Eric Braun - At the Battle of Bull Run: An Interactive Battlefield Adventure

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You are living through a pivotal time in the history of the United States. The country has split into two parts as Southern states have seceded, or left, the country. The result is a new war, the Civil War, fought between the North and the South. Both sides are preparing for the wars first major battle. Can you survive this bloody time?

In this book youll explore how the choices people made meant the difference between life and death. The events youll experience happened to real people.

Chapter One sets the scene. Then you choose which path to read. Follow the links at the bottom of each page as you read the stories. The decisions you make will change your outcome. After you finish one path, go back and read the others for new perspectives and more adventures. Use your device's back buttons or page navigation to jump back to your last choice.

YOU CHOOSE the path you take through history.

You are heading to battle. You walk along a pitted dirt road with your company. Ahead of you carriages weighed down with equipment creak and kick up dust. Dust is everywhere it coats your face, it gets in your mouth. Officers bark directions while their horses dot the road with their poop. You and your fellow soldiers walk in silence, thinking about the fight ahead.

What will happen to you? Will you be brave or will you crumble under pressure? Will you live or die? And how will this war end?

Most believe it will end soon, though it has barely begun. The North has more soldiers and more money. Northerners find it hard to imagine that the South will last long against these odds. At the same time, Southerners believe the North will eventually tire of a long-term invasion and will give up the fight.

But as you reach your position outside moving into place.

You want to believe, like so many others, that this will be a short war. But as the earth rumbles with the movement of armies, you begin to fear that the bloodshed has only just begun.

The white men watch you carefully. You feel their eyes on you at all times, even though you are on the same side. They dont trust you.

Of course this makes sense. They should not trust you.

When the war broke out, Master Carhardt ordered you to join the slavery.

The 26th Regiment United States Colored Infantry was one of three African-American infantry units from New York that fought in the Civil War.

At first you and several other slaves were assigned to build cannons. You were not given weapons out of fear that you might use them to escape. Then General P.G.T. Beauregard learned from a spy that the Union planned to cut off the railroad at Manassas Junction, Virginia. The Confederates knew they had to confront the Union and they needed more fighters. So you were trained for battle. You and Augustus, another enslaved man from Carhardts plantation, are trained to fire a cannon you built. The type of cannon youre assigned to is heavy and made for long-range firing.

Other troops have built a wooden barricade along Bull Run Creek, and you push your cannon behind it. Augustus begins lifting cannon balls off a wagon and setting them near the cannons muzzle. After checking to make sure none of the white men will hear, he speaks quietly to you.

You hear the rumor? he asks.

You shake your head. You noticed Augustus whispering with other slaves during the march north. It seems he has found out something big.

Carhardt and both his boys went off to fight, Augustus says. He explains that all the white men have left the plantation. They left only white women and children behind to watch the slaves. With little security to hold them back, many of the slaves escaped. I heard Rebecca and Janie got out, he says. Thats your wife and baby daughter. You hope hes right.

You are shocked and thrilled. But there is little time to think about your family because cannon fire explodes through the air. A huge cloud of mud and water flies into the air downstream from you.

Two soldiers of an African-American unit take aim and fire in Dutch Gap, Virginia.

A white soldier, Captain Pickens, orders you to fire on a Union artillery nest. You can see the target across the field in the trees. You realize those Union soldiers are fighting to free you.

Explosions rattle the earth and you are scared to the bone. You dont feel right about shooting at men who are fighting to end slavery but you have little choice. If youre caught sabotaging the attack, youll be hanged. So you aim the gun. Augustus loads it with a solid ball and you fire.

The guns roar echoes in your ears. For a moment you cant see or hear anything as you hunch with your eyes closed. When you look again, the enemy artillery nest is in flames. A feeling of sickness fills your stomach. Youre sure you have killed someone.

There is little time to contemplate what is happening because ordnance fire rips through the air again. Just a few feet away, a section of the barricade explodes. You watch in horror as two slaves lie in the dirt screaming in pain. At least one of them seems to be fatally injured.

You also see the body of the white captain who ordered you to shoot. An explosion flung him away from the others, closer to you. He is dead. You look around. No other officers are present for the moment.

You cant bring yourself to kill Union soldiers. You wish you could fight alongside them. So after Augustus loads the cannon, you aim it in the enemys direction. But you lower the muzzle so the shot will land low.

The cannonball explodes harmlessly in the dirt just on the other side of the stream. You and Augustus look at each other. You give him a look that tells him you did it on purpose.

You there! shouts the white officer, Captain Pickens. He looks furious. I told you to fire on that artillery nest. I know you missed on purpose. Ill have you strung up!

You look around. You are surrounded by black soldiers and they are looking at you.

You grab Augustus by the arm and point at the dead officer, Captain Pickens. Nows our chance, you say.

There is a house along the creek not far downstream. Near it, a few families are sitting in the grass picnicking and watching the fighting. You run along the barricade toward them as gunfire and artillery fire rock the air. Hundreds of Union troops are advancing toward the Confederate position you just left. It looks like the Union will win this battle.

As you approach the house, an older woman sitting in a chair on the porch waves her hands at you. Is she welcoming you or telling you to go away? You cant tell. You dont know if shes sympathetic to the North or the South, but you decide to take a chance.

Will you hide us? you ask.