to his wife. “All that we are to carry is our blankets and three days provisions … you can expect by far the largest battle or the most inglorious retreat the coming week.”8
With the Confederates massing near Manassas Junction, McDowell ordered his officers to push the Union troops forward rapidly. He planned a surprise attack on the Confederate troops commanded by General Beauregard, his old classmate from West Point. It was imperative to strike before Confederate general Johnston could arrive with reinforcements.
“General Tyler, a Connecticut man, was in command of the first and largest division of the army [about 30,000 men],” explained a Middletown private, “and the Connecticut Brigade, consisting of the [1st, 2nd, and 3rd] Connecticut regiments and the Second Maine, formed the first brigade of that division, and were thus, in regular formation, the advance of the entire force. On the afternoon of the 16th of July General Tyler put his division in motion, the Connecticut men in the advance.”9
Hoping to move swiftly, McDowell was disgusted to find he could not. “The men were not used to marching; they stopped every moment to pick blackberries or to get water. They would not keep in the ranks, order as much as you pleased. When they came where water was fresh they would pour the old water out of their canteens and fill them with fresh water; they were not used to denying themselves much.”10 For the next three days, McDowell fumed over continuous delays.
Gus Dana described the march from the enlisted man’s view:
About noon of the 17th we came in sight of Fairfax Court House and could plainly see the enemys gun barrels glisten: the officers who had glasses said they were in rapid retreat … We were halted and ordered to lie down while a [Union] battery fired over our heads; we only scooched though, because great luscious ripe blackberries were in abundance within our reach. We would occasionally hear Maj Speidel yell at us “Keep your intervals damn you” when an especially fine bush had caused several men to group together. But we had to fill up on something.11
Confederate troops fled before the First Division’s advance. When the Union soldiers halted to rest, they were not far behind the enemy. “We found campfires burning which the Rebels had left in their hasty retreat,” wrote Horace Purdy of Danbury. “Also some provisions Ham, Whisky & Tents—Drums—shoes, clothing were also found. We had some sport at this place, some of the men dressing themselves in secession clothing and such rigs as some of them were, it was enough to make ones sides ache with laughter.”12
At daylight, three days before the Battle of Bull Run would take place, the advance resumed.
[We] followed the rebels through Germantown trying to head them off but the trees they had felled across the road during their retreat delayed the artillery and we had to … chop the obstructions away. We bivouacked that night about four miles west of Centerville, nearly famished for food and water … our stomachs ached with emptiness … finding an old cow, one of our boys killed it and cut it up, each one that could get near enough cutting off a gob and then frizzling it over a little fire of leaves and twigs. Nat Middletown had half a hard tack & I had a piece of beef the size of the palm of my hand, so we divided and banquetted.”13
With the 3rd Connecticut Regiment marched Sgt. Charles Upham, a quiet twenty-two-year-old imbued with a strong sense of duty. In his pocket, Charlie carried a roll book in which he’d written the names of each man in his company, and recorded assignments such as guard posting. Charlie knew many of the men well; most came from Meriden, where he lived and worked as a dry-goods clerk.
In the days ahead, Sergeant Upham would lead and encourage these young soldiers as they faced the enemy for the first time. At times like this, a soldier’s thoughts shifted inexorably to home. Setting aside his roll book, Charlie could reflect on a small memento he carried: a lock of fine brown hair encircled by a silk ribbon. The lock was folded into a slip of paper inscribed “Evening. May 18, 1861”—presumably when Charlie had received it from eighteen-year-old Emma Clark as he departed for war.
BLACKBURN’S FORD
General Tyler had left the Connecticut men of the 1st Brigade with their colonel, fifty-one-year-old Erasmus Keyes, and pushed ahead with other units to determine the position of the Confederate flank. At Blackburn’s Ford, a crossing of Bull Run, Tyler suddenly met a Confederate force that pulled him into a sharp skirmish.
The brief engagement “had a disheartening effect upon our soldiers,” mused Elnathan Tyler of Middletown, “especially those who thought the rebels would not fight, or at most would only fight a few minutes and then run away … As our dead and wounded soldiers lay in the shady door yard of an old house in Centreville we had a chance for the first time to see some of the horrors of war. To many of us who had seemed to think the whole thing was a grand military picnic, those dead and dying soldiers was a dispiriting reality, and our enthusiasm which had been at the boiling point, was chilled by a doubt.”14
It was now July 20, the day before the fight at Bull Run was to take place. Few of the soldiers got any sleep that night. Quartermasters hurriedly issued rations, and the Connecticut regiments’ brigade pulled out shortly after 2:00 a.m., leading the advance.
One of the chaplains with the 2nd Connecticut was forty-eight-year-old Hiram Eddy, a Presbyterian minister of imposing physique. Eddy had left his pulpit in Winsted, as well as his wife and five children, to volunteer. His diary preserved his impressions from the historic morning when 30,000 Union troops prepared for battle: “The grandeur of the army. All parts of the nation, representatives passing by from Main[e] to Minnesota and Iowa—All in good cheer & thousand ‘buly for yous’ rang out as the regiments & brigades went past. Every body was hopeful. No one dreamed of anything but victory.”15
“We had heard the artillery of both sides for some time, and as we went rapidly forward for the last mile or two before reaching the scene of action, the increased roar warned us that we might soon feel as well as hear. We soon emerged from the last piece of woods between us and the battle-field … the perspiration streaming down our faces … panting, and puffing, and trying to catch our breath,” wrote Elnathan Tyler.16
Just before ten in the morning, the Connecticut soldiers approached the stream called Bull Run. Gus Dana described the 1st Connecticut’s movements: “We inclined to the right to cross an open field & ford the stream … half way across this field the rebels opened on us with shot and shell, one plowing a furrow at the feet of Maj Rodman and turning him a somerset unhurt. Orders to doublequick soon brought us to the bank of Bull Run; the stream itself was insignificant but the banks very precipitous … On nearing the run an officer on a grey or white horse on the high bank on the further side, shouted ‘What regiment is that,’ ‘First Conn’ we shouted and Gen. W. T. Sherman, as it proved to be, said ‘Bully for the First Conn, here’s work for you up here.’”17
News of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Winsted, Connecticut, on a Sunday morning. Rev. Hiram Eddy, minister of the town’s Second Congregational Church, immediately rewrote the sermon he was to give that day. According to a parishioner, Eddy’s fiery new sermon, emphasizing devotion to the Union, “electrified his hearers, and raised them to the plane of his own patriot ardor.” At forty-eight years old, Reverend Eddy was twice the age of most soldiers, but he asked his church for a leave of absence and joined the state’s 2nd Regiment as chaplain. (John Boyd, Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Connecticut, p. 462).
