TOPICS OF THE DAY.
Tag FIRST AMERICAN EA.TTLE. THE North has lost its first battle. The impatient roar of millions of mee, as full of the military spirit as ignorant of military necessities, proved at last too much even for the well-trained nerves of General Scott. According to statements distinctly authorized by himself, he gave way to the President, and prepared for the advance in force to the southward which he knew to be inexpedient. His troops were half trained, his carriage was half organized, and he had no cavalry at command, but he did the best he could with his insufficient materials. He sent General M'ClelIan, the best trained officer at hand, to clear Western Virginia, and so protect the right flank of the great route, and as General M'Clellan had to drive out one half-trained rabble with another just as much trained, from amidst a population more friendly to him than to his foe, he succeeded indifferently well. He did not fight "great battles" as the Northern editors, in their exaggerated dialect, chose to affirm, nor did he execute any one of the feats which reveal the heaven-born general. He simply performed the service our generals have so often had to perform in India—that is, he compelled large but scattered outposts which had advanced to the front to fall back. on their main body. A sharp English colonel, with two thousand regular troops, supported by two batteries of flying artillery and a couple of regiments of light horse, would have done all the work without thinking it necessary to write quite so many de- spatches. Still the work was accomplished, and it only remained to clear the main road to Richmond. This road, running due south, is flanked on the east by the river Potomac, and on the west by the mountains, and. de- bouches through a broad gap in the hills—the Manassas Gap —into the plains of Central Virginia. Near this gap the enemy was known to be posted, in a position more or less entrenched, and as the gap was, to use a familiar illustration, the only gate to the pound, it was evident that here must the first contest be fought out. General Scott, it is asserted, underrated the force assembled to bar the passage, but of this, as of most other assertions about the battle, there is not the shadow of proof. There is no evidence whatever that the Confederate army exceeded fifty thousand men, and fifty thousand men were ordered by the old commander-in-chief to be in readiness for attack. The main body, which, under General M'Dowell, commenced its march on the 16th ult., consisted of nearly thirty thousand men, and General Patter- son, who, with twenty-two thousand more, occupied a position a few miles to the west, was ordered to join in front of Ma- nassas Gap. This reinforcement, it may be as well to state here once for all, never came up, General Patterson having suddenly lost three-fourths of his army, who, as time-expired men, refused to delay their departure for a day. The main body advanced accordingly, but very slowly, the scattered posts of the enemy retreating before them, until they reached a creek called Bull's Run, where, supported by a battery of eight pieces, the Confederates compelled the advanced guard of the Federal army to retire. And here the fatal effect of a loose and disjointed discipline became painfully manifest. The unimportant repulse, during which only thirty-seven men were killed, was magnified at once into a huge disaster, tidings of which fluttered the citizens of Washington, and roused up new hopes in the rebels of Baltimore.
Three days had been lost in this parade of twenty-five miles, when at last, on the 20th July, General M'Dowell received the order to carry the main position in front of Manassas Gap. It was not till the 21st, however, that the main column again advanced, and again encountered the enemy, posted at Bull's Run. Of the precise nature of the position it is almost im- possible, after reading scores of accounts, to acquire more than the faintest idea, the American narratives being usually nonsense, while Mr. Russell did not quite reach the front of the attacking force. The general arrangement must, how- ever, from some of the circumstances recorded, have been something in this wise. Heavy batteries crossed the main road over a low plateau, behind which lay Manassas Junc- tion, into and from which throughout the day masses of fresh troops from Richmond constantly poured. On the right, looking from the north, were other batteries, some of them at considerable elevations, the fire of which crossed the road, and which were "masked," as the Americans call them—that is, not visible through the brushwood at the first glance. In front, between the main position and, the ad- vancing enemy, were two or three "smaller batteries," apparently protected by slight earthworks ; though even this seems doubtful, for the Americans say, "as fast as one was taken, two more came up," a statement about as intelligible as the "coming up" of a line of fortifications would be. With or without orders, Colonel Hunter com- menced the engagement by attacking these batteries, Chit- lianwallah fashion, directly in front, and with the bayonet, a mano3uvre which the ground may have compelled, but which suggests the brave blundering of incompetent officers ; and though the assailants suffered heavily, and in two instances at least were repulsed, they either carried the guns, or were permitted by their withdrawal to ad- vance. The -order was then given to advance on the main position, and then the scene of confusion commenced.
