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The Battle Of Bull Run

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The Battle of Bull Run

The American Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 to determine whether the Union or Confederacy would survive. The fight would take place between the North, called Union states and the South, called Confederate states. The Confederate states wanted to leave the North and South union and stand on their own. The war started on April 12, 1861 when Confederate forces attacked a Union military base at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The reason the war started at this time was that Abraham Lincoln had just been elected President in 1860. Abraham Lincoln wanted to end slavery but keep the union together. The North had an increase of industry and the South still depended on farming the land. However, the South …show more content…

to strike a Confederate force along a small river known as Bull Run. After fighting on the defensive for most of the day, the rebels rallied and were able to break the Union right flank, sending them into a chaotic retreat towards Washington. The Confederate victory gave the South a false confidence and shocked many in the North, who realized the war would not be won as easily as they had hoped.
By July 1861, the northern press and the public were eager for the Union Army to make an advance on Richmond ahead of the planned meeting of the Confederate Congress there on July 20. Encouraged by early victories of Union troops in western Virginia, and by the war fever spreading through the North, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Brigadier General Irvin McDowell to mount an offensive that would hit quickly and decisively at the enemy and open the way to Richmond, thus bringing the war to a quick end. The offensive would begin with an attack on Confederate troops under the command of General P.G.T. Beauregard camped near Manassas Junction, Virginia (25 miles from Washington, D.C.) along a little river known as Bull Run.
The cautious McDowell, then in command of the Union volunteer troops, gathered in the Federal capital, knew that his men were not prepared and pushed for a postponement of the advance to give him time for additional training. But Lincoln ordered him to begin the offensive, reasoning that the rebel army was made up of amateur

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