A Modern Manassas: Viewing Battle through Digital Means
Captain John Tidball couldn’t believe his eyes when he stood with his battery at Centreville, Virginia in July 1861. Commanding the 2nd U.S. Artillery, Tidball saw “throngs of sightseers” who had heard the news that a great battle was on the horizon and wanted to see the action. “They came in all manner of ways,” Tidball stated, “some in stylish carriages, others in city hacks, and still others in buggies, on horseback and even on foot.” Most of these spectators were from Washington, D.C. and the surrounding area due to the proximity of the upcoming battle (First Manassas or Bull Run) to the city (approximately 48 km or 30 miles).
These civilians had a curiosity about what a battle looked like. They were determined to get close to the action because many believed that the war would be over after one large fight. Their preconceived notions of what combat looked like was based on drawings and paintings and left them ill-prepared for what was to come.
After Union troops had gained a successful advantage early in the day on July 21, Confederate reinforcements arrived via railroad¹ to Manassas to turn the tide of the battle. With the Union Army being driven from the field in disorder, and with their Confederate counterparts pursuing (also in disorder in many cases), civilians were now caught up in the path of a fleeing army.
The Warrenton Turnpike, now U.S. Route 29, became choked with Union soldiers returning in the direction from whence they came. As soldiers approached Centreville, spectators became caught up in the confusion. In fact, one congressman, Alfred Ely (NY), was captured by the Confederates and sent to the Confederate capital, Richmond, Virginia, as a prisoner. Most of the civilians escaped with no physical wounds, but the loss at Manassas would weigh heavy on the minds of many.
Today, hindsight permits us to see that these spectators had no clue what they were getting involved with and for them, battle would never be seen the same way again. One of their number would later go on to document the horrors of the war using the latest photographic methods: Mathew Brady. In fact, his “Dead at Antietam” exhibition in late 1862, using photographs from the bloodiest day in American history, the Battle of Antietam, brought some of the sights of battle to the eyes of a public.
Currently, we are witnesses to conflict through the interfaces we place in front of us, be it a television, computer, or mobile device. For several generations, images of battle have been shown to us in newsreels and documentaries. During World War II, the latest war news was shown in theatres before the featured movie would commence. During the Vietnam War, these images became a part of the evening news in millions of American homes. In the Western world, imagery from the Gulf War (1991) was disseminated through the press pool system, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense, and was heavily censored as America tried to break ties with the Vietnam Syndrome.
Within current conflicts there has been a shift from press pools, and soldiers can simply livestream their activities, or create videos from digital assets that they just produced on their phones. In other words, the advancement in technology has given us a raw glimpse at what battle looks like. Whether these images are from drones, body/helmet cameras, or mobile devices, to see the true nature of combat has never been easier to find and watch.
What we must be careful of is taking all of these visual assets as the whole truth as to what is happening in a war zone. Andrew Hoskins states that we are witnessing digital war, which he defines as, “the ways in which multimedia smartphones, messaging apps and social media platforms have disrupted the relationship between warfare and society, creating a global, although uneven, participative arena in which it is decreasingly clear who is fighting, who is commentating, and who is experiencing the effects of war.”² This disconnect between who is filming, the targets of the activity, why the event is occurring in this space and time, and how the entire act is evolving on the ground (or in the air), is perilous for a greater, civic understanding of the geopolitical and social landscape in the modern era.
Being a spectator, or witness, involves gathering information. But in an era where the average attention span is under ten seconds, we see a decrease in an understanding of the effects of conflict, even though we have never been so able to access data about it. Hoskins describes some of this as “compassion fatigue.” We are so inundated with visuals from traumatic events that it is often hard to have a familiarity with those involved in the activity. “Viewers are supposedly slowly dulled and numbed into jaded indifference by the sheer scale and persistence of the suffering of innocents on repeat,” he says, “looped into social media platforms and news cycles that offer only war without end.”³ As our world maintains an emotional hangover from the COVID-19 lockdowns and human losses, rising costs of goods and services, and political polarization, are we losing our ability to empathise with those in conflict zones if the conflagration lasts beyond our self-imposed allotted time of viewing? Are we caught in a web of the virtual and unable to perceive the effects of reality?
Curiosity compels many who use social media and watch major news networks to focus on the screen for information. But are we like the civilians caught up in the confusion on the Warrenton Turnpike in 1861? So much is happening around us that we don’t quite understand, and yet the volume of visual information, like the Union troops, rushes towards us as if it were a tidal wave.
Notes
¹ Some historians have incorrectly stated that this was the first time the railroad was used in this manner. It wasn’t. We know that the British employed a railroad system for reasons such as this in the Crimean War.
² Andrew Hoskins. “Media and Compassion After Digital War: Why Digital Media haven’t Transformed Responses to Human Suffering in Contemporary Conflict.” International Review of the Red Cross. 2020.
³ Ibid.
