He had agents everywhere.* (* “I have taken special pains,” he writes on January 17, “to obtain information respecting General Banks, but I have not been informed of his having gone east.  I will see what can be effected through the Catholic priests at Martinsburg.”  O.R. volume 5 page 1036.) His intelligence was more ample than that supplied by the Confederate spies in Washington itself.  No reinforcements could reach the Federals on the Potomac without his knowledge.  He was always accurately informed of the strength and movements of their detachments.  Nor had he failed to take the precautions which minimise the evils arising from dissemination.  He had constructed a line of telegraph from Charlestown, within seven miles of Harper’s Ferry, to Winchester, and another line was to have been constructed to Romney.  He had established relays of couriers through his district.  By this means he could communicate with Hill at Leesburg in three hours, and by another line of posts with Johnston at Centreville.

But his chief reason for believing that Romney might be occupied without risk to a junction between himself and Johnston lay in the impassable condition of the Virginia roads.  McClellan’s huge army could not drag its guns and waggons through the slough of mud which lay between Washington and Centreville.  Banks’ command at Frederick was in no condition for a rapid advance either upon Leesburg or on Winchester; and it was evident that little was to be feared from Lander until he had completed the work, on which he was now actively engaged, of repairing the communications which Jackson’s raid had temporarily interrupted.  With the information we have now before us, it is clear that Jackson’s view of the situation was absolutely correct; that for the present Romney might be advantageously retained, and recruiting pushed forward in this section of Virginia.  If, when McClellan advanced, the Confederates were to confine themselves to the defensive, the post would undoubtedly have to be abandoned.  But if, instead of tamely surrendering the initiative, the Government were to adopt the bolder strategy which Jackson had already advocated, and Johnston’s army, moving westward to the Valley, were to utilise the natural line of invasion by way of Harper’s Ferry, the occupation of Romney would secure the flank, and give the invading force a fertile district from which to draw supplies.

It was not, however, on the Secretary’s misconception of the situation that Jackson’s request for relief was based.  Nor was it the slur on his judgment that led him to resign.  The injury that had been inflicted by Mr. Benjamin’s unfortunate letter was not personal to himself.  It affected the whole army.  It was a direct blow to discipline, and struck at the very heart of military efficiency.  Not only would Jackson himself be unable to enforce his authority over troops who had so successfully defied his orders; but the whole edifice of command, throughout the length and breadth of the Confederacy,