FINALIZING STRATEGIES
The way General Winfield Scott had planned it, the first year of the war would be spent, mostly, in getting ready. The old general had a poor opinion of volunteer troops - like most West Pointers, he felt that they had behaved badly in the Mexican War - and he believed that it would take a long time to prepare them for field service. It would also take a long time to get the supply service organized, so that boots and pants and coats and tents and muskets and all of the other things the new armies would need could be produced in adequate quantities. It would be absurd to start offensive operations until properly trained armies, fully supplied and equipped, were ready to move.
In all of this General Scott was quite correct, by the standards of military logic. Unfortunately, however, military logic was not going to be controlling this war. What was going on between North and South was a violent extension of political contest, and the rules and axioms of formalized warfare were not going to mean much.
By those rules and axioms, for instance, Mr. Davis' Confederacy was in hopeless shape. Some of the best manpower any soldier ever saw was flocking to the colors - lean, sinewy men used to handling weapons and to outdoor life, men who could get along very well on poor rations and skimpy equipment, violent men who had a positive taste for fighting - but much of this manpower could not be used because there were no arms. At the beginning of the war the U.S. government arsenals held more than 500,000 small arms, and 135,000 of these were in the South. These, of course, the Confederacy had promptly seized, but it needed a great many more, and anyway only 10,000 of the confiscated guns were modern rifles. The rest were old-fashioned smoothbores, many of them flintlocks little different from the Brown Bess of Revolutionary War days. Frantic state governors had tried to collect weapons from their backwoods owners - shotguns, country rifles, and whatnot - but very little could be done with these; their use would complicate the ammunition supply pattern beyond solution.
To make things worse, the Confederate government had made a miscalculation in respect to cotton which would have a permanently crippling effect.
The Northern blockade was not yet effective, and it would be many months before it would be. The markets of Europe were open, and all of the munitions which the South so desperately needed were for sale in them. Furthermore, they could very easily be paid for with cotton, of which the South had millions of bales. Energetic action in the first few months of the war could have solved all of the Confederacy's problems of equipment.
But the Southern leaders had chanted "Cotton is King" so long that they had come to believe it. If England and France, and most particularly England, could not get the cotton which their mills needed, it was believed, they would presently intervene in this war, break the Union blockade (which did not yet really exist), and underwrite the Confederacy's independence in order to insure their own supply of cotton. Consequently, the Confederate government in its wisdom refused to export cotton, in order to make certain that England and France would feel the pressure. In effect, it made the Federal blockade effective until such time as the Federal navy could handle the job unaided; and what it had failed to figure on was that because there had been heavy cotton crops during the years just before the war began, there was a substantial carry-over on the world market in 1861. England and France could get along nicely for months to come; so nicely that even in 1862 England was actually shipping some of its cotton back to New England.
Because of all this the Confederacy was not getting the weapons it wanted at the time when it needed them most, and when it could unquestionably have got them without the slightest difficulty. So it could not arm all of the men who were clamoring to get into the army, and the ones who were armed were armed most imperfectly. In time, this problem of weapons would be adjusted. Meager as its industrial facilities were, the South would do wonders with what was available and would produce artillery, small arms, powder, and bullets; it would eventually import European goods in spite of the tightening blockade; and from first to last it would capture a great deal of war materiel from the Yankees. But in 1861 it was in dire straits, with untrained armies, inadequate in size and very poorly outfitted. By military logic it was little better than helpless.
But the North was not a great deal better off. To be sure, it had more weapons than the South had, and its means of adding to its supply were much broader. Washington by now was ringed with camps, very martial-looking, with some of the new three-year volunteer regiments mingling with the ninety-day militia units, and to Northern editors and politicians it seemed that it was high time for a little action. That the generals who would control these formless levies had never handled large bodies of troops before, that the soldiers themselves were mere civilians in arms with very little discipline and no understanding of the need for any, that what was believed to be an army was simply a collection of independent companies and regiments hopelessly unready to maneuver or fight as a coherent mass - of all these things few people had any comprehension. The pressure for an immediate advance on the new Confederate capital at Richmond became stronger. Horace Greeley, the forceful but eccentric editor of the powerful New York Tribune, was sounding off with his "Forward to Richmond!" war cry; and although General Irvin McDowell, commander of the troops around Washington, knew perfectly well that it would be a long time before his men were ready for a battle, there was nothing he could do about it. Ready or not, he was going to have to move.
