History of the United States, v.3, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 15, Part 2: Robert E. Lee through Second Uprising of the North

The Confederates had an advantage in that Robert E. Lee espoused their cause; to some extent appreciated at the time, this in reality was an advantage beyond computation. Had he followed the example of Scott and Thomas, and remained in service under the old flag, in active command of the army of the Potomac, how differently might events have turned out!

Lee, now fifty-four years old, his face exhibiting the ruddy glow of health and his head without a gray hair, was physically and morally a splendid example of manhood. Able to trace his lineage far back in the mother-country, he had the best blood of Virginia in his veins. The founder of the Virginia family, who emigrated in the time of Charles I., was a cavalier in sentiment; "Light-horse Harry" of the Revolution was the father of Robert E. Lee. Drawing from a knightly race all their virtues, he had inherited none of their vices. Honest, sincere, simple, magnanimous, forbearing, refined, courteous, yet dignified and proud, never lacking self-command, he was in all respects a true man. Graduating from West Point, his life had been exclusively that of a soldier, yet he had none of the soldier's bad habits. He used neither liquor nor tobacco, indulged rarely in a social glass of wine, and cared nothing for the pleasures of the table. He was a good engineer, and under General Scott had won distinction in Mexico. The work that had fallen to his lot he had performed in a systematic manner and with conscientious care. "Duty is the
____________
1 Century War Book, vol. i. p. 97.

sublimest word in our language," he wrote to his son. Sincerely religious, Providence to him was a verity, and it may be truly said he walked with God.

A serious man, he anxiously watched from his station in Texas the progress of events since Lincoln's election. Thinking "slavery as an institution a moral and political evil,"1 having a soldier's devotion to his flag and a warm attachment to General Scott, he loved the Union, and it was especially dear to him as the fruit of the mighty labors of Washington. Although believing that the South had just grievances due to the aggression of the North, he did not think these evils great enough to resort to the remedy of revolution, and to him secession was nothing less. "Still," he wrote, in January, 1861, "a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. ... If the Union is dissolved and the government is disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defence, will draw my sword on none."2 Summoned to Washington by his chief, Lee had arrived there a few days before the inauguration of Lincoln, and he had to make the decision, after the bombardment of Sumter and the President's call for troops, whether he should serve the national government or Virginia. The active command of the federal army with the succession to the chief place was virtually offered to him,3 but, with his notion of state rights and his allegiance to Virginia, his decision, though it cost him pain to make it, could have been no other than it was. He could not lead an army of invasion into his native State, and after the ordinance of secession had been passed by the Virginia convention he resigned his position and accepted the command of the Virginia forces.4
_____________
1 Letter of December 27, 1856, Life of Lee, Long, p. 83.
2 Life of Lee, Long, p. 88.
3 Ante.
4 See letter to General Scott, April 20; also to his sister, same date, Life

Northern men may regret that Lee did not see his duty in the same light as did two other Virginians, Scott and Thomas, but censure's voice upon the action of such a noble soul is hushed. A careful survey of his character and life must lead the student of men and affairs to see that the course he took was, from his point of view and judged by his inexorable and pure conscience, the path of duty to which a high sense of honor called him. Could we share the thoughts of that high-minded man as he paced the broad pillared veranda of his stately Arlington house, his eyes glancing across the river at the flag of his country waving above the dome of the Capitol, and then resting on the soil of his native Virginia, we should be willing now to recognize in him one of the finest products of American life. For surely, as the years go on, we shall see that such a life can be judged by no partisan measure, and we shall come to look upon him as the English of our day regard Washington, whom little more than a century ago they delighted to call a rebel. Indeed in all essential characteristics Lee resembled Washington, and had the great work of his life been crowned with success or had he chosen the winning side, the world would have acknowledged that Virginia could in a century produce two men who were the embodiment of public and private virtue.

The contemplation of Lee's course at the parting of the ways has another lesson for us of the North: it should teach us to regard with the utmost charity other officers in the army and men in civil life who either did not believe in the constitutional right of secession or in the expediency of exercising it, yet who deemed it the path of duty to follow the fortunes of their States when they, in the parlance of the day, resumed their full sovereign powers.1
_______________
of Lee, Cooke, p. 29. Most of this characterization of Lee and many of the facts I have drawn from the biographies of Lee by Long and Cooke; see, also, Recollections of a Rebel, by George Cary Eggleston. 1 In a thoughtful article in the Atlantic Monthly for January, 1892, Professor Basil L. Gildersleeve refers to an expression in private conversation

"The loss of Stephen A. Douglas at this crisis must be regarded as a national calamity," wrote Greeley, while Douglas was lying on his death-bed in Chicago.1 Leaving Washington soon after pledging his support to the President, he had on his way home spoken words of wise and pure patriotism to the citizens of Wheeling, to the people of Columbus, and to the legislature of his own State. The last time that he addressed his countrymen from the platform, always a labor of love, was on his arrival, the 1st day of May, at Chicago, when a concourse of all parties met him at the depot and escorted him to the wigwam in which Lincoln had been nominated, now, as then, crowded with ten thousand people. In his emphatic way Douglas declared: "There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots—or traitors. ... It is a sad task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war, but sad as it is, bloody and disastrous as I expect it will be, I express it as my conviction before God that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally round the flag of his country." 2 His work, however, was done. Worn out and sick, he took to his bed to die. His last thoughts were of his country; his dying message to his sons came with a full voice. "Tell them," he said," to obey the laws and support the Constitution of the United States."3 With all his fail
______________
of Lowell's "touching Lee's course in turning against the government to which he had sworn allegiance," and he shows that he himself, who served in the Confederate army, regards Thomas much in the same light as Lowell did Lee. We must not, however, ignore that many Southerners have paid feeling tributes to Lincoln. A noteworthy one was the Phi Beta Kappa poem of Maurice Thompson, read at Cambridge, June 29, 1893.
1 New York Tribune, June 1.
2 Ibid., June 13 ; for an abstract of his speech at Columbus, ibid., April 26; his speech at Springfield, ibid., May 1; Chicago Tribune, June 6; his remarks at Bellaire, Ohio, Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Rumors and Incidents, p. 41; his last public letter, May 10, Ibid., vol. ii., Docs., p. 126. For a graphic account of his impromptu speech at Columbus, article of J. D. Cox, Century War Book, vol. i. p. 86.
3 Chicago Journal, cited by Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. L, Rumors

failings he lacked not patriotism. His ambition had wrecked himself and his party; but he had done much to retrieve his great error, and the nation, in sorrowing at his loss, forgot the Kansas-Nebraska bill or forgave its author.1

The solidarity of Christendom is such that the nations across the water could not look on the struggle in America unmoved. The North and the South appealed to Europe, the one for sympathy, the other for material aid; and such was the connection between the English speaking peoples,2 that to each the attitude of all the rest of Europe together was unimportant compared with what they expected from England. The people of the Confederacy not only asked her assistance, but confidently believed that the want of cotton would compel her recognition of their independence and the eventual breaking of the federal blockade; 3 that
_________________
and Incidents, p. 110. My father, who was with Douglas during his last days, has often told me that this was the word he sent to his two boys, then at Georgetown college. Douglas died June 3; his age was 48.
1 Two tributes given Douglas, one from each side of Mason and Dixon's line, are worthy of recall. Greeley wrote, in Recollections of a Busy Life, p. 359, published in 1868: "Our country has often been called to mourn severe, untimely losses; yet I deem the death of Stephen A. Douglas, just at the outbreak of our great Civil War and when he had thrown his whole soul into the cause of the country, one of the most grievous and irreparable." Alexander H. Stephens wrote, in The War between the States, vol. ii. p. 421, published in 1870: "His [Douglas's] death, at the time, I regarded as one of the greatest calamities, under the dispensations of Providence, which befell this country in the beginning of these troubles."
2 " Of the whole foreign trade of the United States more than three fifths, of the foreign tonnage entering American ports more than four fifths, were contributed by this kingdom [Great Britain] and its colonies. From the Western States of the Union we drew every year large supplies of food, and from the Southern the raw material for our most important manufacture."—The Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War, Bernard, p. 122.
3 "By the end of this summer the stock of cotton and tobacco in Europe will be exhausted. Europe must have more, or witness the commencement of the most terrible of revolutions at home—a revolution arising from starvation. It is therefore a matter of compulsion that they should break through the blockade and obtain our crop under the right of their neutral flag."—Richmond Examiner, July 2. August 9 the same jour

she would not hesitate to adopt that policy when she comprehended the situation, and knew that the South offered her cotton in exchange for her manufactured goods, which would be subject only to a simple revenue tariff. Nor, indeed, in their opinion, had she a choice in the matter; for so many of her operatives were dependent for bread on a constant supply of the Southern staple that if it were not to be had a revolution would break out in Great Britain.1 "' Look out there,' a Charleston merchant said to William H. Russell, pointing to the wharf on which were piled some cotton bales; 'there's the key will open all our ports, and put us into John Bull's strong-box as well.'"2 "Rhett," Russell wrote, "is also persuaded that the Lord Chancellor sits on a cotton bale. 'You must recognize us, sir, before
________________
journal commended united voluntary withholding of cotton from the market. Action by the Confederate government would be ill advised from a diplomatic standpoint; comp. Charleston Courier of July 30. The Charleston Courier declared, September 21, "that honor and duty and policy and patriotism require that not a bale of cotton should leave a Southern port . . . until it can be exported legally and regularly after a recognition of the Confederacy." "The American crop is grown and gathered, but its proprietors threaten to withhold it from our markets."— London Times, September 19. "The Confederate States have presumed upon their monopoly so far as to make it an engine of coercion. They have declared, though perhaps without much sincerity, that they will hold back their crops and leave Europe to see what can be done without them."—Ibid., September 21. The Richmond Dispatch, October 1, 1861, expressed surprise that a single man in the South could entertain the notion "that it would be good policy to permit England to purchase the entire cotton crop." Professor Sumner says in regard to this view, which seems to have had more currency at this time in private circles than among the Confederate statesmen: "Perhaps the grandest case of delusion from the fallacy of commercial war which can be mentioned is the South in 1860. They undertook secession in the faith that 'cotton is king,' and they had come to believe that they had a means to coerce the rest of the world by refusing to sell cotton. As soon as they undertook secession their direst necessity was to sell cotton. Their error came down to them in direct descent from 1774 and Jefferson's embargo."—Alexander Hamilton, p. 65.
1 W. H. Russell's Diary, entries of April 18 and 19, pp. 118, 123; Russell's letters to the London Times, from Montgomery, May 8, Cairo, June 20. 2 Diary, p. 128.

