I. Introduction
The federal defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run has spurred study and debate ever since Sunday, July 21, 1861. The Union plan to dispense with the Southern rebellion in an afternoon was proceeding brilliantly until the army’s advance stalled and collapsed on Henry Hill. Observers pointed to the Confederate capture of two cannon from Captain Charles Griffin’s battery as the precise moment of reversal. The circumstances surrounding the seizure of Griffin’s guns — specifically the claim that the cannon were lost after Griffin’s crew hesitated to fire on Confederate troops mistakenly identified as fellow federals — became the subject of dispute and integral to the battle’s lore. The two artillery officers most directly involved, Major William F. Barry and Captain Griffin, each cast blame on the other for the decision to withhold firing on the Virginia soldiers who soon overran the guns. Their conflicting statements in after-battle reports and testimony before a Congressional committee have shaped accounts of the battle’s climactic moment ever since. This essay examines the circumstances surrounding the capture of Griffin’s guns, questions the evidence, briefly surveys the historiography, and weighs whether blame can, or even should, be assigned.
II. The Battle
On the morning of June 21, 1861, General Irvin McDowell’s federal troops crossed Bull Run creek. McDowell’s ambitious turning movement first seized Matthews Hill, sending the Confederate defenders scurrying. The federals then paused to celebrate their success and reorganize rather than immediately pursue the retreating rebels. This hesitation gave Confederate survivors time to retreat across the Warrenton Pike and find refuge on Henry Hill. There Wade Hampton’s Legion of fresh troops bolstered the disorganized Southerners.[1]
Instead of attacking in force, McDowell and his division commanders probed Henry Hill in a series of disjointed advances by individual regiments. Supported by batteries under Captain Charles Griffin and Captain James B. Ricketts securely positioned on Dogan Ridge to the northwest of Henry Hill, the federal regiments drove the Confederates from the hill’s north side. The rebels reformed on Henry Hill’s south slope, largely concealed from the Union cannons by the hill’s crest. Sheltered by woods, the Confederates welcomed the arrival of a brigade of Virginia regiments commanded by Thomas Jackson, soon to win his sobriquet Stonewall.
More than one hour after taking Matthews Hill, McDowell ordered his chief of artillery, Major William F. Barry, to send two batteries (six cannons each) forward to Henry Hill. Barry relayed the orders to Capt. Griffin and Capt. Ricketts who, despite concerns about insufficient infantry support, limbered up their guns and moved them forward. After a brief detour by Griffin’s lieutenant to an incorrect hill, Ricketts led the way up Henry Hill where he lined up his six cannons to the southwest of Henry House. Griffin with his five guns (earlier that day, one gun was disabled with a ball lodged in it)) completed the journey of about three-quarters of a mile from Dogan Ridge and set up northeast of Henry House. After Ricketts initially cleared the Henry House of Confederate sharpshooters, the batteries fired their long-range Parrott guns ineffectively toward the Confederate cannons and Virginia troops who, although quite close, were well protected by the contours of the hill and the shelter of the woods. As they had feared, Ricketts and Griffin found their artillery insufficiently defended by infantry and exposed to increasingly damaging return fire from Confederate cannons.
The situation of the federal batteries was rapidly becoming precarious. Crews manning the cannons were losing horses and men to enemy fire. As the crisis escalated, Griffin sought a better firing angle to take on the Confederate batteries. In a maneuver that would long be debated, Griffin swung his two howitzers down the west side of Henry Hill and to the right (south) of Ricketts’s cannons, covering about one-third of a mile in this maneuver.
From this new position, Griffin’s two cannons took aim at the Confederate batteries and began firing. Infantry then appeared on the edge of woods by a rail fence about two hundred yards to Griffin’s right. At approximately the same time, Major Barry arrived at Griffin’s new position. The unidentified men by the woods were close enough that Griffin believed he could shred their lines and ordered his men to load the cannons with rounds of cannister. For reasons later heatedly disputed – and the focus of this paper – Griffin held back his gunners from firing. The mysterious men were indeed a Virginia regiment that, after a span of time later debated, opened fire on Griffin’s battery with devastating results.
A single volley from the Confederates standing at the rail fence precipitated the disaster that followed. Men and horses staffing the Union batteries were cut down, leaving the guns helpless in the face of now rapidly advancing Confederate infantrymen. The guns were overrun and their remaining cannoneers fled. A bitter fight ensued over Henry Hill in which infantry from both sides battled over the cannon which changed hands several times until the arrival of fresh Confederate soldiers swept away the Union holdouts and took control of Henry Hill. Griffin’s hesitation may not have lost the day for the United States, but many believed it marked the turning point of the war’s first major battle.[2] The war was not to be decided that summer day, nor in the three summers to come.
The First Battle of Bull Run ended that day, but the fight over the assignment of blame for the Union debacle was just beginning. The participating officers filed their after-action reports (“AARs”) in the coming days. The immediate ramification of the defeat was the end of McDowell’s leadership of the federal army. Then in December 1861, Congress convened the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (JCCW) to investigate, among other issues, the reasons for the Bull Run disaster. Both Barry and Griffin would appear before the JCCW, each to defend his conduct and impugn that of the other.
