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CONFEDERATE ADVANTAGES—THE LEADING GENERAL OFFICERS—GRADUATES OF WEST POINT JOIN THE CONFEDERACY—CAPITAL REMOVED FROM MONTGOMERY—PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S CALL FOR SOLDIERS AND SAILORS—SOUTHERN PRIVATEERS—"ON TO RICHMOND!"

Although up to this time no important engagements between the troops had taken place, the war was actually begun. The Sumter affair had been the signal for both sides to throw away subterfuge and disguise, and it became thenceforth an open struggle for military advantage. The South no longer pleaded State rights, but military necessity, for seizing such Government posts and property as were within reach; the North no longer acted under the restraint of hesitation to commit an open breach, for the peace was broken irrevocably, and whatever it was possible to do, in the way of defence or offence, was now become politic.

The two contending powers were entering on the struggle under very different conditions and with unequal advantages. Before taking up the military operations which ensued, it will be interesting to look at these conditions.

On both sides there were many experienced army and navy officers, who had seen service, had been educated at the United States Military and Naval Academies, and had either remained in the service or, having withdrawn to civil life, were prompt to offer their swords to the side to which they adhered. Assuming the number and quality of these officers to have been equally divided, there were several respects in which the Confederates had the advantage in their preliminary organization, apart from the studied care with which disloyal cabinet officers had scattered the Federal regular army and had stripped Northern posts of supplies and of trustworthy commandants. President Lincoln came on from his Western home without knowledge of war, acquaintance with military men, or familiarity with military matters, and was immediately plunged into emergencies requiring in the Executive an intimate knowledge of all three. He became the titular commander-in-chief of an army already officered, but not only ignorant as to whether he had the right man in the right place, but powerless to make changes even had he known what changes to make, by reason of the law and the traditions governing the personnel of the service, in which promotion and personal relations were fixed and established. He found a military establishment that had been running on a peace footing for more than a decade and was not readily adaptable to war conditions; and officers in high command, who, as their States seceded, followed them out of the Union, carrying with them the latest official secrets and leaving behind them vacancies which red-tape and tradition, and not the free choice of the commander-in-chief, were to fill. His near advisers, particularly those in whose hands were the details of military administration, were scarcely better informed than himself, possessing political shrewdness and undoubted loyalty, but none of the professional knowledge of which he stood so sorely in need.

The President of the Southern Confederacy, on the other hand, was Jefferson Davis, a man whose personal instrumentality in bringing about the rebellion gave him both knowledge and authority; an educated soldier and veteran of the Mexican war, in which he held a high command; familiar, through long service as Secretary of War and on the Senate Military Committee, not only with all the details of military administration, but with the points of strength and weakness in the military establishment of the enemy he was about to grapple with. Placed at the head of a new government, with neither army nor navy, nor law nor tradition for their control, he was free to exercise his superior knowledge of military matters for the best possible use of the men at his command in organizing his military establishment. None of the political conditions surrounding him forced on President Davis the appointment of political generals—an unavoidable evil which long postponed the effectiveness of President Lincoln's army administration. Whatever his judgment, guided by his professional military experience, approved of, he was free to do. It was President Lincoln's difficult task to learn something about military matters himself, and then to untie or cut the Gordian knot of hampering conditions; and if, in doing this, an occasional injustice was done to an individual officer, it is a cause for wonder far less significant than that by the exercise of his extraordinary faculty of common-sense he progressed as rapidly as he did toward the right way of accomplishing the ends he had in view.

FRANCIS H. PIERPONT, Governor of West Virginia.

CAMP OF THE FORTY-FOURTH NEW YORK INFANTRY, NEAR ALEXANDRIA, VA.

The beginning of trouble in 1861 found the administration of the War Department in the hands of Secretary Joseph Holt, who had succeeded the secessionist Floyd, and was in turn succeeded by Simon Cameron, the war secretary of Lincoln's first cabinet, who remained there until the appointment of Edwin M. Stanton, the great "war secretary" of the remaining years of the struggle. Cameron was a shrewd politician, but was uninformed on military matters, for advice on which President Lincoln relied principally on other members of the cabinet and on General Scott. The cabinet of 1861 contained also John A. Dix, in the Treasury—whence issued his celebrated "shoot him on the spot" despatch—who took a general's commission when he retired in favor of Salmon P. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury during most of the war. Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy.

Among the staff officers of the army were Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant-General; E. D. Townsend, who as Assistant Adjutant-General was identified with this important office throughout the war; Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster-General; and Joseph G. Totten, Chief of Engineers.

The general in command of the army was Winfield Scott, whose conduct of the Mexican war had made him a conspicuous military and political figure, an able officer and a most loyal Unionist, but already suffering from the infirmities of age, which soon compelled him to relinquish to younger hands the command of the army. But until after the battle of Bull Run, his was the directing mind. His immediate subordinates were Brig.-Gens. John E. Wool, also a veteran in service; William S. Harney, whose reluctance to take part in civil war soon terminated his usefulness; and David E. Twiggs, who surrendered his command to the Confederates in Texas, and going with the South, was replaced by Edwin V. Sumner.

The command of the main Union force, organized from the volunteers who were pouring into Washington, devolved on Irvin McDowell, a major in the regular army, now promoted to be brigadier-general, who established his headquarters at Alexandria, across the Potomac from Washington, there directing the defence of the capital, and thence advancing to Bull Run. In this command he succeeded Gen. Joseph K. F. Mansfield. Under him, during this campaign, were many officers who rose to eminence during the war. His corps commanders at Bull Run were Gens. Daniel Tyler, David Hunter, Samuel P. Heintzelman, Theodore Runyon, and D. S. Miles; and among the brigade commanders were Gens. Erasmus D. Keyes, Robert C. Schenck, William T. Sherman, Israel B. Richardson, Andrew Porter, Ambrose E. Burnside, William B. Franklin, Oliver O. Howard, Louis Blenker, and Thomas A. Davies. Threatening the approach to Richmond from the lower Chesapeake, was Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, at Fortress Monroe.

Among the Confederate generals who prepared to defend Virginia, were Robert E. Lee, then in command of the Virginia State troops, Samuel Cooper, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, James Longstreet, Jubal A. Early, Richard S. Ewell, Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson, Robert S. Garnett, John C. Pegram, Benjamin Huger, John B. Magruder, and others.

The seventy-five thousand troops called for in President Lincoln's proclamation of April 15th, were three-months men. On the 3d of May, 1861, he issued another proclamation, calling for forty-two thousand volunteers for three years, and authorizing the raising of ten new regiments for the regular army. He also called for eighteen thousand volunteer seamen for the navy. The ports of the Southern coasts had been already (April 19th) declared in a state of blockade, and it was not only desirable but absolutely necessary to make the blockade effectual. The Confederate Government had issued letters of marque for privateers almost from the first; and its Congress had authorized the raising of an army of one hundred thousand volunteers for one year.

When Congress convened on the 4th of July, President Lincoln asked for four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, to suppress the insurrection; and in response he was authorized to call for five hundred thousand men and spend five hundred million dollars. What he had already done was approved and declared valid; and on the 15th of July the House of Representatives, with but five dissenting votes, passed a resolution (introduced by John A. McClernand, a Democrat) pledging any amount of money and any number of men that might be necessary to restore the authority of the National Government.

The seat of the Confederate Government was removed from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Va., on the 20th of May.

BATTLE OF BULL RUN, JULY 21, 1861.

BRIGADIER-GENERAL McDOWELL AND STAFF.