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| Corcoran's Sixty-Ninth New York. |
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brigade, and the Nationals, greatly outnumbered, withdrew behind Ayres's battery on the hill.
In this movement, a part — of the New York Twelfth were thrown into confusion, but were soon rallied.
Just then, Sherman with his brigade came up, having Colonel Corcoran's New York Sixty-ninth in front, when Ayres's battery again opened fire, and an artillery duel was kept up for an hour, the Confederates responding gun for gun. It was now four o'clock in the afternoon.
McDowell had just returned from his reconnoissance, satisfied that his plan for turning the Confederate position was impracticable; and he ordered the whole body to fall back to Centreville.1 This severe skirmish was called by the Confederates the battle of Bull's Run, and was claimed by them as a victory.
The loss of the combatants was about equal, that of McDowell being seventy-three, and of Beauregard, seventy.2
The affair at Blackburn's Ford elated the Confederates and depressed the Nationals.
The loss of life saddened the soldiers and the people at home.
Yet the result of that reconnoissance was important and useful, in revealing the strength and excellent equipment of the Confederates, which had been much underrated, and caused that circumspection which prevented the Nationals from being allured, by the appearance of weakness and timidity on the part of
their foes, into a fatal snare.
It appears to have been a part of Beauregard's plan to entice McDowell, by skirmishes and retreats, across Bull's Run, and when he had placed that stream at the back of his antagonist, to fall upon him, front and flank.
For this purpose, he carefully concealed his batteries.
McDowell felt the pressing necessity for an immediate and vigorous attack on the Confederates.
In the course of a few days he might lose full ten thousand of his best troops, in consequence of the expiration of their term of service, while Beauregard's army was daily increasing.
He concentrated all of his forces at and around Centreville on the 18th, and made instant preparations for an advance.
He had thirty thousand men there, and five thousand more, under Runyon, were within call, guarding his communications with Washington.
He caused a thorough reconnoissance to be made on the 19th with the intention of attacking his foe on Saturday, the 20th.
1 Beauregard had made his Headquarters, during the engagement, at the house of Wilmer McLean, near McLean's Ford. Soon after this, when military occupation made that region almost untenable, Mr. McLean went with his family to another part of Virginia, near Appomattox Court House, hoping for quiet. There came the same armies, after a lapse of almost four years, and under his roof Grant and Lee signed articles of capitulation early in April, 1865, for the surrender of the Confederate forces under the latter.
2 Report of Colonel Richardson to General Tyler, July 19, 1861; Report of General Tyler to General McDowell, July 27, 1861; Report of General Beauregard to Adjutant-General Cooper, August, 1861; The C. S. A. and The Battle of Bull's Run: a Letter to an English Friend: by Major J. G. Barnard, who was with Tyler's division. The Nationals lost nineteen killed, thirty-eight wounded, and twenty-six missing; the Confederates lost, according to Beauregard's Report, fifteen killed, fifty-three wounded (several of them mortally), and two missing.
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