groves between the two rivers, surrounded with the verdure of early summer, and the luxuriant wheat fields whitening for the harvest. In this smiling paradise they solaced themselves five days for their fatigues, the men reposing under the shade, or bathing in the sparkling waters of the Shenandoah, and the horses feeding in the abundant pastures. The Saturday following the battle, was proclaimed by General Jackson as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and all the troops were called to join with their General and their chaplains, in praises to God for his deliverances. The next day, a general communion was observed in the 3rd Virginia brigade, at which the Lord's supper was dispensed, in the wood, to a great company of Christian soldiers from all the army. At this solemnity the General was present, as a worshipper, and modestly participated with his men in the sacred feast. The quiet diffidence with which he took the least obtrusive place, and received the sacred emblems from the hands of a regimental chaplain, was in beautiful contrast with the majesty and authority of his bearing in the crisis of battle.

The following brief extract from his correspondence with his wife exhibits the same humble and devout temper, which ever characterized him.

"NEAR WIER'S CAVE, June 14th.

"Our God has thrown his shield over me in the various apparent dangers to which I have been exposed. This evening we have religious services in the army, for the purpose of rendering thanks to the Most High for the victories with which he has crowned our arms; and my earnest prayer is that our ever kind Heavenly Father will continue to crown our arms with success, until our independence shall, through his divine blessing, be established."

THE RICHMOND CAMPAIGN.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE RICHMOND

CAMPAIGN.

AFTER the victory of Winchester in May, General Jackson had requested his friend Hon. A. R. Boteler to represent to the authorities near Richmond, his desire for reinforcements, that he might carry the war toward the Federal Capital. "Tell them," said he, "that I have now fifteen thousand men. I should have forty thousand; and with them I would invade the North." When this message was delivered to General Lee, the Commander-in-Chief, he replied: "But he must help me to drive these people away from Richmond first." Thus it appears that his sagacious mind had already formed the design of concentrating the army of Jackson with his own, in order to take the aggressive against M'Clellan. Had the battle of Port Republic been a disaster, this would have been impossible, and Richmond would probably have fallen into the hands of the assailants. As soon as the news of Jackson's victory there was received in Richmond, it was judged that the proper time had arrived for the great movement. To make it successful, it was necessary to mask Jackson's removal from the Valley, lest his enemies, lately defeated, should assail some vital point, and to continue the diversion of General M'Dowell's army from a union with M'Clellan. To further these objects, a strong detachment, consisting of the brigades of Whiting, Hood, and Lawton, which made an aggregate of seven thousand men, was sent to Jackson

by the way of Lynchburg and Charlottesville. It was so arranged that the captives from Port Republic on their way to the military prisons of Richmond, should meet all these troops upon the road; and on their arrival there, General Lee dismissed the officers among them upon parole. He knew that they would hasten to Washington and report what they had seen. The report of General M'Clellan reveals the success of the expedient. He states that the answer made by Mr. Lincoln to the next of his repeated requests for the co-operation of General MDowell, was the following: that he could not now need that aid, inasmuch as the army of General Lee was weakened by fifteen thousand men just sent to General Jackson, and the dangers of Washington City were to the same extent increased: (the Federal officers, with their customary exaggeration, had doubled the number of Jackson's reinforcements.)

He, meanwhile, was deceiving the enemy in the Valley with equal adroitness. As soon as Colonel Munford established his cavalry at Harrisonburg, he sent him orders to arrest all transit up and down the Valley, and even to limit the communication between his own troops on the outposts and the Confederate infantry, to the narrowest possible bounds; so that no intelligence might steal through to the enemy. He also instructed him to press his outposts with energy against those of the enemy, and to drive him as far below as practicable. He desired thus to produce in Fremont the persuasion, that the whole Confederate army was about to advance upon him, to improve its victory in that direction. Last, he requested Colonel Munford to do all in his power, by other means, to foster this belief. Opportunity was already provided for carrying out this order. As the advance of the Confederates pressed toward Fremont, they met, twelve miles north of Harrisonburg, a Federal flag of truce, in the hands of a major, followed by a long train of surgeons and ambulances

FEDERAL FLAG OF TRUCE.

433

bringing a demand for the release of their wounded men. Colonel Munford had required the train to pause at his outposts, and had brought the major, with one surgeon, to his quarters at Harrisonburg; where he entertained them with military courtesy, until their request was answered by the commanding General. He found them full of boasts and arrogance: they said that the answer to their flag was exceedingly unimportant, because Fremont and Shields were about to effect a junction, when they would recover, by force, all they had lost, and teach Jackson a lesson which would cure his audacity. When Colonel Munford received the instructions we have mentioned, he called for Mr. William Gilmer of Albemarle, a gentleman of infinite spirit and humor, who was serving with his young kinsman as an amateur trooper, and gave him his cue. He silently left the village, but presently returned, in very different fashion, as an orderly, with despatches from General Jackson and from Staunton. With an ostentatious clanking of spurs and sabre, he ascended to Colonel Munford's quarters, and knocked in a hurried manner. "Come in," said the gallant Colonel. "And what answer do you bring, orderly, from General Jackson?" At this word, the Yankee officers in the adjoining chamber were heard stealthily approaching the partition, for the purpose of eavesdropping. "Why," said Gilmer, "the General laughed at the demand for the surrender of the wounded prisoners. He has no notion of it." "Do you bring any good news?" asked the Colonel. "Glorious news," he answered. "The road from Staunton this way is chock-full of soldiers, cannon, and wagons, come to reinforce Jackson in his march down the Valley. There is General Whiting, General Hood, General Lawton, and General I-don't-know-who. I never saw so many soldiers and cannon together in my life. People say there are thirty thousand of them." After a few such questions and answers, framed for the edification of the eavesdroppers,

The whole place
Citizens came to

Colonel Munford dismissed him, and he descended, to fill the hotel and the town with his glorious news. was speedily in a blaze of joy and excitement. offer supplies for the approaching hosts; and bullocks, flour, and bacon were about to be collected for them in delighted haste. After leaving his guests to digest their contraband news, for several hours, Colonel Munford at length sent for them, and told them that he had a reply from his General, respectfully declining to accede to their request; so that nothing now remained but to send them back to their friends, in the same honor and safety in which they had come. They departed much humbler, and as they imagined, much wiser men. He pushed his advance soon after them, to New Market; and upon their arrival at the quarters of General Fremont near Mount Jackson, the Federal army precipitately broke up its camp, and retreated to Strasbourg; where they began busily to fortify themselves. The Confederate cavalry then drew a cordon of pickets across the country just above them, so strict that the befooled enemy never learned General Jackson's whole army was not on his front, until he discovered it by the disasters of M'Clellan.

The larger part of the reinforcements sent from Richmond had halted near Staunton. On the evening of June 17th, General Jackson began to move his troops from Mount Meridian, and leaving orders with his staff to send away the remainder the next morning, he went to the town to set the new brigades in motion. No man in the whole army knew whither it was going. General Ewell, the second in command, was only instructed to move towards Charlottesville, and the rest were only ordered to follow him. Two marches brought them to the neighborhood of the latter town, where General Jackson rejoined them, and confiding to his chief of staff the direction of his movement, with strict injunctions of secrecy, departed by railroad, to hold