Irvin McDowell - Civil War

Civil War

McDowell was promoted to brigadier general in the regular army on May 14, 1861, and given command of the Army of Northeastern Virginia, despite never having commanded troops in combat. The promotion was partly because of the influence of his mentor, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. Although McDowell knew that his troops were inexperienced and unready, and protested that he was a supply officer, not a field commander, pressure from the Washington politicians forced him to launch a premature offensive against Confederate forces in Northern Virginia. His strategy during the First Battle of Bull Run was imaginative but ambitiously complex, and his troops were not experienced enough to carry it out effectively, resulting in an embarrassing rout.

After the defeat at Bull Run, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan was placed in command of the new Union Army defending Washington, the Army of the Potomac. McDowell commanded a division in the new army, but McClellan soon reorganized his command and McDowell was given I Corps the following spring. His corps stayed behind to defend Washington, and was eventually supposed to march to McClellan's support while the latter fought in the Peninsula Campaign; however, the nervous politicians who feared that General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's Valley Campaign would eventually attack Washington kept McDowell's 40,000 soldiers behind.

Eventually, the three independent commands of Generals McDowell, John C. Frémont, and Nathaniel P. Banks were combined into Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia and McDowell led the III Corps of that army. Because of his actions at Cedar Mountain, McDowell was eventually brevetted major general in the regular army; however, he was blamed for the subsequent disaster at Second Bull Run. He escaped culpability by testifying against Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter, whom Pope court-martialed for alleged insubordination in that battle. Despite his formal escape, McDowell spent the following two years in effective exile from the leadership of the Army.