Bull Run

( Originally Published 1898 )

IN respect of numbers engaged and losses suffered, the war which was now about to begin was the greatest ever fought. It also seemed to be the most deplorable; for it was a war of like against like : of brothers against one another. After nearly two and a half centuries, the sons of the pioneers who had settled Virginia and Massachusetts, and of those who followed them, were marshaled against each other, with deadly enmity in their hearts. From a few score—a few hundreds—they had increased to full thirty million of as enlightened and enterprising a people as were in the world; and they were about to plunge into the hideous work of mutual destruction. Together they had resisted Europe, and their blood had mingled on a hundred battlefields, where freedom was the stake; they had together built up a great civilization, and had presented to the world the spectacle of a vast democracy living in freedom, with no ruler but themselves; they had upset the predictions of failure which the wisest of the old nations had made; and the populace of the old monarchies and despotisms had heard of their liberty, and millions of them had crossed the ocean to share it. Already America was the hope of mankind. And yet, at the height of their seeming success, they had quarreled with themselves—these sons of the new day—and were gathering their mighty energies to annihilate the work which their great fathers had made. It was a grievous sight to see, and an ominous failure to confess; for if America failed, there was no rational hope that the cause of civil and religious freedom could ever succeed. Never again could the experiment be tried under conditions so favorable; and even could another continent be found, and another people with the spirit of the Puritans and Pilgrims to colonize it, the precedent of the American collapse would discourage and handicap them. We had believed that God led us to the Wilderness, and had protected us there. But if, after all, we were to go down in ruin, under-mined by our own hands, would it not be a sign that God had no part in our attempt? Except the Lord build the city, they labor in vain who build it. It had all been a vast mistake and delusion from the beginning. Let us call back our kings and czars, and surrender our liberty and equality. Man is not able to govern himself. Let Moses lead the Israelites back to Pharaoh, and cast the tablets of the Divine Law into the depths of the Red Sea. The Pillar of Cloud by day, of Fire by night, was but a mirage and a mockery; and a few selfish tyrants shall have dominion over many helpless slaves.

But the conflict was irrepressible. During forty years every means of composing it had been tried, and had miscarried. The Frankenstein monster of slavery which had been forced by alien and then by geographical agency upon the South, was a growing monster, and must be fed and given room to stretch his shackled but formidable limbs. Above all must he be left undisturbed where he was, or his sinister force, which now was given to giving his masters wealth, would be turned against their throats. The South-ern slaveholder could never feel fully safe. Those black figures bending and toiling in his fields were obedient only to force, and the force was absurdly inadequate—it was the mere intellectual domination of a superior race. But should a Toussaint arise to tell them of their strength, and lead them to put it forth, what would become of the planter?

What had become of the French in San Domingo? Or, failing a leader of their own color, should another John Brown, or an army of them, appear—as from indications at the North might well happen—the days of the South would be numbered. Their only security, then, lay either in spreading the slave system over the entire Union, so that all alike should be concerned to maintain it : or in retiring from the Union, so that the peril of the Abolitioinsts might be re-moved. "Peaceably if we may—forcibly if we must!" said the South, taking the words from the mouth of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts sixty years before. New England had no right to protest; she herself had knotted the lash which was now laid across her shoulders. The Boston Federalists had sown the wind, and the whirlwind was now to be reaped. The pretext was different, but the argument was the same.

But the North could not yield, in spite of the tu-quoque taunt, and in spite of pusillanimous mutterings from a faint-hearted minority, of whom Buchanan was the type:—the Copperheads, as they came to be called. They were willing to let the slaves stay where they were, and promise never to meddle with them; but they could not corrupt free labor by suffering slave labor to compete with it on its own soil; nor could they allow the Southern minority to pre-empt the untrodden regions which yet lay to the north and west. Well, the South would agree, so far; but what objection had the North to letting her peaceably secede? Let the land of staple-producers separate from the land of traders and manufacturers. There was no real union of interests between them; why should a forced political union be maintained? Let each go its own road, parting with mutual good wishes, and be happy and prosperous in its own way. There was space and to spare on the American continent for two mighty empires at least.

To this proposition, what should the North reply? It seemed far more reasonable than the other. The Constitution seemed to admit it, for though the doctrine of state rights was denied by the North, it was supported by powerful reasoners, and might at least be considered open to argument. And was it not more politic to be separated from a friendly community than to tie an unwilling one to one's self? Moreover, so long as South and North made one country, there would always be danger of contamination from slavery either covert or overt; but if they were politically foreign to each other, no such contingency would exist. Why, then, not let the South go? Independent of us, she could do us as much good 'as before, and would do us much less harm.

There was a good deal of talk of this kind at the North during the first months of 1861, and it sounded plausible and prudent. Yet the weight of feeling in the North was against it. Against policy, against profit and utility, the decision was that the South must be compelled to remain in the Union. Was this the result of a determination to back one interpretation of the Constitution against another? Was it sullen pride, or obstinacy, or stupidity? Was it fear that a severance of the bonds of Union would weaken us to the attacks of Europe? Was it apprehension that if the principle of secession were once recognized, the practice would spread, until the great American Republic became a cluster of helpless and snarling principalities, such as already vexed the tropical regions of the continent?

