Lessons learned in the midst of battle are gained too late to benefit most soldiers. Soldiering, like many professions, is a practice of experience, training, education, and application. Unlike other endeavors even the finest soldiers can die while doing the best they can. The warrior's equivalent of a gold watch and a celebratory banquet is gray hair.

When the war began in 1861 thousands of earnest young men in the North and South flocked to recruiting stations or joined their militia regiments and marched off to war. It was a glorious adventure filled with speeches, parades, tears, and the patriotic spirit that swells the chest almost to bursting. It was a magnificent time.

Then came the real war.

Strategy for the South was to settle in and await the Yankee aggressors. For the North it was reduced to the constant harangue -- On to Richmond. Both sides, imbued with the image of the Minuteman, and the Spirit of 1776, were convinced the Civil War (or War of Northern Aggression), would be short, relatively bloodless, and end in vindication. Novices on both sides, as well as some military professionals who should have known better upheld that theory. 

General Winfield Scott, Old Fuss and Feathers, a national institution unto himself, was cautious. Not George B. McClellan-cautious, but the kind that comes from leading untrained troops at Lundy's Lane in the War of 1812, and a long, bloody, victorious campaign during the Mexican War. Scott could barely climb into the saddle without help. Gout made life miserable and his body was bloated. But his mind was still sharp, and as he oversaw the efforts of General Irwin McDowell to assemble a Union army at Washington, he knew the greatest gift he could give his subordinate was time. The army had to be clothed, trained, armed, fed, taught how to survive in the field, pitch tents, load, shoot, care for their equipment, how to march, how to respond to commands, how to maneuver in battle -- in short, the soldier's trade. The army (one of several being created by the Union) McDowell would eventually lead from Washington D.C. on its fateful journey to the Virginia countryside, was more than twice as large (nearly 35,000 men) as the entire regular United States Army in 1860. It was, in fact, the largest army ever assembled under the stars and stripes.

Union forces of a sizable nature (compared to pre-war standards) had encountered Rebels before Bull Run. The results were mixed. The Battle at Big Bethel, Virginia on June 10, 1861 was a Rebel victory, although as battles went, it was a skirmish. Lasting about two hours the Confederates lost one killed and perhaps ten wounded. The Union lost eighteen dead with forty wounded.  Philippi in western Virginia was another matter. Led by a relatively unknown major general named George B. McClellan, Union forces defeated and captured 555 Rebels and their commander Lieutenant Colonel John Pegram on July 12, 1861. This may have been one of the few times McClellan was driven to act in a timely fashion, and he was impelled by the same specter that prodded General Irwin McDowell -- his army was made up of ninety-day enlistees.

President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers after the fall of Fort Sumter on April 13, 1861. Jefferson Davis had beaten him to the punch by calling for 100,000 volunteers before the fort's bombardment, but neither side had a problem finding men anxious to be about their patriotic duty. Keeping them after they got a taste of drills, marches, orders, army food, and the boredom of camp was another matter.  Lincoln used the Militia Act of 1792 as his basis for mobilization. The act gave him an army for ninety days and he expected Congress (called into special session to meet on July 4, 1861) to fully support him. He also expected some kind of action from the military. He was not the only one.

As the army was new, and the president was a military novice (he had served less than three months in the Black Hawk War -- seeing no action), the nation did not trouble itself with the practicalities of wars and armies. Led by innocents like Horace Greeley of the New York Daily Tribune, northerners demanded a move against the Rebel capital.  It was, as the masthead of the Tribune acknowledged, "The Nation's War Cry." All that McDowell's army had to do was defeat the Confederate forces at Manassas Junction, about twenty-five miles from Washington. It would not be an easy thing to do. Confederate General P.T.G. Beauregard, the man who conquered Fort Sumter, waited for an attack with a substantial command, and Confederate forces were thrown out between Beauregard's army and the Potomac River. Unlike McDowell who was urged to move against the enemy, Beauregard had been expressively forbidden to attack by General Robert E. Lee and President Jefferson Davis. Neither Confederate leader had much confidence in the general's young and ill-trained army. The Rebels would wait and watch, with instructions to fall back if the Union army advanced.

"I wanted very much a little time," McDowell lamented, knowing that his army was not yet ready.  He commanded, in effect, a uniformed mob, but the nation demanded the Confederates be punished, and the president urged General Scott to send the army out, and Scott ordered McDowell forward.

