BALL'S BLUFF-FIGHT AT DRANESVILLE. 625 that retreat on his part was simple | sured, in a confidential whisper, that ruin. He must repulse the enemy our men had been so demoralized assailing him then and there, or be and spirit-broken by their rout at destroyed; for no force that Stone Bull Run, that there was no fight in might now send to his relief could be them-that a whole brigade would brought up in time to save him. take to their heels at the sight of a Rebel regiment advancing to the charge. Ball's Bluff repelled and dissipated this unworthy calumny--by showing that our soldiers, though most unskillfully handled, precipitated into needless perils, entrapped, surrounded, hopeless, had still the courage to fight and the manhood to die. The Ball's Bluff tragedy, grossly misrepresented as it was in Rebel bulletins and exulting narratives, tended to confirm and extend the vain-glorious delusion which was already sapping the foundations, if not of Rebel strength, at least of Rebel Gen. Evans officially reenergy. ported that he had fought and beaten 8,000 men,commanded by Gen. Stone -his troops using the musket alone; while the Unionists employed artillery, and fired on him with longrange guns from the Maryland shore! and that his brigade had driven "an enemy four times their number from the soil of Virginia, killing and taking prisoners a greater number than our whole force engaged." These fables were repeated in general orders, with the necessary effect of inflating the whole Confederate people with an inordinate conceit of their own prowess, and misleading them into an intense contempt for Yankee cowardice and inefficiency. The natural consequences of this delusive swagger were evinced in the encounters of the ensuing Spring. DRANESVILLE. At 6 A. M., of Dec. 20th, Gen. E. O. C. Ord, commanding the 3d Pennsylvania brigade, in pursuance of orders from Gen. George A. McCall, commanding the division holding the right of Gen. McClel lan's army, moved forward from Camp Pierpont toward Dranesville, Loudoun County, Va., instructed to drive back the enemy's pickets, procure a supply of forage, and capture, On the other hand, Ball's Bluff dispelled, though at a terrible cost, some of the aspersions which had been sedulously propagated with regard to the spirit and morale of the Union rank and file. Whoever asked of any champion of the prevailing strategy why our armies stood idle, and as if paralyzed, in the presence of inferior forces of Rebels, were as the 6th South Carolina, out of 315 present, losing 65-in part, by the fire of the 1st Kentucky (Rebel), which, mistaking them for Unionists, poured a murderous volley into them at forty yards' distance. It was a foolish affair on the part of Stuart, who was palpably misled by the gasconade of Evans, with regard to his meeting and beating more than four to one at Ball's Bluff. When he found himself overmatched, losing heavily, and in danger of being outflanked and destroyed, the Rebel General withdrew rapidly, but in tolerable order, from the field; and Gen. McCall, who came up at this moment, wisely decided not to pursue; since a Rebel force thrice his own might at any moment be interposed between him and his camp. Each party returned to its quarters that night. if possible, a small cavalry force-running off their guns by hand; scouting betwixt Dranesville and the Potomac. Gen. Ord's brigade consisted of the 9th, Col. C. F. Jackson, 10th, Col. J. S. McCalmont, 12th, Col. John H. Taggart, the Bucktail Rifles, Lt. Col. T. L. Kane, a part of Lt.-Col. the 6th, with Easton's battery and two squadrons of cavalry; in all, about 4,000 men. While halting to load forage just east of Dranesville, he was attacked by a Rebel brigade, led by Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, composed of the 11th Virginia, the 6th South Carolina, 10th Alabama, 1st Kentucky, the Sumter Flying Artillery, and detachments from two cavalry regiments—the whole force numbering, according to Rebel accounts, only 2,500. Stuart appears to have been likewise on a foraging excursion ; as he had with him about 200 wagons, which probably returned empty of aught but wounded men. They came up the road leading southwardly from Dranesville to Centerville, some fifteen miles distant, and were foolishly pushed on to attack, though the advantage in numbers, in position, and even in artillery, appears to have been decidedly on our side. They were, of course, easily and badly beaten; the Pennsylvanians fighting with cool intrepidity and entire confidence of suc-aging parties, believed by our men to cess. Our aggregate loss was but 9 killed and 60 wounded-among the latter, Lieut.-Col. Kane, who led his men with signal gallantry. The Rebels lost, by their own account, 230; among them, Col. Forney, of the 10th Alabama, wounded, and Lieut. Col. Martin, killed. They left 25 horses dead on the field, with two caissons--one of them exploded, The victory of Dranesville, unimportant as it may now seem, diffused an immense exhilaration throughout the Union ranks. It was a fitting and conclusive answer to every open assertion or whispered insinuation impeaching the courage or the steadiness of our raw Northern volunteers. The encounter was purely fortuitous, at least on our side; two strong for be about equal in numbers, had met on fair, open ground; had fought a brief but spirited duel, which had ended in the confessed defeat and flight of the Rebels, whose loss was at least twice that they inflicted on us. Admit that they were but 2,500 to our 4,000; the Army of the Potomac, now nearly 200,000" strong, and able to advance on the enemy "Gen. McClellan, in his deliberately prepared, loudly trumpeted, and widely circulated Report, THE SITUATION AT THE CLOSE OF 1861. 