Considerations such as these may have entered into the thoughts of the North upon the subject; but they were not the controlling ones. The answer given was usually in the words, "The Union must be preserved." Literally, this would imply only a reluctance to relinquish a material bond; but there is no doubt that it was the expression of a spiritual conviction of a remarkable kind; a recognition of the truth that God had placed us here to make one nation, and that we were bound to fulfill His purpose. There were generations of historical consciousness in that resolve; an unseen influence transmitted from father to son, becoming incorporate with our growth, an organic part of us, not to be rooted out. The United States was one, and one it should forever remain. Our ancestors had not suffered from hunger and Indians, from royal oppression, from insolent war, to have the work of their blood and brains and hearts destroyed by the shallow and infidel impatience of a hot-headed and arrogant minority. These planters were not the nation, for they were willing to destroy the nation; their attitude was not buttressed by the august and deep-laid foundations of history, for they cast history aside, and acted from the selfish and immediate impulse of personal comfort and prosperity. What was the true motive that actuated them?—the maintenance of slavery! For the sake of this sin—for sin it was, no matter what expediency might say—they would destroy the edifice of ages, in which were involved the purest hopes of mankind. It should not be permitted. The higher law forbade it. We had a trust to guard, and we would guard it. War was a terrible evil, and we had put it aside as long as we could—until concession could no further go —until honor and submission were no longer compatible. Now, therefore, let war come, if it must; and let us rather die to uphold a truth than live to profit by a sin. Such were the inner sentiments contained in the words, "The Uinon must be preserved!" and they constituted an irresistible power. The North, indeed, had physical resources not possessed by the South; but these could not have been called forth, nor kept in action, had not a profound spiritual conviction of right and duty animated them as soul animates body. By no lesser force could the local patriotism and fiery ardor of the South have been overcome. The South fought for their homes, and for slavery; the North fought for the America of the future; and it was a cause worth all the blood and treasure it cost. But the North, too, had sins of commission and omission to answer for; she too, in the past, had been selfish and impatient for ends of her own; and the punishment which the war inflicted upon her was not undeserved. She carne out of it. purified and strengthened, and having learned a lesson of the fruit of tampering with evil which could never be quite forgotten; but a full generation must pass away, and deep wounds be healed, before South and North could forgive each other, and enter with sincerity into new bonds of brotherhood.

Though the ultimate strength of the South was less than her opponent's, her immediate resources were greater, so far as material and preparation went. Floyd, while drawing his salary as a sworn officer of the government, had been busily engaged in crippling in all ways the national power; he had dispersed the army in places where the Union could least avail itself of its services ; he had sent arms and am-munition where the South could get hold of them, and had left the forts which guarded the coast below Norfolk without garrisons or supplies; and he had done this with Buchanan's connivance, and in defiance of the repeated protests And ad-vice of Scott. Washington, Baltimore, and places yet further north, were full of disloyalty; and movements made toward suppressing the rebellion were immediately telegraphed to southern points. So long as Buchanan remained in office, the South would not be interfered with; and she used the opportunity to hasten her arrangements, while the North was obliged to look on without being able to lift her hand.

Yet the North was not wholly idle; the people were deeply interested in the progress of affairs, and every North-ern town had its company drilling every evening on the common ; old guns and old uniforms were routed out of the local armories, or from private hoards, and one beheld queer and motley assemblages marching and countermarching at the word of command, before the winter snows had left the ground clear. The younger folk entered into this work with a certain pleasurable excitement, the instinctive pleasure which the idea of battle supplies; the old people looked on gravely, and often shook their heads as they turned away. After Lincoln had taken his oath as President, and his early orders had proved that he was not going to accept the Southern acts supinely, the excitement rose., and the clash of opinions became sharper between those who still wished to temporize, and those who desired to go right ahead and fight, leaving talk till after the fighting was done. Then were repeated the painful scenes which had been en-acted more than fourscore years before, when American tories and patriots had taken sides against one another; men hitherto of weight and repute in the local community suddenly found themselves looked at askance, or ostracized, be-cause they expressed opinions which were out of accord with the general feeling. There was a great deal of intolerance, and hard names were bandied about; as for argument, there was little, but only plentiful contradicting one of another. Feeling had taken the place of argument, and all breath expended in arguing was breath wasted. North and South were going to fight; and nothing was now worth talking about except how to get to fighting as quickly and as effectively as possible.

At ten minutes before five o'clock on the morning of April 13, 1861, a mortar in Charleston Harbor discharged a shell, which burst in the air above Fort Sumter, arousing Major Robert Anderson and his threescore men to realization of the fact that war between North and South had actually begun, and that the South had fired the first shot. It hurt nobody, nor did any of the many hundreds which were discharged on both sides during the remainder of the day and night, and on the following morning; Major Anderson keeping his garrison behind the bomb-proofs, and letting the guns on the parapet, which were the biggest in the fort, be knocked off their places rather than risk lives for the sake of firing them off. The reluctance to kill people was observable in the early days of the war, more on the Northern than on the Southern side. The enemies were polite and "chivalrous" to one another, and seemed desirous to convey the idea that though they were fighting, their mutual regard for one another was in no way impaired. But this sort of flummery presently wore thin and disappeared; and we came to think no more of sacrificing a thousand men to capture a battery, than we did of the solitary unfortunate who was killed in Sumter, not in the battle, but by the accidental discharge of a gun fired in salute after the surrender. It is not that armies become more bloodthirsty as their experience ripens; but they learn to regard killing as a mere business, to be pursued, like any other, on business principles.

