The Original Monument to the First Bull Run

Now that the Spring has sprung, I am going to take you to some monuments away from the cities. I went to a conference at the University of Virginia last weekend on the Second Battle of Bull Run. Professor Caroline Janney gave a lecture on the two original monuments at Bull Run that I found fascinating. After the conference finished I decided to head to Manassas to see the two monuments. I had seen the First Bull Run monument every time I had visited the park. I think I must have been there at least a dozen times. The Second Bull Run Monument I had only hiked to once before. I will cover each monument in separate posts, although you will find that they look very similar and had a similar history.

I had parked at the Stone House at the corner of Warrenton Turnpike (Route 29) and Sudley Road. I climbed up Henry  House Hill, past artillery marking batteries from the First Bull Run, up to Henry House. Henry House is the centerpiece of the battlefield. It is where Mrs. Henry, an 85 year-old window was killed by a Union artillery shell. Now Mrs. Henry was not in what is now known as “Henry House.” The wooden structure there now is a recreation. The original house was destroyed by the two battles and in 1870 the family built the current structure. The house later became a visitor center and in the summer it is open for visitors.

Henry House Hill is where Thomas Jackson earned his name Stonewall for turning back the advancing Union army, or at least that is the story.

As you pass the house your eyes are drawn to a figure on a horse that towers over the scene. This was a 20th Century monument to Stonewall Jackson, heavily influence by “Lost Cause” iconography. But if you can draw your eyes away from the statue, you will see a simple mourning obelisk recalling the United States soldiers who fought here during the First Battle of Bull Run.

 

 

The dedication of this monument and its sister 2nd Bull Run monument took place on June 11, 1865. The monument was made out of red sandstone cut by soldiers serving at Manassas. They assembled the monuments and finished them on June 10, 1865. The soldiers who made the monuments did not serve at either of the two battles. They were stationed there in 1865 and they constantly encountered unburied corpses in the fields and woods near Henry Hill.

According to Janney, Brig. General William Gamble asked for permission to bury the dead that his men found. On May 28, 1865 his men began their work on the monuments. Many were members of the 5th Pennsylvania Heavy Artillery. The stone came from the unfinished railroad cut. The men took shells they found on the battlefield and placed them on the monument.

 

While the soldiers erected the monuments in 1865, the United States government made very little effort to protect them. In fact, Confederate sympathizers changed the monument to honor the Confederacy! This was time where monuments were not as respected as they later became.

As you can see in the picture above, there is a modern fence enclosing the monument. This replicates the cedar fence put up by the soldiers in 1865.

 

The simple inscription on the front of the monument says “ERECTED JUNE 10, 1865.”

 

On the opposite side it says “IN MEMORY OF THE PATRIOTS WHO FELL AT BULL RUN JUNE 21 1861.”

 

When word got out that the monument was to be dedicated, not only the Union soldiers who erected it were there for its dedication on June 11, 1865, but civilians and dignitaries from nearby and Washington came to the site. A minister helped dedicate the monument. Many viewed this as a funeral, according to Janney, for the men whose bodies are buried on the field. The sermon identified “slavery as the cause of the war and the president’s death,” says Janney. She said that the Union victory secured freedom. In the prayer said at the ceremony, it recognized that “they fought and fell, though not in vain, …the blows that broke the bondsman’s chain at last were on this ground begun.” The end of slavery was seen as starting here.

Within a couple of years the two original monuments were targets for both those sympathetic to the Confederacy and for trophy hunters, with some even digging up the bodies of Union dead in the area. In 1866, the Federal government began collecting the remains and moving them to Arlington where they would be safe from despoliations from white Virginians.

Dorothy Dix tried to protect the monuments, but the War Department was not interested because the two obelisks were not on Federal property. In the late 1800s, there were many statues and monuments going up around the county, with Gettysburg being the epicenter. These were done by private entities or state or municipal governments.

As National Military Parks were being dedicated, Bull Run was overlooked. In was only in 1900 that a Confederate veteran introduced legislation to make the battlefield a National Park. It stalled. A Union veteran from Manassas named George Round took up the cause the next year.

A problem developed. Congress did not believe the Federal government had constructed the monuments. Round offered newspaper clippings and photos taken by Alexander Gardner. Round turned to the Grand Army of the Republic to lobby, but its leader, Louis Wagner, said that these monuments did not exist. In 1904, the G.A.R. went to Manassas and saw the monuments and the veterans group was convinced they were worth saving. Confederate veterans approached the G.A.R. and asked to try to save the battlefield together.

Above is a photo showing the dedication of the monument at Henry House Hill showing Union troops in uniform.

George Round died in 1918 without the battlefield being protected.  After he passed, Confederate heritage organizations began to raise money to buy land near Bull Run. The Confederate groups said that they would protect the two Union monuments. In 1921, the United Daughters of the Confederacy established the Manassas Battlefield Corporation. They wanted to establish a Confederate park. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt the park was incorporated the Confederate park into a New Deal recreation area. In 1940, the Manassas National Battlefield Park was established.

 

The close-up above shows the military uniforms of the soldiers surrounding the monument in 1865.

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