Late in June,the Cabinet decided upon the political course,overruled the military advisers,and gave its voice for an immediate advance into Virginia.Lincoln accepted this rash advice.Scott yielded.General Irwin McDowell was ordered to strike a Confederate force that had assembled at Manassas.[8]On the fourth of July,the day Congress met,the government made use of a coup de theatre.It held a review of what was then considered a "grand army"of twenty-five thousand men.A few days later,the sensibilities of the Congressmen were further exploited.Impressionable members were "deeply moved,"when the same host in marching order passed again through the city and wheeled southward toward Virginia.Confident of victory,the Congressmen spent these days in high debate upon anything that took their fancy.When,a fortnight later,it was known that a battle was imminent,many of them treated the Occasion as a picnic.They took horses,or hired vehicles,and away they went southward for a jolly outing on the day the Confederacy was to collapse.In the mind of the unfortunate General who commanded the expedition a different mood prevailed.In depression,he said to a friend,"This is not an army.It will take a long time to make an army.But his duty as a soldier forbade him to oppose his superiors;"the poor fellow could not proclaim his distrust of his army in public."[9]
Thoughtful observers at Washington felt danger in the air,both military and political.
Sunday,July twenty-first,dawned clear.It was the day of the expected battle.A noted Englishman,setting out for the front as war correspondent of the London Times,observed "the calmness and silence of the streets of Washington,this early morning."After crossing the Potomac,he felt that "the promise of a lovely day given by the early dawn was likely to be realized to the fullest";and "the placid beauty of the scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington"delighted him.
And then about nine o'clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery.
Through those beautiful Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.
At the White House that day there was little if any alarm.
Reports received at various times were construed by military men as favorable.These,with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful,established confidence in a victory before nightfall.Late in the afternoon,the President relieved his tension by taking a drive.He had not returned when,about six o'clock,Seward appeared and asked hoarsely where he was.The secretaries told him.He begged them to find the President as quickly as possible."Tell no one,"said he,"but the battle is lost.The army is in full retreat."The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until close to midnight.It caused an instantaneous panic.In the small hours,the space before the Treasury was "a moving mass of humanity.Every man seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news,while all sorts of rumors filled the air.A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared to possess everybody....Our soldiers came straggling into the city covered with dust and many of them wounded,while the panic that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes."The President did not share the panic.He "received the news quietly and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement"'[10]Now appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist.All night long he sat unruffled in his office,while refugees from the stricken field--especially those overconfident Senators and Representatives who had gone out to watch the overthrow of the Confederates--poured into his ears their various and conflicting accounts of the catastrophe.During that long night Lincoln said almost nothing.Meanwhile,fragments of the routed army continued to stream into the city.At dawn the next day Washington was possessed by a swarm of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled over it.
The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his dependence upon his advisers.While the runaway Senators were talking themselves out,while the rain was sheeting up the city,he had reached two conclusions.Early in the morning,he formulated both.One conclusion was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in which the first move should be a call for volunteers to serve three years.[11]The other conclusion was the choice of a conducting general.Scott was too old.
McDowell had failed.But there was a young officer,a West Pointer,who had been put in command of the Ohio militia,who had entered the Virginia mountains from the West,had engaged a small force there,and had won several small but rather showy victories.Young as he was,he had served in the Mexican War and was supposed to be highly accomplished.On the day following Bull Run,Lincoln ordered McClellan to Washington to take command.[12]
