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MCDOWELL’S ADVANCE TO BULL RUN.

191

Beauregard extended his left to outflank McDowell’s shattered, shortened, anddisconnected line, and the F ederals left the field about half-past 4. Until thenthey had fought wonderfully well for raw troops. There were no fresh forces onthe field to support or encourage them, and the men seemedto be seized simultaneously by the conviction that it was nouse to do anything more and they might as well starthome. Cohesion was lost, the organizations with some ex-ceptions being disintegrated, and the men quietly walked off.There was no special excitement except that arising fromthe frantic efforts of officers to stop men who paid littleor no attention to anything that was said. On the highground by the Matthews house, about where Evans hadtaken position in the morning to check Burnside, Mc-Dowell and his staff, aided by other officers, made adesperate but futile effort to arrest the masses and formthem into line. There, I went to Arnold’s battery as itcame by, and advised that he unlimber and make a stand asa rallying-point, which he did, saying he was in fair con-dition and ready to fight as long as there was any fightingto be done. But all efforts failed. The stragglers movedpast the guns, in spite of all that could be done, and, asstated in his report, Arnold at my direction joined Sykes’s battalion of infan-try of Porter’s brigade and Palmer’s battalion of cavalry, all of the regulararmy, to cover the rear, as the men trooped back ingreat disorder across Bull Bun. There were some hoursof daylight for the Confederates to gather the fruits ofvictory, but a few rounds of shell and canister checkedall the pursuit that was attempted, and the occasion calledfor no sacrifices or valorous deeds by the stanch regularsof the rear-guard. There was no panic, in the ordinarymeaning of the word, until the retiring soldiers, guns,wagons, congressmen, and carriages were fired upon, onthe road east of Bull Bun. Then the panic began, andthe bridge over Cub Bun being rendered impassable forvehicles by a wagon that was upset upon it, utter con-fusion set in: pleasure-carriages, gun-carriages, and am-munition wagons which could not be put across the Bunwere abandoned and blocked the way, and stragglersbroke and threw aside their muskets and cut horsesfrom their harness and rode off upon them. In leavingthe field the men took the same routes, in a general way,by which they had reached it. Hence when the menof Hunter’s and Heintzelman’s divisions got back to Cen-treville, they had walked about 25 miles. That night they walked back tothe Potomac, an additional distance of 20 miles; so that these undisciplinedand unseasoned men within 36 hours walked fully 45 miles, besides fighting

UNIFORM OF BLENKER’S 8THNEW YORK VOLUNTEERS.

UNIFORM OF THE GARI-BALDI GUARDS,COLONEL D’UTASSY.