 Sometime in early July 1861, Betty DeVall took a seat on a wagon and left Washington, D.C. She wore inexpensive clothing and because she was a woman of no apparent stature, the Union Pickets did not see her as a threat. In Virginia, she spent the night at the house of a Southern sympathizer and the next day, she took a horse to the camp of General Millage Luke Bonham, one of Pierre Beauregard's subordinates protecting Manassas Junction. Following the Bonham's account of the visit, Betty DeVall quote, took out her tucking comb and let fall the longest and most beautiful roll of hair that I have ever seen on a human head. Flushed with the morning's ride, with the glow of patriotic devotion beaming from her bright face, she looked to the Confederate general radiantly beautiful end quote. But she wasn't undoing her hair for appearances. Tucked in the folds of her hair was a wrapping of black silk and inside the silk was a note. Note read quote, McDowell has certainly been ordered to advance on the 16th ROG. The initials ROG refer to Rose O'Neill, Greenhow. Greenhow controlled a spy network for the Confederates working for Thomas Jordan who put together the network in Washington D.C. before resigning from the U.S. military and leaving the country's capital in late May. The most famous of Greenhow's unwitting informants was Republican Senator Henry Wilson whose love letters to the Confederate spy were found among her papers. Betty Duvall was one of many members of the network who worked as a courier for Greenhow in order to safely pass by Union soldiers. In August, Greenhow would be arrested by the Pinkerton detectives and they would find incriminating papers such as the letters from Henry Wilson. Among Confederates, she became a legend. Five days after Beauregard received Duvall's message, he received another message from a former Treasury Department employee claiming that quote, McDowell, with 55,000 men, will advance this day from Arlington Heights in Alexandria onto Manassas via Fairfax Courthouse and onto Centroville, end quote. The number was wrong and the date was wrong, but the day the message was received, July 16th, Beauregard did send a wire to Jefferson Davis saying that he expected McDowell to attack. He would later say that despite the inaccuracies, the note showed that Greenhow was aware of McDowell's intentions. Some historians consider Beauregard's story apocryphal and that he wanted to spice up the story by including the spy in his account of the history. So it has not been fully confirmed that Greenhow revealed McDowell's intentions to attack Manassas prior to the battle, but she was certainly a Confederate spy. At the very least, Beauregard's account is certainly plausible and it isn't unlikely that Greenhow could have simply had inaccurate information about McDowell's movement and army figures. Whatever the case, Jefferson Davis and Pierre Beauregard gave Greenhow credit with alerting them of the pending battle. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we focused on Joseph Johnston's Army of the Shenandoah and Robert Patterson's Army of Pennsylvania, ending the episode with the small skirmish of Hope's Run or Falling Waters, depending on which name you prefer. The battle was a nominal union victory, but Patterson's unwillingness to engage Johnston after it allowed Johnston to bring his troops to reinforce Beauregard later in July. In today's episode, we will be looking at Beauregard and his army of the Potomac and Irvin McDowell and his army of Northeastern Virginia, leading us into the Prelude to the First Battle of Bull Run, the Battle of Blackburns Ford. Both Beauregard and McDowell would choose interesting homes to serve as their headquarters in the weeks prior to Bull Run. McDowell set up shop in the home of Robert E. Lee, who had only recently had his invalid wife evacuated. Upon taking over the estate, McDowell sent a gentlemanly note to Ms. Lee, promising that he would see that the home was respected and that his men would not be permitted to loot the property. He also promised that he would be living in a tent on the estate rather than inside the home, though it didn't take long for him to break this promise for practical reasons. McDowell's wife, Helen, would also come to stay with him there, which was not uncommon practice for military officers at the time. Although the McDowells did move inside the mansion, they tried to respect the property as much as they could. General Beauregard established his headquarters in the home of a Virginian named Wilmer McClain. The interesting element of this decision would not come about until 1865 after McClain moved to Appomattox so that he could avoid the war only to play host to Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant. McClain has thus gone down in history as being the man who saw the war begin in his front yard and end in his living room. The nearly two months between the taking of Arlington and Alexandria on May 24th and the Battle of Bull Run on July 21st were spent by both armies trying to do everything they could to prepare for the pending battle. For Beauregard, this meant building defensive works, including both his soldiers to work as well as employing slaves owned by locals. He would either lint the slaves out for free or if they were less patriotic, rented their labor for a price. But the rest of the time was spent either in leisure or to