First Battle of Manassas

EFFECTS OF FIRST MANASSAS. The news of the disaster was first received in the Capital with incredulity and amazement, then with consternation. Throughout the night President Lincoln received spectators of the battle and listened in silence to their descriptions of the engagement.

"For a few days," writes Channing, "the North was dazed, stocks went down, money went up, and people sat around with their hands folded in despair. Then, almost as by magic, the scene shifted and stern resolve took the place of the hysteria of the Hundred Days since Sumter. Lincoln called for volunteers. The best blood of the North in all ranks of society, in the East, in the Ohio Valley, and on the shores of the Great Lakes responded. The new men went into the conflict with a determination and a spirit that has seldom been seen and never excelled."

In the South, the news of the victory was received with great elation. Thanksgiving sermons were preached from the pulpits while public officials commemorated the event with congratulatory proclamations. In the ill-considered opinion of many Southerners the war was over, yet seldom if ever has so complete a victory borne such meager results. An overweening confidence and a false sense of security developed in the South a paralysis of enterprise more damaging to it than was the disaster of defeat for the North.

The battle, however, as the English historian Fuller points out, was to have a profound influence on the grand strategy of the war. "First, it imbued the Southern politicians with an exaggerated idea of the prowess of their soldiers and so led them to under-estimate the fighting capacity of their enemy; secondly, it so terrified Lincoln and his Government that from now onwards until 1864, east of the Alleghanies, the defence of Washington became the pivot of Northern strategy."

Though the men of each army had fought with flashes of steadiness and exceptional courage, there was ample evidence to show the costly result of inadequate training.