en led direct on Centreville by the roads crossing the fords they were guarding, they could easily have reached that point, four or five miles distant, before the fugitives of the Federal army, who for the most part were returning by the circuitous route over which they marched in the morning, and which was the only road they knew. The six thousand Federal reserve at Centreville, under Miles, certainly, in view of the demoralization of the rest of the army, could not have made a successful resistance. Bonham and Longstreet crossed Bull Run in pursuit, but were stopped by three regiments of General Blenker's brigade. Three hours and a half of daylight still remained. The Confederates had nineteen companies of cavalry, McDowell seventeen. In neither army at that time was the employment of cavalry understood. It was not massed, but distributed around among the various infantry brigades where the troopers were principally used for couriers. If the whole of the Southern cavalry had been ordered forward under an enterprising soldier like Stuart, supported by the troops that had not been engaged, Centreville might have easily been reached that night. The next day, while Stuart was moving in the direction of Alexandria and Washington, with some of the freshest infantry as supports, the head of the Confederate army might have been turned toward White's Ford, on the upper Potomac, some twenty-five or thirty miles away. Patterson's army was disintegrating by the expiration of enlistments; Banks, his successor, had at Harper's Ferry about six thousand men and was fearing an attack. Dix, at Fort McHenry and  Baltimore, with a small force, was uncomfortable; and Butler, at Fort Monroe, was protesting against Scott's order to send to Washington his Illinois volunteers. All conditions were favorable to a march through Maryland by the Southern army, and either capture the Federal capital or occupy the strategic point at the junction of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad with the Washington and Baltimore Railroad at the Relay House. Thousands of Marylanders whose sympathies were with the South would have increased the numbers of the Confederate army. Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia, and Howard and Montgomery counties in Maryland, were teeming with food for men and horses. Half a million rounds of ammunition for small arms had been captured. Gorgas, chief of ordnance, had many rounds also in Richmond, for on July 14th General Lee ordered him to send a full supply to General Wise in West Virginia. Besides ammunition, large quantities of muskets, pistols, knapsacks, swords, cannons, blankets, wagons, ambulances, hospital and subsistence stores, and camp and garrison equipment were captured. On July 22, 1861, there were no troops in Baltimore with which any defense of that city could have been made. There were a few regiments for provost duty, but no available fighting force. Banks was ninety-five miles from Baltimore by the nearest road. White's Ford, on the Potomac, where Johnston and Beauregard could have crossed, is about forty-five miles from Baltimore. The occupation of the Relay House might have produced the immediate evacuation of Washington by the Federals, the transfer of the seat of war to Pennsylvania, the accession of Maryland to the Confederacy, and fifty thousand more men as recruits as fast as they could have been armed, for Baltimore would have clothed and equipped them. Next year, when the second battle of Manassas was fought, General Lee crossed the Potomac and entered Maryland without difficulty under much less favorable conditions. His inferiority of numbers to those of his antagonists were greater, and his ammunition, supplies, and transportation less in proportion to the strength of his army. The extent of the Southern victory was not known  on that hot afternoon of July 21, 1861, because the pursuit had been feeble. Later in the evening, when the Federals were in full retreat, the report reached the Confederate commanders that a strong body of Union troops was advancing via Union Mills on Manassas, and orders wer