Taylor with his New Jersey brigade, supported a little later by Scammon with an Ohio brigade of two regiments, attacked the Confederates, presumably with the intention of recapturing the stores. The Eighteenth North Carolina regiment was detached from Branch to guard the captured supplies, and the rest of Branch s brigade joined in the chase of Taylor s men, who had been scattered by the brigades of Archer, Field and Fender. General Taylor was mortally wounded, and his command driven across Bull Run. The Confederates took 200 prisoners, and inflicted, according to the itinerary of Taylor’s brigade, "a very severe loss in killed, wounded and missing."
The short supply of rations upon which Confederate soldiers did hard marching and harder fighting is well illustrated by this sentence from Gen. Samuel McGowan’s report: "In the afternoon of that day, the brigade returned to the junction (Manassas), where three days rations were issued from the vast supply of captured stores; and the men for a few hours rested and regaled themselves upon delicacies unknown to our commissariat, which they were in good condition to enjoy, having eaten nothing for several days except roasting-ears taken by order from the cornfields near the road, and what was given by the generous citizens of the Salem valley to the soldiers as they hurried along in their rapid march.
General Jackson’s position was now exceedingly hazardous. His three divisions were separated by a long interval from Lee, and Pope was rapidly concentrating his entire army to fall upon and destroy him before Lee could succor him. McDowell, Sigel and Reynolds, having forces greatly outnumbering Jackson s command, were already between him and the army under Lee. McDowell felt, as Ropes states, "that if Jackson could be kept isolated for twenty-four hours longer, he ought to be overwhelmed, horse, foot and dragoons."[1]
—
- ↑ The Army under Pope, p. 67.
