Original subtitles

Fellow-citizens of the United States: In compliance

with a custom as old as the government itself,

I appear before you to address you briefly,

and to take, in your presence, the oath prescribed by the

Constitution of the United States to be taken by the

president before he enters the on the execution of his office.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern

States, that by the accession of a Republican Administration,

their property, and their peace, and personal security,

are to be endangered.

There has never been any reasonable cause

for such apprehension.

Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the

while existed, and been open to their inspection.

It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who

now addresses you.

I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly,

to interfere with the institution of slavery in the

States where it exists."

I believe I have no lawful right to do so,

and I have no inclination to do so."

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge

that I had made this, and many similar declarations,

and had never recanted them... In your hands,

my dissatisfied fellow countrymen,

and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.

The government will not assail you.

You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors.

You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the

government, while I shall have the most solemn one to

"preserve, protect, and defend it."

How did it come to this?

That a duly elected, American president should plead with his

fellow citizens to not become "the aggressors."

When did the American Experiment go so far awry that half the

nation sat poised on the edge of violent insurrection?

How far back can we trace this schism in our own self-identity,

in which we were a beacon of liberty to the world,

yet drove millions of slaves to toil beneath the lash?

Slavery in America was older than the nation itself,

born among the colonies of European nations.

During the lead-up to the revolution,

Jefferson and others criticized Britain for creating slavery

in the colonies.

The new Constitution denigrated slaves with its three-fifths

clause, by counting each as less than a whole person.

But it also set an end date

for the international trade in slaves.

And in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787,

the congress had sectioned off an enormous territory and

declared that this portion of land should be forever free.

Things changed with the invention of the cotton gin.

Eli Whitney's invention didn't take all of the intense labor

out of cotton.

It removed the time-consuming bottleneck of combing cotton,

which meant that now cotton plantations could process

enormous amounts of cotton far more quickly than ever before.

Which meant that those plantations needed to get more

cotton out of the fields, faster.

And to do that cheaply, they needed slaves.

The growth in slavery driven by cotton changed slavery from a

British-created institution that Thomas Jefferson could claim had

been forced upon the colonies,

into a truly American engine of industry.

By 1850, about seventy-five percent of American slaves were

in the service of King Cotton.

Paralleling the rise of cotton was the growth

of the abolitionists.

Initially, the abolitionist movement was limited to Quakers,

who persuaded members to give up their slaves.

Following the American Revolution,

the movement grew, with more and more people

calling for the end of slavery.

In the years leading up to the Civil War,

abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frderick

Douglass insisted that, over time, former slaves

and their progeny would become assimilated

into American society.

Against the flood of abolitionists,

there stood a wall of southern planters and their

representatives in the Congress and the Senate.

South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond,

who crowned cotton king, and before him,

South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun,

were among the most prominent voices.

In the eighteen thirties and forties,

Calhoun led the pro-slavery faction in the Senate.

He directly opposed abolitionism and was a major advocate of the

1850 Fugitive Slave Law.

Calhoun is perhaps most famous, or infamous,

for his 1837 speech on the senate floor,

in which he described slavery not as a "necessary evil"

but as a "positive good."

Abolition and the Union cannot coexist.

As the friend of the Union I openly proclaim it,

and the sooner it is known the better...

We of the South will not, cannot,

surrender our institutions.

To maintain the existing relations between the two races

inhabiting that section of the Union is indispensable to the

peace and happiness of both.

The relation now existing in the slaveholding states between the

two races is, instead of an evil,

a good - a positive good.

In 1850, Calhoun was a major supporter

of the Fugitive Slave Act.

This new law would serve to galvanize opponents of slavery,

driving the wedge between North and South even deeper.

The original Fugitive Slave Act in 1793 had made it illegal to

give aide to runaway slaves.

However, that law left responsibility for enforcement

to the states.

Under the new law, however, all fugitive slave cases would be

handled by federal officials.

