In point of fact, it was a stage of the war when defeat was more wholesome than victory.  Fortunately, too, the North was not even momentarily discouraged.  The people had sense enough to see that what had happened was precisely what should have been expected.  A little humiliated at their own folly, about as much vexed with themselves as angry with their enemies, they turned to their work in a new spirit.  Persistence displaced excitement, as three years’ men replaced three months’ men.  The people settled down to a long, hard task.  Besides this, they had now some idea of what was necessary to be done in order to succeed in that task.  Invaluable lessons had been learned, and no lives which were lost in the war bore fruit of greater usefulness than did those which seemed to have been foolishly thrown away at Bull Run.

FOOTNOTES: 

[143] So said Hon. George W. Julian, somewhat ruefully acknowledging that Lincoln “was always himself the President.” Polit.  Recoll. 190.

[144] South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas were covered by this proclamation; on April 27, North Carolina and Virginia were added.

[145] For the documents in this case, and also for some of the more famous professional opinions thereon, see McPherson, Hist. of Rebellion, 154 et seq.; also (of course from the side of the chief justice), Tyler’s Taney, 420-431; and see original draft of the President’s message on this subject; N. and H. iv. 176.

CHAPTER X

THE FIRST ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA

On the day after the battle of Bull Run General George B. McClellan was summoned to Washington, where he arrived on July 26.  On the 25th he had been assigned to the command of the army of the Potomac.  By all the light which President Lincoln had at the time of making this appointment, it seemed the best that was possible; and in fact it was so, in view of the immediate sphere of usefulness of a commanding general in Virginia.  McClellan was thirty-four years old, of vigorous physique and fine address.  After his graduation at West Point, in 1846, he was attached to the Engineer Corps; he served through the Mexican war, and for merit received a captaincy.  In 1855 he was sent by Jefferson Davis, then secretary of war, to Europe to study the organizing and handling of armies in active service; and he was for a while at the British headquarters during the siege of Sebastopol, observing their system in operation.  In January, 1857, he resigned from the army; but with the first threatenings of the civil war he made ready to play an active part.  April 23, 1861, he was appointed by the governor of Ohio a major-general, with command of all the state forces.  May 13, by an order from the national government, he took command of the Department of the Ohio, in which shortly afterward