It is an incomplete, imperfect, and unsatisfactory look which you have taken of the machinery of a great army. But you can see that a very small thing may upset the best-laid plan of any commander. The cowardice of a regiment, the failure of an officer to do his duty, to be at a place at an appointed moment, the miscarriage of orders, a hundred things which you can think of, may turn a victory into a defeat. You can see that a great battle must be a grand and terrible affair; but though you may use all your powers of imagination in endeavoring to picture the positions of the troops,--how they look, how they act, how they stand amid the terrible storm, braying death, how they rush into the thickest fire, how they fall like the sere leaves of autumn,--you will fail in your conceptions of the conflict. You must see it, and be in it, to know what it is. CHAPTER III. THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. The first great battle of the war was fought near Bull Run, in Virginia. There had been skirmishing along the Potomac, in Western Virginia, and Missouri; but upon the banks of this winding stream was fought a battle which will be forever memorable. The Rebels call it the battle of Manassas. It has been called also the battle of Stone Bridge and the battle of Warrenton Road. Bull Run is a lazy, sluggish stream, a branch of the Occoquan River, which empties into the Potomac. It rises among the Bull Run Mountains, and flows southeast through Fairfax County. Just beyond the stream, as you go west from Washington, are the plains of Manassas,--level lands, which years ago waved with corn and tobacco, but the fields long since were worn out by the thriftless farming of the slaveholders, and now they are overgrown with thickets of pine and oak. Two railroads meet upon the plains, one running northwest through the mountain gaps into the valley of the Shenandoah, and the other running from Alexandria to Richmond, Culpepper, and the Southwest. The junction, therefore, became an important place for Rebel military operations. There, in June, 1861, General Beauregard mustered his army, which was to defeat the Union army and capture Washington. The Richmond newspapers said that this army would not only capture Washington, but would also dictate terms of peace on the banks of the Hudson. Hot-headed men, who seemed to have lost their reason through the influence of slavery and secession, thought that the Southern troops were invincible. They were confident that one Southerner could whip five Yankees. Ladies cheered them, called them chivalrous sons of the South, and urged them on to the field. But General Beauregard, instead of advancing upon Washington, awaited an attack from the Union army, making Bull Run his line of defence, throwing up breastworks, cutting down trees, and sheltering his men beneath the thick growth of the evergreen pines.