Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[259] chief. The people learned that it was not sufficient to have placed 500,000 men at the disposal of the President, but that it was necessary to aid him in converting those men into soldiers; they cast aside all their prejudices and gave up all their illusions. ‘Drill and organize’ was the watchword on every lip. Instead of casting a stone at the regular officers who had had the misfortune of being vanquished, but who had bravely performed their duty, justice was meted out to them, and they were entrusted with the task of repairing the disaster. Almost all the principal commands in the Federal army were bestowed upon them, and the States contended for the privilege of confiding the new regiments that were being organized to these officers. Nay more, their advice, when they asked the country to renounce that fatal impatience which had brought on the Bull Run campaign, was listened to, and public opinion accepted without a murmur the long inaction which was deemed necessary to organize the national forces.

This inaction, which lasted until the year 1862, was interrupted from time to time only by combats of little importance. The principal occupation of the chiefs of the Federal armies during the six months succeeding the battle of Bull Run was to prepare the instruments they were to use at a later period. The order of our narrative itself, therefore, leads us to say a few words in this place concerning the great task they had to accomplish before they could take the field in earnest.

The most important thing to be done was to reconstruct the army which had been beaten at Bull Run. General McClellan was summoned in great haste on the 22d of July by Mr. Lincoln, and entrusted with this duty. McDowell, who had been offered an independent command in the West, preferred to remain at the head of a simple division among the companions of his defeat. General McClellan had made himself known by the successful and rapid campaign which three weeks before had freed West Virginia, but he happily possessed also organizing talents which he had not been able to display in that small command. His laborious character, his precise, methodical mind, and his vast military knowledge peculiarly fitted him for the ungrateful and difficult work which had fallen to his lot. He was