Not surprisingly, it is believed that many free blacks were

caught up in this Act, captured by agents working for southern

planters and unable to offer a word in their own defense.

Also unsurprisingly, this law outraged abolitionists

such as Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Stowe was infuriated, believing the law sought to make

her complicit in an immoral system.

Her sister-in-law, Isabella Porter Beecher,

wrote to Stowe, "if I could use a pen like you Hatty,

I would write something that would show the entire world what

an accursed thing slavery is."

Stowe, already a writer, resolved to do just that.

The result was successful beyond anyone's expectations.

Written in 1851 as a serial story published in the

anti-slavery newspaper "The National Era,"

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was collected

and sold as a book in 1852.

It sold three hundred thousand copies within a year,

and two million in two years.

Telling the story of slaves suffering under,

escaping from, and dying in slavery,

Stowe's book spread her own outrage into the hearts and

minds of millions of readers.

The dividing line between north and south grew ever sharper,

and it was drawn on the issue of slavery.

As the U.S. gained more and more territory,

expanding westward according to

its Manifest Destiny, disagreements became arguments,

arguments became fights, fights became battles,

and eventually, battles became war.

Introduced by Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois,

the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 changed the rules for

determining whether a territory would be slave or free.

Under the concept known as "popular sovereignty,"

the residents of each territory would get to vote to decide

whether slavery would be permitted.

That is, the white, male residents would get to vote on

whether peoples other than themselves could be enslaved.

The act specifically repealed that part of the Missouri

Compromise that outlawed slavery north of the line drawn in 1820.

Stephen Douglas hoped this would win him the support of

southerners, his eye was on an eventual bid for the presidency.

But he did not consider the degree of opposition the bill

would face in the north.

In particular, he had no inkling of the future of one man in

particular who would be energized by this Act.

Araham Lincoln.

I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of

the Missouri Compromise aroused me again.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the impetus for the

first round of the Lincoln-Douglas debates that

launched Lincoln's national political career,

and carved out his views on slavery.

I think, and shall try to show,

that it is wrong; wrong in its direct effect,

letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska - and wrong in its

prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part

of the wide world, where men can be found inclined to take it.

This declared indifference for the spread of slavery,

I cannot but hate.

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice

of slavery itself.

I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its

just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free

institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites -

causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,

and especially because it forces so many really good men

amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental

principles of civil liberty - criticizing the Declaration of

Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of

action but self-interest.

Despite the opposition of Lincoln and many others,

the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed,

signed into law on May 30, 1854.

The question of slavery in each territory would be determined by

the vote of the people living there.

And so the stage was set for the most strident,

short-tempered, zealous, and potentially violent proponents

of both slavery and abolition to marshal their forces and run to

Kansas, to swell the ranks of voters for their side in hopes

of winning the state.

Pro-slavery settlers moved in from Missouri,

with some showing up just long enough to vote.

Meanwhile, abolitionist societies back east were funding

settlers to add their anti-slavery votes.

Thousands of pro- and anti-slavery men and families

moved to Kansas, planning to wage war at the ballot box,

but also armed for a more physical confrontation.

Tensions rose, and political chicanery became open violence.

On May 21, 1856, a group of about eight hundred Border

Ruffians entered the town of Lawrence,

Kansas, which was under the control of Free-State settlers.

They blocked off all roads out of town,

preventing escape.

Under a flag inscribed "Southern Rights",

they smashed the printing presses in the town's two

printing offices, and threw the type into the river.

They then set fire to the Free State Hotel.

Hundreds more would be killed in the war of

bushwhackers in Kansas.

But in 1859, Free-Soilers were able to elect a majority of the

delegates to the territory's constitutional convention,

and in January 1861, Kansas was admitted as a free state.

Less than a year after these incidents in Kansas,

the issue of congress setting aside territories as being slave

or free rose again.

The case was Dred Scott v Sanford,

in which the court further declared that persons of African

descent, slave or free, were not citizens of the United States.

Scott sued for his freedom in 1846.