When Sumter had been pounded from the shore batteries in the harbor for a day and a half, its fire slackened, and a certain hasty General Wigfall unexpectedly appeared upon the esplanade outside its gates, demanding to see Anderson at once to arrange terms of surrender. After some parley he was admitted, for indeed he was in acute peril of being killed by the bombardment of his own side if he were not; and he offered Anderson the honors of war and permission to go home if he would give up. Anderson was a brave and faithful officer enough, and lived to raise again over Sumter the flag he now pulled down; but he was a Kentuckian and a slaveholder, and he had not yet got accustomed to the idea of fighting his kindred; and he knew, besides, that the fort could not hold out much longer, and could not inflict any loss upon the enemy if it did. So he accepted Wigfall's terms, and hoisted the white flag ; and only discovered after-ward that Wigfall had been acting entirely on his private responsibility, and that the terms he had accepted were liable to be disallowed. However, at that stage of the war, such technicalities were not insisted on; and Anderson was al-lowed to depart without further molestation. That night it was known all over the Union that the war had begun indeed; and every one North and South stiffened himself for the fight. The Southerners needed no further stimulus or signal; the North waited for the word from Washington.

What would that long-legged, humorous, peaceable-looking Illinois President say or do?—The waiting was not long. The proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers appeared on Monday morning, April 15th. The response was almost as quick as the call. Massachusetts was in the lead; her Sixth Regiment passed through Baltimore on the 19th of April—a day remembered in Massachusetts, and now to be signalized again. For Baltimore was full of secession, which was only kept from declaring itself as in the other Southern cities by the fact that Baltimore lay, geographically, between two fires, Philadelphia being loyal, and Washington at least partially so. But when the mob in Baltimore saw Northern troops passing through their city on the avowed errand of killing their fellows in the field, their wrath overcame all considerations of prudence, and they first cursed and then attacked them. One of the cars in which they were crossing the town broke down, and the soldiers began to suffer from the missiles and revolver-practice which made them their target. One does not like to hear of troops firing upon citizens in the streets of their own city, and Massachusetts men had not forgotten the Boston Massacre. But these Northern soldiers were certainly not looking for trouble in Baltimore; they had expected no such reception, and were merely doing what had to be done—pass through that fiery city on their way to Washington. Accordingly, not they but the citizens are to be blamed for the fusillade with which they finally replied to the attack upon them. Several of the soldiers were killed, and their bodies left upon the streets; more were wounded; it cannot be known what casualties happened to the Baltimore men. But the first blood of the war, on both sides, may be said to have been spilled here; and the increase of mutual animosity which it caused was extraordinary. The best campaign song of the war was drawn out by this episode; a local journalist in his early twenties, of scholarly proclivities and enthusiastic temperament, being moved to call upon "Maryland, my Maryland," to avenge the patriotic gore which had flecked the streets of Baltimore on this occasion. Maryland did not respond to the poet's summons; and, on the other hand, the North, failing to produce as good a song for her side, unblushingly purloined Mr. James Ryder Randall's production, which, with the change of a few words, was found to serve just as well to fire the Northern as the Southern heart. And yet, after all, the "John Brown's body" hymn, as thundered forth by the marching myriads of the North, was a better campaign document than its graceful and spirited rival.

During the ensuing weeks there were many tender partings of sons from parents and sweethearts; though the terms of enlistment were commonly short, and it was still believed on both sides that the war would be a matter of not more than "a hundred days" or so. If either party had foreseen four or five years of continuous and terrific fighting, between armies aggregating two million men, and with losses altogether of near seven hundred thousand, the emotions of those partings would have been more poignant still. But in these first weeks there was displayed a kind of sentiment which could only belong to the early stages of the war. There had as yet been no gaps made in the family circles of the nation; there were no wrongs to avenge, no sufferings to requite; the harsher aspect of the struggle had not yet come. There was only the exaltation of fighting for one's country, the pathos of saying good-by, the hope of glory, the glow of facing untried dangers. The boys left their classes in Harvard and Yale, the farmers, mechanics and artisans left their work, the clerks laid down their bargains on the counter, the merchant raised a company or a regiment and put himself at its head. Gentlemen of elegant leisure found at last the opportunity for action which they had missed all their lives, without knowing what ailed them; ne'er-do-weels and black sheep started for the front with a determination to prove that there was stuff in them after all. They all went into camp green, ignorant, loose, awkward; the men were independent and free-and-easy; the officers, men of education and refinement, unused to the exigencies of military discipline, asked their rank and file (with many of whom perhaps they had been acquainted in the walks of peace) to "please step this way"; "kindly present arms," and so on. But such softness wore off before long; and when the first three-monthsmen came back to their native villages, they were hardly recognizable for the gawky citizens who had gone forth so lately; their figures were wiry and erect, their lean faces were tanned by the summer suns of Virginia, they walked in pairs or threes with the long, springy, measured step of war; they were now disciplined soldiers, who had shot and been shot at, had faced death, had obeyed orders, had made a part of battles. The difference was wonderful, and it never wore away. The familiar village was not the same village any more. Many who marched forth returned no more forever; those who came back were changed; there were empty places in almost every household, as the years went by ; and the family group round the hearth, if it were still full, never looked the same as before; there was another spirit, another feeling in it. And everywhere you saw the badge of mourning; women, old and young, in black gowns, with crape veils; it was a sight so common that one ceased to notice it. And the talk was all of campaigns, battles, generals, captains, regiments, charges, retreats, victories, defeats. The war-correspondents of that day were few, but the news-papers were absorbing reading nevertheless; and they had news to tell. There were the black headlines; the columns of terse narrative; the list of dead and wounded—but these soon had to be given up, save for the names of leading officers; what should a newspaper do with the losses of forty and fifty thousand which some of the great battles brought? Short or long, those lists of dead, wounded and missing were as trying to the women's hearts at home as was the charge that caused them to the soldiers who faced the guns. Yes, far more trying; for the charge was made in hot blood and fierce excitement, with glory to win and only one's own death to face; but the lists were read at home; cold and trembling fingers held the paper; the eyes were painfully strained, the lips were parted, the cheeks pale; and the heart stood still or leaped by turns. There was no excitement to sustain the wife or mother; no glory to gain; and the death, if it came, came not to her, but to him she loved best. No adequate history could ever be written of the women of the Civil War; but it is strange indeed that no great sculptor or architect has been commissioned to erect some mighty monument, to commemorate forever in enduring marble and bronze her heroism, her sacrifices, and her achievements.

