Bull Run Aftermath - Harper's Weekly August 10, 1861

It took the editorialists and engravers at Harper's Weekly several issues to catch up with the Union defeat at Bull Run. Over the next few days we will be running some of the illustrations, which grew progressively more dramatic. This is from the issue dated August 10, 1861, and shows what looks like an orderly "retreat by moonlight." As the account by William Howard Russell in Our Man in Charleston makes clear, that was far from the case.

July 21, 1861 - Today the Battle of Bull Run (and publication of OMIC)

On the 154th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run or First Manassas, an excerpt from Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South, published today:

On the morning of July 21, 1861, William Howard Russell was running late for a battle. Confederate troops under Gen. P. G. T. Beauregard, whom he knew from Charleston, and the Union Army under Gen. Irvin McDowell, whom he’d met several times, were now massed around a little rivulet called Bull Run near the Manassas Gap Railroad junction. Everybody in Washington seemed to think this first major battle would be a Northern victory. It might be the beginning of serious fighting. It might be the end of it. Whatever happened, there was no question, Russell had to be there to see it.

Since Russell’s return from the South to the Federal capital, nothing had gone right for him. While he’d been away, and despite his reams of reporting, Delane and the other editors of the Times of London had taken a stand of clear sympathy with the secessionists. They reflected the interests of an elite with commercial concerns about cotton and contempt for the American notion of a republic. They also embraced the idea that, because President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward insisted this war was not about freeing the slaves, then truly that was the case. And for the masses, there was the appeal of the Southerners as underdogs struggling against the subjugation of Washington. The Times editors had become just the apostles of the fait accompli that Seward had feared. So even though the paper still ran Russell’s articles about the inadequacies of the Southern military position, the arrogance of King Cotton, 

“If the Confederates do not grasp that which will never come again on such terms, it stamps them with mediocrity.”

and the monstrosity of slavery, its editorials were such that Russell found the Times “assailed on all sides as a Secession organ, favorable to the rebels and exceedingly hostile to the Federal government and the cause of the Union.” The net result for its correspondent was that he no longer had the kind of access to the Union military that he’d wanted and expected. Seward would still see him, but War Department passes were hard to come by, and on the eve of combat no one would give him the countersign so he could get through checkpoints to see the battle begin at dawn.

Not until midday did Russell finally get close enough to the fighting to hear “the thudding noise, like taps with a gentle hand upon a muffled drum” of artillery in action. Among congressmen and other dignitaries, many of them accompanied by their wives, he watched from atop a hill above Centreville as distant wisps of smoke marked the opposing lines. He ate a sandwich. He drank some Bordeaux he’d packed in his case. By the time he drew closer to the fighting, the Union forces were pulling back; then, suddenly, they were fleeing in a rout so complete that he could hardly believe his eyes. Russell was on a borrowed nag threading his way toward the action when he heard loud shouts ahead of him and saw several wagons coming from the direction of the battlefield. The drivers were trying to force their way past the ammunition carts coming up the narrow road. A thick cloud of dust rose behind them. Men were running beside the carts, between them. “Every moment the crowd increased, drivers and men cried out with the most vehement gestures, ‘Turn back! Turn back! We are whipped.’ They seized the heads of the horses and swore at the opposing drivers.” A breathless officer with an empty scabbard dangling by his side got wedged for a second between a wagon and Russell’s horse.

“What is the matter, sir?” Russell asked. “What is all this about?

“Why, it means we are pretty badly whipped,” said the officer, “and that’s the truth.” Then he scrambled away.

The heat, the uproar, and the dust were “beyond description,” Russell wrote afterward. And it all got worse when some cavalry soldiers, flourishing their sabers, tried to force their way through the mob, shouting, “Make way for the general!”

Russell had made it to a white house where two field guns were positioned, when suddenly troops came pouring out of the nearby forest. The gunners were about to blast away when an officer or a sergeant shouted, “Stop! Stop! They are our own men.” In a few minutes a whole battalion had run past in utter disorder. “We are pursued by their cavalry,” one told Russell. “They have cut us all to pieces.”

After a while there was nothing the world’s greatest war correspondent could do but fall in with the tide of men fleeing the fighting. In all his battles, he had never seen anything like this: “Infantry soldiers on mules and draught horses, with the harness clinging to their heels, as much frightened as their riders; Negro servants on their masters’ chargers; ambulances crowded with unwounded soldiers; wagons swarming with men who threw out the contents in the road to make room; grinding through a shouting, screaming mass of men on foot, who were literally yelling with rage at every halt and shrieking out, ‘Here are the cavalry! Will you get on?’ ” They talked “prodigious nonsense,” Russell said, “describing batteries tier over tier, and ambuscades, and blood running knee-deep.” As he rode through the crowd, men grabbed at Russell’s stirrups and saddle. He kept telling them over and over again not to be in such a hurry. “There’s no enemy to pursue you. All the cavalry in the world could not get at you.” But, as he soon realized, he “might as well have talked to the stones.”

