summer's day, the sixteenth of July, the army only marched six
miles; and it took the better part of the seventeenth to herd its
stragglers back again. "I wished them, " says McDowell, "to go to
Centreville the second day [only another six miles out] but the
men were footweary, not so much by the distance marched as by the
time they had been on foot." That observant private, Warren Lee
Goss, has told us how hard it is to soldier suddenly. "My canteen
banged against my bayonet; both tin cup and bayonet badly
interfered with the butt of my musket, while my cartridge-box and
haversack were constantly flopping up and down--the whole
jangling like loose harness and chains on a runaway horse." The
weather was hot. The roads were dusty. And many a man threw away
parts of his kit for which he suffered later on. There was food
in superabundance. But, with that unwieldy and grossly
undisciplined supply-and-transport service, the men and their
food never came together at the proper time.

Early on the eighteenth McDowell, whose own work was excellent
all through, pushed forward a brigade against Blackburn's Ford,
toward the Confederate right, in order to distract attention from
the real objective, which was to be the turning of the left. The
Confederate outposts fell back beyond the ford. The Federal
brigade followed on; when suddenly sharp volleys took it in front
and flank. The opposing brigade, under Longstreet (of whom we
shall often hear again), had lain concealed and sprung its trap
quite neatly. Most of the Federals behaved extremely well under
these untoward circumstances. But one whole battery and another
whole battalion, whose term of service expired that afternoon,
were officially reported as having "moved to the rear to the
sound of the enemy's cannon." Thereafter, as military units, they