III. Two Career Artillery Men
William F. Barry and Charles Griffin had much in common. Both men attended West Point. Barry graduated in 1838 (together with McDowell and First Bull Run’s rebel commander Pierre Gustave Beauregard) and Griffin nine years later. Each ranked in the middle of his class, entered the artillery service, and made the military a career. Each spent time in Mexico during the Mexican War, but neither appears to have seen combat there. As was typical of the antebellum military experience, the officers were rotated every few years among remote forts on the American frontier and periphery, interrupted by occasional postings on the East Coast.
In the 1850s, Barry was assigned to a board of artillery officers tasked with developing “a revised system of light artillery tactics and regulation.” The result was a manual that Barry co-authored titled “Instruction for Field Artillery” and published in 1860. Griffin too entered military academics when he was assigned to teach artillery at West Point in the fall of 1860.
During the secession crisis in the months following Lincoln’s election in November 1860, Captain Barry was still commanding an artillery battery at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he had served since 1858. When South Carolina seceded from the Union, Barry was called back to Washington where he arrived in mid-January 1861. In April, Barry was dispatched to Fort Pickens at Pensacola to improve its coastal defenses and gun placements with the goal of ensuring that the fort would resist the fate that befell Fort Sumter that same month. After nine years as a captain, Barry was promoted to major of the 5th Regiment, U.S. Artillery in May 1861. A few months later, he was ordered back to Washington where he arrived on July 16, the same day that McDowell’s army set off on its ill-fated Virginia campaign. Three days later, McDowell appointed his former classmate chief of the Union army’s artillery. With no time to reorganize the artillery, Barry accompanied the five batteries assigned to the army’s main body. These batteries included the six guns under Charles Griffin (Battery D, 5th Regt US Artillery) and six more under James Ricketts (Battery I, 1st Regt. U.S. Artillery). [3]
While teaching at West Point, Lt. Griffin received orders in January 1861 to form a “light battery of four pieces, with six horses to the piece.” This unit, known as the West Point Battery, received seventy men “transferred from the dragoon and artillery detachments.” The battery left for Washington at the end of January. In April, Griffin received a long-awaited promotion to captain after twelve years as first lieutenant. In May, the West Point Battery was designated Battery D in the newly organized 5th Regiment of U.S. Artillery under Major Barry. Shortly before the battle, the West Point Battery, now with six guns, was attached to the Union army’s Second Division, 1stBrigade, commanded by Col. Andrew Porter.[4]
IV. Conflicting Accounts
There is no dispute that McDowell gave the order to move Griffin’s and Ricketts’s batteries from their secure and effective positions on Dogan’s Ridge to the exposed and, ultimately, disastrous front-line on Henry Hill. In “after action reports” (herein, AAR) written in late July, neither Barry nor Griffin recorded any skepticism about McDowell’s initial order. In testimony five months later before the Joint Congressional Committee War (JCCW), Barry denied hearing any objection raised to advancing the two batteries to Henry Hill (“not the slightest that I heard”). Griffin, however, differed when he appeared before the JCCW. During his testimony in January 1861, one week after Barry’s appearance, Griffin claimed that when Barry told him of McDowell’s order, Griffin “hesitated about going there, because I had no support” to protect the battery with an adequate number of infantrymen. Instead, Griffin claimed, he counseled moving to a “better place for our battery” on “a hill about 500 yards to the rear of the one to which we were ordered.” Griffin likely meant Buck Hill, which was about half-way between Dogan Ridge and Henry Hill. Again, Griffin stated, during the movement of the batteries to Henry Hill, he approached Barry “and told him I had no support; that it was impossible to go there without support.”[5]
The batteries, with eleven guns and about one hundred men and two hundred horses, sped toward Henry Hill. Griffin preceded Ricketts as Lt. Charles Hazlett of Griffin’s battery led the convoy to a position about two hundred yards short of the objective. Barry and Griffin differed in their recollections of how this error was resolved. Barry testified that he “went forward and corrected the mistake.” Griffin, on the other hand, stated that he “gave the orders to countermarch and go on the hill indicated.” In his confusing account before the JCCW, Lt. Hazlett claimed there were two mis-directions but did not name the officers who misled him or who corrected the course. It is possible that Barry, who was advancing toward Henry Hill with two infantry regiments, gave instructions to Griffin or Ricketts who then passed along the rectified directions to Hazlett. Once on Henry Hill, Griffin lined up his five working guns (to the left of Ricketts (both batteries facing south) and east of Henry House. The batteries quickly commenced firing. [6]
Source: Bradley Gottfried, The Maps of First Bull Run (2009)
After about half an hour, Griffin ordered the fateful repositioning of his two howitzers, shuttling them behind Ricketts and finally stopping on Ricketts’s right (south of Ricketts). Barry does not specifically mention Griffin’s decision to relocate two of his guns. The moments that followed were confusing and the reports contradictory. Each officer’s account will be examined separately.
