Bull Run 1

South Carolina state troops evicted the federal garrison of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. Three months later, a Union army led by Irwin McDowell invaded Virginia, to be met near Manassas Station by the combined Confederate armies of Joseph E. Johnston and Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Though both sides hoped to end the war in a single day, the confused afternoon’s fight ended in a Yankee retreat that was only the start of four years of bloody warfare.