“But the rebels gave us a whipping four days ago. Doesn’t that worry you?” one of the newspapermen had asked. He was referring to a large northern reconnaissance force that had approached the Bull Run four days before and, in an excess of zeal, had tried to cross the stream, but had instead provoked a withering and deadly hail of bullets from the rebels concealed among the thick foliage on the farther bank. James dismissed the repulse as trivial, and had even tried to gloss it with a coat of victory by suggesting that the accidental contact with the enemy had been designed to convince the rebels that any northern attack would fall in the same place, on their right flank, when in fact the real assault would hook deep around the Confederate left.

“So what’s the worst that could happen today, Captain?” another of the newspapermen had wanted to know.

The worst, James conceded, was that General Johnston’s forces might have left the Shenandoah Valley and be on their way to reinforce Beauregard’s men. That, he admitted, would make the day’s fighting much harder, but he could assure the newspapermen that the latest telegraph news from the northern forces in the Shenandoah was that Johnston was still in the valley.

“But if Joe Johnston’s rebs do join up with Beauregard’s,” the newspaperman insisted, “does that mean we’re whipped?”

“It means we must work somewhat harder to defeat them.” James felt annoyed by the tone of the question, but calmly reiterated his assurance that Johnston was still trapped far to the west, which meant that the great issue of American unity must this day be decided by the men presently gathered either side of the Bull Run. “And it will be a victory,” James had confidently predicted. He had taken repeated pains to tell the newspapermen that this northern army was the largest force of troops ever assembled in North America. Irvin McDowell led more than thirty thousand men, over twice as many as George Washington’s army at Yorktown. It was, James assured the journalists, an overpowering force and proof of the federal government’s resolve to crush the rebellion swiftly and absolutely.

The reporters had pounced on the word overpowering. “You mean we outnumber the rebs, Captain?”

“Not outnumber, exactly.” In fact no one knew just how many men the rebels had mustered on the Bull Run’s farther bank, the estimates ranging from ten thousand to a most unlikely forty thousand, but James did not want to make the northern victory sound like an inevitability brought about by sheer numbers. There had to be some room for northern heroism, and so he had hedged his answer. “We think,” he said grandly, “that the rebels can muster numbers not unlike our own, but in this battle, gentlemen, it will be training, morale and justice that shall prevail.”