The first relatively large battle was fought less than 25 miles from Washington. The opening weeks of the war were unsettling for President Lincoln, as significant numbers of troops were slow to arrive in Washington. Part of the difficulty lay in the fact that Maryland was a slave state and several units had to actually fight their way through Baltimore in order to get to the nation's capital. Alternative routes were eventually established, and by June a number of regiments had begun to assemble.
The Union commander, Major General Irvin McDowell, realizing that his troops had had little training, was reluctant to take them into battle. President Lincoln pointed out, however, that the Southern troops and had no more training than the Union men, and he urged McDowell
To begin to move. On July 21, McDowell's 30,000 men advanced towards the Confederate positions along Bull Run Creek near Manassas, Virginia. The march out from Washington revealed that federal troops were poorly trained. They lacked water discipline, draining their canteens early in the march, which caused them to break ranks in search of fresh supplies. In similar fashion they showed that they were not a highly trained military organization. The Confederates, waiting in defensive positions, were perhaps better prepared, as they had time to establish their defenses, although they were also less than fully trained.
The realities of war had not yet sunk in on either population-spectators from both Washington and Richmond traveled to the battle site in carriages and other conveyances in order to observe the action, as if it were some sort of sporting event. They soon discovered that war was not a game.
The Confederates waiting for the Yankees were under the command of General P. G.T. Beauregard, who had fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. General McDowell's battle plan was reasonable, but it depended upon Confederate reinforcements being blocked and other secondary actions that failed. The fighting started fairly early and for much of the day, the Union troops fought well. But as the day wore on and the heat intensified and casualties mounted, the resolve of the Federal soldiers finally broke. As individual fighting men began to scurry from the battlefield, they were pursued by officers on horseback and shouting at them to return.
The actions by those inexperienced officers were misinterpreted by other soldiers within view; they thought a general retreat had been ordered. The result was that more men joined the hasty, ill-organized retreat until the entire Union force was heading back for Washington, discarding weapons and equipment along the way. Meanwhile, the spectators who had come out in carriages with spy-glasses and picnic lunches to observe and the day's activities joined the panicky retreat, as wagon masters and swearing teamsters added to the din and confusion. The scene was later vividly described in detail by British journalist William Howard Russell, who was thereafter known as "Bull Run Russell."
The Confederate rebel yell had supposedly unnerved the Union troops, but when President Jefferson Davis urged his commanders to pursue the fleeing Yankees, it was discovered that they were just as disorganized as the Union troops and did not follow up on their action. The battle was clearly a defeat for the Union, but it was far from being decisive.
In the end, the importance of the Battle of Bull Run is that it generated a considerable amount of confidence in the Confederate soldiers. They came to believe that their fierce rebel yell and their undaunted courage would carry the day in any battle against even a superior sized Union force. That overconfidence was to cost the Confederates dearly over the next few years. On the Union side, those who had been predicting and hoping for a quick, decisive victory quickly became disillusioned. Union leaders from President Lincoln on down began to realize that they needed to dig in for the long haul and prepare for a lengthy contest. Thus the Battle of Bull Run was a wake-up call for the Union which, at the same time, bred a dangerous sense of overconfidence in the Confederates.
General McDowell was relieved of his command and was replaced by perhaps the most controversial Union General of the war, General George B. McClellan. McClellan achieved moderate success in western Virginia with a force of 20,000 troops and had won a several minor engagements. Much of McClellan's success, however, had been attributable to his subordinates; "Little Mac," who was his own press secretary, sent glowing reports of his achievements to Washington. President Lincoln, beginning what would be a long and frustrating search to find a competent general to lead his eastern armies, gave command of the army in Washington to McClellan, who soon became known as the "Young Napoleon."
As McClellan busied himself reorganizing the Union Army of the Potomac, the Union suffered another defeat at the Battle of Ball's Bluff above Washington. A former U. S. Senator, Col. Edward D. Baker, made several tactical blunders which led to the decimation of Union forces. Repercussions included the forming of a congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War.
