*After Manassas, nothing much happened for the residue of 1861.  General McDowell was replaced by George McClellan.  McClellan, a much better political intriguer than a general, soon pushed Winfield Scott into retirement and was named overall commander of the US Army in the east, called the Army of the Potomac.  Most Federal Armies are named after rivers, while most Confederate Armies are named after states or parts of states.

*McClellan did nothing for some time.  This was in part because the carnage of Manassas had horrified everyone.  The Congressmen and their wives who went to picnic beside the battle and be entertained were amazed to see total casualties around 4,900.  This was, at the time, seen as horrible—that was more men than George Washington sometimes had had in his entire army.

*These incredible casualty rates (which will just get worse) are the result of new weapons, the rifled musket and the Minie bullet, and artillery firing shot, shell, and canister.  These accounted for far more casualties than did the old standby, the bayonet.  New weaponry made war more deadly, but so did old, pre-Napoleonic line tactics.  With accurate shooting up to 500 yards and a total range much longer than that, rifles meant men got mowed down long before they reached their enemy, but generals still tried to fight in the old style, because it was how they learnt it at West Point.

*In fact, and important trend to observe is the use of all the technology of the industrial revolution in warfare.  Railroads will move troops and supplies, telegraphs will make communication easier, and new weapons and other means of dealing death will be invented.  Dr Gatling will make his first gun, the first land mines (called torpedoes or infernal machines) will be buried for the first time, and even hot air balloons will be employed to make a sort of air force.

*Although little is happening in the East, the war is starting up in the West.  As part of the plan to take the Mississippi River (and the Upper South in general), U.S. Grant attacks Fort Henry on the Tennessee River on 6 February, 1862, and ten days later takes Fort Donelson on the Cumberland with the help of Union gunboats sailing off the Ohio River onto its Confederate tributaries.  Not only did this protect the Ohio River, but it let the Union take Nashville.  Lincoln appointed as military governor the most prominent Southern member of Congress to remain loyal to the Union, Senator Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a former governor, congressman, state legislator, and mayor of Greeneville.

*From Fort Donelson, Grant marched toward the Mississippi leading the Army of the Tennessee.  Along the way, he ran into a major Confederate Army, the Army of Tennessee, commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston.  On 6 April, 1862, Johnston’s army surprised Grant’s men, in some cases overrunning camps where men were cooking breakfast—the hungry Confederates stopped to eat their bacon.  Grant’s men were pushed all the way to the edge of the Tennessee River.  However, during the fighting, Johnston was killed, bleeding to death from a wound in the leg.  His surgeon could have saved him if he had not been sent off to tend to Yankee prisoners.  Johnston was (for the moment) replaced by Beauregard, who did not win the battle.

*During the night, Grant was reinforced by General Don Carlos Buell’s Army of the Ohio.  They fought back the next day, and the fighting was intense and bloody.  By the end of the 7th, more men had died in this single battle than in all previous American wars put together.  Despite winning the battle, Grant was relieved of command because of the shock at the terrible death toll.

*From this difficult victory, the Union Army captured Memphis and then went to lay siege to Vicksburg.  This was an important fortified city on the Mississippi.  Until the Union controlled the city, they could not control the Mississippi River.

*On the seas, the Confederacy revolutionised naval warfare.  Taking an old wooden steamship called the Merrimack, the Confederates bolted iron plates to its hull armouring it.  They subsequently renamed it the Virginia, and sent her out to attack the Union Navy.  She sank a number of ships and terrified the North.  It was feared that the Virginia would sail up the Potomac and bombard Washington.  This was called an ironclad ship, and it made all existing wooden navies obsolete.

*The North hired an engineer and sank money into his project, and in one hundred days built a better ironclad, one meant to be an ironclad, and not merely a converted steamboat.  This will be called the Monitor, and after a long battle will chase the Virginia away.  Later, when the Union captures Norfolk, they Confederates will burn the Virginia to keep it from being captured.

*In the East, not much is happening.  McClellan has built and trained a vast army, but he will not use it.  McClellan is, and will remain, convinced that the Confederates vastly outnumber his forces (although they rarely, if ever, do), and he will always be reluctant to attack them let he damage his army.  McClellan is very popular among his men, however, because he rarely gets them killed.

*By May, 1682, Lincoln will be out of patience.  He orders McClellan to attack, but he’s afraid to go at it directly.  He tries to get around the main Confederate Army in Northern Virginia by sailing down to Yorktown, where Cornwallis was defeated 100½ years ago.  He actually does get around the main army, but he does not believe it.  He plans to move up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers and seize the Confederate capital at Richmond, and so this is called the Peninsular Campaign, but his army of 100,000 is outnumbered by 15,000 Confederates of McClellan’s own imagination.

*McClellan is faced by a small Confederate Army of about 15,000, commanded by John Magruder, who builds fake cannon out of logs called Quaker guns.  He holds McClellan off long enough for Joseph Johnston to move his army to the peninsula.

*During the battles on the peninsula, McClellan wins many of his battles or at least fights them to a draw.  However, the battles are numerous and very bloody.  Furthermore, relatively early in the campaign, General Joseph Johnston is wounded and relieved of command.  Johnston later said this was the best thing that ever happened to the Confederacy, because he was replaced by Robert E. Lee.  Lee renames his army the Army of Northern Virginia, and, joined by Stonewall Jackson, begins to fight back hard.

*Lee pushes McClellan hard, and attacks him many times and in many places.  Although McClellan wins many of these fights, the constant pressure on him, combined with his incorrect certainty that the Confederates outnumber him, forces McClellan to retreat and abandon the peninsula and return to Washington, where he will be relieved of command and replaced by General Pope, who will not be any more successful.

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