Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 30.djvu/277

 The First Manassas. 269

"Johnson set him to hold Averill, while he brought the rest of the brigade to his support. But the Federal rush, the elan of success, was too strong.

"The Twenty-first Virginia Confederate Cavalry, mustering at the time only 350 men present for duty, held the brigade of Federal Cavalry in check for thirty minutes, and yielded only after several assaults upon its lines."

FOOT NOTE " It carried off the Twenty-first Virginia Cavalry like chaff before the whirlwind, leaving Peters shot through the body, mortally wounded, if any wound can be mortal. But human will triumphs over human anatomy and surgical possibilities, and Peters survives to this day as indomitable in his Latin professorship (at the University of Virginia) as he was that drear morning at Moorefield.' ' Confederate Military History, Volume II, page 130.

[From the Richmond, Va., Dispatch, August 10, 1902.]

THE FIRST MANASSAS.

A Man Who Was There Tells About the Great "Skedaddle."

DISCIPLINE OF OUR TROOPS.

The Lack of It Was Most Conspicuous A Writer Who Visited Beau- regard's Camp When a Boy Recalls the Great Battle.

Was there ever a more humiliating scene enacted in this country of ours than that as shown by the demoralized and fleeing United States troops at the first battle of Manassas ? It has been some con- solation to us old Confederates who have suffered so long and pa- tiently since the close of the Civil war to know that the army of General McDowell, on the 2ist day of July, 1861, composed of several thousand old regulars and 25,000 volunteers, were badly whip- ped by the Southern troops, who numbered not over 21,000, and of that number only about 16,000 were actually engaged. They had every advantage of us in means, ammunition, provisions, transporta-