But under the "pepper box policy," a part of this force was sent under McClellan to West Virginia; a part of it to the Valley of Virginia under Patterson; a part of it to Fortress Monroe, and the main body to Washington and its neighborhood, to protect the capital and presently to advance for the overthrow of Beauregard at Manassas and for a determined advance upon Richmond.
This policy invited defeat and met it. On the tenth of June the small force at Fortress Monroe advanced and assailed the Confederates at Big Bethel. It was defeated with some loss, having inflicted no corresponding or compensatory injury upon the Confederates. Even had the expedition succeeded in driving the Confederates from Big Bethel, it could not possibly have accomplished anything of value to the Federal arms or cause. It was supported by no force at Fortress Monroe or elsewhere which was conceivably adequate to undertake an advance by that route upon Richmond. In default of such support the expedition was a foolish and futile one, and it must have been so reckoned even if it had succeeded in capturing the wholly unimportant works at Big Bethel.
In the same way, early in July, McClellan gained some notable advantages at Rich Mountain and elsewhere in West Virginia. He had distinctly the best of it in the fighting; he dislodged his adversaries from their chosen positions; and he made prisoners of a considerable number of men. But his expedition led nowhither. His position and the positions which he captured from the Confederates were alike strategically unimportant from the point of view of an aggressive campaign. His victories commanded no strategic points and opened no road to any desirable objective.
In the Valley of Virginia the Confederates abandoned Harper's Ferry—carrying off everything there that had military value, and General Patterson occupied the place. This made good dispatches for the newspapers and justified startling headlines of victory. But in very truth it meant nothing whatever except that the wily Fabian, Joseph E. Johnston, in command of the Confederate forces in that quarter, was wisely determined to keep himself and his army within reinforcing distance of Beauregard at Manassas, where the first great battle of the war was obviously destined to occur. Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg were clearly of no value whatsoever to General Johnston. By abandoning them and retiring to Winchester he placed his army twenty-five or thirty miles nearer to Manassas than it had been and drew Patterson by so much farther from the fighting points. For in order to reach and reinforce McDowell for the impending Manassas fight Patterson must march north, recross the Potomac, move thence eastward to Washington and then move southwest again to McDowell's assistance. Johnston meanwhile secured to himself a short line of march which gave him a very great advantage.
When the time came for the first great battle of the war to be fought, it was hoped at Washington that Patterson with his strong force, numbering about twenty-two thousand men, might be able to reinforce McDowell, while real or pretended operations might detain Johnston in the valley and prevent him from reinforcing Beauregard with his much smaller force. But by retiring to Winchester Johnston had secured for himself the certainty of joining Beauregard in time for the battle. When Patterson threw forward a cloud of skirmishers as if intending to offer battle at Winchester and secure the mountain passes into eastern Virginia, it did not take the ceaselessly active cavalry leader J. E. B. Stuart many hours of continuous skirmishing within his enemy's lines to discover that the movement was a feint and that Patterson was in fact hurrying the main body of his army toward Manassas, by way of Harper's Ferry and Washington.
Even before Stuart definitely reported this fact, Johnston had so far penetrated Patterson's purpose that he began his own movement toward Manassas, sending first the heavier and more slowly moving corps across the mountains to a point where railroad transportation was to meet them, and thus clearing the way for the cavalry and the lighter infantry and the well-horsed field batteries to proceed over country roads without the assistance of railroad cars.
Thus the "pepper box" system of strategy which prevailed at Washington met its first defeat. If Patterson had been sent at the outset to strengthen McDowell the result of the battle of Manassas might or might not have been different from what it was. But at any rate that arrangement would have given to McDowell a much greater preponderance of strength than he actually had on that battlefield. If Patterson had not gone to the valley of course Johnston would not have gone thither to meet him, and the bulk of Johnston's force would have been added to Beauregard's. But Patterson's army very largely outnumbered the force that Johnston had at Winchester within striking distance of Manassas, so that the total result of the plan of concentration would have been to strengthen McDowell.
More important still is the fact that while Johnston actually got a large part of his army to Manassas in time to decide the battle, Patterson never got there at all. So in considering the policy that sent Patterson to the valley instead of sending him to the line of Bull Run, we are entitled to reckon it as the cause of Patterson's complete absence from a field on which his valley adversary was present with timely and sorely needed strength.
In the meantime and throughout the summer there was a civil war going on in Missouri with varying fortunes. It occupied many thousands of men who might perhaps have been more wisely and effectively employed in aid of the one great movement upon Richmond, which if it had been thus made conspicuously successful, would pretty certainly have made an end of the war before it had had time to develop its strength. Those operations in Missouri had a dramatic interest of their own. But they in no way bore upon the problems of grand strategy which were meanwhile the proper and legitimate objects of supreme concern and consideration by the two stalwart contestants.