So little conception had the people at large of the actualities of war that many Washingtonians and tourists, of all ages and sexes, drove down in carriages to watch the battle from a safe position on the hillside. Fighting began on the morning of Sunday, July 21, and the first reports that reached the city described everything as going favorably to the Union cause. The despatches sent to Northern newspapers all reflected this view, and some went pretty elaborately into detail concerning incidents on various parts of the field. But suddenly the tide turned, and with a panicky force which started the whole body of Federal troops on a pell-mell rush for Washington. The light-hearted spectators ran, too, often impeding the retreat of the soldiers by getting their carriages wedged together on a bridge or a narrow road, while the air shook with mingled profanity and prayers, punctuated with hysterics. Not a few of the carriage folk, as night drew near, became so terrified that they cut their harness and rode their horses bareback, two sometimes clinging to one animal. The Confederates, discovering the rout, were as much surprised as the Federals. They set out to follow their foes, but, not fully grasping the real conditions, stopped about fifteen miles short of Washington and waited for morning, thus giving the fugitive army a chance to recover from its first demoralization. Had they pressed on, they might have taken possession of the capital that night, captured the stored munitions, and looted the Treasury; and the record of the next four years must have been written in a different vein.
Meanwhile, the true story had been brought in by the fleeing non-combatants, and the Associated Press attempted to send out a correction of first reports, but discovered too late that the Government had seized all the telegraph lines and established a temporary censorship, postponing any further dissemination of news. As far as known, only one prominent paper in the North was able to describe the disaster in its Monday morning’s issue. That was a Philadelphia journal, whose correspondent had taken to his heels as soon as the panic began. By the time he reached Washington, he was so convinced that the Confederates were going to capture the city at once, that he boarded a train which was just pulling out for Philadelphia, and at his desk in his home office dictated his observations of the battle and the stampede.