large scale had saved the
Confederate capital, though at fearful cost, and he was everywhere
regarded as a great general. From this time Davis and the Confederate
Government gave him the fullest confidence, and the people of the South
came to think of him as almost superhuman. Though he was bold in action
and even reckless of human life, his soldiers gave him an obedience and
a reverence which no other commander in American history has ever
received. Jackson, Longstreet, and D. H. and A. P. Hill had also won
fame in this baptism of blood. To the average Southerner the outlook was
once more exceedingly bright. Richmond breathed freely, and the
Government bent its energies to the task of supplying its able officers
with men and means.

While the Federal Government was deciding what to do with McClellan and
his army, still almost twice as large as Lee's, the Confederate
commander sent Jackson with some 20,000 men to the neighborhood of Bull
Run, where the commands of McDowell, Banks, and Fremont had been united
to make a third army of invasion. General John Pope was brought from
successful operations in the West to Washington, where Secretary Edwin
M. Stanton, assuming more and more the directing authority of the
Government, prepared, with the assistance of Senator Benjamin F. Wade, a
proclamation which Pope was to distribute among the troops. "I come from
the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies," ran this
remarkable admonition to Eastern, officers and men. "Let us look before
us and not behind." Most of the 50,000 men who were soon to meet Jackson
and Lee resented the comparison and the affront. On August 9 a sharp
encounter at Cedar Mountain showed how resolute and real was the purpose
of Lee to drive this army out of Virginia. When President Lincoln
removed McClellan and ordered the Army of the Potomac in part to
Washington, in part to Acquia Creek, near Fredericksburg, to support
Pope, and gave the command of all the armies of the East to General H.
W. Halleck, for whom Grant had won high reputation earlier in the year,
Lee hastened northward to defeat Pope before these reinforcements could
arrive. The Union forces north of Bull Run amounted now to nearly 75,000
men; Lee had 55,000, but there was no thought of delay. On the 29th and
30th Pope was crushed and routed completely in a series of maneuvers and
battles which have been pronounced the most masterly in the whole war.
For four days the disco