North Star State: A Minnesota History Reader

“Indeed We Did Fight”: A Soldier’s Letters from the First Battle of Bull Run

“Indeed We Did Fight”: A Soldier’s Letters from the First Battle of Bull Run Edited by Edward G. Longacre As the Civil War broke out inApril 1861,Minnesota GovernorAlexander Ramsey was in Washington,D.C.,and immediately oJered Minnesota troops for the Union side.Within two weeks the First Minnesota was created,and more than nine hundred men eventually joined the regiment .These three letters were written by Jasper Searles of Hastings at the start of the First’s three-year term of duty.The letters portray the enthusiasm ,ideals,and innocence of the twenty-year-old Searles as he sets oJ to Washington with his regiment.The first battle of Bull Run on July 21,1861,quickly ended that innocence.Union forces panicked and chaotically retreated to Washington,overrunning the civilians who had been picnicking on the surrounding hillsides watching the fray.The illusion the warwould be short was gone and the country was hurled into our greatest national crisis. introduction In the spring and summer of 1861,when the North went to war at least in part to preserve the Union, the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry went with it— and with the First Minnesota went Jasper N.Searles of Hastings.An intelligent and precocious twenty-year-old when the CivilWar broke out,Searles parlayed some rudimentary medical training into a brief stint as a hospital steward. Before the warwas a year old,however,he assumed the duties of a line oIcer and by the time he was mustered out in May, 1864, had advanced from a private to the rank of captain in the First. He carried his military prominence into postwarprivate life,where he forged a prosperous law career,first at Hastings and then for some thirty-five years at Stillwater.Searles served one term (1881–83 in the Minnesota House of Representatives and seven years 1917–24) as a judge of the district court.He died in Stillwater on April 25,1927,at the age of eight-six. A careful, observant recorder of the scenes that attended his military service,and blessed with a keen facilitywith a pen,young Searles left a graphic contemporary account of the early career of his regiment in the form of 109 correspondence with his family and friends back in Dakota County. In three lengthy letters that follow,dated June 27, July 2, and July 27,1861, he presents an especially vivid picture of the First Minnesota’s formative days in military life—its long and arduous trip to the seat of war in the East,its training period in Washington, D.C., and its first exposure to warfare in northern Virginia which culminated in the battle of First Bull Run (or First Manassas) on Sunday ,July 21,the first large-scale land engagement of the Civil War. Though it brought defeat and gloom to the Union army as a whole,Bull Run covered the First Minnesota with great distinction.Not only had the regiment traveled fartherto reach the fighting than anyotherunit,Federal orConfederate, but saw the most extensive participation and suJered the greatest number of losses of all the Union outfits engaged.The regiment,too,was one of the last to leave the field and most of it retired in reasonably good order unlike other out- fits.In spite of its losses,as Searles points up,the First’s spirit of combativeness, which prompted the regiment to resist retreating despite thrice being ordered to do so, remained intact at the battle’s close.That spirit would carry the First through almost three more years of unparalleled carnage,which would climax on July 2,1863,at Gettysburg,Pennsylvania.On that date the regiment made a sacrificial charge which,according to the most widely accepted account of Judge William Lochren,saw it suJer 82 percent losses—the greatest casualty rate,in proportion to numbers engaged,sustained by any outfit in American history.1 The three Searles letters published here are among twenty-five he wrote to his family during the Civil War.They were donated to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1930 by Searles’s widow and are now in the division of archives and manuscripts. Subjects covered after Bull Run include troop movements, the “Monitor” and the “Merrimac,” General George B.McClellan’s last review of the troops following his dismissal as commander of the Army of the Potomac, criticism of President Lincoln’s conduct of the war and of his removal of McClellan,and a long...