was a native of Ohio, and enjoyed the political influence of Salmon Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, and a man who had his finger in a great many of the pies cooked up by the dubious crew with which Lincoln was surrounded as a result of political indebtedness. Chase assured that McDowell was given command of the forces at Washington City, and when the Republican radicals in Congress put pressure on Winfield Scott to advance on Beauregard's army, McDowell was obliged to move with dubious material in what was at the time the largest campaign in American history. McDowell's little of army of about 35,000 men equalled the entire amount of forces committed to the Mexican War. His command was the Department of Northeast Virginia. His army was known as the Army of Northeast Virginia, or the Army of Northern Virginia, depending upon whose account you read. The army was organized into five divisions, the first of four brigades; the second, fourth and fifth of two brigades each, and the third containing three brigades. The commanders who served under him were anonymously memorable only for being so forgettable. Two officers only stood out,
Samuel Heintzelman, commanding the third division, and
William Sherman commanding the third brigade of the first division. By and large, the judgement of careful students of the performace of the army is that the material was raw but good, and very badly lead. Many troops commented later that they would be happy to see their regiments disbanded and to join different organizations under competent officers. Heintzelman lacked no courage, nor willingness to fight--but above the level of a regiment, he was in over his head. Just like Grant, Heintzelman had a habit of wandering off during an engagement and not devoting his otherwise considerable energies to the fight at hand. Unlike Grant, Heintzelman had no flair for inspirational leadership, and lacked the unrelenting drive which made Grant--a mediocre officer at the regimental level--a first-class commander of armies in the field, so long as his subordinates were able, and Grant had a genius for choosing his subordinates. Commanding the Third Corps of McClellan's Army of the Potomac, Heintzelman had two such commanders in Joe Hooker and Phil Kearney, but in the gossipy, old-boys' club of the eastern army, his shortcomings were not overlooked. Sherman's career might similarly have been doomed if he had remained in the east, but he had the good sense to know it, and wangled his way into another command in the west. We will join him there later.
McDowell's advance might have been even more of a fiasco had he not been based in Washington City. For most of the war, and in most of the departments of the United States Army, the most noticable quality of the officer corps is an unstinting mediocrity. Nevertheless, when McDowell took the field, his little army was as well supplied and supported as it was possible to be on the North American continent in 1861. His army wandered into northern Virginia, and straggled badly, but didn't suffer the consequences such disorganization would have cost him only a few months later. The desire to be fed returned most stragglers to their regiments by nightfall each evening. After five days on the road (to cover a distance most healthy adults could walk in a day), he had entered Prince William and Fairfax counties, where Beauregard had been. A young officer who was once obliged to report bad news to Thomas Jackson, began by saying: "General Jackson, i fear . . ." Jackson interrupted him to say: "Never take counsel of your fears." This advice could well have been heeded by many in higher command levels than Jackson in that war. Among them i would number Pierre Toutant. When Beauregard arrived in northern Virginia on the first of June, he was alarmed to discover that not only had the New York Zouaves taken Alexandria, but that Arlington (the estate of Lee's father-in-law) had also been occupied--yet southern troops continued to occupy unorganized bivouacs strung out along the roads by which they had straggled into Prince William and Fairfax counties. When the sluggish bureaucracy of the United States Army finally lurched into gear, under the unfailingly competent hand of Halleck, the organization which only a handful of officers (most notably, George Thomas) had imposed on federal forces was eventually everwhere apparent. By contrast, the Confederate War department limped along like a lamed hanger-on forever failing to catch up to the army ahead on their shared road. But southern officers did from the outset display a flair for
ad hoc organization. But southern organization was all too often of the nature of a gentleman's club organizing a field day--a group of cronies, and some disgruntled, suspicious and plotting members on the fringes, performing brilliantly, until their interest and their energy flagged, or they became so caught up in the bickering (
viz. Braxton Bragg and the Army of the Tennessee) that their commands were neglected. Most of the senior officers of the southern forces knew each other from the "Old Army," and so many of them had been cultivated by the Virginian (unfailingly loyal to his country and the Union) Winfield Scott, and by Jefferson Davis when he had been Secretary of War, that they had an initial advantage in organizing their armies.
