CHAPTER XXVII

JACKSON'S VALLEY CAMPAIGN

No sooner had Lee come into command than he set out to change and reverse the existing conditions of the war. He was determined to drive McClellan away from Richmond, to put an end to siege operations that, if persisted in, must ultimately result in the capture of that city, and to transfer to some more distant point the scene of active hostilities. In other words, it was Lee's purpose to change a dispiriting defense into an all-inspiring offense, to raise McClellan's siege of Richmond and to institute in its stead operations that should put Washington upon the defensive.

To that end he began by strengthening his army. He deemed the time now ripe to adopt the plan which he had negatived as premature when Johnston had suggested it. He called to Richmond all the available forces that could be spared from the Southern coasts and elsewhere, swelling his army to 70,000 or 80,000 men.

This reinforcement did not indeed give him an army equal to McClellan's in numbers or in equipment, but it materially reduced the disparity between the two opposing forces and opened the way to a hopeful trial of conclusions in the field.

But there was, as already stated, a strong Federal force marching by way of Fredericksburg to join McClellan. It numbered more than 40,000 men and was under the very capable command of General McDowell. If that force should form a junction with McClellan the odds against Lee, in spite of reinforcement, would be decisive, and any attempt he might make to save the Confederate capital by offensive defense must fail.

Lee's first necessity, therefore, was to prevent McDowell's army of 40,000 men from joining McClellan before Richmond; his second purpose was to bring all his own forces to bear at that crucial point for a supreme effort to overthrow his adversary there.

He knew the excessive apprehension felt at the North for the safety of Washington city, and he played upon it with masterly skill. Ever since November, 1861, Stonewall Jackson had been in the Valley of the Shenandoah trying with a totally inadequate force to hold that region and upon occasion to inflict what damage he could upon the foe, especially by destroying a section of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad and of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, upon which the Federal communications between the forces in West Virginia and the headquarters at Washington depended. Jackson had done some brilliant things in that quarter and had succeeded in detaining there a Federal force much greater than his own, which if set free to join McClellan would have made the Federal army before Richmond irresistible in its strength.

But inferiority of force was by no means the sorest difficulty that Jackson had contended with during all those months of winter marchings and fightings amid snowstorms. On the Southern as on the Northern side every really capable general was embarrassed by the ignorant and intrusive dictation of men in place above him. As Grant was paralyzingly dominated by Halleck's interference at every critical moment in his western campaigns, and as Farragut was restrained from obviously easy and supremely desirable achievement by the hand of ignorant authority in the Navy Department at Washington, so Jackson, in the Valley, found his military plans brought to naught by the interference of a civilian Secretary of War who, having authority, chose to use it in giving orders to Jackson's troops in the field without so much as consulting Jackson as to his reasons for posting them as he had done. Beauregard and Johnston at Manassas had encountered a like difficulty and had several times been upon the point of resigning their commissions in despair of achieving any worthy results under such conditions of ignorant and arbitrary control. Jackson was driven further and on the thirty-first of January, 1862, he wrote in despair to Governor Letcher of Virginia, asking that he be ordered back to his professor's chair in the Virginia Military Institute, and tendering his resignation as a major-general if such an order could not be given.

The circumstances were these. With great difficulty, at serious risk of defeat and by exacting a positively heroic endurance on the part of his men in marches through snow and sleet and mud, Jackson had conquered the strategic control of the region under his command from an enemy greatly outnumbering him. The strategic key to the position thus conquered was Romney and there Jackson had stationed Loring with a force strong enough to hold the place while keeping in touch with Jackson himself. This disposition rendered the valley, with all its strategic advantages, a secure Confederate possession and a military base from which it was easy to threaten or with reinforcements to assail Washington and the country north of the Potomac.

No sooner had Jackson by genius and heroic endeavor secured this advantage for the Confederate arms than the lawyer at the head of the War Department at Richmond assumed to undo his work by an order which Jackson obeyed as a soldier, but bitterly resented as a strategist baffled by the ignorance and arrogant assumption of his civilian superior officer. His letter to Governor Letcher which follows sufficiently explains the matter:

Winchester, January 31, 1862

Governor:--This morning I received an order from the Secretary of War to order General Loring and his command to fall back from Romney to this place immediately. The order was promptly complied with; but as the order was given without consulting me and is abandoning to the enemy what has cost much preparation, expense and exposure to secure, and is in direct conflict with my military plans, and implies a want of confidence in my capacity to judge when General Loring's troops should fall back, and _is an attempt to control military operations in detail from the Secretary's desk at a distance_,[5] I have, for the reasons set forth in the accompanying paper, requested to be ordered back to the Institute and if this is denied me, then to have my resignation accepted. I ask as a special favor that you will have me ordered back to the Institute.

As a single order like that of the Secretary may destroy the entire fruits of a campaign I cannot reasonably expect if my operations are thus to be interfered with to be of much service in the field.... If I have ever acquired by the blessing of Providence any influence over troops this undoing of my work by the Secretary may greatly diminish that influence.

* * * * *

I desire to say nothing against the Secretary of War. I take it for granted that he has done what he believed to be best, but I regard such a policy as ruinous.

Very truly your friend, T. J. JACKSON

[5] The italics are inserted by the author of this history. They are intended to direct attention to the marrow of the matter.

