t Wing of them--were whipped,
the Enemy also was whipped. Jackson himself confesses that while he
had, at the last moment, broken our centre, our forces had turned both
of his flanks. The Enemy was, in fact, so badly used up, that he not
only dared not pursue us to Washington--as he would have down had he
been able--but he was absolutely afraid McDowell would resume the
attack, on the right of the original Bull Run line, that very night!
For, in a letter to General Beauregard; dated Richmond, Virginia, August
4, 1861, Jefferson Davis,--who was on the ground at Bull Run, July
21st,--alluding to the Battle of Bull Run, and Beauregard's excuses for
not pursuing the Union troops, says:

"I think you are unjust to yourself in putting your failure to pursue
the Enemy to Washington, to the account of short supplies of subsistence
and transportation. Under the circumstances of our Army, and in the
absence of the knowledge since acquired--if, indeed, the statements be
true--it would have been extremely hazardous to have done more than was
performed. You will not fail to remember that, so far from knowing that
the Enemy was routed, a large part of our forces was moved by you, in
the night of the 21st, to repel a supposed attack upon our right, and
the next day's operations did not fully reveal what has since been
reported of the Enemy's panic."

And Jefferson Davis's statement is corroborated by the Report of Colonel
Withers, of the 18th Virginia, who, after starting with other regiments,
in an attempt to cut off the Union retreat, was recalled to the Stone
Bridge,--and who says: "Before reaching the point we designed to occupy
(near the Stone Bridge) we were met by another order to march
immediately to Manassas Junction, as an attack was apprehended that
night. Although it was now after sunset, and my men had had no food all
day, when the command to march to Manassas was given, they cheerfully
took the route to that place."

Colonel Davies, who, as we have seen, commanded McDowell's stubborn Left
Wing, was after all, not far wrong, when, in his testimony before the
Committee on the Conduct of the War, he declared, touching the story of
the Bull Run Battle: "It ought to have read that we were victorious with
the 13,000 troops of the Left Wing, and defeated in the 18,000 of the
Right Wing. That is all that Bull Run amounts to."

In point of fact, the Battle of Bull Run--the first pitched battle of
the War--was a drawn ba