13 Dec 00

The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run), July 1861

Between 1815 and 1860, the American federal army had withered to a nearly harmless size. Intuitively distrusting a large, standing army, Americans relied heavily on the privately armed, citizen militia to augment regular forces when and if war came. By 1860, widely scattered regular federal forces totaled fewer than 16,000 men.

Regulars fought an inconclusive, running battle with Seminoles in Florida between and 1835 and 1842, and, in 1846, Americans launched an aggressive war with Mexico, conquering a vast territory, all the way to the Pacific Coast. However, militia members were quickly mustered out the moment the Mexican war ended, again leaving only a few regulars to carry on until the next war. They didn't have to wait for long!

In the first half of the Nineteenth Century a number of individual states, mostly in the South, feeling themselves threatened by industrialized, northern states, repeatedly threatened to succeed from the Union. In fact, such threats were so common that they rarely made headlines and were usually greeted with little more than polite laughter.

On 17 December 1860, the laughter abruptly stopped! Abraham Lincoln, an ambitious Illinois politician, was seen in the South as unfairly favoring northern states and simultaneously looking down his nose at southerners, regarding them as residing in a collection of backward, unenlightened, and insignificant, vassal states. War clouds gathered ominously when Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election via an overwhelmingly northern electorate.

His election as president was the last straw for South Carolina. The legislature there voted unanimously to succeed from the Union without delay. Predictably, succession fever quickly spread! Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana joined the new "Confederacy" by the end of January. Texas entered on the first of March, having only just joined the Union in 1845. By the end of May, Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina also succeeded. Kentucky remained neutral, and Missouri broke apart in its own, internal civil war. Both Delaware and Maryland nearly succeeded but ultimately did not.

In April, South Carolina demanded that the island federal installation at Ft Sumpter (in Charleston Harbor) be evacuated. When the commander of the resident, federal garrison politely declined, the fort was shelled by state militiamen, and the War was on in earnest!

Most northerners desperately wanted to believe that the whole "misunderstanding" would all be over in a few weeks. Lincoln, spurred on by ambitious newspaper editors and armchair generals, believed the conflict could be ended, in grand, Napoleonic style, via a single, decisive battle. His Grand Plan hinged on one preemptive, conclusive, and incontrovertible victory, which would cause the fledgling Confederacy to precipitously disintegrate. Secessionist states would then, one after another, meekly ask to be readmitted into the Union. Lincoln's foolish underestimation of southern resolve was inexcusable and would ultimately cause the deaths of 618,000 Americans.

The commander chosen by Lincoln to conduct this battle was forty-three-year-old Irvin McDowell. He had been promoted from the rank of major to that of brigadier general in a span of two months! Under heavy pressure to get an army together and march on Richmond, McDowell scurried about Washington DC trying to organize and train a disorganized avalanche of newly arriving state militia units. Some were even arriving unarmed!

Giving into political pressure to "get the offensive going," McDowell started out toward Richmond with his "army" of 73,000 mostly untrained troops. One New York unit, lead by Benjamin Butler found and fired upon an enemy unit, only to discover the "enemy" was another unit from New York! The real enemy subsequently met both units and easily defeated them. This and other bad omens should have cautioned McDowell to delay his offensive until his army could be trained and equipped properly. However, with an anxious Lincoln breathing down his neck, he plunged forward anyway in a direct advance toward Richmond.

McDowell's troops advanced at a snail's pace, giving Confederate General Beauregard ample time to outmaneuver them. At a tributary of Bull Run, called Young's branch, Beauregard's troops hit the disorganized Union line. Union militia units instantly fell apart and disintegrated into a pall mall retreat. The regulars held, but only for a short time. Panic spread like an epidemic through Union formations! McDowell, seeing a terrorized hoard that used to be his army, running back toward him, realized in horror that he had lost all control.

McDowell's disorganized mob sprinted all the way back to Washington, many abandoning their weapons as they ran! Dumfounded spectators, who had come out with picnic baskets to witness the "glorious victory" ran back with them. McDowell had lost nearly three thousand troops as well as twenty-three of his fifty-five cannon. It was the most humiliating defeat of the War. It would be over a year before the Union Army would be ready for another offensive. McDowell kept his rank but was unceremoniously shuttled to the rear. He would never command troops in battle again.

One of Beauregards's generals, Tom (Stonewall) Jackson, wanted to capitalize on the victory, chase the Union troops all the way back, and then burn the city of Washington! He was overruled, a grave mistake which may have changed the course of the War.

Lincoln, now realizing that the War would be long and bitter, abandoned Napoleonic strategies and opted for the British tactic of slow strangulation and attrition. Four painful years later, this plan would ultimately yield victory.

Lessons: When politicians try to micromanage a war from afar, overruling local commanders, the seeds of calamity are sown! Seasoned regulars, who know how to fight, are usually victorious, but even the brave become timid when they are confused. Confusion leads to hesitation. Hesitation leads to panic. Panic spreads like fire, and catastrophe is assured.

/John