Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/442

 general retreat, and the fact that a large portion of the army was already on its way to Centreville, put an end to the question. But it has since been held by military critics of high authority that General Pope might have remained on the battlefield without much danger, that he might have brought on, during the night, from Centreville, the 20,000 men of Sumner's and Franklin's corps, which would have given him a superiority of numbers, and that thus the formal confession of defeat and the consequent demoralization of the army and the injury to the Union cause might have been avoided. My personal experience of the condition of the battlefield that night seems to speak for this theory.

About eight o'clock General Sigel directed me to withdraw Schimmelfennig's brigade, and to march with my whole division to the hilly ground between Young's Branch and Bull Run, where I joined the rest of our army corps. There we waited in the dark for two hours, my first brigade furnishing the guards and pickets. The enemy did not molest us in the least. After having received a report that, as far as could be ascertained, the rest of the army, with their wagons and ambulances, had crossed Bull Run, General Sigel ordered the corps to take up its march to Centreville. We passed over the Stone Bridge between eleven o'clock and midnight. On the east side of the bridge we once more took position, General Stahel on the right of the road and I on the left, front towards the creek, with Dilger's guns to command the bridge. As we were forming, we discovered a small body of troops bivouacking there, a battalion of the Pennsylvania Bucktail Regiment, under Colonel Kane, who had become detached from his brigade, and had picked up and kept with him several stray pieces of artillery. He was delighted to meet us, and willingly reported to General Sigel for orders. One of General McDowell's officers coming