Panic at Bull Run is an excerpt from a longer article, The Battle of Bull Run, by the famous English journalist William H. Russell (1827 to 1907, also known as Sir William Howard Russell), one of the most widely read writers of his day. Russell was an eyewitness to the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) on 21 July 1861 during the American Civil War, but his article focused primarily on only one aspect: the disorderly Union retreat at the end of the day.
Russell was a staff writer for the newspaper The Times of London, starting as a reporter in 1842, and had covered world events as varied as the Great Potato Famine in Ireland, the Crimean War, and the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 in India. As tensions mounted in the United States in early 1861, Russell was sent to America to cover the story.
He was received graciously by President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C. and then by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Charleston, South Carolina and was there for the surrender of Fort Sumter in April 1861. He had interviewed General Irvin McDowell, who would be the commander of the Union forces at the Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), and William H. Seward, the US Secretary of State.
People on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, many of whom had become fans reading his Crimean War articles, looked forward to whatever he might write as the American Civil War began.
Russell and Bull Run
When the Union Army lost the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) on 21 July 1861, Russell was there and, afterwards, his vast audience waited to hear what he would say about the event. Scholar Joseph L. Gardner notes:
The excitement generated by Bull Run was slow in dying. Once the initial shock was over, press and public became anxious for the views of The Times famous correspondent…They had a month to wait; for Russell’s story, published in London on August 6, did not reach America until August 20. (5)
The Confederate South loved the article, but the Union North, not so much. The piece not only focused on the Union retreat but on the “disgraceful conduct of the troops” as they fled the field. Gardner continues:
In six and one-half columns, Russell went on to tell of men “whom it were a disgrace to the profession of arms to call soldiers” …The reaction in the North to this frank dispatch was immediate and stormy. Friends warned Russell not to stray outside unarmed; one said he would not take a million dollars to be in his place. His mail was flooded with anonymous letters threatening him with tarring and feathering or death by revolver or Bowie knife. (5)
The writer became known derisively as “Bull Run Russell” and, when he published his memoirs of his coverage of the Civil War in 1863, they went unread in America. Even so, Russell’s first-hand account of the Union retreat from the battlefield of Bull Run remains one of the most significant primary sources on the event.
Although his reputation suffered in America in August of 1861 and afterwards, he remained highly regarded in Europe and was knighted in 1895. Today, Sir William H. Russell is recognized as one of the most important journalists of the 19th century and a groundbreaking war correspondent.
Text
The following excerpt, Panic at Bull Run, from William H. Russell’s August 1861 article The Battle of Bull Run is taken from The Civil War: The North, edited by Thomas Streissguth, pp. 49-53.
The civilians Russell mentions were US Senators, their families, and others from Washington, D.C. who had come out to Centreville, near Manassas, in their carriages, by horse, or on foot, to watch the battle, confident of a Union victory, and certain that the Confederate capital of Richmond would be in Union hands by day’s end.
The sounds which came upon the breeze, and the sights which met our eyes, were in terrible variance with the tranquil character of the landscape.
The woods, far and near, echoed to the roar of cannon and thin, frayed lines of blue smoke marked the spots whence came the muttering sound of rolling musketry, the white puffs of smoke burst high above the treetops, and the gunners’ rings from shell and howitzer marked the fire of the artillery.
Clouds of dust shifted and moved through the forest and, through the wavering mists of light blue smoke and the thicker masses which rose comingling from the feet of men and the mouths of cannon, I could see the gleam of arms and the twinkling of bayonets.
On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler, sex. A few officers and some soldiers, who had straggled from the regiments in reserve, moved about among the spectators, and pretended to explain the movements of the troops below, of which they were profoundly ignorant.
The cannonade and musketry had been exaggerated by the distance and by the rolling echoes of the hills and, sweeping the position narrowly with my glass, from point to point, I failed to discover any traces of close encounter or very severe fighting.
The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera glass who was near me was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood – “That is splendid. Oh, My! Is not that first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time tomorrow.”
These, mingled with coarser exclamations, burst from the politicians who had come out to see the triumph of the Union arms. I was particularly irritated by constant applications for the loan of my glass. One broken-down-looking soldier, observing my flask, asked me for a drink, and took a startling pull, which left little between the bottom and utter vacuity.
“Stranger, that’s good stuff and no mistake. I have not had such a drink since I come South. I feel now as if I’d like to whip ten Seceshers [secessionists]…”
Notwithstanding all the exultation and boastings of the people at Centreville, I was well convinced no advance of any importance, or any great success had been achieved, because the ammunition and baggage wagons had never moved, nor had the reserves received any orders to follow in the line of the army…
Loud cheers suddenly burst from the spectators as a man dressed in the uniform of an officer, whom I had seen riding violently across the plain in an open space below, galloped along the front, waving his cap and shouting at the top of his voice. He was brought up by the press of people round his horse close to where I stood.