the degree that it was even possible in training the new volunteers. McDowell, if you remember from a previous episode, sold his plan on the merit of an immediate push into Richmond to end the crisis in one quick swoop while Winfield Scott wanted to buy time to get the army ready. But when McDowell's plan was chosen over Scott's, the Elder General vowed that he would do everything he could to see it successfully executed. By late June, it was therefore Winfield Scott who was growing anxious with McDowell's delays. McDowell cited the inexperience of his men as the reason for holding out the attack to which President Lincoln replied, quote, you are green. It is true. But they are green also. You are all green alike. End quote. This was true enough, but McDowell still wanted more time. He had maybe 14,000 men at his disposal at the time of this message, but more volunteers were coming in every day. But all the advantages of waiting meant the same advantages for the Confederates who were also sending more troops to Beauregard's Army of the Potomac as well as giving them more time to build their defenses. The ability to actually train the soldiers was limited as well. The Army Lincoln called for on April 15th would create the largest military the United States had ever seen. That meant more officer commissions than the United States had ever seen. And this meant that many of the officers would lack the same training as their men. In addition to the general inexperience of officers, many of them were elected by the militias they led, meaning that the incentive was to be lenient and officer drunkenness was a widespread problem. Even if the officers knew how to train their men, this was an environment that would make it hard to command the respect and discipline of the soldiers they needed to teach. So ideally this time would have been spent with the officers conducting drills to train their men in military routine and submission to orders. But the lack of experienced officers and the civilian mindset of most volunteers made this impractical. Many of them, particularly volunteers from the North, were inexperienced with firearms, but even firing practice was sparingly conducted as ammunition was not nearly abundant enough to spare on practice. But most of the soldiers were literate to some degree, so they learned how to be a soldier the only way they could by reading. The most widely read manual was called Rifle and Light Infantry Tactics. Both the Union and Confederate officers adhered to the manual and by July, one newspaper reported that a single bookstore in Richmond had sold 20,000 copies already. So if you want an idea of how a mid-1861 Civil War volunteer was learning how to be a soldier, this is the book to read. The problem, of course, is that you can't really learn how to be effective in a battle from reading a book. And this particular manual did not make the hard task of translating battle from the abstract to the real world any easier. Let me read you the very first line in the book just to give you an idea of what these young men were dealing with. Quote, a regiment is composed of 10 companies which will habitually be posted from right to left in the following order. First, sixth, fourth, ninth, third, eighth, fifth, tenth, seventh, second, according to the rank of captains. End quote. The book goes on in this style for nearly 100 pages. In the section about double time marching, the instructions read that, quote, the length of the double quick step is 33 inches and its swiftness at the rate of 165 steps per minute. End quote. The instructions on how to load the gun was divided into nine precise steps and some of the steps were divided further into various motions. The fifth step of loading the gun was divided into three motions, quote, first motion, half draw the rammer by extending the right arm. Steady it in this position with the left thumb, grasp the rammer near the muzzle with the right hand, the little finger uppermost, the nails to the front, the thumb extended along the rammer. Second motion, clear the rammer from the pipes by again extending the arm, the rammer in the prolongation of the pipes. Third motion, turn the rammer, the little end of the rammer passing near the left shoulder, place the head of the rammer on the ball, the back of the hand to the front, end quote. That's one of the nine steps of loading the gun and these instructions went on for 80 pages with each page divided into two columns of small print. There were no illustrations to help soldiers visualize the steps and many of the instructions were specifically referring to how to conduct yourself in the middle of a battle but this is what soldiers had to learn from and even if they could absorb the information in the book and practice it to the best of their ability in their downtime, the manual gave no account of what conditions soldiers would be dealing with in the middle of battle. In addition to the psychological stress of the sound of explosions in the sight of your friends being shot, firearms in 1861 were prone to all kinds of problems that soldiers would have to deal with on the battlefield. At the outset of the Civil War, the weapons distributed to the soldiers were not uniform. Some still had smoothbore muskets that were standardized earlier in the century. Many of the muskets had been rifled. A rifled musket had better range and accuracy than a