And justice would prevail, James still believed, not just to capture a rural railhead, but rather to so defeat and so demoralize the Confederate forces that the victorious northern troops could march unobstructed on to the rebel capital, which lay a mere hundred miles south. “On to Richmond!” the northern newspapers cried, and “On to Richmond!” was sewn in bright cloth letters on the standards of some federal regiments, and “On to Richmond!” the spectators had called to the troops marching across the Long Bridge out of Washington. Some of those spectators had done more than watch the troops leave, but had actually accompanied the army into Virginia. Indeed it seemed to James as though half of Washington’s polite society had come to witness the great northern victory for, as the sun now rose above the Bull Run, he could see scores of civilian spectators already mingling with the federal troops. There were elegant carriages parked among the gun limbers, and artists’ easels and sketch pads standing amidst the stacks of rifles and muskets. Fashionable ladies sheltered under parasols, servants laid out rugs and picnic hampers, while self-important congressmen, eager to share if not wholly capture the glory of the hour, pontificated to whomever might listen on the army’s strategy.

“You reckon we’ll make Richmond by Saturday?” the Harper’s Weekly reporter now asked James Starbuck.

“We devoutly hope so.”

“And we’ll hang Jefferson Davis on Sunday,” the reporter said, then gave a whoop of glee at that happy prospect.

“Not on Sunday, I think.” James was too much of a lawyer to let such a careless remark go unchallenged, especially in front of the foreign military attachés, who might conclude from the reporter’s words that the United States was not only a nation of Sabbath breakers, but also a pack of uncivilized roughs who did not understand the need for strict legality. “We’ll hang Davis after due process,” James said for the benefit of those foreigners, “and only after due process.”

“The Captain means we’ll tie a good knot in the rope first,” one of the reporters helpfully explained to the military attachés.