The case wound its way through courts over the years,

finally landing in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1856,

whose members included five slaveholders.

Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote the majority opinion,

declaring that Dred Scott, and all persons of African descent,

could not be citizens of the United States,

even if they were recognized as citizens of an individual state.

Therefore, Scott could not sue in federal court,

and the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the case.

The immediate consequence of the decision was that Dred Scott and

his family failed to secure their freedom in court.

As Lincoln said in his House Divided speech in 1858:

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks

of being alike lawful in all the States...

Such decision is probably coming,

and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present

political dynasty shall be met and overthrown.

In that same speech, Lincoln foresaw

the coming Civil War.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

I believe this government cannot endure permanently

half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the

house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing, or all the other.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread

of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the

belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction;

or its advocates will push it forward,

till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,

old as well as new - North as well as South.

A veteran of the fighting in Bloody Kansas would

help divide the house further with his next and final militant

effort against pro-slavery forces.

In Kansas, in 1856, John Brown and his sons had led the

Pottawatomie Massacre, in which supporters of slavery were

dragged from their homes and slaughtered with a broadsword.

In 1859 John Brown focused his attention on a new target:

the government armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

He planned to use those weapons to arm what he expected to be an

army of fugitive slaves that would join him.

But he failed to convince one important escaped slave.

John Brown had long been a friend of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass had preached pacifism prior to 1850,

but in the wake of the Fugitive Slave Law,

he believed that "who would be free must himself

strike the first blow."

Brown appealed to Douglass to join him in the raid.

Douglass tried to talk Brown out of the mission, but failed.

He later said:

I told him, finally, that he was going into

a steel trap from which there was no escape, and that I did

not see it as my duty to follow him.

Douglass' prediction was correct.

John Brown's mission was a failure.

Half his men were killed during the raid,

including one of Brown's sons.

Most of the others, including John Brown himself,

were captured and hanged.

Four men escaped, including another of Brown's sons.

John Brown died by hanging on December 2, 1859.

This was one more event to shock the consciences of the American

people and to put them into opposing camps on the rightness

of Brown's cause, if not his methods.

The raid on Harper's Ferry would be seen by many as the first

shots fired in the Civil War.

Decades later, Frederick Douglass would ask an audience

about the success of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry:

If John Brown did not end the war that

ended slavery, he did at least begin the war

that ended slavery...

Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim,

shadowy and uncertain.

The irrepressible conflict was one of words,

votes and compromises.

When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared.

The time for compromises was gone - the armed hosts of

freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union -

and the clash of arms was at hand.

The South staked all upon getting possession of the

Federal Government, and failing to do that,

drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own,

and not Brown's, the lost cause of the century.

In the election of 1860, the south made that bid

for control of the federal government.

All of the conflicts of the past decades came to a head

in the presidential election.

In the turmoil of the 1850s, the major American political parties

were falling apart.

The Whigs were essentially gone.

Northern, anti-slavery Whigs joined the new Republican Party,

which was entirely sectional.

The Republican Party's anti-slavery stance - which

varied in degree among its members - meant that it had no

place in the south.

Most Southern Whigs joined the new Constitutional Union Party.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were torn across the Mason-Dixon

line, into Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats.

Abraham Lincoln, a former U.S. Representative,

was nominated by the Republicans.

John Bell, former Senator from Tennessee received the

Constitutional Party nomination.

The Southern Democrats nominated the sitting Vice President,

John Breckenridge, and the Northern Democrats nominated

Lincoln's old adversary, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois.

Lincoln was, in the eyes of many Republicans,

a moderate on the slavery question.

He was strongly opposed to its expansion into the territories,

which he believed was in direct contrast with the intentions of

the founding fathers.

But he did not seek to eliminate slavery in those states where it

was already permitted.

Lincoln and Douglas battled in the north,

while Bell and Breckenridge faced off in the south,

though Douglas - unlike Lincoln - had some support

in the south as well.

