was put in motion, inexperience and indiscipline stood like giants in the path.  The Federal troops were utterly unfitted for offensive movement, and both Scott and McDowell had protested against an immediate advance.  The regiments had only been organised in brigades a week previously.  They had never been exercised in mass.  Deployment for battle had not yet been practised, and to deploy 10,000 or 20,000 men for attack is a difficult operation, even with well-drilled troops and an experienced staff.  Nor were the supply arrangements yet completed.  The full complement of waggons had not arrived, and the drivers on the spot were as ignorant as they were insubordinate.  The troops had received no instruction in musketry, and many of the regiments went into action without having once fired their rifles.  But the protests of the generals were of no effect.  The Federal Cabinet decided that in face of the public impatience it was impossible to postpone the movement.  “On to Richmond” was the universal cry.  The halls of Congress resounded with the fervid eloquence of the politicians.  The press teemed with bombastic articles, in which the Northern troops were favourably compared with the regular armies of Europe, and the need of discipline and training for the fearless and intelligent representatives of the sovereign people was scornfully repudiated.  Ignorance of war and contempt for the lessons of history were to cost the nation dear.

The march from Washington was a brilliant spectacle.  The roads south of the Potomac were covered with masses of men, well armed and well clothed, amply furnished with artillery, and led by regular officers.  To the sound of martial music they had defiled before the President.  They were accompanied by scores of carriages.  Senators, members of Congress, and even ladies swelled the long procession.  A crowd of reporters rode beside the columns; and the return of a victorious army could hardly have been hailed with more enthusiasm than the departure of these untrained and unblooded volunteers.  Yet, pitiful masquerade as the march must have appeared to a soldier’s eye, the majority of those who broke camp that summer morning were brave men and good Americans.  To restore the Union, to avenge the insult to their country’s flag, they had come forward with no other compulsion than the love of their mother-land.  If their self-confidence was supreme and even arrogant, it was the self-confidence of a strong and a fearless people, and their patriotism was of the loftiest kind.  It would have been easy for the North, with her enormous wealth, to have organised a vast army of mercenaries wherewith to crush the South.  But no! her sons were not willing that their country’s honour should be committed to meaner hands.