The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

In brief there was absolutely no conceivable reason for the failure of the Confederate generals to follow up their phenomenal success on the battlefield by an instant and dramatic march upon their enemy's capital over a road which was obstructed by nothing more menacing or embarrassing than huge piles of abandoned food supplies.

General Beauregard and General Johnston have courageously and manfully assumed all responsibility for that failure to advance at the right and critical moment. For a time that failure was attributed to the paralyzing hand of Jefferson Davis, who came upon the field near the end of the battle. But that accusation was unjust. Mr. Davis has been exonerated from all responsibility for the failure by the deliberately recorded testimony of his lieutenants. Mr. Davis was in fact eager for an immediate advance which might crown the victory with its legitimate consequences. He even dictated and had written out a peremptory order to that effect, which Johnston and Beauregard persuaded him to withhold.

Their reasons for doing so have been fully set forth by themselves. In spite of the facts that lay before their eyes, they could not believe in the completeness of the victory they had achieved. Neither had they confidence in the army that had won that victory. They were sure that it was tired. They thought it needed rest. They doubted its trustworthiness. They had no adequate conception of its enthusiasm for the enterprise for which it was clamorously eager. It is one of the embarrassments of war that a commanding general has sometimes no means of knowing what the men under his command are thinking and feeling.

So far were the two Confederate commanders from appreciating the magnitude and the completeness of their victory, that after it was all over, and after events of every kind had demonstrated the extremity of Federal demoralization, they were by their own confession, frightened half out of their wits by the movement of certain Confederate forces which they believed to be a new and determined advance by the hopelessly demoralized enemy.

They ought to have known better, of course; but they did not, and they would not let Stuart teach them better, though he, with his preternatural activity, had followed the panic-stricken fugitives far enough to know what their moral condition was.

Let us frankly recognize facts and take account of them in the reckoning of history. Johnston and Beauregard were accomplished officers, familiar with every detail of technical military duty. But neither of them was as yet experienced in the command of armies or the conduct of campaigns. Until a few months before that battle was fought they had been mere captains of engineers. Neither had ever commanded any force greater than a company. Neither had ever seen an army of proportions half so large as those of the force that fought at Manassas. Neither had ever had even the smallest experience in grand strategy. They were mere apprentices still in the art of war. They had not yet fully learned their trade. They utterly failed to understand what their victory meant. They had no conception of the disorganizing, disintegrating effects of that victory upon their adversaries. They were utterly incapable of understanding their opportunity or of taking advantage of it. Because of their inexperience they let slip the finest opportunity that was at any time afforded to commanders on either side to achieve a quick and decisive result.

With no purpose or willingness to undervalue the ability or the devotion of two officers who afterwards achieved well-deserved distinction as the commanders of armies, it may fairly be pointed out that they were in command at Manassas not because of known and demonstrated fitness for command, but solely because of their technical rank in the old, peace-time army of the United States, where promotion was exclusively by seniority—perhaps the unsafest ground of promotion that was ever devised by the evil ingenuity of officialism and professional self-regard. Whatever capacity these two officers afterwards developed, it is very manifest that at the time of the Manassas battle they both showed themselves incapable of seizing upon the opportunity that victory offered them in any such masterful way as that in which Lee afterwards seized upon far less obvious opportunities at the end of the Seven Days' Battles and again after Chancellorsville.

Having won the completest and most conspicuous victory of modern times, they set to work to fortify themselves for defense against the enemy they had so disastrously overthrown, precisely as if they had been beaten in the fight and were called upon to defend themselves against further aggression at the hands of an enemy to be feared. Having everything of opportunity their own way, they threw it all into the adversary's hands. Having reduced their enemy's army to pulp they deliberately gave him time and opportunity to reconstruct it, to reinforce it, to reorganize and discipline it, as he presently did, into a superb fighting machine instead of pushing forward and fighting it vigorously while it possessed no fighting force at all.

Both sides in this war suffered for a time from this paralysis of officialism and routine which set inferior men to command their superiors and balked conclusions by incapacity. It will be related later in this history, how Grant—the most masterful man in the Federal army—was long denied his opportunity by the arbitrary will of the immeasurably inferior Halleck, to whom a false system and an old man's favor gave control in despite of fact and achievement.

At present we deal only with the facts of a single case. On the night of July 21, 1861, and on the following morning, there was open to the Confederate commanders at Manassas an opportunity which hopefully promised to bring the war to an immediate end. They utterly failed to embrace that opportunity and the price paid for their neglect was four years of bloody conflict, involving the loss of lives by scores of thousands and the infliction of incalculable suffering upon the American people. At several other points in the history of the struggle like opportunities presented themselves, less conspicuously indeed but none the less positively, to one side or the other. In many cases they were similarly neglected, and the war went on with all its horrors.