the end of October.' "1 Jefferson Davis did not share the overweening confidence of his people. The Times correspondent, arriving at Montgomery early in May, noted his anxious expression, his "haggard, care-worn, and pain-drawn look," and set down in the diary that the Confederate President " was quite aware of the difficulty of conquering the repugnance which exists (in Europe) to slavery." 2 Benjamin, the attorney general of the Confederacy, felt sure, however, that cotton would prove to be the king over Great Britain. "All this coyness about acknowledging a slave power will come right at last," he declared with a jaunty air.3

Both the North and the South were disappointed at the action of England. Lord John Russell, the foreign minister, received unofficially the Confederate commissioners, but gave them no encouragement.4 In May the British government decided that a due regard to the commercial interests of its subjects required that it should take notice of affairs in America,5 and accordingly it issued, May 13, "The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality." "Whereas," it said, "hostilities have unhappily commenced between the government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America," it declared the "royal determination to maintain a strict and impartial neutrality in the contest between said contending parties."6 The proclamation, modelled after that issued in 1859 on the commencement of the war between Austria and France and Sardinia, with the usual
_____________
1 Russell's Diary, p. 148.
2 Ibid., pp. 173, 174; see, also, letter to the London Times, May 7.
3 Ibid., p. 176.
4 Lord Russell to Lord Lyons, May 11, British and Foreign State Papers, 1860-61, p. 186; Adams to Seward, June 14, Message and Documents, 1861, p. 104. Yancey and Mann gave Toombs, May 21, a full account of this interview, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MSS. Treasury Department.
5 Bernard, p. 129 et seq.
6 The proclamation is printed by Bernard, p. 135, and from the Gazette, in Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Docs., p. 246.

whereases, recitals of statutes, warnings, and commands—an official matter-of-course on the occasion of a war between two friendly nations—derived now great importance for the reason that its issuance and the nature of its terms were the recognition of the Confederacy as a belligerent power. To regard the Confederate States as a belligerent conflicted with the theory of the Lincoln administration that the Southerners were insurgents, and with the largely prevailing notion at the North that they should be treated as rebels and traitors; and it placed in the eyes of nations— for all the important powers of Europe substantially followed the example of Great Britain — the vessels that should accept letters of marque from the Confederate government on the level of privateers, instead of considering them pirates and the men on board amenable to punishment for piracy, as the President's proclamation of April 19 had declared them to be. By Davis's inviting applications for letters of marque, and by Lincoln's proclamation of blockade, it seemed probable to the English government that a maritime war would result;1 and the declaration of neutrality appeared necessary for the protection of British interests on the high seas as well as "an endeavor, so far as possible, to bring the management of it (i.e., 'a war of two sides') within the rules of modern civilized warfare."2 It was a decided disadvantage to the Union that the probable Confederate cruisers were at once given the quality of privateers instead of having the hand of every maritime power raised against them as pirates; but
_________________
1 Bernard, pp. 134,144 et seg.
2 Lord John Russell's statement in conversation to Adams, Adams to Seward, May 21. Russell also stated: "The fact was that a necessity seemed to exist to define the course of the government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending conflict. To that end the legal questions involved had been referred to those officers most conversant with them, and their advice had been taken in shaping the result. Their conclusion had been that, as a question merely of fact. a war existed."—Message and Documents, p. 92; see, also, Bernard, p. 127 et seg.

the English then, and have since, made out a good case.1 It was a stubborn fact that the United States had, in 1856, refused its unconditional assent to a proposition, agreed to by the larger number of civilized nations, that "privateering is and remains abolished."2 Nevertheless, the American government and people felt honestly aggrieved at this action of Great Britain. Seward wrote that the queen's proclamation was "exceptionable," on account of its being issued on the very day of the arrival in England of Charles Francis Adams, the minister to the Court of St. James appointed by President Lincoln, and also for the matter of it;3 and Adams, in a conversation with Lord John Russell, "conducted in the most friendly spirit," after hearing his assignment of the reasons for the government's course, re
_________________
1 Lord Russell, in conversation already cited and in that reported by Adams to Seward, June 14; Lord Russell to Lord Lyons, May 21, June 21, British and Foreign State Papers, 1860-61, pp. 192, 198; debate in the House of Lords, May 16. The London Times of May 15 said : "Being no longer able to deny the existence of a dreadful civil war, we are compelled to take official notice of it. . . . Our foreign relations are too extensive, the stake we hold in the commerce of the world is too vast, and, we may add, our attitude is a matter of too much importance for us to allow ourselves the gratification of saying 'Peace, when there is no peace,' so largely indulged in up to the very latest moment by the statesmen of America herself. Yes, there is war. . . . Eteocles and Polynices are confronting each other with hostile weapons, and England, like the venerable queen of Thebes, stands by to behold the unnatural combat of her children. From acknowledging the state of war the next step is to acknowledging the belligerent rights of the contending parties. ... As belligerents they are as equal in our eyes as Trojan or Tyrian was in the eyes of Queen Dido. We are bound equally to respect their blockades and equally to abstain from any act which may violate the conditions of the most impartial and undiscriminating neutrality;" see, also, Earl Russell to Adams, August 30,1865; Bernard, p. 162 et seq.; Goldwin Smith's article, "The Case of the Alabama," Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1865 ; McCarthy's History of Our Own Times, vol. ii. p. 193.
2 Bernard, chap, viii.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. iv. p. 277 et seq. On the negotiations in 1861 respecting this subject see the same and the diplomatic correspondence, printed in Message and Documents, 1861-62; also Henry Adams's article, "The Declaration of Paris, 1861," printed in his Historical Essays.
3 Seward to Adams, June 3, 8.

marked "that the action taken seemed ... a little more rapid than was absolutely called for by the occasion." 1

Northern men, feeling in every nerve that slavery was
________________
1 Adams to Seward, May 21 ; see, also, his despatch of June 14. Motley, who was well known in English society and loved it, came to America in June after an absence abroad of ten years, and wrote his wife from Washington, June 18, "Had the English declaration been delayed a few weeks or even days, I do not think it would ever have been made, and I cannot help thinking that it was a most unfortunate mistake."—Correspondence, vol. i. p. 380.

The charge that the English government was precipitate merits some attention. "It" (recognizing the Confederates as belligerents), said John Bright in the House of Commons, March 13, 1865, "was done with unfriendly haste and had this effect: that it gave comfort and courage to the conspiracy at Montgomery and Richmond, and caused great grief and irritation among that portion of the people in America most strongly desirous of maintaining amicable and friendly relations between their country and England."—Cited on p. 63 of The Case of the United States, to be laid before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva; Rogers's edition of John Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 132. Woolsey, who in the main is favorable to the English side of the dispute, writes that the advisers of the queen's proclamation "are chargeable with haste, bad judgment, and a certain unstatesmanlike indifference to results."—New Englander, July, 1869, p. 579. After a careful consideration of much of the evidence and many of the arguments, I have arrived at the conclusion that the English government was not in May actuated by any particular unfriendliness to the North. The sentiment of England and the disposition of the government at that time must not be confounded with what they were later. If we may judge by the proceedings in the House of Commons, American affairs occupied only a very small share of the attention of the ministry, and it is possible that, if the political as well as the legal points had been carefully considered, the proclamation might have been delayed, which it obviously could have been without harm to British interests. Yet those who contend earnestly for the American position will, it seems to me, find it difficult to answer two questions in a way to support their reasoning:

1. Could the Proclamation of Neutrality have been by any possibility delayed after the battle of Bull Run?

2. What greater damage resulted to the United States from having the proclamation issued May 13 instead of the 1st of August?

The American argument is strongly put by Adams in his letters to Earl Russell of April 7, May 20, and September 18,1865; and the English position is equally well maintained by Earl Russell in his replies of May 4 and August 80,1865, though not, I think, with equal consistency.

The United States "regard the concession of belligerency by Great

the single cause of the trouble, and deeming it impossible that England could shut her eyes to the patent fact that the peculiar institution was the corner-stone of the Confederacy, looked to her, on account of her honorable and praiseworthy position towards negro slavery since 1833, for generous sympathy. The apparently undue haste, therefore, with which her government placed the Confederate States on an equality with the Union as to belligerent rights was galling; and it seemed to presage the recognition of their independence at the earliest opportune moment. There is, wrote Motley from his home, June 14, "a deep and intense feeling of bitterness and resentment towards England just now in Boston. . . . The most warmhearted, England-loving men in this England-loving part of the country are full of sorrow at the attitude taken up by England. It would be difficult to exaggerate the poisonous effects produced by the long-continued, stinging, hostile articles in the Times. The declaration of Lord John Russell that the Southern privateers were to be considered belligerents, was received, as I knew and said it would be, with great indignation. . . . This, then, is the value, men say to
___________________
Britain as a part of this case [the case before the Tribunal of Arbitration at Geneva] only so far as it shows the beginning and animus of that course of conduct which resulted so disastrously to the United States." I have not been able to find anything in the opinions of the three unbiassed arbitrators which indicates that this assertion, or the argument on which it was based, added aught of strength to our case. On the contrary Count Sclopis distinctly declared, "I am far from thinking that the animus of the English government was hostile to the federal government during the war."

