If Patterson had not been sent to the valley at all, but to Washington instead, the Federal force would have been swelled to 55,000 or 60,000 men, while Beauregard's strength could not have been increased by more than a few thousands at most. In that case the result of the first great battle of the war might or might not have been different from what it was--for with wholly untrained troops strength is not always to be accurately measured by numbers. But in any case the probability would have been greatly increased that the first battle of the war should be the last and that the country by quick and complete victory should be spared four years of desolating war that threw homes by scores of thousands into the shadow. The battle was brought about not in answer to any consideration of military propriety but solely in response to ignorant but irresistible popular clamor. The people of this country knew nothing of modern war or of the conditions that govern success or failure in it. The latest national recollection of war was of the unequal conflict with Mexico nearly a decade and a half before. The American people had never seen assembled in their name and behalf an army half so great as that with which their patriotism had now responded to the country's call. In front of Washington and in the near-by valley of Virginia they had between fifty and sixty thousand men, while their adversaries could muster there only a little more than half as many. Knowing little of the difference between uniformed men with arms in their hands and seasoned soldiers, the people at the North grew violently impatient of the delay. They had furnished their Government twice as many armed men as the enemy could count, and they could not understand why the double force thus created should not go on at once to make an end of what they regarded as the "nonsense down there in Virginia." So confident had been the conviction at the North that this was a petty outbreak to be suppressed easily and quickly, that a large part of the enlistments were for no more than three months. That period seemed to them more than adequate to the task in hand, and it had been deemed needless to take young men away from their homes and their employments for a greater length of time. It is plain enough that the administration at Washington at first shared this conception of the case. Otherwise it would neither have called for nor accepted three months volunteers.