Headquarters, Valley District, Winchester, Virginia:  January 31, 1862.

Hon. J.P.  Benjamin, Secretary of War,

Sir,

Your order, requiring me to direct General Loring to return with his command to Winchester immediately, has been received and promptly complied with.

With such interference in my command I cannot expect to be of much service in the field, and, accordingly, respectfully request to be ordered to report for duty to the Superintendent of the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, as has been done in the case of other professors.  Should this application not be granted, I respectfully request that the President will accept my resignation from the army.* (* O.R. volume 5 page 1053.)

The danger apprehended by the Secretary of War, that Loring’s division, if left at Romney, might be cut off, did not exist.  General Lander, an able and energetic officer, now in command of the Federal force at Cumberland, had put forward proposals for an active campaign in the Shenandoah Valley; but there was no possibility of such an enterprise being immediately undertaken.  The Potomac was still a formidable obstacle; artillery and cavalry were both deficient; the troops were scattered, and their discipline was indifferent.  Lander’s command, according to his official despatches, was “more like an armed mob than an army."* (* Ibid pages 702 and 703.) Romney, therefore, was in little danger; and Jackson, who had so lately been in contact with the Federal troops, whose cavalry patrolled the banks of the Potomac, and who was in constant receipt of information of the enemy’s attitude and condition, was certainly a better judge of what was probable than any official in the Confederate capital.  There were doubtless objections to the retention of Romney.  An enormous army, in the intrenched camp at Washington, threatened Centreville; and in the event of that army advancing, Jackson would be called upon to reinforce Johnston, just as Johnston had reinforced Beauregard before Bull Run.  With the greater part of his force at Romney such an operation would be delayed by at least two days.  Even Johnston himself, although careful to leave his subordinate a free hand, suggested that the occupation of Romney, and the consequent dispersion of Jackson’s force, might enable the enemy to cut in effectively between the Valley troops and the main army.  It is beyond question, however, that Jackson had carefully studied the situation.  There was no danger of his forgetting that his was merely a detached force, or of his overlooking, in the interests of his own projected operations, the more important interests of the main army; and if his judgment of the situation differed from that of his superior, it was because he had been indefatigable in his search for information.