It is a plain inference from the arguments of two of our best authorities on international law that England's acknowledgment of the belligerent rights of the Confederacy was justifiable, R. H. Dana's note to Dana's Wheaton, § 23; Woolsey's International Law, § 180, also his article in New Englander, July, 1869. The United States Supreme Court, at its December term of 1862, decided that the President's proclamation of blockade of April 19, 1861, was "itself official and conclusive evidence to the Court that a state of war existed;" see, also, Snow's Cases of International Law, pp. xvi. 254,

me every moment, of the anti-slavery sentiment of England, of which she has boasted so much to mankind. This is the end of all the taunts and reproaches which she has flung at the United States government for being perpetually controlled by the slavery power, and for allowing its policy to be constantly directed towards extending that institution." 1 The irritation at the North came largely from the belief that the Queen's Proclamation represented an evident desire on the part of the ruling classes of Great Britain to aid the South. The sending of the Great Eastern with troops to Canada fostered this impression.2 The concession of belligerent rights to the Confederates raised their hopes, and seemed to them to imply that they had not reckoned in vain on the support of England.3
_______________
1 Correspondence, vol. i. p. 372. August Belmont, a Democrat, wrote from New York, May 28, in a similar strain, to Baron Rothschild, a member of Parliament representing the city of London, and " a very intimate friend of Lord John Russell, and on equally friendly relations with Lord Palmerston," the prime-minister. He said : "It would be difficult for me to convey to you an idea of the general feeling of disappointment and irritation produced in this country by this manifesto of the British government, by which a few revolted States are placed, in their relations with Great Britain, upon the same footing as the government of the United States. . . . England's position threatens to prolong the war by giving hope and comfort to the rebels." Belmont also speaks of "the shortsighted policy of the gentlemen of Manchester, who now allow cotton to outweigh their anti-slavery professions."—Belmont's Letters and Speeches, privately printed, pp. 36, 38. Belmont wrote, June 3, to Lord Dunfermline, of the House of Lords, who had intimate relations with Lord John Russell: "The people of the North see now revealed to them, in all their horrid nakedness, the treasonable schemes of the slavery oligarchy, who, while pretending to battle for their threatened constitutional rights," really purpose " to fasten slavery as a political element upon this country."—Ibid., p. 42. Belmont wrote, June 7, to N. M. Rothschild & Sons, London: "Lord Palmerston's organ, the Morning Post, hints at a recognition of the Southern Confederacy as a de facto government. ... It seems almost incredible to see England, the great advocate and leader of negro emancipation, give now her aid and influence to a most criminal rebellion, got up for no other purpose than that of fastening slavery not only upon our country, but also upon Mexico and Central America." See, also, his letter to Seward, June 6, ibid., p. 45.
2 Adams to Seward, June 14, 28.
3 Ibid.(June 14; Russell's Diary, entry June 18, p. 319. But Russell

It cannot be averred that at this time our Secretary of State conducted foreign affairs with tact and wisdom. His despatch of May 21, even in the shape that it reached Adams, might, in the hands of a less competent and prudent minister, have led to serious difficulty; but had it been sent as Seward first wrote it — without the modifications and suggestions of the President, with the instruction to deliver to the British foreign minister a copy of it if he continued even unofficial intercourse with the Confederate commissioners;1 menacing, as it did, Great Britain for this and her presaged acknowledgment of the Southern privateers as lawful belligerents; 2 threatening her categorically with war if she should recognize the Confederacy, and intimating that "the result of the debate in which we are engaged" may be war "between the United States and one, two, or even more European nations," in which the United States will come out of it very much better than Europe—the game would then have been in England's hands.3 To repel Seward's reckless language would be easy; to carry out the policy of acknowledging the independence of the Confederate States or of breaking the blockade, demanded by what then would have grown to be an irresistible sentiment, would have been grateful work
_______________
writes that the Southerners overestimated the value to them of the declaration.
1 At this time Seward did not know that Lord John Russell had seen the Confederate commissioners; he had told Dallas, the retiring minister, that he was not unwilling to see them unofficially. Adams wrote, June 14, that Russell said that "he had seen the gentlemen once some time ago, and once more some time since; he had no expectation of seeing them anymore."
2 The Queen's Proclamation was May 13, and, of course, Seward did not know of it when this despatch was sent. The news was published in the New York Tribune of May 25, having been received by telegram from Cape Race, from a steamship leaving Queenstown the 16th. Between the date of despatches at Washington or London and their reception a fortnight seems to have elapsed.
3 Compare the despatch as sent, Message and Documents, p. 87, and as first submitted to the President, Nicolay and Hay, vol. iv. p. 270.

for the English government. In turn, Northern public opinion might have exacted a declaration of war against Great Britain, which would also mean war with France, as the two European nations were then on a friendly footing and were acting together in American affairs.1 The infatuation of Seward is hard to understand; it shows that the notion which had prompted the "Thoughts for the President's consideration"2 still lodged in his brain, and that he dreamed that if the United States made war on England because she helped the Confederacy, the Southerners, by some occult emotional change, would sink their animosity to the North, and join with it for the sake of overcoming the traditional enemy.3 His unconcern at the prospect of serious trouble with England was not courage, but a recklessness which made him oblivious of what all discerning Northern statesmen knew—that the people devoted to the Union had undertaken quite enough, in their endeavor to preserve the nation from destruction by its internal foes. "Great Britain," Seward wrote to his wife, "is in great danger of sympathizing so much with the South, for the sake of peace and cotton, as to drive us to make war against her as the ally of the traitors. If that comes, it will be the strife of the younger branch of the British stock for freedom against the older for slavery. It will be dreadful, but the end will be sure and swift."4 It is no wonder that Thurlow Weed, his friend and mentor, apprehended that
_____________
1 Yancey and Rost to Toombs, Paris, May 10; Yancey and Mann to Toombs, London, May 21; Yancey, Rost, and Mann to Toombs, London, June 1; Yancey and Mann to Toombs, London, July 15; Yancey to Hunter, Paris, October 28, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MSS. Treasury Department.
2 Ante, p. 341.
3 This inference might be drawn from the concluding portion of his despatch to Adams of May 21, and from his private letters to Weed of May 23 and to his wife of June 5, Life of Seward, vol. ii. pp. 576, 590; see p. 342, note 2. The New York Herald of July 4 proposed that the North and South unite to wage war on England and France. The Richmond Dispatch of July 15 called it a " preposterous lunatic" suggestion,
4 Letter of May 17, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 575.

he was "too decisive" with the European powers.1 The course of Seward was all the more dangerous in that it represented the defiant sentiment of many Northern people, and one can hardly exaggerate the evil it might have brought upon us had he not been restrained by the President, whose native good sense was instructed by the intelligence and discretion of Sumner.2 It produced mischief in England, where, sympathy being divided between the North and the South, it tended to make the position of the friends of the Union more difficult to maintain. "I earnestly entreat," wrote to Sumner the Duke of Argyll, a member of the British cabinet, and thoroughly friendly to the North, " that you will use your influence and official authority to induce your government, and especially Mr. Seward, to act in a more liberal and a less reckless spirit than he is supposed here to indicate towards foreign governments, and especially towards ourselves. I find much uneasiness prevailing here lest things should be done which would arouse a hostile spirit in this country. . . I believe there is no desire stronger here than that of maintaining friendly relations with America. But there are points on which our people are very sensitive; and if they saw themselves touched on these points in honor or interest, the irritation would be extreme and could not be controlled."3 Fortunately, the position of minister to England was filled by a man who had extraordinary qualifications for the place. Charles
_____________
1 See letter to Weed, May 23, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 576. While glad Count Gurowski had been appointed private secretary to Secretary Seward, Schleiden wrote Sumner, June 5: "I feel rather uneasy in regard to the influence he will try to exercise—and, perhaps, really exercise—upon your relations with Great Britain. I think the fire already burns briskly enough in the State Department and requires no stirring."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 See Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. pp. 31,117 (Sumner was chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate); also Russell's Diary, entry of July 3, p. 377. Russell apparently had intimate relations with Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington.
3 Letter of June 4, Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 81.

Francis Adams—the selection of Seward,1 and thoroughly loyal to his chief—whose distinguished ancestry gave him especial welcome in a country where birth is highly esteemed, translated the harsh language of the Secretary of State into courteous but forcible reasoning: menace became remonstrance, and without taking a radical, or what might have proved an untenable, position, he persistently urged the claims of his government. If it be good diplomacy to see your own side of the question intensely, and your opponent's side with sufficient distinctness to repel his arguments, but not clearly enough to sympathize in the least with his standpoint, and, moreover, to present your case with candor and firmness, then Adams, in these first negotiations with Lord John Russell, showed himself a good diplomat, winning admiration from his own countrymen and respect from England.

While Adams was exhibiting our position in the most favorable light to the government and to "persons of weight in Great Britain,"1 sober second thought had come to the administration and people in America. "There has nothing occurred here," wrote Schleiden from Washington, June 5, to Sumner, "in regard to Great Britain; and the President, who last night entertained the whole diplomatic body at dinner, told me, when I alluded to these relations, in a very sensible manner, that it appeared to him as if this government had no reason to complain of any European power in this contest, all of them having, by the long-continuing want of any distinct policy on the part of the United States, been induced more or less to believe the Union weaker, and the seceded States stronger, than was really the fact. He seemed not, at least, to be apprehensive, neither was Lord Lyons."3 A leading article in the New York Tribune of June 3, when compared with preceding expressions of opinion, showed either that it was
______________
1 Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 525.
3 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS,
2 Adams, June 14

inspired in high official quarters and was an effort to lead opinion, or else that it represented a changing public sentiment. This journal argued that the "evident desire" of the western European powers to maintain amicable relations with us had not been fairly met on this side of the water;1 defending England in some measure for her recognition of the belligerent rights of the Confederate States, it excused the unofficial reception of their commissioners by Lord John Russell. Returning to the subject the following day, it said that even if Great Britain or France should open one of the blockaded ports and load a merchant fleet with cotton, we had better pocket the insult for the supreme reason of necessity, for our war with the South was a "life-and-death struggle." As the scope of the Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality came to be more clearly understood, sentiment in the Union certainly grew more favorable towards Great Britain. The letters of Belmont and of Motley, representing as they did a wide range of opinion, reflect this improved feeling.1 Motley, while in Washington, had an hour's talk with Lincoln, and he spoke out of his large knowledge of the subject with friendliness and warm sympathy of the English government and people — to good purpose, he thought.2 The President's remark in his Fourth-of-July message was a sincere expression, and stated with reasonable exactness the sentiment of the public. "The sovereignty and rights of the United States," he declared, "are now everywhere practically respected by foreign powers, and a general sympathy with the country is manifested throughout the world."

