CHAPTER SEVEN

Thenceforward and Forever

1. Recipe for Confusion

In the west, John Pope had declared, Federal soldiers mostly saw the backs of their enemies, and the same thing ought to happen in Virginia. Whatever this statement lacked in accuracy—Buell's army right now was going north at top speed, the backs of its enemies out of sight in advance—it at least breathed the offensive spirit. Acting on this spirit, and recovering quickly from the embarrassing check at Cedar Mountain, General Pope in mid-August assembled his troops and set out to carry the war to the foe. He got as far as the Rapidan River, made ready to cross and campaign in true western style, and then began to learn that in Virginia things were different.

To begin with, he was facing Robert E. Lee, whose like he had not yet seen. In addition he was at the mercy both of his own shortcomings, which General Lee would cruelly expose and exploit, and of the high command of the Army of the Potomac, which expected him to fail and which in the end would be deliberate enough to make failure certain. Finally, General Pope was coming to the stage just when the nature of the war was changing.

Both sides had supposed originally that they fought to restore the past, the difference between them being largely a question of what the past really meant and how it could best be regained. Now something more fundamental was coming to the surface, compelling men to examine their ideas about the future. So the fighting would be different, hereafter, infinitely harder to control and understand than it had been before. The going was likely to be rough for a Federal Army commander unless he was either totally phlegmatic or exceptionally perceptive; and John Pope unfortunately was neither.