His army had been saved from annihilation by the quick wit and daring courage of a single Brigadier General who had moved his five regiments on his own initiative in the nick of time and saved the Confederates from utter rout.
Victory had been snatched at last from the jaws of defeat by an accident. The misfortune of a delayed regiment of Johnston's army was suddenly turned into an astounding piece of luck. The sudden charge of those two thousand men on the flank of the victorious army had produced a panic among tired raw recruits. McDowell was at this moment master of the field. In a moment of insane madness his unseasoned men had thrown down their guns and fled.
The little dark General in his flower-decked tent had made good his boasts. And worse--the Northern army had proven his wildest assertions true. They were a rabble. The star of Beauregard rose in the Southern sky, and with its rise Disaster stalked grim and silent toward the hilarious Confederacy.
The South had won a victory destined to prove itself the most fatal calamity that ever befell a nation.
Socola dismissed his hope of a speedy end of the war and devoted himself with new enthusiasm to his work. His eyes were sleepless--his ear to the ground. The information on conditions and public sentiment in Richmond and the South which he had dispatched to Washington were of incalculable service to his government. One of the immediate effects of the battle was the return of Jennie Barton to the Capital. Her mother was improving and Jimmie had been wounded. Her coming was most fortunate. It was of the utmost importance that he secure a position in the Civil Service of the Confederacy. It could be done through her father's influence.
Socola watched the first division of Northern prisoners march through the streets amid the shouts and laughter of a crowd of urchins black and white. A feeling of blind rage surged within him. That the tables would be shortly turned, he was sure. He would play his part now without a scruple. He would use pretty Jennie Barton as any other pawn on the chessboard of Life and Death over which he bent.
Jefferson Davis watched the effects of the battle on the North with breathless interest and increasing dismay.