om below, took possession of Columbus on the Mississippi.
With both hostile armies thus encamped on her soil, Kentucky could no
longer be neutral. Her decision was quickly taken. The Legislature
demanded of President Davis to withdraw Polk's forces, at the same time
calling upon General Anderson, the hero of Sumter, who had been placed
in charge of the Department of the Cumberland, to take active measures
for the defence of this his native State.

The mountain portion of Virginia belonged to the West rather than to the
South. It contained only 18,000 slaves, against nearly 500,000 in
Eastern Virginia. Union sentiment was therefore strong, and when the old
State seceded from the Union, Western Virginia proceeded to secede from
the State. General Lee sent troops to hold it for the Confederacy.
Thereupon General McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio,
threw several regiments across the river into Virginia, and defeated the
foe in minor engagements at Philippi, Rich Mountain, and Carrick's Ford.
By the middle of July he was able to report, "Secession is killed in
this country." Later in the year the Confederates renewed their
attempts, but were finally driven out. West Virginia organized a
separate government, and was subsequently admitted to the Union as a
State by itself.

[Illustration: Map.]
Bull Run--the Field of Strategy.

While these struggles were going on in the border commonwealths, the
Union soldiers lay inactive along the Potomac. Constant drill had
changed the mob into some semblance of an organized army, but the
careful Scott feared to risk a general engagement. The hostile forces
stretched in three pairs of groups across Virginia from northwest to
southeast. In the southeastern part of the State, at Fortress Monroe,
Butler faced the Confederate Magruder. At Manassas, opposite Washington,
and about thirty miles southwest, lay a Confederate army under General
Beauregard. General Patterson, a veteran of the War of 1812, commanded
considerable forces in Southern Pennsylvania. About the middle of June
he advanced against Harper's Ferry, which had been abandoned by the
Unionists the latter part of April and was now occupied by General
Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston evacuated the place upon Patterson's
approach, and retreated up the Shenandoah Valley, in a southwesterly
direction, to Winchester. Patterson followed part way, and the two
armies now lay watching each other.

Anxious to see the rebellio