Aftermath of the First Major Battle

Around 4,500 men were killed in the first major battle of the Civil War. The North called the battle Bull Run and the South dubbed it Manassas. It was a major defeat for the North and for a first battle, it made a tremendous first impression. One of the Union soldiers commented: "I'm going home. I've had enough fighting to last my lifetime." President Lincoln called for the enlistment of 100,000 additional troops to serve for three years instead of three months. This was a wakeup call; it did not appear like this would be a short war after all.

President Lincoln appointed a new man to be in charge of the Union forces: George B. McClellan. McClellan found the Union army in shambles. He wrote that not a "regiment was properly encamped, not a single avenue or approach guarded. All was chaos and the streets, hotels and barrooms were filled with drunken officers and men absent from their regiments without leave." The new General devoted himself to bringing order to this chaos. A hundred thousand untrained volunteers became an army.

The defeat at Bull Run increased Lincoln's fears that the slaveholding Border States within the Union might secede. Lincoln explained to a friend, "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game, Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These are all against us, and the job on out hands is too large for us." Maryland was especially crucial to the Union, for if it fell, Washington D. C. would be surrounded by hostile states. Bull Run had emboldened the secessionists in Maryland. The evening before a vote on secession, Lincoln sent troops to occupy Baltimore, locked the mayor and legislators in jail, and kept them there without trial until a new and safely Unionist legislature was elected.

In the meantime, McClellan believed in making no moves until the army was completely prepared. As summer turned to autumn, it became clear that the General may never consider the army prepared because he had not lead it anywhere. Republicans in Congress grew impatient, if the Union did not avenge Bull Run soon, they feared Europe would view it as a sign that northern resolve was weakening and they might recognize the Confederacy. As the pressure began to mount on him McClellan to move the army, the General claimed he was "disgusted with these wretched politicians." Lincoln was patient with him and when the general-in-chief Winfield Scott retired, the President appointed McClellan to the post. Still, he did nothing. He continuously believed false reports of where Confederate troops were and about the size of enemy armies. He used these reports as excuses and refused to believe that anything that happened was his fault. So, with this mind set, McClellan took his great army into winter quarters and continuously blamed others for his own inactivity. He assured his wife that he had been "thwarted and deceived by . . . incapables at every turn . . . it now begins to look as if we are condemned to a winter of inactivity. If it is so the fault will not be mine."

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