way from his ranks,
and hopes for safety in dispersion. At four o'clock in the afternoon
of the 21st there were more than 12,000 volunteers on the
battle-field of Bull Run who had entirely lost their regimental
organisation. They could no longer be handled as troops, for the
officers and men were not together. Men and officers mingled together
promiscuously; and it is worthy of remark that this disorganisation
did not result from defeat or fear, for up to four o'clock we had
been uniformly successful. The instinct of discipline which keeps
every man in his place had not been acquired. We cannot suppose that
the enemy had attained a higher degree of discipline than our own,
but they acted on the defensive, and were not equally exposed to
disorganisation."* (* Report of Captain Woodbury, U.S. Engineers,
O.R. volume 2 page 334.)

"Cohesion was lost," says one of McDowell's staff; "and the men
walked quietly off. There was no special excitement except that
arising from the frantic efforts of officers to stop men who paid
little or no attention to anything that was said; and there was no
panic, in the ordinary sense and meaning of the word, until the
retiring soldiers, guns, waggons, Congressmen and carriages, were
fired upon, on the road east of Bull Run."* (* General J.B. Fry,
Battles and Leaders volume 1 page 191.)

At Centreville the reserve division stood fast; and the fact that
these troops were proof against the infection of panic and the
exaggerated stories of the fugitives is in itself strong testimony to
the native courage of the soldiery.

A lack of competent Staff officers, which, earlier in the day, had
prevented an advance on Centreville by the Confederate right, brought
Johnston's arrangements for pursuit to naught. The cavalry, weak in
numbers, was soon incumbered with squads of prisoners; darkness fell
upon the field, and the defeated army streamed over the roads to
Washington, followed only by its own fears.

Why the Confederate generals did not follow up their success on the
following day is a question round which controversy raged for many a
year. Deficiencies in commissariat and transport; the disorganisation
of the army after the victory; the difficulties of a direct attack
upon Washington, defended as it was by a river a mile broad, with but
a single bridge, and patrolled by gunboats; the determination of the
Government to limit its military operations to a passive defence of
Confederate territor