smoothbore musket, but it still had to be loaded by ramming a mini ball down the barrel with a ramrod. After enough rounds had been fired, residue would build up in the barrel of the gun causing misfires but in the heat of battle with gunfire going off all around you and you're hearing likely suffering from the artillery, you didn't always realize that your gun misfired. So after pulling the trigger, you might assume it went off like normal and just start loading another ball in the muzzle. So it was not at all uncommon after large battles throughout the war to recover firearms that had more than one bullet lodged in the muzzle. After Gettysburg, 18,000 of the 37,000 rifles picked up had more than one ball in the muzzle. Some guns were found to have more than 10. The manual certainly didn't prepare soldiers for the gunpowder smoke that would fill the battlefield and obscure the soldier's vision or the chaos of warfare or the deafening explosions or the anxiety and psychological stress of combat. It didn't mention that the weapons of the early days of the war in particular were so wildly inaccurate that your shot might go 12 feet wide of your target due to winds. If a soldier believed he hit the person he was aiming at because the enemy target went down, it could have very well been that the soldier was hit by a comrade firing from several feet to his left or right aiming at a completely different target of their own. The Civil War was very much a transitionary war from the previous days of smoothbore muskets with an effective range of maybe 100 yards max where the combat really was based largely around bayonet charges to warfare that now saw more damage from gunshots themselves. Rifling muskets extended their range to far enough that soldiers could fire off several more shots before they got to within bayonet range but the distance was not yet far enough to do away with the tactics of bayonet rushes altogether. This would all contribute to the unprecedented carnage of the war. The manual suggestion for how to conduct the bayonet charge after the rifling of muskets increased their range was for the most part to just run faster toward the enemy. Because of the scarcity of ammunition target practice was conducted with blanks which was better than nothing for training men in the loading of their guns but would not help very much with their ability to aim. One soldier gave this testimony of target practice prior to bull run, quote. We had a sharp drill this afternoon and fired our first blank cartridges. The noise seemed to confuse them in a little. We need more of it. Some of them fired almost to their first guns. It all went off very well except one man shot away his ramrod at the second fire, end quote. When one Massachusetts volunteer wandered away from his camp one night and was unable to provide the password upon returning the sentinels guarding the camp tried to shoot him from only four paces away and they were still unable to hit him. The only thing that would compensate for the inaccuracy of the guns in the coming battles would be the sheer number of targets. Aiming would be both pointless and largely unnecessary. Picket duty was almost laughable at the time as well. The soldiers hardly took their duty seriously as many people throughout the country still took it for granted that the crisis would be quickly resolved with one decisive battle. One Union picket on the 4th of July spent his picket duty writing a letter to his mother and he closed the letter saying quote, I've got to keep a good lookout for both of my comrades have dropped asleep, end quote. It wasn't uncommon for the guards of the respective armies to be within conversation distance from each other. One Virginian wrote a letter to his father about guard duty saying quote, our picket guards and their sentinels talk to each other constantly. They are continually asking us for some whiskey. Sometimes some of our sentinels let them have it. There was an agreement between each other, end quote. At this point in the war, this wasn't an uncommon sentiment. The soldiers didn't hate each other though as the war would progress resentment would increase. But for now this was very much a politicians war in the minds of many soldiers particularly those in the North who believed that the people of the South were simply misguided by bad politicians. One New York volunteer said this in a letter home quote, I confess the truth when I think calmly of the matter it seems impossible for me to kill or even wound anyone even in self defense. It seems to me I would rather die than do it. And this feeling is increased when I recollect that the men we are to slaughter are as innocent of any crime against us as men can be, end quote. Being untrained many soldiers couldn't handle the physical demands of large marches as well. Upon the arrival of the fourth main volunteers they were directed toward a camp two miles away and several of them apparently passed out from sunstroke during the short march. Soldiers from Massachusetts had similar experiences though usually with longer marches than just two miles. One wrote of his March quote, the way was long and tedious. Many of the men were worn out with fatigue. I held a Negro on the route and got him to carry my knapsack. Though nothing but a boy he was tough notwithstanding and did not think it very tiresome work, end quote. Even Southern volunteers from