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Posted on 03/01/2005 10:13:51 PM PST by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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A crowd of Washington politicos, socialites, and newsmen came out to watch the war's first real battle, along northern Virginia's Bull Run. For most, the view was as disappointing as the fight's outcome. But a few got to see all the action they could handle, and more.  Among the military throng that night was John Taylor, an aspiring politician from New Jersey, who, like a few other civilians, had come out early from Washington to witness history. The future state senator watched the Union army assemble about 2:00 a.m. It was, he wrote, "one of the most inspiring and impressive sights of my life time." From the fields on either side of Braddock Road and the Warrenton Turnpike, which ran east to west through Centreville, hundreds of soldiers tumbled from their camps and into column. Writing of the scene 32 years later, Taylor wistfully remembered that the cadence of the troops seemed to be measured "by the unison of those hearts beating stoutly for their country's salvation."  Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard Taylor would soon have plenty of civilian company. As the Union army around Centreville stirred that July morning, Washington rumbled with an excitement rarely matched in the capital's history. For months, the 19th-century equivalent of CNN had churned out "news" and speculation at a feverish pitch. Now, the day of the big battle had finally arrived. It was Sunday--the week's only leisure day--and throughout the city, newspapermen, politicians, and common folk hunted up carriages for a trip to the front. Talk of the battle was everywhere, and many of the curious meant to see of it what they could. The sun rose over clots of civilian wagons heading westward out of the city, taking their passengers to witness what would surely be an unsparing, unequivocal Union victory. Intending only to watch from the sidelines as history was made, these noncombatants were about to become part of the history and lore of the First Battle of Bull Run--part of an enduring legend that puts civilians at the center of some of the most chaotic moments in that first major battle of the war, regardless of what actually happened.  Only a handful of civilians were in Centreville early enough to watch the army march. Their numbers would swell by the hour to perhaps several hundred, and would include some of America's luminaries: Congressman Elihu Washburne of Illinois, later Ulysses S. Grant's sponsor; Senator Jim Lane of Kansas; future Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax of Indiana; Radical Republican Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts; Senator Benjamin F. "Bluff Ben" Wade, who would be the spiritual leader of the radical Committee on the Conduct of the War; and a handful more. Despite their lofty positions, few of them had any concept of the day's battle plan as laid out by the Union army commander, Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. Once the army started to march, the civilian dignitaries, like the Confederates, would have to guess what would happen next. There was, however, one civilian with special access to the army and its plans that day: Rhode Island's 31-year old governor, William Sprague. Sprague was rich, cultured, ambitious, and eligible (he would later marry Washington's foremost belle, Kate Chase, daughter of the treasury secretary). The governor took seriously his titular post as commander of the Rhode Island State Militia; he would attach himself this day to the brigade commanded by Colonel Ambrose E. Burnside. The two Rhode Island regiments in Burnside's brigade would lead the day's featured Yankee movement: an arching march north and west to cross Bull Run creek above the Confederate left flank and the Stone Bridge, where the Warrenton Turnpike crossed the creek, almost five miles west of Centreville. Sprague had no intention of merely looking over his favorite general's shoulder. Instead, he rode at the head of the column with Burnside, spurring forward occasionally to reconnoiter, and ultimately directing his constituents into tumultuous musketry fire on Matthew's Hill, just north of the turnpike. "Governor Sprague was foremost in the fight and inspired the men with coolness and courage," wrote one Rhode Islander. The governor had two horses shot from under him--probably the only sitting governor in American history to suffer that distinction.  Senator Henry Wilson Sprague and his Rhode Islanders prevailed that morning on Matthew's Hill, driving the Confederates away in haste just as McDowell had envisioned. Of all this, however, the distant and growing pods of civilians near Centreville knew little. Throughout the morning and early afternoon, steady streams of would-be spectators found their way to the heights at Centreville, fully five miles from the battlefield. "They came in all manner of ways," wrote a Union officer, "some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still others in buggies, on horseback, or even on foot. Apparently everything in the shape of vehicles in and around Washington had been pressed into service for the occasion." Shortly after 1:00 p.m., the most famous news correspondent on the field, William H. Russell of the London Times, crested the Centreville ridge. Russell recalled the slopes were "covered with men, carts, and horses" while spectators crowned the summit. To the west, a vast panorama lay before the audience: forest and field against the backdrop of the Bull Run Mountains, 15 miles distant. The civilian horde looked intently into the scene, but could divine little. Congressman Alfred Ely of New York, who had also just arrived, noted that the "thick woods hid from our view all the troops," although the smoke of the battle "was plainly seen, and the deep-throated roar of the artillery distinctly heard." Russell scanned the supposed battlefield intently with his glass, but, as he wrote in what would be the most famous recounting of the Bull Run disaster, "I failed to discover any traces of close encounter or very severe fighting."  Hon. Elihu B. Washburne For most civilians present that day, the experience was less a visual feast than a forum for wanton speculation. Russell noted that they "were all excited," especially one woman with an opera glass. She was "quite beside herself" when a louder-than-usual volley echoed from the distant battlefield. "That is splendid," she exclaimed. "Oh my! Is that not first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time tomorrow." A handful of soldiers made their way among the spectators, offering commentary and interpretation of the unseen battle beyond Bull Run. At one point, the crowd stood rapt when an officer galloped up the Warrenton Turnpike from the direction of the battlefield (credentials enough, apparently, for the spectators to assume his word reliable). He waved his cap and conveyed stunning news: "We've whipped them at all points. We have taken their batteries. They are retreating as fast as they can, and we are after them."
