Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[145] Evans' position at Stone Bridge. This continued for an hour, while the main body of the enemy was marching to cross Bull Run, some two miles above the Confederate left. Discovering, to his amazement, that the enemy had crossed the stream above him, Col. Evans fell back. As the masses of the enemy drew near, military science pronounced the day lost for the Confederates. They had been flanked by numbers apparently overwhelming. That usually fatal and terrible word in military parlance--“flanked” --may be repeated with emphasis.

It is true that Col. Evans, who had held the position at Stone Bridge, where the enemy's feint was made, had discovered the nature of that demonstration in time to form a new line of battle, as the main body of the enemy emerged from the “Big forest,” where it had worked its way along the tortuous, narrow track of a rarely-used road. But the column that crossed Bull Run numbered over sixteen thousand men of all arms. Col. Evans had eleven companies and two field-pieces. Gen. Bee, with some Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi troops, moved up to his support. The joint force was now about five regiments and six field-pieces. That thin line was all that stood between sixteen thousand Federals and victory. It is wonderful that this small force of Confederates should have, for the space of an hour, breasted the unremitting battle-storm, and maintained for that time odds almost incredible. But they did it. It was frequently said afterwards by military men in Richmond, that the Confederates had been whipped, but that the men, in the novelty of their experience of a battle-field, “did not know it.”

But at last the blended commands of Bee and Evans gave way before the surging masses of the enemy. The order for retreat was given by General Bee. The Confederates fell back sullenly. Their ranks were fast losing cohesion; but there was no disorder; and, at every step of their retreat, they stayed, by their hard skirmishing, the flanking columns of the enemy. There were more than five-fold odds against them. The enemy now caught the idea that he had won the day; the news of a victory was carried to the rear; the telegraph flashed it to all the cities in the North, and before noon threw Washington into exultations.

General Bee had a soldier's eye and recognition of the situation. The conviction shot through his heart that the day was lost. As he was pressed back in rear of the Robinson House, he found Gen. Jackson's brigade of five regiments ready to support him. It was the timely arrival of a man who, since that day, never failed to be on the front of a battle's crisis, and to seize the decisive moments that make victories. Gen. Bee rushed to the strange figure of the Virginia commander, who sat his horse like marble, only twisting his head in a high black stock, as he gave his orders with stern distinctness. “General,” he pathetically exclaimed, “they are beating us back.” “Then, ”