Let the reader imagine if he can, a lawyer utterly unskilled in military affairs and completely unacquainted with even the topography of the valley, sitting in Richmond, and undertaking not only to direct the movements of troops in that region but to cancel and reverse the orders of Stonewall Jackson without so much as asking his opinion of a situation which that Napoleonic commander had painfully wrought out with inadequate means and in face of difficulties that might well have appalled even his resolute spirit. Such imagining will help to a comprehension of the peculiar difficulties at that time needlessly thrown in the way of the men to whom was assigned the task of conducting the war to a successful conclusion. The like thing was a familiar story on both sides at that period of the war, and it cost both sides many thousands of human lives and many millions of treasure.

These are not pleasant facts for the historian to record, but they must be set down if the story of the war is to be told with truth and in a fashion to be understood.

Not only did Judah P. Benjamin, the unmilitary lawyer who held the post of Secretary of War, assume to interfere with Jackson's dispositions of his troops without consulting Jackson; his arrogance had an even more astounding manifestation. Jackson was acting in the valley under the command of his superior officer, General Joseph E. Johnston, who had sent him thither, who trusted him implicitly, and who very wisely and properly left to his trained skill and well-approved judgment every detail of a campaign, the general purport of which was all that even Johnston, as commanding general, responsible for results, assumed the right to dictate to such a man as Jackson. Benjamin, the lawyer Secretary of War, was so far ignorant or negligent of those forms and courtesies of military life upon which military success very largely depends that he sent his order directly to Jackson, instead of sending it, as common courtesy and all military usage properly required, through Jackson's commander, General Johnston. This seriously endangered results and it was an affront to Johnston which that officer would have been fully justified in resenting with his own resignation. It was something far worse than an affront. It was an impertinent interference with Johnston's military plans as well as with Jackson's--an interference of ignorance with the activities of knowledge which might easily have defeated operations of the utmost consequence.

It seems incredible, but it is a fact, that General Johnston, the officer at that time charged with the supreme command in Virginia, never knew or heard of the order of the Secretary of War to Stonewall Jackson, utterly disorganizing his plans and directing him to surrender all that he had painfully achieved of strategic advantage, until Jackson's letter to Governor Letcher, tendering his resignation in righteous resentment of the interference and in despair of accomplishing worthy results under such conditions, came to General Johnston in the regular course. For Jackson was far too well educated a soldier to send his letter, even though it was personal and was addressed to the Governor of Virginia, otherwise than through his regular military superiors.

Upon reading that letter and its inclosed communication to the Secretary of War and learning for the first time of Benjamin's interference with Jackson's operations, General Johnston sought to save to the Confederacy the inestimable services of his great lieutenant. He wrote to Jackson as follows:

My Dear Friend:--I have just read with profound regret your letter to the Secretary of War asking to be relieved from your present command, either by an order to the Virginia Military Institute or the acceptance of your resignation. Let me beg you to reconsider this matter. Under ordinary circumstances a due sense of one's own dignity, as well as care for professional character and official rights, would demand such a course as yours. But the character of the war, the great energy exhibited by the government of the United States, the danger in which our very existence as an independent people lies, require sacrifices from us all who have been educated as soldiers. _I receive my information of the order of which you have such cause to complain from your letter. Is not that as great an official wrong to me as the order itself to you?_ Let us dispassionately reason with the government on this subject of command, and if we fail to influence its practice, then ask to be relieved from positions _the authority of which is exercised by the War Department while the responsibilities are left to us_.[6]

I have taken the liberty to detain your letter, to make this appeal to your patriotism, not merely from warm feelings of personal regard but from the official opinion which makes me regard you as necessary to the service of your country in your present position.

[6] The italics are inserted by the author of this work to emphasize the peculiar stupidity that on both sides in the war permitted ignorance to overrule knowledge and self-assumption to dominate skill. This particular interference came near depriving Lee of the superb genius of Stonewall Jackson as Halleck's interference well nigh lost Grant to the Federal army.

General Johnston's appeal to Jackson to continue in the service in spite of the ignorant, embarrassing, and grossly ill-mannered interference with his operations by the Secretary of War, was supported by a multitude of letters and appeals from statesmen, citizens, generals and common soldiers--many of the latter being men of high social and political distinction who had enlisted in the ranks in a war that all regarded as their own, but whose enlistment had in no wise invalidated their right to speak with authority as representative citizens.

Governor Letcher went at once to the War Department to plead with Secretary Benjamin for the saving of Stonewall Jackson's genius and devotion to the Confederate cause. Benjamin so far yielded as to hold open the question of Jackson's resignation. He had not intended to provoke that. It is doubtful that he would have dared it. He had not intended anything, indeed, except to impress his own authority upon the army. When he understood how great a loss Jackson would be to the cause, and how narrowly his own grossly irregular interference with Jackson had missed compelling the resignations of Beauregard, Johnston, and a host of others in high and low position, Mr. Benjamin became placative in an extreme degree.