states like Georgia where they would be more accustomed to the heat wrote about similar problems. One even saying that the march gave him a nosebleed. The heat and the distance were given the blame but it's likely that poor nutrition from the army rations was the primary culprit. Some of the pre-packaged rations were dated from as early as 1848. And because of the logistical difficulties of bringing in the necessary supplies to provide for four growing armies, Patterson's, McDowell's, Beauregard's and Johnston's, soldiers sometimes wanted a day or more without eating anything. Though they would also supplement their diets with looting and foraging. Sometimes they passed by a berry bush and grab a handful without even bothering to try to avoid the thorns. Some soldiers politely asked for meals from nearby citizens and others brazenly took what they wanted. Three polite soldiers from Massachusetts knocked on the door of a home and asked for breakfast which they paid 25 cents a piece for. And as they were finishing the meal one of the young daughters of the family asked if they were there to steal Southern land and slaves. When the union men said no, the girl responded, quote, the folks all said so. And if it be as you say why don't Lincoln write the Southern people a letter and tell them all about it? That would save some of your from being shot, end quote. But most union soldiers were hardly this respectful to the Southern homes they came upon. Many secessionist homes had been abandoned after Arlington and Alexandria were taken and the soldiers would loot the homes not just for food and useful supplies that they didn't hesitate to slaughter pigs and chickens as they came across them but they were also after other spoils of war such as nice clothing and fashionable canes that they hoped to take home with them after their term was up. After looting the homes, they often set fire to them. This was often an extension of the lack of military discipline. As officers viewed this as unseemly conduct, William Tecumseh Sherman who would later gain infamy for making Georgia howl, as he put it, wrote a letter to his wife about his men looting homes in Virginia. Sherman said, quote, no gods, no vandals ever had less respect for the lives and property of friend and foe, end quote. And he wasn't above smacking a looting soldier with a flat side of his saber to try to keep them in line. One of Beauregard's subordinate officers described the union soldiers as a, quote, swarm of locusts burning and destroyed, end quote. There were no standard uniforms at this time either. Many volunteers simply showed up in their civilian clothing. Others wore uniforms provided by their local militia. The 39th New York volunteers wore red shirts and straw hats. The first Minnesota wore either red or blue shirts, blue pants and black slouch hats. Many of the New England militia units wore gray uniforms which would prove particularly problematic in the coming battle. One Scottish volunteer from New York wore a kilt and when he tried to chase a pig to butcher it, his comrades ridiculed him with lines like, but on your drawers. A unit of self-proclaimed sharpshooters, which most likely referred to their personal ownership of sharps rifles rather than their skill at shooting, wore green. The suaves wore baggy red pants, sashes and turbans. Others might be seen wearing Fez hats or Kepis along with their large white boots. The need to quickly supply large numbers of men with uniforms led to contracts being filled by untrustworthy contractors who used a material padded with lint that would fall apart as soon as it rained. This is where we get the term shoddy from. It was the material was called shod, but this wouldn't really take place until after bull run since everybody was still expecting a quick war. So for now people were in all kinds of outfits. McDowell also liked to wear a noticeable helmet similar to what a French officer might wear. It was white and was topped with a highly conspicuous lance head making it easy for subordinates to find him on the battlefield. The prelude to the first battle of bull run would come on July 18th, three days prior to the larger battle. The union would refer to this skirmish as the battle of Blackburns Ford, but the Confederates would call this the battle of bull run while the battle on the 21st would be called bull run by the union and Manassas by the Confederates. So I will exclusively be referring to this as the battle of Blackburns Ford as I think I've already been using bull run and Manassas interchangeably over the past several episodes. But again, we just have to accept that battle names throughout this war can be confusing. Historian David Detzer offers a useful analogy for the movement of the troops the day before the battle of Blackburns Ford. There's a game called Kriegspil. