1861 July 18th

July 18 1861 Thursday

Battle of Blackburn’s Ford, VA (CWSAC Formative Battle – Confederate Victory)

First Bull Run Campaign
McClellan’s West Virginia Campaign
Patterson’s Shenandoah Valley Operations

Maryland. Commander Daniel Bowly Ridgely, commanding the US receiving ship Allegheny, reported that his ship had received a battery of guns from the Washington Navy Yard and was standing by in the harbour for the protection of Annapolis.

Missouri. Incident at Parkersville.

Missouri. Kansas City Home Guards were attacked by Confederates near Harrisonville. Union Major R T Van Horn reported one casualty and 20 Confederate casualties.

Missouri. Skirmish at Martinsburg.

Virginia. The Confederate schooner Favorite was captured by USS Yankee, Commander Thomas Tingey Craven, on the Yeocomico River. The Favorite was sunk later at Piney Point on the Potomac River to block the passage.

Virginia. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Russell Mallory reported that the frigate formerly known as USS Merrimack, renamed as CSS Virginia, had been raised and docked. It was planned to shield the ship entirely with a casemate of 3-inch iron. In the end, 4-inch armour was fitted, angled to render it invulnerable to solid shot. The innovative warship would seek to contend against enemy ships in Hampton Roads and off the coast of Virginia.

Virginia. Orders reached Confederate Brigadier-General Joseph Eggleston Johnston at 1 am to leave the Shenandoah Valley immediately and to reinforce Brigadier-General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard at Manassas. The withdrawal of Union Major-General Robert Patterson towards Harper’s Ferry had relieved Johnston of immediate anxiety for the security of the Valley and allowed him to relocate alongside Beauregard to oppose the greater threat. Johnston’s Confederate Army of the Shenandoah departed from Winchester at 12 noon, marched via Ashby Gap to Piedmont, and travelled thence by rail towards Manassas Junction.

Virginia. The Confederate brigade of Brigadier-General Theophilus Hunter Holmes arrived with 3,000 men at Manassas Junction from Aquia Creek to reinforce the Confederate force behind Bull Run Creek.

Blackburn’s Ford, Virginia, also known as Bull Run, McLean’s Ford or Mitchell’s Ford. The Union Army of Northeastern Virginia under Brigadier-General Irvin McDowell reached Centreville after a nine-mile march from Fairfax. They approached Bull Run Creek, where a Confederate army of about 22,000 men under Brigadier-General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was guarding the fords. McDowell ordered State Brigadier-General Daniel Tyler to give the impression of marching towards Manassas but not to bring on an engagement while making a reconnaissance of the Confederate left flank. Tyler was ordered to advance through Centreville, to reconnoitre towards Bull Run and report back. When Tyler found that Centreville was unoccupied by Confederate troops, he continued his march south-eastwards to Mitchell’s Ford and Blackburn’s Ford, arriving at the latter at about 11am. Looking south across the stream Tyler believed that the road to Manassas Junction was clear but failed to see a Confederate brigade under Brigadier-General James Longstreet concealed in the woods beyond the ford. Tyler ordered two howitzers under Captain Romeyn Beck Ayres to bombard the Confederate artillery he could see. These were guns of the Alexandria Artillery and the Washington Artillery. The Union fire had no visible effect on the enemy’s guns.
Tyler then ordered Colonel Israel Buch Richardson and part of his brigade forwards. Richardson’s advance met initial resistance from the 1^st Virginia Infantry, 11^th Virginia Infantry, and 17^th Virginia Infantry of Longstreet’s brigade. Tyler ordered Ayres to move his own guns closer to the action, accompanied by cavalry, while the rest of Richardson’s brigade was sent toward the ford. The two sides exchanged fire across the river. Richardson’s assault fell apart when the inexperienced 12^th New York began to retreat under heavy fire. Their collapse caused a wave of panic to spread through the Union line. When Confederate Colonel Jubal Anderson Early arrived with his Confederate brigade after marching two miles north from Beauregard’s headquarters at Wilmer McLean’s house, this additional strength sealed the Confederate victory. The Washington Artillery kept the Union troops under fire as they retreated away from the Ford.
The unauthorised reconnaissance-in-force at Blackburn’s Ford confirmed the wisdom of McDowell’s decision not to make an immediate frontal assault across Bull Run Creek. Deterred from attacking at Blackburn’s Ford, McDowell now prepared a more ambitious flanking manoeuvre to cross the river further upstream. The repulse cost 83 Union casualties (19 killed, 38 wounded, and 26 men missing), while the Confederates reported 68 casualties (15 killed and 53 wounded). (CWSAC Formative Battle – Confederate Victory)

Union Organisation

Commander in Chief: President Abraham Lincoln
Vice-President: Hannibal Hamlin
Secretary of War: Simon Cameron
Secretary of the Navy: Gideon Welles

Atlantic Blockading Squadron: Silas Horton Stringham
Gulf Blockading Squadron: William Mervine
Pacific Squadron: John Berrien Montgomery
West Indies Squadron: Garrett J Pendergrast
Western Gunboat Flotilla: John Rodgers
Potomac Flotilla: Thomas Tingey Craven