The Union army must concentrate at Washington, and thence proceed to the defense of the line along the Potomac and the Ohio which marked the boundary between South and North. For the capture of Sumter had added to the Southern array the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas and Tennessee. The western, mountainous part of Virginia was finally saved to the North, after several sharp battles had been fought there; Kentucky also remained loyal, Missouri too, and the new free state of Kansas. The Confederacy, therefore, was bounded on the north by the old Compromise line of 1820, and included Texas as its western frontier. The North held all the rest; but practically, the states involved in active war on the Northern side were less in area than those on the South. On the other hand, the North surpassed the South in wealth and population, and in means of sustaining a long conflict. The City of Washing-ton, lying as it did on the borders of Virginia, was in danger of Southern attack, and its defense was the first problem of the war; coupled with that, was the attack on Richmond. The true theory of tactics for the North, however, was not to capture Richmond, for although that was the Capital of the Confederacy, its possession was not vital to their cause, as that of Washington might have been to the North. And since it would be impossible within our limits to follow this war in detail, it seems advisable here at the outset to give an outline of the entire contest. The story of the strategy of modern battles, however edifying to the expert, goes in at one ear and out of the other of the unmilitary reader; the latter can appreciate the description of a charge, the heroism of a siege, the sublimity of a forlorn hope; but the details of maneuvers in the field are more than he can digest. To comprehend the general plan of a whole war is less difficult, and to the student of history far more important.

The South hoped for victory on two grounds : first, because the North had no practice in war—for the trifling operations by land of the war of 1812 were hardly worth considering, besides that all who took part in them were already gone to their reward; the only considerable battle had been at New Orleans, and in that the South had borne the chief share. The Mexican war, again, had been fought mainly by Southern troops; and the South had ever since been engaged, unofficially, in border raids and filibustering expeditions, which had kept her familiar with the idea of war, and ready to take part in any fighting that came her way. She felt, therefore, the same sense of superiority over the North that a boxer does over a man, bigger perhaps than he, but uninstructed in the art of self-defense.

In the second place, the South trusted that no long time would pass after the outbreak of hostilities before Europe would intervene in her favor. For she supplied Europe with cotton and tobacco, and the old world would not long submit to be deprived of these necessities, as must happen were the war prolonged. The rest of the earth, in short, could get along without the aid of the northern states of the Union, but not without the Confederacy; and when England or France, or both, put their weight into the scale, the North must yield, even were she not beaten already.—All this was counting chickens before they were hatched, and, as it turned out, had the usual fate of such optimism; but it gave the South a hardihood which she might else have lacked, which plunged her into the war so deep that there was no getting out ' except by the surrender which was inevitable upon her complete exhaustion.

As for the North, she believed that she would conquer by dint of her superior strength, wealth and lasting powers; she was far from estimating at its true value the resistance and vigor of the South, or the depth of feeling which attached her to her cause. She thought her fickle and easily discouraged, and she doubted not that when a few months had proved to her the futility of struggling against a resolute and stern adversary, she would be glad to come back, a repentant prodigal. So large a miscalculation on the part of both South and North goes to show how little the two sections knew of each other; lack of common interests had bred ignorance. They were far better strangers now than they were when the struggles with England came to an end. But they were in a fair way to remedy this deficiency.

The area of the Confederacy, geographically regarded, divides into three parts, like Caesar's Gaul; the dividing lines being the Mississippi River, and the Alleghany Mountains. Of these three, that west of the Mississippi, comprising Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, may be left out of consideration, for it was not the object of Northern strategy and its population was relatively small. This we may call the "right region," looking at it from the north. The "left region" is that between the Alleghanies or Appalachian range and the Atlantic, comprising Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia—all seacoast states, and able from their position to menace Washington. Along the whole coast line as far south as Pensacola (where the North, thanks to Captain Slemmer, still held Fort Pickens), the South, at the outbreak of the war, was mistress of every fortification. This gave her an advantage which it cost the North much fighting and many lives to counteract. The "middle region" is the great sloping plain between the Appalachian range and the Mississippi, containing Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and the western extremities of some of the eastern states. This was where most of the grand maneuvering of the war took place; it was the heart of the Confederacy, and was attacked and defended as such.

The town of Memphis, on the Mississippi, and Charleston, on the coast of South Carolina, were united by a line of rail-way; and at Chattanooga, at the east of Tennessee among the mountains, another road branched off in a northeast direction, and terminated in Richmond. Chattanooga, therefore, was a point of vital strategic importance; for this Memphis-Charleston-Richmond railroad was the only one connecting the west with the east of the Confederacy. If the North could seize and hold Chattanooga, the Confederacy would be cut in twain, to its serious detriment. Recognizing this, the North made the town the object of attack, and the South bent her energies to protecting it. This she did by defending a military line between one and two hundred miles to the north of the railway. One end of this line was at Columbus on the Mississippi, a little below the junction with it of the Ohio; the other or eastern end was at Bowling Green, in Warren County, Kentucky, some two hundred miles east of Columbus. This military line passed through Forts Henry and Donelson, midway on its route. A large river, the Tennessee, flows southward from the Ohio, until it reaches the Memphis-Charleston railway; it then turns to the east, following the railway line.