With the change of feeling towards England, opinions altered touching the treatment of the Confederates. That severe punishment should be visited upon them had been the common desire. "I have seen it placarded in the
____________
1 See Belmont's letter to Baron Rothschild of June 18; Motley's of June 33.
2 See letter of June 33.

streets of Boston," wrote George Ticknor, " that we should hang the secession leaders as fast as we can get them into our power. I have found this course openly urged in leading papers of New York and Boston. It is even said that the government at Washington is now considering the expediency of adopting it."1 No one, indeed, had seriously proposed that a traitor's doom should be meted out to the rank and file; and by the 4th of July it became apparent that prisoners taken in battle must be exchanged, and the war in other respects conducted on the same principles as war with a foreign nation. It was then seen that executions of the leaders would be revolting to humanity, and, moreover, that the Confederate States were strong enough to make reprisals. While I have not been able to trace the matter, it seems reasonable to believe that the declarations of the European powers had an influence in modifying public sentiment in this regard. Not that these declarations affected the law in the case, for legally as well as according to the popular notion the Confederates were rebels and traitors,2 but the nations of Europe expressed the opinion that they had shown sufficient strength to have conceded to them the rights of belligerents. Chase accurately described the course of the administration when, as chief-justice, he afterwards said, in a judgment delivered from the bench, "The rights and obligations of a belligerent were conceded to it [the Confederacy] in its military character very soon after the war began, from motives of
_____________
1 He added, "I have, indeed, little fear that my government, or its military chief, will seriously consider such a suggestion—none that they will adopt it."—Life of George Ticknor, vol. ii. p. 442. The New York Tribune of May 27 was specific: "Davis, Toombs, Rhett, Yancey, Mason, Stephens, Cobb, Letcher, Hunter, Benjamin, Pickens, and civilians of that class, and Twiggs, Bragg, Beauregard, Lee, Johnston, Magruder, Pillow, and soldiers like them, with thousands of other men of high repute and great influence, must succeed in this rebellion, or either sue for pardon or be put to death as traitors or flee from their native land forever."
2 According to a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States at the December term of 1862, Miller's Decisions, vol. iv. p. 876.

humanity and expediency, by the United States."1 A fair statement of Northern sentiment by the 4th of July is that, although most of the rebels would be pardoned by a gracious government, Jefferson Davis and the men captured on board of vessels bearing his letters of marque should be hanged.2

Adams wrote from London, May 31: "The feeling towards the United States is improving in the higher circles here. It was never otherwise than favorable among the people at large." 3 Of the same tenor were his despatches of a week and a fortnight later. June 1 the English government interdicted the armed ships and privateers of both parties from carrying the prizes made by them into any British ports.4 This order in its operation would hurt the Confederacy, but not the Union, which had commissioned no privateers; it caused expostulations from the Confederate agents in London, and drew from Seward the remark that "it would probably prove a death-blow to Southern privateering."5 So much pressure was brought to bear upon Gregory, a member of the House of Commons, that he withdrew, June 7, his motion "to call the attention of the
__________________
1 Wallace's Reports, Supreme Court, December, 1868, p. 10.
2 It was impossible to put this sentiment in force regarding so-called pirates. The crew of the Savannah, a Southern privateer captured June 3, were tried, but the jury was unable to agree upon a verdict. William Smith, one of the crew of the Jeff Davis, was convicted, but never executed. Retaliation was threatened by the Confederate government. The crew of the Savannah were at first put in irons, but afterwards were treated as prisoners of war, Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 10; Bernard, p. 99; Stephens's War between the States, vol. ii. p. 430; Belmont to Baron James de Rothschild, June 18: New York Tribune, June 18, 19; New York Times, June 16, cited in Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. i., Docs., p. 375; Wharton's International Law Digest, § 381.
3 Adams had heard with pleasure Lord John Russell's and Gladstone's friendly references to the United States in the House of Commons, May 30, for which see Hansard, vol. clxiii. pp. 278, 331.
4 Statement of Lord John Russell in the House of Commons, June 3, Bernard, p. 136. 5 Cited by Bernard, p. 133, and in Woolsey's International Law, § 180.

House to the expediency of the prompt recognition of the Southern Confederacy." 1 The true nature of the conflict and the embarrassment to British interests from it were at this time clearly understood by the English government. "The taint of slavery," wrote Lord Lyons from Washington, "will render the cause of the South repugnant to the feelings of the civilized world. On the other hand, commercial intercourse with the cotton States is of vital importance to manufacturing nations."2 Lord John Russell declared in the House of Commons that the trouble had "arisen from that accursed institution of slavery." 3 "The commercial protectionism of the North," wrote the Duke of Argyll to Sumner, "is doing you infinite mischief here; but still I think it is seen by the press generally and by the public that other and deeper issues are at stake in your domestic quarrel."4 "The intelligence received from the United States," wrote Adams, June 21, "of the effect produced by the reception of the Queen's Proclamation has not been without its influence upon opinion here. Whilst people of all classes unite in declaring that such a measure was unavoidable, they are equally earnest in disavowing any inferences of want of good will which may have been drawn from it. They affect to consider our complaints as very unreasonable, and are profuse in their professions of sympathy with the government in its present struggle. This is certainly a very great change from the tone prevailing when I
_______________
1 Hansard; Adams's despatch of June 14.
2 Cited in Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 546.
3 May 30, Hansard. The London Times of May 22 said: " A slave-holding community under an almost tropical sun has separated itself—perhaps unjustifiably, but still quite naturally—from the traders and shippers and mechanicians and farmers of a northern land." The London Daily News of May 22 said: "The only object the South have in separating is that slavery, hitherto limited by counteracting principles, may henceforth become sovereign, expanding itself, and pervading and moulding every institution of government." "The insolence of the slave-owners has at last produced its natural effect."—The Saturday Review, cited by New York Tribune, June 3.
4 Letter of June 4, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

first arrived. It is partly to be ascribed to the accounts of the progress of the war, but still more to the publications in the London Times of the letters of its special correspondent." 1 This is a reference to William H. Russell's graphic and impartial letters describing his journey through the Southern States, in which he told the English public in unmistakable terms that the cause of the South was the cause of the slave power.2 Nevertheless there was a divided sen
______________
1 Message and Documents, 1861-62, p. 109.
2 Russell wrote from Charleston, April 21: " The State [South Carolina] is but a gigantic Sparta, in which the helotry are marked by an indelible difference of color and race from the masters." From Montgomery, May 6, he states the position of South Carolina, "which has been the fone et origo of the secession doctrines, and their development into the full life of the Confederate States, thus : ' We hold that slavery is essential to our existence as producers of what Europe requires; nay, more, we maintain it is in the abstract right in principle; and some of us go so far as to maintain that the only proper form of society, according to the law of God and the exigencies of man, is that which has slavery as its basis.'" Under the shadow of the Capitol in which the Confederate Congress was sitting Russell had an object-lesson, which he presented to his readers in a graphic and sympathetic manner. He wrote from Montgomery, May 8 : "My attention was attracted to a group of people to whom a man was holding forth in energetic sentences. . . . 'Nine h'un'nerd and fifty dollars! Only nine h-hun'nerd and fifty dollars offered for him! 'exclaimed the man. . . . . 'Will no one make any advance on nine hundred and fifty dollars?' A man near me opened his mouth, spat, and said, 'Twenty-five.' 'Only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars offered for him! Why, 'at's radaklous—only nine hundred and seventy-five dollars! Will no one,' etc. Beside the orator auctioneer stood a stout young man of five-and-twenty years of age, with a bundle in his hand. He was a muscular fellow, broad-shouldered, narrow-flanked, but rather small in stature; he had on a broad, greasy old wide-awake, a blue jacket, a coarse cotton shirt, loose and rather ragged trousers, and broken shoes. The expression of his face was heavy and sad, but it was by no means disagreeable, in spite of his thick lips, broad nostrils, and high cheek-bones. On his head was wool instead of hair. I am neither sentimentalist nor Black Republican nor negro-worshipper, but I confess the sight caused a strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar with the fact that I could, for the sum of nine hundred and seventy-five dollars, become as absolutely the owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, flesh, and brains as of the horse which stood by my side. There was no sophistry which could persuade me the man was not a man; he was, indeed, by no means my

sentiment, and Belmont, who went to England in July, and saw, perhaps, more of commercial and financial people than did Adams, was struck at the lack of any real sympathy for
__________________
brother, but assuredly he was a fellow-creature. I have seen slave-markets in the East, but somehow or other the Orientalism of the scene cast a coloring over the nature of the sales there which deprived them of the disagreeable harshness and matter-of-fact character of the transaction before me. For Turk or Smyrniote or Egyptian to buy and sell slaves seemed rather suited to the eternal fitness of things than otherwise. The turbaned, shawled, loose-trousered, pipe-smoking merchants, speaking an unknown tongue, looked as if they were engaged in a legitimate business. One knew that their slaves would not be condemned to any very hard labor, and that they would be in some sort the inmates of the family and members of it. Here it grated on my ear to listen to the familiar tones of the English tongue as the medium by which the transfer was effected, and it was painful to see decent-looking men in European garb engaged in the work before me. Perchance these impressions may wear off, for I meet many English people who are the most strenuous advocates of the slave system, although it is true that their perceptions may be quickened to recognize its beauties by their participation in the profits. The negro was sold to one of the bystanders, and walked off with his bundle, God knows where. 'Niggers is cheap,' was the only remark of the bystanders." See, also, his letters of April 30 and May 22, the latter from New Orleans. A later letter, from Natchez, June 14, gives his further unfavorable impressions concerning slavery, and concludes by averring that if the South is successful the African slave-trade will be reopened. See article in New York World, July 30, testifying Russell's impartiality, and article of Richmond Examiner, of August 7, and of Memphis Appeal, cited by Tribune, August 13, condemning Russell.

Punch understood the meaning of the contest, and composed "The National Hymn of the Confederate States."

"When first the South, to fury fanned,
Arose and broke the Union's chain,
This was the charter, the charter of the land,
And Mr. Davis sang the strain:
Rule Slaveownia, Slaveownia rules, and raves,
Christians ever, ever, ever have had slaves.

"And trade, that knows no god but gold,
Shall to thy pirate ports repair;
Blest land, where flesh—where human flesh is sold,
And manly arms may flog that air. .. ."

the North. After an hour's interview with Lord Palmerston, he thought that the prime-minister summed up in one pithy remark the reason of the government's action and the sentiment of the public. "We do not like slavery," Palmerston said, "but we want cotton, and we dislike very much your Morrill tariff."' Adams was convinced that the de
_____________
Of state-rights Russell said, in his letter from Savannah, May 1: "To us the question is simply inexplicable or absurd." See, also, letter from Montgomery, May 7. Russell set down in his Diary, June 18 (p. 315): "Day after day . . . the impression on my mind was strengthened that 'state-rights' meant protection to slavery, extension of slave territory, and free trade in slave produce with the outer world." The London Times in a leader of May 22 said: "There can be no doubt that secession was never contemplated by the parties to the Union of 1787." And, "If the North prevails, it will prove that the Union was a nationality; if the South makes good its independence, it will prove that the Union was a partnership during pleasure ;" see a mournful article in the Richmond Examiner of July 13, to the effect that foreigners do not fully comprehend the character of the war.

