main line of communication between Washington and the West; and alongside the railway ran the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, a second and most important line of supply.  Above all, projecting as it did towards the great lakes of the North, the north-western angle, or Virginia Panhandle, narrowed the passage between East and West to an isthmus not more than a hundred miles in breadth.  With this territory in the possession of the Confederates, the Federal dominions would be practically cut in two; and in North-western Virginia, traversed by many ranges of well-nigh pathless mountains, with few towns and still fewer roads, a small army might defy a large one with impunity.

November 4.

On November 4 Jackson’s wish was partially granted.  He was assigned to the command of the Shenandoah Valley District, embracing the northern part of the area between the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge.  The order was received with gratitude, but dashed by the fact that he had to depart alone.  “Had this communication,” he said to Dr. White, “not come as an order, I should instantly have declined it, and continued in command of my brave old brigade.”

Whether he or his soldiers felt the parting most it is hard to say.  Certain it is that the men had a warm regard for their leader.  There was no more about him at Centreville to attract the popular fancy than there had been at Harper’s Ferry.  When the troops passed in review the eye of the spectator turned at once to the trim carriage of Johnston and of Beauregard, to the glittering uniform of Stuart, to the superb chargers and the martial bearing of young officers fresh from the Indian frontier.  The silent professor, absent and unsmiling, who dressed as plainly as he lived, had little in common with those dashing soldiers.  The tent where every night the general and his staff gathered together for their evening devotions, where the conversation ran not on the merits of horse and hound, on strategy and tactics, but on the power of faith and the mysteries of the redemption, seemed out of place in an army of high-spirited youths.  But, while they smiled at his peculiarities, the Confederate soldiers remembered the fierce counterstroke on the heights above Bull Run.  If the Presbyterian general was earnest in prayer, they knew that he was prompt in battle and indefatigable in quarters.  He had the respect of all men, and from his own brigade he had something more.  Very early in their service, away by the rippling Shenandoah, they had heard the stories of his daring in Mexico.  They had experienced his skill and coolness at Falling Waters; they had seen at Bull Run, while the shells burst in never-ending succession among the pines, the quiet figure riding slowly to and fro on the crest above them; they had heard the stern command, “Wait till they come within fifty yards and then give them the bayonet,” and they had followed him far in that victorious rush into the receding ranks of their astonished foe.