three o'clock before
In mad efforts to force a passage mob piled on mob until the panic enveloped every division of the army that thirty minutes before was sweeping with swift , sure tread to its final victorious charge . Across every bridge and ford of Bull Run the panic-stricken thousands rushed pellmell , horse , foot , artillery , wagons , ambulances , excursion carriages , red-jowled politicians mingling with screaming women whose faces showed death white through the rouge on their lips and cheeks . For three miles rolled the dark tide of ruin and confusion -- with not one Confederate soldier in sight . It was three o'clock before the train bearing the anxious Confederate President and his staff drew into Manassas Junction . He had heard no news from the front and feared the worst . The long deep boom of the great guns told him that the battle was raging . From the car window he saw rising an ominous cloud of dust rapidly approaching the Junction .