Whether any attack was made at all it is as yet impossible to say, but if it was, it was speedily repulsed. The official accounts, which are supported by some evidence, declare that the ammunition for the artillery was exhausted, and the caissons were sent to the rear to replenish ; a novel manceuvre, derived, one would think, from the feeding of lo- comotives. The rush of the artillery horses struck a panic into the troops, and flung the baggage train, an immense array, full of unarmed and half-armed men, unguarded and under no military control, into a mad confusion. The impulse spread through the ranks, officers caught it as fully as the men, and in a few minutes the entire army was in full rout, men, waggons, and guns thundering back on the Northern road. There was nobody to pursue, for the enemy, if they had cavalry, which seems probable, had not, as Ame- ricans seem to imagine, planted them precisely in front of their own artillery ; but the insane fear which possesses soldiers in flight, a fear begotten of noise, and fatigue, and mad excitement, much more than cowardice, had seized on the entire army. The road was the quickest route, and to the road the fugitives rushed, till waggons crashed into a solid mass, and men and horses, wheeled vehicles and guns at full speed, were all wedged into one headlong stream. The guns were speedily abandoned, the waggons were emptied of their contents to fly the quicker, the men threw away their accoutrements, and the whole mass, wild with fear, almost screamed at the sound of a distant cannon. There was no attempt to rally them till they reached Centre- ville, some miles from the scene of action ; and then it failed. The bonds of subordination were completely broken. The soldiers—half of them Germans and Irish—fired at their own officers when they tried to restrain them, and the majority continued their headlong flight till they reached Washington, where, says Mr. Russell, with a characteristic touch, the President was entertaining a party of friends, and where they bivouacked without food in the rain, the utterly demoralized relics of a powerful army. The remainder were halted between Centreville and Washington, and streamed in gradually, bearing in almost every regiment the marks of utter defeat. In a few days we shall probably hear that the army is bitterly sullen, that disease is making heavy indents on its strength, and that desertions are almost as ruinous as disease.
The Northerners have lost their first battle—lost it as completely as it is possible for a nation to lose a battle, and it only remains to consider whether they have not lost more. The prevalent opinion in England is obviously that they have ; that they have lost the confidence which is the beginning of victory, and have betrayed qualities—want of discipline and contempt for subordination—which will make success for ever impossible. A panic is not an uncommon event, but a panic like this, it is said, indicates something more than mere want of cohesion, proves either that the soldiers have no heart for the work, or that, as Sir Henry Lawrence used to say of the Sikhs, they are not yet civilized up to the point when the soldier can trust that his right hand man is not scheming to run away. That view is not unnatural in men accustomed only to watch armies whose reverses are shrouded in secrecy, but it is, we believe, widely removed from the truth. We question if the panic, mad and disgraceful as it certainly wag, proves anything, except that the army is not yet inured to battle. The troops, in their maddest excitement, did nothing which was not done by the Frenchmen who within five days drove the first infantry in Europe back from the hill of Valmy. They actually screamed as they fled from the bayonets they were so soon to despise. These Americans are as excitable as Frenchmen, and, like them, want only sharp drill to become as good soldiers as any in the world. In this view the magnitude and even the character of their defeat will do much to smooth the path of the drillmaster. The habit of vapouring talk, -which is the worst of the national characteristics, and which rises sometimes, as in Gaseous, almost to a national mania, has blinded them to their own defects. That very intelligence, too, of which President Lincoln is so proud, tends to foster insubordi- nation, to produce a habit of criticism fatal to discipline, until, as in the French army, it gives way to the instinct of military organization. The new spirit will come fast enough, and General Beauregard seems inclined to afford plenty of leisure for its development. Instead of attacking Washing- ton at once, while the army is still demoralized, he has moved upon Harper's Ferry, obviously with the idea of rousing Maryland, and placing a ring of combatants around the capitaL His neighbourhood, and the humility which will, we may hope, follow defeat, will hasten the reorganization of the Federal army, which has already commenced. There are men in abundance, more perhaps than is good for the work to be performed. Large armies are difficult to feed, even in America, and one of the thousand reports accounts for the defeat at Manassas by the state of the commissariat. Large half-trained armies, again, are almost unmanageable, and General Scott would probably exchange the whole of the forces at his command for thirty thousand drilled sol- diers, accustomed to action, and with all the appliances for quick and decisive movement. The men, however, are