As Marine Major John G. Reynolds marched his battalion over the Potomac Long Bridge on the afternoon of July 16, 1861, he must have wondered what lay ahead for his Marines. A Mexican War veteran, Reynolds had seen Marines serve with distinction in that war 14 years earlier, and now he fully expected his command to do the same. Still, as an officer with 35 years of military service under his belt, Reynolds worried about the green troops under his command. True, they were Marines, but as they headed toward their first fight in a new war, across a small Virginia creek called Bull Run, he had some doubts that could only be answered when the bullets began to fly.

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The order to the commandant had been specific: ‘You will be pleased to detail from the barracks four companies of eighty men each, the whole under the command of Major Reynolds with the necessary officers, noncommissioned officers and musicians for temporary field service under Brigadier General [Irvin] McDowell. The Marines were to join Union forces moving to oppose the Confederates positioned at Manassas, Va. From regiments of brand-new volunteers to U.S. Army regulars, every available Union soldier was being rushed toward the impending fray, and the Marines were no exception.One part of the Confederate Army had already occupied Manassas, a day’s march of 26 miles from Washington, D.C. General P.G.T. Beauregard’s Southerners, about 23,000 strong, were astride an important railroad junction and in position to threaten the capital itself. The remainder of the Confederate forces, 15,000 men under General Joseph E. Johnston, were in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry, 70 miles northwest of Manassas.

The Confederate Army, split as it was into two separate wings, seemingly invited attack, and the Union commander was being pressured from all sides to take quick and decisive action. McDowell needed to act quickly to defeat the divided Confederates while he still commanded an army. Many of the 90-day Union volunteer regiments in his army, called into service in response to Confederate seizure of Fort Sumter two months earlier, were nearing the end of their enlistments, and many of the new replacement regiments were not yet combat-ready. Nevertheless, recognizing the need for urgency, the Lincoln administration rushed additional reinforcements to McDowell from all parts of the Union. Raw young recruits from New York, New England, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota poured into Washington, camping in a sea of white tents visible in every direction from the Capitol dome.

The arrival of new troops in Washington reflected the growing sense of panic within both the government and the Union Army. With a teeming Rebel army mere miles away, an understandable sense of urgency gripped the president, his cabinet and U.S. Army General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, an aging hero of the Mexican War. Scott, in particular, was obsessed with protecting the capital, to the point of resisting McDowell’s plan for taking the war to the Confederates in Virginia and advising instead that he consider making a large-scale assault down the Mississippi River to split the Confederacy in two. McDowell, in turn, refused to consider Scott’s counter suggestion, and Lincoln eventually intervened, ordering flatly that the Union Army take the offensive-immediately.

Under direct orders from the president, McDowell drew up a plan for dividing his army into three columns to converge on the Rebels from three different directions north of Manassas. The plan was a good one, but it required at least twice as many men as McDowell then had at hand-hence the tumultuous influx of new recruits in Washington.

The Marine Corps of 1861 reflected the turmoil of the times. Its 48 officers and 2,338 enlisted men had a wide range of experience levels, from aging veterans to raw recruits. Having grown by 25 percent between 1860 and 1861, the Corps swelled once again as the Civil War started. Indeed, the influx was so rapid that new troops at the Washington Navy Yard had to be berthed in the stables. Since many veteran Marines still served aboard ships or were deployed at U.S. shore installations throughout the world, few experienced Marines remained in Washington to help preserve the Union. As a result, untested new recruits filled out the ranks of Reynold’s force.

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