Page:Boissonnas, Un Vaincu, English, 1875.djvu/66



Along Bull Run Creek on the morning of July 21st Tyler′s division vigorously attacked from the cast the Confederation under Longstreet and Beauregard on the western bank. By this attack Mc Dowell hoped to succeed in falling unexpectedly on the rear of the Confederate left with the force sent on a detour of some three miles to the north. A charge of fresh troops brought forward by Beauregard in person in the late afternoon started the panic of the raw Union volunteers… “Men who had fought courageously an hour before, had become as hares fleeing from pursuing hounds. The confusion was increased and multiplied by the presence among the fugitives of a multitude of panic-stricken picnickers. Congressmen, civilians of every sort, and lavishly dressed women — who had gone out in carriages and carryalls to see the spectacle of a Federal army walking over the Confederates. The Confederates fed fat for days afterward upon the provisions that the picnickers abandoned in their flight.”

The handsome old colonial mansion known as the McLean House was near Manassas station, not far from Blackburn′s Ford, the scene of a sharp encounter preliminary to the battle of Bull Run. Tyler′s division of McDowell′s army, finding the Confederates had retreated from Centre-ville, attacked near here on the morning of July 18th. A vigorous cannonade opened the action, and a shell landing in the fireplace of the McLean house deprived General Beauregard of his dinner.