1 Letter of Belmont to Seward, July 30. It must be remembered that the English had not yet the news of the battle of Bull Run. Belmont added: "I am more than ever convinced that we have nothing to hope from the sympathy of the English government and people in our struggle. Because this war is not carried on for the abolition of slavery in the Southern States, they try to maintain that the war has nothing to do with slavery; wilfully shutting their eyes to the fact that the attitude of the North with regard to introducing slavery into the territories is the main ground upon which the secessionists justify their action. As a distinguished lady, wife of a prominent liberal in Parliament, told me last evening, 'I am sorry to say we have been found wanting in the present emergency, and principles have to yield to interest.' ... I hope that by the time this reaches you our troops have been victorious in Virginia; one or two battles now will very soon change the tone and feeling of our English cousins."

Punch gave expression to the same idea:

"Though with the North we sympathize,
It must not be forgotten That with the South we've stronger ties, Which are composed of cotton.
Whereof our imports mount unto
A sum of many figures;
And where would be our calico
Without the toil of niggers?

development of an active sympathy and the gaining over of the waverers depended on military successes and an exhibition of federal strength that would seem to promise a speedy termination of the war.1 Such, then, was the sentiment of the English people when they heard the news of the battle of Bull Run.

The President, when possible, adhered literally to the provisions of the law; therefore, in his proclamation of April 15, he commanded the insurgents "to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes in twenty days." Naturally no forward movement would take place until the expiration of that time. Then the question of marching United States troops with hostile intentions into a State had to be considered. The necessities of geographical position required the advance to be made into Virginia, but she did not consummate the act of secession until May 23, the day of the popular vote on the ordinance. After that election she constituted in a complete manner one of the Confederate States, and the repossession of the Richmond custom-house came within the purview of the President's

__________
"The South enslaves those fellow-men,
Whom we love all so dearly;
The North keeps Commerce bound again,
Which touches us more nearly.
Thus a divided duty we Perceive in this hard matter:
Free-trade, or sable brothers free?
Oh, won't we choose the latter!"
_______________
1 Adams said, in his despatch to Seward of June 21: "Neither party would be so bold as to declare its sympathy with a cause based upon the extension of slavery, for that would at once draw upon itself the indignation of the great body of the people. But the development of a positive spirit in the opposite direction will depend far more upon the degree in which the arm of the government enforces obedience than upon any absolute affinity in sentiments. Our brethren in this country, after all, are much disposed to fall in with the opinion of Voltaire, that ' Dieu est toujours sur le cote des gros canons.' General Scott and an effective blockading squadron will be the true agents to keep the peace abroad, as well as to conquer one at home."—Message and Documents, p. 110.

proclamation as much as the retaking of the forts in Charleston harbor. On the administration theory of the war, an advance into Virginia was entirely proper; so, in the early morning of the 24th, the federal soldiers crossed the Potomac River, and occupied Arlington Heights and the city of Alexandria. Even this was primarily a move for the protection of the capital; while a sentiment of nationality prompted the eager desire to take possession of Alexandria, for from the windows of the Executive Mansion could be plainly seen a Confederate flag flying over its principal hotel.1 The invasion of Virginia, the pollution of her sacred soil as it was termed, called forth a vigorous proclamation from her governor and a cry of rage from her press.2 General Beauregard, then in command "of the troops in the Alexandria line," issued a proclamation which showed a strange misapprehension of the character of the Northern soldiers, unless it was conceived with the dexterous purpose of firing the Virginian heart with anger. "A reckless and unprincipled tyrant has invaded your soil," he declared. "Abraham Lincoln, regardless of all moral, legal, and constitutional restraints, has thrown his abolition hosts among you, who are murdering and imprisoning your citizens, confiscating and destroying your property. . . . All rules of civilized warfare are abandoned, and they proclaim by their acts, if not on their banners, that their war-cry is ' Beauty and booty.'"3

The people of western Virginia, by reason of their character, occupations, and small ownership of slaves, were more closely connected with Pennsylvania and Ohio than
_____________
1 Nicolay and Hay, vol. iv. p. 311.
2 Richmond Examiner, May 25, June 5; Richmond Enquirer and Richmond Whig, May 25; Russell's Diary, entry of May 25, p. 235.
3 Date of proclamation, June 5. Official Records, vol. ii. p. 905. For a defence of this proclamation, see Roman's Beauregard, vol. i. p. 73. On a current notion at the South that ''beauty and booty" were the aim of the Northern troops, see Richmond Enquirer, June 13; New York Tribune, July 20; Greeley's American Conflict, vol. i. p. 508, note.

with the eastern part of their State, and their vote on the ordinance of secession made evident their wish to adhere to the Union.1 Before the election a movement began which had for its object the erection of an independent commonwealth west of the Alleghanies. Hoping to check this movement, Governor Letcher sent troops from the eastern part of the State beyond the mountains. General McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio, having already organized a considerable force, had been invited by Union men to march into western Virginia, but this he would not do until he had heard the result of the popular vote. May 26 he ordered a detachment to cross the Ohio River, and co-operate with the loyal volunteers in driving the Confederates from their territory. Under this protection and encouragement the Union men proceeded rapidly in constituting themselves a State; they assembled in convention at Wheeling, adopted a declaration of independence, passed ordinances requisite to the occasion, and elected a governor. Shortly after the convention adjourned a legislature, composed of members from the western counties, met, enacted necessary legislation, and chose United States senators, who were permitted to qualify and take their seats in the Senate as senators from Virginia at the special session. The reception which General McClellan's troops met on their march through upper western Virginia, and that General Cox had in his progress through the valley of the Kanawha, showed that the election returns represented the true sentiment of that part of the State. The Union forces met the Confederates at Philippi 2 and defeated them. June 22 McClellan took command in person and issued a bombastic proclamation to his army, in which he rated the secessionists as wicked as Beauregard had pronounced the Northern soldiers. "Your enemies have violated every moral law," he declared; "neither God nor man can sustain them." The campaign continued to be an
____________
1 Ante, p. 387.
2 A small town in western Virginia.

advance on his part, and a retreat on the part of the Confederates.1

In eastern Virginia there had been several skirmishes, mainly to the disadvantage of the federal troops, but with results of no importance. As the army in the neighborhood of Washington grew in numbers and discipline, a fierce desire arose in the Northern people that it should advance, defeat the secessionists in one great battle, and make an end of the war. Business was bad, financial distrust prevailed, and, on account of the uncertain condition of the country, better times could not be seen ahead. "The Nation's War-cry" of the New York Tribune gave utterance to this sentiment, and at the same time fostered it. June 26 this journal declared, at the head of its editorial columns, with all the emphasis that type could give: "Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July! By THAT DATE THE PLACE MUST BE HELD BY THE NATIONAL ARMY!"2

Congress met in Washington July 4. On the next day the President's message was read in the Senate and the House, the representatives testifying their approval of many parts of it by enthusiastic applause.3 The President asked Congress for at least 400,000 men and $400,000,000, in order to make "this contest a short and decisive one." Congress gave him authority to accept the services of 500,000 volunteers, and, carrying out substantially the more detailed recommendation of the Secretary of the Treasury, authorized a loan of $250,000,000; it also increased the tariff duties, provided for a direct tax of $20,000,000, appor
_____________
1 See Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia, 1861; Official Records, vol. ii.; Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. ii.; J. D. Cox's article, "McClellan in West Virginia," Century War Book, vol. i. p. 126; McClellan's Own Story; New York Tribune.
2 This was printed in several succeeding issues. The war-cry, however, was not Greeley's, see Tribune of July 25.
3 Portions of this important state-paper have already been referred to when discussing matters of which it treated, see pp. 346, 398, 405-408,427,

apportioned to all the States and territories, and imposed an income-tax, hoping from this legislation to get a revenue of about $75,000,000 for the fiscal year.1

The President spoke in his message of his extraordinary acts since Sumter fell. He believed that the call for 75,000 militia and the proclamation of the blockade were strictly legal. The call for three-years troops and the increase of the regular army and navy were measures which, if not strictly legal, he trusted then and now that Congress would readily ratify. He had deemed it necessary to the public safety to authorize the commanding general to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, in justification of which he made the argument of necessity, but he also reasoned that it was no violation of the Constitution. This subject from the first engaged the attention of Congress, and a joint resolution was introduced to approve and confirm these several acts.2 The extreme Democrats opposed this violently; but though their arguments were forcible, they had the defect of applying to a state-of war considerations mainly applicable only to a condition of peace.3 It was more important, however, that Republicans and the Democrats who were disposed to co-operate with them in all measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war to restore the Union differed in regard to these points. There was a concord of opinion that the call for 75,000 militia and the proclamation of blockade were strictly legal, but able jurists out of Congress and lawyers and statesmen of the Senate did not agree about the suspension of the privilege of
____________
1 The notable increases of the tariff which gave a revenue were the duties of four cents per pound on coffee and fifteen cents per pound on tea—both of which, in the Morrill tariff, were on the free list—and the considerable augmentation of the duty on sugars. The direct tax was allotted to the disloyal as well as the loyal States, and would not yield over $15,000,000. The income-tax was three per cent. on incomes over $800, and was to be levied after January 1, 1862, on incomes of the preceding year.
2 For this see Congressional Globe, p. 40.
3 See Vallandigham, Congressional Globe, pp. 58,130; Powell, of Kentucky, p. 66; Breckinridge, p. 137; Pearce, of Maryland, p. 332; Bayard, Globe Appendix, p. 14,

the writ of habeas corpus.1 The notion prevailed that the call for three-years volunteers and the increase of the army and the navy by proclamation was an assumption of powers by the executive which the Constitution strictly and unmistakably vested solely in Congress, and that the argument that they did not involve a violation of the organic act was strained.2 In the last days of the session there was tacked to the bill for the increase of the pay of the privates in the army a section ratifying the acts and proclamations of the President respecting the regular army and navy and the militia and volunteers from the States. This passed the Senate with only five negative votes, all five being from the border slave States. On a test vote in the House nineteen opposed it.3

Lincoln, in his message, spoke not only to Congress, but to the people—the "plain people," as he called them; and no one understood them better than he. He told them how he regretted the war, and made it clear that it had been forced upon him. He related, by the aid of a familiar illustration, the course of the secessionists, combated their argument, and gave, in emphatic and easily understood words, the theory on which the resistance of the government to the "rebellion" was based. He told them the
___________
1 Chief Justice Taney, in the Merryman case, declared that "the President, under the Constitution of the United States, cannot suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize a military officer to do it." Congress alone has that power, Tyler's Taney, p. 645 et seq. Reverdy Johnson, between whom and Taney there had been thorough sympathy in regard to the Dred Scott opinion (see vol. ii. p. 269), totally differed now with the chief justice, and wrote an elaborate reply, declaring that "the President's conduct was perfectly constitutional."—See Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. ii., Docs., p. 185. As to disagreement of Republicans in the Senate, for Browning's opinion see Congressional Globe, p. 188; Trumbull's, p. 337; Sherman's, p. 393; Howe's, p. 393; Fessenden's, p. 453.
2 For the reasoning of Morrill, of Maine, see Congressional Globe, p. 392.
3 For the vote in the Senate see Congressional Globe, p. 442; in the House, p. 449. The bill passed the Senate August 5; the House, August 6. For an explanation why the Senate did not also ratify the suspension of the habeas corpus, see letter of Grimes, September 16, Life of Grimes, p. 150.

meaning and the purpose of the conflict; he explained the reason of the war. "This is essentially a people's contest," he declared. "The leading object of the government for whose existence we contend " is "to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life." Such a government the secessionists aim to overthrow, and "the plain people understand and appreciate this." Many of the officers of the army and the navy in high station have "proved false to the hand which had pampered them," but "not one common soldier or common sailor is known to have deserted his flag. . . . This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand without an argument that the destroying the government which was made by Washington means no good to them." They have therefore rushed to its defence. "One of the greatest perplexities of the government," he said, "is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their government, if the government itself will do its part only indifferently well." "And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose," he concluded, "let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts."

