In the 2nd Connecticut, Captain Eli Walter Osborn led a company formed of the New Haven Grays militia. His boys, he wrote, “stood fire like bricks it was a hard matter to keep them back, we were ordered to charge one of their batteries, and then the order was countermanded by Col Keyes if we had gone there would not have been a dozen of us left to tell the tale, but the boys wanted to try it, and could not see why they could not.” (Letter from E. Walter Osborn to his brother, July 27, 1861, typescript in private collection.)

      As the Connecticut regiments began to retreat, the Confederate cavalry formed for a charge.

      General Tyler, seeing the rebel cavalry meant mischief, ordered us to halt and face to the rear. A few, but at first a very few, obeyed the order promptly. The old general’s ire was up in a moment; galloping his horse through the retreating mass, at the imminent risk of riding over the men, his form erect, his eyes flashing, and with an energy we little dreamed was in the old man, he fairly yelled, “Halt! Come back here! Come back, you cowards, and face this cavalry!”

      … Cowards we might be, but we wasn’t going to have it thrown in our faces in that way; so while some still pressed on, many more halted and resolutely turned our faces to the foe again … Several times we were obliged to turn and face them … but a few shots from us seemed to cool their ardor.²⁷

      As regiment after regiment joined the retreat, the withdrawal devolved into pandemonium. A Connecticut soldier wrote:

      the road before us was the greatest scene of excitement that I ever witnessed. The lots were full of men, the roads crowded with artillery wagons, their horses on a dead run, colliding with freight wagons, and smashing hacks containing gentlemen spectators. I cannot begin to describe the confusion … Everything that we had on, which had the least tendency to stop our progress, was thrown away …

      … I took to the woods, threw off my haversack, which contained a number of eatables, writing materials, and many other things I would liked to have saved, next my belt, cartridge box, etc.; then went my blankets. It was hard to do it; but we were scattered, and running for dear life.²⁸

      While Chaplain Eddy of the 2nd Regiment hurried along with thousands of retreating Union troops, he saw a familiar face: Captain Joseph Hawley of the 1st Regiment.

      I now determined to move along with Capt. Holley’s [Hawley’s] company. The men were not in line but they might be said to be in company as birds are in a flock. Capt. Holley took a gun from one of his men & requested me to take it & go to the rear & endeavor to keep the men in line. This I did for some time as well as I co’d but I have seen geece march in better order. Nevertheless I worked at my task, but all the men seemed safer near Capt. Holley, & I confess [I] myself did when I heard his calm voice & saw his steady steps.

      But soon there came another sharp crash of musketry a short distance behind us, followed by a universal runing for the woods. I still hear the Capt.’s voice calm as ever ‘Steady, men. Steady, men. Steady.’ But all in vain. The men scattered like patridges in the woods & the Capt with the rest & your humble servant was among those who scaled the fence, after which every man was for himself. I ran again until my right lung gave out, & seeing a clump of bushes with a close curtaine of leaves on all sides, I determined to try my chances in it. I dropped in.²⁹

      Gus Dana, who marched on for miles with his exhausted comrades, finally approached the town of Centerville and noted with relief: “we found a line of troops, Blenkers Reserve, sent out from Washington … our tired and hungry army passed behind them and laid down supperless to sleep.”³⁰

      “As we lay down on the same ground that we had left about eighteen hours before,” Elnathan Tyler continued, “it seemed as if we had never been so tired, so disheartened, so thoroughly disgusted with everybody and every thing as we were then. But even the most weary soldier had hardly got asleep, when the order came again to fall in and continue our weary march to the rear. The officers concluded it was not safe to stay there, even through the night; we might all be prisoners by morning.”³¹

      A correspondent of The New York World reported:

      Though so wearied that one officer of the [3rd Connecticut] regiment says that $10,000 and a colonelcy at Vienna would not have induced him to march there for it, they were pushed right along by orders, and reached their old camp at Falls Church after daylight on Monday morning.

      Here they found the Ohio camps, at which the First and Second Ohio had refused to pause in their retreat. Tents, stores and munitions were here all abandoned—property amounting in value to $200,000—and Col. Chatfield ordered his men to take hold and save it. Sending to Alexandria for a special train, they worked all day loading it with the deserted Ohio property, sent it off, and marched away themselves, just in time to escape the vanguard of the pursuing enemy.³²

      The New York Times added, “This service was performed in thirty-six hours, during which time they were entirely without food, and drenched in the tremendous rain that raged without intermission.”³³

      Word of the rout traveled north, reaching Connecticut before the soldiers did. Everywhere, shock greeted the news. “Our defeat at the battle of Bull Run corrected, as nothing else could have done, an extravagant estimate of our own strength … it swept away our ‘ninety days’ optimism, and showed us that what we had mistaken for an April shower was to be a long storm, and a hard one.”³⁴

      The dazed soldiers made their way back home. Elnathan Tyler described the 3rd Regiment’s homecoming: “as the good citizens of Connecticut had assembled only a few months before to bid us good bye and wish us success in our defence of the old flag, so now they assembled to bid us welcome home again. Although our success on the whole must have fallen far short of what they desired … they listened patiently to our stories of hardships in the camp and field; inquired just how we felt when we first came under fire on the battle-field; asked if all the rest of the Northern soldiers did as well as we did, if we didn’t think we would have won the battle, and finally if we were going again.”³⁵

      In fact, Private Tyler did go again, enlisting for three years in the state’s hardest-fighting regiment, the 14th Connecticut. Many of the “Three Month Men” did the same, joining the rapidly forming regiments that answered the Union’s call for troops.

      But not everyone reenlisted. Some veterans had had enough; others had obligations to family or work. And some men didn’t return with their