xacting.

The alarm in Washington was only transitory, and it was generally
supposed in the North that insurrection would be easily put down. Some
even specified the number of days necessary, agreeably fixing upon a
smaller number than the ninety days for which the militia were called
out. Secretary Seward has been credited with language of this kind,
and even General Scott, whose political judgment was feeble, though his
military judgment was sound, seems at first to have rejected proposals,
for example, for drilling irregular cavalry, made in the expectation of
a war of some length. There is evidence that neither Lincoln nor
Cameron, the Secretary of War, indulged in these pleasant fancies.
Irresistible public opinion, in the East especially, demanded to see
prompt activity. The North had arisen in its might; it was for the
Administration to put forth that might, capture Richmond, to which the
Confederate Government had moved, and therewith make an end of
rebellion. The truth was that the North had to make its army before it
could wisely advance into the assured territory of the South; the
situation of the Southern Government in this respect was precisely the
same. The North had enough to do meantime in making sure of the States
which were still debatable ground. Such forces as were available must
of necessity be used for this purpose, but for any larger operations of
war military considerations, especially on the side which had the
larger resources at its back, were in favour of waiting and perfecting
the instrument which was to be used. But in the course of July the
pressure of public opinion and of Congress, which had then assembled,
overcame, not without some reason, the more cautious military view, and
on the 21st of that month the North received its first great lesson in
adversity at the battle of Bull Run.

Before recounting this disaster we may proceed with the story of the
struggle in the border States. At an early date the rising armies of
the North had been organised into three commands, called the Department
of the Potomac, on the front between Washington and Richmond, the
Department of the Ohio, on the upper watershed of the river of that
name, and the Department of the West. Of necessity the generals
commanding in these two more Western Departments exercised a larger
discretion than the general at Washington. The Department of the Ohio
was under General McClellan, before the war a captain of