In the meanwhile he had sacrificed all that Jackson's energy and genius had accomplished in the Valley and had discouraged the army in a degree and to an extent for which no later efficiency could by any possibility atone. Until Benjamin interfered with him Jackson was master of the Valley, and of all that its possession signified, by virtue of his painful endeavors to achieve that highly desirable result by means of arduous campaigns in snow and sleet and slush and mud. If he had been let alone Jackson would have been in undisputed command of the upper Potomac country; he would have had Maryland and southern Pennsylvania thenceforth always at his mercy; and with reinforcements that might at any moment have been sent to him he would have been in position to threaten Washington in a way possibly to compel the instant withdrawal of McClellan's army from Richmond and the recall of McDowell's from Fredericksburg.

As it was, it was left to Lee to achieve those purposes in much more arduous ways and at cost of great and otherwise needless battles, involving the loss of human lives by tens of thousands, where but for ignorant interference no considerable loss at all would have been necessary.

Let us make this matter clear. If Jackson had been let alone in the Valley, of which he had made himself complete master, his way would have been easily open to the region in rear of Washington. With the opening of the spring of 1862 practically the whole of Johnston's army, then still at Manassas and Centreville, together with the troops at Richmond reinforced from the seaboard and the South, could have been pushed by the valley route into Maryland, threatening Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and the North. If that had been done McClellan would not have been permitted by his government to advance up the Peninsula. His entire force would have been held at Washington or sent northward and westward to meet the Confederate advance. It would have been Washington, the Federal capital, and not Richmond, the seat of Confederate government, that was besieged.

But the interference of a civilian war department spoiled the program and made a mess of the campaign. It resulted in a siege of Richmond which sorely discouraged not only the Confederates but also their friends in Europe who were struggling to secure the South's recognition as an independent power. It rendered necessary the Seven Days' battles presently to be considered, and the campaign against Pope, as damaging and depleting preliminaries to a campaign of aggression which, but for the War Department's interference, would have been undertaken with the full force of the Confederate army, unimpaired by the losses of nearly a dozen battle conflicts.

Jackson's services were fortunately saved to the Confederates. His position in the valley was impaired by the order of the Secretary of War, which he obeyed in spite of its destructiveness, and the results of his arduous campaign there were largely sacrificed to the fetish of official authority. But at any rate Jackson's energy and genius were not lost to the cause to which he was so ardently devoted. Johnston's appeal and a multitude of others that poured in upon him overcame the great general's reluctance to continue longer in a service in which crass ignorance was permitted to interfere with and destroy the results of military skill and heroic endeavor.

A week after his resignation was written Jackson, overwhelmed by appeals to remain in the service, wrote to Governor Letcher as follows:

February 6, 1862

Governor:--Your letter of the 4th inst. was received this morning. If my retiring from the army would produce the effect upon our country that you have named in your letter, I, of course, could not desire to leave the service, and if, upon receipt of this note, your opinion remains unchanged, you are authorized to withdraw my resignation unless the Secretary of War desires that it should be accepted. My reasons for resigning were set forth in my letter of the 31st ult. and my views remain unchanged; and _if the Secretary persists in the ruinous policy complained of I feel that no officer can serve his country better than by making his strongest possible protest against it, which, in my opinion, is done by tendering his resignation, rather than be a willing instrument in prosecuting the war upon a ruinous principle_.

This then was the situation. Stonewall Jackson, with a miserably inferior force, was holding the Valley throughout a long winter, and detaining there a Federal army, which, if it had been added to the main Federal force, would have made that force irresistible in numbers of men and guns. Toilsomely, and at cost of desperately hard marching and fighting, he had made himself master of the strategic position. He could now hold the Valley secure even with his inadequate force, and in the event of reinforcement he could threaten Washington in ways that must compel the diversion of decisive Federal forces from the march upon Richmond. His strategy had been masterly, his enterprise matchless, and his achievements astonishing in their completeness.

Just as these results were achieved a lawyer who happened to be Secretary of War, without any adequate knowledge of the military situation, without any skill in the art of war, without consultation with Jackson and even without sending his orders through Jackson's commanding officer, Johnston, assumed to order Jackson to undo all his work and withdraw his forces from points of commanding importance which had been won with difficulty and at cost of positively heroic sacrifice.

Is it any wonder that a war so blunderingly conducted by ignorant civilians on both sides was prolonged to four times the length it ought properly to have endured? Is it any wonder that under such ignorant direction the war cost scores of thousands of lives needlessly sacrificed by mismanagement, and hundreds of millions of needlessly expended treasure?

These details, which seem at first glance, to belong rather to biography than to history, are set forth here, precisely as those touching Grant's restraint from activity by Halleck and Farragut's embarrassment by a civilian Navy Department, are set forth in other chapters of this history, because they serve to show how the war was conducted on both sides in those early years. As influences that caused the prolongation of the struggle and added enormously to its cost both in precious treasure and in more precious human life, they have a historical meaning wholly out of proportion to their biographical significance.

Jackson remained in command in the Valley. He had a meager force,--usually less than one fourth that of his adversary,--and in spite of his activity in battle at Kernstown, Romney and the rest--his original plans having been brought to naught by the interference of the Secretary of War--he was slowly beaten back into positions that seemed to make of the Valley a Federal possession.

Then he turned about and by one of the most brilliant campaigns of all the war, reversed conditions, and made himself again master where he had seemed to be almost hopelessly on the defensive.

