“so Eager Were We All …” (June 1965 | Volume: 16, Issue: 4)

“so Eager Were We All …”

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Authors: Lewis Herbert Metcalf

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June 1965 | Volume 16, Issue 4

Lewis Herbert Metcalf was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1835, and he died in i8j), and during his brief life he knew one great and terrible day—July 21, 1861, when he fought as a Union Army private in the First Battle of Bull Run. A few years before his death he wrote his story of the battle; after gathering dust on a shelf for more than a century it is printed here (slightly condensed) for the first time.

Its innocent freshness makes it one of the most appealing of the Civil War’s innumerable I-was-there reminiscences. What happened to this young soldier at Bull Run stood out in his mind and becomes vivid in his writing largely because this was his only battle. Early in the fight he was wounded. He was captured, suffered amputation of a leg, and presently he was back in his home again, a disabled veteran out of the army for good. He had no later battles with which he could compare his Bull Run experience; his hours under fire were set apart, without the traditional old-soldier’s knowledge to put them into perspective. He did not try to give a full account of the battle. He simply told what he saw.

As Stephen Crane pointed out in his Red Badge of Courage , the private soldier in battle never sees more than a fragment of the whole, and confusion is of the essence of it. That was especially true at Bull Run, in which soldiers pathetically unprepared for war served under generals who were still learning their trade. The battle was hopelessly bungled, and it went according to no coherent pattern.

A word or two about Metcalf’s regiment may be in order. He served in the nth New York, briefly famous as the “Fire Zouaves”—a regiment recruited from the volunteer fire companies of New York City, led originally by Colonel Elmer Ellsworth. Big things were expected of this regiment. It wore the baggy red pants, trim jackets, and ornamental sashes copied from the French Zouave regiments; as firemen its members were supposed to be more than ordinarily brave and indomitable; and Ellsworth, a protégé of Abraham Lincoln, was a flamboyant character who had attracted much publicity. But Ellsworth lost his life before Bull Run, during the occupation of Alexandria, Virginia, being replaced by Lieutenant Colonel N. L. Farnham; his regiment discarded its gaudy uniforms in favor of the regulation blue; and eventually it became just another regiment.

Metcalf s story was made available to AMERICAN HERITAGE by his granddaughter, Mrs. E. F. Stoneham of Lewfields, New Hampshire. The original manuscript is now owned by Murray S. Danforth, Jr., of Providence.

THE morning was beautiful. The day before had been so hot and sultry that the damp cool night air seemed quite a relief, and the full moon,