![]() (Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images) They would arrive at Bull Run just in time to play a decisive role in the fighting.ĭrawing depicting stampede of retreating Union troops. Union General Robert Patterson had been tasked with bottling up Johnston’s forces, yet unbeknownst to McDowell, Johnston had slipped away on July 18 and packed his men into Manassas-bound trains. Johnston, whose 11,000-man Army of the Shenandoah was lurking some 60 miles away in Winchester. McDowell’s aim was to crush the Confederate army and open the road to their capital at Richmond, but his plan hinged on the rebels not receiving reinforcements from General Joseph E. At the same time, two other divisions under David Hunter and Samuel Heintzelman would steal across the creek at Sudley Ford and execute a turning maneuver against the Confederate left flank. ![]() It called for General Daniel Tyler’s division to stage a diversionary attack near a stone bridge along Bull Run. Beauregard held with some 20,000 Confederates.įollowing an opening skirmish at Blackburn’s Ford on July 18, McDowell finalized a battle plan. His target was the railroad junction at Manassas, which Louisiana-born Brigadier General P.G.T. On July 16, he had marched his 35,000-strong army out of Washington to begin the war’s first major campaign. Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, a cautious officer from Ohio, had been tasked with striking the decisive blow. ![]() Just three months had passed since the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and many in the North still believed the conflict would be over the moment the United States won a pitched battle against the Confederacy. The tourists weren’t the only ones predicting a swift end to the Civil War.
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