In preparation for that campaign he earnestly begged Lee for reinforcements--Lee being then in general command of the Confederate forces--and all that Lee could do was to assign to his command the little force under Edward Johnson west of Staunton, with the privilege of calling to his aid such troops as General Ewell had with him on the line of the Rappahannock, east of the Blue Ridge. His own immediate command, together with Ewell's and Edward Johnson's, amounted in all to a little less than 17,000 men, divided into three widely separated columns with the Blue Ridge and a whole day's march between his own position and that of his chief lieutenant. Opposed to him were Banks at Harrisonburg with 19,000 men,--or more than Jackson's total possible strength--Milroy and Schenck lying to the west of Staunton with 6,000 men and Fremont advancing from West Virginia with 9,000 more.

In brief, by concentrating all his widely scattered forces, Jackson could bring to bear upon his problem no more than 17,000 men at the very most, while he stood beleaguered by no less than 34,000, under generals who already held the greater part of the valley and seemed easily able to occupy the rest of it, including Staunton and the chief railroad lines, at will.

When Jackson definitely learned that he could have no other help than that of Ewell and Edward Johnson, he boldly planned to concentrate his 17,000 men and with them make war upon his 34,000 adversaries. His hope lay in secrecy and celerity of operation. His plan was to bring the three widely separated parts of his army together without the enemy's knowledge, and to hurl the whole like a thunderbolt against one after another of his enemy's divisions.

The largest of those divisions,--that under Banks's personal command at Harrisonburg--outnumbered Jackson's total force by all of 2,000 men, while the other two divisions were nearly enough equal to his own to make an assault upon either of them perilous. Moreover the geographical problem was such that Jackson could at no point bring all his inferior force to bear at once. He must always keep a considerable part of it detached and out of action, lest his adversary seize upon a position of commanding importance.

Nevertheless, this truly Napoleonic commander planned a campaign in which, with his 17,000 men, he should defend Staunton and destroy in detail his adversary's double numbers.

Thus began that campaign whose strategy has been called by a historian "massive thimble-rigging," because its success depended upon Jackson's ability to conceal his movements and make sudden appearances in quite unexpected places.

The season was highly unfavorable for rapid marchings. The roads were quagmires and the fields on either side of the highways were morasses. Sometimes it was impossible, even by the most heroic endeavors, to move the guns more than five miles in a day. Rain and mud offered obstacles immeasurably more obstinate than hostile battalions, but in spite of all, Jackson persisted.

His first purpose was to unite the force under his own immediate command at Swift Run Gap, with the troops under Edward Johnson at West View, west of Staunton and forty miles or more away. He began by ordering Ewell, with his 8,000 men, to cross the Blue Ridge from the east, and occupy Swift Run Gap. While Ewell was executing this movement Jackson, with his 6,000 men and with the purpose of deceiving his enemy, moved northward down the valley, turned eastward, crossed the mountains to their eastern side, and then by a circuitous route made his way back again westward across the mountains to join Edward Johnson west of Staunton. His purpose in all this was to convince his enemy that he was abandoning and evacuating the Valley and marching to join the Confederate forces defending Richmond.

He accomplished that deception perfectly, and so secretly was his return to the Valley conducted that the pushing of his column into Staunton astonished the Confederates there quite as much as it would have astonished the Federals if they had known of it, as they did not.

Ewell, had in the meanwhile, crossed the Blue Ridge and occupied the position left by Jackson in the Elk Run valley. Unfortunately for Jackson, that position must be held at all hazards, and so it was impossible for him, for the present at least, to add Ewell's 8,000 men to the meager forces with which he intended to assail the Federals farther west.

Thus Jackson's campaign was begun with only Edward Johnson's force, numbering a scant 3,000 men, and his own battalions, amounting to 6,000, or somewhat less. He had in all a force of about 8,500 men or perhaps a trifle more, with which to deal with Milroy and Schenck, who had 6,000 men at McDowell, the much larger forces of Fremont advancing from the west, and such reinforcements as Banks might choose to send to them from his army of 19,000 men at Harrisonburg.

A glance at a map of the Valley will show the reader clearly that in assailing Milroy and Schenck, Jackson in fact invited battle with all of Fremont's and Banks's forces--in other words, that with 9,000 men he risked and boldly challenged a conflict with no less than 34,000. But so careful and so masterly had his dispositions been that the chance of such a concentration against him amounted to scarcely more than zero. For Ewell with his 8,000 men was at Elk Run, and Ewell was an enterprising officer, greatly given to fighting upon the smallest provocation. Had Banks detached any considerable part of his force from the Harrisonburg position to aid Milroy and Schenck, Ewell would very certainly have moved to the conquest of Harrisonburg, and the success of such a movement would have meant of necessity the quick reconquering of the whole valley by the Confederates.

Reckoning upon this Jackson joined Johnson and together they fell upon the Federals at McDowell, where a small but severe battle ensued on the eighth of May, in which after four hours of determined fighting the Federals were driven from the field and compelled, during the succeeding night, to withdraw from their position at McDowell, and fall back, the Confederates closely pursuing them. The retreat lasted for several days and was marked by some picturesque incidents.

Schenck, though beaten in battle and driven into retreat, was still formidable and the fighting quality of his men had not been impaired. Jackson feared that the force retreating before him might be reinforced from Banks's strong army at Harrisonburg. In that case it would turn again and rend him. But the reinforcements, if sent at all, must be sent through certain narrow and heavily-wooded defiles, and to check their advance Jackson sent out detachments to obstruct those passageways by felling timber across them. He also asked the aid of the farmers in such work and right willingly they responded.

