From
“Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst
July 19
What came to be called First Bull
Run took place on July 19, a balmy Sunday in 1861, and, hard though it may be
for us at this vantage to imagine, all of Washington took picnic baskets with
them in their carriages to watch the Rebels get whipped. [The assumption, North
and South, was that this was going to be a quick and easy war, each side
asserting that the other was no match for them!] Unfortunately, after what
looked like a quick Northern victory, it was the Yankees who got whipped. At
the end of the day the roads back to Washington were clogged with an odd but
profoundly sobering assortment of panicky congressmen, women in their summer
finery, members of the diplomatic corps and soldiers flinging their equipment
to the four winds – all in headlong flight from what looked very much like
abject defeat. Confident Northern boasts were destined to disappear like snow
in spring. A world of tranquil certitudes was over, perhaps never to return.
‘Wisdom comes
by disillusionment.’
- George
Santayana
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