John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion

[170] Letcher called into service; and the earliest levies of Northern Virginia were posted at Manassas Junction, where railroads from Richmond, from Alexandria, and from the Shenandoah Valley met. On examination, its strategical value was found to be much greater than was suspected at the beginning; Colonel Cocke, the local commander, first pointed out to Lee its important relation to the Shenandoah Valley. “These two columns,” he writes, under date of May 15th, “one at Manassas and one at Winchester, could readily co-operate and concentrate upon the one point or the other, either to make head against the enemy's columns advancing down the valley, should he force Harper's Ferry; or, in ease we repulse him at Harper's Ferry, the Winchester supporting column could throw itself on this side of the mountains, to co-operate with the column at Manassas.”

With the great increase of Federal troops at Washington, and their seizure of Alexandria and Arlington Heights, the post at Manassas Junction became of such prominence and importance, that Beauregard was sent to take command of it about June 1st. Beauregard was an officer of curiously unequal merit: thoroughly educated, and highly skilful in the science and art of military engineering, he had little capacity for administration, or sound judgment in the conception of large field-operations. Giddy to intoxication with laudation for his cheap victory at Sumter, he now invited upon his own head the contempt of the world, and of history, by publishing a proclamation in which, without provocation, he charged the Union armies to have abandoned “all rules of civilized warfare,” and to have made “Beauty and Booty” their war-cry. His next exploit was to excite the distrust of the Richmond authorities upon his military ability, by proposing a series of aggressive movements intended to annihilate the Union armies and capture Washington; liable, however,