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Tidball spent as much time providing commentary as he did commanding his battery that day. Situated as he was on a secondary front far from the fighting, however, he could do nothing to satisfy his visitors. "Most of the sightseers were evidently disappointed at what they saw, or rather did not see," recorded Tidball. "They no doubt expected to see a battle as represented in the pictures."
The most distinguished of Tidball's visitors was the troika of Senators Wilson, Wade, and Lane. Tidball recorded that all three were "full of the 'on to Richmond' fever"--impatient to see more of the battle than Tidball's overlook offered. Lane, a Mexican War veteran, was particularly intent, declaring that "he must have a hand in it [the battle] himself." When someone pointed out that he lacked a gun, he retorted, "I can easily find a musket on the field." Lane led the trio on foot across the fields toward the Warrenton Turnpike, where a close encounter with battle (a victorious one, of course) seemed more likely.
During the battle's early hours, only a small knot of civilians had managed to get to this place--a half-dozen reporters, the aspiring politico Taylor, the prominent Ohio judge Daniel McCook, and one of his sons. (McCook was scion of perhaps the Civil War's most militaristic family; 16 of his kin would serve.) As word of the Union's morning successes filtered back to Centreville, however, more civilians, like the senatorial triumvirate of Lane, Wade, and Wilson, trickled onto the ridge. Those who got to the overlook (which is today a huge quarry, hundreds of feet deep) were generally the well-connected and the literate: a half-dozen senators, a dozen representatives, and sundry other scribes and voyeurs, probably not more than 50 in all. Although these lucky few were but a fraction of the probably 500 civilians who ventured forth that Sunday to watch the battle, these were the men who would write of their experiences and thereby convey as typical an experience that properly belonged to only a few.
At the Stone Bridge--now in Union hands--New York Herald correspondent Henry Villard frantically asked directions to McDowell's headquarters. No one could tell him, and the journalist watched in some puzzlement as the tide of blue-clad refugees along the Warrenton Turnpike grew. After 20 minutes, Villard spotted a familiar staff officer, and repeated his query for McDowell. "You won't find him," came the shocking response. "All is chaos in front. The battle is lost. Our troops are giving way and falling back without orders. Get back to Centreville."
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Intense urgency yielded to outright panic when the Confederates managed to get some artillery in range of the bridge over Cub Run. Amidst the gauntlet of shells, a Union wagon swerved and overturned on the bridge, forcing all who wished to cross into the water on either side. "Ambulances, horses, cannon, and men were piled in one confused mass," remembered a Rhode Island artilleryman. Shells burst overhead as the Yankees rushed on, and soon the Rhode Islander shuddered at the sight of "the upper half of a soldier's body flying up the hill." With this, he admitted, "A cry of mortal terror arose among the flying soldiers." Union Troops fleeing in panic from Bull Run in what became known as 'the great skedaddle' The scene at the Cub Run bridge was the defining event of the First Battle of Bull Run. It was into this scene (commonly mislocated to the Stone Bridge) that newspapermen, moviemakers, historians, and novelists injected civilians as central characters--frightened souls tossing aside picnics and parasols to infect the retreating army with panic. Yet, dozens of contemporary accounts make it clear that the panic was a military, not a civilian, event. No civilians were killed or wounded (as the moviemakers love to portray), and so few of them were present east of Cub Run that their presence was rarely if ever mentioned by the soldiers who did participate in the panic. That handful of civilians who had reached the ridge overlooking the Stone Bridge managed to recross the Cub Run bridge before the span was blocked and the true panic began. As Taylor asserted after the war, "There is no truth whatever" in the claim that civilians contributed to the panic. Once across Cub Run, the panicked mob transformed into a discouraged flood, protected by a strong line of infantry and artillery just west of Centreville. Captain Tidball had by now moved his battery to the Warrenton Turnpike and watched as the bedraggled crowd flowed by. Tidball recognized his inquisitors of the morning, Senators Lane, Wilson, and Wade. Lane came by first, now mounted on a "flea-bitten gray horse with a rusty harness on" and wielding, "sure enough," the musket he had promised to find. Not far behind Lane trundled Senator Wilson, "hot and red in the face from exertion...in his shirtsleeves, carrying his coat on his arm." When he reached Tidball, Wilson (who would later briefly command the 22d Massachusetts Infantry, "Henry Wilson's Regiment") swabbed the sweat from his brow and growled, "Cowards! Why don't they turn and beat back the scoundrels?" And finally up the hill toiled Wade, without the strength to do anything but drag his coat on the ground behind him. Wrote Tidball, "As he approached me I thought I had never beheld so sorrowful a countenance." Wade's normally long face seemed "still more lengthened by the weight of his heavy under-jaws...so heavy it seemed to overtax his exhausted strength to keep his mouth shut."  