*

But, attempting with about four thousand men to make good his escape southward, he found McClellan already grasping his line of retreat, and he then fled eastward over the mountains. Being vigorously pursued, he was twice brought to & stand and severely handled; but forces that the Union commander had directed to move from the north and east to intercept the flying enemy, did not act with sufficient promptness, so that the operation was not as decisive as it otherwise must have been. The last stand made by Garnett was at Carrick's Ford, at the passage of the Cheat River, where he was attacked by the advance of General Morris's brigade+ on the 13th, driven in disorder, losing all his guns and baggage, and General Garnett himself, while gallantly striving to rally his rear-guard, was killed. This ended the brief and brilliant campaign in the mountains, and General McClellan was able to telegraph to Washington as its result the capture of a thousand prisoners, with all the enemy's stores, baggage, and artillery, and the complete disruption of the hostile force. "Secession," he added, "is killed in this country."

The result of this miniature campaign was most inspiriting to the people of the North, and had an effect far beyond its intrinsic importance, just as had in another way the fiascos of Big Bethel and Vienna. It is the moral influence of small successes and small defeats, that in the first stages of a war makes their importance and forms the real measure of their value. All great commanders have understood this well. The campaign in West Virginia was conducted agreeably to military principles,—a characteristic that did not belong to other operations thus far; and its execution, as well as the fact that it was undertaken by General McClellan of his own motion, and without countenance from Washington, stamped him as a man of superior ability.

* McClellan Campaign in Western Virginia, p. 34.

This attack was made by the Fourteenth Ohio, the Seventh and Ninth Indiana, and a section of Barnett's battery.

III.

THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.

WHEN in a national crisis the thoughts of men, and even the policy of the Government are in that condition which is expressed by the term drifting, wonderful is the effect of a phrase that crystallizes the floating and half-formed sentiments of the people into a definite theory. Such a phrase, about the time reached by this narrative, arose in the North. Thus far, no well-defined military policy guided the conduct of the war. The series of small outlying operations already sketched were, with the exception of those in West Virginia, crude in conception, undertaken at haphazard, and aimed at no definite result. But when Congress assembled in extra session, on the 4th of July, the effervescent enthusiasm of the country found expression in a phrase that, as it perfectly embodied the popular sentiment, was presently echoed throughout the whole North. This phrase was, "On to Richmond."

Now, in such popular cries there is always a certain element of the ideal; and hence we may suppose that this one did not so much imply a literal movement "on to Richmond," as it expressed with emphasis and in definite shape the conviction of the popular mind that immediate action should be taken against the rebellious force that had ensconced itself in the Manassas stronghold, only a few miles in front of the Federal capital. No doubt there were many that actually believed the Union force might not only drive the enemy from Manassas, but really follow "on to Richmond." It need hardly be said, however, that an overland march to Richmond by the force then assembled at Washington would have been an impossibility, even had there been no enemy to oppose the adventure. The people, conscious of great earnestness and enthusiasm, were unconscious either of the nature of the task they had set themselves to do, or the nature of the means

needed to carry it through. They knew that the rebels were at Manassas. They saw around Washington an imposing martial array, which they fondly named the "Grand Army of the United States;" and they could not understand what, after almost three months of preparation, could possibly hinder the advance of that army against the confronting enemy, and even on to the capital seat of the rebellion.*

The veteran soldier who, burdened with years and the infirmities of nature, remained at the head of the United States army, and to whom, by consequence, it fell to direct the military councils at Washington, was ill-fitted to grapple with the tremendous problem forced upon him. General Scott knew well war and war's needs. He knew that the imposing array of patriotic citizens who, dressed and armed to represent soldiers, lay around Washington, was but the simulacrum of an army; that to this mass were wholly wanting the organization, discipline, experience, whatever, in fact, goes to the fashioning of that most complex of living organisms. But it was little that he should know this, when those in power, who knew it not and would not know it, were determined to act as if it were not. Indeed he had himself to assume that it was not, and proceed in the work of forming a plan of campaign for immediate action. Now, a plan of campaign General Scott could well devise; for he was a man that knew generalship and grand war; had himself plucked laurels on the field of battle before the present generation of men was born; and long years ago, in Europe, had discussed the highest principles of the military art with the great marshals of Napoleon. But all this only served to separate him and his views and plans the more hopelessly from those with whom he had to deal. He was opposed to what he called "a

