The First Battle of Bull Run, 1861

The American Civil War was the first major conflict to be photographed, though shutter speeds were too slow to take “action” shots. It was also the first in which combatants moved to their next engagement by train. Confederate reinforcements embarked at Piedmont station, Delaplane, on the Manassas Gap Railroad and let the train take the strain as far as Bull Run.

The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas, was fought over control of a strategic railway junction at Manassas, in Virginia. A year later, they came back and did it all again in the Second Battle of Bull Run, which, as you will have guessed, is sometimes also known as the Second Battle of Manassas.

The 1861 encounter was the battle where “Stonewall” Jackson got his name. He stood firm with his Virginian troops on Henry Hill. The splendid modern-day visitor’s centre is located here and a statue to Jackson has been erected at the place where he made his famous stand. America knows how to do public monuments. They all seem to share a solidity of fabric, organisation and presentation. They take their history seriously and they communicate it very well.

The belief in Washington was that the Union forces were going to teach the rebels a lesson at Manassas. Wealthy establishment figures, including congressmen and their families, travelled in their coaches the twenty-five miles west-south-west from the capital to watch the spectacle unfold. This attempt at war as entertainment misfired badly. The additional Confederate troops that had come from the Shenandoah valley by train tipped the balance in favour of the South and the Union soldiers were forced into a disorganised retreat. The would-be spectators fled for their lives, blocking the same roads as the dishevelled government troops, in what the Southern press described as “The Great Skedaddle”.