The outcome of the Battle of Manassas—or as Northerners, who liked to name battles after watercourses, had it, Bull Run—turned on this very same tactic, in this case a secret and stunningly successful Federal march around the left wing of the Confederate army. The movement followed the military maxim, bringing a large mass of Union troops to confront a small rebel force. By the late morning of July 21, the Union tactic had created a mismatch so extreme that it should have resulted in the wholesale rout of the Confederate army and the triumphant arrival that day of the Union army at Manassas
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