Last Monday morning I was standin’ near the Astor House, when I saw the Seventy-first Regiment returnin’ from its Mardi Gras trip to New Orleans. Everybody seemed happy and “the boys” were loud in their praises of Southern hospitality. How different from that other time, just twenty years ago, when this same Seventy-first Regiment went South, and came back again from the battle of Bull Run.
I remember that other time as if it was but yesterday. I remember gettin’ up one Monday mornin’ and lookin’ at the head-lines of the war news in the papers. How big they looked! I remember ‘em distinctly: “Brilliant Union Victory;” “Capture of Bull Run’s Batteries;” “The Rebels Routed and Driven Back to Manassas;” “Our Men Go Into Action Singin’ Patriotic Songs;” “The New York Sixth-ninth Boys Go In Stripped to Their Pants;” “The First and Last Battle of the Rebellion,” and so on.
Everybody in New York thought the daily papers were right, of course, and that there was nothin’ left of the South–everybody, that is, but a few knowin’ ones and the Southern sympathizers.
These last wouldn’t believe a word of it at all. That Monday night, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, a tall, lean, lank North Carolinian got talkin’ with Moses Grinnell in the lobby, and told Grinnell that he had better wait till he heard the news confirmed in the mornin’ before he crowed. And then Grinnell got mad, and said that although he wasn’t in favor of hangin’ as a rule he wouldn’t mind makin’ the tall, lean, lank Southerner an exception, and stringin’ him right on the lamp-post in front of the hotel, whilel a lot of men, young and old, stood round and looked as if they’d like to help Grinnell do the hangin’.
But the next mornin’, sure enough, Grinnell didn’t feel so much like doin’ the hangin’, and the tall, lean, lank Southerner and felt more like doin’ some crowin’, for the news wasn’t confirmed at all. It was upset altogether. The head-lines now were: “The Rebels Reinforced by the Whole of Johnson’s Army;” “Repulse of the Union Troops by Overwhelming Numbers,” and all that sort of thing.
The papers and the people were completely turned round in twenty-four hours. On Monday night everybody was praisin’ Lincoln and General Scott and General McDowell. On Tuesday night everybody was blamin’ Lincoln and findin’ fault hot and heavy with Scott, and fairly cursin’ McDowell. General Tyler came in for a lot of blame because he had been doin’ some fightin’ without any orders, and old General Patterson, of Philadelphia, was called every name in the calendar because he hadn’t done the fightin’ he was ordered to, and hadn’t prevented Johnson from joinin’ Beauregard.
People at the Fifth Avenue Hotel cursed Chase because he had forced McDowell on Lincoln, and one man in the crowd called Patterson a stupid old traitor, at which the Philadelphians in the lobby got mad and called the first man a liar, and for a minute or two there was quite a lively free fight. The streets were full of people wranglin’ over the situation, and at the New York Hotel they drank at dinner to the health of Jeff Davis, while one man was willing to bet that Beauregard would be in Washington before Sunday. Meanwhile everybody who had any friends at the battlefield were anxious about ‘em, and kept goin’ to the telegraph offices to hear about ‘em. The principal telegraph office then was at Liberty street and Broadway, and there was a crowd around it day and night. One old gentleman and lady–rich people–who had two sons at the front, came to the telegraph office at nin o’clock on Tuesday mornin’ and stayed there till five in the afternoon, standin’ up all that time, and neither eatin’ nor drinkin’, but sendin’ messages to everybody they could think of around Washington to find out about their children, but without gettin’ any answers at all, good, bad or indifferent, from anybody. The old lady fainted with fatigue and worry at last, and died the week after.
The headquarters of the Sixty-ninth Regiment was in a state of siege all the time, people rushin’ there to hear of their relatives. There were some hard scenes gone through, scenes just as terrible as any on the battlefield.
