Agreed.
For once, Bard, I cannot fault your logic. A defeat at Bull Run for the Confederacy would be disasterous. They would be left with a broken army, no proven commanders, limited supplies, and degrading morale. Finally, where to the Confederates fall back to? They don't have any real fortifications in the region to withdraw to, and that's a long retreat for a green, defeated army. And it doesn't have any built up defenses to resist an offensive at this time either.
IOTL, Abraham Lincoln wanted Robert E. Lee to be the commander of
the Army of the Potomac.
I remember reading somewhere that Lee was never actually offered the Army of the potomac, just some high office (commander of the defenses of Washington, I believe). Cant find the source, unfortunatly.
He asked his good friend, George Blair,
you have any source for this? Or any reason why this is relavent?
whose house is now the official guest residence of the United States Government,
to offer Lee the position. Blair did. Lee refused saying "I can't fight against my
country."
As stated earlier, I believe that Lee wasn't offered the potomac. However, the basic facts are correct. Which leads to the question of why Lee is at all relavent to a discussion of the first bull run, at which he was not present. In fact, he was in west virginia (and lost, although nobody knows today) at the time.
The irony? Lee was opposed to slavery was about to free his slaves
yet he was fighting to preserve it.
Debatable. He made comments which can be interpreted as opposing slavery, but which can also be taken to mean that he thought it would end if and when god willed it would. He did own slaves, however.
McClellan, owned slaves, and was fighting
to abolish it.
I'll give you this one. Not sure if he owned them, but he did not personally oppose the institution.
Thank you. Not yet, anyway. The Civil War, at this time, wasn't about freeing
the slaves. It was about holding the Union together. That was why Lincoln resisted calls by Frederick Douglass to put blacks in uniform.
Irrelevant