The
defection of Robert E. Lee was a conspicuous example, and his loss to
the Union and service to the rebel army cannot easily be measured. So,
also, were the similar cases of Adjutant-General Cooper and
Quartermaster-General Johnston. In gratifying contrast stands the
steadfast loyalty and devotion of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott,
who, though he was a Virginian and loved his native State, never wavered
an instant in his allegiance to the flag he had heroically followed in
the War of 1812, and triumphantly planted over the capital of Mexico in
1847. Though unable to take the field, he as general-in-chief directed
the assembling and first movements of the Union troops.
The largest part of the three months' regiments were ordered to
Washington city as the most important position in a political, and most
exposed in a military point of view. The great machine of war, once
started, moved, as it always does, by its own inherent energy from
arming to concentration, from concentration to skirmish and battle. It
was not long before Washington was a military camp. Gradually the
hesitation to "invade" the "sacred soil" of the South faded out under
the stern necessity to forestall an invasion of the equally sacred soil
of the North; and on May 24 the Union regiments in Washington crossed
the Potomac and planted themselves in a great semicircle of formidable
earthworks eighteen miles long on the Virginia shore, from Chain Bridge
to Hunting Creek, below Alexandria.
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