V. The Collapse
A. Barry makes his case:
1. Barry’s After Action Report (AAR)
In Barry’s AAR, dated two days after the battle, he described the confusion on Henry Hill. While the batteries “at once opened a very effective fire upon the enemy’s left,” enemy cavalry charged from woods close to the Union right. Then, “a few minutes afterwards,” came the crucial moment: “a regiment of the enemy’s infantry, covered by a high fence, presented itself in line on the left and front of the two batteries at not more than sixty or seventy-yard’s distance, and delivered a volley full upon the batteries and their supports.” Numerous Union artillery men and their horses were killed or wounded, and the two infantry regiments in support “broke and fled in confusion to the rear.” The Confederates rushed and seized the guns.[7]
2. Barry’s JCCW Testimony
Under questioning at the JCCW on January 7, 1862, Barry added more detail to his initial account, although his narrative became increasingly difficult to follow. Barry stated that he accompanied the infantry regiments that he had organized and arrived on Henry Hill only after the two batteries. He spent his time on the hill, about fifteen minutes, “passing from one battery to another, and looking to the infantry regiments coming up.”[8]
Barry first visited Ricketts’s battery and had just arrived at Griffin’s two howitzers on the far right of the federal line when Griffin directed Barry’s attention to soldiers emerging from woods to the “front and right – not really in front.” Barry believed that the 14th Brooklyn infantry regiment had moved ahead into or in the direction of “a piece of woods.” Barry “supposed” that these troops now appearing were “this same regiment [14th Brooklyn] that had gone into the woods” or, if not into the woods itself, in that direction as a swale might have hidden the 14thBrooklyn from Barry’s view. Barry’s said that his view of these troops was obstructed by a “very tall Virginia fence, eight or nine rails high.” He could just see the “top of their bayonets – not the clothes of the men at all.”[9]
Barry, however, proceeded to contradict himself and complicate his narrative. Initially in his January 7thtestimony Barry stated that the regiment emerging from the woods, which he misidentified as the 14th Brooklyn, “came out in line of battle, and a few minutes after they came out they delivered their fire upon us.” After further questions from Congressman Gooch of the JCCW committee, Barry revised his account of the time elapsed. He asserted that even if he had recognized the troops coming out of the woods as Confederates, there “would have been no time to do anything before they delivered their fire.” It was “all the work of a moment.” The deadly volley, he repeated, came “almost instantaneous” after Griffin had called Barry’s attention these troops. Barry saw only “this line of bayonets” before they opened fire, again, “almost instantaneously after [I] first saw them.” The fire came right through the rail fence. “Even if we had known they were the enemy,” Barry concluded “there would have been no time to have turned the guns upon them before their fire was delivered.”[10]
Source: Bradley Gottfried, The Maps of First Bull Run (2009)
B. Griffin Objects and Blames Barry
1. Griffin’s AAR report
Griffin’s statements about the events on Henry Hill depart from Barry’s accounts in several crucial points. In his AAR, also dated July 23, 1861, Griffin briefly recounted the artillery’s advance to Henry Hill. Once on Henry Hill, Griffin’s battery “changed position to the right and fired two rounds when it was charged by the enemy’s infantry from the woods on the right of our position.” With damning language, Griffin reported tersely that the infantry that attacked the batteries “was mistaken for our own forces, an officer on the field having stated that it was a regiment sent by Colonel Heintzelman to support the battery.” While Griffin does not name Barry in his AAR, his later testimony makes indisputably clear that Barry was the “officer on the field.”[11]
2. Griffin’s JCCW Testimony
In a long uninterrupted narrative before the JCCW nearly six months after the battle, Griffin expanded his account of the events on Henry Hill. Griffin explained that after he moved two of his cannons to the right of Ricketts’s battery, he angled his guns to fire toward the Confederate batteries. About five minutes after this change in position, Griffin reported that “a regiment of Confederates got over a fence on my front and some officer…stepped out in front of the regiment…. And commenced making a speech to them.” These troops were about two hundred yards distant.
Then came the climactic moment. Griffin testified that he commanded one of his officers to fire on these troops. The cannons were loaded with canister- ammunition designed to devastate enemy infantry – and the two guns were “just ready to fire upon them, when Major Barry rode up to me.” Speaking to the JCCW, Griffin then recalled crucial dialogue from nearly six months earlier that he had omitted in his AAR: “’Captain, don’t fire there’” Barry instructed, for “’those are your battery support.’” Griffin claimed that he argued with Barry and insisted that “[t]hey are confederates; as certain as the world, they are confederates.” Still Barry, in Griffin’s recollection, insisted “they are your battery support.” Commanded by Barry not to fire on the troops at the rail fence, Griffin ordered his men instead to turn their guns in the previous direction. Griffin next described the movement of the troops by the rail fence, who faced left, marched about fifty yards, then faced right, marching about another forty yards “and then opened fire upon us, and” in Griffin’s dramatic summation “that was the last of us.” In a subtle but devastating comment prompted by Rep. Chandler’s questioning, Griffin bitterly implied that Barry had the time to ride over to confirm the identity of the purported federal “support” troops who turned out to be the enemy.
