[CHAPTER XV]
The Paralysis of Victory
On the evening of the twenty-first day of July, 1861, the Confederate army at Manassas rested upon one of the completest and most spectacular victories that had ever been won by any army over any adversary. The assailing army had not only been repelled—all possibility of resistance was gone from it. Not only had it been driven pell-mell from the field with every circumstance of demoralization that could add picturesqueness to its flight, but the uttermost link of cohesion that could hold its battalions together for any purpose of resistance was completely broken up and destroyed. Divisions were dissipated, brigades were broken into bits, regiments no longer existed and even companies were scattered to the winds. Only demoralized and panic-stricken fugitives, each madly seeking safety, remained. That which had been a most gallant "army with banners" at sunrise had become before nightfall a panic-stricken mob without possibility of cohesion or stamina and utterly without a sense of soldierly duty.
Then followed the strangest event of the war. This victory, the completest, the most picturesque, the most absolute that could be imagined, had the effect of paralyzing the winners of it to an extent to which even defeat could not have done.
The story is too strange and historically of too much import to be told otherwise than in its fulness.
Let us first consider the character and composition of the two armies that fought at Manassas. The Confederate volunteers were enlisted for twelve months. The term might have been made longer without the loss of a volunteer. For these young men, whatever their contract with the Government might stipulate, fully intended to remain in the service so long as the war should last. They felt it to be their own personal war and most of them had nothing else to do than fight it out to the end, however long it might endure. Indeed it was certain that so long as it lasted no young man of the South could long remain out of the army without incurring damning disgrace at home.
As a consequence, the organization of the Confederates when the battle of Manassas occurred was far more perfect and had far more of permanency in it than was the case with that of McDowell's forces. These consisted largely of men who had volunteered for no more than a three months' service, and the terms of many regiments were expiring or about to expire when the call to battle was issued. Many of those whose terms were at an end turned back on the very eve of battle—four thousand of them quitting on the day of battle itself. They refused to participate in the conflict because their time was up.
This was a manifestation of indifference to all patriotic and manly considerations such as was nowhere witnessed on the Southern side at any time during the war.
But let us not judge too harshly. These young men were civilians, not soldiers. They had enlisted only for a period of three months. They were callow youths unaccustomed to war. They had regarded a three months' service in the volunteers as a sort of exciting picnic excursion to the South. They had done their duty during the term for which they had agreed to serve, with very tolerable faithfulness. They had had their outing. Their frolic was over. Their contract was fulfilled. They very naturally wanted to return to their homes. When under such circumstances a fierce battle confronted them, with the enemy very manifestly in no "excursion" mood but bent upon all that was possible of slaughter, is it any wonder that these young men faltered and failed?
They were scathingly assailed in patriotically inspired prose and verse, and certainly a similar turning back on the part of Southern youths on the very eve of battle would have been punished with an enduring and all-embracing social ostracism harder to bear than death. But there were differences between Northern and Southern sentiment that must be taken into the reckoning. At the North there was a party more or less openly opposing the war. At the South there was none such. At the North the military impulse did not inspire all minds as it did at the South. At the North personal courage was not held to be the one supreme test of manhood, as it was at the South. At the North a man might fail in that and have laughter for his portion, while at the South the punishment for a like fault was the eternal damnation of scorn and contempt, with universal social outlawry as an accompaniment. If any man in Beauregard's army had gone home because his enlistment had expired while the battle was pending he could never more have visited any neighbor or aspired to any woman's hand; he would have been everywhere treated with contempt and measureless scorn. His neighbors would not have sat on the same bench with him in church. He would have been instantly rejected as a juryman by both sides in every case. No other crime that he might commit could have added in the least degree to the depth of his degradation.