there, Congress shows no want of courage or zeal, and if the Govern- ment has but one tithe of the energy it claims for itself, it ought in a month to have thirty thousand men with some decently competent general at their head, ready to take the field. The demoralization of the old army can scarcely be of the kind which renders troops useless for future service. Volunteers, if more readily dispersed than regular soldiers, do not suffer so severely from a reverse, and unless the men are of a temper Americans have never displayed, they will be only too eager to retrieve a humiliation as complete as it was unexpected. The North lacks sadly a general trained to success ; but McClellan has won the confidence of his men, and General Fremont, who attended the last Cabinet Council, has at least a reputation to lose. The most evil effect of defeat, a national sense of despair, seems as absent from America as from England after Corunna, and 'Mille hope is still vivid nineteen millions of people can repair more than the loss of a single battle. They will do it all the more easily, because the better journalists are at last con- vinced of their folly, and with the Tribune at their head, have acknowledged the error of urging General Scott, and formally promised to abstain from criticism. The effect of the loss is, indeed, tremendous. It will reunit the whole South as only victory could have done, throw back the generals who have half rescued the Border States, and perhaps bring two millions of allies up to the side of the rebels. But the centre of American power is still un- touched, and all these losses are nothing if they do but evoke the desire to obey, which is the essence of fighting strength. Unless history is a record of misleading pre- cedents, the American Government will in a month be the stronger for its defeats. That it should be so must be the wish of every Englishman, for the consequences of de- feat must be disastrous to human freedom. The South in possession of Washington, and once recognized as a Power, would be in the best position to realize its dream of conquest and spoliation. The army which had defeated the North, or even driven it back from its soil, would overrun Mexico as easily as the first conquerors of the country. Once masters of the silver mines, and of a great taxable population, the Southern leaders might in a few years organize an army which nothing on the American continent could withstand, and which would speedily bring about a new calamity—the armed interference of Europe in Central America. Such a Power, while unop- posed, might reopen the slave trade, and would certainly so extend the area of slavery as to render its extinction all but impossible. The first barrier against a misfortune so terrible to the world is the strength of the American Government, and however annoying its failures, or however deep our dis- gust at its tone, it is with that Government that the sym- pathies of all free men perforce must lie. It is freedom which is at stake, and before that great in- terest all others must disappear; but we acknowledge frankly the difficulties in the way of all English friends of the North. Never was there a cause which required so thorough a sup- pression of English tastes, prejudices, and sense of natural right. From the insults heaped on the English people to the last resolution of Congress not to interfere with "State rights," every step of the contest is marked by incidents which excite in high-principled Englishmen a feeling of simple disgust. Americans really appear to believe that their bombast terrifies England, that a nation without a fleet can frighten the mistress of the seas by chatter of future punishment. If our Government proclaims its neutrality, some envoy declares in a speech, full of brag and bad gram- mar, that the mighty Republic will yet avenge the wrong. If, carrying out the proclamation, privateers are forbidden to sell their plunder in the British ports, Mr. Jay accepts with an air of majestic self-restraint that "partial," " half- hearted" "atonement." And now, after the defeat at Manassas, Congress has poised an act authorizing the President to station squadrons on the high seas, stop all vessels bound for the ports of the South, and collect the dues fixed by an American tariff. A Barbary pirate never laid down a rule more utterly contemptuous of international law. Congress might as well collect taxes in Liverpool, or levy a toll on the passage of the Atlantic, or demand dues for our right to sail out of our own ports. There is not even the poor pretence of enforcing a blockade ; for if a ship may enter Charleston after payment of dues in the Gulf of Mexico, the blockade is at an end. It is scarcely possible to believe that a Government supposed to be guided by educated men can intend to enforce such an Act, except against its own subjects ; but the American Govern- ment has shown for years an inability to understand any rights but its own, which may well arouse a painful mis- giving. An incurable vulgarity of soul appears to affect its judgment, to disable it from seeing that principles may be sound even though not directly conducive to American profit. The result, in this instance, may be most disastrous to the world ; but we will not yet believe that a Govern- ment which has staked its existence on a war for rights, will attempt to levy means for the contest by an organized system of plunder on the high seas.
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