Now, Kentucky being a Northern state, the Union army, to attack the Columbus-Bowling Green line to the best ad-vantage, would descend upon it by way of the Ohio, Mississippi and Tennessee rivers, capturing Forts Henry and Donelson; and after breaking the line, would march south-east through Tennessee to Chattanooga. Thereby not only would the Confederacy be divided, but the Mississippi would be opened. The Confederate armies in Virginia would be between two Union armies, one threatening them from Chattanooga, the other by way of the North via Richmond. This strategy should be the key of the whole war, to which everything else would be subsidiary. The Confederate forces in the east could be attacked in detail, and Richmond would fall of itself. As the South had no navy, the Atlantic coast and the gulf could be blockaded, and with the Mississippi in Northern hands, she would inevitably be squeezed to death.—But it was some time before this general view of the situation was taken.

The first idea of the North was to capture Richmond : "On to Richmond," to the ordinary apprehension, seemed to be the cry that meant immediate victory. The attempt to reach Richmond, which would have been of minor value had it succeeded, was rendered impossible by the first great battle of the war, in which the two armies met at Bull Run in Virginia, with the result that the Northerners were stampeded, and thrown back in dire confusion upon Washington. The North was thereby admonished that this war was to be no hundred-days affair; and under McClellan as commander-in-chief an army of two hundred thousand men was carefully drilled during the fall and winter. By February they were ready to move, or at all events Stanton, the Secretary of War, thought they were, and General Grant performed the task of ascending the Tennessee River and capturing Forts Henry and Donelson. This exploit was accomplished on the 16th of February, 1862, and gave the North control of Kentucky and most of Tennessee, though the Mississippi was not yet clear. The South failed to re-capture these points, being finally defeated in the attempt by the defeat at Murfreesboro on the last day of the year. But the war was still only at its beginning. The South suffered seriously this year from the blockade of her ports, which prevented her from selling her cotton, and thus obtaining the sinews of war. But neither McClellan, Pope nor Burnside was able to take Richmond. On the 22d of September Lincoln announced that from January 1st, 1863, all slaves in the seceded states would be declared free. Thus the second year of the war ended with no conclusive advantage on either side; but the South was straitened by the blockade and by Grant's successes, and had acted hitherto on the defensive.

The year 1863 gave the South several successes, though they were not so important as they appeared. General Lee, aided by storms, turned back Burnside in his attempt on Richmond, and almost annihilated Hooker's great army at Chancellorsville, in May. Galveston was retaken by the Confederates, while Banks failed at Port Hudson, Dupont in his naval attack on Charleston, and Southern cruisers did immense injury to Northern commerce. Lee, after destroying Hooker, advanced into Pennsylvania, and met Meade at Gettysburg. They fought for three days, the greatest battle of the war, and Lee was defeated and thrown back. The next day, July 4th, Grant received the surrender of Vicksburg, and the Mississippi, in the words of Lincoln, "ran unvexed to the sea."

After the surrender of Vicksburg, Grant won a battle at Chattanooga, which ended the conflict for that region; and in March of the year 1864 he was raised to the chief command of all the Union armies. Under his direction, the war was brought to a close with a series of masterly maneuvers worthy of the highest military genius. He left Sherman, whose worth he knew, to dispose of the Confederate force in Georgia; he devoted his own attention to the problem of overthrowing Lee in Virginia. Lee was his peer in the science of war, but the forces of which Grant was able to dispose were greater, and their steadiness was invincible. After a series of engagements lasting for more than a year, Grant at length planted the Stars and Stripes on the walls of Richmond, almost five years to a day after the first shot fired at Sumter. Sherman, coming up from his march through Georgia, had prevented Lee's junction with Johnston's army in North Carolina, and forced his surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House on the 9th of April. Johnston surrendered to Sherman two weeks later, and the final capitulations had taken place by the end of May. Such were the leading features of the Civil War; and though the agony and exhaustion inflicted upon the South were severe, she bravely and honorably accepted the issue of the hazard she had tempted. She might have maintained a harassing guerrilla warfare indefinitely; but the South were a civilized, not a barbarous, people; they had done their best and their utmost; there was no disgrace in their defeat; and they manfully faced its consequences. The leaders, however, were unwilling to give the guarantees which the North required against any future renewal of the war; and the result was the passage, two years after the war closed, of the Reconstruction Act, which divided ten Southern states into five military districts with Union army officers in command. These states could not resume their regular place in the Union until, in the words of the Act, a convention of delegates "elected by the male citizens of whatever race, color or previous condition" should frame a constitution, which being ratified by the people and approved by Congress, should go into operation; and the legislature there-upon elected should adopt the fourteenth amendment—which secured to freedmen the right of citizenship, declared the validity of the national debt, and regulated the basis of representation, and disqualification from office.

