reason to doubt that he acted on his own sober judgment as well as that of his Cabinet. Whatever degree of confidence he reposed in Scott, Scott was not very insistent; the risk was not overwhelming; the battle was very nearly won, would have been won if the orders of Scott had been carried out. No very great harm in fact followed the defeat of Bull Run; and the danger of inaction was real. He was probably then, as he certainly was afterwards, profoundly afraid that the excessive military caution which he often encountered would destroy the cause of the North by disheartening the people who supported the war. That is no doubt a kind of fear to which many statesmen are too prone, but Lincoln's sense of real popular feeling throughout the wide extent of the North is agreed to have been uncommonly sure. Definite judgment on such a question is impossible, but probably Lincoln and his Cabinet were wise. However, they did not win their battle. The Southern army under Beauregard lay near the Bull Run river, some twenty miles from Washington, covering the railway junction of Manassas on the line to Richmond. The main Northern army, under General McDowell, a capable officer, lay south of the Potomac, where fortifications to guard Washington had already been erected on Virginian soil. In the Shenandoah Valley was another Southern force, under Joseph Johnston, watched by the Northern general Patterson at Harper's Ferry, which had been recovered by Scott's operations. Each of these Northern generals was in superior force to his opponent. McDowell was to attack the Confederate position at Manassas, while Patterson, whose numbers were nearly double Johnston's, was to keep him so seriously occupied that he could not join Beauregard. With whatever excuse of misunderstanding or the like, Patterson made hardly an attempt to carry out his part of Scott's orders, and Johnston, with the bulk of his force, succeeded in joining Beauregard the day before McDowell's attack, and without his gaining knowledge of this movement. The battle of Bull Run or Manassas (or rather the earlier and more famous of two battles so named) was an engagement of untrained troops in which up to a certain point the high individual quality of those troops supplied the place of discipline. McDowell handled with good judgment a very unhandy instrument. It was only since his advance had been contemplated that his army had been organised in brigades. The enemy, occupying high wooded banks on the south side of the Bull Run, a stream about as broad as the Thames at Oxford but fordable, was successfully pushed back to a high ridge beyond; but the stubborn attacks over difficult ground upon this further position failed from lack of co-ordination, and, when it already seemed doubtful whether the tired soldiers of the North could renew them with any hope, they were themselves attacked on their right flank. It seems that from that moment their success upon that day was