Dugan & Brothers’ place, the publishers, was full of anxious crowds all the time, as one of their people was a captain in the Sixty-ninth. The firemen at their engine houses talked over the news, swearin’ and sorrowin’ on account of the great slaughter of the Fire Zouave Regiment at Bull Run. The whole city was terribly excited–first glad and wild with joy on Monday night, then depressed and almost despairin’ on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and then full of determination to make the best of things, and keep the war agoin’ at all hazards.
Among the worst of the growlers, and the most persistent of ‘em all, were the Sabbath League people, as they called themselves, or the men and women (they ought to have all been women, and old women at that) who were opposed to having any fightin’ on Sunday. These ducks, or geese, went around sayin’ what a sad thing it was that the battle of Bull Run had been fought on a Sunday, and hintin’ that if the Union troops had only commenced on Saturday or waited till Monday they would have had better luck.
One of these Sunday Leaguers got talkin’ his nonsense one night at the corner of the Thirteenth street and Broadway, and was hooted and laughed at by a big crowd, till he was obliged to take refuge in Wallack’s Theatre, though he was as much opposed to theatres any night of the week as he was to fightin’ on Sunday. But this Sunday League absolutely got to work and got some tracts printed about refrainin’ from fightin’ on the Sabbath, and sent them to General Scott. The veteran swore like a trooper, and put the tracts in the fire, and said that if he had his way he would put the men that sent ‘em to him just where he had put the tracts.
By Wednesday people came from Washington to New York bringin’ with them news or accounts of the battle, and tellin’ what they ‘emselves had seen or had done. All this instead of making things clearer, muddled ‘em up all the more, for everybody who pretended to have been in the battle told an entirely different story from everybody else who had been in the battle.
One fellow, who was entertaining a lot of men at the Astor House with the story of his brave achievements, said that he had killed eight rebels with his own hands before he “retreated.” He told the tale of his brilliant actions very well, too, and people were just beginnin’ to believe in him, when another man with whom he had had a difficulty here in New York, stepped up to him, called him a liar and pulled his nose, right in the rotunda, and walked off.
There was an awful amount of lyin’ done about this battle of Bull Run. It was the first big battle of the war, and the boys on either side hadn’t quite got used to this sort of thing, and couldn’t afford to tell the truth, or thought they couldn’t. All the accounts on both sides were exaggerated, multiplied by say from ten to a hundred. Every officer or high private who came to New York from the battlefield gave it out that his particular regiment or company had been cut to pieces after performin’ the most unheard-of acts of bravery, he himself being one of the few left alive after the terrible slaughter.
According to Dick Brockett, an army sutler, who dropped in my place a week or so after the battle, the real cause of the defeat was a panic or stampede caused by a teamster, an acquaintance of his, who saw the artillery wagons approachin’ on the double quick, and got frightened. This started off and demoralized the rest of the teamsters and sutlers, and the civilians on the outskirts or–coat-tails, as it were–of the army; and from these the fright spread to the soldiers ‘emselves, until the panic seized the whole army, just like a flock of sheep. The men fled so fast that they dropped their guns and left their army clothes and provisions behind for the rebels to pick up.
But there was some real fightin’ done by the boys in blue at Bull Run, after all, and I remember once in a crowd in Broadway, how a Rhode Island man spoke up for the honor of his little State, when somebody in the crowd got swearing at the “Yanks.” The Rhode Island man showed how Governor Sprague had fought like a real hero, as he was, at Bull Run; how he had had his horse shot under him in the fight, and then his men had rushed up to him and asked him not to risk his valuable life again. Then the “Fightin’ Governor” had replied that his life was valuable only to his country, and, like Richard III, had cried: “Give me another horse, bind up my wounds,” and had then started out again, leadin’ his men, only to have his second horse shot under him.
At the New York Hotel, one night, one Southern man was taken down pretty nicely. The Southern man was talking about the cowardice of the North and the bravery of the South, when a Northern man, takin’ a drink at the bar just then, said he knew a big Southern man who had refused to fight a duel with a Western man. The Southern man bet that the Northern man couldn’t name the “big Southern man” he spoke of, but he did, and it turned out to be Roger A. Pryor, too, a regular fire-eater. Pryor had challenged Potter to a duel, and Potter had accepted, and, as the challenged party, had named his weapons, which were bowie knives, and then Pryor backed out.
