Journey of the Captives - Ball's Bluff

Tuesday, October 22, 1861
The Twentieth Massachusetts prisoners continued on their progress toward Richmond. Civilians taunted them with shouts of “Kill the damned Yankees!” as they passed by homes along the route. Around 4:00 P.M. they reached the Bull Run battlefield after an exhausting sixteen-hour march. Confederate guards confined the officers in a stone house while detaining the enlisted men outside in the pouring rain. After being deprived of food for many hours, the prisoners devoured a scant meal of corn bread and raw pork. Cold and hungry, the prisoners settled in for the evening with expectations for another grueling march in the morning.¹

References:
¹George A. Bruce, The Twentieth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry 1861 - 1865 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Riverside Press, 1906), 65-66; Richard F. Miller, Harvard's Civil War: A History of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2005), 86.