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. I actually had to ask one of the German fellows here how to pronounce that. And this is a version of chess where the players sit back to back and the board in front of them only has their own pieces. They are entirely unaware of the moves their opponent is making. This isn't like the games where the peace positions are called out and a player has to keep mental track of it. In this game, they literally have no idea where their opponent's pieces are at all. There's a judge who informs them if their move is illegal or if the piece is captured but they have no information if they captured a pawn or a queen. So their strategy is entirely blind toward their opponent. This, Detzer says, is very much what McDowell and Beauregard were playing when they were positioning troops on July 17th. One of McDowell's subordinate officers, Brigadier General Daniel Tyler was moving his men slowly toward Blackburns Ford. McDowell would later complain about the speed at which the men moved but the primary reason for their slow pace was because of instructions he had previously issued to his officers. These instructions read quote, the three following things will not be pardonable in a commander. First, to come upon a battery of breast work without knowledge of its position. Second, to be surprised. Third, to fall back, end quote. So as Tyler was moving, he was making sure to follow these instructions halting to allow skirmishers to check for possible ambushes and keep an eye out for enemy batteries. Confederates had made a camp around both Blackburn and Mitchell's Ford on the Bull Run River. On the Confederate side of the river at Mitchell's Ford camped the brigade of Millage Bonham who if you remember from a couple episodes back was initially put in charge of Manassas Junction until Beauregard took over. Bonham's brigade was the largest in the Army of the Potomac. On the other side of the river, he placed three companies and two artillery guns to keep an eye out for Union soldiers. At Blackburn's Ford, just to the east of Bonham's troops, sat the brigade of Brigadier General James Longstreet. Tyler judged Longstreet's position to be the more weakly defended so this is the direction he sent his troops. Tyler, in fact, was quite surprised that the Confederates did not have stronger defenses set up around Blackburn's Ford. If you're not familiar with the terminology, fords are areas in a river that are shallow enough for people to cross without a bridge. So these were all potentially vulnerable areas for Union troops to push past the river of Bull Run toward Manassas Junction. Two other fords, McLean's Ford and Union Mill's Ford further to the east of Blackburn's Ford regarded by other brigades under the command of D.R. Jones and Richard Ewell, respectively. Additional forces were on reserve under the command of Jubal Early. This was essentially the Confederate right flank on the morning of July 18th. Tyler's division included regiments led by Colonel Israel Richardson and William Tecumseh Sherman. Richardson is particularly interesting and he provides a good example of the supreme overconfidence many people in the Union had about their prospects at a quick and easy victory. Richardson was recently married and as was not uncommon for officers, his new wife Fanny Richardson joined him on the battlefield. But unlike other officer wives, she seemed to have something of a command over the men. In addition to her horse, Fanny brought with her a personal beehive to supply her with honey, if you can believe that. And when one of Richardson's men tried to procure some of the honey for himself, she had him sent home. Later, some of the men would accuse Richardson's jealousy over his wife who was receiving attention from other minor officers for influencing his battlefield decisions. But if Richardson is evidence of the widespread overconfidence and a quick Union victory, William Sherman was one of the exceptions. Shortly prior to the battle of Blackburn's Ford, he wrote his wife telling her that he feared at the beginnings of a long war. He would of course be proven right, but few people shared his foresight at this point. Tyler's orders were not to start the battle that everybody was preparing for. McDowell at this point was waiting for more provisions to arrive to be able to feed his large army, which is one of the major elements in his delaying the full battle until July 21st, something that would end up allowing Johnston to bring in his army of the Shenandoah. So Tyler's orders were to move cautiously, to be assertive, and essentially put pressure on Manassas' junction. But Tyler was given some interpretive leeway in how he might make a show of things and he decided to be a bit aggressive around Blackburn's Ford, since he saw it as the most vulnerable of the Confederate camps. It might also be worth mentioning, because it possibly had some influence over his decision, that Tyler did not respect Irvin McDowell, who he thought was a, quote, expensive ornament to the military service, end quote, who earned his command through political patronage. There may have been some truth to that, as Samuel Chase lobbied on behalf of McDowell and other officers from his home state of Ohio, and a large portion of the early union officer commissions were handed to Ohioans. But it's hard to say how much of McDowell's promotion was Chase's favoritism and how much was sincere faith in his abilities. So it's sufficient here to just say that Tyler personally believed that McDowell was the beneficiary of favoritism, regardless of whether or not that was actually the case. Tyler ordered two 10-pound rifled cannons under the command of R.B. Ayers to move in front of the skirmishers. After the artillery, Tyler ordered Richardson to move his brigade toward Blackburns Ford, followed by Sherman's brigade. Ayers' artillery was borrowed from Sherman's brigade and his battery was coincidentally referred