When we study the Civil War, we have one big advantage over everyone who lived at the time: we know how it ended. We know the North won. 

We might, therefore, be tempted to think that a Union victory was inevitable. After all, the North had more people, more resources, and more industry. 

But that wasn’t how people at the time experienced it. For those in the South, the first eighteen months of the war were very encouraging — everything looked to be going their way. For those in the North, it was just the opposite: one defeat after another. 

How do we explain this?

First, the South had a significant edge in military leadership. Its president, Jefferson Davis, was a West Point graduate, a veteran of the Mexican War, and a former secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce. 

By contrast, President Abraham Lincoln had served briefly in the Black Hawk War, during which, he later quipped, his bloodiest struggles were “with the mosquitoes.” 

He would have to learn on the job.

The generals Lincoln had at his disposal — men like George McClellan, Irvin McDowell, and Joseph Hooker — proved themselves to be no match for the far more aggressive, decisive, and charismatic Confederate generals — Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson, to name just a few. 

Second, the South was well armed. Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan did little to stop the South from seizing federal forts and arsenals filled with guns, cannon, and ammunition during the four months between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration.  

These advantages were apparent at the first major engagement of the war, the Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861. Hoping for a quick war-ending victory, Lincoln ordered General Irvin McDowell to go on the offensive. The plan was to overwhelm General P. G. T. Beauregard’s army, encamped 25 miles southwest of the capital. 

Hearing that the battle was about to begin, excited journalists, members of Congress, and various DC residents hurried to a nearby hill to observe the action. Confident in the Union’s superior numbers, the spectators made a picnic out of it, bringing baskets of food and wine. 

What they saw shocked them. 

Confederate forces routed McDowell’s men, inflicting nearly 3,000 casualties. 

The partygoers, fearing capture, fled back to the capital in panic. 

Lincoln himself was shaken but stayed calm. He dismissed McDowell and put General George McClellan in his place. A graduate of West Point and a veteran of the Mexican War, McClellan’s appointment was greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm. 

This seemed to be the man who could win the war for Lincoln. 

The general spent the next seven months building up his army. During that time, he became the toast of DC society.

He wrote to his wife, “I seem to have become the power of the land… I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator or anything else that might please me…"

His massive ego would have driven a normal president out of his mind, but Lincoln was not a normal president. He would tolerate McClellan as long as McClellan brought him the victory he so desired. 

And that was the problem. McClellan did everything but fight. He had assembled the largest army in American history up until that point — over 120,000 men — yet insisted he needed more. 

A frustrated Lincoln commented to a military aide, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.”

Finally, in March of 1862, McClellan made his move. Known as the Peninsula Campaign. It started promisingly with some minor victories at Yorktown and Williamsburg, Virginia in early May. 

The first major confrontation occurred at Seven Pines on May 31. It ended in a bloody stalemate one day later. 

And then it all went bad. 

Robert E. Lee took command of the Confederate forces and quickly outgeneraled McClellan at every turn. On June 27, at the Battle of Gaines’ Mill, Lee launched a massive counterattack that broke the Union line. 

By July 1, it was clear that McClellan had failed. The cost was atrocious: 3,000 dead; 22,000 wounded, captured, or missing. His objective, the Confederate capital of Richmond, was safe. What ground he had initially gained, he had to give up. All he had left were excuses, and of those, he had many. Mostly, he blamed Lincoln, who, he claimed, forced him to go into battle with insufficient manpower.

Lincoln now had a disgruntled and incompetent general at the head of his army and a dispirited populace who, along with members of Lincoln’s own cabinet, seriously wondered if they had elected the wrong man for the job. 

Looking back, it’s no exaggeration to say that Abraham Lincoln had the worst first year of any president in American history. 

As the commander-in-chief looked to the future, it seemed that a Union victory was anything but inevitable.

I’m Wilfred McClay, professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of Land of Hope, for Prager University.