"Have you ever heard an explanation of this strange state of things?" asked Baillie. "You see, I've been out of the way of hearing anything ever since the battle."
"O, yes, I've heard all sorts of explanations. But the real explanation, I think, is the lack of an experienced general, capable of grasping the situation and turning it to account. Neither in the field nor in authority at Richmond, have we a man who ever commanded an army, or even looked on while a great campaign was in progress. General Johnston and General Beauregard are doubtless very capable officers in their way. But until this war came, they were mere captains in the engineer corps, engaged in constructing Mississippi levees, and that sort of thing. Neither of them ever in his life commanded a brigade. Neither ever saw a great battle, or had anything to do with an army composed of men by scores of thousands.
"Their victory at Manassas simply appalled them. They didn't know at all what to do next. They will probably become good and capable commanders of armies before the war is over, but at present they are only ex-captains of engineers, suddenly thrust into positions for which they have absolutely none of that fitness which comes of experience."
"But have they not learned enough yet? Will they not now see their opportunity, and undertake a fall campaign?"
"No. The opportunity is entirely gone. The Federal army is to-day much stronger in every way than our own. We have pottered away the months that should have been spent in vigorous and decisive action. The only man in our army capable of seeing and seizing such an opportunity and turning it to account—I mean Robert E. Lee—has been kept in the mountains of Western Virginia, engaged in settling wretched little disputes among a lot of incapable, cantankerous political brigadiers. It means a long war and a terrible one, Baillie, and you'll have opportunity to do all the fighting you want before it is over. But nothing of any consequence will be done this fall."
The young lieutenant was quite right in his prophecy. Except for a little contest at Drainesville—amounting to scarcely more than a skirmish—there was absolutely nothing done until the 21st of October. Then occurred the small, badly ordered and strategically meaningless battle of Leesburg, or Ball's Bluff, when the Federals were again completely defeated. After that came a long autumn of superb campaigning weather, and a tedious winter of complete inaction. Federal expeditions besieged some of the forts and islands along the Carolina coasts, thus preparing the way for a coast campaign which was never made in earnest.
There was fighting of some consequence in Kentucky and Missouri, and as the winter waned, General Grant made his important campaign against the forts on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, breaking the Confederate line of defence in that quarter, and pushing it southward. But in Virginia, the natural battle-field, absolutely nothing was done during all those months of weary waiting.
For this strange and strangely prolonged pause in a war which had begun with a rush and a hurrah, history has been puzzled to find an explanation. It is true that the Confederate forces were untrained volunteers, whose endurance and discipline could not have been relied upon in an aggressive campaign to anything like the extent to which Lee afterward depended upon the unflinching endurance and unfaltering courage of these same men. But the Federal army was at that time in much worse condition. To unfamiliarity with war and to complete lack of discipline in that army, there was added the demoralisation of disastrous defeat and panic. General McClellan said in his official capacity, and with carefully chosen words, that when he was placed in control in August, he found "no army to command,—a mere collection of regiments cowering on the banks of the Potomac, some perfectly raw, others dispirited by recent defeat, some going home." He completed his description of the situation by saying: "There were no defensive works on the southern approaches to the capital. Washington was crowded with straggling officers and men absent from their stations without authority."
Why the Confederates, with their great victory to urge them on, made no effort to take advantage of such conditions, but lay still instead, giving McClellan many months in which to recruit and organise and drill his forces into one of the most formidable armies of modern times, is one of the puzzles of history. Perhaps Marshall Pollard's suggestion was the correct explanation,—namely, that there was no general at Manassas who knew what to do with a great opportunity, or how to do it.
Seeing that Baillie was becoming excited by this serious talk, his friend adroitly turned the conversation to less strenuous matters. Half an hour later The Oaks ladies drove up in their antique, high-hung carriage, to make that formal inquiry concerning Mr. Baillie Pegram's convalescence which from the first they had made with great scrupulousness three times every week.