oss the field from the front with a
gun on his shoulder. As he came up to our line someone asked him how the
battle was going. He replied, "We've got them on the trot." Then there
was wild cheering; the soldier was right. McDowell's army was beaten and
in full retreat toward Washington. It proved to be the worst rout that
any army suffered during the Civil War.

At one stage of the battle it looked very doubtful for our side.
Beauregard believed that he was beaten, and had ordered his forces to
fall back, calling on Johnston to cover his retreat. But the arrival of
Elzey's brigade of Johnston's army upon the field just at this
psychological moment turned the battle in our favor. A member of the
First Maryland Regiment, forming a part of this brigade, has given me a
graphic description of how the brigade was hurried from the railroad
station at Manassas, across the fields for five miles under the hot July
sun, the men almost famished for water and covered with dust, most of
the distance at double-quick, toward the firing line, from which the
panic-stricken Confederates were fleeing in great disorder. But I shall
only narrate what I saw myself, and will not quote farther, however
interesting it may be. A train came down from Richmond about three
o'clock, bringing the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson C. Davis,
and fresh troops, but they arrived too late to be of any special
service. I saw the President as he mounted a gray horse, with a number
of other prominent Confederates from Richmond, and move off toward the
battlefield.

A short time after this they began to bring in the wounded from the
front. I stood by and saw the pale face and glassy eyes of Gen. Bee as
they took him dying from the ambulance and carried him into a house near
the Junction. It was he who an hour or so before had said to his
retreating troops, "Look at Jackson; he stands like a stone wall." That
night Gen. Bee died, and Jackson was ever known afterward as "Stonewall
Jackson."

Yes, the Union army was beaten, and their retreat developed into a
disastrous rout, although they were not pursued by the Confederates.

"While there was great rejoicing all over the South on account of this
splendid victory gained by our raw recruits, there was no noisy
demonstrations. Crowds thronged the streets, but no bonfires lit up the
darkness of the night. No cannon thundered out salutes. The church
steeples were silent, except when in solemn tone they calle