Lincoln, as we all know today, was the final winner of the

election, but it was no sure thing.

He was not even on the ballot in most of the slave states.

Of almost a thousand counties in the fifteen slaveholding states

in 1860, Lincoln won only two.

Nationally he had only forty percent of the popular vote,

but that was considerably higher than his nearest opponent,

Stephen Douglas, with twenty-nine percent.

Lincoln won 180 out of 303 electoral college votes,

making him the clear winner.

To do that, he had to sweep the free states of the north.

The southern states were outraged.

Not a single ballot had been cast for Abraham Lincoln in ten

southern states - because he was not on the ballot -

and yet now he was president.

South Carolina moved first, seceding from the Union

on December 20, 1860.

They cited Lincoln's election as an "overt act of aggression"

by the North.

That is, they did not claim to be seceding because they had

been attacked, or because the federal government was

attempting to divest them of their slaves,

but because the result of the presidential election

was itself an offense.

Within a few months, Florida, Mississippi,

Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas had joined them.

These states adopted a new constitution in February 1861,

and declared themselves the Confederate States of America.

Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was appointed President by the

delegates, and Alexander Stephens of Georgia

was appointed Vice President.

Alexander Stephens gave a speech the following month,

in which he outlined how this new constitution was superior to

the original, on the subject of slavery.

The new Constitution has put at rest

forever all the agitating questions relating to our

peculiar institutions - African slavery as it exists among us -

the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization.

This was the immediate cause of the late rupture

and present revolution.

Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this,

as the "rock upon which the old Union would split."

He was right.

What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact...

The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading

statesmen at the time of the formation of the old

Constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was

in violation of the laws of nature;

that it was wrong in principle, socially,

morally and politically.

It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with;

but the general opinion of the men of that day was,

that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence,

the institution would be evanescent and pass away...

Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong.

They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races.

This was an error...

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea;

its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests,

upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white

man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his

natural and normal condition.

This, our new government, is the first,

in the history of the world, based upon this great physical,

philosophical, and moral truth.

If anyone had any lingering doubts about the role

of slavery in causing the southern states to secede from

the Union in 1861, Vice President Alexander Stephens'

speech should have abolished those doubts.

As he said, the "cornerstone" of the "new government" was the

assertion that slavery was the natural condition

of African Americans.

Most still hoped that this secession crisis

would not lead to war.

A Peace Conference was held in Washington in February 1861.

But the conference was unable to resolve the central issue of

slavery, which had brought the crisis to a head.

The conference failed to bring peace,

but the eight states, which had not yet seceded,

still remained with the Union.

The federal government did not immediately react

to the secessions.

Lincoln had not even taken office before the seceded states

had written their new constitution,

and begun capturing federal forts within their boundaries.

But soon came an action they could not ignore.

Six days after South Carolina seceded,

and under the cover of darkness, Major Robert Anderson had moved

his regiment out of the indefensible federal Fort

Moultrie and into Fort Sumter.

Both forts were in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor,

but Sumter, still under construction and previously

unoccupied, controlled the entrance to the Harbor.

Anderson was in a better position,

but he and his eighty-odd men needed supplies,

arms, and reinforcements.

President Buchanan ordered a civilian merchant vessel,

the Star of the West, to be used to make the delivery,

hoping it would be seen as less antagonistic

to the Confederates.

But as the Star of the West approached Sumter,

on January 9, 1861, cadets from the Citadel,

who were manning the artillery battery on Morris Island,

opened fire.

Batteries from the now-Confederate-held Fort

Moultrie joined in, and the ship was forced to withdraw.

When Lincoln took office in the first week of March,

he was dismayed to learn that Anderson,

now becoming a hero in the Union,

only had enough rations to last six weeks.

By now, Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard

had built up a powerful force within the other

harbor forts, to challenge Anderson.

Negotiations over the next month failed to improve the situation.

Lincoln insisted that the southern states had no right

under the constitution to secede,

and that, in fact, they simply could not leave the Union.