It is not surprising that some years passed before this ultimatum was accepted by all the states; the stumbling-block, of course, being the stipulation that the emancipated slaves should be entitled to vote. Indeed, the policy of this step is still open to question. White men, especially South-ern white men, can never submit to negro domination; but if, as might easily happen, the negroes in a district outnumbered the whites, and chose to elect negroes to office, the whites must either submit or rebel. As a matter of fact it has usually happened that the negroes in the South have either been kept from the polls, or their votes have been cast under white direction; and the relations of the white and black races in the Southern states are in many respects unsatisfactory. Yet if the negro in the South is neither to be a citizen nor a slave, his position is anomalous, and open to another class of objections.

We will now proceed to fill in the above outline with some details. Missouri and Kentucky, as has been said, did not join the Confederacy; but their attitude led to some interesting complications. In Kentucky, the governor and civil officers were mainly Southern sympathizers; but inasmuch as the people were fairly divided, it was determined that the state should remain neutral during the war, affording succor to neither side, and operating against neither. This singular stand, which might be regarded as secession in another form, was maintained for nearly a year. But at the first opportunity, the Uinon party in the state contrived to elect a loyal legislature; and when, in September, 1861, General Polk, of the Confederates, moved his army into Kentucky, resolutions were passed declaring his act to be a violation of neutrality, and Kentucky declared herself a Union state. This put an end to the strange spectacle of enlistments for South and North going on in the same towns ; and it was a severe loss to the Confederacy.

In Missouri the course of events was different. Here the Southern sympathizers predominated; but the Union class, the majority of whom were Germans, were the more alert and energetic; and they had the benefit of being led by two men—Frank P. Blair and Captain Nathaniel Lyon—who possessed phenomenal strength and ability. Blair attended to the political matters, while Lyon managed the military maneuvers. Blair combined the Union men with the neutrals with such effect that the secessioinsts found it impossible to elect delegates to a convention which had been called to discuss the question of leaving the Union. But when Lincoln's call for seventy-five thousand men was made, the state governor, Jackson, refused to supply men for an "unholy crusade" whose objects were "inhuman and diabolical" ; though he did not scruple at the same time to raise and drill men with a view to their joining the Confederate army. Blair, on the other hand, raised a force of "Home Guards"; and these two forces were drilling at the same time under the flag of the United States. Neither party, however, had arms; and both plotted to seize the arsenal. Jackson secretly sent to the Confederate government for cannon, which were promised him; but Lyon, meanwhile, obtained the appointment of commander of the arsenal, and immediately issued arms to the Home Guards. A few days later he happened to be on the levee when the cases containing the can-non arrived, labeled "marble." Their appearance was suspicious, and following them up to their destination in Jackson's camp, he discovered the truth. The next day he led his men against the camp, in spite of the misgivings of many of his party, and captured it without a struggle. As he was marching back with his prisoners he was attacked by the mob, and fired at; his men returned the fire and killed or wounded twenty. He followed up this exploit by seizing St. Louis, the governor and state officials taking flight; and all further efforts to carry the state out of the Union ceased. Lyon was a veteran of the Mexican war, and a man of iron decision; and his service in saving Missouri at this early and important stage was of incalculable value.

The month following the surrender of Fort Sumter passed by with no shots fired, but in active preparation on both sides. The Southern troops were collecting in northern Virginia around the village of Manassas, about thirty miles from Washington; they blocked the Potomac, threw up fortifications, and laid plans for a forward movement. Finding themselves unmolested, they advanced their lines so far that President Lincoln, looking from the windows of the White House with a glass, could see their flag waving across the river. Winfield Scott was in command at Washington, and there were upward of twelve thousand troops in Washing-ton; but the old general hoped the "revolt" would presently subside, and was reluctant to invade Virginia while any hope of peace remained.

But when, on the 23d of May, it became known that General Lee was laying out works on Arlington Heights, commanding the city, Scott ordered his troops across the river. The advance was in three divisions, the third being led by Ellsworth's Zouaves, which seized the town of Alexandria, the population of which was secessionist. A secession flag was flying from the roof of the hotel. Taking one or two men with him, Ellsworth entered the hotel, intending. to lower the flag; on the second landing he was confronted by a man with a shotgun loaded with buckshot, who fired at him at close range, not only sending the charge through his heart, but forcing with it Ellsworth's gold badge inscribed "Non nobis sed pro patria." Ellsworth fell dead; one of his companions shot his slayer through the head and bayoneted him. Ellsworth was one of the most conspicuous of the young leaders of the North; he was a magnificent athlete, and his Zouaves were all picked men. The incident made a deep impression on the country, and both Ellsworth and the man who had killed him were regarded as martyrs by the opposing sections. The Union outposts seized Mount Vernon, the home of Washington, and Arlington House, the residence of Robert E. Lee; the site of the latter is now a military cemetery, in which repose the bones of sixteen thousand Uinon soldiers.

Meanwhile Fortress Monroe, at the end of the peninsula formed by York and James Rivers, was occupied by Union troops under General Butler; but the Confederates threw up earthworks to shut them in, using great numbers of slaves for the purpose. Some of these escaping into the fortress, their owners demanded them back, on the ground that rights of property were to be respected. But Butler informed the Southern gentlemen that although property was to be respected, war material did not fall under that category; the negroes, having been employed in building fortifications, were war material, and as such "contraband of war." Therefore they would not be returned. This bit of reasoning caught the popular fancy, and the Southern negro was a "contraband" in the common speech thenceforth. The government also accepted Butler's ruling as good in law, and in future all negroes who came within the Union lines were declared free. They were in the same category with sandbags and picks, blunderbusses and mortars.

