The First Republican Army: The Army of Virginia and the Radicalization of the Civil War

by John H. Matsui,
The American Historical Review, February 1, 2018

In the summer of 1862, following the Second Battle of Bull Run, General George McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, boasted to his wife that his enemies had been crushed, silenced, and disarmed. McClellan, John H. Matsui reminds us, was not referring to Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. His barb was directed at his fellow Union general John Pope, commander of the Army of Virginia.