3-003-938 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Civil War in America: retreat of the Federalists after the fight at Ball's Bluff, Upper Potomac, Virginia - from a sketch by our special artist, 1861. 'It is hardly credible that 1800 men should have been sent across a river...and left unsupported when 30,000 of the division to which they belonged were within sound of their rifles...The 15th Massachusetts...knew the odds to be greatly against them...as the deadly fire of the Mississippi riflemen drove them back each time...seeing the utter uselessness of contending against their powerful enemy, the few surviving combatants slowly fell back to the river-side...In the endeavour to recross to the island, midway between the Maryland and Virginian shores...the general organisation of the force was quite abandoned...[Those] who could swim started, half naked, over the river...A large flat boat was sunk by overcrowding, and scores of men perished, some by drowning and some by the fire of the Confederates, who...poured an incessant fire upon the scattering fugitives. The river channel was thickly strewed with the dead and dying...Hundreds, probably, were here sacrificed. This much is certain, that out of the 1800 who landed scarcely 600 returned'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.