Beauregard quickly assured the tightening of organization in his force, and as quickly pulled it back across a small but fast running and deep stream, now legend in American history, Bull Run. He formed six brigades, and the list of commanders is very nearly in its entirety a list of high ranking officers later in the war, with the single exception of Phillip Saint George Cocke (pronounced "cook") who took his own life in December of that year. The first brigade was commanded by Milledge Luke Bonham, the second brigade by Richard Stoddard Ewell, the third by David R. Jones, the fourth James "Pete" Longstreet, the fifth by the unfortunate Cocke and the sixth by Jubal Anderson Early. Initially, batteries of artillery were randomly assigned, and the cavalry, such as it was, was complete unorganized, but tended to congregate near the command post of the Army, so they were ready-to-hand if Beauregard had conceived of a use for them. The only well-organized cavalry force then available to the southerners was the First Virginia Cavalry in the command of James E. B. Stuart (see the earlier account of Jackson at Hoke's Run or Falling Waters). This was one more well-organized cavalry force than McDowell possessed, however. Among the troopers was a newly-made officer who had enlisted as a private soldier when the regiment was formed,
John Singleton Mosby. Mosby had been an attorney with a love of casual violence--he frequently challenged men whom he believed had slighted him to duels without regard for the illegality of the passtime, and on a few occassions, was reputed to have publicly pistol-whipped men who refused to fight him. Perhaps it is well that he was versed in the law. Becoming a partisan after the sorry retreat of Johnston from northern Virginia, he made that ground so dangerous to any Yankee who strayed from the railroad or a marching column, that it became known as "Mosby's Confederacy." He also survived the war by more than fifty years, making him one of the longest lived of the famous men of that war, and one of the most unreliable sources for events in the war, no mean feat in that pantheon. Stuart arrived on July 16, the same day that McDowell advanced into Virginia, and he kept Beauregard apprised of the Federal forces--which may have been a disservice, given the regularity with which Pierre Gustave took counsel of
his fears.
A few miles north of the stream at Centreville, McDowell came to a halt on July 18th, and sent Tyler forward to Blackburn's ford, due south on the road to Manassass Junction. This was a rather obvious move, and one for which Beauregard had very naturally prepared.
"Pete" Longstreet held the ford. Jackson said of his men--the Stonewall Brigade--that they had sometimes failed to take a position, but they had never failed to hold one. That is not strictly true, although close enough. I know of no occassion on which troops under Longstreet's command failed to hold their ground. Contrary to Beauregard's habit of taking counsel of his fears, McDowell took counsel of his officers, placing him at a severe disadvantage in the comparison. One of the officers present wrote to his mother that "every one issued orders, and no one issued orders." McDowell had sent his vanguard under Brigadier Daniel Tyler to reconnoitre the ford, to conduct a reconnaisance in force. Tyler, styling himself "Connecticutt Militia, commanding first division" in his report, made up for his almost complete lack of military sense and ability by the expedient of aggressiveness. He ordered his regimental commanders to attack, without consulting his brigade commanders, and awaited the results. Longstreet doubtless could have held them had they come at him in a body--one regiment at a time coming up, the southerners would kill a dozen men or so, and the regiment would break for the rear. It was more than enough to spook Beauregard, however, who had, ironically, so far done everything just as he should. On one of the few occassions in the war when this was true, both sides knew almost exactly the size of the opposing force. McDowell command just fewer than 35,000 effectives, and Beauregard just a few more than 22,000. All tolled, there were about 80 Federals killed, and about 70 Confederates. The lack of a disparity in the casualty figures reflects the accidental excellence of Federal artillery support--batteries usually plunged ahead of the infantry line, with the whole-hearted support of the foot soldiers now behind them, and popped away for all they were worth. This would lead to disaster in three days time.
McDowell now assembled his force in a ring around Centreville and spent three days listening to more and more bad advice from his officers, the most of whom had even less experience than he, or no experience at all. By the evening of July 20th, he had a plan . . . so to speak.