The singularly complete victory at Manassas was won on the twenty-first of July, 1861. That was almost at the beginning of the season favorable to military operations in Virginia. Yet after that battle was over there was no effort made on either side to utilize the time in military movements of any kind. The Confederates advanced to Fairfax Court House and threw their pickets as far forward as Mason's and Munson's Hills, within a few miles of Washington, but they undertook no military operations of importance. They inaugurated no campaigns. They made no advance upon Washington, which was the one thing that ordinary intelligence was entitled to expect at their hands. They did not at all behave like victors. They nowhere assailed their enemy. They made no effort of any kind to strengthen themselves, either by the occupation of strategic positions or by giving battle where battle promised every chance of victory. They simply sat still, and their sitting still was one of the most inexplicable things that ever happened during the Confederate or any other war. There were several other pauses of like kind during the gigantic struggle, but there was none so completely without an explanation, as was this utter throwing away of half a year of superb campaigning weather. On the Northern side the inaction was not only explained but justified by the utter demoralization of the army which had been so terribly beaten, and so utterly disintegrated at Manassas. But nobody has ever yet offered so much as a plausible suggestion of a reason for the more astonishing inaction of the Confederates during all that summer and autumn, when the very causes of inaction on the other side afforded the utmost inducement to tireless activity on the Southern side. At a time when all that could be desired of achievement was freely open to them, they sat still, doing nothing except to aid their adversaries in undoing what had been accomplished by hard fighting.[4] [4] Gen. Beauregard insists that he did indeed submit a plan of aggressive campaign a little while after the battle but it involved so much of preparation that it was rejected at Richmond. As it led to no activity it has no historic significance. McClellan succeeded McDowell in command of the Federal army during the month of August. His difficult problem was to organize that army anew; to create it out of chaotic elements and in the face of the difficulties that were thrown in his way by its experience in battle. He must give it morale. He must teach his soldiers the very primer lessons of military service; he must overcome their phenomenal demoralization and gradually mold them into a shape fit to take the field.