627 with not less than 150,000 sabers and I had been called to command at Washbayonets, eagerly awaited the long-ington on the same day that Fremont expected permission to prove itself but fairly represented in that casual detachment which had fought and won at Dranesville. In every other quarter, our arms were in the ascendant. The blow well struck by Butler and Stringham at Hatteras, had never been retaliated. The Rebels' attempt to cut off Brown's regiment at Chicamicomico had resulted in more loss to them than to us. Du Pont's triumph at Port Royal had dealt a damaging blow to our foes, and inflicted signal injury on the original plotters of treason, without loss to our side. In West Virginia, the campaign was closing with the prestige of success and superiority gilding our standards, and with at least nine-tenths of the whole region securely in our hands. In Missouri, Gen. Fremont-though vehemently reproached for not advancing and fighting sooner, and though never enjoying facilities for obtaining arms, munitions, or any material of war, at all comparable to those at all times eagerly accorded to McClellan-had collected, organized, armed, and provided, a movable column of nearly 40,000 men, at whose head he had pushed Price—one of the very ablest of the Rebel chieftains-to the furthest corner of the State, and was on the point of hunting him thence into Arkansas or eternity, when the order which deprived him of his command was received at Springfield on the 2d of November. Yet then and throughout the Winter, Gen. McClellan, who | left New York for St. Louis, stood cooped up and virtually besieged in the defenses of Washington, holding barely ground enough in Virginia to encamp and maneuver his army; while the Rebels impudently obstructed the navigation of the lower Potomac, on one hand, by batteries erected at commanding points on the Virginia shore, while the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was dismantled and obstructed by them at Harper's Ferry and further west on the other; leaving the city of Washington, as well as his vast army, dependent on the single track of the Branch Railroad for all their subsistence and supplies, throughout the tedious Winter that followed. The Confederates had not yet enforced a general Conscription; and, though volunteering was widely stimulated by Police discipline and Lynch law, while the more ignorant and illinformed young women of many slaveholding localities were envenomed Secessionists, refusing to give any but the most furious countenance to young men who hesitated to enlist, yet the white population of the States actually controlled by the Rebels was so very far inferior in numbers to that of the loyal North and West, that the Rebel armies were necessarily and vastly the less numerous likewise. Gen. McClellan, indeed, appears to have estimated their numbers in Eastern Virginia at 150,000; but the information on which he acted differed 169,452 were "fit for duty." This does not include Gen. Wool's command at and near Fortress Monroe. On the 1st of January following, he states the force under his more immediate command on the 1st of December-that is, the force then in the Federal District, Maryland, Delaware, and the small patch of Eastern Virginia opposite | makes his total 219,707; on the 1st of February, Washington held by him-at 198,213; whereof | 222,196. widely from that of his subordinates | wore heavily away, and saw nothing who spent the Winter in camp in of moment attempted. Even the Virginia, while he remained snugly Rebel batteries obstructing the lower housed in Washington. Gen. Wads- Potomac were not so much as menworth, who saw and (until forbidden) | aced-the Navy laying the blame on questioned the 'contrabands' and the Army; the Army throwing it other deserters who came within our back on the Navy-probably both lines from Centerville and vicinity right, or, rather, both wrong: but the that Autumn and Winter, was con- net result was nothing done; until fident that 60,000 was the highest the daily repetition of the stereotyped number they ever had encamped in telegraphic bulletin, "All quiet on our front; and these we might have as the Potomac"--which had at first sailed at a day's notice with 120,000; been received with satisfaction; afterand, by taking three days for prepara- ward with complacency; at length tion, with 150,000. Why not? evoked a broad and general roar of disdainful merriment. The weather was magnificent; the roads hard and dry, till far into Winter. An artillery officer wonderingly inquired: "What is such weather for, if not fighting?” The loyal masses-awed by the obloquy heaped on those falsely accused of having caused the disaster at Bull