to as Sherman's battery, though it was not named after William Sherman, but rather Thomas West Sherman, who shared no relation to the more famous William de Cumza, who was now in charge of the battery, named after Thomas Sherman. The battery consisted of six guns, two 12-pound Howitzers, a smoothbore design, which were better for short-range shells, two six-pound cannons, which was a more common size of filled artillery because of its greater mobility, and the two 10-pound rifled cannons. Rifled cannons, like rifled muskets, had better range than smoothbore cannons, but in combat against soldiers, it's worth mentioning that they were not as useful. They could fire shells at a greater distance, but the spread of the shells was limited because they would only explode into a few larger projectiles. Smoothbore cannons were far more useful against infantry because they worked more like shotguns than muskets, in that they sent a short-range spread of grape shot that could hit multiple soldiers and didn't require much precision, but grape shot was pretty much done away with by this time as it was replaced by canister shot, which sent three times as many projectiles in one shot, but it was still limited to close range. I will mention some of the records in the Battle of Bull Run referred to grape shot by the soldiers, but it's not clear if it's actual grape shot or if they're just confusing canister shot with grape shot. So I don't know if grape shot was actually used at Bull Run still, or if the soldiers just didn't know enough about the difference between canister shot and grape shot to accurately identify what was flying at them, but the primary difference between the two was just that canister shot had a wider spread and more projectiles. With the rifling of muskets, smoothbore cannons were more vulnerable to infantry attacks. So artillery was really in an awkward phase during the Civil War. It would still be important, of course, but as McDowell would learn the hard way in a few days, the artillery-centered strategies that helped make Napoleon Bonaparte famous were becoming obsolete. Shrapnel shells helped give rifled cannons a similar combat use as the grape shot from smoothbore cannons, but we didn't really see these employed in rifled artillery until 1864, though other shells were used well before the Civil War. So despite their limitations, rifled cannons certainly had an effect on soldiers who still had to keep an eye out for flying cannonballs, not to mention the psychological effect of facing large guns. The cannons fired on the Confederate soldiers around both Blackburn and Mitchell's Ford, but both Long Streets and Bonham's men held fast. The psychological effects of artillery are evident in the testimony of one Virginian who wrote about the first shot he faced under one of the Union cannons. He wrote that the cannon fired came, quote, making a noise that cannot be described. It was more like the neigh of an excited or frightened horse than anything I can compare it to. A kind of wicker, wicker, wicker sound as it swapped ends in the air, end quote. When the shell hit the ground in front of the soldiers, it exploded harmlessly, quote, making dirt fly and tearing a hole in the ground, big enough to bury a horse in, end quote. Wilmer McLean's estate was unfortunately in the combat zone, and here we would see clearly the reason why Wilmer would decide to move to Appomattox to avoid the war. One of the first shells fired exploded right on McLean's farm. Another one slammed into the chimney of his kitchen, which was in a separate building to protect his home from kitchen fires. In addition to terrifying McLean slaves, the stew they were preparing for Beauregard was sent flying, costing the general his lunch. McLean's barn had also been set up as a Confederate hospital, and although it was not hit, the threat of the artillery fire forced a rapid evacuation of the sick and injured men inside. Tyler was disappointed at the Confederate's resilience under the cannon fire. He was hoping to get them to retreat back to their primary encampment, revealing the position and strength of the Army of the Potomac, which would have given McDowell a distinct edge in the coming battle. But when the Confederates refused to flee, Tyler had to decide on either escalation or backing down. One subordinate officer pleaded with Tyler not to advance, claiming that it would be a violation of his orders. This was probably true, but remember that Tyler had a little respect for McDowell. He decided to push forward more aggressively. Just before noon, he ordered Richardson to move forward and flush out the enemy soldiers. Richardson sent his infantry toward Longstreet's camp at Blackburns Ford, and Longstreet skirmishers immediately fell back to the camp to alert the rest of the brigade. The Confederates sprang into action. The officers moved through the men, reminding them to fire low. The tendency to fire over the heads of enemies was notorious. In fact, if I may offer one of my all too common asides, one of the most important books I think I have ever read was Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman's book on killing, in which he argues that human beings have a predisposition against killing other humans. And he introduces his argument by detailing the historical rate of deliberate misfire, including testimonies from civil war soldiers who admitted