Edward Porter Alexander, Military memoirs of a Confederate: a critical narrative

[21] against us at this stage must have been high. Against their force, our position and our organization were both inferior. Our line of battle was nearly seven miles long, and communications in rear of it were poor and crooked. Our six brigades were all independent of each other, no divisions having been formed, and there were, besides, several unbrigaded regiments and batteries, making a command too complex to be efficiently handled, especially with an inexperienced staff. Apart from their superior numbers, the effective division organization of the Federals, and especially their batteries of regular artillery with each division, would seem enough to insure Federal victory even for a front attack by brute force. This might have been made, even on the afternoon of the 17th, by a bold pursuit of our advanced guard, which comprised but one brigade.

For the slowness of the Federal advance that day (it holds the record for slowness) McDowell was personally responsible. He had issued to his troops a good order of march, in which he called attention to the strength of each column, and its ability to cope with all it was likely to meet, even without the help of the other columns. But he had spoiled the moral effect of his own language and practically demoralized his brigade commanders by one unwise caution.

It ‘would not be pardonable in any commander to come upon a battery or breastwork without a knowledge of its position.’ That caution meant more to McDowell's officers than appears on its face. For the newspaper reporters of those days, with the appetite for sensations which still distinguishes the craft, had made a great bugbear of ‘masked batteries.’ The term originated at the attack upon Fort Sumter, where a certain battery was constructed, masked by a house which was destroyed just before opening fire. After that masked batteries figured on every field and in every event. When Butler was repulsed at Big Bethel it was a masked battery which did it. When Schenck's railroad reconnoissance from Alexandria on June 17, accidentally ran into Gregg's reconnoissance from Manassas at Vienna, and was fired into by Kemper's six-pounders, the mysterious masked battery got the credit. Soon, to read the newspapers, one might believe the woods were infested with such