Griffin’s narrative, however, has its own contradictions and problems with accounting for time. Initially after recounting Barry’s order not to fire on the troops by the rail face, Griffin testified that his men “threw down the canister, and commenced firing again in the former direction.” Griffin then explained that “I gave the command to fire in another direction with the battery. But I never delivered the fire, for we were all cut down.” Yet, a few lines later, his testimony includes the puzzling statement: “I started to limber up my pieces, so thoroughly convinced was I that they were the confederates.”[12]
C. Battle of the Reports
By the time each officer appeared before the JCCW in January 1862, his account of the events of July 21, 1861, had already been shaped by reports of what the other man and fellow soldiers had written in the AARs. While it is not clear whether Griffin and Barry compared impressions immediately after the battle and prior to submitting their AARs dated two days after the battle, Griffin later told the JCCW that he had read Barry’s AAR prior to his January 1862 testimony. Thus, Griffin knew that Barry, in his own AAR, had evaded responsibility for a decision that, in both men’s minds, led directly to loss of the cannons and risked severe career and reputation damage for any officer blamed. It cannot be known whether Griffin was aware of the details of Barry’s JCCW testimony one week prior to his own appearance, but Griffin almost certainly considered his turn before the Congressional committee as an opportunity to vindicate his record by expanding on his AAR and addressing the evasion he found in Barry’s initial account.
Similarly, it can be assumed that Barry was familiar with Griffin’s AAR which implicitly, although not directly by name, accused Barry of misidentifying the mysterious troops as federals. Barry was certainly aware that Gen. McDowell and Col. Andrew Porter had already incorporated Griffin’s version of the events into their AARs. The JCCW presented Barry with an opportunity that he seized to respond to Griffin by both endorsing and distorting Griffin’s AAR. Barry conceded that he had in fact misidentified the mystery troops but added the wrinkle that he had never communicated that mistake to Griffin. Barry insisted that any order not to fire that Griffin said he had heard and obeyed certainly did not originate with Barry.
Although he may not have known that Griffin was scheduled to testify the following week at the JCCW, Barry shrewdly anticipated Griffin’s accusations. With skillful testimony, Barry rebutted Griffin’s AAR insinuations by shifting responsibility for the decision not to fire on the Virginia soldiers, the ensuing loss of the howitzers, and ultimately the collapse of the federal position, back onto Griffin but without explicitly condemning him. The flaw with Barry’s defense strategy was that no one really cared about his subtle arguments. Griffin’s narrative had already proved much more compelling and irresistible to brother officers, the public, and nearly all historians to come.
Nor do witnesses to the events on Henry Hill help resolve the contradictory statements from Griffin and Barry about what, if anything, was said between the two officers. Barry claimed no eyewitnesses in his statements. Griffin, on the other hand, identified Lt. Horatio B. Reed from his battery as standing by his side and “a witness to Major Barry’s telling me that those were our troops.” In his JCCW appearance on January 28, 1862 (two weeks after Griffin), however, Lt. Reed did not entirely corroborate Griffin’s account. Reed confirmed that “We had orders not to fire” but then Reed undercut Griffin’s certainty by stating that he (Reed) was “under the impression that General Barry gave the order… I heard the order given by someone to Captain Griffin and Lieutenant Hasbrouck – and I am under the impression that it was General Barry – not to fire upon that body of men, for the reason that they were troops sent up to support us.” Since Reed remained under Griffin’s command in the 5th Regiment of US Artillery at the time of his JCCW testimony, his hesitation to positively confirm that Barry gave the order not to fire, despite Griffin’s assurance to the JCCW that Reed would do so, suggests that his testimony was not entirely coached by his directly superior officer but reflected genuine uncertainty.[13]
D. William Averell’s Conflicting Versions
Col. William W. Averell, assistant adjutant general to Gen. Andrew Porter, witnessed the devastating fire on Griffin’s two guns on Henry Hill. Appearing before the JCCW, Averell testified that he stood with Gen. Samuel Heintzelman “to the left of the battery.” Averell described how he and Heintzelman
“saw some troops immediately in front of us, not over 75 or 100 yards off. I should say it was at least a regiment; we could see their heads and faces very plainly. I said to Colonel Heintzelman: “What troops are those in front of us?” He was looking off in another direction. I said: “Here, right in front of the battery.” I do not remember the reply he made, but I dropped my reins and took up my glasses to look at them, and just at that moment down came their pieces, rifles and muskets, and probably there never was such a destructive fire for a few minutes.”
