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little more than a mile back from the Stone Bridge. course, therefore, Evans had not far to move, and in half an hour the whole of his change of front was easily made. A petty tributary of Bull Run, called Young's Branch, shoots northerly over the turnpike near this crossing of the Sudley Springs road, and thence bending forward in a wide curve around the base of an elevation over which the turnpike runs, flows along back across the turnpike near Stone Bridge. Evans, throwing his demi-brigade out to meet Hunter, found, north of the turnpike and of the bend of Young's Branch, very good ground for his purpose. His right rested in a long and narrow grove in front of Young's Branch; his centre crossed the Sudley road, some distance north of the pike, and his left was concealed among some houses, sheds, hay-stacks, and fences, on the farm of one Dogan. What with artillery and musketry he had a good fire down the slope at his enemy, whenever he might debouch from the woods many hundred yards distant.

The moment the head of Burnside's brigade appeared, Evans opened fire; and the former, too eager and too untrained to form proper line of battle, sharply responded. A brisk, but irregular and unimportant skirmish went on for half an hour between Burnside and Evans, while the former was getting his troops in hand. Porter's brigade, coming out of the woods, formed on Burnside's right, and Sykes's eight hundred regulars were sent to his left, while Griffin's battery got into position and attacked the Confederate artillery, and then the general battle began. Evans, meanwhile, had got up similar welcome reinforcements. A part of Colonel Bee's brigade, which had come from Johnston's army, was despatched to him, and a part of Colonel Bartow's, with six more pieces of artillery, of Imboden and Richardson. And, meanwhile, other supporting forces were arranging a second position in the rear. Bee and Bartow having crossed to Evans, the fight was sharply carried on. Hunter's left, in

which was Sykes's battalion, pressed rapidly against the grove in front of the Confederate right, and drove it back upon the road. More tenaciously Bee, who was now in command, clung to his left. But the Union force managed to keep its early advantage; and, pressing along with vigor, Hunter at length drove the Confederates back right and left, carrying with it the grove and the house; and finally sweeping across Young's Branch, across the turnpike, where the Sudley road reaches it, he forced the Confederates up the slopes to the heights beyond. At the turnpike, Colonel Hampton's legion had been thrown in to the assistance of Evans, Bee, and Bartow ; but it was too late to check the progress of Hunter, and could only, according to General Johnston, "render efficient service in maintaining the orderly character of the retreat from that point." Up the slope to a plateau on its crest rushed Bee's discomfited troops, and there found, solid and strong, and dressed in line, a full brigade holding the heights, and awaiting the rolling shock of battle. It was the brigade of Colonel Jackson already a great soldier, since already he was possessed of those moral qualities which made him chiefly what he is now in history. Here, rallying his men, Bee pointed them for encouragement to their fresher comrades: "There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall;" and one word of the pithy exclamation became immortal.

In this way Hunter's division auspiciously opened the battle of Bull Run. A still greater success was awaiting the Union army. The brigades of Colonel W. T. Sherman and General Schenck, of Tyler's division, had been lying quietly on the turnpike in front of Stone Bridge. By ten o'clock, however, it was perceived from tree-tops that Evans's brigade, on the other side, which had been drawing back from the bridge for half an hour, was now nearly all gone up the turnpike, and thence out to meet Hunter, the head of whose column could also be discerned from the same rude

observatory. Hunter's fire drew nearer and nearer as he forced Evans back; but at length, almost an hour later, clouds of dust showed that the five supporting regiments of Bee and Bartow, with their artillery, had reached Evans, having crossed the turnpike, and that Evans, was holding his ground. Tyler accordingly now ordered Sherman to cross the run, and Keyes to follow him, to Colonel Hunter's left. The quick eye of the former had earlier seen a horseman fording at a point above, and, having noted the place, he now led thither his brigade, and crossed without difficulty. The firing guided his march; but Hunter's success was already assured, and Sherman, reporting to McDowell, was simply ordered to join in the pursuit of the enemy, who was falling back to the left of the Sudley Springs road." Keyes came up and formed on his left, while Heintzelman moved over the conquered field, crossed Young's Branch, and marched up the turnpike road beyond.