The peninsula afforded a direct road to Richmond, and in order to clear it Butler ordered an advance in two columns, from Hampton and Newport News, to surprise General Magruder at Great Bethel. Signals were devised by which the two columns should recognize each other when they formed their junction. But the officer commissioned to impart these signals to the Newport News column forgot to do so, and the consequence was that it was fired upon by that from Hampton. The mistake was soon discovered, but the firing had alarmed Magruder and put him on his guard, and the Union troops, weary with their night march, were repulsed from his works, losing fifty men, among them young Theodore Winthrop, a descendant of the famous Winthrops of Boston. For the second time in the short course of this war death had showed that he loved a shining mark.

The early actions of the war were little more than skirmishes, and showed only that the troops on both sides were brave, and that they were unfamiliar with the operations of war. The passes of the mountains of north and west Virginia were held by the Confederates, and as they afforded access to the interior of the state, McClellan determined to capture them. Detaching Rosecranz to march to the rear of the enemy's position on Rich Mountain, he prepared to engage in front; Rosecranz found General Pegram with two thousand men opposed to him; but after some irregular fighting he captured his positions, and compelled his retreat; and Garnett, finding his rear thus exposed, followed him, pursued by McClellan. Pegram was killed, and Garnett surrendered; and West Virginia was thenceforward free from Confederate armies. But the fear which McClellan had expressed, in his address to his troops, that they "would not find foemen worthy of their steel," was premature. McClellan was destined to hold another opinion of South-ern soldiers before long.

The evil of short terms of enlistment was now once more exemplified in our experience. Most of the seventy-five thou-sand men called out by Lincoln had enlisted for three months, and their term was nearly up, yet nothing had been done. Nothing, that is, that the people could recognize; for it seems to the uninstructed observer that troops drilling in camp are idle. The general officers were of course aware that drill is an indispensable preliminary to effective work in the field; and to the cry of "On to Richmond" they replied that they could not lead an undisciplined army on such an enterprise with any reasonable chance of success. But the clamor did not cease; and Lincoln and Scott were at length obliged to attempt something. And there was an operation which it seemed not too rash to undertake.

The railroad from Richmond and that from the Shenandoah Valley to the west, met at Manassas Junction in Virginia, five-and-thirty miles south of the Potomac. It was the key to the railway system of the state, and was held by the Confederates under General Beauregard, with an advance line along the brook known as Bull Run. The Con-federates at this point numbered twenty-five thousand; but in the Shenandoah Valley was Johnston, with ten thousand more. He, however, was confronted at Harper's Ferry by Patterson, with double his number; so the chance of his being able to re-enforce Beauregard seemed remote. Macdowell was ordered to attack Beauregard with thirty thou. sand men. There was considerable delay in getting together the war material and supplies, and Confederate spies kept the Southern generals apprised of what was doing. Of this information they made excellent use.

Patterson was a soldier of 1812, and not proficient in the later developments of warlike science; but he had for some time been urging Scott to let him attack Johnston, and Scott finally gave him permission. He advanced accordingly, expecting a fierce resistance; but to his astonishment found the works empty and the guns spiked. Suspecting a ruse, he became exceeding cautious; and when Macdowell was ready to make his movement on Manassas Junction, and Scott wrote to Patterson to engage Johnston in order to prevent his re-enforcing Beauregard, Patterson delayed, and finally retreated, intending another maneuver. But Johnston was far more than his match in strategy; and was on his way to join Beauregard while Patterson was imagining that he had him in a trap.

On the 15th of July Macdowell, with his enormous train of impedimenta, was ready to move; and Beauregard, through a spy, was informed of the number of men who were to be led against him, and of the precise hour at which they would set out. They left Washington, in fact, on the night of the 16th, and advanced as if going to a picnic; it was impossible to keep order in the ranks ; the scouts did not know their duty, and the officers had little control. They reached Fairfax Court House by noon of the 17th, and spent the night there in a frolic, looting several of the abandoned houses; some of them paraded the streets in women's clothes. At nine the next morning they were at Centreville, where a battle was expected. The Confederates had their base at Manassas Junction, and their advance line on Bull Run; the stream is sluggish, the country rolling and lightly timbered. Twenty thousand Confederates were posted along the winding course of the stream behind earthworks, extending eight miles. There were seven fords and one bridge to be defended. The obvious course for Macdowell to adopt was to outflank his enemy, and this he prepared to do on the south. His position at Centreville, on the north, was intended to hide his purpose. But his engineers reported that the southern or right flank could not be turned, and the plan had to be altered to turn the left flank. Meanwhile General Tyler, sent forward to reconnoiter, but with orders not to bring on a general engagement, disobeyed his instructions so far as to start up a lively and quite useless little battle at Blackburne's ford; after losing sixty men he retired, leaving the Confederates with the elation of victory. The night passed with nothing done; but Johnston was marching at full speed to reinforce Beauregard, Macdowell flattering himself that he was safe in Patterson's grasp. It was not until Saturday, July 20th, that the engineers reported the ford passable; in the interval a regiment and a battery whose term had expired turned their backs on the enemy, and, in spite of the entreaties of Macdowell, marched back to Washington. Such are the incredible poltrooneries occasionally to be seen in war.