"The country could not understand, ignorant as it was of war and war's requirements, how it could possibly be true that, after three months of preparation and of parade, an army of thirty thousand men should be still utterly unfit to move thirty miles against a series of earthworks held by no more than an equal number of men." Hurlbut: McClellan and the Conduct of the War, page 103.

little war by piecemeal." He was averse to fighting at all in Virginia, which he did not regard as a theatre for decisive action, and thought that the Union army should strike its first blow in the basin of the Mississippi. But what were such views to the ardent congressmen and cabinet councillors to whom Beauregard's blazon at Manassas was the picador's flag to the infuriate bull? They prevailed. General Scott has confessed it his moral firmness gave way under the pressure of an Administration that was in turn goaded almost to frenzy by a press and people demanding action at all hazards.

There was, therefore, to be an advance of the army in front of Washington; and early in July the duty of planning and executing a movement against Beauregard at Manassas devolved upon General McDowell, who, since the transfer of the Union force into Virginia, had been put in command of the column of active operation south of the Potomac, and of the Department of Northeastern Virginia. This column numbered about thirty thousand men.

The officer to whom it thus fell to lead the main army to its first field was a man of no mean capacity as a soldier. Of the staff of the old regular army, McDowell was distinguished for his fine professional acquirements; and having studied the theory of war and seen European armies, he was, of the small body of trained soldiers, perhaps the man best qualified for the command. That he had never commanded any considerable body of men on the actual field was a drawback shared by every other officer in the service.

General McDowell knew perfectly well the kind of material with which he had to work, and its greenness and unfitness to take the field; and he did his best to improve it. This he might readily have done, had he had to grapple merely with this work; but his main struggle was elsewhere: and he has left a picture, half pathetic and half ludicrous, of his unavailing plea for a little common sense with those whose ardor was only equalled by their ignorance. "I wanted," says he, "very much a little time—all of us wanted it.

We did not have a bit of it." To his plea of the

"greenness" of his troops, the answer, more specious than well taken, was constantly returned-" You are green, it is true; but they are green also: you are all green alike.'

So far from having time to mould his army, many of his regiments were brought across the Potomac at the last moment, without his even seeing them, and without being even brigaded. He had, therefore, no opportunity to test his machinery-to move it round and see whether it would work smoothly or not; and such was the feeling, that when, on one occasion, McDowell had a body of eight regiments reviewed together, he was censured for "trying to make a show."t Even the special circumstance that should have caused delay, to wit, the fact that a large part of the best, that is, the best-armed, drilled, officered, and disciplined troops in front of Washington consisted of three months' volunteers whose term of service was about to expire,-was an incentive to precipitate action. These troops had fulfilled the duty for which they were called out, which was to assure the safety of the national capital; their presence had given time to organize a force for the war; Congress had authorized a call for five hundred thousand three years' volunteers, and these were thronging to the Potomac. It is certainly easy to see that the dictate of prudence was this: not to attempt to employ the three months' men in active operations, but to organize and mobilize, from the three-year troops, an adequate army for the field. Other counsels prevailed, and the army with which McDowell took the field was an army without organization, or a staff, or a commissariat, or an organized artillery. The wonder, indeed, is not that he

* Report on the Conduct of the War, vol. i., p. 38.

+ Ibid.

"Being tête-à-tête with McDowell, I saw him do things of detail which, in any even half-way organized army, belong to the specialty of a chief of the staff. . . . . McDowell received his corps in the most chaotic state. Almost with his own hands he organized, or rather put together, the artillery. Brigades are scarcely formed; the commanders of brigades do not know their commands, and the soldiers do not know their generals." Gurowski: Diary. 1861-2, p. 61. Mr. Russell (My Diary North and South, pp. 424-5) makes some striking statements to the same purpose.