Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 2.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[9] An English officer asserts that he met one of Gen. Johnston's aids in New York on Sunday, and that he personally knew him to be such. The rebel spy — for he was nothing else — told the Englishman that Messrs. Davis, Beauregard, Lee and Co. consider their victory at Bull Run as a defeat, in comparison with what they expected and ought to have made it. They had their lines so skilfully arranged as to draw us within and beyond their flanks — to catch us in the most deadly kind of trap, attack us with shot, and musketry, and horse, from every side at once, and enforce a wholesale surrender of the “grand army of the Potomac.” They had been fighting, he says, all day, in such wise as merely to indicate a determined defence, and by a gradual retreat had nearly lured us into the desired position, when all their plan was defeated by the mistaken enthusiasm of Col. Kirby Smith. That officer brought on the railroad reinforcements from Winchester, and, instead of going straight to the Junction, as had been positively ordered by Beauregard, he stopped the cars near the battle-field, formed his men in solid squares, and marched superbly to the ground. This was the reserve which our tired forces saw coming against them, and before which they retreated in time to escape the snare laid for them. Johnston's aid affirmed that Smith was in high disfavor for his error, which was the only movement that saved the Federal army.--N. Y. World.