The President wheeled his horse and rode rapidly into the front lines until stopped by the captain of a command of cavalry. "You are too near the front, sir, without an escort--" The President rode beside the captain and watched him form his men for their last charge on the enemy. He inspected the field with growing amazement. For miles the earth was strewn with the wreck of the Northern army--guns, knapsacks, blankets, canteens--and Brooklyn-made handcuffs! Their defeat had been so sudden, so complete, so overwhelming, it was impossible at first to grasp its meaning. He passed the rugged figure of Jackson who had won his immortal title of "Stonewall." An aide was binding a cloth about his wounded arm. The grim General pushed aside his surgeon, raised his battered cap and shouted: "Hurrah for the President! Ten thousand fresh men and I will be in Washington to-night!" The President lifted his hat and congratulated him. The victory of the South was complete and overwhelming. Jefferson Davis breathed a sigh of relief for deliverance. Within two hours he knew that this victory had not been won by superior generalship of his commanding officers. They had been outwitted at every turn and overwhelmed by the plan of battle their wily foe had forced upon them. It had not been won by the superior courage of his men in the battle which raged from sunrise until four o'clock. The broken and disorganized lines of the South and the panic-stricken mob he had met on the way were eloquent witnesses of Northern valor. His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout. Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled. The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse--the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy. The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation. CHAPTER XVIII THE AFTERMATH