When the Civil War broke out the US Army had only some 16,000 men, most of them scattered far from Washington, and President Lincoln''s call for volunteers to defend the Union optimistically set their initial term of service at only three months. After maneuvering in the Shenandoah Valley and in eastern Virginia, it was these hastily created and poorly trained units, with a motley array of uniforms and equipment, which fought the first major battle of the war at Bull Run (Manassas).Based on painstaking research in state archives, period newspapers and correspondence, and illustrated with portrait photos and color reconstructions, this book records a wealth of detail on the hugely varied appearance of those first Union volunteer regiments.