No demagogue ever made a more crafty appeal, and yet nothing could be further from the appeal of a demagogue. In manners, habits of life, to a large extent in tastes, Lincoln was himself one of the "plain people;" he was separated from the mass only by his great intellectual ability. The people of the North felt him to be one of them, and since the 4th of March it had come to them, at first dimly, but steadily, though by slow degrees, that their President was a man of power, fitted to guide the nation in its crisis, and they knew that when he proclaimed anything it was the truth as he saw it. They felt that Lincoln was their true representative; that when he acted, their will was expressed. Their hearts went out to him. The relation was one of mutual confidence. He felt he had their trust. They knew their trust lay in worthy hands.

The cabinet were beginning to see that Lincoln would be the master. "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities," privately wrote Seward. "The President is the best of us."1 The discussions in Congress and the action of that body show what a change of opinion had been wrought since the 4th of March concerning him in the minds of the politicians and statesmen of the nation. No ruler could hope to have his wishes more fully met by his legislature than were Lincoln's by the Congress which deliberated from July 4 to August 6. As one of its members afterwards wrote, the "session was but a giant committee of ways and means."2 In the Senate were 12 Democrats and 4 Unionists3 from the border slave States, and of these one half co-operated faithfully with the Republicans in the important measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war.4 The House was composed of 106 Republicans, 42 Democrats, and 28 Unionists;5 but on the resolution offered by McClernand, a Democrat, that the House pledge itself "to vote for any amount of money and any number of men which may be necessary to insure a speedy and effectual suppression of the rebellion," there were only 5 nays.6 This substantial unanimity of Congress, its members bred in an atmosphere of liberty and having a profound respect for the law, was the more remarkable inasmuch as the acts of the President since April 15 had been the acts of a Tudor rather than those of a constitutional ruler. He had encroached on the legislature, a department of our government
_______________
1 June 5, Life of Seward, vol. ii. p. 590.
2 Riddle, Life of Wade, p. 291. Riddle was a representative from Ohio.
3 There were 32 Republicans.
4 Two of the opposition, Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and Polk, of Missouri, joined the Confederacy before the next session.
5 This is the classification of the Tribune Almanac of the House which met December, 1861, but it is substantially correct for the special session.
6 Congressional Globe, p. 131. The yeas were 121. On the National Loan bill the vote was larger, there being 150 yeas, but only 5 nays, ibid., p. 61. Burnett, of Kentucky (who afterwards joined the Confederacy), Vallandigham, of Ohio, Benjamin Wood, of New York, were among the nays.

government always jealous for the limits of its authority. "One of the most interesting features of the present state of things," wrote Schleiden to Sumner, "is the illimited power exercised by the government. Mr. Lincoln is, in that respect, the equal, if not the superior, of Louis Napoleon. The difference consists only in the fact that the President rests his authority on the unanimous consent of the people of the loyal States, the emperor his on the army." 1 Lincoln was strong with Congress; he was stronger still with the people. The country attorney of Illinois had assumed the power of a dictator. Congress agreed that the times needed one, and the people backed their President. Yet there was method in this trust, for never had the power of dictator fallen into safer and nobler hands.

July 16 the House voted General McClellan thanks for "the series of brilliant and decisive victories" which he had achieved in western Virginia. Since taking command in person he had defeated the Confederates in the affairs of Rich Mountain and Beverly. General Scott telegraphed him, "The general in chief, and what is more the cabinet, including the President, are charmed with your activity, valor, and consequent successes."2 On the same day that he received this despatch McClellan gained the combat of Carrick's Ford, and sent word to Washington, "Our success is complete, and secession is killed in this country."3 Although these engagements were small affairs, they secured the important result of freeing upper western Virginia from organized bands of Confederates, and they made McClellan the military hero of the North. He displaced in the popular favor Major Anderson and General Scott. Northern public opinion demanded that the Union soldiers force a battle in eastern Virginia. It was an intelligent sentiment, and the administration was right in yielding to it. For a battle gained now would be of immense value.
____________
1 Letter of May 11, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Despatch of July 13, Official Records, vol. ii. p. 204.
3 Despatch of July 14, ibid.

To maintain that unanimity of feeling at the North which had prevailed since the firing on Sumter success was needed. A short war would keep patriotism at the high-water mark; a long one would breed differences of opinion and foster an opposition party. Europe, now beginning to regard with good-will the efforts of the national government to preserve its authority, would feel sympathy with the North, could it show that it had the stronger battalions. Moreover, the time of the three-months men was fast expiring, and as they were eager to fight, it seemed injudicious to disband an army which represented the best blood and noblest purpose of the North without giving it a chance to feel the enemy. The President was wise, therefore, in calling a council of war of his cabinet and of the prominent military men, in order that the political aim might be considered in the light of technical skill. June 29 this council met at the White House. By request, General McDowell, a graduate of West Point, who had served with credit in the Mexican War, submitted a plan of attack on Beauregard, who had at Manassas Junction and within easy distance an effective force of 21,900.1 McDowell said he would make the movement, provided Joseph E. Johnston, who was in the Shenandoah valley with nearly 9000 available men,2 could be prevented from joining Beauregard. General Scott, who did not approve of the plan of fighting a battle in Virginia, but who set himself loyally at work to carry out the wish of the President,3 said, " If Johnston joins Beauregard, he shall have Patterson
_____________
1 To avoid considerable detail in this account I give this army as it was the day of the battle of Bull Run. This is a statement in 1884 of Beauregard's adjutant-general (Century War Book, vol. i. p. 195), and almost exactly agrees with Beauregard's official report of October 14, 1861, Official Records, vol. ii. p. 487. Manassas was the junction of the railroad from Alexandria to Richmond with that which went to the Shenandoah valley.
2 Johnston's Narrative, p. 81.
3 McDowell's Testimony, Report on the Conduct of the War, part ii. p. 37; Richardson's statement in the House, July 24, of a declaration of Scott to the President, McClernand, Logan, Washburne, and himself, Congressional Globe, p. 346.

on his heels."1 General Patterson, a veteran of the War of 1812 and of the Mexican War, held command of 18,000 to 22,000 troops2 at Martinsburg, and had been instructed to beat Johnston, or, if not strong enough, to detain him in the Shenandoah valley.3

War on a large scale was a new business for Americans; to handle and move troops expeditiously was an art to be learned. The advance was not made as soon as intended, but on the afternoon of July 16 McDowell's "Grand Army," about 30,000 strong, composed of nearly 1600 regulars,4 and the rest for the most part three-months volunteers, marched to the front. The Confederates retired before him, and by the 18th he had occupied Centreville. "The march," writes William T. Sherman, who commanded a brigade, "demonstrated little save the general laxity of discipline." 5 On the 18th a reconnoissance was made by one of the brigades of Tyler's division at Blackburn's Ford of Bull Run; a skirmish ensued, in which the Union troops got the worse of it, and although the material damage was not great, the effect on the morale of the army was considerable.

Informed of the movement of the federal army, Beauregard ordered his advanced brigades to withdraw within the lines of Bull Run. This was accomplished without interruption. At the same time he begged Davis for reinforce
______________
1 McDowell's Testimony.
2 His army, after being reinforced by General Sandford July 8. Sandford says it was 22,000, Testimony, p. 56. Patterson admits 18,225,ibid., p. 99.
3 Scott to Patterson, July 13, Official Records, vol. ii. p. 166.
4 I am under obligations to Joseph W. Kirkley, member of War Records Publication Board, War Department, Washington, for having calculated for me from the official returns the number of men in five companies of artillery and in the battalions of infantry and marines. For four companies of artillery there is no return, and at the suggestion of General J. D. Cox I have estimated their number at the average of the five companies, and the battalion of cavalry at 200. This makes a total of 1561 regulars. For the number of guns in McDowell's army and the number that went into action, see James B. Fry's statement, Century War Book, vol. i. p. 195, 5 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 181.

ments.1 The Richmond government telegraphed Johnston to join Beauregard if practicable.' Johnston received the despatch at one o'clock on the morning of July 18, and he at once determined to make the movement. To do this it seemed necessary to defeat Patterson or elude him. Elusion was thought the more speedy and certain, but Johnston could not know that his artifice would be as successful as if the Union army were fifty miles away. Patterson's mind had fed upon rumors and false reports until he had magnified Johnston's 9000 into a force of 35,000.3 Nevertheless, July 15, he advanced to Bunker Hill, being then within nine miles of Johnston's camp at Winchester; but instead of remaining where he was, approaching nearer, or, as one of his generals proposed, throwing his large force between the Confederates and the Shenandoah River, he marched directly away from them, moving on the 17th to Charlestown, twenty-two miles from Winchester, thus giving Johnston as good an opportunity for escape as if he had actually planned to do it.4 While the time of many of the three-months men had nearly expired and they were anxious to return home, yet the army was a fine body of men, largely made up of New York and Pennsylvania militia, who were willing to stay over time for a fight, but, when ordered to march away from the enemy, clamored for discharge to the moment.5 General Scott's anxiety lest Patterson should not perform his part became alarm on July 18, when he telegraphed: "I have certainly been expecting you to beat the enemy. If not, to hear that you had felt him strongly, or at least had occupied him by threats and demonstrations. You
____________
1 Beauregard to Davis, July 17, Official Records, vol. ii. p. 439.
2 Ibid., p. 478.
3 Patterson to Townsend, July 20, Official Records, vol. ii. p. 172.
4 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 166; Sandford's, Stone's, and Cadwalader's testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War. These were officers under Patterson.
5 Sandford's, Doubleday's, and Patterson's testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War.

