JACKSON A BRIGADIER-GENERAL.

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gratification it will give you, and serving my country more efficiently.

Through the blessing of God I now have all that I ought to desire in the line of promotion. I would be very ungrateful if I were not contented, and exceedingly thankful to our kind heavenly Father. May his blessing ever rest on you, is my fervent prayer!"

The reader will see here, the same remarkable union of honorable professional aspirations, with faith and dependence on God, which distinguished his whole course,

CHAPTER VII.

MANASSAS.

THE movement of General Johnston from Harper's Ferry to Winchester was dictated, not only by the circumstances within his own field of operations, but by his relations to the Confederate commanders on his right and left. In the northwest was General Garnett, who, with five thousand men, confronted a Federal army of four times that number, commanded by Generals M'Clellan and Rosecranz. Had this army been overpowered, as it was during the month of July, while General Johnston was at Harper's Ferry, the victorious forces of M'Clellan would have been in a condition to threaten his rear at Winchester. East of the Blue Ridge, General Beauregard was organizing an army at Manassa's Junction, to cover that approach to the capital of the confederacy, and was confronted by the strongest of all the Federal armies, under General M'Dowell. The fearful preponderance against Beauregard could at any time have been increased, by suddenly withdrawing General Patterson's army from the Upper Potomac to Washington, for which the vast resources of the Baltimore Railroad offered ready means; while, from Harper's Ferry to Manassa's Junction, General Johnston must have travelled a more circuitous line; but, by placing his head-quarters at Winchester, he tempted General Patterson to Martinsburg. The advantages for concentration were now all reversed. General Johnston possessed the interior line, and

was able to move by the shorter route to the support of General Beauregard.

The traveller who left the town of Alexandria, upon the Potomac, to go southwestward into the interior of Virginia, at the distance of twenty-five miles, found the Manassa's Gap Railroad dividing itself on the right hand from the main stem, and turning westward towards the peaks of the Blue Ridge, which are visible in the horizon. This road sought a passage through those mountains at Manassa's Gap, a depression which received its name from an obscure Jew merchant named Manassa, who, years ago, had fixed his home in the gorge of the ravine. From this the railroad was called the Manassa's Gap Road, and the junction with the Alexandria Railroad the Manassa's Junction. Thus the name of an insignificant Israelite ha's associated itself with a spot, which will never cease to be remembered, while liberty and heroism have votaries in the world. This Junction was manifestly the strategic point for the defence of Northeastern Virginia. It was at a convenient distance from the Potomac, to observe the course of that river; for the Confederate generals were too much masters of the art of war, to adopt the stupid policy of attempting to hold all the banks of a long stream, on the stationary defensive, against a superior assailant. It was manifest that the command of railroads, by reason of their capacity for the rapid transportation of troops and supplies, must ever be a decisive advantage in campaigns. The general who is compelled to move all his forces and material of war over country roads, by the tedious and expensive agency of teams, in the presence of an adversary who effects his advance on a railroad, must be at his mercy. To hold Manassa's Junction, covered two railroads, of which one led southwestward to Gordonsville, and thence, by two branches, to Charlottesville, and Richmond; and the other led westward, through the Blue

Ridge, into the heart of the Great Valley, the granary of the State; but worse, the possession of the Manassa's Gap Railroad by the Federalists uncovered General Johnston's rear to them equally whether he were at Harper's Ferry or at Winchester, and at once required the evacuation of the whole country north of that thoroughfare.

For these reasons, the Confederate Government made every effort to hold, and the Federal, directed by the veteran skill of General Winfield Scott, to seize this point. It is situated three miles south of Bull Run (a little stream of ten yards' width, almost everywhere fordable), in a smiling champaign, diversified with gentle hills, woodlands, and farmhouses.

The water-course takes its rise in a range of highlands, called the Bull Run Mountains, fourteen miles west of the Junction, and, pursuing a southeast course, meets Broad and Cedar Runs five miles east of it, and forms, with them, the Occoquan. The hills near the stream are more lofty and precipitous than the gentle swells which heave up the plain around the Junction; and, on one side or the other, they usually descend steeply to the water, commanding the level meadows which stretch from the opposite bank. Where the meadows, happened to be on the north bank, the stream offered some advantages of defence for the Confederates; but where the lowlands were on the south side, the advantage for attack was with the Federalists.

No works of any description defended this line. The Junction, three miles in its rear, was surrounded with a single circuit of common earthworks, consisting of a ditch and an embankment of a few feet in height, with platforms for a score of cannon. A journey of six miles from the Junction, northeastward by the country road, brings the traveller to the hamlet of Centreville, seated on a high ridge. Through this little village passes the paved highway from Alexandria to Warrenton, in a direction

almost due west; and, at a point five miles northwest of the Junction, this thoroughfare crosses the channel of Bull Run obliquely upon an arch of stone. Here a little tributary, called Young's Branch, enters the stream from the southwest, and the hills from which it flows rise to even a bolder elevation than the other heights of Bull Run. Upon those hills was fought the first Battle of Manassas.

On the 16th of July, the hosts of General M'Dowell left their entrenched camps along the Potomac, and drove in the advance of General Beauregard from Fairfax Court House on the 17th. The Federal army consisted of about sixty. thousand men, including nearly all the United States regulars cast of the Rocky Mountains, and sixty pieces of artillery. It was equipped with all that wealth and art could lavish, and armed throughout with the most improved implements of destruction.

The whole army and people of the North were inflated with the assurance of victory. The Generals had labelled the packages of supplies " for Richmond." The fanatical volunteers had supplied their pockets with halters with which to hang the "Southern Rebels," as soon as they were captured in battle. The Federal Congress, then in session in Washington, was adjourned, in order to enable the members to go with the army, and feast their eyes with the spectacle of the rout of the Confederates; and long lines of carriages, filled with females bedecked with their holiday attire, followed the rear of the Federal army, with baskets of champagne, and all the appli ances for the feast and the dance, with which they proposed to mock the groans of the dying thousands on the evening of their victory. The newspapers of the North scouted with disdain the ideas of defeat; and declared that, in ten days at the utmost, their triumphant army must be established in Richmond, and