In the meanwhile Schenck protected his retreat from too close a pursuit by setting fire to the dense woods and literally stifling his enemy with smoke. Jackson's men found it sometimes impossible to go forward without actual suffocation and so Schenck gained time in which to effect his retreat.

The destruction of superb timber, the growth of fifty or a hundred years, which the operations of both the contestants involved, was only a small part of that waste which makes war the most costly of all human arbitraments.

Human lives are of course more precious in many ways than forest growths, but human life is easily and quickly reproduced, while a forest destroyed upon steep mountain sides is so much of God's good gift to man forever taken away.

Jackson had now completely accomplished his purpose of driving Schenck back upon Fremont. He had no desire to press on and bring about a battle with the united forces of the two in the difficult mountain country. He had effectually prevented a junction of Fremont or Schenck with Banks's army at Harrisonburg. He had prevented the capture of Staunton by the Federals, thus protecting the railroad connections of the Confederates, and he had kept between thirty and forty thousand Federal troops busy in the Valley, who might otherwise have been sent to reinforce McClellan.

Still more important, his operations had compelled the Federal Government to stop the advance of McDowell's army by way of Fredericksburg and thus to deprive McClellan, assailing Richmond, of a reinforcement which might have rendered his assault absolutely irresistible.

Jackson's next necessity was to unite his meager force with the column of Ewell which was posted at Elk Run for the double purpose of threatening Banks at Harrisonburg and standing ready to march at a moment's warning to the assistance of the beleaguered garrison at Richmond. It was the grandest of grand strategy that Jackson was engaged in, and it was directed by the masterful genius of Robert E. Lee, acting through and by the genius of Stonewall Jackson.

Milroy and Schenck had been dislodged from the positions that threatened Staunton. They had been driven westward. They had also been effectually cut off for the time at least from a possible junction with Banks. So Jackson decided to effect the speediest possible junction between his own force in the field and Ewell's command of 8,000 men at Elk Run valley, and with the force thus concentrated to assail Banks at Harrisonburg. He hoped by a precipitate movement to defeat Banks before Fremont, whose plans of campaign he had so greatly interfered with, could come to that general's assistance.

But Banks did not wait for Jackson. In face of the fact that his 19,000 men at Harrisonburg outnumbered the whole of Jackson's widely scattered forces, Banks retreated northward down the Valley as soon as Jackson began his campaign. On the first of May he evacuated Harrisonburg and slowly retired to Newmarket. There he lost more than half his force by the detachment of Shields with 11,000 men, who moved on May 12, by way of Luray and Front Royal to join the force at Fredericksburg, thus emphasizing that threat to Richmond which it was Jackson's function to divert.

So far Jackson's strategy was unsuccessful. He had defeated Schenck and Milroy. He had prevented a junction of their forces with those of Banks; but he had not prevented Banks from sending 11,000 men and a proportionate number of guns to strengthen the column at Fredericksburg which was intended to join McClellan before Richmond and to render him irresistible.

From Newmarket Banks continued his retreat down the valley--northward--until he rested at Strasburg and Front Royal.

In the meanwhile the administration at Washington, nervously and even absurdly apprehensive as it was, plucked up courage enough to order McDowell, with the army at Fredericksburg, reinforced by Shields with 11,000 men, to march on the twenty-sixth across country by way of the Richmond and Fredericksburg railroad, and join McClellan's right wing before Richmond.

Timidity itself could not have hesitated to consent to this movement. It placed an army of more than 40,000 men in front of Washington and between that capital and the Confederate forces of 60,000 men or less, that McClellan was already beleaguering at Richmond with 120,000 men, while it left Banks in the Valley with 8,000 and the easy support of Fremont's 15,000 men to check any movement that Jackson might make upon Washington with his force of not more than 15,000 or 16,000.

Yet so great was the apprehension felt at Washington for the safety of that city that when the time came, Lee played upon it with success and by his play upon it deprived McClellan of reinforcements from McDowell, Banks and Fremont, aggregating nearly 65,000 men.

Turning about, after his pursuit of Schenck, Jackson quickly formed a junction of his own force with Ewell's, and with 16,000 or 17,000 men turned upon Banks, who was now retreating down the Valley toward Strasburg. He struck first at a detachment at Front Royal which he surprised and almost completely destroyed on the twenty-third of May.

On the twenty-fourth Banks decided to abandon Strasburg and retreat to Winchester, destroying his stores and such wagons of his train as he could not save from capture. Jackson's cavalry destroyed a multitude more of them on march, throwing the Federal trains into the utmost confusion. Jackson now had a much stronger force than Banks--about three men indeed to Banks's one.

With his vastly superior force Jackson set out to obey his orders, which were to "clear the valley and threaten Washington," so as to compel the diversion of McDowell's army from McClellan's reinforcement before Richmond.