Irwin McDowell set out, leading his grand army in three columns, on July 16, 1861. Scattered Confederate forces fled, disappearing into the rolling hills of Virginia as McDowell's army snaked along. It was a cumbersome march, men falling out to find water or scare up a chicken. The columns began to unwind and drift, men unused to marching lagging behind. Uniforms, a wondrous collection of regular army blue, militia gray, or the fezzes and baggy pants of Zouves, became the common color of dust. If the men were novices, then their officers, regulars among them, were cut from the same cloth. Men like David Hunter, Oliver Otis Howard, Ambrose E. Burnside and William Tecumseh Sherman learned a valuable lesson, volunteers are a fragile lot and it takes more than uniforms and orders to turn them into soldiers.

On July 20, 1861, a day before the battle began General Joseph Johnston and his nine thousand men joined Beaugard's twenty thousand men who were nervously awaiting the arrival of the Union army. McDowell had known Johnston and his men were near Winchester, Virginia, and were concerned they would come down and swell Beauregard's army. He told aged Union General Robert Patterson would block this rebel threat. He had no confidence in Patterson's ability and planned to defeat Beauregard before that very capable Confederate arrived. McDowell was on the receiving end new technology. Johnston had been summoned by telegraph, and raced to Beauregard's aid on the train. This war, apparently, would be like no other before it.

Elements of McDowell's army moved out in the darkness of early morning on July 21, 1861. It was a tangled affair with miscues and confusion, and Union forces did not reach their objective, Sudley's Ford, until 9:00 am. Union troops arrived at the Stone Bridge, two miles down stream from the Ford, to find it, seemingly, undefended.

Confederate Colonel Nathan Edwards and a scratch force of cavalry, artillery, and some frightening looking men in red shirts waited near the bridge. They were the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion, led by 6'4" Major Roberdeau Wheat. Outnumbered, the Confederate forces made a desperate fight at the Stone Bridge, blunting a direct attack. Out-numbered and outflanked, Evans was forced to fall back.

By mid-morning it appeared McDowell's army might just have a victory on its hands. Despite the blunders early on, Union commanders had handled their men fairly well (or at least had not badly mishandled them), and soldiers on both sides fought well despite their own fear, and the confusion of battle. It would take just a few hours and a single incident to jeopardize McDowell's hope for victory.

In early after noon Union Captain Charles Griffin was ordered to move his battery forward on Henry House Hill. Captain James B. Ricketts would be on his left, and both batteries would be supported by the 11th New York Fire Zouves. It was a Virginia regiment that arrived instead and they got within 70 yards of the batteries before unleashing a volley. In the swirling mass of fanciful uniforms on the Bull Run battlefield, those of the 33rd Virginia proved the most beneficial to the South. They were blue, and the men in them were mistake for Yankees. The batteries were overrun and Confederate forces surged forward to take the position and flank the Yankees. The battle continued for four hours more, as desperate in its own way, as any that followed.

At about 4:30 pm the Union route began, units slowly crumbling until retreat became panic, and McDowell's army ceased to exist except for a few regiments who refused to be routed.  

By Monday, the 22nd of July, most of McDowell's army was safe within the protective ring of forts that surrounded Washington. The shocking realities about modern warfare exposed in the First Battle of Bull Run should have prepared soldiers and generals for what was to follow. The fundamental flaw of lessons is they will do no one any good unless adopted.

There was nothing wanting in Union or Rebel soldiers except a great deal more training. Army officers, primarily Yankee officers but there was room for improvement in Rebel commanders, needed to learn their craft. There were too many instances of regiments being fed into the battle on a piecemeal basis, instead of unleashing a thunderbolt. Railroads mattered, as well as the nearly instantaneous communication of the telegraph. And finally, civilians from the president on down saw that under the glory of war perpetuated in songs, paintings, and speeches, lay the horror of death and destruction. Unbridled patriotism is nothing more than a thin veneer that obscures the reality of warfare.

The combined casualty list for the First Battle of Bull Run was approximately 5,000 troops dead, wounded, and missing. Later in the war, when the soldiers become more proficient in the art of killing, the number will seem like nothing more than a token sacrifice to Mars.