the enemy beyond Fairfax Court House. The Junction will probably be carried to-morrow."

On the 18th General Scott was in possession of the fact that Patterson had made his demonstration on the 16th, and that he was then in Charlestown. On the 18th he learned from Patterson, by telegram, that the enemy had not left Winchester, that the demonstration on the place, on the 16th, had effected that.

It is time now to draw conclusions, after a brief summation of the facts. Scott appointed the 16th of July as the day for the demonstration on Winchester. It was made by Patterson on that day. The enemy was known at that time not to have reinforced Beauregard. The battle at Manassas did not take place on the 16th, as expected, but was postponed, according to General Scott, to the 18th. At Charlestown, on the 18th, three days before the battle, twelve hours before any reinforcements whatever left Winchester for Manassas, General Patterson telegraphed General Scott that, from the condition of his force from anticipated disbandment, he considered an attack on Winchester hazardous, but concluded with the words, "shall I attack ?"

There was not only no answer to this, but General Patterson was left in entire ignorance of General McDowell's movements. So it is as clear as day that, even as late as the 18th, General Scott could either have ordered Patterson to attack Winchester or to reinforce McDowell by the way of Leesburg.

Finally, General Patterson, tied as his hands were for personal endeavor, did what he could by sending, on the 20th, the following despatch to the assistant-adjutant-general: "With a portion of his force Johnston left Winchester by the road to Millwood, on the afternoon of the 18th, his whole force thirty-two thousand five hundred." General Scott, in his comments upon Patterson's statement, sub

mitted to the Committee on the Conduct of the War, said, "Now, it was, at the reception of that news, too late to call off the troops from that attack [McDowell's], and, besides, though opposed to the movement at first, we had all become animated and sanguine of success; and it is not true that I was urged by anybody in authority to stop attack, which was commenced as early, I think, as the 18th of July."

It was either too late, or it was not too late, "to call off the troops." The frame of mind in which the authorities at Washington found themselves cannot qualify the possibility of calling off the troops. The frame of mind in which those authorities did find themselves doubtless brought it about that, on the 18th, Patterson was neither told to attack Winchester nor to reinforce McDowell by the way of Leesburg. And it does look very much, indeed, as if that frame of mind had prevented calling off the troops. Had the battle terminated otherwise than as it did, General Patterson's action, which really represented the views of some of the best officers of the army, would have been regarded as highly commendable. Yet despite the sufficient facts that were presented to it, the Committee on the Conduct of the War said in their report, that "the principal cause of the defeat on that day was the failure of General Patterson to hold the forces of Johnston in the Valley of the Shenandoah." However, although General Patterson, failing in being allowed a court of inquiry, had to wait until 1865 for vindication, he had the solace of many testimonials from men of the highest military talent, justifying him in his course in every respect, and recognizing that, in obedience to his orders, the result could not have been other than it was.

Owing to the fact of the changes that took place in the names of the main armies contending on the eastern coast

of the United States, they having been in one instance even interchanged, it becomes necessary to mention here formally what these names on the respective sides were and what they finally became. Beauregard's army was called the Army of the Potomac, and Johnston's the Army of the Shenandoah, while McDowell's army was not popularly known by any distinctive name. In the next campaign, that of the Peninsula, under General George B. McClellan, which campaign we are now about to consider, the Federal army was known as the Army of the Potomac, and the Confederate one as the Army of Northern Virginia. In the immediately following campaign, that of the second battle of Bull Run, some of the troops of the Army of the Potomac reinforced a Federal army under General John Pope, known as the Army of Virginia, which fought a number of battles with the Army of Northern Virginia. Finally the Federal army continued to retain the name of the Army of the Potomac, and the Confederate army to retain that of the Army of Northern Virginia, and they thus remained named and known until the end of the war.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN-The siege oF YORKTOWN AND THE BATTLES OF WILLIAMSBURG AND FAIR OAKS.

GENERAL MCCLELLAN assumed command of the Army of the Potomac on July 27, 1861. He at once began, and he continued in the most energetic way, the organization of an army worthy of the name and of the dire need of the Republic. Simultaneously the defensive works of Washington, planned and executed by General J. G. Barnard, chief-engineer of the army, were carried as an enceinte around Washington, from a point on its western bank, touching the Potomac at Hunting Creek, just south of Alexandria, in a curve to the northward of the city, to where the line rested on the eastern branch of the Potomac, just above Bladensburg, a stretch altogether of some thirtytwo miles. Here McClellan was in his element, both through the particular constitution of his mind and his previous military training. He worked smoothly and expeditiously within the groove of routine, with a special knowledge of the particular branch of routine with which he had to do. He had, in the Mexican War, seen service which had redounded to his credit. Nothing there, however, had made him especially conspicuous among the brave and brilliant group of young officers who served under Scott and Taylor, but he had subsequently been selected as one of a small band of élite, only three in number, of whom Major Richard Delafield and Major Alfred Mordecai were the other two, to visit Europe during the Crimean War, and

there study the most approved methods and appliances of war. This distinction had so crowned him, as with an aureole, through the years between that event and the breaking out of the Civil War, that even in the minds of American military men he was thought of as the peer of Lee. Natural bent of mind, therefore, and special training, and accruing confidence from recognition of his powers, had peculiarly fitted him for the creation and organization of an army. We have the authority of Napoleon for believing that this is no light task when there are no existing cadres to be filled up, and, therefore, we should award to McClellan full measure of praise for his accomplishment in giving to the Army of the Potomac that soul and body with which it afterwards bore itself so heroically in all times of trial, whether of victory or defeat.

It is not anticipating to say here what is already so plainly written on the scroll of history, that with all this military aptitude in McClellan, there was still conjoined with it such defects in that part of character upon which great military achievement principally depends, that they neutralized his other efficiency. Contrasting what he declared, when he said that he would make the conflict short, sharp, and decisive, with the progress and conclusion of affairs of which he had control, their outcome was lamentable. Say that he was unduly interfered with at times, and any one must grant it; but it would only be fair to add, that if he had not been interfered with at other times, the turn of events would have been disastrous. That he should, despite his shortcoming as a general fitted for the great emergency in which the nation found itself, have possessed for a long time the implicit faith of the army and of the whole country, is a thing for which the following pages among others ought to show that it is impossible wholly to account. No doubt a winning personality, when he