Therefore any discussion of turning over or selling U.S.

forts to what he considered a false government

could not take place.

The situation at Sumter was becoming dire.

Rations were running out.

Lincoln's position was delicate.

On the one hand, he did not want to take aggressive actions that

might push Virginia and the other states of the upper South

out of the Union and into the Confederacy.

He still hoped that this crisis of secession

would not turn into a war.

On the other hand, if he surrendered Sumter in the face

of military threat from the new-born Confederacy,

that might give the insurrectionist government too

much legitimacy, so that he would never be able to bring its

states back into the Union fold.

Lincoln informed the South Carolina Governor on April 6,

that the federal government would attempt to resupply

Sumter, but no men, arms, or ammunition would be included

except in case of attack.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered General Beauregard

to demand Anderson to surrender Fort Sumter.

If Anderson refused, Beauregard was to order

an artillery strike.

On April 12, Anderson informed Confederate Colonel James

Chestnut that, unless he received new orders or supplies,

he would surrender the fort at noon on April 15.

This was not the unwavering promise

that Beauregard was looking for.

Anderson was told that Beauregard would open up with

artillery within the hour.

Abner Doubleday, a Captain serving under Major Anderson,

later wrote about the incident.

Nineteen batteries were now hammering at us,

and the balls and shells from the ten-inch columbiads,

accompanied by shells from the thirteen-inch mortars which

constantly bombarded us, made us feel as if the war

had commenced in earnest...

Our fort had been built with reference to the penetration of

shot when the old system of smooth-bore guns prevailed.

The balls from a new Blakely gun on Cummings Point,

however, had force enough to go entirely through the wall which

sheltered us, and some of the fragments of brick which were

knocked out wounded several of my detachment...

The firing continued all day...

They had a great advantage over us,

as their fire was concentrated on the fort,

which was in the center of the circle,

while ours was diffused over the circumference...

The night was an anxious one for us...

The batteries fired upon us at stated intervals all night long.

We did not return the fire, having no ammunition to waste.

By 11 a.m. the next day,

the conflagration was terrible and disastrous.

One-fifth of the fort was on fire,

and the wind drove the smoke in dense masses into the angle

where we had all taken refuge.

It seemed impossible to escape suffocation.

On the afternoon of April 13th,

Major Anderson agreed to a truce,

and he evacuated Fort Sumter the next day.

Despite the artillery bombardment and the fire,

there was no loss of life on either side of the conflict.

But by another reckoning, over six hundred thousand would die

as a result of the firing on Fort Sumter.

Because the war had well and truly begun,

and there would be no looking back.

Citing the presidential powers given in the

Militia Acts of 1792, Lincoln called for the remaining states

of the Union to send troops to recapture the forts and preserve

the Union against insurrection.

Initially, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand

volunteers, who would serve for ninety days.

In the face of this call, four more states - Tennessee,

Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia - seceded.

Though they had resisted calls to join the Confederacy for

months, they refused to support a military response against

their fellow southern states.

To reward Virginia - birthplace of Washington,

Jefferson, Madison, and many other founding fathers -

Richmond, Virginia became the capitol of the Confederacy.

Abraham Lincoln reached out to one prominent Virginian,

a twenty-five year veteran,

and offered him command of the Union Army.

Robert E. Lee, son of Revolutionary war hero

"Light Horse Harry" Lee, declined the offer.

On April 20, he resigned his commission in the U.S. Army.

On the 23rd, he took command of Virginia's forces.

In the early days of the war, both the Union and Confederacy

had an easy time raising volunteers.

As far south as Tallulah, Louisiana,

a young woman named Kate Stone wrote of her brother's desire to

fight for the Confederacy.

May 15: My Brother started at daybreak this morning

for New Orleans.

He goes as far as Vicksburg on horseback.

He is wild to be off to Virginia.

He so fears that the fighting will be over before he can get

there that he has decided to give up the plan of raising a

company and going out as a Captain.