Macdowell's plan was now made—an attack on the right flank at Blackburne's ford; a feint at the center, and the main attack, under Macdowell, was to proceed by night to Sudley's ford on the left flank, and crumple up the enemy's line. This latter movement was accomplished, though the troops, unused to marching, spent two or three hours longer than had been calculated on the route, and were exhausted by their efforts. But the attack on the center had not been strong enough to deceive Evans, who commanded the Confederates at that point, and when he was apprised of the movement against the flank, he left the ford and faced it, holding the Federals until he was re-enforced. But by this time the engagement had become general, and there was a good deal of confusion on both sides among soldiers unaccustomed to battle; the Union men, upon the whole, slowly forcing back the Confederates. Presently the retreat became a rout, and men who had fought bravely and steadily an hour before were running in something like panic, too bewildered to respond to the frantic efforts of their officers to rally them. Everywhere was smoke, and the roaring and rattling of guns, and great bodies of men in motion. The day seemed lost to the Confederates.

But a brigade of troops, five regiments and a couple of batteries, had just arrived from the Shenandoah Valley, and were drawn up in line across the turnpike along which General Bee's brigade was retreating in confusion. In front of the line stood its commander. "They are beating us back!" cried Bee, galloping up to him. "Very well, sir, we'll give them the bayonet," replied Jackson, composedly. "See!" yelled Bee to his men: "there stands Jackson like a stone wall !" It was a famous word, and gave the then almost unknown commander his title.

The flying men rallied on the colors; Beauregard and Johnston came up; the Federal advance was checked. There was an interval during which both armies remained in position; but the Confederates had now learned that the main attack was on their left, and they were concentrating there. In a wood covering the crest of a hill they formed in strength, and their batteries began to shell the Federals below. Macdowell had to face a body of troops now equal in numbers to his own, many of them fresh, and strongly intrenched. He sent Rickett's and Griffin's batteries to open fire, but they were insufficiently supported, and the enemy's fire was masked by the woods. They would have maintained their positions, however, had they not at that juncture been attacked by a regiment coming up on their right, which were mistaken for Federals until they discharged their muskets pointblank into Griffin's battery.. This regiment, under Kirby Smith, had just arrived from the Shenandoah, and their action settled the fortunes of the battle. The men supporting the batteries became panic stricken and fled, the Zouaves among them. The deserted guns were seized by a Virginia regiment. But a regiment from Michigan recaptured them. Meanwhile the effort to carry the hill still continues and more than once almost succeeded; but at the critical moment the attackers are driven back; and they are weakening while the others are constantly gaining strength. For four or five hours the assault was kept up; then, gradually, the Union army began to crumble to pieces. The want of discipline again made it-self felt, and now disastrously. Regimental orgainzations were lost; squads and individuals stopped fighting and walked off to the rear. Officers lost their men, and men their officers. There was no panic or stampede, but the Union army was steadily melting away. The Confederates did not know they had won a victory, and for a time the Federals did not think themselves beaten; but that impression finally gained upon them, and then they began to re-treat in earnest. They were not pursued ; they had not been defeated; but they ran, with ever-increasing good will. As evening drew on, a scene was witnessed such as had seldom before been seen in warfare. A great throng of sight-seeing non-combatants had come out from Washington in the rear of the army, to witness the defeat of the "rebels." These turned tail at the first alarm, and streamed headlong north-ward. All things that could retard flight were thrown aside, and the ground was encumbered with the most grotesque heterogeny of articles imaginable, from champagne bottles and note-books to cannon and brass horns. This headlong horde, pursued only by itself, converged toward a narrow suspension bridge over the stream called Cub Run, and there a terrible jam occurred; and to make it worse, a shell from a Confederate battery, which had been posted to command this bridge, exploded on an artillery wagon which had reached the middle of the bridge, and wrecked it there, blocking the way for all who followed. Here, accordingly, was a vast assortment of plunder for the surprised Confederates to pick up the next day. Onward poured the endless mob in a dismal flood; it had been very sultry during the day, and the yellow dust kicked up by the marching thousands hung in the air, and was mixed with the smoke of powder and the grime of the powder itself in the skins of the unhappy ones. A drizzling rain which set in on the Sunday night achieved what had seemed impossible in making the general misery greater. Such a draggle-tailed, wretched, shame-faced, exhausted, sleepy, disorganized and demoralized multitude of tramps as poured into Washington all the next day was never seen before. The dismay caused by their appearance (except among the numerous sympathizers with the South who dwelt in the city and ill concealed their triumph) was profound. It seemed as if the Union had gone to pieces, and the Con-federates would presently come whooping down Pennsylvania Avenue. It was not quite so bad as that, however. Macdowell had succeeded in partly checking the rout at Centreville, and the brigades of Richardson and Blenker, which had been in reserve as a rear guard, formed in good order behind the fugitives and kept off the half-hearted pursuit of the enemy's cavalry. Indeed, it would have put the fugitives in much better conceit with themselves had a real pursuit taken place; they could not have run faster, and it would have helped them to explain to curious inquirers the reasons of their flight.

But all things have an end, and the retreat of the Union army was over at last. Jefferson Davis, on the battlefield, was declaring that "we have won a glorious but dear-bought victory." In truth it was neither dear-bought nor glorious; for the total losses on the Confederate side were but three hundred and eighty killed and a little over a thousand wounded, out of thirty thousand troops engaged; and the Federals had lost little more, except the fourteen hundred prisoners captured. The victory, moreover, turned out to be rather to the advantage of the Union than of the Confederacy; since the latter jumped to the conclusion that one Southerner was a match for five Northerners; while the Northerners perceived that they had no summer picinc before them, but a real war with men who could fight, and made their preparations accordingly. A new call for men was issued, and Congress voted five hundred million dollars to continue the war. The South, on the contrary, thinking the war over, lost thousands of men who returned to their homes from the front; and the Southern cities began disputing as to which of them should be the seat of the government, which was now believed to be finally established.