Studies in American History 
263 
Union forces drove their antagonists back. As the fight con- 
tinued, the position of the Confederates became more serious 
till about three o’clock in the afternoon when loud cheering 
was heard proceeding from fresh Confederate troops. They 
were the remainder of the army of the Shenandoah who had 
followed their commander as fast as trains could convey 
them.^^ They were at once ordered to attack McDowell’s right 
flank and the Federals were routed. It would not be safe 
to assert that McDowell’s raw recruits could have taken Rich- 
mond and ended the war had not the Manassas Gap Railroad 
brought Johnston’s troops from the Shenandoah Valley in time 
to turn the tide of defeat into victory, yet it is safe to predict 
that the Union forces would have won an important victory 
and might have changed the nature of the war and forced 
the final conflict to be fought farther south.^^ 
Perhaps in no other battle or campaign in the East was the 
railroad of so much immediate importance, tho, as will be 
shown later, the breaking of railway communications was 
the object of many of the movements of troops and the cutting 
of railway lines on the south and southwest of Richmond by 
Sherman and other generals ultimately greatly helped in forc- 
ing Lee to surrender. 
The inadequacy of railroad transportation between Wash- 
ington and Richmond together with the large number of navi- 
gable bodies of water help to explain this situation. McClellan 
tried to take advantage of the naval superiority of the North 
in his Peninsular campaign and found water transportation 
very satisfactory.^® In fact, our railroads would have broken 
down under the strain placed upon them had they not been 
supplemented by the steamboat and sailing ship, yet McClellan 
could not have fed or equipped this vast army if the railroads 
from the North and West had not been pouring supplies into 
2" Rhodes, History of the Civil War, 1861-1865, 41 ; E. P. Alexander in his hook, Mili- 
tary Memoirs of a Confederate, a Critical Narrative (New York, 1907), asserts on pages 
18 and 19 that the railway authorities had promised to deliver all four of Johnston’s 
brigades at Manassas Junction by sunrise of Saturday, July 20, but because it had no 
relays of employees it could not do so. Kirby Smith and Elzey arrived about noon 
Sunday with 2,000 men, marched six miles to the critical point at the critical moment 
and saved the day. 
2* John G. Nicolay in his history. The Outbreak of the Rebellion (New York, 1881), 
168, says: “It was these 9,000 men of Johnston’s army who not merely decided, but 
principally fought the battle.’’ 
On page 238 of McClellan’s Own Story he states that 113 steamers, 188 schooners, 
and 88 barges in 37 days transported from Perryville, Alexandria, and Washington to 
Fortress Monroe 121,500 men, 1,150 wagons, 44 batteries, 74 ambulances, pontoon bridges, 
^nd other equipment, 