It was a long way back to Washington that day. But after several brushes with violent deserters, drunken soldiers, and more panic-stricken officers, Russell made his way in the moonlight to the Long Bridge across the Potomac and into the capital. He told anyone who asked him that the Union commander would regroup and resume the battle the next morning. But when he awoke in his boardinghouse on Pennsylvania Avenue, he found the city full of uniformed rabble. “The great Army of the Potomac,” he wrote, “is in the streets of Washington instead of on its way to Richmond.”

The Federal capital was essentially defenseless. “The inmates of the White House are in a state of the utmost trepidation,” Russell wrote, “and Mr. Lincoln, who sat in the telegraph operator’s room with General Scott and Mr. Seward, listening to the dispatches as they arrived from the scene of the action, left in despair when the fatal words tripped from the needle and the defeat was already revealed to him.”

For the South, “here is a golden opportunity,” said Russell. “If the Confederates do not grasp that which will never come again on such terms, it stamps them with mediocrity.” But the rebels stayed where they were, and the fact that they did not march on Washington suggested this would be a long war.

As Russell studied the city, its politicians, and its dispositions in the aftermath of the battle, he did not agree with “many who think the contest is now over.” He figured the Northerners had learned
a lesson about “the nature of the conflict on which they have entered” and would be roused to action. But when the Times ran Russell’s article on the battle, his balanced judgment about the lessons learned got no play. The whole effect of his account of the rout was to reinforce the editors’ image of a South that not only would fight, but that could fight better than the North and, therefore, should soon be free of it.

Obviously now the Palmerston government in London could recognize the Confederacy and would and should. And yet it did not.

Southerners, in full hubris, were continuing to withhold their cotton in order to inflict as much pain as possible on Britain for its evident reluctance to join their cause. British consul Robert Bunch sent a note to Lyons in cipher about these developments, then concluded, uncoded, with the ironic comment, “We are getting much ‘riled’ at not being recognized.” Lyons labeled the letter in his file, Wicked designs of the South.

Why did Britain hold back? ...

Illustrations from "Harper's Weekly," which tried desperately to put a positive face on the battle, courtesy of The American Library in Paris.

July 16, 1861 - It's not looking good for the North

Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South will be published July 21. As it happens, that is also the 154th anniversary of the Battle of Bull Run or, if you will, First Manassas. While Consul Bunch in Charleston began laying the groundwork for secret talks with the Confederate government (which he loathed), his friend William Howard Russell, the great war correspondent for the Times of London, was in Washington D.C. examining preparations for the battle everyone knew would be coming soon in northern Virginia.

It’s not looking good for the North.

July 16. … On arriving at the Washington platform, the first person I saw was General McDowell alone, looking anxiously into the carriages. He asked where I came from, and when he heard from Annapolis, inquired eagerly if I had seen two batteries of artillery Barry s and another which he had ordered up, and was waiting for, but which had”gone astray.” I was surprised to find the General engaged on such duty, and took leave to say so. “Well, it is quite true, Mr. Russell ; but I am obliged to look after them myself, as I have so small a staff, and they are all engaged out with my head-quarters. You are aware I have advanced ? No ! Well, you have just come in time, and I shall be happy, indeed, to take you with me. I have made arrangements for the correspondents of our papers to take the field under certain regulations, and I have suggested to them they should wear a white uniform, to indicate the purity of their character.” The General could hear nothing of his guns ; his carriage was waiting, and I accepted his offer of a seat to my lodgings. Although he spoke confidently, he did not seem in good spirits. There was the greatest difficulty in finding out anything about the enemy. Beauregard was said to have advanced to Fairfax Court House, but he could not get any certain knowledge of the fact.

“Can you not order a reconnaissance?”

“Wait till you see the country. But even if it were as flat as Flanders, I have not an officer on whom I could depend for the work. They would fall into some trap, or bring on a general engagement when I did not seek it or desire it. I have no cavalry such as you work with in Europe.”

I think he was not so much disposed to undervalue the Confederates as before, for he said they had selected a very strong position, and had made a regular levee en masse of the people of Virginia, as a proof of the energy and determination with which they were entering on the campaign.