The task was an inviting one and Jackson accomplished it promptly. Marching tirelessly, by night as well as by day, he quickly drove Banks from Strasburg to Middletown and from Middletown to Winchester. At Winchester he broke Banks's force into bits in a hotly contested battle, and having cut off the Federal general's retreat to Harper's Ferry, sent him flying in confusion by way of Martinsburg to Williamsport on the upper Potomac. Banks fought stubbornly against such odds as no commander could hope to overcome, but finding himself beaten and his columns disintegrated he skilfully retreated over the space of thirty-four miles in a single day, and successfully placed himself behind the Potomac where his force could threaten Jackson's flank, if the great Confederate should move upon Washington by way of Harper's Ferry.

Apart from its brilliant incidents which cannot be here related in detail Jackson's Valley campaign had thus far completely accomplished its strategic purpose. It had detained Fremont and Schenck with 15,000 men in the mountains when McClellan needed them before Richmond. It had kept Banks busy and finally had driven him out of the Valley and into a position from which he could render no assistance to the Federal armies anywhere. Finally it had so greatly alarmed the authorities at Washington that they completely diverted McDowell's 40,000 men from McClellan's reinforcement, sending the major part of that force upon the fruitless errand of destroying Jackson and employing the rest of it in the direct defense of Washington.

All this was precisely what Robert E. Lee had planned and intended, and it was perfectly accomplished. If larger space is here given to an account of this campaign than the size and direct importance of its battles would seem to justify, it is because of the tremendous strategic consequences of the operations involved. Jackson's activity made possible not only Lee's superb campaign of dislodgment against McClellan, but all the stupendous campaigning that followed, including the overthrow of Pope at Manassas, the invasion of Maryland, the battle of Antietam, the Fredericksburg battle and the later Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

The story of all that will follow in later chapters. In the meanwhile, it is pleasant to record here one step forward in civilization which was made during this campaign and the author of which, Dr. Hunter McGuire, deserves remembrance for his humanity. Until that time, and indeed for long afterwards, surgeons in charge of hospitals full of wounded men, upon falling into the enemy's hands, were treated as prisoners of war. After every battle, therefore, the surgeons of a retiring army, in charge of wounded men from both sides, must make a hard choice. They must either abandon their patients--many of whom were in desperate need of immediate surgical attention, or they must submit themselves to the rigors and sufferings of a military imprisonment, precisely as if they had been taken in battle. As a result of this peculiar barbarism of war the wounded--by the flight of their surgeons--were often left unattended at the critical moment that meant to them the difference between life and death. Many precious lives were needlessly sacrificed to this barbaric military practice.

At the battle of Winchester Jackson captured all the Federal surgeons in charge of the field hospitals there, but instead of sending them to Belle Isle or Andersonville or Libby Prison, he acted upon the suggestion of his medical director, Dr. Hunter McGuire, and released the doctors unconditionally upon the rational and humane ground that surgeons do not make war, and ought not to be subjected to war's pains and penalties, and upon the still more rational and humane ground that it is needful for the care of the wounded on both sides that surgeons shall be permitted to remain at their posts until surgeons on the other side can replace them, regardless of army movements and without fear of being sent to a loathsome prison as a punishment for their faithfulness to their merciful duty.

This step forward in the amelioration of war's horrors was not generally followed up until two years later when, during the tremendous struggle of 1864, General Lee and General Grant, acting upon their own humane impulses and with no authority except the confidence of each that his acts would be approved, agreed that surgeons in charge of wounded men should not be made prisoners of war, but should be subject only to such temporary detention as might be necessary to prevent them from carrying tidings of strategic importance across the lines.

It was Dr. Hunter McGuire who first offered this suggestion in behalf of humanity, and it was Stonewall Jackson who first took the responsibility of acting upon it. To their memory history should accord honor for it.

Jackson's Valley campaign had completely accomplished its chief purpose. It had thrown the War Department at Washington into a panic which is reflected in the dispatches of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton sent about that time. Neither McClellan nor McDowell regarded the situation in any such serious light as that in which it was viewed by Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton. McClellan and McDowell were trained and educated soldiers, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were civilians. The two soldiers perfectly understood that while Jackson had driven Fremont back into the West Virginia mountains and had chased Banks to and across the Potomac, he could not with his meager force--now reduced to less than 15,000 men--sanely cross into Maryland or without madness undertake a serious campaign against Washington. They knew Jackson to be a perfectly sane man, and hence they did not expect him to undertake either of those crazy operations. They were agreed in thinking that the proper course was for McDowell to push on to Richmond and join McClellan there before Jackson could add his force to Lee's.

If they had been permitted to do this, McClellan's force before the Confederate capital would have been sufficient, within three or four days, to overpower all conceivable opposition and to capture Richmond.

But Lee knew how almost insanely the administration at Washington dreaded every threat against that city or the country north of it, and he had successfully counted upon that absurd nervousness to enable Jackson, with 16,000 or 17,000 men, to neutralize McDowell's army of 40,000 in the great game then being played for the possession of Richmond. He had made a zero of Fremont and Schenck in the problem. He had converted Banks's army into a Potomac river-picket guard, and he had compelled McDowell's 40,000 men to remain inactive as a garrison defending Washington.

Never in all the war was so small a force as Jackson's made to neutralize so large a force. By the simple virtue of Lee's masterful strategy and Jackson's extraordinary capacity in execution, 17,000 men occupied 65,000 and kept them completely out of the decisive struggle. And as if to add emphasis to the situation, the 17,000 who had thus paralyzed three or four times their number, were themselves brought upon the field before Richmond in time to play their full part in the critical and decisive actions from which their previous activity had excluded so great a number of their opponents.

