 |
| General Thomas Stonewall Jackson (Century Magazine. 1884) |
By noon, the Confederate left was falling apart.
Union troops had crossed Bull Run that morning and hit them hard. Men who had marched onto the field expecting a quick fight were suddenly stumbling back through the woods, bleeding, exhausted, and scared. Officers tried to stop them. Some did. Plenty kept going.
The
fighting rolled south toward Henry House Hill.
General
Barnard Bee had been in the middle of it for hours. His command was chewed up.
Regiments had lost their shape. Men were scattered through the trees and along
the road. Bee rode through the wreckage trying to pull something back together.
Then
he saw Jackson.
Thomas Jackson had brought his Virginia
brigade onto Henry House Hill and planted them there. While men from other
commands streamed past, Jackson’s Virginians stood in line waiting for the
Federals to come.
They
did.
Union artillery pounded the hill. Shells ripped through the trees and kicked up dirt around Jackson’s men. Horses screamed and went down. Men disappeared behind clouds of smoke. Every few seconds another cannon fired, and the ground shook.
Jackson
rode behind his line as if none of it mattered.
“Steady.”
Jackson
wanted them closer still.
His
men waited with loaded rifles while the blue lines came up the slope. Then the
Virginians opened fire.
The first volley tore into the Union ranks. The Federals fired back.
 |
| Robinson House, near where Jackson earned his name at Bull Run (Photographic History of the Civil War. 1912.) |
For the next several hours Henry House Hill became a mess of smoke, screaming men, broken formations, and abandoned guns. Artillery crews fired almost point-blank into the infantry. Soldiers rushed batteries, were driven off, then came again.
Some
of the guns changed hands more than once.
Jackson
was hit in the hand. Blood ran down his arm. He wrapped the wound and stayed in
the saddle.
Bee
found him while his own troops were still being driven back.
“General,
they are beating us back.”
Jackson
said, “Sir, we will give them the bayonet.”
Bee
turned his horse and rode back toward his men.
“There
is Jackson standing like a stone wall,” he shouted. “Rally behind the
Virginians.”
Then
Bee led them forward again. Minutes later, he was hit.
The
fighting kept rolling over the hill.
Jackson’s
Virginians held, fired, reloaded, and charged. Fresh Confederate troops began
reaching the field. The Union attack, which had looked so strong that morning,
started to lose its punch.
Then
it broke.
The
roads filled with men, horses, wagons, and overturned equipment. Soldiers
tossed away rifles, blankets, and anything else that slowed them down.
Thomas
Jackson had gone into the battle as one more Confederate brigadier general. He
came out of it with a name nobody would forget.
Stonewall
Jackson.
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