He has about fifty men on his rolls and they and Uncle Bo have

empowered him to sign their names as members of any company

he may select.

Mamma regrets so that My Brother would not wait and

complete his commission.

He could get his complement of men in two weeks,

and having been educated at a military school gives him a

great advantage at this time.

And we think there will be fighting for many days yet.

Indeed, there would be.

Kate Stone's brother returned ten days later,

having missed the company he hoped to join.

...he joined the Jeff Davis Guards at Vicksburg,

and was elected third lieutenant.

It is an Irish company officered by Americans...

They leave for Richmond on Monday,

and so My Brother and Uncle Bo get off in the morning

as early as possible.

The parting will be dreadful for Mamma.

She so depends on My Brother, her oldest and best beloved.

The boys are disgruntled because they cannot go too.

The North was also able to attract a large number

of volunteers.

Jacob Dolson Cox was a Republican Senator of Ohio,

who was later commissioned a brigadier general

in the Ohio militia.

He described the response to Lincoln's call for volunteers.

...the great mass of the people of the North,

forgetting all party distinctions,

answered with an enthusiastic patriotism that swept

politicians off their feet.

But although some states,

such as Ohio, were enthusiastic, they had much to do

to be prepared for war.

When Mr. Lincoln issued his first call for

troops, the existing laws made it necessary that these should

be fully organized and officered by the several States.

Then, the treasury was in no condition to bear the burden of

war expenditures, and till Congress could assemble,

the President was forced to rely on the States to furnish the

means necessary for the equipment and transportation of

their own troops.

The governor spoke of the embarrassment he felt at every

step from the lack of practical military experience in his

staff, and of his desire to have some one on whom he could

properly throw the details of military work.

That "some one" to whom the Ohio governor turned

would later be responsible for organizing

the Union's Army of the Potomac.

George B. McClellan.

At the time McClellan's name was a good deal

associated with that of Beauregard;

they were spoken of as young men of similar standing in the

Engineer Corps of the Army, and great things were expected of

them both because of their scientific knowledge of their

profession, though McClellan had been in

civil life for some years.

His report on the Crimean War was one of the few important

memoirs our old army had produced,

and was valuable enough to give a just reputation for

comprehensive understanding of military organization,

and the promise of ability to conduct

the operations of an army...

Nonetheless, men were flocking to enlist.

These ill-equipped, ill-prepared "soldiers" would

discover the reality of war not long after reaching Washington.

With the Confederacy's capital now in Richmond,

the seats of the Union and Confederate governments were now

just a hundred miles apart.

Over the next four years, hundreds of thousands of

Americans would fight, bleed, and die in this short span.

It began poorly for the Union, with the First Battle of Bull

Run, or First Battle of Manassas,

as the victorious Confederates named it.

In mid-July, the 90-day enlistments that Lincoln called

for after Fort Sumter were about to expire.

Lincoln felt pressure from the public to act.

Editorials in northern papers clamored for General in Chief

Winfield Scott to strike for the capital of the Confederacy.

"On to Richmond!" they cried.

Lincoln hoped a more limited attack,

at the Confederate forces gathering just across the

Potomac, in Manassas, Virginia, would be able to accomplish what

he wanted most - a quick end to the insurrection,

without doing irreparable harm to the South.

And so, Brigadier General Irvin MacDowell was sent to lead his

unseasoned troops into battle with P.G.T. Beauregard's equally

unseasoned Confederate troops

near the vital rail junction in Manassas.

"You are green, it is true," Lincoln told McDowell,

"but they are green also..."

McDowell moved his army of thirty-four thousand out of

Washington on July 16.

Beauregard's twenty-five thousand Confederate troops

awaited him about twenty-five miles southwest of Washington,

at Manassas Junction.

After a slow, disorganized march,

the Union forces neared their destination.

A minor skirmish on July 18, accomplished nothing,

and McDowell resolved to assault the Confederate's left flank,

while sending diversionary strikes at the Confederate

center and right flank.

But it was another two days before his troops

moved into position.