Averell reported encountering Barry going down Henry Hill after the loss of the cannons and Barry’s telling him “I am to blame for the loss of that battery. I put Griffin there myself.” Averell did not, however, quote Barry’s taking responsibility for instructing Griffin not to fire. Instead, in response to further questioning, Averell offered his opinion that Griffin’s battery refrained from firing at the mysterious troops because “It was understood that these troops were mistaken for our own, and Captain Griffin was ordered not to fire. My impression is that it was the chief of artillery on the field who made the mistake.” The chief of artillery was, of course, Major Barry. Averell’s choosing the word “impression,” however, suggests that his statement about Barry derived from later conversations or information and not from witnessing any interaction between the Barry and Griffin.[14]
Col. Averell, however, complicated and changed his Henry Hill narrative with new details that he introduced in a memoir written decades later. Averell’s JCCW testimony – six months after the battle – suggested that he and Heintzelman reacted to the mysterious troops appearing by the woods similarly to Barry and Griffin. When comparing the accounts of the two pairs of men, it appears that Averell and Heintzelman observed the unfolding scene from a vantage point close to but separate from Griffin and Barry’s. In his later memoir, however, Averell wrote the following:
“I found General Heintzelman by the side of Griffin, discussing with him the character of a line of men forming not over two hundred and fifty yards in front in the edge of the woods. Griffin’s men were at the lanyards and he wished to give the command “fire.” Heintzelman thought they were our own troops in front and appealed to me…. From their uniforms I decided at once and said “they are our enemy,” and advised Griffin to fire. Heintzelman was on my right and extending his left arm, laid his hand on my right to check me and exclaimed, “No, no! They are our men.”
At that instant down came the line of small arms of the enemy to a level; we heard the command “fire,” and experienced a sensation like that of passing through an imaginary sieve. Heintzelman gave an expression of pain as a ball passed through his wrist near my arm and it seemed to me that every horse in the batteries sank down with many of the men.”
While compelling, Averell’s dramatic and detailed account suffers from serious credibility issues. Averell began working on his memoir in 1891 and left it uncompleted upon his death in 1900. It appears that thirty years after First Bull Run, Averell’s memory fused his recollection of standing with Heintzelman with Griffin’s widely accepted narrative of his encounter with Barry, but also erased Barry from the scene. Moreover, Heintzelman’s journal entries written six weeks after the battle present none of these details, let alone conversations with Griffin or even mention of Averell. Instead, Heintzelman states that he was wounded when he joined the 14th Brooklyn while trying to recapture Griffin’s lost guns. Considering the inconsistencies with nearly contemporaneous accounts from Griffin, Barry, Reed, Heintzelman. and even Averell himself, Averell’s memoir, which replaced Barry with Heintzelman in those fateful moments on Henry Hill, cannot be given much weight[15]
VI Griffin Wins “The Battle Over Henry Hill”
Within days of the battle, the tale of the mistaken identification of troops on Henry Hill and the ensuing fatal fire which cut down the federal batteries, had spread in the army. Col. Andrew Porter, commander of the 1stBrigade of the 2nd Division to which Griffin’s battery was attached, wrote in his July 25th AAR that the volley that “cut down every cannoneer and large number of horses…. came from some infantry of the enemy, which had been mistaken for our own forces, an officer of the field having stated that it was a regiment sent by Colonel Heintzelman to support the batteries.” Porter’s words of course are nearly identical to Griffin’s report dated two days earlier and addressed to Porter. Gen. McDowell in his report dated August 4, 1861, also wrote how the batteries of Ricketts and Griffin were disabled by the enemy after an officer “mistaking one of his regiments for one of our own” allowed the enemy “to approach without firing upon it.” Thus, within days of the battle, Griffin’s version of events was taking hold with Barry’s reputation in peril.[16]
Similarly, as shown above, Averell’s account at the JCCW (unlike his much later memoir) reflected his familiarity with and acceptance of Griffin’s narrative. Senator Ben Wade, in his report presenting the finding of the JCCW, also accepted Griffin’s version of the events. Wade concluded that
“In regard to the capture of the batteries, it appears by the testimony that they were ordered to take an advanced and exposed position, and were not sufficiently supported. Not long after they were placed in position, a rebel regiment appeared in their immediate vicinity. Captain Griffin states that he took them to be rebels from the first, and directed one of his lieutenants to open upon them with canister. But Major Barry, chief of artillery, coming up at the time, told him that they were some of our own troops coming to the support of the batteries, and directed him not to fire upon them. The battery was accordingly turned in another direction, and, almost immediately after, this regiment of the enemy opened fire upon it, disabling the horses, and killing and wounding most of the men at the guns. That completed the discomfiture of our troops, and the day which had opened upon our success, closed upon a defeated and retreating army.”[17]
After the war, Griffin’s self-exculpatory narrative spread even further. As early as 1867, authors who wrote about First Bull Run accepted Griffin’s JCCW testimony as accurate, going so far as to adopt Griffin’s account of his Henry Hill conversation with Barry as an actual transcript of dialogue. Griffin’s narrative became settled lore among veterans of the battle. Twenty years after Griffin’s death, James Frye, Griffin’s West Point classmate, “warm friend,” and fellow First Bull Run veteran, wrote in his account of the battle that “A regiment of infantry came out of the woods on Griffin’s right, and as he was in the act of opening upon it with canister, he was deterred by the assurance of Major Barry, the chief of artillery, that it ‘was a regiment sent by Colonel Heintzelman to support the battery.’ A moment more and the doubtful regiment proved its identity by a deadly volley, and, as Griffin states in his official report, ‘every cannoneer was cut down and a large number of horses killed, leaving the battery (which was without support excepting in name) perfectly helpless.’” Even Confederate veterans repeated Griffin’s accusations against Barry.[18]
