Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1861. War correspondent

Camped with the 1st Regiment, Rhode Island infantry, four miles west of Fairfax, Va., Pvt. James A. DeWolf had a cartridge box for a table as he penned a Civil War dispatch to The Providence Journal.

His unit was anticipating a clash with southern troops at Manassas Junction. He wrote on July 19, 1861:

"One thing is certain, Manassas must be ours, and the Rhode Island men expect to do their part in its reduction. That done, we will return content."

The battle on July 21, known as Bull Run, was a disaster for the Union. Readers of The Providence Journal learned of the defeat through dispatches from local soldiers hired by Journal editor James B. Angell, a former Brown University professor.

DeWolf, 21, was a Brown graduate from Providence. His tale of defeat and escape reached the pages of The Journal in three letters over the next week.

Two days after the battle, DeWolf wrote from Washington, D.C.

"I had no heart to write yesterday. I have not much to write to-day. It is an ungrateful task to describe a defeat, but I have no choice."

The morning of the battle, he wrote, two Rhode Island regiments awoke early in the morning for a 10-mile march to Manassas. The 1st Regiment found Confederate artillery near a railroad embankment.

". . . Our men were dropping here and there, mangled and dying . . . The sight of the first dead man, especially if he be one of your own, causes a sickening feeling, not experienced afterwards on the field covered with the wrecks of war.

"The enemy fought with determined courage, but our fire grew too hot for them at last -- the rattling storm of Minnie balls fell less thickly among us, and they began to retire."

Another column of soldiers advanced at the enemy and the 1st Rhode Island Regiment enjoyed "the fond delusion that the day was ours."

"In the cornfield I found numbers of the enemy dead or dying. After rendering what assistance we could, I conversed with some not so severely wounded. They belonged to New Orleans and Alabama regiments, and stated that their Colonel was mortally wounded . . . They seemed grateful for any kindness, and said they were now convinced that we were neither brutes nor cowards, as we had been represented to them."

But within half an hour, the battle turned.

Union soldiers in retreat streamed past the Rhode Island troops. "Save yourselves, boys!" they cried out. "We are whipped, and the enemy is close behind us!"

The Rhode Islanders hurried back the way they had come.

Journal files

Bull Run lay ahead for these men of Company D, 1 st Rhode Island Regiment, shown above at Camp Sprague near Washington, D.C.

"We kept together very well for six miles, till coming upon an open plain, two musket shots sounded ominously in the wood to our left. In three minutes more artillery was heard on the main road, which we were now approaching again, and the iron missiles came singing over our heads and crashing through the trees . . ."

"Our own artillery piled up pell mell, with wheels broken and horses gone, our ambulances filled with wounded drawn up to the side of the road, their occupants resigning themselves to their fate . . ."

DeWolf sloshed through a river, waist deep, and into the woods. Survivors from the 1st Rhode Island Regiment then began a long march toward Washington.

Rhode Islanders learned of the Battle of Bull Run by telegraph dispatch in The Journal. New technologies such as the telegraph, photography and the railroads shaped the way America experienced and remembered the war.

The regiment shipped home, by train and boat, several days after Bull Run. In the July 30 Providence Journal, DeWolf wrote of the warm welcome the troops received in Providence.

"It went to our hearts with the assurance that though defeated you are not ashamed of us -- though we bring no captured standards as trophies of victory, we bring back our own dear flag, written over with the story of Rhode Island's honor."