The land war

The war in 1861

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The first military operations took place in northwestern Virginia, where nonslaveholding pro-Union Virginians sought to secede from the Confederacy. McClellan, in command of Federal forces in southern Ohio, advanced on his own initiative in the early summer of 1861 into western Virginia with about 20,000 men. He encountered smaller forces sent there by Lee, who was then in Richmond in command of all Virginia troops. Although showing signs of occasional hesitation, McClellan quickly won three small but significant battles: on June 3 at Philippi, on July 11 at Rich Mountain, and on July 13 at Carrick’s (or Corrick’s) Ford (all now in West Virginia). McClellan’s casualties were light, and his victories went far toward eliminating Confederate resistance in northwestern Virginia, which had refused to recognize secession, and toward paving the way for the admittance into the Union of the new state of West Virginia in 1863.

Meanwhile, sizable armies were gathering around the Federal capital of Washington, D.C., and the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, which was about 100 miles (160 km) south of Washington. Federal forces abandoned positions in Virginia, including, on April 18, Harpers Ferry (now in West Virginia), which was quickly occupied by Southern forces, who held it for a time, and the naval base at Norfolk, which was prematurely abandoned to the Confederacy on April 20. On May 6 Lee ordered a Confederate force—soon to be commanded by P.G.T. Beauregard—northward to hold the rail hub of Manassas Junction, Virginia, some 26 miles (42 km) southwest of Washington. With Lincoln’s approval, Scott appointed Irvin McDowell to command the main Federal army that was being hastily collected near Washington. But political pressure and Northern public opinion impelled Lincoln, against Scott’s advice, to order McDowell’s still-untrained army to push the Confederates back from Manassas. Meanwhile, Federal forces were to hold Confederate soldiers under Joseph E. Johnston in the Shenandoah Valley near Winchester, Virginia, thus preventing them from reinforcing Beauregard along the Bull Run near Manassas.

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McDowell advanced from Washington on July 16 with some 28,000 men and moved slowly toward Bull Run. Two days later a reconnaissance in force (an attack by a large force to determine the size and strength of the enemy) was repulsed by the Confederates at Mitchell’s Ford and Blackburn’s Ford. When McDowell attacked on July 21 in the First Battle of Bull Run, he discovered that Johnston had escaped the Federals in the valley and had joined Beauregard near Manassas just in time, bringing the total Confederate force to about 32,000. (The battle came to be known in the South as the Battle of First Manassas. Civil War battles often had one name in North, which was usually associated with a prominent nearby physical feature, and another name in the South, usually derived from the town or city closest to the battlefield.) McDowell’s sharp attacks with green troops forced the equally untrained Southerners back a bit, but a strong defensive stand by Thomas Jonathan Jackson (who thereby gained the nickname “Stonewall”) enabled the Confederates to check and finally throw back the Federals in the afternoon. The Federal retreat to Washington soon became a rout. McDowell lost 2,896 men—killed, wounded, and missing (including prisoners)—against a Southern loss of 1,982. Both sides now settled down to a long war, but the First Battle of Bull Run left a lasting impression on both the Confederacy and the Union. Confederates took their victory as confirmation of their belief that a single rebel soldier was worth 10 Yankees, an overconfident and dangerously unrealistic mindset. On the Union side, the loss seems to have infected the high command of the Army of the Potomac with both an inferiority complex and a wary fear of Southern military proficiency. This attitude was in evidence until Grant became the general in charge of all the armies in the spring of 1864.