Run by their ignorant impatience and precipitancy-stood in silent expectation. They still kept raising regiment after regiment, battery after battery, and hurrying them forward to the allingulfing Army of the Potomac, to be in time for the decided movement that must be just at hand-but the torrent was there drowned in a lake of Lethean stagnation. First, we were waiting for reënforcements-which was most reasonable; then, for the requisite drilling and fitting for service-which was just as helpful to the Rebels as to us; then, for the leaves to fall-so as to facilitate military movements in a country so wooded and broken as Virginia; then, for cannon-whereof we had already more than 200 first-rate field-guns in Virginia, ready for instant service: and so the long, bright Autumn, and the colder but still favorable December, And so, Winter at last settled down upon that vast, gallant, most effective army, Two Hundred Thousand strong, able and ready, on any fair field, to bear down at a charge all the Rebels in their front without coming to a stand; yet lying thus beleaguered and paralyzed, shivering and dying in the tents to which they had been so suddenly transferred from their comfortable homes-not allowed to build themselves huts, such as the Rebels had, because that would reveal to the country the fact that nothing was to be attempted till Spring or later; expecting, hoping every day to receive the long-awaited order to advance; but seeing night after night close in without it; and sinking into homesickness and disease, which employment for body and mind would readily have repelled and dissipated. Is this obstinate fixity, this rooted neglect and waste of the grandest opportunities, explicable? Not by the hypothesis of a constitutional aversion to the shedding of blood-that is, of other men's on the part of our Young Napoleon;' for he was at that moment among the most eager MCCLELLAN'S TORPOR-FITFULLY BROKEN. to have our country involved in still another great war, by a refusal, on the part of our Government, to surrender Mason and Slidell. Not even Vallandigham was more belligerent in that direction. Constitutional timidity and irresolution-an overwhelming sense of responsibility and inadequacy to so stupendous a trustwere probably not without their influence in the premises. But, beyond and above all these, there was doubt less a slowly awakened consciousness that Slavery was the real assailant of our National existence, and that to put down the Rebellion by a positive, determined exertion of force, was to seal the doom of its inciting cause, which had so recently transformed into downright traitors so many high officers who once honored and loved our Union and its flag. It was hard for one who had long been arguing and voting that, in our current polities, Slavery was not the aggressor, but the innocent victim, to unlearn this gross error in a year; and Gen. McClellan is essentially slow. But, in the high position to which he had been so suddenly exalted, it was hard also not to see that, in order to save both Slavery and the Union, there must be little fighting and a speedy compromise that fighting must be postponed, and put off, and avoided, in the hope that financial embarrassment, a foreign war, or some other complication, would compel the mutual adoption of some sort of Crittenden Compromise, or kindred 'adjustment,' whereby the Slave Power would graciously condescend to take the Union afresh into its keeping, and consent to a reünion, which would be, in effect, an extension of the empire of Jefferson Davis to the Canada | 629 frontier, and a perpetual interdict of all Anti-Slavery discussion and effort throughout the Republic. On this hypothesis, and on this alone, Gen. McClellan's course while in high command, but especially during that long Autumn and Winter, becomes coherent and comprehensible. The Rebels, so vastly outnumbered and overmatched in every thing but leadership, were, of course, too glad to be allowed to maintain a virtual siege of Washington, with all but one of its lines of communication with the loyal States obstructed, to make any offensive movement; and the only assault made that Winter upon our General-in-Chief's main position, was repelled with prompt, decided energy. The circumstances were as follows: A portion of the melodious Hutchinson family, having been attracted to Washington by the novelty of finding the public halls of that city no longer barricaded against the utterance of humane and generous sentiments, had there solicited of the Secretary of War permission to visit the camps across the Potomac, in order to break the monotony and cheer the ruggedness of Winter with the spontaneous, unbought carol of some of their simple, heartfelt songs. Gen. Cameron gave their project not merely his cordial assent, but his emphatic commendation; and, thus endorsed, they received Gen. McClellan's gracious permission. So they passed over to the camps, and were singing to delighted crowds of soldiers, when an officer's quick ear caught the drift of what sounded like Abolition! Forthwith, there were commotion, and ef fervescence, and indignation, rising from circle to circle of the military aristocracy, until they reached the |