This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[13]
I was met by a courier with orders to halt where I was, as the alarm, upon which the order to me had been founded, had proved false.
As this false alarm was rather singular in its nature, but of such a character that any general might have been deceived by it, I will state how it occurred.
A captain of General Ewell's brigade, who had been posted with his company on picket at Yates' Ford not far below Union Mills, retired from his post and reported in the most positive manner that the enemy had appeared in heavy force on the opposite bank of Bull Run and commenced building two bridges.
He further stated that he had seen General McDowell on a white horse superintending the construction of the bridges.
As there was no reason to doubt his veracity or courage, General Ewell, of course, sent at once the information to General Beauregard and hence the order for my movement.
After the message was dispatched, something suggested a doubt as to the correctness of the report, and the officer making it was sent in charge of another to ascertain the facts.
On arriving in sight of the ford he pointed triumphantly to the opposite bank and exclaimed, “There they are. Don't you see the two bridges, don't you see McDowell on his white horse?”
when the fact was there was nothing visible but the ford and the unoccupied banks of the stream, which were so obstructed as to render a crossing impracticable until the obstructions were removed.
It was then apparent that it was a clear case of hallucination, produced by a derangement of the nervous system, consequent on a loss of sleep and great anxiety of mind resulting from the nature of the duties in which he had been engaged.
Neither his sincerity nor his courage was questioned, and this affair shows how the most careful commander may be misled when he has to rely on information furnished by others.
It requires very great experience and a very discriminating judgment to enable a commanding general to sift the truth
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.