The opposing forces now in the field numbered 190,000 Unionists and half that number of Confederates; sixty-nine warships flew the Stars and Stripes and a number of improvised ironclads and gunboats the rival "Stars and Bars." On the 10th of June a Federal force was defeated at Big Bethel (near Fortress Monroe), and soon afterwards the main Virginian campaign began.

On the Potomac the Unionist generals McDowell and Patterson commanded respectively the forces at Washington and Harper's Ferry, opposed by the Confederates under Generals J. E. Johnston and Beauregard at Winchester and at Manassas. The forces of these four commanders were raw but eager, and the people behind them clamoured for a decision. Much against his own judgment, Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, the Federal general-in-chief, a veteran of the second war with England and of the war with Mexico, felt constrained to order an advance against Beauregard, while Patterson was to hold Johnston in check on the Shenandoah.

"On the 21st of July took place the first battle of Bull Run.."

On the 21st of July took place the first battle of Bull Run (q.v. between McDowell and Beauregard, fought by the raw troops of both sides with an obstinacy that foreboded the desperate battles of subsequent campaigns.

The arrival of Johnston on the previous evening and his lieutenant Kirby Smith at the crisis of the battle (for Patterson's part in the plan had completely failed), turned the scale, and the Federals, not yet disciplined to bear the strain of a great battle, broke and fled in wild rout. The equally raw Confederates were in no condition to pursue. A desultory duel between the forces of Rosecrans and Robert E. Lee in West Virginia, which ended in the withdrawal of the Confederates, and a few combats on the Potomac (Ball's Bluff or Leesburg, October 21; Dranesville, December 20), brought to a close the first campaign in the east.

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