to deliberately firing over the heads of their enemy. So there's always some question over how accurate the rate of deliberate misfires were compared to just people unwittingly firing over the heads of the enemy, but I think David Grossman still made an interesting point in his book, and I highly, highly recommend the book on killing. As the Union soldiers advanced, they fired off their guns and the Confederates started to respond in kind. One Confederate described the scene, quote, bullets screamed over our heads like a hornet's nest, end quote. Then the militia leader of the first Massachusetts, George Wells, ordered his men to charge. Seeing the Union soldiers running down the hill toward them, some Confederate soldiers bled, but most stood firm and continued to fire on the charging Yankees, forcing them to fall back. A second charge was ordered, yielding the same results. This is an early sign of the effects of rifled muskets on the increasingly ineffective bayonet charges. One of the minor officers of the first Massachusetts, Lieutenant William Smith, came upon Confederate soldiers, but the first Massachusetts wore gray uniforms, which was common among the Confederate militias, so he wanted to make sure he wasn't about to attack friends. He yelled out, who are you? And the Confederates responded with the same question. Smith replied, Massachusetts men, and upon confirming that he was indeed a Yankee, the Confederates leveled their guns and shot him dead. Similar confusion over uniforms would plague both sides repeatedly during bull run in three days. But after their felled charges, the men of the first Massachusetts fell back to their ridge and exchanged fire with the Confederates, nearly single-handedly holding up the Union effort at this point. One soldier wrote admiringly of their commander, quote, Lieutenant Colonel Wells fought like a common soldier. He rushed from man to man, grasping their muskets and firing them and shouting for another loaded one. So did our captain and the men, encouraged by their example, fought like devils, end quote. Meanwhile, Brigadier General Tyler was observing the action, trying to get an estimate of the Confederate defenses at the fort, but the fighting wasn't revealing enough to give him a confident idea of what he was dealing with. So he decided to ante up. He sent Captain Ayers to move his two Howitzers to within about 500 yards of the river. While Ayers was repositioning his Howitzers, Richardson added two of his other regiments, the 12th New York and the 2nd Michigan, to join with the 1st Massachusetts. Once the Howitzers were in position, the shots flew over the heads of the Confederates, but managed to unnerve many of them by slamming to the trees above them, sending branches everywhere. The Confederates returned infantry fire and Tyler estimated that there must have been 5,000 of them, though this was a highly inflated estimate. The true estimates for total Confederates involved was about 5,000, but the men firing from the creek that Tyler was referring to would have only been a small fraction of this number. It's also worth keeping in mind that in any given battle throughout the war, the official numbers refer to the total men in the armies involved, but the actual number of soldiers actively fighting at any given time would be substantially smaller for various reasons. Some men fled, many were sick, and because militias were organized by localities at this time, the men in the companies were usually friends even before their service. So if one man was injured, his friends would stop fighting and as a group, carry him to safety and try to attend to his injuries. As a result, one injury might mean the removal of five or so soldiers from the field. So the total numbers given for battles are relatively accurate, but they failed to reflect all of the absentee soldiers. During the battle of Bull Run, maybe 18,000 of the 35,000 men on each side actually took part, and probably less than half of that number were vigorous participants. But in the heat of battle, enemy numbers were always grossly overestimated, as was the case when Tyler claimed that the Confederates must be firing 5,000 muskets at once. With this though, Tyler had gotten the information that he was after. Namely, he learned that the Ford was well defended. He was now ready to fall back. Unfortunately, Richardson had pushed too far toward Longstreet's men to make an easy retreat. They'd over committed. After the battle, by the way, the men of the 12th New York would accuse Richardson of sending them to the slaughter out of jealousy over their commander, Colonel Walruth, who had supposedly been paying too much attention to Fannie Richardson, though there is no way to substantiate their allegations. Longstreet responded to the Union artillery by bringing in two reserve regiments from Virginia to support his men. They eagerly complied. Longstreet also sent word to Jubal early to bring support, but he was a bit further down the river. Meanwhile, the men manning the artillery, firing at Longstreet, abandoned their guns in the face of the Confederate fire. To try to keep from letting their artillery fall into Confederate hands, the 12th New York pushed toward them through the woods. They were trying to use the trees to cover them somewhat from enemy fire, but as they moved, in the words of their leader, Colonel Ezra Walruth, the