e were in part opposed
to secession; from Washington by a direct movement on Richmond; and
from Fortress Monroe on the Virginia Peninsula.

The first skirmish before Fortress Monroe, led by B. F. Butler, had been
repulsed with such ease no serious danger was felt in that quarter. The
ten thousand men under Holmes and McGruder could hold Butler
indefinitely.

Davis had seen from the first that one of the supreme dangers of the
South lay in the long line of exposed frontier in the West. If a
commander of military genius should succeed in turning his flank here
the heart of the lower South would be pierced.

For this important command he reserved Albert Sidney Johnston.

The Northern army under George B. McClellan and Rosecrans had defeated
the troops in Western Virginia. In a series of small fights they had
lost a thousand men and all their artillery. General Lee was dispatched
from Richmond to repair if possible this disaster.

The first two clashes had been a draw. The South had won first blood on
the Peninsula--the North in Western Virginia. The main army of the South
was now concentrated to oppose the main army of the North from
Washington.

Brigadier General Beauregard, the widely acclaimed hero of Fort Sumter,
was in command of this army near Manassas Station on the road to
Alexandria.

Beauregard's position was in a measure an accident of fortune. The first
shot had been fired by him at Sumter. He was the first paper-made hero
of the war. He had led the first regiment into Virginia to defend her
from invasion.

He was the man of the hour. His training and record, too, gave promise
of high achievements. He had graduated from West Point in 1838, second
in a class of forty-five men. His family was of high French extraction,
having settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. He had entered the
Mexican War a lieutenant and emerged from the campaign a major. He was
now forty-five years old, in the prime of life. His ability had been
recognized by the National Government in the beginning of the year by
his appointment as Superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point.
His commission had been revoked at the last moment by the vacillating
Buchanan because his brother-in-law, Senator Slidell of Louisiana, had
made a secession speech in Washington.

Jefferson Davis was not enthusiastic in his confidence in the new hero.
He was too much given to outbursts of a public kind to please the
ascetic mind of the