Canon knew what Jackson would want, that being what Napoleon would have wanted. The professor carried a volume of Napoleon’s maxims in his saddlebags, and one maxim to which Jackson strongly adhered was that cavalry should always be sent to scourge a fleeing enemy.
The horses were standing by and the brigade bugler was blowing cavalry call when Jackson rode up to the gun emplacement. His left hand was loosely wrapped with a bloody handkerchief. A bullet had clipped the top off his left index finger. It was on the hand Jackson habitually held high to “help keep his body in better balance.” Neither man mentioned the wound.
“My compliments, Captain,” said Jackson in the ritual military manner of greeting on the field. “Are you ready to ride?”
“On your order, sir,” replied Canon.
“They have hit us their best blow, I believe,” said Jackson, “and we have withstood it. Now it is our turn. Ride after them, chase them back to Washington.”
“It will be my pleasure.”
Calling his leaders around him, Canon said, “Pass the word. We will pursue the enemy, paroling those who surrender, shooting those who do not. We may encounter unarmed citizens along the way. We are not here to make war on civilians. Do not harm them. But if the opportunity presents itself, you have permission to scare the hell out of them.”
Swinging into the saddle, Canon looked over to the artillery crew which had taken over the captured Yankee gun emplacement. “Corporal,” he called to a baby-faced teenager who proudly carried two chevrons on his sleeve, “try to put a shell on that stone bridge for me.” The young man saluted as he nodded, then turned back to the gun. Canon rode to the front of his troop, drew his saber, and turned to the bugler. “Sound the charge,” he called.
At the bridge, civilian party-goers began to notice more and more Union soldiers stream past on their way to the rear. Many picnickers still lolled about, unaware of any change in fortune, but the more perceptive realized something had gone horribly wrong. Among these, thoughts of holiday vanished like wisps of battlesmoke.
Thrumming conversation lessened, palled. Gaily bedecked bonnets, which had been nodding in time with animated discourse, turned south and grew still. Some spectators had field glasses. One man in a carriage, wearing a black stovepipe hat after the fashion of Mr. Lincoln, suddenly leaned forward, peering intently through his lens.
“My God,” he muttered to himself, “it is the Black Horse.”
Practically all the spectators had read highly fictionalized accounts in the Northern press of depredations and cruelty by the now infamous southern Black Horse cavalry. They believed every word. Another man, standing near the first, overheard.
“The Black Horse? Where?” he said, and brought his own glass to his eye. Then, “My God.”
Canon, swinging Old Scratch down the steep hill, deplored coquetry and false modesty with equal intensity. He would have been gratified by the honesty of the first man’s lady friend.
Fairly ripping the field glasses from his eyes, she said, “Get me the hell out of here, right this damned second,” and essayed a quick glance through the glass as she climbed in the carriage.
It was nearing three P.M. when McDowell gave the general order to retire from the field. His young soldiers were falling back in disarray, but a semblance of order remained. There was confusion and dismay, but no panic. Retreating men were crossing Stone Bridge with purpose but without flight.
As word swept through the Union forces that the dread Black Horse was coming, the retreat became boisterous and unruly. Yankee soldiers, too, had believed the Northern press.
Then the young gunner to whom Canon had spoken loosed the finest artillery shot of the day. Stone Bridge over Cub Run represented the only quick, convenient and dry method of crossing the stream. The corporal’s third round exploded in the middle of the bridge, killing several horses and overturning a huge supply wagon. It blocked the way just when an open way was what the retreating army needed most.
Consternation grew as soldiers and civilians tried to force their way through. Then someone looked back and screamed. An account of the battle read: “In the midst of the turmoil, there were shouts that the dreaded Confederate ‘Black Horse Cavalry’ was riding down on the mob. Newspapers and magazines had carried many stories about the horsemen, and now their name was enough to stir up fear. The raw recruits, who had fought so well, dropped their guns and ran. The army fell apart.”
Those who witnessed the charge of the Black Horse did not wonder that the army fell apart. For those who had read the inflammatory stories, seeing the charge thundering down on them must have seemed something from their worst nightmare.
Through clearing coils and ropes of black gunpowder smoke, three hundred glossy steeds of the same intense hue came galloping. They moved as one, veering left or right like an ebony arrow. At the forefront rode a huge figure wielding a sword as long as a small man’s body. Soldiers and civilians abandoned the bridge and dove into the water.
Though cleared of people, the bridge was still blocked by the overturned wagon. Without hesitation, Canon took Scratch onto the bridge and effortlessly over the wagon. The Black Horse followed without question or pause.
Those who witnessed it remembered it as one of the most spectacular sights of the Civil War. All three hundred horses cleared the wagon, often three abreast. Men who thought themselves safe on the other side of the bridge were stunned by the display. As these men watched the black horses fly over the wagon, they felt panic descending on them. In mindless terror, soldiers ripped the reins of horses and carriages from their civilian owners. Rushing pell-mell down the road to Washington, they scattered and dismayed other soldiers, still marching in good order, with shouts for them to run for their lives.
It had taken McDowell’s army four days to make the fifty miles from Washington. It made the return trip in forty-eight hours.
Night had fallen by the time Canon returned to Jackson’s field headquarters on Henry House Hill. Approaching darkness and the delaying necessity of rounding up prisoners had finally ended the Black Horse pursuit.
Canon found the South’s new hero in a humor black as the moonless night. “I fear that our army is making a terrible mistake,” Jackson said. Although Jackson maintained a controlled tone, Canon could see how affected he was. Eyes glittering, voice straining with emotion, Jackson continued, “General Beauregard has convinced General Lee and President Davis that our army is too tired and scattered to march on to Washington tonight. “If it were up to me, I would take the city before daylight if it killed me and half our army, but I cannot convince them.”
Canon knew the words passing between them were from friend to friend and that Jackson would never refer to the matter again. Even now, the man’s tone was one of disconsolation and disappointment, not bitterness.
They talked until midnight about the events of the day. Jackson was proud of the way his Virginians had stopped the brunt of the Union attack, but he doubted his brigade would receive the credit it was due. As the evening waned, Canon began to believe that in this, Jackson was mistaken. For, as the victorious Rebels celebrated around the camp, Canon began to hear a chant that would sweep the South.
“Stonewall . . . Stonewall . . . Stonewall!”
When Canon finally left to seek his own tent, Jackson had reconciled his mind to the failure to follow-up the day’s victory.
“Perhaps it will serve to bring the leaders of the Union to listen to reason,” he said. But he added, “I wish I could believe it.”
Many times Canon would think back on that humid July night when the Confederate Army stood at the door of unprotected Washington. But he never heard Jackson mention it again.
The battle of Bull Run/Manassas became little more than a skirmish in retrospect. A total of seventy thousand men had fought for a day; each side lost about two thousand men. Coming battles would see