The Battle of Manassas
The Civil War began with more bombast and bravado than bombs. Neither side gave much thought to war’s reality. This changed after the armies came together in the first big battle along Bull Run at Manassas, Virginia on July 21, 1861. Even civilians were shocked by the carnage.
Congressman Alfred Ely’s reflections are an example of the reaction in the North. He was an anti-slavery Republican from Rochester, who had displayed little appreciation for what was coming. As late as February of that year, he thought war might still be avoided: “God grant that our glorious Union may yet be saved without the effusion of one drop of American blood.”
When Ely learned of the big fight shaping up at Bull Run, he claimed he needed to visit constituents in the Thirteenth New York Regiment that was maneuvering for battle, but the truth seemed to be that he naively wanted to see the spectacle with his own eyes. So, the Congressman went to Union General Winfield Scott for a pass to get on the battlefield. The General warned that the Confederate forces were estimated to be 38,000. Ely pointedly asked how many men the Union had. Scott would only answer with a laconic, “Enough.”
Pass in hand, the Congressman hired a carriage and sped off for Manassas. Soon he was in the thick of battle. A few hours later, as the smoke cleared, he found himself a prisoner of the victorious Confederates.
Margaret Loughborough of Richmond captured the reaction in the South. Her fiancée, and future husband Henry, was a soldier at Manassas. They had postponed their wedding lest the war end before he had a chance to fight. After the battle, Henry had stumbled upon some congressman’s abandoned carriage, most likely Ely’s. Margaret remembered: “A young soldier, a friend of mine, brought me some champagne and cake he had found in a congressman’s carriage on the battlefield; he had brought it to celebrate the walk-over the North expected, but we of the South, drank to our success.”
Ely’s captors put him in the boxcar of a train bound for Richmond along with cars of Union prisoners and Confederate wounded. He spent five months there before being exchanged for Confederate prisoners held by the North. After he was safely home, Ely published his journal of the experience. He wrote about the folly of what he had done: “[T]o visit battle-fields as a mere pastime, or with the view of gratifying a panting curiosity … is neither a safe thing in itself, nor a justifiable use of the passion which Americans are said to possess for public spectacles….”
But Ely didn’t stop there. He went on to explain how Manassas had changed him: “Bull Run now looms up in my mind with a very frightful aspect, and in all the magnitude of its horrors. The dead and the dying, the shattered limbs and flowing blood of the wounded, the miseries of desolated homes, the mourning of widowed mothers and fatherless children, and the crushing agony suddenly cast into the hearts of thousands in every ‘corner of the land, are so vividly pictured [now] on my imagination by the official reports….”
The battle had the same effect on Margaret even though she witnessed it from the safety of Richmond. She recalled: “One morning, the 21st of July, 1861, just as my aunt and myself were preparing to leave Richmond for the country, we heard that the first battle of Bull Run was being fought. Almost all the young men in Richmond were on the battle-field and everyone was anxious. Later the news came that we had a glorious victory; there was much rejoicing until the cars came in bearing the wounded and dead. Then we realized what the war meant and would mean to us. Richmond was filled with mourning; the houses were thrown open to the wounded; the hospitals filled.”
The Civil War had been going on for three months; it would continue for forty-five more.
The Journal of Alfred Ely, a Prisoner of War in Richmond was published in 1862 and is available online.
