by matters beyond my control. I have never heard of the assignment to which you allude — of commander in chief of the Southern army-nor have I any expectation or wish for it. President Davis holds that position. I have been laboring to prepare and get into the field the Virginia troops to strengthen those from other States, and the threatened commands of Johnston, Beauregard, Huger, Garnett, etc. Where I shall go I do not know, as that will depend upon President Davis.” The press on both sides, North and South alike, excited by the probability of a battle, began to severely criticise the delay in decisive movements. They did not understand that armies composed almost exclusively of citizen soldiers had to be organized with great care. Regiments had to be placed in brigades, and they in turn formed into divisions; ammunition, the means of subsistence, and the requisite amount of transportation had to be provided. General Lee resisted public clamor in his usual calm and dignified way. Mc-Dowell too, like a seasoned soldier, stood the pressure against him as long as he could, but at last it became so great he could wait no longer. So he issued General Order No. 17, dated Arlington Heights, July 16th, which started from camp and put on the march thousands of armed men, as a vast engine is put in motion by pressure on a button. Some thirty miles away, behind a small stream called Bull Run, Beauregard waited the arrival of McDowell. The two army commanders were classmates  at West Point, and had studied and marched side by side for four years. It was a strange sight to see them now manoeuvring hostile armies. The capture of Washington should have been the legitimate military result of the Southern victory at Manassas. A great part of Beauregard's army had not fired a gun on the 21st; the brigades of Ewell, D. R. Jones, Longstreet, Bonham, and Holmes had been quietly resting all day, if we except a small skirmish by Jones. Ewell moved to the battlefield in the afternoon, but was not engaged. If these fresh troops had been 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. 