But the story of the Valley campaign is not yet fully told. Having driven Fremont back into West Virginia and Banks beyond the Potomac at Williamsport, Jackson was ordered by Lee to make a demonstration threatening an invasion of Maryland and seeming to threaten an assault upon Washington, by way of still further disarranging the Federal plans and diverting Federal forces from the assault upon Richmond.

Jackson moved at once upon Harper's Ferry and for a time seemed not only determined but quite easily able to cross the Potomac there and push forward into Maryland and Pennsylvania or to sweep with enthusiastic fury upon Washington itself.

The result was what Lee had planned that it should be. Fremont, whose force ought to have been moved to McClellan's reinforcement, was ordered to advance from the fastnesses of the West Virginia mountains into the Valley, there to assail Jackson. Banks, driven to cover at Williamsport on the Potomac above Harper's Ferry, was ordered to hold the crossings there against a possible advance of Jackson by that route and presently to return to the Valley and assail Jackson. Saxton, with 7,000 or 8,000 men, withdrawn from McDowell's army, was sent to hold the heights about Harper's Ferry and at the proper time to advance. McDowell's carefully planned march upon Richmond was suspended and the greater part of his force was ordered to the Valley. The purpose was by concurrent action on the part of Fremont moving from West Virginia, Banks moving back up the Valley from Williamsport, Saxton's advancing from the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, and McDowell's strong column crossing the Blue Ridge from Fredericksburg, completely to surround, overwhelm and destroy Jackson, whose total force was now reduced to a scant 15,000, while the forces thus set to the task of making an end of him, aggregated not less than 55,000 or 60,000 men. It was his task, with 15,000 men not only to meet and destroy these forces in detail, so far as that might be done, but in any case to escape from the trap set for him and unite his army with that of Lee before Richmond in time to lend his enthusiasm and his strength to that assault upon McClellan which was planned for the immediate future.

If the reader will look at a map he will see almost at a glance how perilous a problem Jackson had to solve. With less than 15,000 men he was threatening Harper's Ferry and the strongholds round about, held by Saxton with 7,000 men and eighteen pieces of artillery. Banks with about 9,000 men was now advancing from Williamsport to assail him in flank and rear, and cut off his retreat. Fremont with 10,000 or 15,000 men was advancing from West Virginia and had by telegraph promised Mr. Lincoln that he would be in Strasburg--seventeen miles south of Winchester and commanding Jackson's route of retreat--on Saturday, May 31. In the meanwhile Shields, commanding 20,000 men from McDowell's army and followed by McDowell himself with the rest of it, was hurrying from Fredericksburg into the Valley and was due at Strasburg by noon of the thirty-first.

In other words four armies, numbering in the aggregate more than 50,000 men, were threatening to envelop and overwhelm Jackson. Of these forces no less than 35,000 men were rapidly concentrating in Jackson's rear upon the lines over which he must march in order to escape from the trap set for him and add his force to Lee's in time for the impending battle before Richmond.

It was Jackson's problem not only to escape from these forces, rapidly concentrating to destroy him, but so far to defeat them in detail with his little army as to keep them where they were, while moving his own army to Lee's assistance.

This required grand strategy on a grand scale, and Jackson responded to the demand with a brilliancy wholly unmatched in any other operation of the war. Putting aside details that would only serve to confuse the reader's mind, let us tell in outline the story of what the great commander of the "foot cavalry" did in this complex emergency.

First of all, he withdrew his troops hurriedly from the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry to Winchester. When he got there he found that McDowell's force was in possession of Front Royal, only twelve miles from Strasburg, and Fremont was at Wardensville, only twenty miles away, while the head of his own column was eighteen miles distant from the crucial point, and its rear forty-three miles away. A large part of his force was footsore and exhausted after a hurried march of twenty-five miles in a single day, with frequent skirmishings to punctuate their progress.

Nevertheless Jackson determined to reach and occupy Strasburg before his enemies could get there. He had eighteen miles to go while one of the enemy's columns had twenty and the other only twelve to travel. Their combined forces outnumbered his own about three to one, to say nothing of the 15,000 men of Banks and Saxton who had been pressing his rear all day. But he believed it possible for him, reckoning upon the extraordinary marching qualities of his men, to reach Strasburg before the enemy's columns could concentrate there. If he could do that he counted upon the superb fighting spirit of his men to overcome the enemy's three detachments by striking them separately in spite of the fact that one of those detachments outnumbered him by thirty-three per cent while each of the others nearly or quite equaled him in numbers.

He acted instantly. His march was incumbered by 2,300 Federal prisoners and an embarrassingly large train consisting in its major part of wagons loaded with precious stores which he had captured from the enemy. But in spite of all he marched all the way to Strasburg on the 31st of May, while his rear guard succeeded in passing well beyond Winchester, some parts of it having covered thirty-five miles since the morning. The Federals pursuing under Saxton had stopped at Charlestown, their commander afterwards reporting that their exhaustion was such as to forbid a further advance.

