A few days before the army of the Potomac was to make its advance, thirty thousand new troops passed through Washington, and were reviewed by the President and his Cabinet. A stand had been erected in front of the White House, in full view of Jackson’s monument, on which Lincoln, Seward, Chase, and other members of the Cabinet sat while these troops passed them in review. Eloquent speeches were made, and the most unbounded confidence expressed in the soldiers’ ability to win a glorious victory over the enemy whenever they should meet him in the open field.
The troops listened with interest, and answered these glowing predictions with enthusiastic shouts, as they passed away from the parade ground and marched in solid columns across the Long Bridge that spans the Potomac, there to share a destiny far different to the promised glory, on the battle field of Manassas.
Another imposing ceremony was witnessed in Washington on the afternoon of the review. A flag was to be raised on a staff near the Treasury Department, and this was a kind of work that Lincoln loved to accomplish with his own hands; so he moved with his Cabinet down to the point of operation.
A platform had been erected at the foot of the flagstaff, and when the President took his place upon it, thousands and thousands of loyal citizens gathered around to see the glorious bunting hoisted in mid-air.
It was an imposing sight when the President’s tall figure appeared standing in the midst of his councilors, with the halyards in his hands, ready to send the stars and stripes aloft. With his hand uplifted and his face raised toward the sky, he ran the flag up, and saw it catch the wind and float slowly out between him and the blue sky. He stood looking at it a moment, then turned his bright, earnest eyes upon the uplifted faces of the crowd. “My friends,” he said, in a clear, full voice, “it is an easy thing for me to run this flag up to the top of the staff, but it will take the whole nation to keep it there.”
A shout rang up from the multitude, one of those wild, impulsive echoes of a thousand hearts, which bespeak the enthusiasm of untried strength. It seemed an easy thing to the people, with the tramp of those twenty thousand new troops in their ears, to keep thousands of star-spangled banners skyward; but before many days had passed, the rush of fugitive feet, as they fled along those very pavements, proved how prophetic that simple speech of President Lincoln’s was.
But even then the armies on the opposite banks of the Potomac were mustering in force, for it had been decided that an advance should be made and a battle fought, which it was hoped would decide a war which no one expected to be of long duration. Many of these new troops passed from that Washington review, and were swallowed up by the grand army without having been inspected by the commanding General, who afterward considered this fact one cause of his defeat. But the nation was eager for action; a portion of the press fiercely urgent for a forward movement; the two houses of Congress impatient of delay; so, all unprepared, General Scott ordered the advance, against his own judgment, to appease the general clamor.
ADVANCE OF THE GRAND ARMY.
From the time of the President’s proclamation calling for troops until the 12th of July, immediately preceding the advance of the Grand Army under General McDowell, to attack the rebel forces at Bull Run, the time had been industriously employed in preparation. Fortifications had been erected on the north side of the Potomac, at eight or ten points within a radius of three miles from Washington and Georgetown. No military force of the rebels was then known to exist on the Maryland shore; but from Mount Vernon to the mouth of the Chesapeake on the south, and from the Chain Bridge to the junction of the Shenandoah at Harper’s Ferry on the north, they held undisputed possession.
General Patterson had crossed the Potomac early in July, with a force of thirty thousand men, and was encamped at Martinsburgh, on the 12th, having instructions from the Commander-in-chief to hold the rebel army under General Johnston in check, should he attempt to move forward to Manassas for the purpose of reinforcing Beauregard’s command at that point. Johnston was at Winchester, on the direct route to Manassas Gap, twenty-five miles from Martinsburgh, and it was a matter of vital importance that he should be prevented from making a further advance.