ttery under Ayres behind, on account
of the impassability of the bluff on the Western bank of Bull Run
--says: "Early in the day, when reconnoitering the ground, I had seen
a horseman descend from a bluff in our front, cross the stream, and
show himself in the open field, and, inferring we could cross over
at the same point, I sent forward a company as skirmishers, and
followed with the whole brigade, the New York Sixty-ninth leading."

This is evidently the ford at the elbow of Bull Run, to the right
of Sherman's front, which is laid down on the Army-maps as "Poplar
Ford," and which McDowell's engineers had previously discovered and
mapped; and to which Major Barnard of the U. S. Engineer Corps
alludes when, in his Official Report, he says: "Midway between the
Stone Bridge and Sudley Spring our maps indicated another ford,
which was said to be good."

The Comte de Paris, at page 241, vol. I. of his admirable "History
of the Civil War in America," and perhaps other Military
historians, having assumed and stated--upon the strength of this
passage in Sherman's Report--that "the Military instinct" of that
successful soldier had "discovered" this ford; and the impression
being thus conveyed, however undesignedly, to their readers, that
McDowell's Engineer corps, after spending two or three days in
reconnaissances, had failed to find the ford which Sherman had in a
few minutes "discovered" by "Military instinct;" it is surely due
to the truth of Military history, that the Engineers be fairly
credited with the discovery and mapping of that ford, the existence
of which should also have been known to McDowell's brigade
commanders.

If, on the other hand, the Report of the Rebel Captain Arthur L.
Rogers, of the Loudoun Artillery, to General Philip St. George
Cocke, be correct, it would seem that Sherman attempted to cross
Bull Run lower down than Poplar Ford, which is "about one mile
above the Stone Bridge," but was driven back by the fire of
Rogers's guns to cross at that particular ford; for Rogers, in that
Report, says that about 11 o'clock A. M., the first section of the
Loudoun Artillery, under his command, "proceeded to the crest of
the hill on the West Side of Bull Run, commanding Stone Bridge. *
* * Here." continues he, "I posted my sectio