At this time the fortunes of the Confederates were in a critical condition. Their left had been turned, the Warrenton turnpike taken from them, uncovering Stone Bridge, and their line driven back a mile and a half since morning. The loss of this ground had allowed Tyler to cross two thirds of his division to Hunter's aid, while Heintzelman had already got into position. While McDowell had thus worked nearly all of his three divisions into good position, and was advancing nearly 18,000 strong, the Confederate lines had been thrown into confusion, and it was doubtful for a time whether an equivalent force could be quickly enough hurried forward to check the very much strengthened columns with which the enemy was now about to renew the conflict. But Johnston and Beauregard, ordering up the brigades of Holmes, Early, Bonham, and Ewell, and the batteries of Pendleton and Albertis, hastily rode to the scene of conflict, four miles distant from their head-quarters, to rally their disheartened forces. "We came," says Johnston, "not a moment too soon," for

"the long contest had greatly discouraged the troops of Bee and Evans." He found "that the aspect of affairs was critical;" but by great efforts, "and some example,” the "battle was re-established," and, after a time, "many of the broken troops, fragments of companies, and individual stragglers, were re-formed and brought into action." The tide of fugitives, with their wild stories of disaster, which had begun to set from the Confederate ranks, in the custom of raw troops, was checked; and an inexplicable lull in the Union attack (inexplicable except from the newness of the experience of the Union commanders) afforded golden minutes to the anxious Confederate generals.

The position on which the Confederates had now made a stand was a broad table-land elevated from 100 to 150 feet above Bull Run, and rising at its most advantageous points still higher. Around its northerly and easterly bases runs Young's Branch, while another creek encloses the northerly side; along the westerly side is the Sudley Springs road, nearly parallel with Bull Run at this point, and from it about a mile and a half distant. The main plateau is generally bare, and broken into rugged ridges; but its southerly and easterly heights are thickly wooded with pines, and at its westerly crest the Sudley road runs through a forest of oaks. In this opening victory the Union troops had seized the slopes leading up to the plateau from the turnpike. They now fought, in general, to sweep the Confederates from the crest and the plateau beyond. The latter had rallied and reinforced their line, and the brigades of Bee, Evans, Bartow, Bonham, Jackson, Hampton's legion, and Fisher's regiment, were put in line of battle, with the batteries of Imboden, Pendleton, Albertis, and others.

To carry the position, McDowell now had the brigades of Wilcox and Howard on the right, supported by part of Porter's brigade, and the cavalry under Palmer; the brigades of Franklin and Sherman in the centre and up the road, and

Keyes's brigade on the left. Ricketts's and Griffin's batteries were on the right, and the Rhode Island battery on the left. It will thus be seen that Heintzelman's division was on the right, a part of Hunter's (now under Porter, Hunter being wounded), in the centre, and two brigades of Tyler on the left. Schenck's brigade and Ayers's battery were still on the other side of the river, and Miles's division, 9,000 strong, back at Centreville. McDowell had, however, 18,000 men with him on the field of action; from which, nevertheless, he had to deduct the losses of the morning and some withdrawn troops, like Burnside's brigade. The force which Johnston could bring immediately to bear was even less than this, for McDowell's demonstrations with the reserves of Miles and Richardson detained several Confederate brigades at the lower fords of Bull Run, from fear of a crossing at that point. Indeed it was not until three o'clock that the withdrawal of a part of these forces, and the arrival of Johnston's first troops from the valley, gave to the Confederates numerical equality, and at length, in their turn, superiority.

Accordingly, until three o'clock, the tide of battle steadily continued to turn against the Confederates. On the Union left, Keyes's brigade charged up the slope from the turnpike; and, finding itself in sharp conflict with both cavalry and infantry, succeeded nevertheless in reaching the crest and seizing the buildings known as the Robinson House on the plateau above: a position, however, which had soon to be abandoned. The great contest meanwhile was on the Union right, where, not far from the Henry house, some annoying Confederate batteries had been planted, and upon which from a neighboring crest, carried earlier in the day by the Union troops, the batteries of Griffin and Ricketts played. Between and around these batteries, from one o'clock till three, a fierce conflict raged, and forward and backed surged the opposing lines, the westerly edge of the plateau and the Sudley wood and the neighboring woods- nay, the two Union