CHAPTER 1.7.  ROMNEY.

1861 November.

While the Indian summer still held carnival in the forests of Virginia, Jackson found himself once more on the Shenandoah.  Some regiments of militia, the greater part of which were armed with flint-lock muskets, and a few squadrons of irregular cavalry formed his sole command.

The autumn of 1861 was a comparatively quiet season.  The North, silent but determined, was preparing to put forth her stupendous strength.  Scott had resigned; McDowell had been superseded; but the President had found a general who had caught the confidence of the nation.  In the same month that had witnessed McDowell’s defeat, a young officer had gained a cheap victory over a small Confederate force in West Virginia, and his grandiloquent dispatches had magnified the achievement in the eyes of the Northern people.  He was at once nicknamed the “Young Napoleon,” and his accession to the chief command of the Federal armies was enthusiastically approved.  General McClellan had been educated at West Point, and had graduated first of the class in which Jackson was seventeenth.  He had been appointed to the engineers, had served on the staff in the war with Mexico, and as United States Commissioner with the Allied armies in the Crimea.  In 1857 he resigned, to become president of a railway company, and when the war broke out he was commissioned by the State of Ohio as Major-General of Volunteers.  His reputation at the Military Academy and in the regular army had been high.  His ability and industry were unquestioned.  His physique was powerful, and he was a fine horseman.  His influence over his troops was remarkable, and he was emphatically a gentleman.

It was most fortunate for the Union at this juncture that caution and method were his distinguishing characteristics.  The States had placed at Lincoln’s disposal sufficient troops to form an army seven times greater than that which had been defeated at Bull Run.  McClellan, however, had no thought of committing the new levies to an enterprise for which they were unfitted.  He had determined that the army should make no move till it could do so with the certainty of success, and the winter months were to be devoted to training and organisation.  Nor was there any cry for immediate action.  The experiment of a civilian army had proved a terrible failure.  The nation that had been so confident of capturing Richmond, was now anxious for the security of Washington.  The war had been in progress for nearly six months, and yet the troops were manifestly unfit for offensive operations.  Even the crude strategists of the press had become alive to the importance of drill and discipline.

October 21.

A reconnaissance in force, pushed (contrary to McClellan’s orders) across the Potomac, was repulsed by General Evans at Ball’s Bluff with heavy loss; and mismanagement and misconduct were so evident that the defeat did much towards inculcating patience.