By Daniel J. Ursu, Roundtable Historian
The Cleveland Civil War Roundtable
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Editor’s note: This article was the history brief for the September 2023 meeting of the Cleveland Civil War Roundtable.
As Ed Bearss recounts it in his book Fields of Honor, “McDowell was under political pressure to do something dramatic…enlistments of the Union Army’s 90-day volunteers were about to run out. When he complained to the President that his men were ill prepared to assume the offensive at this point, Lincoln famously replied, ‘You are green it is true, but they are green also; you are all green alike.'” And so it was that the First Battle of Bull Run would ensue shortly thereafter.
But if the soldiers were green, it necessarily implies that their commanders were also green and it is worthwhile to explore how they fared. A lot has been written about First Bull Run army commanders Irvin McDowell, P.G.T. Beauregard, and Joseph Johnston throughout the war, so instead this history brief is a brief look at the lesser-known Union division commanders and the Confederate brigade commanders engaged in the battle, not so much to analyze the things that they did or did not do due to their greenness, but rather more so what they did after Bull Run. This history brief highlights one of the Confederate commanders and two Union commanders.
Continue reading “First Bull Run Union Division and Confederate Brigade Commanders”