Events in western Virginia in June and early July seemed to show that the time for a big offensive campaign was at hand.
THE FIRST BATTLE OF BULL RUN
General George McClellan had taken some 20,000 men across the Ohio River and was moving east from Parkersburg along the line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. With a portion of his army he surprised and routed a small contingent of Confederates at the town of Philippi, winning a very small victory which a jubilant press enlarged into a major achievement. With other troops he made an advance to Beverly, on the turnpike that led via Staunton to the upper end of the Shenandoah Valley, and at Rich Mountain, near Beverly, he routed a Confederate army of 4,500 men. Western Virginia was apparently safe for the Union now, and McClellan's dispatches spoke enthusiastically of the way his men had "annihilated two armies... intrenched in mountain fastnesses, fortified at their leisure." To a country hungry for good news this was most welcome. Furthermore, McClellan's troops were no better trained than McDowell's. If they could campaign in rough mountain country, annihilating their foes and storming lofty passes, it seemed reasonable to suppose that McDowell's men could do as well in the more open country between Washington and Richmond. Early in July, McDowell was directed to organize and launch a thrust at the principal Confederate army, which lay at and around Manassas Junction, some twenty-five miles from Washington, behind a meandering little river known as Bull Run.
The military situation in Virginia was complicated.
Federal troops under one of the newly created political generals, Ben Butler of Massachusetts, occupied Fort Monroe, at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. Butler had essayed a mild advance up the Peninsula but had given it up when his advance guard lost a sharp little skirmish at a place known as Big Bethel. He would be inactive, his force not large enough to require more than a small Confederate contingent to watch it.
Up the Potomac River, in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry, there were 16,000 Federal troops commanded by an aged regular, Major General Robert Patterson. Patterson meant well, but he was far past his prime and would very shortly demonstrate that he was much too infirm for field command. Facing him were perhaps 9,000 Confederates under the canny Joe Johnston.
Behind Bull Run there were approximately 20,000 Confederates under P. G. T. Beauregard. Johnston outranked Beauregard, but while Johnston remained in the Shenandoah Valley, Beauregard was virtually independent. Since Beauregard had the biggest force, and since he lay squarely across the line of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which looked like the best way for a Federal army to approach Richmond, Beauregard's army was the chosen target.
McDowell, therefore, would march down overland to make his attack. He noted that a railway line ran from Manassas Junction to the Shenandoah Valley, within convenient range of Johnston's men; if Johnston could give Patterson the slip he could quite easily move his troops down to the Bull Run area and reinforce Beauregard. Patterson, accordingly, was instructed to keep pressure on Johnston so that he could not detach any troops. McDowell, whose army would total about 35,000 men, thus would have what ought to be a decisive numerical advantage when he made his fight. On the afternoon of July 16 his troops started out.
There is nothing in American military history quite like the story of Bull Run. It was the momentous fight of the amateurs, the battle where everything went wrong, the great day of awakening for the whole nation, North and South together. It marked the end of the ninety-day militia, and it also ended the rosey time in which men could dream that the war would be short, glorious, and bloodless. After Bull Run the nation got down to business.
When it set out from Washington, McDowell's army was at least brilliant to look at. The militia regiments wore a variety of uniforms. Many of the contingents were dressed in gray. Others wore gaudy clothing patterned after the French Zouaves - baggy red breeches, short blue coats, yellow or scarlet sashes about the waist, turbans or fezzes for the head. There was a New York regiment which called itself the Highlanders, and it had kilts for dress parade, although on this campaign the men seem to have worn ordinary pants. Regimental flags were of varicolored silk, all new and unstained. Baggage trains, which were somewhat tardy, were immense. A regiment at that time had as many wagons as a brigade would have a little later. From McDowell on down no one knew anything about the mechanics of handling a large army on the march, and logistics were badly fouled up. The fact that most of the soldiers would break ranks as the mood took them - to wander into a field to pick blackberries, to visit a well for drinking water, or simply to take a breather in the shade - did not help matters much. No more informal, individualistic collection of men in uniform ever tried to make a cross-country march. The weather was hot, and great clouds of dust settled over the fancy uniforms.
