Idag för 150 år sedan

General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson (1824-1863)(Konfederationen)

Idag för 150 år sedan stod det första stora slaget i det amerikanska inbördeskriget- slaget vid Bull Run (eller Manassas). I början såg det ut att gå bra för de federala styrkorna men de hade underskattat fienden och segern gick till sydstaterna. General Jackson höll ställningarna och det var här han fick sitt namn "Stonewall" .

" There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians!" Yttrat av Barnard Elliot Bee (som stupade i slaget). Nära femtusen soldater miste livet eller sårades svårt i drabbningen . Nu förstod man att kriget skulle bli långvarigt.

Walt Whitman var åsyna vittne till de federalas snöpliga reträtt tillbaks in i Washington DC:

"The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington over the Long Bridge at daylight on Monday, 22nd July. The day drizzling all through with rain. The Saturday and Sunday of the battle had been parched and hot to an extreme - the dust, the grime, and smoke, in layers, sweated in, their clothes all saturated with the clay-powder filling the air - stirred up everywhere on the dry roads and trodden fields by the regiments, swarming wagons, artillery. All the men with this coating of sweat and rain, now recoiling back, pouring over the Long Bridge - a horrible march of twenty miles, returning to Washington baffled, humiliated, panic-struck. Occasionally, a rare regiment, in perfect order, with its officers (some gaps, dead, the true braves) marching in silence, with lowering faces, stern, weary to sinking, all black and dirty, but every man with his musket, and stepping alive; but these are the exceptions."