In an 1890 paper Thomas Allen, another veteran of the battle turned historian, echoed Frazar Kirkland’s earlier approach offering a dramatic reenactment of the supposed debate between Griffin and Barry with dialogue adapted from Griffin’s JCCW statement. Allen set the scene:
“Griffin, absorbed in directing the fire of his guns against the rebel batteries, was suddenly startled at seeing a regiment advancing boldly on his right, in open view. Their very audacity puzzled him. They could hardly be friends, he thought; yet was it possible that foes were so near and would take such a risk? Instinctively he ordered his guns to be charged with canister and trained upon them. Yet at the dreadful thought of pouring such a volley upon a Union regiment, he once more hesitated and held a brief colloquy with Major Barry, chief of support. ‘They are Confederates,’ replied Griffin in intense excitement; ‘as certain as the world they are Confederates.’ ‘No,’ answered Barry, ‘I know they are your battery support.’ Griffin spurred forward and told his officers not to fire. The mistake proved fatal.”[19]
Later, more analytical historians routinely accepted Griffin’s version of his encounter with Barry. In his highly regarded artillery history, L. Vanloan Naisawald may have described Griffin’s movement of his guns to Ricketts’s right as a “tragic mistake,” but he also repeated Griffin’s accusation that Barry ordered him not to fire. In one of the foremost recent accounts of the battle, John Hennessy, like Thomas Allen, accepted Griffin’s self-exonerating description of his purported conversation with Barry as reported in his JCCW testimony. Ethan Rafuse and other prominent historians have followed suit.[20]
A few studies, however, are skeptical of Griffin’s account. David Detzer took a more cautious approach, noting the contradictory accounts of Griffin and Barry without taking a side. Detzer noted sardonically that at the JCCW, Griffin “blamed Barry. He blamed the Fire Zouaves. He refused to blame himself.” Among recent historian, only Edward Longacre has sought to discredit Griffin’s account. Longacre closely read the AAR and JCCW testimony and focused on the question of the decision-making that preceded the loss of Griffin’s guns. Longacre introduced refreshing skepticism into his narrative of Henry Hill as he pointed out “the holes in Griffin’s account.” Longacre suggested that “there is reason to believe that Griffin deliberately defamed a superior officer he had long disliked and resented” and that these accusations “served to divert scrutiny of [Griffin’s] egregious tactical error” in recklessly moving his two guns to an exposed position and precipitating the loss of two batteries with many men and horses. Yet Longacre undermined his indictment of Griffin’s narrative by failing to scrutinize Barry’s statements for similarly self-serving distortions. Longacre’s attempt to impeach Griffin’s credibility is also weakened by his uncritical reference to other incidents from Griffin’s career which do nothing more than suggest an irascible personality. Finally, Longacre’s “smoking gun” against Griffin is Averell’s memoir that replaced Barry with Heintzelman in the climactic moment on Henry Hill. As stated above, however, Averell’s recollections, composed decades after the events described, are problematic in that they alone identify Heintzelman in a role not documented by any 1861 accounts, including those from Heintzelman and Averell.[21]
VI. Conclusion
In each of his accounts, Griffin blamed Barry for misidentification of the troops and, initially by implication and later explicitly, for loss of the cannons. The main difference between Griffin’s AAR and later JCCW appearance was his assertion that not only had Barry insisted that the troops appearing by the woods were federals, but also that Barry ordered Griffin not to fire his guns on those men. Griffin’s accounts of Henry Hill were insistently self-exculpatory, but his narrative, particularly his contradictory statements about loading and limbering his guns, was not subjected to cross-examination, or challenged by his Congressional questioners.
If Griffin indeed was dissembling, he was at least mostly consistent in his self-defense. Barry’s statements may be similarly self-vindicating but create a tangled narrative. Barry expanded and then contracted the passage of time on Henry Hill and gave inconsistent accounts of his first sighting of the unknown troops. Did “a few minutes” pass from the time he first saw these soldiers and the time they fired on the Griffin’s howitzers, or was it “the work of a moment?” A cross-examination would have focused on Barry’s claim that he saw the troops only after Griffin directed his attention to them, but then Barry also testified that he saw these soldiers emerge from the woods. Barry offered the excuse that there was no time to react after perceiving the troops by the woods (“instantaneous”), but he also claimed that Griffin was “competent” to fire the cannons if Griffin had chosen to, implying that Griffin did have time to make that decision and issue corresponding orders to his battery.
Beyond some tense moments before the JCCW, the loss of Griffin’s guns had no discernable impact on the men most directly implicated. If Griffin shaped his account of Henry Hill to preserve his career, he succeeded completely in that goal. He would soon receive a brevet promotion to major dated to First Bull Run for gallantry and meritorious service in that battle. In December 1861, he married into the politically connected Carroll family with the Lincolns attending the wedding. In June 1862, upon President Lincoln’s request to Gen. George McClellan, Griffin was promoted to brevet brigadier general and commanded a brigade on the Peninsula. He later rose to division commander in the Fifth Corps culminating in his battlefield promotion to corps commander when Phil Sheridan dismissed Gouverneur Warren at Five Forks shortly before the Confederate surrender. Griffin ended the war as a brevet major general of volunteers and colonel in the regular army. He died in September 1867 in a yellow fever epidemic while leading the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas.
