The First Battle of Manassas: The Story

Once the lines had been drawn in the sand, many people throughout the watching world were expecting the division between the Union and Confederacy to come to a point of blows on the battlefield.  The Union, after all, could not abide by secessionists, and its integrity had to be defended.  Fort Sumter had already been lost, and restless politicians in Washington were eager to show that the Union would no longer bear such insults.  While some people did imagine that the war would swiftly be won by the superior war machine of the industrialized northern states, the myth that the war would be over within days is largely a modern creation; the Confederates went far enough to break off, and would surely put up a fight.  One such realist in this regard was the Union Brigadier General Irvin McDowell.

McDowell was very much concerned that his relative lack of experience, as well as that of his men, would not make victory a sure thing.  While he had seen action in the Mexican-American war, that was an entirely different conflict.  Military technology and tactics had already advanced significantly in the years since his time in active combat, and many of his men were fairly inexperienced themselves.  On top of this, they were true northerners, some from as far away as Minnesota and upstate New York, and were marching under 100 degree heat, complicated further by Virginian humidity.  Even without the 25 mile march to the battle, the fighting alone would take a feat of endurance under such conditions.  I was "fortunate" to experience these exact conditions there this past summer.  Believe me, even driving to the battlefield in an air-conditioned car with a nice cold bottle of water in hand did not make the experience any easier when I was walking the place.  And yes, northern Virginia has a plethora of mosquitoes as well.  All in all, not fun conditions to go fight in.

Anyway, McDowell was eventually harassed enough to make his move, and on July 16th, 1861, under a brutal sub-tropical sun, he set off.  He had at his command the largest army ever assembled on North American soil at that time, 35,000 men.  His plan was to force the Confederates back from the rail junction at Manassas to the Rappahannock River, which pretty much parallels the Potomac for much of its length.  At the same time, under the command of Beauregard, the Confederate army was waiting at the junction with just over 21,000 men.

Courtesy of awesome map maker Hal Jespersen!  His website can be found here.

As noted, McDowell's men were inexperienced in two very important regards.  The heat was getting to them, and they were used to working under the large scale synchronization that the General was going to need to execute his strategy of flanking the enemy from various positions all at once.  Even with a bit of rest at nearby Centreville, the army was not in communication with its various parts, and was pretty much worn down a bit by the time it made it to the fight.  When they did engage the Confederates on the 21st, they were exhausted, scattered, and most assuredly did not have a home field advantage.  On top of this, Beauregard was about to get a huge amount of reinforcements from a second army coming from the distant Shenandoah Valley, who definitely had a home field advantage, and were not tired from a long march, having arrived by rail instead.  McDowell had not been expecting them, thinking that Major General Patterson would be able to subdue or at least stop an army half the strength of his back in the distant valley.

This is not to say that all was not an immediate loss on the part of the Union.  McDowell had some rather capable men under his command, notably Michigan's then colonel William T. Sherman, who made a nice enough surprise assault to mess up the Confederate lines a bit by mid-day.  Things then started to get really collected around Henry Hill, where the headquarters of the modern National Park site stands today.  While not particularly fierce, the Union lines were driving pretty steady into the Confederates in the early afternoon, until their army decided to pull out a Sherman of their own, Stonewall Jackson, who earned his nickname at this very battle by pretty much not flinching an inch even while under fire at Henry Hill.  I can only imagine what a sight that must have been, because even just seeing it re-enacted was, well, cool as hell.  His heroic/reckless action has since been captured in sculpture over the site of the very deed.

The Confederates certainly noticed; the army learned from the example, as well as from the determination of the Virginians in general, and made a huge solid wall against the Union lines.  Essentially, at this point, they were not nearly as worn out as the Union army, they were fighting for their own soil, and they had the best morale officers in the world in the persons of the Confederate leadership.  By the end of the day, it became clear that this was no show, and that the war would take a bit longer than many figured.

Tomorrow: Pictures from the Re-enactment on July 21st, 2011!

Saturday: Pictures of the battlefield as it exists today, and a general overview of its ecosystem.