There are sleepless nights in the tent of the general-in-chief. When all others except the pickets are asleep, he is examining maps and plans, calculating distances, estimating the strength of his army, and asking himself whether it will do to attack the enemy, or whether he shall stand on the defensive? can this brigade be relied upon for a desperate charge? will that division hold the enemy in check? At such times, the good name, the valor, the bravery of the troops and of the officers who command them is reviewed. He weighs character. He knows who are reliable and who inefficient. He studies, examines papers, consults reports, makes calculations, sits abstractedly, walks nervously, and lies down to dream it all over again and again.
The welfare of the country, thousands of lives, and perhaps the destiny of the nation, is in his hands. How shall he arrange his corps? ought the troops to be massed in the centre, or shall he concentrate them on the wings? shall he feel of the enemy with a division or two, or rush upon him like an avalanche? Can the enemy outflank him, or get upon his rear? What if the Rebels should pounce upon his ammunition and supply-trains? What is the position of the enemy? How large is his force? How many batteries has he? How much cavalry? What do the scouts report? Are the scouts to be believed? One says the enemy is retreating, another that he is advancing. What are the probabilities? A thousand questions arise which must be answered. The prospect of success must be carefully calculated. Human life must be thrown remorselessly into the scale. All the sorrows and the tears of wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters far away, who will mourn for the dead, must be forgotten. He must shut up all tender thoughts, and become an iron man. Ah! it is not so fine a thing to be a general, perhaps, as you have imagined!
It is an incomplete, imperfect, and unsatisfactory look which you have taken of the machinery of a great army. But you can see that a very small thing may upset the best-laid plan of any commander. The cowardice of a regiment, the failure of an officer to do his duty, to be at a place at an appointed moment, the miscarriage of orders, a hundred things which you can think of, may turn a victory into a defeat. You can see that a great battle must be a grand and terrible affair; but though you may use all your powers of imagination in endeavoring to picture the positions of the troops,—how they look, how they act, how they stand amid the terrible storm, braying death, how they rush into the thickest fire, how they fall like the sere leaves of autumn,—you will fail in your conceptions of the conflict. You must see it, and be in it, to know what it is.
CHAPTER III.
THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.
The first great battle of the war was fought near Bull Run, in Virginia. There had been skirmishing along the Potomac, in Western Virginia, and Missouri; but upon the banks of this winding stream was fought a battle which will be forever memorable. The Rebels call it the battle of Manassas. It has been called also the battle of Stone Bridge and the battle of Warrenton Road.
Bull Run is a lazy, sluggish stream, a branch of the Occoquan River, which empties into the Potomac. It rises among the Bull Run Mountains, and flows southeast through Fairfax County. Just beyond the stream, as you go west from Washington, are the plains of Manassas,—level lands, which years ago waved with corn and tobacco, but the fields long since were worn out by the thriftless farming of the slaveholders, and now they are overgrown with thickets of pine and oak.
Two railroads meet upon the plains, one running northwest through the mountain gaps into the valley of the Shenandoah, and the other running from Alexandria to Richmond, Culpepper, and the Southwest. The junction, therefore, became an important place for Rebel military operations. There, in June, 1861, General Beauregard mustered his army, which was to defeat the Union army and capture Washington. The Richmond newspapers said that this army would not only capture Washington, but would also dictate terms of peace on the banks of the Hudson. Hot-headed men, who seemed to have lost their reason through the influence of slavery and secession, thought that the Southern troops were invincible. They were confident that one Southerner could whip five Yankees. Ladies cheered them, called them chivalrous sons of the South, and urged them on to the field.