oning fight,
since we were there for fighting. We scattered our forces, we did not
unite, we did not entrench, we did not advance; we made all the mistakes
a young army could, worst of all the mistake of hesitancy.

It was not until the twentieth of July that our leaders determined upon
a flanking movement to our right, which was to cross Bull Run at the
Sudley Ford. Even so, we dallied along until every one knew our plans.
Back of us, the battle opened on the following day, a regiment at a
time, with no concert, no _plan_. My men were with this right wing,
which made the turning movement, but four brigades in all. Four other
brigades, those of Howard, Burnside, Keyes and Schenck, were lost
somewhere to the rear of us. Finally, we crossed and reached the left
flank of the Confederates under Beauregard, and swung south along Bull
Run. Our attack was scattering and ill-planned, but by three o'clock of
the next day we were in the thickest of the fighting around the slopes
which led up to the Henry House, back of which lay the Confederate
headquarters.

I saw the batteries of Rickett and Griffin of our Regulars advance and
take this height against the steadily thickening line of the
Confederates, who had now had full time to concentrate. There came a hot
cavalry charge upon the Zouave regiment on my left, and I saw the
Zouaves lie down in the woods and melt the line of that charge with
their fire, and save the battery for a time. Then in turn I saw that
blunder by which the battery commander allowed Cummings' men--the
Thirty-third Virginia, I think it was--deliberately to march within
stone's throw of them, mistaken for Federal troops. I saw them pour a
volley at short range into the guns, which wiped out their handlers, and
let through the charging lines now converging rapidly upon us. Then,
though it was but my first battle, I knew that our movement must fail,
that our extended line, lying upon nothing, supported by nothing, must
roll back in retreat along a trough road, where the horses and guns
would mow us down.

Stuart's men came on, riding through us as we broke and scattered.
Wheat's Louisiana Tigers came through our remnants as well. We had no
support. We did not know that back of the hill the Confederate recruits
were breaking badly as ourselves, and running to the rear. We were all
new in war. We of the invading forces caught the full terror of that
awful panic which the next day set the North in mourning, and