During that time, a crowd of onlookers,

including congressmen, gathered around the Union camp.

Union Major General James Fry described the scene.

During the 19th and 20th the bivouacs of McDowell's

army at Centreville, almost within cannon range of the

enemy, were thronged by visitors,

official and unofficial, who came in carriages from

Washington, bringing their own supplies.

They were under no military restraint,

and passed to and fro among the troops as they pleased,

giving the scene the appearance of a monster military picnic.

By this time, Beauregard's army had been

reinforced by General Joseph E. Johnston.

General Beauregard later wrote:

General McDowell, fortunately for my plans,

spent the 19th and 20th in reconnaissance;

and meanwhile, General Johnston brought 8,340

men from the Shenandoah Valley,

with 20 guns, and General Holmes brought 1,265

rank and file, with 6 pieces of artillery,

from Aquia Creek.

As these forces arrived [most of them in the afternoon of the

20th] I placed them chiefly so as to strengthen my

left center and left...

One Confederate officer would gain a nickname

during this battle that would follow him

long after his own death.

Brigadier General Thomas J. Jackson

was praised for his defense of the strategic Henry Hill.

We arrived there just as General Barnard Bee's

troops, after giving way, were fleeing in disorder...

They had come around between the base of the hill and the Stone

Bridge into a shallow ravine which ran up to a point on the

crest where Jackson had already formed his brigade...

Every segment of line we succeeded in forming was again

dissolved while another was being formed...

It was at this moment that General Bee used the famous

expression, "Look at Jackson's brigade!

It stands like a stone wall!"

And so was Stonewall Jackson

christened at First Manassas.

Order was restored in the Confederate line,

and things began to go badly for the North.

Major General Fry later wrote of the battle's turn.

The batteries of Ricketts and Griffin,

by their fine discipline, wonderful daring,

and matchless skill, were the prime features in the fight.

The battle was not lost till they were lost.

A regiment of artillery moved out of the woods

to Captain Charles Griffin's right.

He was about to open fire with his artillery,

when his commanding officer stopped him.

The infantry were wearing blue.

Believing them to be Union troops,

Griffin held his fire.

A moment more and the doubtful regiment proved its

identity by a deadly volley, and,

as Griffin states in his official report,

"every cannoneer was cut down and a large number of horses

killed, leaving the battery... perfectly helpless."

The loss of the artillery and the arrival of

Confederate reinforcements was too much.

The Union forces were soon forced into a retreat.

It began as an orderly withdrawal,

but turned into a full, panicked rout.

Though much smaller than some battles that would occur later

in the war, at the time, Bull Run,

or Manassas, was the largest battle in American history.

The Union suffered almost five hundred dead and twenty-five

hundred wounded, captured, or missing.

In comparison, the Confederate troops lost almost four hundred

dead, sixteen hundred wounded, and a handful missing.

The Confederate victory in this fight led many in the south to

think that they had all but won the war.

But despite the sense of humiliation and despair among

many in the north, the defeat at Manassas actually served to

strengthen Union forces.

The day after the rout at Bull Run,

Lincoln signed a bill calling for the enlistment of five

hundred thousand volunteers, these to serve three years

rather than three months.

McDowell would bear the brunt of the blame for the defeat.

Lincoln would soon remove him from command,

to be replaced by the general whose organizational skills had

so impressed Senator and General Jacob Cox of Ohio:

Major General George B. McClellan would be named

general-in-chief of the Union armies.

McClellan would eventually prove disappointing

as a commander in the field.

But his ability to inspire his men and turn a ragtag bunch of

raw recruits into the best-trained professional army

on the continent would put the Union on the path

to military victory.

But victory for the north was still four long years away.

Fondly do we hope -

fervently do we pray - that this mighty scourge of war

may speedily pass away.

Yet, if God wills that it continue,

until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and

fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk,

and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash,

shall be paid by another drawn with the sword,

as was said three thousand years ago,

so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord,

are true and righteous altogether."