staff came down from Manassas a few days after Bethel, in
charge of prisoners; and he told me that the men had been in a state of
nervous excitement for an advance before, but now were so wild over the
news, it was hard to restrain them from advancing of their own accord.

The clear-headed generals in command, however, looked over the flash
and glitter of the first success, to the sterner realities beyond; and
they drew the bands of discipline only tighter--and administered the
wholesome tonic of regular drill--the nearer they saw the approach of
real work.

The Government, too, hailed the success at Bethel as an omen of the
future; but rather that it tested the spirit of the troops and their
ability to stand fire, than from any solid fruits of the fight. They
understood that it was scarcely a check to the great advance to be
made; and though perhaps not "only a reconnaissance that accomplished
its intention," as the Federal officers declared, it was yet only the
result of such a movement. True, eighteen hundred raw troops, never
under fire, had met more than double their number and fought steadily
and well from nine o'clock till two; and had, besides, accomplished
this with the insignificant loss of _one_ killed and seven wounded!

But this was not yet the test that was to try how fit they were to
fight for the principles for which they had so promptly flown to arms.
The great shock was to come in far different form; and every nerve was
strained to meet the issue when made.

The Ordnance Department had been organized, and already brought to a
point of efficiency, by Major Gorgas--a resigned officer of the United
States Artillery; and it was ably seconded by the Tredegar Works. All
night long the dwellers on Gamble's Hill saw their furnaces shine with
a steady glow, and the tall chimneys belch out clouds of dense,
luminous smoke into the night. At almost any hour of the day, Mr.
Tanner's well-known black horses could be seen at the door of the War
Department, or dashing thence to the foundry, or one of the depots. As
consequence of this energy and industry, huge trains of heavy guns, and
improved ordnance of every kind, were shipped off to the threatened
points, almost daily, to the full capacity of limited rolling stock on
the roads. The new regiments were rapidly armed; their old-style
muskets exchanged for better ones, to be in their turn put through the
improving Tredegar process. Battery equipments, harness work