“We’ve whipped them on all points,” he cried. “We have taken all their batteries. They are retreating as fast as they can, and we are after them.”
Such cheers as rent the welkin! The Congressmen shook hands with each other and cried out, “Bully for us. Bravo, didn’t I tell you so.” The Germans uttered their martial cheers and the Irish hurrahed wildly. At this moment, my horse was brought up the hill and I mounted and turned towards the road to the front…
I had ridden between three and a half and four miles, as well as I could judge, when I was obliged to turn for the third and fourth time into the road by a considerable stream, which was spanned by a bridge, towards which I was threading my way, when my attention was attracted by loud shouts in advance, and I perceived several wagons coming from the direction of the battlefield, the drivers of which were endeavoring to force their horses past the ammunition carts going in the contrary direction near the bridge; a thick cloud of dust rose behind them, and running by the side of the wagons were a number of men in uniform whom I supposed to be the guard.
My first impression was that the wagons were returning for fresh supplies of ammunition. But, every moment, the crowd increased, drivers and men cried out with the most vehement gestures, “Turn back! Turn back! We are whipped.”
They seized the heads of the horses and swore at the opposing drivers. Emerging from the crowd, a breathless man in the uniform of an officer, with an empty scabbard dangling by his side, was cut off by getting between my horse and a cart for a moment.
“What is the matter, sir? What is all this about?”
“Why, it means we are pretty badly whipped, that’s the truth,” he gasped, and continued.
By this time, the confusion had been communicating itself through the line of wagons toward the rear, and the drivers endeavored to turn round their vehicles in the narrow road, which caused the usual amount of imprecations from the men and plunging and kicking from the horses.
The crowd from the front continually increased; the heat, the uproar, and the dust were beyond description; and these were augmented when some cavalry soldiers, flourishing their sabers and preceded by an officer, who cried out, “Make way there – make way there for the General,” attempted to force a covered wagon, in which was seated a man with a bloody handkerchief round his head, through the press.
I had succeeded in getting across the bridge with great difficulty before the wagon came up, and I saw the crowd on the road was still gathering thicker and thicker. Again, I asked an officer, who was on foot, with his sword under his arm, “What is all this for?”
“We are whipped, sir. We are all in retreat. You are all to go back.”
“Can you tell me where I can find General McDowell?”
“No! Nor can anyone else.”
A few shells could be heard bursting not very far off, but there was nothing to account for such an extraordinary scene. A third officer, however, confirmed the report that the whole army was in retreat and that the Federals were beaten on all points, but there was nothing in this disorder to indicate a general rout.
All these things took place in a few seconds. I got up out of the road into a cornfield, through which men were hastily walking or running, their faces streaming with perspiration, and generally without arms, and worked my way for about half a mile or so, as well as I could judge, against an increasing stream of fugitives, the ground being strewed with coats, blankets, firelocks, cooking tins, caps, belts, bayonets, asking in vain where General McDowell was.
Again, I was compelled by the condition of the fields to come into the road; and having passed a piece of wood and a regiment which seemed to be moving back in column of march in tolerably good order, I turned once more into an opening close to a white house, not far from the lane, beyond which there was a belt of forest.
Two fieldpieces, unlimbered near the house, with panting horses in the rear, were pointed towards the front, and along the road beside them there swept a tolerably steady column of men mingled with field ambulances and light baggage carts, back to Centreville.
I had just stretched out my hand to get a cigar light from a German gunner, when the dropping shots which had been sounding through the woods in front of us suddenly swelled into an animated fire. In a few seconds, a crowd of men rushed out of the wood down towards the guns, and the artillerymen near me seized the trail of a piece and were wheeling it round to fire when an officer or sergeant called out, “Stop! Stop! They are our own men!” and in two or three minutes the whole battalion came sweeping past the guns at the double, and in the utmost disorder.
Some of the artillerymen dragged the horses out of the tumbrils [cart harnesses] and for a moment the confusion was so great I could not understand what had taken place; but a soldier whom I stopped, said, “We are pursued by their cavalry; they have cut us all to pieces…”
There was nothing left for it but to go with the current one could not stem…
On arriving at the place where a small rivulet crossed the road, the throng increased still more. The ground over which I passed going out was now covered with arms, clothing of all kinds, accoutrements thrown off and left to be trampled in the dust under the hoofs of men and horses.
The runaways ran alongside the wagons, striving to force themselves in among the occupants, who resisted tooth and nail. The drivers spurred and whipped and urged the horses to the utmost of their bent…
As I rode in the crowd with men clinging to the stirrup leathers or holding on by anything they could lay hands on, so that I had some apprehension of being pulled off, I spoke to the men and asked them over and over again not to be in such a hurry.
“There is no enemy to pursue you. All the cavalry in the world could not get at you.” [I said]
But I might as well have talked to the stones.
