April 2016

The Confederates’ decisive defeat of Union forces at the Battle of Bull Run/Manassas so shocked the U.S. government that it instituted an income tax for the first time in American history. The defeat came at the hands of an outnumbered, underfunded, and inferiorly supplied Confederate army. It left Gen. George McClellan braying for more men, imagining a massive Napoleonic army capable of crushing the rebels in one decisive campaign. He wanted at least 273,000 soldiers and sailors at an average cost of $1,000 each. The older, and more seasoned, Gen. Winfield Scott, was pushing a strategic plan that would cost scarcely less: it required a greatly strengthened Navy and strong armies on both sides of the Mississippi River.