The railroads there connect the strategically important Shenandoah Valley with the Virginia interior. They aim to block the Union army advance on the Confederate capital by defending the railroad junction at Manassas, just west of the creek. The Confederates under Beauregard, equally green, are positioned behind Bull Run Creek west of Centreville. On July 16, the Union 90-day volunteer army under McDowell-around 35,000 troops with great enthusiasm and little training-sets out from Washington, D.C. The Federals retreated to Washington, where the Lincoln administration retooled for a war that would be waged at great human and financial cost McDowell to embark on a campaign to capture the Confederate capital in Richmond, but McDowell’s troops were stopped at Bull Run by Brig. Under public pressure to end the war in 90 days, President Lincoln had pushed the cautious Gen. In contextĪlthough the Civil War officially began when Confederate troops shelled Fort Sumpter on April 12, 1861, the fighting didn’t commence in earnest until the Battle of Bull Run, fought months later in Virginia, just 25 miles from Washington D.C. McClellan, who set about reorganizing and training what would become the Army of the Potomac. Irvin McDowell, the commander of the Union Army of Northeastern Virginia, was relieved and replaced by Maj. After this stinging defeat for the Union, Brig.
The fierce fight there forced both the North and South to face the sobering reality that the war would be long and bloody.
African Americans During the Revolutionary War.The First American President: Setting the Precedent.