1850 American Gold Tycoon.

Chapter 679: The Southern Army's First Victory

June 1861, 6, Manassas, Virginia.

Over the past month, this small town less than 25 miles away from the capital of the Northern Federation has been the focus of contention between the North and the South on the Eastern Front.

Both sides deployed more than 30,000 troops in Manassas to fight for this small town which had only two or three thousand people before the war.

The reason why the North and the South were so obsessed with fighting for control of Manassas was not only because Manassas was very close to the capitals of both sides, but also because it was the most important railway hub in Virginia.

The Alexander and Harrisburg Railroad and the United States Southern Railroad intersected here. These rail lines connected Washington, D.C., with major cities in the South (such as Richmond), playing a vital role in the movement of supplies and troops.

If the Union Army controlled the town of Manassas, it could cut off the Confederate Army's supply lines and prevent the Confederate troops in the south and east from gathering here and heading north.

If the Confederate Army controlled the town of Manassas, they could move their capital, Richmond, away from the front line and move the war to the north, preventing the Southern territory from becoming a battlefield and being ravaged by war.

The increasingly sparse gunfire in Manassas in recent days has made the northern elites in Washington feel uneasy.

This was indeed the case. After a week-long fierce fighting, the Northern Army finally collapsed first.

The only good news was that although the Union Army was defeated and lost the strategic town of Manassas, it did not collapse completely.

Brigadier General Nathaniel P. Sinclair, the military commander of the Army of the Shenandoah, gathered the remnants of the army in the town of Fairfax and stopped the further retreat of the Union army.

The capital of the Northern Union, Washington, did not open its doors completely to the Confederate Army.

In this battle alone, the main Shenandoah Corps participating in the Battle of Manassas suffered heavy casualties, and it was inevitable that it would not be able to participate in high-intensity battles in the future.

In the Battle of Manassas, the Union Army paid a heavy price of 2180 killed, more than 3200 wounded, more than 1200 missing, and more than 870 captured. It was the worst defeat the Union Army had suffered on the Eastern Front since the outbreak of the Civil War.

Although it cannot be said that the Confederate Army won a tragic victory, it still suffered heavy casualties. More than 1110 Confederate soldiers were confirmed dead in this battle, and another 46 Confederate soldiers were missing.

In the town of Manassas, the water of the Bull Run River carried blood-stained bandages and rolled into pink whirlpools on the sandstone riverbed. In the peach orchard on the north bank of the Bull Run, a dozen damaged cannons were like twisted steel thorns. The walnut stocks of Springfield rifles crackled in the embers, and the air was filled with the sweet smell of burning human flesh mixed with gunpowder.

The battlefield, where the smoke had not yet dissipated, looked like a moldy tortilla, covered with blue-gray human remains.

Willis, a tall and thin man from the 5th South Carolina Regiment, was wearing a pair of cowhide boots that had just been stripped from the body of a Union lieutenant. Although the cowhide boots did not fit his feet well, they were much more comfortable than the straw shoes he had worn before.

After putting on his cowhide boots, Willis stuffed the brass buttons he had stripped from the corpses of Union soldiers into the wide boot shafts. With every step he took, the trophies engraved with the federal eagle emblem jingled, like a human wind chime.

Not far from Willis, Confederate engineers were converting Union tent poles into makeshift stretchers to transport their own wounded to the makeshift hospital at Thomasville Farm.

"Willis, look what treasure I found!" Lieutenant Bob, Willis's fellow countryman and superior, held up a silver-plated officer's sword with half of an ear stuck to the scabbard, whose owner was unknown.

Behind Bob, a dozen Confederate soldiers, whose clothes were not even of the same color or style, were surrounding an overturned medical van, using bayonets to pry open tin boxes filled with morphine. The brass syringes were glowing with an alluring metallic luster in the setting sun.

The South was not fully prepared for the war. Apart from guns, which were barely enough for each person, other supplies were in short supply. The Confederate soldiers basically wore and used whatever was available.

This caravan full of morphine and brass syringes was a very valuable strategic material for the Confederate Army.

"Willis, you're here just in time. You and George should take this caravan to Thomasville Farm. Many of our guys are still lying on the farm, and the injured guys need these medical supplies."

Bob sheathed the treasure he had just found and ordered Willis to take his companions and escort the medical caravan to the field hospital at Thomasville Farm.

Willis' eyes lit up, and he happily accepted the task. He found a lame horse that could still move to pull the caravan. After seeing that Lieutenant Bob had gone to other places to clean up the battlefield, Willis quietly took out a handful of morphine and a brass syringe from the metal box that had been pried open.

On the way to Thomasville Farm, Willis encountered a prisoner escort, a long procession that looked like a centipede stained with blue ink.

The Union major who was walking in the front with his hands tied behind his back suddenly stumbled and fell into a mud pit, and his gold-rimmed glasses were immediately covered with blood and horse manure.

The Confederate sergeant in charge of the escort grinned, revealing the black hole where his front teeth were missing: "A young master from New York can't even walk?"

As he spoke, the Confederate sergeant wielded the captured Springfield rifle and picked up the enemy's muddy silk bow tie and waved it as a battle flag.