have been at least his equal, and I suppose superior, in numbers. Has he not stolen a march and sent reinforcements towards Manassas Junction V "The enemy has stolen no march upon me," promptly replied Patterson. "I have kept him actively employed, and by threats and reconnoissances in force caused him to be reinforced."1 While Patterson was sending this and another complacent report, Johnston was leaving Winchester on his way to Manassas. "The discouragements of that day's march," he writes, "are indescribable." 2 The delays, the lack of discipline, made him despair of reaching Beauregard in time. At Piedmont, therefore, he took the railroad, and by noon of Saturday, July 20, arrived with 6000 troops at Manassas Junction. On that day Patterson first learned that Johnston had left Winchester with his whole force, and so telegraphed to Washington.3

McDowell's subsistence train having arrived, he deemed his information of the country and of the enemy sufficiently exact, and determined to make the attack on Sunday, July 21, his intention being to turn the Confederate left. At half-past two in the morning the troops were in motion. The officers were inexperienced and the men green, so that delays in marching and manoeuvring were inevitable. Tyler's division was slow in getting out on the road, and hindered the divisions which were to make a long detour by the right flank. It marched on the Warrenton turnpike to the stone bridge over Bull Run, and at 6.30 fired a signal gun to show that it was in position. Hunter's division turned off from the turnpike to the right, marched through the woods to the ford at Sudley Springs, crossed Bull Run, and met the Confederates at ten o'clock, three hours later than had been planned, on a hill north of Young's Branch. The Union troops engaged outnumbered the enemy, and drove them back across the Warrenton turnpike and Young's Branch,

__________
1 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 168.
3 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 172.
2 Narrative, p. 36.

a distance of one and a half miles, gaining possession of the road and uncovering the stone bridge. The Confederates were in full retreat, but as they ran up the slope of the plateau, about the Henry House, Thomas J. Jackson's brigade stood there in line calmly awaiting the onset. General Bee, who commanded a Confederate brigade, cried out in encouragement to his retreating troops, "Look at Jackson! There he stands like a stone wall," an exclamation that gave him the name by which he has since been known.1 McDowell had with promptness pushed across Bull Run two other divisions, and soon had 18,500 men with twenty-four pieces of artillery2 advancing on the Confederates, and the day seemed gained.

Beauregard, thinking it advisable to assume the offensive before Patterson could effect a junction with McDowell, had formed the plan of crossing Bull Run by his right, and attacking the Union troops; for both he and Johnston supposed that the Union general, who had actually retired to Harper's Ferry in fear of an attack, was now making all haste to meet McDowell. Johnston, the ranking officer, approved the plan, but the orders miscarried, and before this could be remedied he and Beauregard, though four miles away, divined, from the sound of cannon in the direction of Sudley Springs, that McDowell was trying to turn their left. They rode furiously to the scene of action. "We came not a moment too soon," writes Johnston.3 The Confederates were demoralized. A disorderly retreat had begun. It needed all the influence and force of will of the commanding generals to rally them. "General Johnston impressively and gallantly charged to the front with the colors of the Fourth Alabama Regiment by his side,"4 and
____________
1 Daniels (1863), Dabney (1866), Cooke (1866), Mrs. Jackson (1891) relate this circumstance. General D. H. Hill, in the Century Magazine for February, 1894, says the tale was "a sheer fabrication."
2 James B. Fry's statement, Century War Book, vol. i. p. 195.
3 Official report, October 14.
4 Beauregard's official report of October 14.

then all the men obeyed the order to form on the line of their colors. Beauregard remained, in the thick of the fight, in command of the troops there engaged, while Johnston regretfully rode to the rear to hurry forward reinforcements.

It was high noon when the two Confederate generals appeared on the field. From this hour until three the battle surged. The hottest part of the contest was for the possession of the Henry plateau. The Union troops had seized it, brought forward Ricketts' and Griffin's batteries of regulars, and placed them in effective position. Twice the Confederates tried to take these batteries, twice were they repulsed. At two o'clock Beauregard gave the order to advance to recover the plateau. The charge was made with spirit. Jackson's brigade pierced at the bayonet's point the Union centre. The other parts of the line moving forward with equal vigor, the federal lines were broken and swept back from the open ground of the plateau. The Union troops rallied, recovered their ground, and drove the Confederates entirely from the plateau and beyond it out of sight. McDowell, who had this part of the field immediately under his own eye, thought this last repulse final, and that the day was his. Although the numbers of available troops were substantially equal,1 McDowell seems to have disposed his men better than did Johnston, for up to three o'clock he had a superior force engaged. Johnston with remarkable candor admits it was "a great fault" on his part that he did not order two brigades into action earlier, and that he failed to bring the largest part of three other brigades on to the field of battle at all.2
_____________
1 McDowell's 30,000 had been reduced to less than 29,000 by the withdrawal of the Fourth Pennsylvania and the battery of volunteer artillery of the Eighth New York. Their time had expired, they had insisted on their discharge, and they ''moved to the rear to the sound of the enemy's cannon."—McDowell's report. Beauregard's army of 21,900, and Johnston's reinforcement of July 20, of 6000, brought the Confederate force nearly to 28,000.
2 Johnston's Narrative, p. 57

Thus stood affairs at three o'clock. McDowell had possession of the plateau, hoping the fight was over. His men had been up since two in the morning, one division having had a long, fatiguing march. The day was intensely hot. They had been fighting five hours. Many of the men had thrown away their haversacks and canteens. They were choked with dust, thirsty, hungry, and tired. Beauregard ordered forward all of his force within reach, including his reserve, with the purpose of making a last supreme effort to regain the plateau, and he intended to lead the charge in person. Then cheers of fresh troops were heard. It was the remainder of the army of the Shenandoah, which had followed Johnston as expeditiously as the railroad could bring them. Twenty-three hundred soldiers led by Kirby Smith, directed by Johnston, threw themselves upon McDowell's right. From mouth to mouth of the Union men went the word, "Johnston's army has come." At the same time Beauregard moved forward his whole line. The federal troops broke and retired down the hill-side. All order was soon lost. In vain did McDowell and his officers attempt to rally them. The battalion of regular infantry alone obeyed commands. It covered the volunteers' retreat, which became a rout and then a panic. The troops crossed the fords of Bull Run and crowded the Warrenton turnpike, a confused mass of disorganized, frightened men. The Confederates pursued them as far as Cub Run; the road there becoming blocked with artillery and wagons, the panic increased. McDowell intended to make a stand at Centreville.1 There and somewhat nearer the scene of action were a crowd of congressmen and civilians who had come out to witness the expected victory of "the grand army." The panic in an aggravated form was communicated to them, and also to the drivers of the ambulances and of the
_______________
1 The stone bridge at Bull Run was one half mile from Cub Run, and four miles from Centreville. Manassas Junction is seven miles southwest of Centreville. Centreville is twenty-seven miles from Washington.

commissariat and ammunition wagons. It was a save-himself-who-can, a disorderly flight towards Washington, an impetuous rush for the shelter of the federal capital. It was found impossible to make a stand, either at Centreville or Fairfax Court-House. "The larger part of the men," telegraphed McDowell from Fairfax Court-House, "are a confused mob, entirely demoralized." "They are pouring through this place in a state of utter disorganization."1 The flight of the troops was not stopped until they reached the fortifications south of the Potomac, and many of the soldiers crossed the Long bridge into Washington. The alarm had been utterly baseless. The men were frightened by a shadow. The Confederates made no effective pursuit.2
_____________
1 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 816.
2 The loss of the Union army was: 16 officers and 444 men killed, 78 officers and 1046 men wounded, 50 officers and 1262 men missing. J. B. Fry, assistant adjutant-general to McDowell, Century War Book, vol. i. p. 193. Compare Official Records, vol. ii. p. 327. The Confederate loss was 378 killed, 1489 wounded, and 30 missing. "Twenty-eight pieces of artillery, about 5000 muskets, and nearly 500,000 cartridges, a garrison flag, and 10 colors were captured on the field or in the pursuit. Besides these we captured 64 artillery horses with their harness, 26 wagons, and much camp equipage, clothing, and other property abandoned in their flight."—Johnston's official report. The literature of the Bull Run battle is voluminous. The best authorities are, of course, the official reports of both sides, published in vol. ii. of Official Records. I have made up my account almost wholly from the reports of McDowell, Johnston, Beauregard, Jackson, W. T. Sherman, and Tyler, and from McDowell's and Patterson's testimony, and that of several of their officers before the congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. It is worthy of note that McDowell's report was made August 4, while Johnston's and Beauregard's were not fully prepared until October 14. I feel quite sure General Sherman is right when he says, "The reports of the opposing commanders, McDowell and Johnston, are fair and correct."—Memoirs, p. 181. General Johnston and General Sherman's accounts in their books are very interesting. Johnston's, Beauregard's, and James B. Fry's articles in vol. i. Century War Book aid one to understand the battle if carefully compared with the official reports. Swinton's account is picturesque, and I should have been glad to incorporate in my narrative some incidents he mentions, for I presume they are true, but I could not find warrant for them in the Official Records. His book was published in 1867, before the government began to print the Official

"It is now generally admitted," writes William T. Sherman, " that Bull Run was one of the best-planned battles of the war, but one of the worst fought." 1 Detracting as this fact must from its value as a lesson to the military man, it is to the student of men one of the most interesting of battles. In the one view it was an encounter between two fighting mobs; in the other, as the result of the uprising at the North and the South, it was the meeting on a bloody field of their best. Without discipline and experience, without knowledge of the art of war, those men fought bravely and died heroically, both armies feeling that they were contending for a sacred principle. The available forces were substantially equal in number. The arms of the Northern infantry were little if any superior. The Southerners were more expert in the use of the rifle. Beauregard had in his army five South Carolina regiments, and the Hampton Legion, which had been under discipline more than six months; but as an offset to them must be reckoned the regulars
_________________
Records. Roman's Beauregard, the biographies of " Stonewall" Jackson by his wife and by Cooke, Dabney's Life and Campaigns of Jackson, and General J. A. Early's account (Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 392) add something of interest to the story. William H. Russell, in his Diary, gives an interesting and accurate account of the panic on the road. General Patterson made an elaborate defence before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and James B. Fry makes a generous defence of him in Century War Book, vol. i. p. 182, note, neither of which has modified the judgment I expressed in the text. I do not know that civilian criticism of military matters is of much value, but it seems to me that the Committee on the Conduct of the War told the true story in their report—"the movement was made too late rather than too soon. . . . The principal cause of the defeat . . . was the failure of General Patterson to hold the forces of Johnston in the valley of the Shenandoah." General McDowell hoped to make the attack Saturday, but he was prevented by delays for which he was not responsible. He had heard rumors that Johnston's army had joined Beauregard's, but did not fully credit them; see Official Records, vol. ii. p. 308, his testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and Century War Book, vol. i. p. 183. Scott telegraphed McDowell the day of the battle that Johnston had strongly reinforced Beauregard, but then the fight was on. Official Records, vol. ii. p. 746; Century War Book, vol. i. p. 182.
1Memoirs, p. 181.