As the two sides continued to organize their armies and train enlistees who flocked to the Union and Confederate colors, little major action occurred on land for the remainder of 1861. In November federal naval forces captured Port Royal, South Carolina, as part of the effort to establish a blockade around the Confederacy. In that regard relations with England were to become the most critical; the Union blockade during the opening months of the war was mostly a paper blockade. In order for a naval blockade to be legal under international law, it had to be enforced with naval vessels on the scene. Early in the war the Union Navy lacked sufficient vessels and sailors to achieve that end. The Union advantage in this matter was that Great Britain, as a maritime nation, had depended heavily on blockades in the past and would likely continue to do so into the future. Thus Great Britain tended to overlook the minor violation of international law resulting from the weakness of the Union blockade.
The Trent Affair. Relations between the two nations took a sour turn, however, when information was obtained that two Confederate agents, James Mason and John Slidell, had been embarked in a British ship, H. M.S. Trent, on a diplomatic mission to establish Confederate relations in Europe. Captain Charles Wilkes of the U. S.S. San Jacinto stopped the Trent and removed the Confederate agents and their secretaries over the protests of the captain of the Trent. The British government lodged immediate protests, and an embarrassed President Lincoln was obliged to release Mason and Slidell and eventually issue a formal apology. British Canada, feeling threatened by a disturbance with its southern neighbor, doubled the size of its militia from 50,000 to 100,000. Despite enthusiastic support in the North for Captain Wilkes's actions, the British accepted President Lincoln's apology, and the affair died.
One of the unsung heroes of the Civil War for the Union was the U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams. Inheriting the diplomatic skill of his father, Adams performed brilliantly, as he was sometimes obliged to sidestep the heavy-handed diplomatic efforts of Secretary of State Seward. During the Trent affair, as well as during subsequent diplomatic crises, Adams performed an extremely valuable service in helping to keep Great Britain out of the war, a condition that was vital for Union victory.
Raising again the point about the inevitability of the outcome of the war, it seems clear that if Great Britain or France had entered the war on the Confederate side, a Southern victory might well have been assured. Lincoln's major diplomatic challenge was to fight the war in such a way so as not to irritate Great Britain, whose lead would be followed by the French. Gauging British sympathies was not easy; some elements in Great Britain were sympathetic to the Southern position, while others, correctly perceiving that slavery was an underlying cause of the war, were well disposed toward Lincoln and the Union.
On November 1 General McClellan was appointed General in Chief upon the retirement of General Winfield Scott, whom McClellan rather ungraciously helped usher out the
Door. McClellan was a superb organizer, and he soon began an excellent regimen of training to bring the growing Union Army up to fighting trim. He replaced incompetent officers with more capable men and began to build up the Army of the Potomac, which, when well led, could stand against any army in the world. The problem with General McClellan was that he was reluctant to lead it into battle; a series of parades and reviews thrilled Congress and the Washington community but left Lincoln frustrated and unimpressed. When illness forced McClellan to his bed for what seemed to Lincoln an overlong recuperation, Lincoln sent a note to McClellan suggesting that if the General had no immediate plans for using his army, the president might like to borrow it. McClellan did not respond well to such jibes and accused Lincoln of being a meddler.
In November Major General Henry W. Halleck, known as "Old Brains" for his authoritative writings on warfare, made some replacements in the western commands, but the Union forces in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys were still divided. Gen. Don Carlos Buell commanded forces in central and eastern Kentucky, while Brigadier General Ulysses Grant and others commanded other western areas. Grant, who had left the Army in 1854 under something of a cloud because of his alleged drinking habits, had to talk his way into an officer's commission at the outbreak of the war. He had, however, quickly demonstrated his natural military skills. He won a small battle at Belmont in November, 1861, but in those early days of fighting a small victory was noticed. Grant was gradually given more responsibility.
Summary of 1861: Both sides began uncertainly. Young men flocked to colors for "Union" (North) and "Liberty" (South), each feeling it was upholding the "principles of 1776." President Lincoln, less experienced in military matters than President Davis, began to educate himself in the ways of war. He was a quick study. Davis, more experienced, had difficulties arising from his political situation; the South had a single party political system. Thus criticism of the Confederate president took on a personal flavor, a condition exacerbated by Davis's prickly personality.
World History
