X

then Secretary of War, was good enough as a party politician, but all thumbs when fumbling with the armies in the field. The other members of the Cabinet had war nostrums of their own; and every politician with a pull did what he could to use it. Behind all these surged a clamorous press and an excited people, both patriotic and well meaning; but both wholly ignorant of war, and therefore generating a public opinion that forced the not unwilling Government to order an armed mob "on to Richmond" before it had the slightest chance of learning how to be an army.

The Congress that met on the Fourth of July voted five hundred thousand men and two hundred and fifty million dollars. This showed that the greatness of the war was beginning to be seen. But the men, the the money, and the Glorious Fourth were so blurred together in the public mind that the distinction between a vote in Congress and its effect upon some future battlefield was never realized. The result was a new access of zeal for driving McDowell "on to Richmond." Making the best of a bad business, Scott had already begun his preparations for the premature advance.

By the end of May Confederate pickets had been in sight of Washington, while McDowell, crossing

the Potomac, was faced by his friend of old West Point and Mexican days, General Beauregard, fresh from the capture of Fort Sumter. By the beginning of July General Patterson, a veteran of "1812" and Mexico, was in command up the Potomac near Harper's Ferry. He was opposed by "Joe" Johnston, who had taken over that Confederate command from "Stonewall" Jackson. Down the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay there was nothing to oppose the Union navy. General Benjamin Butler, threatening Richmond in flank, along the lower Chesapeake, was watched by the Confederates Huger and Magruder. Meanwhile, as we have seen already, the West Virginian campaign was in full swing, with superior Federal forces under McClellan.

Thus the general situation in July was that the whole of northeastern Virginia was faced by a semicircle of superior forces which began at the Kanawha River, ran northeast to Grafton, then northeast to Cumberland, then along the Potomac to Chesapeake Bay and on to Fortress Monroe. From the Kanawha to Grafton there were only roads. From Grafton to Cumberland there was rail as well. From Cumberland to Washington there were road, rail, river, and canal. From Washington to

Fortress Monroe there was water fit for any fleet. The Union armies along this semicircle were not only twice as numerous as the Confederates facing them but they were backed by a sea-power, both naval and mercantile, which the Confederates could not begin to challenge, much less overcome. Lee was the military adviser to the Confederate Government at Richmond as Scott then was to the Union Government at Washington.

Such was the central scene of action, where the first great battle of the war was fought. The Union forces were based on the Potomac from Washington to Harper's Ferry. The Confederates faced them from Bull Run to Winchester, which points were nearly sixty miles apart by road and rail. The Union forces were fifty thousand strong, the Confederate thirty-three thousand. The Union problem was how to keep "Joe" Johnston in the Winchester position by threatening or actually making an invasion of the Shenandoah Valley with Patterson's superior force, while McDowell's superior force attacked or turned Beauregard's position at Bull Run. The Confederate problem was how to give Patterson the slip and reach Bull Run in time to meet McDowell with an equal force. X The Confederates had the advantage of interior

lines both here and in the semicircle as a whole, though the Union forces enjoyed in general much better means of transportation. The Confederates enjoyed better control from government headquarters, where the Cabinet mostly had the sense to trust in Lee. Scott, on the other hand, was tied down by orders to defend Washington by purely defensive means as well as by the "on to Richmond" march. Patterson was therefore obliged to watch the Federal back door at Harper's Ferry as well as the Confederate side doors up the Shenandoah: an impossible task, on exterior lines, with the kind of force he had. The civilian chiefs at Washington did not see that the best of all defense was to destroy the enemy's means of destroying them, and that his greatest force of fighting men, not any particular place, should always be their main objective.

On the fourteenth of June Johnston had destroyed everything useful to the enemy at Harper's Ferry and retired to Winchester. On the twentieth Jackson's brigade marched on Martinsburg to destroy the workshops of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and to support the three hundred troopers under J. E. B. Stuart, who was so soon to be the greatest of cavalry commanders on the Confederate

Χ

side. Unknown at twenty-nine, killed at thirtyone, "Jeb" Stuart was a Virginian ex-officer of United States Dragoons, trained in frontier fighting, and the perfect type of what a cavalry commander should be: tall, handsome, splendidly supple and strong, hawk-eyed and lion-hearted, quick, bold, determined, and inspiring, yet always full of knowledge and precaution too; indefatigable at all times, and so persistent in carrying out a plan that the enemy could no more shake him off than they could escape their shadows.

On the second of July the first brush took place at Falling Waters, five miles south of the Potomac, where Jackson came into touch with Patterson's advanced guard. As Jackson withdrew his handful of Virginian infantry the Federal cavalry came clattering down the turnpike and were met by a single shot from a Confederate gun that smashed the head of their column and sent the others flying. Meanwhile Stuart, who had been reconnoitering, came upon a company of Federal infantry resting in a field. Galloping among them suddenly he shouted, "Throw down your arms or you are all dead men!" Whereupon they all threw down their arms; and his troopers led them off. Patterson, badly served by his very raw staff, reported