Nor was Barry’s advancement impeded. A few weeks after First Bull Run, he was promoted to brigadier general of volunteers and later rose to brevet major general of volunteers and colonel in the regular army. Barry filled several distinguished posts in the artillery and was greatly influential in shaping the Union army’s artillery service during the war. In addition, he was cited for gallantry and meritorious service for his role in the campaign and capture of Atlanta and the North Carolina campaign that closed the war. Barry died in July 1879 while serving as commander of Fort McHenry in Baltimore.[22]
The truth of what exactly happened between Major William F. Barry and Captain Charles Griffin on Henry Hill remains frustratingly elusive. We have only contradictory and self-serving accounts from Barry and Griffin that evolve over time and prove to be unverifiable. Nevertheless, veterans and then historians of First Bull Run usually accepted Griffin’s version of the events and, unknowingly, courted injustice by vindicating Griffin at Barry’s expense. The sole significant historian to rebut the accepted account, however, extended his critique of Griffin too far and replaced the consensus with equally unsupportable speculation. Certainly, contemporaries found the purported misidentification and withholding of fire to be noteworthy but not sufficiently egregious to punish anyone involved. After all, First Bull Run–the Civil War’s first major battle–was notorious for many similar friendly fire and misidentification incidents, although none may have been more dramatic than Griffin’s failure to fire his howitzers on Henry Hill. As with so many other compelling tales from the past, it is with reluctance that we concede that we have established conjecture as historical fact.[23]
Daniel R. Weinfeld
[1] Gottfried, Bradley, The Maps of First Bull Run (2009), Map #17, p. 777. Harry Smeltzer’s website, https://bullrunnings.wordpress.com/, is an invaluable compendium of all sources related to First Bull Run where all Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War (JCCW) testimony and After Action Reports (AAR) reports cited herein can be found. “One of Griffin’s guns had a shell lodged in its bore and did not join the movement to Henry Hill.” Hennessy, John, The First Battle of Manassas: An End to Innocence July 18-21, 1861 (revised ed. 2015), p. 183, ft 14.
[2] See, Gardner, Joseph L., “’Bull Run’ Russell,” in American Heritage, June 1962, vol. 13, issue 4. Referring to the loss of the Union batteries on Henry Hill, Russell lamented that “McDowell’s army was on the brink of success. Then, in a moment of confusion, the Union’s hope of ending the rebellion with one quick stroke was shattered forever.” Fry, James B., “McDowell’s Advance to Bull Run,” Battles and Leaders of the Civil War vol. I: From Sumter to Shiloh, pp. 167-193: “The batteries of Ricketts and Griffin, by their fine discipline, wonderful daring, and matchless skill, were the prime features in the fight. The battle was not lost till they were lost;” also Gen. John A. Logan in National Tribune, April 15, 1886: “It is terrible blunder. For up to his moment the battle is undeniably ours… The fate of the day hung balanced right there and then, with all the chances in favor of McDowell;” and Gottfried, Maps of First Bull Run, 1027; Map 23, ft 4: “For many Confederates on the field, the capture of Griffin’s isolated guns was the turning point of the battle, but the fighting was far from over.”
[3] Williams, Stephen D., William Farquhar Barry: The Real Man Behind the Guns (U.S. Army War College, 1991), pp. 8, 21. Griffin testified that he and Barry “never have been on good terms.” JCCW, p. 175. The two men knew each other well: in the mid-1850s, Lieutenant Griffin served under Barry who was his captain in the Second Battery, U.S. Artillery.
[4] Bush, James C., “Fifth Regiment of Artillery,” in The Army of the US Historical Sketches of Staff and Line with Portraits of Generals-in-Chief (1896), p. 376. https://history.army.mil/books/R&H/R&H-5Art.htm; See also, Noles, James L, “The West Point Battery fought on many battlefields and produced several high-ranking Northern officers,” America’s Civil War, May 2002, pp. 12-18.
[5] JCCW, 144, 168-9.
[6] Historian John Hennessey suggests that Lt. Hazlett initially led the batteries to Chinn Ridge, west of Henry Hill, instead of Buck Hill. Hennessey, email to author. JCCW, 144, 169, 219. Ricketts must have arrived on Henry Hill and established his position first as he reported firing toward Henry House to drive off enemy sharpshooters. As Griffin is reported as setting up his guns on the opposite side of Henry House, it is implausible that Ricketts would have been firing in the direction of Griffin’s guns, or that Griffin would have neglected to report the sharpshooters firing from Henry House. John Hennessey, “The First Hour’s Fight on Henry Hill,” (December 1985, Fredericksburg National Park Service Library), p. 1.
[7] Barry AAR in Official Records, vol. IX, p. 347.
[8] JCCW, 144-5.
[9] Ibid. First Bull Run expert Harry Smeltzer points to Barry’s comment about not being able to see clothing as significant as the 14thBrooklyn was well-known for its distinctive uniform featuring red pants. H. Smeltzer email with author.