bushes, quote, seemed to be alive with rebels, end quote, taking hits. Walruth ordered his New Yorkers to hit the ground and stay low while they fired. This was wise, but his men weren't trained in dealing with their weapons while lying on the ground. One man's gun ignited prematurely and went off in his face. One Confederate landed his first kill here and wrote guiltily about it later, quote, I fired twice at random and then growing cool, I loaded deliberately and waited with a peace at a ready for a sure shot. At length, I was rewarded. The soldier had a black hat like my own and a glazed cloth haversack. I came to him, steadied my peace and aiming at his breast, I fired. I saw him no more, God of mercy on him. The distance was about 70 yards and I could not miss him. Well, I was fighting for my home and he had no business being there, end quote. Longstreet, who had earned fame during the war, impressed his men during the battle. Refusing to abandon his soldiers, he brazenly rode his horse through the battlefield, a cigar between his teeth, encouraging his men. At one point, his horse was shot out from under him. His men later would write about the inspiring effect Longstreet had on them. Finally, after about 20 minutes, somebody in the 12th New York ordered a retreat and the New Yorkers scattered. Colonel Walruth said that he was trampled by his own men as they fled. Richardson, the brigade commander, tried to stop the retreat, but he couldn't get the men under control at this point and Tyler told him to let the men flee since he'd been ready to retreat anyway. The Confederates gave chase in the words of one private, quote, like a pack of hounds after a fox, end quote. But the Confederate advance was nearly as messy as the Union retreat. Still, they came upon the first Massachusetts who'd borne the majority of the Union effort during the battle. And they were exposed. One of the men was seen by his friend leaning on his rifle. When the men were ordered to hit the ground to avoid enemy fire, the private called for his sergeant, shook hands with the men, said he was hit, and then fell dead to the ground. While the Union men closest to the Confederates were trying to avoid a massacre, their comrades who were a safer distance away were stopping to pick blackberries. Finally, Tyler rode up and ordered Richardson to pull back. His timing probably saved the entire remaining force because even though he didn't know it, the reinforcements Longstreet had sent for from Jubal Early were arriving. Had Richardson continued to try to cross the fort, they would have been slaughtered. When Early's men came across the battle, they were struck by the carnage. Good God, look at the dead men, one of them yelled. Early encouraged them to hold steady. Now, boys, he said from his horse, if you don't run, the Yankees will. He wasn't wrong, as the Union men were already on the retreat. Sherman's men came in as reinforcements, but they would only encounter fleeing soldiers. Instead, they would hold out as Confederate artillery continued to keep the Yankees at bay, leading to one of the more heavily circulated stories about William Sherman. As his men were dealing with the cannonball, sending tree branches flying all around them, Sherman rode around on his horse, telling his men that by the time they heard the shell explode, it was too late to take cover, so there was no point in trying. But as he was giving his men this advice, a shell exploded right above him and he instinctively hugged the saddle of his horse. Upon sitting back upright, the embarrassed officer told his men, quote, you may dodge the big ones. The artillery from both sides continued to exchange fire for nearly an hour, but at around four in the afternoon, the battle was over. The Confederates reveled in their victory and as minor as it was, the officers would later argue that the victory of Blackburn's Ford had its greatest benefit in giving the volunteers confidence in taking on the Yankees. The confidence boost was true enough and it would be seen in the reaction demonstrated by the Virginians after they realized they were successfully repelling the Yankees and the words of one Virginian, quote, each man just opened his mouth as wide as he could, strained his voice to the highest pitch and yelled as long as his breath lasted, then refilling his lungs, repeated it again and again, end quote. One newsman from Boston overheard the cries and described it as quote, the war whoop of the painted warrior of the Western Plains, end quote. The famous Confederate battle cry that would come to be known as the rebel yell was thus born. The casualty counts after the battle trailed up to 63 Confederates killed or wounded and the Union saw 19 killed, 38 wounded and 26 missing, at least some of whom were taken prisoner. This small battle was in many ways part of the first battle of Bull Run that would end up taking place three days later. And that is where we will pick up our story in the next episode. Historical Controversies is a production of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. If you would like to support the show, please subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher and leave a positive review. You can also support the show financially by donating at Mises.org slash Support HC. If you would like to explore the rest of our content, please visit Mises.org. That's M-I-S-E-S dot O-R-G.