The First Battle of Bull Run, fought on 21 July 1861 near Manassas, Virginia, was the first major land battle of the American Civil War and a Confederate victory. A Union army advanced expecting a quick win, but Confederate reinforcements, and a stubborn stand that earned Thomas Jackson the name "Stonewall," turned the day into a Union rout back toward Washington. It ended any illusion of a short war.2
In the summer of 1861 crowds rode out from Washington to watch the army win the war in an afternoon. By evening the picnickers and the soldiers were fleeing back together, and the North understood for the first time what it had begun.3
Part of The greatest battles of the Civil War · Before: Battle of Fort Sumter · Next: The Battle of Fort Donelson
On to Richmond
Three months into the war, public pressure for a quick blow drove the Union army under Irvin McDowell toward the Confederate capital at Richmond. His raw troops marched on the rail junction at Manassas, where a Confederate army waited behind a stream called Bull Run.4
The war had begun with the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter on 12 April 1861, and most of McDowell's men were 90-day volunteers who had answered Lincoln's call for 75,000 militia; the first of their enlistments were already running out that July. McDowell himself, a 42-year-old career officer, had never led a large body of troops in combat, according to the American Battlefield Trust. On 16 July his army, about 35,000 strong, marched out of Washington to cheering crowds.5
The target mattered. At Manassas Junction, about 25 to 27 miles from Washington, the Orange and Alexandria Railroad met the Manassas Gap Railroad, which ran west to the Shenandoah Valley. Whoever held the junction held the best overland route to Richmond.6
The armies meet at Bull Run
McDowell's plan to turn the Confederate flank began well, pushing the defenders back. But Confederate reinforcements under Joseph E. Johnston arrived by rail, one of the first times an army was carried to a battlefield by train, and the fighting swung back and forth across the hills.7
A first clash at Blackburn's Ford on 18 July cost the two sides about 150 men and persuaded McDowell to try a wide march around the Confederate left instead. Before dawn on 21 July his flanking column set off for Sudley Ford, but the green troops moved slowly, and the lead brigade, under Colonel Ambrose Burnside, crossed Bull Run around 9:30 a.m., almost three hours behind schedule. A Confederate signal officer, E. P. Alexander, had spotted the glint of their weapons and flagged a warning to Colonel Nathan Evans at the Stone Bridge: "Look out for your left, you are turned."8
Evans shifted his small brigade to Matthews Hill, and the brigades of Bernard Bee and Francis Bartow came up to join him. For nearly two hours regiments from eight states fought across the Matthews farm before the Confederate line broke and fell back up the slopes of Henry Hill. Among the Union dead was Major Sullivan Ballou of the 2nd Rhode Island, whose farewell letter to his wife, written a week earlier, the Park Service calls the most famous of all those written before the battle.9
Stonewall Jackson's stand
On Henry House Hill a Virginia brigade under Thomas Jackson held firm against the Union attacks. General Barnard Bee, trying to rally his own men, is said to have called out that Jackson and his brigade stood like a stone wall, but the words vary from source to source. Beauregard later gave them as "Look at Jackson's brigade! It stands there like a stone wall", while Joseph E. Johnston wrote only that the name was "said" to have come from Bee calling to his men to observe how Jackson and his brigade stood "like a stone-wall". The nickname Stonewall stuck to Jackson for the rest of his life.10
Jackson's 2,500 Virginians formed on the eastern slope of the hill behind a line of 13 guns. The Park Service gives Bee's words as "Yonder stands Jackson like a 'Stonewall.' Let us go to his assistance"; Bee himself was killed in the fighting. Around 2 p.m. the Union batteries of Captains James Ricketts and Charles Griffin were ordered forward onto the western slope, close to the Confederate guns. Shellfire from Ricketts' cannon mortally wounded Judith Henry, a widow sheltering in her house, and Ricketts' guns changed hands three times as both armies fed regiments into the struggle.11
How many soldiers fought at the First Battle of Bull Run?
About 60,000. McDowell marched about 35,000 men out of Washington, but the American Battlefield Trust counts only some 28,450 Union soldiers actually engaged, against 32,230 Confederates. The Confederate total combined Beauregard's army of about 22,000 to 24,000 at Bull Run with roughly 10,000 to 12,000 men brought by rail from the Shenandoah Valley.12
By later standards, the Trust notes, the losses were modest. Its battle page puts Union casualties at 2,896, of them 460 killed, 1,124 wounded and 1,312 missing or captured, and Confederate casualties at 1,982, including 387 killed and 1,582 wounded. Its longer account rounds the totals to about 2,700 and 1,900.13
The rout
As fresh Confederate troops pressed the attack, the exhausted and inexperienced Union army broke and streamed back toward Washington, tangling with the civilian sightseers who had come to watch. The retreat turned into a panicked rout, though the Confederates were too disorganized to pursue.14
The last major action came on Chinn Ridge around 4 p.m., when Colonel Oliver Howard's brigade, McDowell's last fresh troops, was struck by Confederates newly arrived by train from the Valley and driven back. The withdrawal began in order, but the road across Bull Run was jammed with the carriages of congressmen and others who had driven out to watch, and panic turned it into a rout. Congressman Alfred Ely of New York was among those captured. Confederate President Jefferson Davis reached the field as the fighting ended, and by daybreak on 22 July the beaten Union army was back behind the defenses of Washington.15
Who commanded at the First Battle of Bull Run?
Brigadier General Irvin McDowell led the Union army. On the Confederate side, Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard commanded the army defending Bull Run and General Joseph E. Johnston brought his army from the Shenandoah Valley to join him. Among the brigade commanders were men who became famous later, from Jackson to Burnside and Sherman.16
Colonel William T. Sherman led a Union brigade and later described how a regiment uniformed in gray was mistaken for the enemy, one of many cases of confusion in armies that did not yet wear standard blue and gray. Burnside went on to command the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg in late 1862, and Colonel J.E.B. Stuart led the Virginia cavalry that charged the retreating Federals. For the wider cast of the war, see our guide to the commanders of the American Civil War.17
Why Bull Run mattered
The defeat shocked the North out of its confidence and showed both sides that the war would be long and bloody. It sent the Union to build a real army, the Army of the Potomac, and it made Stonewall Jackson a legend. The reckoning came the next year at Antietam.18
McDowell was relieved and replaced by Major General George B. McClellan, who set about reorganizing and training the force that became the Army of the Potomac. Ninety days of service had proved unrealistic, and, the Trust notes, Congress quickly passed laws to enlarge the army and lengthen enlistments. Thirteen months later the armies met on the same fields again, at the Second Battle of Manassas on 28 to 30 August 1862, and again the Union was beaten.19
Can you visit the Bull Run battlefield today?
Yes. The ground is preserved as Manassas National Battlefield Park in Prince William County, Virginia, under 30 miles from Washington. Established in 1940, the park covers about 5,100 acres and both battles of Manassas.20
Henry Hill, the unfinished railroad and the Chinn farm can be reached on hiking trails and driving tours. The American Battlefield Trust lists a 20-mile self-guided driving tour, more than 40 miles of hiking trails, and more than 700,000 visitors a year.21