Beauregard, at Manassas Junction, knew that the Yankees were coming. He had a good intelligence service, with spies in Washington who kept him posted, and in any case there was nothing secret about his move; half of the country knew about it, and Beauregard had ample time to make preparations. He was an able soldier, this Beauregard, but rather on the flashy side, given to the construction of elaborate plans, and he considered that he would smite this invading host by a clever flank attack without waiting for it to assault him. His troops were in line along eight miles of Bull Run, covering the bridges and the fords, and Beauregard planned to swing his right over the stream and strike the Union left before McDowell was ready. Oddly enough, McDowell was planning a somewhat similar move himself - to demonstrate before the Confederate center, cross the bulk of his troops a few miles upstream, and come down hard on the Confederate left.
McDowell's army moved very slowly - which, considering everything, is hardly surprising - and contact with the Confederates was not made until July 18. On this day a Union division prowled forward to Blackburn's Ford, near the center of the line, to make a demonstration; it prowled too far, and was driven back with losses, and the Confederates were mightily encouraged.
Meanwhile, in the Shenandoah Valley, Joe Johnston had given Patterson the slip. He had moved forward and had made menacing gestures, which led Patterson to believe that he was about to be attacked; then, while the old Federal took thought for his defenses, Johnston got most of his men away and took the cars for Manassas. His men would arrive at Bull Run just in time. Johnston himself, ranking Beauregard, would be in command of the united armies, although this was a point that Beauregard never quite seemed to understand.
In any case, the great battle finally took place on July 21, 1861. This was the day on which Beauregard was to make his flank attack, modeled, he proudly remarked, on Napoleon's battle plan at Austerlitz. (Most professional soldiers then had the Napoleon complex, and of all armies that of the French was the most respected.) Beauregard's move, however, was a complete fiasco. Like McDowell, he had no staff worthy of the name, and routine staff work in consequence never got done. Orders went astray, those that did reach their destination were not understood or followed, and the advance of the Confederate right amounted to nothing more than a series of convulsive twitches by a few brigades.
All in all, this was a lucky break for the Confederates. The Rebel army at Bull Run was in no better shape than the Federal army, but when the showdown came it was able to fight on the defensive - which, as numerous battles in this war would show, was infinitely easier for untrained troops. For McDowell's flank move was actually made, and although it was inordinately slow and confused, it did at last put a solid segment of the Union army across Bull Run at a place called Sudley Church, in position to march down and hit the Confederates' left flank. A doughty Confederate brigadier commanding troops at the Stone Bridge, where the main road to Washington crossed Bull Run, saw the Yankees coming and fought a stout delaying action which held them off until Johnston and Beauregard could form a new line, on the wooded plateau near the Henry House, to receive the attack. McDowell sent forward two excellent regular army batteries, and the battle was on.
For men who had never fought before, and who had been given no training of any real consequence, the Northerners and Southerners who collided here did a great deal better than anyone had a right to expect. A good many men ran away, to be sure, but most of them stayed and fought, and the struggle was a hot one. For a time it seemed that the Confederate line would be broken and that the "Forward to Richmond" motif would come to a triumphant crescendo. The two regular batteries that had been doing such good work were advanced to the crest of Henry House Hill, infantry came surging along with them, and a number of the Confederate units weakened and began to drift to the rear.
Then came one of those moments of dramatic inspiration that men remember. Brigadier General Barnard Bee sought to rally some of the wavering Confederate regiments. Not far away he saw a Virginia brigade of Johnston's troops, standing fast and delivering a sharp fire: a brigade led by that former V.M.I. professor, Brigadier General T. J. Jackson.
"There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!" cried Bee, gesturing with his sword. "Rally behind the Virginians!"
So a great name was born. From that moment on the man would be Stonewall Jackson.
Bee's troops rallied. Fresh Confederate troops, just off the train from the Valley, kept coming in on their flank. The two pestiferous Union batteries, placed too far forward to get proper support from their own infantry, were taken by a sudden Confederate counterattack - the Rebels here wore blue uniforms, and the gunners held their fire until too late, supposing the attack wave to be Unionists coming up to help - and suddenly the Union offensive, which had come so near to success, collapsed, all the heart gone out of it, and the soldiers who had been involved in it turned and headed for the rear.
