In 1861 the Governors of the several Northern States
were ordered to call for volunteers to enlist for ninety days, the
men electing their own officers. It was generally believed throughout
the North that all Southern resistance would collapse before the
great armies that would thus be raised. But the troops sent out to
crush the rebellion, when they first came under fire, were soldiers
only in outward garb, and at Bull Run, face to face with shot and
shell, they soon lapsed into the condition of a terrified rabble, and
ran away from another rabble almost equally demoralised; and this,
not because they were cowards, for they were of the same breed as the
young regular soldiers who retreated from the same field in such
excellent order, but because they neither understood what discipline
was nor the necessity for it, and because the staff and regimental
officers, with few exceptions, were untrained and inexperienced.
Mr. Davis, having prevented the Southern army from following up the
victory at Bull Run, gave the Northern States some breathing time.
Mr. Lincoln was thus able to raise a new army of over 200,000 men for
the projected advance on Richmond.
The new army was liberally supplied with guns, pontoons, balloons,
hospitals, and waggons; but, with the exception of a few officers
spared from the regular army, it was without trained soldiers to lead
it, or staff officers to move and to administer its Divisions.
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