At this time the North was looking for a victory on the Potomac; but they were no longer looking for it with that impatience which in the summer had led to the disgrace at Bull’s Run.  They had recognized the fact that their troops must be equipped, drilled, and instructed; and they had also recognized the perhaps greater fact that their enemies were neither weak, cowardly, nor badly officered.  I have always thought that the tone and manner with which the North bore the defeat at Bull’s Run was creditable to it.  It was never denied, never explained away, never set down as trifling.  “We have been whipped,” was what all Northerners said; “we’ve got an almighty whipping, and here we are.”  I have heard many Englishmen complain of this—­saying that the matter was taken almost as a joke, that no disgrace was felt, and that the licking was owned by a people who ought never to have allowed that they had been licked.  To all this, however, I demur.  Their only chance of speedy success consisted in their seeing and recognizing the truth.  Had they confessed the whipping, and then sat down with their hands in their pockets—­had they done as second-rate boys at school will do, declare that they had been licked, and then feel that all the trouble is over—­they would indeed have been open to reproach.  The old mother across the water would in such case have disowned her son.  But they did the very reverse of this.  “I have been whipped,” Jonathan said, and he immediately went into training under a new system for another fight.

And so all through September and October the great armies on the Potomac rested comparatively in quiet—­the Northern forces drawing to themselves immense levies.  The general confidence in McClellan was then very great; and the cautious measures by which he endeavored to bring his vast untrained body of men under discipline were such as did at that time recommend themselves to most military critics.  Early in September the Northern party obtained a considerable advantage by taking the fort at Cape Hatteras, in North Carolina, situated on one of those long banks which lie along the shores of the Southern States; but, toward the end of October, they experienced a considerable reverse in an attack which was made on the secessionists by General Stone, and in which Colonel Baker was killed.  Colonel Baker had been Senator for Oregon, and was well known as an orator.  Taking all things together, however, nothing material had been done up to the end of October; and at that time Northern men were waiting—­not perhaps impatiently, considering the great hopes and perhaps great fears which filled their hearts, but with eager expectation—­for some event of which they might talk with pride.