The people of the North knew nothing about war or armies. Wild with
enthusiasm and excitement, they cheered the departing regiments, which,
as they vaguely and eagerly fancied, were to begin fighting at once.
Yet it was true that no one would stake his money on a "football team"
which should go into a game trained in a time so short as that which had
been allowed for bringing into condition for the manoeuvres and
battlefields of a campaign an army of thirty or forty thousand men, with
staff and commissariat, and arms of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
altogether constituting an organization vast, difficult, and complex in
the highest degree of human cooeperation. Nevertheless "On to Richmond!"
rolled up the imperious cry from every part of the North. The
government, either sharing in this madness, or feeling that it must be
yielded to, passed the word to the commander, and McDowell very
reluctantly obeyed orders and started with his army in that
direction,--not, however, with any real hope of reaching this nominal
objective; for he was an intelligent man and a good soldier, and was
perfectly aware of the unfitness of his army. But when, protesting, he
suggested that his troops were "green," he was told to remember that the
Southern troops were of the same tint; for, in a word, the North was
bound to have a fight, and would by no means endure that the three
months' men should come home without doing something more positive than
merely preventing the capture of Washington.
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