Many Civil War researchers and enthusiasts are familiar with the reports of Washington civilians riding out in their carriages to view the action of the First Battle of Manassas.  But as historian David Detzer reports in in his book, Donnybrook: The Battle of Bull Run, 1861:

Almost overlooked in the accounts was the fact that many civilians observed   the battle on the opposite side of Bull Run…Their vantage point was much better than the Centreville knoll, and they could see more of what was happening.  One of them was a boy of about twelve who sat silently on his horse.  He knew his father was fighting over there, and he wept.

In reading this, I was immediately struck by the idea that this is the sort of personal reality which is so often overlooked in the general histories, and yet it is so representative of what war “feels like” for those individuals who are caught up in it. Not knowing many hard facts about this boy, I wondered, “What was going through this young boy’s mind, as he rode out to the field of battle?” He was probably driven by a desire to see his father, who he may not have seen in a while.  He may have thought, in initially heading out, that it would be exciting to witness the battle; he may have imagined that his father would be easy to locate; he may have been thinking back to the pageantry of parades or rallies he witnessed in the several months past. But when he arrives it is likely that he is totally unprepared for the spectacle he sees: the smoke, the noise, the confusion, the vast numbers of troops – the “machinery” of war.  The paper in his hand is my own symbolic addition; not a proven fact, but a reasonable possibility of reality. Is it a letter from his father providing details about his company?  Is it a letter the boy wrote himself, hoping to somehow get it to his father?  Regardless, it is the implication of a simple, basic human need that suddenly seems so small, so ridiculous, so out-of-place, so overwhelmed, by what he actually sees before him. His reaction was likely quite different from that of the Washington civilians watching from the other side of Bull Run Creek.
 

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