The military genius and experience of General Scott, from the first, pretty correctly divined the grand outline of military operations which would become necessary in reducing the revolted Southern States to renewed allegiance.  Long before the battle of Bull Run was planned, he urged that the first seventy-five regiments of three months’ militia could not be relied on for extensive campaigns, because their term of service would expire before they could be well organized.  His outline suggestion, therefore, was that the new three years’ volunteer army be placed in ten or fifteen healthy camps and given at least four months of drill and tactical instruction; and when the navy had, by a rigid blockade, closed all the harbors along the seaboard of the Southern States, the fully prepared army should, by invincible columns, move down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, leaving a strong cordon of military posts behind it to keep open the stream, join hands with the blockade, and thus envelop the principal area of rebellion in a powerful military grasp which would paralyze and effectually kill the insurrection.  Even while suggesting this plan, however, the general admitted that the great obstacle to its adoption would be the impatience of the patriotic and loyal Union people and leaders, who would refuse to wait the necessary length of time.

The general was correct in his apprehension.  The newspapers criticized his plan in caustic editorials and ridiculous cartoons as “Scott’s Anaconda,” and public opinion rejected it in an overwhelming demand for a prompt and energetic advance.  Scott was correct in military theory, while the people and the administration were right in practice, under existing political conditions.  Although Bull Run seemed to justify the general, West Virginia and Missouri vindicated the President and the people.

It can now be seen that still a third element—­geography—­intervened to give shape and sequence to the main outlines of the Civil War.  When, at the beginning of May, General Scott gave his advice, the seat of government of the first seven Confederate States was still at Montgomery, Alabama.  By the adhesion of the four interior border States to the insurrection, and the removal of the archives and administration of Jefferson Davis to Richmond, Virginia, toward the end of June, as the capital of the now eleven Confederate States, Washington necessarily became the center of Union attack, and Richmond the center of Confederate defense.  From the day when McDowell began his march to Bull Run, to that when Lee evacuated Richmond in his final hopeless flight, the route between these two opposing capitals remained the principal and dominating line of military operations, and the region between Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River on the east, and the chain of the Alleghanies on the west, the primary field of strategy.