Having thus eluded his pursuers, Banks and Saxton, Jackson pushed his foot cavalry into Strasburg in advance of both Fremont and Shields, though each of them had had a much shorter line of march than his own in order to reach that place. He had shaken off Banks and Saxton for a time at least, but he had pushed his small force in between Fremont's equal army on the one hand and Shields's superior one, which was now supported by additional troops under McDowell's own command, on the other. His problem was to prevent the junction of these two armies sent to crush him, to escape them and--if possible--to defeat them separately. One of these armies outnumbered his own in the proportion of four men to three while the other equaled his force. But if he could keep them separated and attack them in positions of his own choosing, where they could not both fight him at once, he did not despair of beating them.

McDowell, reckoning upon the easy superiority of his force, sent detachments hither and yon, to "head off" Jackson, and prevent his escape, that seeming now to be the only thing to be done with a fleeing general whose army was beset on every side, outnumbered, and hopelessly entangled.

In execution of these orders a whole day was wasted by Shields, through mistakes as to routes, and Jackson slipped out of Strasburg on his way to Harrisonburg, Cross Keys and Port Republic, points at which he planned to turn upon his enemy and fight him in detail.

By the burning of bridges and the adroit disposition of troops in a region broken by mountain ranges and laced by streams at that time of year unfordable, Jackson managed to keep the divisions of his adversary separated as they severally pursued his retreat, intent upon capturing or destroying him.

So greatly overwhelming were the Federal numbers that General Shields urgently protested to General McDowell against the sending of any more men to his assistance. Says General McDowell in an official utterance:

He [Shields] had been in that country before and his command had suffered somewhat. He wrote me a letter stating his apprehensions, saying that if troops instead of supplies kept coming over, the troops would starve, and asking why I should bring so many there; that he had enough men to clear the Valley out and for God's sake not to send him any more men.

McDowell reassured Shields as to the abundance of supplies and that commander, with his superabundance of men, cheerfully undertook the task of "clearing out the Valley" which seemed to him easy. He had not adequately reckoned upon the genius of Stonewall Jackson--that was all.

The "foot cavalry" had now retreated with splendid success, as far as Jackson intended that they should. He was pursued by the two armies, but he had succeeded in keeping them separated by an unfordable river, while divesting himself of his embarrassing supply train and his still more embarrassing company of Federal prisoners. These, together with his own sick and wounded, he had sent under escort to Staunton.

Thus, stripped for action, he turned upon his pursuers to rend them. Fremont's force and that under Shields were separated by a river. Jackson had destroyed every bridge that crossed that stream except the one at Port Republic, which he securely held for his own use in the contemplated operations. He had about 13,000 men of all arms available for battle uses. Fremont, who was hotly pursuing him, had about 11,500, while Shields's force--weakened by detachments--marching down the other side of the river, was much smaller, not over three or four thousand effectives. Exact figures are unattainable.

Jackson had effectually prevented the union of these two armies. He decided to fight them now, one at a time.

On the eighth of June, at Cross Keys, a few miles north of Port Republic, he turned upon Fremont. He was forced to reduce his firing line heavily by detaching a part of his little army to hold Shields in check on the other side of the river, and another part to hold Port Republic and the bridge which constituted his communication. He posted the remainder of his troops in a position of his own choosing and there awaited Fremont's attack.

That attack was made on the eighth of June and was repulsed with so much ease and so much completeness, that Jackson at once decided to assail his other adversary, Shields, in the hope of defeating him in his turn. Leaving a sufficient force on Fremont's side of the river to hold that general in check, or, if need be to destroy the bridge and prevent his crossing, he withdrew his battalions and precipitately assailed Shields, falling upon him in Napoleonic fashion with the head of his own column and trusting to expeditious marching for the coming up of reinforcements in time to prevent a possible failure from maturing into a disaster.

Shields resisted so valiantly and so stubbornly that Jackson's advance corps was very nearly overthrown, but in the end the Confederate commander brought a superior force to bear and completely crushed Shields's defense.

Immediately Fremont and Shields gave up the contest and retreated northward down the Valley, while Jackson rested his army preparatory to a hurried march to join Lee before Richmond while the fear of him should continue to hold Fremont's and McDowell's and Banks's, and what had been Saxton's, forces in the Valley.

For that march and junction Lee had fully prepared. He secretly sent instructions to Jackson to march at once to Ashland, a dozen miles from Richmond, and thence sweep down between the Pamunkey and Chickahominy rivers, in aid of Lee's own movement against McClellan. Then he ordered two divisions ostentatiously detached from the army before Richmond, to go to Jackson's reinforcement in the Valley, and directed Jackson to do all he could to impress the enemy with the belief that he was planning, with a strongly reinforced army, to sweep down the Valley again and press on into Maryland, threatening Washington and Baltimore. Pains were taken to impress the fact of Jackson's strong reinforcement upon Federal officers who, as prisoners, were about to be paroled and sent north and they carried the news, as it was meant that they should do. The deception was so complete that even while Jackson was actively assailing McClellan's rear on the Chickahominy a few days later, General Banks was sending from the Valley dispatches warning the Washington authorities that Stonewall Jackson was preparing immediately to sweep down the Valley at the head of a reinforced and now quite irresistible army.

The result was that Jackson and the divisions sent ostensibly to reinforce him, joined Lee in front of Richmond in time to aid in the Seven Days' battles for McClellan's dislodgment.