[10] Ibid [emphasis added].
[11] Official Records, Vol. IX, series 1, vol. 2, p. 394 [emphasis added].
[12] JCCW, 173, 175.
[13] JCCW, 220.
[14] Averell in JCCW, 216-7 [emphasis added].
[15] JCCW, pp. 213-218. Eckert, Edward K. and Nicholas J. Amato eds., William W. Averell, Ten Years in the Saddle (1978), pp. X, 298-9. In condemning Griffin’s purported duplicity, Edward Longacre writes that Averell and Heintzelman stood with Griffin at the time of the mistaken identification. Longacre, Edward, The Early Morning of War: Bull Run, 1861 (2014), pp. 395, 397. Heintzelman, however, neither in his journal entries describing First Bull Run (written six weeks after the battle), nor in his JCCW testimony, recounted interacting with Averell, let alone Griffin or Barry. Heintzelman’s journal entry from September 5, 1861, further contradicted Averell’s memoir: Heintzelman wrote that he had been wounded during the 14th Brooklyn’s effort to retake the lost batteries, not when the batteries were first captured. Jerry Thompson, Civil War to the Bloody End: The Life and Times of Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman (2006), pp.128-30. Dr. Thompson kindly provided copies of Heintzelman’s journal entries from July and September 1861.
[16] Official Records, Vol. IX, p. 320, 385.
[17] JCCW, pp. 4-5.
[18] Frazar Kirkland, A Pictorial Book of Anecdotes and Incidents of the War of the Rebellions (1867), p. 299. Fry named Griffin as his source. James B. Fry, “McDowell’s Advance to Bull Run,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War vol. I: From Sumter to Shiloh (1884-7) p. 167-193. Porter Alexander, Military Memoirs of a Confederate, p. 51. Gen. John A. Logan in (Washington) National Tribune, April 15, 1886 (“The deliberateness of the rebel Colonel has given Barry abundant time to have discovered his error.”). General Alexander S. Webb, who started the war as Barry’s aide-de-camp, drily remarked four decades later that “General Barry differed with General Griffin as to the cause of its [the West Point Battery] loss at Bull Run,” adding cryptically that Webb “has the correspondence on the subject.” “A.S.W.” review of Three Rivers in Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States, vol. XLVI (1910), p. 346 (Webb authored another article in the same journal issue, suggesting the strong likelihood that the “A.S.W.” who wrote the review was Alexander S. Webb).
[19] Allen, Thomas S., “The Second Wisconsin At The First Battle Of Bull Run,” October 1, 1890 in War Papers Read Before The Commandery Of The State Of Wisconsin Military Order Of The Loyal Legion Of The United States Vol. I, pp 374-393” found at https://bullrunnings.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/the-second-wisconsin-at-the-first-battle-of-bull-run-thomas-s-allen/ See also, Ropes, John Codman, The Story of the Civil War (1895) p 151.
[20] VanLoan, Naisawald, L., Grape and Canister: The Story of the Field Artillery of the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865 (1960, repr. 2014) p. 27. Hennessy, The First Battle of Manassas, pp. 101-2. In his paper, “The First Hour’s Fight on Henry Hill,” Hennessy took a more cautious approach in presenting each officer’s account of the loss of the guns. pp. 12-13. Griffin’s version is depicted in Johnson, Don, Thirteen Months at Manassas/Bull Run (2013), p. 80, and Rafuse, Ethan, A Single Grand Victory: The First Campaign and Battle of Manassas, (2002) pp. 166-7. Also, Ballard, Ted, Battle of First Bull Run (2004), p. 26, describing the argument between Barry and Griffin. See Gary Adelman, youtube talk on 160th Anniversary of First Bull Run, July 21, 2021 at 12:30 mark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUJgPXS4R90
[21] Detzer asks why, if Griffin was so confident that mysterious troops were Federals, he did not take the precaution of keeping his guns loaded with cannister until those troops were positively identified. Detzer, David, Donnybrook, The Battle of Bull Run, 1861(2004), pp. 362-4. Longacre, Edward, The Early Morning of War, pp. 397-8. Griffin’s professed dislike of Barry was probably reciprocated. Col. Charles Wainwright, Barry’s friend, and fellow senior artillery officer, expressed contempt for Griffin in his wartime journals where, in one of several examples of invective, Wainwright described Griffin as “an inveterate hater, and so ugly in his persecutions.” Nevins, Allen, ed., A Diary of Battle, The Personal Journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright, 1861-1865 (1962), p. 572. Conversely, numerous post-war narratives from staff members, junior officers, and soldiers who served under Griffin expressed, with few exceptions, unstinting admiration for “Old Griff.”
[22] Heitman, Francis B., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, vol. 1 (1903), pp. 195, 478
[23] When asked to assess the importance of the loss of Griffin’s guns, Barry reflected that their capture “had an influence, but I do not know whether it was a very decided influence.” The “most decided influence,” Barry remarked, was the arrival of fresh Confederate troops on the Union’s right flank. JCCW, p. 145.
GENERAL CHARLES GRIFFIN 