The strategic advantages lay with Beauregard. His men were defending what they now regarded as their own separate homeland from the aggressor. He was operating on interior lines, well-served by railways. He had had time to survey the terrain and to prepare his defences in country that provided plenty of cover. Because the soldiers and many of the officers on both sides were largely untrained, it made best sense to hold his men in position and let the enemy charge at them, uphill, wasting strength.
But such a scheme did not accord with Beauregard’s grandiloquent notions of military splendour. Time and again, in the days before the battle, he came up with impractical and potentially disastrous ideas. On 13 July he wrote to Johnston urging him to leave a token force in the Shenandoah Valley and bring the bulk of his army to Manassas, whence the two of them would advance to destroy first McDowell, then Patterson, then General McClellan’s smaller army in West Virginia. Within a month, he claimed, at one brilliant stroke, the war would be won. He sent one of his staff, Colonel James Chesnut, to Richmond to present the plan to President Davis and General Lee. The listened politely, expressed admiration, then pointed out that Beauregard’s assessment of his army’s strength was greatly exaggerated, his assessment of its capabilities hopelessly optimistic.
A few days later, when McDowell’s army started its march, Beauregard devised another aggressive scheme. He felt sure the Northerners would attack at Mitchell’s Ford. As soon as this attack began, Longstreet and other brigades farther downstream would cross the river and hurl themselves at the enemy’s left flank and rear, threatening Centreville. It was another wild plan. It depended on the enemy doing exactly what Beauregard expected him to do, made no provision for anything else, and exaggerated the capabilities of his own units. Fortunately, there was no prospect of its being attempted.
After the affair at Blackburn’s Ford, when Johnston was at Piedmont station arranging his army’s transport to Manassas, Beauregard proposed an even more unworkable scheme. Johnston should split his force in two. Half of them would go to Manassas and link up with Beauregard’s army. The other half would march north of the railway, traverse the Bull Run Mountains and fall upon McDowell’s right flank. Johnston later commented: ‘I did not agree to the plan because, ordinarily, it is impracticable to direct the movements of troops so distant from each other, by roads so far separated, in such a manner as to combine their action on a field of battle.’ At the time, he did not respond to Beauregard’s suggestion. He merely sent a message to say his whole army was making for Manassas Junction.
The first of Jackson’s Virginians reached Piedmont at 6 a.m. on Friday 19 July. The loading took a long time and, since there was only one locomotive available, it travelled very carefully. It was not until late that afternoon that they reached Manassas Junction. The train then hurried back for its next load, two regiments of Colonel Barstow’s Brigade, men from Georgia and Kentucky. It was 8 a.m. on Saturday when they arrived at Manasass. The shuttle service speeded up when another train was commandeered. Johnston travelled with General Bee’s Brigade (from Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee) to reach Beauregard’s headquarters about midday.
Beauregard was a relieved man. No mention seems to have been made of his idea that Johnston should split his force in two. Half of it had now reached the Bull Run front and the rest was on the way. Further reinforcements were coming by rail from Richmond. And for two vital days, 19 and 20 July, McDowell had made no move.
There were two things McDowell had to do on the 19th. His men had run out of food, so fresh supplies had to be brought up in order that each man might go into battle with two days’ rations in his haversack. The other task was to find a way, to the west, by which he might out-flank the enemy line. There was known to be a good ford, wide enough for wheeled vehicles, across the river at a place called Sudley Springs. He needed to be sure that the road to the ford would permit the reasonably trouble-free passage of two divisions, some 13,000 men.
He sent an engineering officer with a cavalry escort to find out. They rode a few miles along the road but had to turn back before reaching the ford because they ran into enemy patrols and did not want to arouse suspicion. It seemed a reasonable assumption that this was a feasible way to Sudley Springs, but McDowell wanted to be absolutely sure. So further patrols were sent, and it was not until midday on Saturday 20th that his engineers could assure him the route was practicable. In effect, a second day had been wasted.
McDowell knew he could delay no longer. Already some of his three-month’ volunteers, the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment and the gunners of the 8th New York, were packing up to go, rejecting all pleas to stay for the fight. That night McDowell told his commanders his plans for the battle.
The affair at Blackburn’s Ford had convinced McDowell that it was in this area that the enemy expected his main attack. It was here, he felt sure, that Beauregard had concentrated his defences. McDowell was right. With this in mind, then, he decided to feint an attack here but send his main striking force round to the west to fall on the enemy’s left flank and rear, severing the railway line before Johnston could reach the field – there were rumours that Johnston was already on the way, but McDowell dismissed them.
On the evening of Saturday 20 July, McDowell issued his orders. Tyler’s First Division would stage the feint attack on the Stone Bridge, ‘making proper demonstrations’. Richardson’s brigade would make similar threatening gestures towards Blackburn’s Ford. The Fifth Division, commanded by Colonel D. S. Miles, would stay in reserve behind them, in the Centreville area. Meanwhile the Second and Third Divisions, totalling more than 13,000 men, would march westwards in the dark, cross the river at Sudley Springs at dawn, out-flank the enemy and carry the day. McDowell himself would be with them.
