The relative loss and gain in these affairs was not greatly unequal.  The victories of Philippi and Boonville easily offset the disasters of Big Bethel and Vienna.  But the public mind was not yet schooled to patience and to the fluctuating chances of war.  The newspapers demanded prompt progress and ample victory as imperatively as they were wont to demand party triumph in politics or achievement in commercial enterprise.  “Forward to Richmond,” repeated the “New York Tribune,” day after day, and many sheets of lesser note and influence echoed the cry.  There seemed, indeed, a certain reason for this clamor, because the period of enlistment of the three months’ regiments was already two thirds gone, and they were not yet all armed and equipped for field service.

President Lincoln was fully alive to the need of meeting this popular demand.  The special session of Congress was soon to begin, and to it the new administration must look, not only to ratify what had been done, but to authorize a large increase of the military force, and heavy loans for coming expenses of the war.  On June 29, therefore, he called his cabinet and principal military officers to a council of war at the Executive Mansion, to discuss a more formidable campaign than had yet been planned.  General Scott was opposed to such an undertaking at that time.  He preferred waiting until autumn, meanwhile organizing and drilling a large army, with which to move down the Mississippi and end the war with a final battle at New Orleans.  Aside from the obvious military objections to this course, such a procrastination, in the present irritation of the public temper, was not to be thought of; and the old general gracefully waived his preference and contributed his best judgment to the perfecting of an immediate campaign into Virginia.

The Confederate forces in Virginia had been gathered by the orders of General Lee into a defensive position at Manassas Junction, where a railroad from Richmond and another from Harper’s Ferry come together.  Here General Beauregard, who had organized and conducted the Sumter bombardment, had command of a total of about twenty-five thousand men which he was drilling.  The Junction was fortified with some slight field-works and fifteen heavy guns, supported by a garrison of two thousand; while the main body was camped in a line of seven miles’ length behind Bull Run, a winding, sluggish stream flowing southeasterly toward the Potomac.  The distance was about thirty-two miles southwest of Washington.  Another Confederate force of about ten thousand, under General J.E.  Johnston, was collected at Winchester and Harper’s Ferry on the Potomac, to guard the entrance to the Shenandoah valley; and an understanding existed between Johnston and Beauregard, that in case either were attacked, the other would come to his aid by the quick railroad transportation between the two places.