A Pennsylvania boy in the prisoner group hummed "The Star-Spangled Banner" to express his dissatisfaction, and Willis, who was passing by, immediately stuffed his mouth with his sweat-soaked leggings.

This funny scene caused the Confederate soldiers escorting the prisoners to burst into laughter: "How stinky! How stinky! Willis, how many days have you not washed your stinky feet?"

"My ears cannot bear their northern decadent music, brothers, let these northern sissies listen to our southern elegant music!" Willis hummed his southern elegant music. "The old thief Lincoln is sick in bed!

The old thief Lincoln is seriously ill!

The old thief Lincoln is seriously ill! "

Willis started, and his companions quickly beat the beat and hummed along.

"Lincoln lay on the bed like a sick dog, a wailing sick dog. How I wish he would die now!"

The disgusting lyrics angered several brave Union prisoners, but just as they were about to protest, they were hit by the butts of Confederate soldiers' rifles and soon became obedient.

Amid the Southern elegant music that expressed his heart, Willis transported a captured caravan of medical supplies to Thomasville Farm. After completing the handover, Willis returned to the camp of the 6th South Carolina Regiment outside the farm.

The cook in the kitchen was Old Sam, a black slave brought by Lieutenant Bob. At this time, Old Sam had set up ten iron pots by the stream. The boiling soup was filled with canned beef from the Union Army, corn stolen from the Thomasville farm, and pepper that was found from some corpse.

As for why Willis could be sure that the pepper was touched from a physical object, the answer is simple: there was still some blood stains on the pepper bottle.

After a simple and not-so-delicious dinner, Willis couldn't wait to find the army vendor with his spoils.

Most of the Confederate Army's vendors were Irish, Jewish, and Chinese who settled in the South.

Since Chinese vendors were more wild and had more small things to show for themselves, even though the English of Southern Chinese was generally not as good as that of the Irish and Jews, Confederate soldiers still preferred to trade with Chinese vendors who accompanied the army.

Many of these Chinese peddlers were doing the work of peddlers on the surface, but secretly they also worked part-time as spies in the West. However, the West and the South were not hostile to each other, and the Confederate Army also needed the services provided by these peddlers very much. The generals of the Confederate Army also turned a blind eye to this, issued special passes to these Chinese peddlers, and allowed them to enter and leave the military camp freely.

The fundamental reason why military vendors can exist is that the army’s own logistics system is not perfect, and military vendors are needed as a supplement to provide soldiers with food, daily necessities, luxury goods, and services such as haircuts and shaving that the army cannot provide.

Not only was there widespread peddling of soldiers in the Confederate Army, but also in the Union Army.

During the Battle of Manassas, Willis's regiment even captured a Jewish peddler who was working as a postman for the Union Army, delivering military intelligence.

"Sergeant Willis, what good stuff have you found today?" A Chinese vendor with a Cantonese accent came up and enthusiastically invited Willis to sit at his stall, offering him a cup of steaming hot tea for free.

"Hong, you have a great memory. I've been here with you before, and you still remember my name." Willis didn't expect that this Chinese merchant who followed the army still remembered his name. After drinking tea, Willis looked around and saw that there was no one else around him, so he asked in a low voice.

"Do you dare to accept contraband?"

"That depends on what contraband items each party provides." Hong Delie said with a smile.

Willis mysteriously showed Hong Delie the morphine he had stolen from the medical van.

Hong Delie picked up an ampoule and looked at it carefully. An ampoule is a hand-blown thin-walled glass tube with a standard length of about 3 inches (7.6 cm) and a diameter of 0.5 inches (1.27 cm), containing 10 grains (about 0.65 grams) of morphine hydrochloride solution.

Because they are hand-blown, there are obvious differences in the size of the ampoules, and the amount of morphine inside them also varies, usually less than the calibrated dose. The military also allows for this error.

As for how much less it is, it depends on how much conscience the manufacturer has left and how strong his background is.

The mouth of this ampoule is sealed with a cork and wax. It contains high-grade morphine used by the Northern Army. The actual dosage of each ampoule is no less than 9 grains, which is undoubtedly hard currency.

"Good stuff! Good stuff!" Hong Delie exclaimed, "Willis, you have made a fortune!"

"You know what's good. There are tax stamps from the Yankee Treasury on these morphine boxes. They're genuine, high-end goods!" Willis said proudly.

"Did you seize these goodies from the Yankees on the north shore?" Hong Delie began to ask Willis.

"Where are the Yankees on the north bank of the Bull Run? We beat the hell out of them and they all ran back to Washington," Willis said impatiently.

"I understand, Sergeant Willis. I'll take as many of these as you have," said Hong Delie.

Willis took out all the morphine, brass syringes and brass buckles from his boots. After counting them, Hong Delie gave a price: "8 morphine tubes, 14 dollars. 4 simple push-in brass syringes without metering scales, 12 dollars. I'll give you 70 cents for the other small things. The total is 26 dollars and 70 cents. Are you satisfied with this price, Sergeant Willis?"

(End of this chapter)