July 6, 1861 - Seward's spies go after Consul Bunch

From Our Man in Charleston: Britain's Secret Agent in the Civil War South, to be published July 21:

Seward saw spies everywhere, and his spies were everywhere. His police, informants, and private detectives kept a constant flow of information and allegations piling onto his desk. Legal guarantees

for suspected traitors and spies were thrown out.  When William Howard Russell met with Seward in July he accused him of running what amounted to a police state, and Seward was unapologetic. “The government will not shrink from using all the means which they consider necessary to restore the Union.” But as word got back to London of Seward’s activities, Palmerston raged against the effrontery of it all. “These North Americans,” he said, “are following fast the example of the Spanish Americans and the Continental despots. They commit all sorts of violence without regard to law, take up men and women and imprison them on mere suspicion, and rule the land by spies and police and martial law.” …

Lyons was worried. The secret mission to Richmond was approaching, but his man was already under scrutiny. “Her Majesty’s Government does not wish for an éclat here, so be particularly careful to avoid bringing one on, either as respects yourself or me,” Lyons warned Bunch on July 6.  “They have already got stories about you and the persons to whom you have given passports to the North, which I shall do all I can to put straight. They make it necessary for you to be particularly cautious.”At about the same time, Lyons wrote to Russell that he saw “symptoms of a determination here to make [Bunch] an object of attack. To withdraw his exequator would be just the sort of half-violent measure which would, I am afraid, be to Mr. Seward’s taste. It would not be an absolutely brutem fulmen [empty threat], for his recognized official character is necessary to enable him to communicate with the U.S. Blockading Squadron, and to obtain respect for messengers sent to and from him with dispatches.” Lyons concluded by saying, “I have no doubt he will manage the negotiations about the Declaration of Paris as well and as prudently as any man.” But the secrecy around the mission to Richmond was compromised before it ever started.

Seward on the cover of "Harper's Weekly" soon after he took office, courtesy of The American Library of Paris

July 2, 1861 - W. H. Russell on West Point and "military aristocracy"

The great British war correspondent William Howard Russell, a key contact for Our Man in Charleston, is on his way back to New York City and Washington after touring the South. 

July 2d - At early dawn this morning, looking out of the sleeping car, I saw through the mist a broad, placid river on the right, and on the left high wooded banks running sharply into the stream, against the base of which the rails were laid. West Point, which is celebrated for its picturesque scenery, as much as for its military school, could not be seen through the fog, and I regretted time did not allow me to stop and pay a visit to the academy. I was obliged to content myself with the handiwork of some of the ex-pupils. The only camaraderie I have witnessed in America exists among the 

West Point men. It is to Americans what our great public schools are to young Englishmen. To take a high place at West Point is to be a first-class man, or wrangler. The academy turns out a kind of military aristocracy, and I have heard complaints that the Irish and Germans are almost completely excluded, because the nominations to West Point are obtained by political influence ; and the foreign element, though powerful at the ballot-box, has no enduring strength. The Murphies and Schmidts seldom succeed in shoving their sons into the American institution. North and South, I have
observed, the old pupils refer everything military to West Point. "I was with Beauregard at West Point. He was three above me." Or, "McDowell and I were in the same class." An officer is measured by what he did there, and if professional jealousies date from the state of common pupilage, so do lasting friendships. I heard Beauregard, Lawton, Hardee, Bragg, and others, speak of McDowell, Lyon, McClellan, and other men of the academy, as their names turned up in the Northern papers, evidently judging of them by the old school standard. The number of men who have been educated there greatly exceeds the modest requirements of the army. But there is likelihood of their being all in full work very soon.

Illustration of Union forces in Cairo, Illinois, on Arlington Heights and at Fairfax Court House from Harper's Weekly, courtesy of the American Library in Paris.

June 23, 1861 - Confederates to Celebrate July 4

Consul Robert Bunch, Our Man in Charleston, is still trying to deal with a bit of scandal provoked by W. H. Russell's account of Southern banter about rejoining the British Empire which has now made it to the front page of "Harper's Weekly." Bunch reflects ironically on the upcoming celebration of July 4 in the Confederate States.

Bunch to Lyons, "Private": 

June 23 - ... We have had quite a tempest in a teapot concerning Russell. You will see from my letter to his namesake Ld. John what I think of it — the revelation is [uncommonly?] awkward just now as regards the [several?] states of the new Confederacy, but the fact is undeniable.

I have had many letters from Russell and his companion Mr. Ward. The last from Memphis, June 18.

I am writing to your Lordship at the coolest window in my home, hour 11:30 a.m. Mrs. Bunch is amusing herself with tying the thermometer which is just now at 93 close to me, and is running up fast. The mosquitoes are [cavorting?] blithely round my ankles which are wrapped in a pieced of gauze. You may fancy how a summer campaign with volunteer troops would "eventuate" in our rice swamps.