The Southern man lost his bet, and then the Northern man piled on the agony then and there by telling how General Fred Lander, a Yankee, had acted towards McGraw, another fire-eater. This McGraw and Lander had quarreled about some contract, and McGraw attacked Lander one day in a bar-room from behind, and tried to beat him insensible. But Lander had turned round, had caught McGraw, and would have licked him to death, if he hadn’t been separated from him by his friends.
Then at another time McGraw and Lander met, and Lander demanded some apology from McGraw. McGraw pulled out a pistol and threatened Lander; but the latter, although he hadn’t a pistol, tongue-lashed McGraw, and called him a liar, and thief, and poltroon, and several other “pet names,” McGraw brandishin’ his pistol all the time, till, gettin’ tired of his own talk, Lander apologized to the crowd around for the necessity he was under of “exposin’ a cur,” and with another partin’ salute to McGraw, walked out of bar-room.
The fact is, at this particular time neither the North or the South understood or respected each other as much as they learn to do afterwards. The simple truth bein’ that there was some braggarts and some cowards, and plenty of brave fellows and good and true men on both sides. And in the midst of all the excitement over Bull Run, New Yorkers had a chance to do a little laughin’, and the laugh came in right here. Just about the time that everyone was full of the battle, Prince Napoleon landed in New York with his wife, the Princess Clothilde, and went right on to Washington, where President Lincoln gave him a grand dinner. Now, the lawyer, Chauncey Shaffer, of New York, was the very image of this Prince Napoleon, and he was constantly being mistaken for the Prince. Once Chauncey humored the mistake, and being with a lot of red hot Republicans, one of whom was a correspondent for a paper, he, as the Prince, spoke in the highest terms of the American army, and promised the aid of his cousin, the French Emperor, to put down the rebellion, which, of course inspired the Republicans and made ‘em dance with joy, while the correspondent, thinkin’ he had got the biggest kind of a bonanza, rushed off to the telegraph office one and was about to wire the tallest kind of a startlin’ special to his paper, when somebody told him the joke, which he didn’t see as a joke at all.
About this time, too, two other correspondents for papers Harvey, and W. H. Hurlburt, who tried to kind of act as go-betweens between the North and South, got ‘emselves into trouble, and between their two stools came mighty near danglin’ to the ground, at the end of a rope.
Well, before a week was over, New York had simmered on Bull Run, and had settled down to money makin’ and carryin’ on the war. And then the great interest was centered on the return of the New York regiments, the Sixty-ninth, the Eighth and the Seventy-first, from the seat of war, home again.
Some of the boys never came back at all–alive. Several captains of the Sixty-ninth were killed, and so was Major Rawlings, brother of Dr. Rawlings, and a good many privates.
Some of the boys came back maimed and wounded, like Captain Hart and Captain Ellis, of the Seventy-first. This Captain Ellis, on the way back from Washington to New York, was nursed all the way by ladies, who fanned him and made him as comfortable as possible.
But most of the New York boys returned together as regiments on a Saturday, and a great Saturday that was. New York made it a regular holiday. From early in the morning till late in the afternoon Broadway was blocked with the crowd, waitin’ to welcome the boys home. The Eighth came in about four o’clock in the afternoon, and the Seventy-first a little later. The Governor of New York made a speech to ‘em, cannons were fired, rockets were shot off, and the people shouted till they were hoarse.
And such huggin’ and kissin’ of wives, sisters, and sweethearts! One lucky fellow of the Seventy-first was pulled right from the ranks at the corner of Broadway and Warren street, and was kissed by four good lookin’ ladies, one after the other, and the boys cheered the ladies; and Bull Run as far as New York was concerned, wound up in a jolly time.
