Organizing for the Fight
After Bull Run, both the Union and the Confederacy realized that the war would not end in one single
climactic battle. As they mobilized, both struggled with problems of scale and shortages of trained
personnel. McClellan’s talents as a trainer helped stamp his personality on the Army of the Potomac.
SECESSION TRIGGERS WAR 1861BEFORE
A
fter Bull Run, Union forces had
to face the deficiencies of their
organization. General James B.
Ricketts argued that at Bull Run,
“The men were of as good material
as any in the world, and they fought
well until they became confused
on account of their officers not
knowing what to do.” Perceptions of
officer incompetence led to officer
examination boards for weeding out
the worst leaders, and by March 1862
the boards had expelled 310 officers
from the Army.
While the Confederate armies also
used the winter after Bull Run to
cull weak officers, and train andorganize others, overly romantic views
of warfare persisted. Shortly after
the battle, the Richmond Examiner
declared that “Ohio and Pennsylvania
ought to feel ... the terrors which
agitate the cowardly and guilty
when retributive vengeance is at
hand ... In four weeks our generals
should be levying contributions in
money and property from their own
towns and villages.”
Unfortunately for the Confederacy,
overheated rhetoric could not by itself
produce armies capable of offensive
operations in the North. The South
should have used the winter to mobilize
its national resources through measuressuch as conscription, but instead waited
until the spring, when Confederate
fortunes began to slide.
In the North, meanwhile, the
veteran, 75-year-old General in Chief
Winfield Scott, before his retirement in
November 1861, had helped formulate
a war strategy, dubbed the Anaconda
Plan, that included a naval blockade
and the capture of the Mississippi River.
This would result in signficant Federal
victories during the spring of 1862,
when the port of New Orleans and
much of Tennessee fell to the Union.Training programs
In all theaters of the war and on both
sides, soldiers drilled and organized,
with varying degrees of effectiveness.
In the primary Federal army in the
Eastern Theater, General George B.During the War with Mexico, the
American military attached civilian
volunteer units to a core of permanent
army professionals.
PERMANENT FORCE
Zachary Taylor commanded an army in northern
Mexico in 1846 composed of regulars, while
Winfield Scott relied on a permanent veteran
core in the force he used to conquer Mexico City.
For the North, the 16,000-man U.S. Army of
1860 could not serve as the bedrock of a new
field army, because the force still needed to
guard the frontier. About one-quarter of its
officer strength resigned and traveled South.
The Confederacy, in contrast, had to build
a new army from scratch ❮❮ 58–59.
MEXICAN TRAINING GROUND
While Scott was now too old to take the field,
many Civil War commanders (including Grant
and Lee) had earned valuable combat
experience during the War with Mexico.
Cannon squad during drill
Aiming accurately, and rapidly firing and reloading
artillery weapons demanded a high standard of
teamwork from the crew, all the more so in difficult
battle conditions under enemy fire.
The number of steps
per minute soldiers
would march at
“double quick time,” the swiftest pace
used by American infantry tactics.165
“We shall ... organize and
discipline an army ... and go
on to victory or sustain defeat.”
DIARY ENTRY OF JOSIAH MARSHALL FAVILL, 71 NEW YORK, AFTER BULL RUN