General–in-Chief: Winfield Scott

Department of Annapolis: Nathaniel Prentiss Banks

Department of the East: John Ellis Wool

Department of Florida: Harvey Brown

Department of Kentucky: Robert Anderson

Department of Northeastern Virginia: Irvin McDowell

Army of Northeastern Virginia: Irvin McDowell

Department of the Ohio: George Brinton McClellan

Army of Occupation: George Brinton McClellan

Department of the Pacific: Edwin Vose Sumner

District of Oregon: George Wright

Department of Pennsylvania: Robert Patterson

Army of the Shenandoah: Robert Patterson

Department of Texas: Vacant

Department of Virginia: Benjamin Franklin Butler

Department of Washington: Joseph King Fenno Mansfield

Western Department: Nathaniel Lyon interim John Charles Frémont awaited

District of Ironton: Benjamin Gratz Brown
Army of the West: Nathaniel Lyon

Confederate Organisation

CSA: The District of Aquia was established in the Department of Fredericksburg, comprising the area between Powell’s River and the mouth of the Potomac River including North Neck and the counties on either side of the Rappahannock River from its mouth to Fredericksburg.
CSA: Colonel Richard Milton Cary assumed temporary command of the District of Aquia.

Commander in Chief: President Jefferson Finis Davis
Vice-President: Alexander Hamilton Stephens
Secretary of War: Leroy Pope Walker
Secretary of the Navy: Stephen Russell Mallory

Military Adviser to the President: Robert Edward Lee

Department No 1: David Emanuel Twiggs

“Forces in New Orleans” “Army of Louisiana”: Braxton Bragg

Department of Fredericksburg: Daniel Harvey Hill

District of Aquia: Richard M Cary temporary

Department of Norfolk: Benjamin Huger

Department of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes

Defences of North Carolina: Theophilus Hunter Holmes

Department of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder

Army of the Peninsula: John Bankhead Magruder

Department of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Army of the Potomac: Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Department of South Carolina: Daniel Harvey Hill

Department of Southwestern Virginia: William Wing Loring

Department of Texas: Earl Van Dorn

Defences of Galveston: John Creed Moore

Department of West Florida: Braxton Bragg

“Forces in Pensacola”: Braxton Bragg

Western Department: Leonidas Polk

District of Upper Arkansas: William Joseph Hardee
Forces in Missouri: Benjamin McCulloch

Defences of Savannah: Alexander Robert Lawton

District of Harper’s Ferry: Joseph Eggleston Johnston

Army of the Shenandoah: Joseph Eggleston Johnston

Indian Territory: Benjamin McCulloch

Forces in Richmond: Thomas Turner Fauntleroy

Army of the Kanawha: Henry Alexander Wise

Army of Liberation: Gideon Johnson Pillow

Army of the Northwest: Henry Rootes Jackson

Union Generals

Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission

Major-General USA

Winfield Scott
George Brinton McClellan
John Charles Frémont

Major-General USV

John Adams Dix
Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
Benjamin Franklin Butler

Brigadier-General USA

John Ellis Wool
William Selby Harney
Edwin Vose Sumner
Joseph King Fenno Mansfield
Irvin McDowell
Robert Anderson
William Starke Rosecrans

Brigadier-General USV

Samuel Peter Heintzelman
David Hunter
Erasmus Darwin Keyes
Andrew Porter
Fitz-John Porter
William Buel Franklin
William Tecumseh Sherman
Charles Pomeroy Stone
Don Carlos Buell
Thomas West Sherman
Nathaniel Lyon
John Pope
George Archibald McCall
William Reading Montgomery
Philip Kearny
Joseph Hooker
John Wolcott Phelps
Ulysses Simpson Grant
Joseph Jones Reynolds
Samuel Ryan Curtis
Charles Smith Hamilton
Darius Nash Couch
Rufus King
Jacob Dolson Cox
Stephen Augustus Hurlbut
Franz Sigel
Robert Cumming Schenck
Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss
Frederick West Lander
Benjamin Franklin Kelley
John Alexander McClernand
Alpheus Starkey Williams
Israel Bush Richardson
James Cooper

Brigadier-General USA (Staff)

Montgomery Cunningham Meigs (Quartermaster-General)

Confederate Generals

Note: Italics, awaiting confirmation of the commission

General ACSA

Samuel Cooper
Albert Sidney Johnston
Robert Edward Lee
Joseph Eggleston Johnston

Major-General PACS

David Emanuel Twiggs
Leonidas Polk

Brigadier-General ACSA

Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard
Braxton Bragg

Brigadier-General PACS

Alexander Robert Lawton
Milledge Lake Bonham
Benjamin McCulloch
William Wing Loring
Charles Clark
John Buchanan Floyd
William Henry Talbot Walker
Henry Rootes Jackson
Theophilus Hunter Holmes
Henry Alexander Wise
Earl Van Dorn
William Joseph Hardee
Richard Stoddert Ewell
David Rumph Jones
Benjamin Huger
John Bankhead Magruder
James Longstreet
Edmund Kirby Smith
John Clifford Pemberton
Thomas Jonathan Jackson
Henry Hopkins Sibley
Barnard Elliott Bee
John Henry Winder
Richard Caswell Gatlin
Daniel Smith Donelson
Samuel Read Anderson
Gideon Johnson Pillow
Benjamin Franklin Cheatham
Felix Kirk Zollicoffer
Daniel Harvey Hill
Jones Mitchell Withers