Such was the condition of most of the Yankees who had found their way to Bull Run that day. But the vast majority of civilians had not gotten near Bull Run, had not caught even a glimpse of a Confederate soldier, and were not panicked by a stumbling mob of frightened Union soldiers. When word of the disaster filtered back to the large gaggle of spectators at Centreville, most of them simply mounted their buggies or horses and headed back toward Washington, albeit with some urgency. One brief spasm of panic infected part of the fleeing horde, but generally the civilian departure was orderly. (Russell noted this sliver of panic, and therefore it became famous.) Some arrived back in the capital during the night, hundreds more the next morning--all of them with tales of woe and fright. The spectacle of these woebegone civilians became an instant target for newspapermen and editorialists--most of whom had been hundreds of miles away during the battle. As time passed and pens spun ever more colorful explanations for Union defeat, inevitably some pundits began fingering the civilians as not just witnesses to the debacle, but as the disaster's cause. One Syracuse paper asserted, "editors, reporters, congressmen, and others...were the first to fly.... [They] filled with consternation many a man who would have remained firm as granite but for that society."  Senator Benjamin Wade The Syracuse editorialist was wrong. But such an explanation--now accepted as rote history--proved useful for the army and the government. It deflected responsibility from the officers and soldiers, who were the overwhelmingly dominant actors in the drama, and it appealed to cynical descendants--us--who revel in the follies of our ancestors. Today, few images in American history are so indelibly linked as the First Battle of Bull Run and civilian spectators. We have contorted the image into a carnival: civilians sprawled about on blankets on the edge of the battlefield, nibbling on picnic lunches while watching death and carnage, cheering as though at a football game. Shocking, sudden Union defeat engulfed these misbegotten ones--so the lore goes--and they fled hell-bent with their military protectors, dodging shells, scrambling through streams, often falling to exhaustion or shrapnel. Modern Americans giggle and gawk at such manufactured images. But the license to giggle and gawk requires us to overlook how we gathered around our televisions by the millions on January 17, 1991, to watch the war with Iraq unfold. It requires us to forget that we swarm by the thousands on hot summer afternoons--hotter by far than July 21, 1861--to watch men pretend to kill each other in reenactments (and we cheer!). It demands that we discount the certainty that if today's civilians could be assured of getting within a few miles of a battlefield without getting hurt, we would not only flock by the thousands, but some of us would be hawking T-shirts, too: "I survived the Battle of Bull Run."  Bull Run, Va. New bridge built by McDowell's engineers; photographer's wagon at left To sustain our cliched vision of civilian spectators at the First Battle of Bull Run, we must overlook that the historical image conjured by movie-makers and historians is grossly overstated. The civilians in fact affected (or were affected by) events that day very little indeed. Rather, the spectators at Bull Run thoroughly symbolized a nation's naive view of the coming war--and commenced a tradition of war-watching that has since been elevated to a virtual (and dominantly American) industry. |
It's so neat to read about a place you have been. That was a good vacation.
A lot more trees in the area today.
Nice country there though.
An excellent pair of essays. I liked them much. Very illustrative of human nature.
As McKay points out, "Men go mad in crowds, but only regain their senses one at a time."
From "Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds", important book on politics, investing, and economics, written about 1800 or so.
Hump Day Bump for the Bull of the Run Freeper Foxhole
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Good morning, snippy and everyone at the Foxhole.
Good morning
March 2, 2005
When I was a little girl, my mother gave me her prized "reader" to help me learn, just as it had helped her years earlier. I loved one particular story, never dreaming how much it would affect me years later.
