force, combined with
conciseness and simplicity of narrative, we present the opening of the
chapter on Bull Run:

"The field of Bull Run and the plains of Manassas will never lose their
interest for the imaginative young or the patriotic old; for on this
field and over these plains are scattered the bones of more than forty
thousand brave men of both North and South, who have met in mortal
combat and laid down their lives in defence of their principles.

"On the twenty-first of July, 1861, was fought the battle of Bull Run,
the first of a long series of engagements on these historic plains. The
battles of Bristoe, Groveton, Manassas, Centreville, and Chantilly
succeeded in 1862, and in the summer and autumn of 1863 followed the
cavalry actions at Aldie, Middleburg, Upperville, and New Baltimore.

"No battle-ground on the continent of America can present to the
generations yet to come such a gigantic Roll of Honor. Here also was
displayed the best military talent, the keenest strategy, and the
highest engineering skill of our civil war. Here were assembled the
great representative leaders of slavery and freedom. Here Scott,
McDowell, Pope, and Meade on the Federal side, and Beauregard, Johnson,
and Lee on the Confederate side, have in turn held the reins of battle
and shared both victory and defeat.

"The action which resulted in the fall of Fort Sumter developed
extraordinary talent in the rebel General P. G. T. Beauregard, and
brought him conspicuously before the Confederate government. Called for
by the unanimous voice of the Southern people, he was now ordered to
take command of the main portion of the Confederate army in northern
Virginia. He selected Manassas Junction as his base of operations, and
established his outposts near Fairfax Court-House, seventeen miles from
Washington.

"General Beauregard's forces, on the line of Bull Run, numbered on the
sixteenth of July nearly forty thousand men, and sixty-four pieces of
artillery, together with a considerable body of cavalry. The threatening
attitude of this force, almost within sight of the National capital, led
General Scott to concentrate the Union forces in that quarter with a
view to meeting the Confederates in battle, and, if possible, giving a
death-blow to the rebellion.

"Ludicrous, indeed, in the light of subsequent events, was the general
conviction of the hostile sections, that a single decisive engagement
would terminate the war. Little did the