its teeth and
determined to wipe out the disgrace at the first possible moment. The
South was wild with joy. The too-prevalent impression that the "Yankees"
were cowards who could not and would not fight seemed confirmed by the
first practical experiment. The whole subsequent course of the war
showed how false was this impression. It has been admitted that the
Southerners were at first, on the whole, both better fitted and better
prepared for war than their opponents. But all military history shows
that what enables soldiers to face defeat and abstain from panic in the
face of apparent disaster is not natural courage, but discipline. Had
the fight gone the other way the Southern recruits would probably have
acted exactly as did the fugitive Northerners. Indeed, as it was, at an
earlier stage of the battle a panic among the Southerners was only
averted by the personal exertions of Beauregard, whose horse was shot
under him, and by the good conduct of the Virginian contingent and its
leader. "Look at Jackson and his Virginians," cried out the Southern
commander in rallying his men, "standing like a stone wall." The great
captain thus acclaimed bore ever after, through his brief but splendid
military career, the name of "Stonewall" Jackson.

Bull Run was fought and won in July. The only other important operations
of the year consisted in the successful clearing, by the Northern
commander, McClellan, of Western Virginia, where a Unionist population
had seceded from the Secession. Lincoln, with bold statesmanship,
recognized it as a separate State, and thus further consolidated the
Unionism of the Border. In recognition of this service McClellan was
appointed, in succession to McDowell, to the command of the army of the
Potomac, as the force entrusted with the invasion of Eastern Virginia
was called.

At the first outbreak of the war English sympathies, except perhaps for
a part of the travelled and more or less cosmopolitan aristocracy which
found the Southern gentleman a more socially acceptable type than the
Yankee, seem to have been decidedly with the North. Public opinion in
this country was strong against Slavery, and therefore tended to support
the Free States in the contest of which Slavery was generally believed
to be the cause. Later this feeling became a little confused. Our people
did not understand the peculiar historical conditions which bound the
Northern side, and were puzzled and their enthusiasm damped by