The Rifles at Manassas (Bull Run)
By Dr. Walter Howell
The Mississippi College Rifles, Company E of the 18th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, were brought to full strength at Corinth in June, 1861 Seventeen Clinton men, including six Irishmen and one native of Germany, and other volunteers joined the original volunteers at Corinth. The Regiment boarded trains for Virginia and arrived at Manassas Station near a stream called Bull Run on July 20, the eve of the first major land battle of the Civil War.
Union troops, led by General Ervin McDowell and prodded by President Lincoln and the Congress, crossed the Potomac River into Virginia in early July. Confederate forces under the command of General P. T. Beauregard moved to Manassas Station to intercept the invaders. As McDowell approached Manassas, Confederates scouts used a semaphore signal system to alert Beauregard. In the early fighting, the Confederates retreated and McDowell anticipated victory.
Around the noon hour, Confederate General Thomas Jackson rallied his Virginia troops and held the line against the advancing Yankee army. Fighting continued throughout the afternoon until the Confederates launched a massive counterattack around 4 p. m. Jackson told his men to “yell like the furies” as they charged. What he got was the Rebel Yell – “a high pitched yelp, part fox cry, part fury.” Union forces were routed, and the first battle of the war went to the Confederates. Northern newspapers described the defeat as “The Great Skedaddle,” because of the disorder among the fleeing Union soldiers.
Troops on both sides were poorly trained, inexperienced and undisciplined at Manassas. There were many instances of “friendly fire,” where men shot themselves or were shot by fellow soldiers. The College Rifles suffered their first casualties at Manassas. Lt. John York, a Mississippi College tutor who helped organized the company, was mortally wounded and died the day after the battle. Thomas Thornton and Littleton Baldwin were both seriously wounded and had to be discharged. William Harris and James Bridges were wounded but continued with the company.
The Confederate army and government were jubilant with victory. Thomas Jackson was thereafter known as “Stonewall” Jackson for his fierce resistance to the Union advances. The “Rebel Yell” became part of Southern strategy. Using trains to carry troops to the battle field and use of the semaphore signal system in land warfare were two “firsts” in American military history.
The Union army retreated across the Potomac River after the battle, and Confederate forces remained at Manassas to train for future conflicts. The Confederate expectation that Lincoln’s government would give up after the Manassas defeat were quickly dashed when the president ordered the call up of an additional five hundred thousand troops on the day after the defeat. Three days later, Lincoln made a second call for another five hundred thousand soldiers. By the end of the year, the Union army numbered more than one million.
For the men of the Mississippi College Rifles, Manassas was their baptism of fire. There would be other battles to fight that year; and the Rifles, like soldiers on both sides, performed much better. A popular officer had died of his wounds and there were other casualties, but the military company from Clinton still believed the war would be of short duration.
Editor’s note: 2011 marks the beginning of the sesquicentennial observation of the American Civil War. This is the second in a series of pieces by Dr. Walter Howell that will follow the movements of the Mississippi College Rifles, the fate of Clintonians involved in the fighting and other events on the home front.