in the Union army and, in a degree, three Massachusetts regiments which since January had had somewhat of drill. The federal artillery was superior. There were nine companies of regulars, and they had better guns than the enemy. But on the whole the two armies were evenly matched in this first contest. At the council of war called by the President, McDowell had asked for longer time to discipline his men. The reply was made, "You are green, it is true; but they are green also."1 This was correct. If McDowell had had only Beauregard's army to meet, he would undoubtedly have gained a signal victory. If the 2300 fresh troops that came into battle at three o'clock had been from Patterson's instead of from Johnston's army, there would still have been a retreat, a rout, and a panic, but the flight would have been towards Richmond instead of Washington. When Jefferson Davis arrived at Manassas Junction the afternoon of the battle, he found many stragglers who had left the field in a panic and who told "fearful stories" of the defeat of the Confederate army. A gray-bearded man calmly said, " Our line was broken, all was confusion, the army routed, and the battle lost."2

A curious game is war. In his official report General Beauregard exults over the supposed enormous loss in killed and wounded of his adversaries, and yet, when he made his final charge, not yet absolutely sure that victory was his, seeing Captain Ricketts, whom he had known in the old army, lying on the ground badly wounded, he paused in his "anxious duties to ask him whether he could do anything for him;" and he sent his own surgeons to care for the Union soldier.3

Into the controversy between Johnston and Beauregard, and between those generals and Jefferson Davis, we need not go. Johnston and Beauregard, who worked harmoniously
____________
1 McDowell's Testimony.
2 Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 349.
3 Beauregard's article, Century War Book, vol. i. p. 213.

ously together the day of battle, who showed courage and fertility of resource in the hour of danger, and who deserved well of the South for their action, have since fought over in print the question as to who was actually in command of the Confederate army.1 Jefferson Davis, whose conduct was such as a civil ruler's in consultation with his victorious generals should have been, felt so keenly the later strictures that to him must be imputed the failure to follow up the victory by the capture of Washington, that he, too, entered into an undignified controversy. The Southern memories of the battle of Bull Run would have been more grateful if the final word concerning it had been the judgments at the time of Johnston and Davis. "Our victory was as complete as one gained by infantry and artillery can be," wrote Johnston.2 "Enough was done for glory, and the measure of duty was full," said Davis in a letter of August 4 to Beauregard.3 Touching the pursuit of the federals, and the notion that McDowell's army and Washington might have been taken, all three are agreed that it was impossible.4 "The Confederate army was more disorganized by victory than that of the United States by defeat," writes Johnston.5 The Confederate generals were unquestionably right in attempting no pursuit. While to Edwin M. Stanton and William H. Russell it seemed clear that the capital might be easily taken,6 McDowell and his generals in the fortifications on the south bank of the Potomac knew that they could make a stubborn resistance to any attack.7 It was not a deceitful reassurance, but a well-sustained confidence,
______________
1 An excellent statement of this controversy and a decision of it by a military critic is given in General J. D. Cox's review of Beauregard's "Battle of Manassas" in the Nation of June 11, 1891.
2 Official report.
3 Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 365.
4 See Johnston's and Beauregard's reports; Johnston's Narrative, p. 61; Davis, vol. i. p. 352.
5 Narrative, p. 60.
6 Stanton to Buchanan, July 26, North American Review, November, 1879; Russell to the London Times, July 29; Diary, p. 170. 7 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 755; Sherman's Memoirs, p. 188.

that led Cameron to telegraph to New York, Monday, July 22: "Our works on the south bank of Potomac are impregnable, being well manned with reinforcements. The capital is safe." 1

On the night of July 21 no man in America had greater need of pity than the commander of the defeated army which was fleeing from the enemy; but as the mists clear away he seems, in the historical view, to have come out of the events of that terrible day the best of all. He did bravely and well. McDowell was a victim to the mismanagement of others, but few now will question the general verdict that he was a true soldier and a magnanimous man.

The defeat was a dreadful blow to Lincoln, the more so that the first news had been favorable. Having reason to believe from the despatches that the Union troops had gained a victory, he went out for his afternoon drive, during which he undoubtedly ruminated on the course he should adopt as a fitting sequel to his success. On his return to the White House he was told the last word which had come: "General McDowell's army in full retreat through Centreville. The day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of this army." 2 He heard the crushing news with fortitude and without moving a muscle. He met this adversity with dauntless spirit, and in the sleepless night that followed he busied his mind with plans to retrieve the disaster.3 Tuesday, July 23, he visited the camps on the south side of the Potomac, and made a speech full of feeling to the soldiers, many of whom had been panic-stricken the Sunday previous.4

The Northern people read in their journals of Monday morning that their army had gained a signal victory; but as the day wore on, and the truth came with overwhelming
_____________
1 Official Records, vol. ii. p. 756.
2 Ibid., p. 747.
3 Nicolay and Hay, vol. iv. pp. 353, 355, 367.
4 Sherman's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 189; Official Records; Nicolay and Hay.

force, dismay was in every heart, proceeding not from the loss of the battle nor from the retreat, but from the rout and the senseless panic that made all hang their heads for very shame. The result seemed to imply that Northerners were cowards, and that, as the South had boastingly asserted, they would not fight. The hope that the army would be on its triumphant way to Richmond gave place to fears for their own capital. Various reasons and explanations of the disaster were popularly current. It is worth while to refer to one of them as showing the literal hold the Jewish Scriptures had upon the Northern people. It was asserted that since the attack on the Confederates had been made on the Sabbath, God, on account of the desecration of his holy day, had given the victory to the enemy.

The bitter discouragement was of short duration. Only a few proposed to give up the contest, but it was perceived that instead of one short campaign the war would be long and severe, and that training as well as enthusiasm was needed to win. A second uprising of the North took place. Recruiting went on with vigor, and the time for which men engaged themselves was three years or during the war. In a week the North had recovered from its dejection, and girded itself anew for the conflict.1

The South received her great victory with a quiet sense of triumph and with expressions of profound gratitude to Jehovah, the God of battles, who had wrought so powerfully in her behalf. The manifestation of sentiment was
________________
1 New York Times, July 22, 23; Evening Post, July 22, 23, 25; Tribune, July 22, 23, 24, 25, 27; Herald, July 22, 23, 24; World, July 22, 23, 24, 29. Letter of Greeley to Lincoln, July 29, Nicolay and Hay, vol. iv. p. 365; Stanton to Buchanan, July 26, North American Review, November, 1879; Seward to Judd, July 26; Motley to his wife, July 23, 28. Touching the allegation that the defeat resulted from fighting on the Sabbath, see New York Herald, July 24, 30. I remember well hearing a sermon at Racine, Wis., the Sunday after the battle, in which this reason for the Confederate victory was emphatically maintained. Richmond thanked "the merciful God, who, on the precious and solemn day of his service, had been pleased to bless our arms with victory."—Examiner, July 22,

that of a deeply religious people who felt that they had a cause hallowed by duty and honor. The Confederate congress by resolution recognized "the hand of the King of kings and Lord of lords" in the "mighty deliverance" of their people. I have not been able to find evidence of loud exultation and boisterous rejoicing such as took place after the taking of Sumter. Richmond had many of her sons in battle, and the loss in killed and wounded tempered the general joy. As full tidings of the rout and panic became known, there were keen regrets that the Confederate army had not pushed on to Washington. The Southern newspapers began to boast. The battle had been between the cavaliers and "the roundhead bullies;" it was a fight between the game-cock and the dunghill; it demonstrated that the Southern soldiers could beat the Yankees two to one. With arrogance it was asserted, "Our social institutions are right," and we must show the rest of the enlightened world that theirs are wrong. The Confederates fully expected recognition from the European governments and the breaking of the blockade, but they did not think that the war was over. They had no idea that the North would give up the contest, and felt that their own exertions must be unremitting and energetic, although they hoped to carry the war into Maryland, and threaten, and perhaps take, Washington. "I have no idea that the North will give it up," wrote Stephens in a private letter. "Their defeat will increase their energy." This was unquestionably the view of the Confederate government.1
________________
1 Johnston and Browne, p. 407; for Davis's opinion see Richmond Dispatch, July 24, Mrs. Davis's book, vol. ii. p. 165. On Southern sentiment generally see Richmond Examiner, July 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29; Richmond Whig, July 24, 26; Richmond Dispatch, July 22, 24, 25; Charleston Courier, July 30; Atlanta Weekly Intelligencer, July 31; Pollard's First Year of the War, p. 116. Johnston, however, writes in his Narrative, p. 60: "The Southern volunteers believed that the objects of the war had been accomplished by their victory, and that they had achieved all that their country required of them. Many, therefore, in ignorance of their military obligations, left the army—not to return."

The result of Bull Run was a heavy blow to the Union cause in so far as the North longed for the sympathy of England in its hour of trial. "The ill news of last week," wrote Adams to Seward, August 8, "has had the effect of bringing to light the prevailing feeling in Great Britain. . .. The division of the Union is now regarded as a fait accompli."1 The government, however, maintained strict neutrality. August 14 the Confederate commissioners addressed a long letter to Earl Russell praying for recognition, and using Bull Run as one of the strongest arguments. Ten days later Russell replied, and said positively that her majesty declined to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate States.2 "The relations with England," wrote Schleiden from Washington, August 24, to Sumner, "appear to be for the moment more friendly than they have been for a long while."3
__________
1 MSS. State Department Archives.
2 British and Foreign State Papers, 1860-61, pp. 219, 231; see, also, letter from the Duke of Argyll to Mrs. Motley, August 20, Motley's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 81.
3 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.


Source: Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States; from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the south in 1877, v.3. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].