Miscellanea
As many people believed The War Between the States (1861-1865) would be over
quickly, its earliest battles were not taken particularly seriously by
civilians. Indeed, at the battle of Manassas/Bull Run, on July 21st
1861, a warm Sunday afternoon, a few hundred people, some of them
senators and their wives and families, arrived with picnics to spectate
from the sidelines. According to sources, they would "stay far enough
away you wouldn’t see any blood" and conceded that there was “going to
be some casualties but there [was] supposed to be".
At around 4pm on the day of the battle, Union generals called a retreat
after the Confederates brought in reinforcements. The Union soldiers ran
for their lives past a group of senators enjoying late afternoon lunch.
One Henry Wilson, who was amongst the gentlemen, had his buggy
destroyed by a Confederate shell while he distributed sandwiches and was
forced to flee the scene on a stray mule, whilst his companions,
sensing defeat, attempted to prevent the soldiers’s escape from the
battlefield.
Greatly sobered by the Union Army’s defeat, the senators relayed their
eye witness accounts to Abraham Lincoln upon their return to Washington
with the dawning realisation that the war was going to be no picnic!
More 
No comments:
Post a Comment