There has been some disputing here as to whether or no the 4th of July should sill be kept in the Southern States. The decision is in the affirmative. I have always looked upon the celebration of the day by the Americans as an amiable trait in their character, as showing a disposition to be very grateful for very little. If an Englishman still regrets the issue of the revolutionary war or is mortified by the celebration of "Independence Day," he is amply compensated for his wounded feelings—Yorktown is fully avenged — the sight of the hostile armies in Virginia ought to satisfy him.


Meanwhile, Russell is scrambling in Illinois: 

June 23—The latest information which I received today is of a nature to hasten my departure for Washington; it can no longer be doubted that a battle between the two armies assembled in the neighborhood of the capital is imminent.


Letter from Bunch to Lord Lyons, the British minister in Washington, courtesy of the Duke of Norfolk Archives, Arundel Castle, West Sussex, UK

Cartoon from Harper's Weekly courtesy The American Library in Paris

June 21, 1860 - W.H. Russell on the South Sucking Up to Great Britain

The great British war correspondent William Howard Russell, a key contact for Our Man in Charleston, has finally made it up the Mississippi and out of the South to Cairo, Illinois. Meanwhile, Harper's Weekly has put him on its front page.


June 21—The people of the seceding States, aware in their consciences that they have been most active in their hostility to Great Britain, and whilst they were in power were mainly responsible for the defiant, irritating, and insulting tone commonly used to us by American statement, are anxious at the present moment when so much depends on the action of foreign countries, to remove all unfavorable impressions from our minds by declarations of good will, respect and admiration, not quite compatible with the language of their leaders in times not long gone by.

The North, as yet unconscious of the loss of power, and reared in a school of menace and violent assertion of their rights, regarding themselves as the whole of the United States, and animated by their own feeling of commercial and political opposition to Great Britain, maintain the high tone of a people who have never known let or hindrance in their passions, and consider it an outrage that the whole world does not join an active sympathy for a government which in its brief career has contrived to affront every nation in Europe with which it had any dealings.

Excerpt is from W. H. Russell's My Diary North and South.

"Harper's Weekly" courtesy of The American Library in Paris

June 20, 1861 - Southern elite dreams of return to British monarchy

A version of this Sully portrait of Victoria gazed
down on the men drafting the ordinance of secession
in Charleston's St. Andrew's Hall in 1860 

The South's Anglophile aristocrats loved to talk about returning to "The Mother Country," a theme picked up on by W. H. Russell in one of his dispatches from South Carolina and supported in this letter to Lord Lyons from Our Man in Charleston Robert Bunch.  Clearly they didn't think this through, since slavery had been abolished throughout the Empire almost 30 years earlier.

June 20 - The Letters of Mr. W. H. Russell, the special correspondent of the "Times" newspaper have been looked for in this Community with an anxiety which to a stranger might almost appear ludicrous—But to one who, like myself, has resided for several years in South Carolina, the desire on the part of the people to learn the judgment which would be pronounced upon them by an intelligent observer and writer, especially by one who commands the attention of the world to so great a degree as does Mr. Russell, appears both natural and proper. It has always been a subject of complaint at the South that the only knowledge of its social system possessed by the European public is derived from Northern sources by which it has been misrepresented and consistently vilified. … I can, therefore, fully appreciate the solicitude with which the criticisms of Mr. Russell were expected. He was to see and judge for himself, not to take at second-hand the interested or prejudiced opinions (as they are considered) of the North, or even of Great Britain on the subject of Slavery.

     Four of Mr. Russell’s letters from the Southern States have now appeared, and have, on the whole, given satisfaction. Altho’ it is asserted that on several points of detail he has not proved himself entirely correct (an opinion from which I altogether differ) there exists an universal disposition to admire his fairness and be flattered by his accounts of the people and the government. But I have found within the last few days some inclination to deny, and even to resent, the statements of his second letter from Charleston, dated April 30, to the effect that the people of South Carolina, or rather its upper classes, which in this State, at least, have the entire control of the “people,” and are the only portion of the population whose wishes are consulted, would not object to see the connection with the Mother Country revived, and themselves either the subjects of Her Majesty or of a Constitutional Monarchy under an English Prince. I have, therefore, thought it not inexpedient to assure Your Lordship that, in my humble judgment, Mr. Russell is entirely correct in the views he expresses. Language such as he describes has been told to me on numberless occasions by the very best and most influential persons in South Carolina, not only during the exciting scenes of the last few months, but from the day of my arrival here in 1853. My Predecessor, Mr. Matthew, informed me before I came of the existence of the same sentiment to a very great extent, and it is now infinitely stronger than ever. I affirm most deliberately that the governing classes of South Carolina would most gladly become the subjects of a Constitutional Monarchy based upon the principles of British Law. ...