(6th Mass.) passed through on its way to Washington on the 19th of April, and, until troops could be spared to protect the railway through Maryland, all reinforcements for the national capital had to be brought up to Annapolis by sea. When that state was reduced to order, the Potomac became the front, and, later, the base, of the Northern armies.
3. Missouri and West Virginia.—Missouri, at the other flank of the line, contained an even stronger Confederate element, and it was not without a severe struggle that the energy of Mr (afterwards General) F. P. Blair, and of Nathaniel Lyon, the Unionist military commander, prevailed over the party of secession. In Kentucky the Unionist victory was secured almost without a blow, and, even at the end of 1861, the Confederate outposts west of the Alleghenies lay no farther north than the line Columbus—Bowling Green—Cumberland Gap, though southern Missouri was still a contested ground. Between the Mississippi and the mountains the whole of the year was spent by both sides in preparing for the contest. In the east hostilities began in earnest in western Virginia. This part of the state, strongly Unionist, had striven to prevent secession, and soon became itself a state of the Union (1863). A force under General G. B. McClellan advanced from the Ohio in June and captured Philippi. This promptitude was not only dictated by the necessity of preserving West Virginia, but imposed by the necessity of holding the Baltimore & Ohio railway, which, as the great link between east and west, was essential to the Federal armies. A month later, an easy triumph was obtained by McClellan and Rosecrans against the Confederates of Virginia at Rich Mountain.
4. First Bull Run.—The opposing forces now in the field numbered 190,000 Unionists and half that number of Confederates; sixty-nine warships flew the Stars and Stripes and a number of improvised ironclads and gunboats the rival “Stars and Bars.” On the 10th of June a Federal force was defeated at Big Bethel (near Fortress Monroe), and soon afterwards the main Virginian campaign began. On the Potomac the Unionist generals McDowell and Patterson commanded respectively the forces at Washington and Harper’s Ferry, opposed by the Confederates under Generals J. E. Johnston and Beauregard at Winchester and at Manassas. The forces of these four commanders were raw but eager, and the people behind them clamoured for a decision. Much against his own judgment, Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the Federal general-in-chief, a veteran of the second war with England and of the war with Mexico, felt constrained to order an advance against Beauregard, while Patterson was to hold Johnston in check on the Shenandoah. On the 21st of July took place the first battle of Bull Run (q.v.) between McDowell and Beauregard, fought by the raw troops of both sides with an obstinacy that foreboded the desperate battles of subsequent campaigns. The arrival of Johnston on the previous evening and his lieutenant Kirby Smith at the crisis of the battle (for Patterson’s part in the plan had completely failed), turned the scale, and the Federals, not yet disciplined to bear the strain of a great battle, broke and fled in wild rout. The equally raw Confederates were in no condition to pursue. A desultory duel between the forces of Rosecrans and Robert E. Lee in West Virginia, which ended in the withdrawal of the Confederates, and a few combats on the Potomac (Ball’s Bluff or Leesburg, October 21; Dranesville, December 20), brought to a close the first campaign in the east.
5. Close of the First Year.—In the end Bull Run did more harm to the victors than to the conquered. The Southerners undeniably rested on their laurels, and enabled McClellan, who was now called to the chief military command at Washington, to raise, organize and train the famous Army of the Potomac, which, in defeat and victory, won its reputation as one of the finest armies of modern history. Johnston meanwhile was similarly employed in fashioning the equally famous Army of northern Virginia, which for three years carried the Confederacy on its bayonets. It was not until the people was stung by the humiliation of Bull Run that the unorganized enthusiasm of the North settled down into an invincible determination to crush the rebellion at all costs. The men of the South were not less in earnest, and the most highly individualized people in the world was thus found ready to accept a rigorous discipline as the only way to success. In the autumn, a spirited attempt was made by the Arkansas Confederates to. reoccupy Missouri. Fremont, the Federal commander, proved quite unable to deal with this, and the gallant Lyon was defeated and killed at Wilson’s Creek (August 10). Soon afterwards, after a steady resistance, the Unionist garrison of Lexington surrendered to Sterling Price. But the work of Blair and Lyon had not been in vain, and the mere menace of Fremont’s advance sufficed to clear the state, while General John Pope, by vigorous action in the field and able civil administration, restored order and quiet in the northern part of the state. In the central theatre (Kentucky), the only event of importance was a daring reconnaissance of the Confederate fort at Columbus on the Mississippi by a small force under Brigadier-General U. S. Grant (action of Belmont, November 7).
6. The Blockade.—Meanwhile the Federal navy had settled down to its fourfold task of blockading the enemy’s coast against the export of cotton and the import of war material, protecting the Union commerce afloat, hindering the creation of a Confederate navy and co-operating with the land forces. From the first months of the war the sea power of the Federals was practically unchallenged, and the whole length of the hostile coast-line was open to invasion. But the blockade of 3000 miles of coast was a far more formidable task, and international law required it to be effective in order to be respected. Nevertheless along the whole line some kind of surveillance was established long before the close of 1861, and, in proportion as the number of vessels available increased, the blockade became more and more stringent, until at last it was practically unbreakable at any point save by the fastest steamers working under unusually favourable conditions of wind and weather. As against the civilian enemy the navy strangled commerce; its military preponderance nipped in the bud every successive attempt of the Confederates to create a fleet (for each new vessel as it emerged from the estuary or harbour in which it had been built, was destroyed or driven back), while at any given point a secure base was available for the far-ranging operations of the Union armies. Two hundred and twelve warships or converted merchantmen were in commission on the 1st of January 1862. There had been several coastal successes in 1861, notably the occupation of Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina, by Commodore S. H. Stringham and General B. F. Butler (August 28–29, 1861), and the bombardment and capture of Forts Beauregard and Walker at Port Royal, South Carolina, by the fleet under Commodore S. F. duPont and the forces of General T. W. Sherman (November 7, 1861). Early in 1862 a large expedition under General A. E. Burnside and Commodore L. M. Goldsborough captured Roanoke Island, and the troops penetrated inland as far as Newbern (actions of February 8 and March 14). About the same time Fort Pulaski (the main defence of Savannah, Georgia) was invested and captured. But the greatest and most important enterprise was the capture of New Orleans (q.v.) by Flag-Officer D. G. Farragut and General Butler (April 18–25, 1862). This success opened up the lower Mississippi at the same time as the armies of the west began to move down that river under Grant, who was always accompanied by the gunboat flotilla which had been created on the upper waters in 1861. A slight campaign in New Mexico took place in February 1862, in which several brilliant tactical successes were won by the Texan forces, but no permanent foothold was secured by them.
7. Fort Donelson.—In the early months of 1862 preparations on a gigantic scale were made for the conquest of the South. McClellan and the Army of the Potomac faced Johnston, who with the Army of northern Virginia lay at Manassas, exercising and training his men with no less care than his opponent. Major-General D. C. Buell in Kentucky had likewise drilled his troops to a high state of efficiency and was preparing to move against the Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, whose reputation was that of being the foremost soldier on either side. Farther west the troops on both sides were by no means so well trained,