It was a simple and reasonable plan. Perhaps it would have been wiser to launch his feint attacks farther downstream, more distant from the flanking movement. There was also the danger, if Johnston’s army was arriving, that the flanking force would come up against Southern soldiers comparatively fresh from their train journey. But the biggest flaw in McDowell’s plan lay in the detail of its timing. His first intention was that his columns should move off that evening and cover some miles before bivouacking. But several of his commanders argued that the men should be allowed to rest until the early hours of Sunday morning, and McDowell allowed himself to be persuaded. It was a mistake on two counts: the night march proved something of a nightmare; and McDowell was able to consume one of his colossal suppers, with the result that he felt seriously unwell next morning.
On the farther side of the river, too, plans were being made and given for the morrow’s battle. The first problem, when Johnston arrived at Beauregard’s headquarters, was to determine who was in overall command. Johnston was not in any doubt about this. He out-ranked Beauregard and had taken the precaution, a few day’s before, of getting confirmation from President Davis that he was to be in charge. Even so, in his account of the battle that was published after the Civil War, Beauregard gave a very different impression: ‘General Johnston was the ranking officer, and entitled, therefore, to assume command of the united forces; but as the extensive field of operations was one which I had occupied since the beginning of June, and with which I was thoroughly familiar in all its extent and military bearings, while he was wholly unacquainted with it, and, moreover, as I had made my plans and dispositions for the maintenance of the position, General Johnston, in view of the gravity of the impending issue, preferred not to assume the responsibilities of the chief direction of the forces during the battle, but to assist me upon the field. Thereupon, I explained my plans and purposes, to which he agreed.’ It is characteristic Beauregard. He lacked most of his hero, Napoleon’s, skills as a commander but had all his assiduity in the favourable rewriting of history.
It was Johnston who took command. But he was a tired man by the time he reached Manassas and wise enough to recognize that Beauregard knew the terrain and the current dispositions far better than he did. So he listened while Beauregard expounded the situation and his plans, gave his approval and went off to catch up on some sleep. Both generals agreed that the battle would have to take place next day. Otherwise, there was a danger that Patterson might arrive to tilt the balance of strength heavily against them.
Beauregard and his staff settled down to write out the orders. His plan was, of course, an aggressive one. His line extended some six miles, from Union Bridge on the right, the point where the railway crossed the river, to Stone Bridge on the left, where the river was spanned by the Warrenton Turnpike road. Despite the setback the Northern army had suffered two days earlier at Blackburn’s Ford, Beauregard still clung to his conviction that the main enemy thrust would come in that region, at Mitchell’s Ford especially. So he had placed the bulk of his army, two-thirds of his men, on the right and right-centre of his line, with Johnston’s men behind them in support. His left flank, where the river offered the best crossing points, he planned to guard with a brigade and a half, just over 4,000 men. At daybreak on Sunday morning, Beauregard ordered, his leading brigades in the centre would force their way across the river and, supported by the others, drive a way uphill towards Centreville in the area where he expected to find the bulk of McDowell’s army.
It was a rash and ill-considered plan and the orders to his commanders were ill-written, unclear and sometimes downright impenetrable. It was a matter of the greatest good fortune for the Southern cause that it proved impossible even to begin to try and implement the plan.
That Saturday night was calm and lovely. On both sides of the river thousands of men lay on the ground, gazing at the starry sky and wondering what the next day would bring. The great majority of them, who had never been in action, tried to imagine what it would be like and worried about how they would behave under fire, whether they would disgrace themselves under the eyes of their comrades and old friends, whether they would see another night sky. All the big talk in the bars, all the parades and speeches and cheering girls were behind them now, and tomorrow they would come face to face with the reality. Even those officers who had known battle before had experienced nothing as big as this.
On the Northern side there had been many visitors to the camps during the day. The pioneer photograper, Mathew Brady, was there with his bulky equipment: ‘We are making history now,’ he said, ‘and every picture that we get will be valuable.’ There were many newspaper reporters in the camps. The editor of the New York Times, Henry J. Raymond, wrote to his paper: ‘This is one of the most beautiful nights that the imagination can conceive. The sky is perfectly clear, the moon is full and bright, and the air as still as if it were not within a few hours to be disturbed by the roar of canon and the shouts of contending men . . . An hour ago I rode back to General McDowell’s headquarters . . . As I rose over the crest of the hill, and caught a view of the scene in front, it seemed a picture of enchantment. The bright moon cast the woods which bound the field into deep shadows, through which the camp fires shed a clear and brilliant glow. On the extreme right, in the neighbourhood of the Fire Zouaves, a party were singing “The Star-spangled Banner”, and from the left rose the sweet strains of a magnificent band, intermingling opera airs with patriotic bursts of “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle” . . .