It was about a little boy with a small shovel. He was trying to clear a pathway through deep, new-fallen snow in front of his house. A man paused to observe the child's enormous task. "Little boy," he inquired, "how can someone as small as you expect to finish a task as big as this?" The boy looked up and replied confidently, "Little by little, that's how!" And he continued shoveling.
God awakened in me the seed of that story at a time when I was recovering from a breakdown. I remember how my "adult" self taunted the weak "child" within me: "How can someone as inadequate as you expect to surmount so great a mountain as this?" That little boy's reply became my reply: "Little by little, that's how!" And I did overcome-by depending on God. But it was one small victory after another.
The obstacles facing Israel as they considered claiming the land God had promised them must have seemed insurmountable. But He didn't ask them to do it all at once.
"Little by little" is the strategy for victory. -Joanie Yoder
Trust God to move your mountain, but keep on climbing.
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on March 02:
1316 Robert II the Steward, King of Scotland (1371-90)
1409 John II French duke of Alençon/co-fighter of Jeanne d'arc
1459 Adrian VI [Adriaan F Boeyens], Netherlands, Pope (1522-23)
1481 Franz von Sickingen German knight
1760 Camille Desmoulins France, journalist/pamphleteer/revolution leader
1769 DeWitt Clinton (Governor/Senator-NY)
1793 Sam Houston 1st president of Texas (1836-38, 1841-44)
1810 Leo XIII [Vincenzo G Pecci], 256th pope (1878-1903)
1824 Henry Beebee Carrington Brigadier General (Union volunteers), died in 1912
1828 Jefferson Columbus Davis Brevet Major General (Union Army), died in 1879
1829 Carl Schurz Major General (Union volunteers) journalist/political reformer/Civil War general
1876 Pius XII [Euhenio MGG Pacelli], 260th Pope (1939-58)
1902 Edward Uhler Condon atomic scientist (Manhattan Project)
1904 Dr Seuss [Theodor Geisel] children's book author (Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who!)
1909 Mel Ott 1st National League-er to hit 500 homeruns, hall of famer (New York Giants)
1917 Desi Arnaz Santiago Cuba, singer/actor (Ricky Ricardo-I Love Lucy)
1923 "Doc" Watson bluegrass musician
1923 Robert H Michel (Representative-Republican-IL, 1957- )
1926 Murray Newton Rothbard economist/Libertarian Party founder
1928 Philip K Dick writer
1931 Duane F Graveline Newport VT, astronaut
1931 Mikhail S Gorbachev Privolnoye USSR, Soviet Secretary-General (1985-91)
1931 Tom Wolfe Richmond VA, journalist/author (Right Stuff)
1942 John Irving Exeter NH, writer (World According to Garp)
1942 Lou Reed [Louis Firbank] Freeport NY, vocalist/guitarist (Walk on the Wild Side, Velvet Underground)
1943 George Benson jazz/blues guitarist (Breezin', This Masquerade)
1949 Gates McFadden actress (Beverly Crusher-Star Trek Next Generation)
1949 Rory Gallagher Ballyshannon Ireland, rock guitarist (See Here)
1952 Laraine Newman Los Angeles CA, comedienne/actress (Saturday Night Live)
1955 Jay Osmond Ogden UT, singer (Osmond Brothers, Donny & Marie)
1975 Arleen McDonald Miss Mississippi-USA (1997)
by Pfc. Cheryl Ransford
March 1, 2005
Sgt. 1st Class Erika Gordon, 58th Military Police Company, Afghanistan, trains with her dog. This photo appeared on www.army.mil
Goods morning, y'all...MUD
BTW..."Gonzalez!!"
(To be sung to Waylon Jennings' "Amanda")
I've held it all in, Lord...God knows I've tried...
But it's an awful awakening in a patriot's life...
To know of Left's tyranny and Slick's shameless lies...
Then put "OUR GUYS" in Justice, but they IGNORE Clinton's CRIMES...
Gonzalez, please do what's Right!!
Fate...it SHALL force you to INDICT Left's blight!!
George Dubyuh, put up a Fight!!
Patriots will help you when you do what's Right!!
That's what's special 'bout FReepers, folks, we understand...
The pleasures of fightin' Slick's BigMoneyMan.
T-Mac screwed o'er the Teamsters...his crimes are OBSCENE.
Now Ashcroft's no longer, Fer Justice We FReep!!
George Dubyuh, Pride of the Right...
Left, they may hate you, but they'll learn our Might!!
Gonzalez, Slick we'll INDICT...
Fate shall then make Bill his Cell-Buddy's "wife"!!
Mudboy Slim (08/27/2001)
Morning Iris7.
I guess human nature doesn't change much.
Morning Snippy. Ready to go reading?
Hi Feather.
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