There was no rout here. The Union attack had failed and the men were withdrawing, but there was no panic. One trouble apparently lay in the fact that the tactical maneuver by which troops fighting in line would form column and go to the rear was very complicated, and most of these green Union troops did not have it down pat; a withdrawal under fire was bound to become disordered and finally uncontrollable, not because the men had lost their courage but simply because they had not had enough drill. McDowell saw that nothing more could be done here and passed the word for a retreat to his advanced base at Centreville, four or five miles nearer Washington.
It was after the beaten army had crossed Bull Run that the real trouble came, and the fault lies less with the soldiers than with the reckless Washington civilians who had supposed that the edge of a battlefield would be an ideal place for a picnic.
For hundreds of Washingtonians had come out to see the show that day. They came in carriages, wagons, buggies, and on horseback, they brought hampers of food and drink with them, and they were spread all over the slanting fields east of Bull Run, listening to the clangor of the guns, watching the smoke clouds billowing up to the July sky, and in general making a holiday out of it. Now, as Union wagon trains, ambulances, reserve artillery, and knots of disorganized stragglers began to take the road back to Washington, all of these civilians decided that it was high time for them to get out of there. They got into their conveyances and went swarming out onto the highway which the army wanted to use, creating the father and mother of all traffic jams; and just as things were at their worst a stray Confederate shell came arching over and upset a wagon on a bridge over a little stream called Cub Run, blocking the road completely.
DARK REALITIES AND NEW ILLUSIONS
After this there was unadulterated turmoil, growing worse every moment, with disorganized troops and panicky civilians trying to force their way through a horrible tangle of wheeled vehicles, mounted men riding around past them, bodies of troops trying in vain to march where they had been told to march; a new surge of fear rising every now and then when someone would shout that Confederate cavalry was coming on the scene. In the weeks before the battle, imaginative newspaper and magazine writers had written extensively about the "black horse cavalry" which the Confederates had developed, and what they said had stuck in men's minds. In the dust and confusion of this disorganized retreat, frightened individuals began to shout that the black horse cavalry was upon them, and outright panic developed, with bewildered thousands dropping their weapons and starting to run, communicating their fears to others by the simple act of running. Before dark there was a complete and unregimented chaos spilling all over the landscape, and hardly anyone who could move at all stopped moving until he had reached the Potomac River. For the time being most of McDowell's army had simply fallen apart. The bits and pieces of it might be useful later on, but right now they were nothing more than elements in a universal runaway. The Confederates might have pursued, but did not. Jefferson Davis had reached the scene, and he conferred extensively with Johnston and Beauregard, almost ordered a pursuit, finally did not; and, as a matter of fact, the Confederate army was almost as disorganized by its victory as the Union army was by its defeat. In the end it stayed in camp, sending cavalry patrols to pick up Yankee stragglers and gleaning the field of an immense quantity of military loot, including many stands of small arms which soldiers had thrown away. Stonewall Jackson, it is said, muttered that with 5,000 men he could destroy what remained of the Yankee army, but Stonewall was not yet a man to whom everybody listened. The Confederate high command was content. It had won a shattering victory, and men believed that night that Confederate independence might be a reality before much longer.
It seemed at the time that the casualty lists were fearful, although by the standards of later Civil War battles they would look moderate. The Federals had lost 2,896 men in killed, wounded, and missing, and Confederate losses came to 1,982. For an unmilitary country which had been subconsciously expecting that the war would not really be very costly, these figures were shocking. People began to see that beneath the romance which had been glimpsed in the bright uniforms, the gay flags, and the lilting tunes played by the military bands, there would be a deep and lasting grimness. Holiday time was over. No one was going to play at war any longer. The militia units could go home now; it was time to get ready for the long pull.
For Bull Run was what awakened the North to reality. (It may have had an opposite effect in the South; the victory looked so overwhelming that many Southerners considered the Yankees poor fighters and expected a speedy triumph.) Before there could be another campaign, a real army would have to be put together, and expert attention would have to be given to matters of organization, training, and discipline. To attend to this job, Lincoln plucked victorious George B. McClellan out of the western Virginia mountains and put him in command of the Army of the Potomac.