Striking eastward from Luray, two good roads cross the Blue Ridge; one running to Culpeper Court House, through Thornton’s Gap; the other through Fisher’s Gap to Gordonsville.

It was the Massanuttons that weighed on the mind of Banks.  The Valley of the South Fork gave the Confederates a covered approach against his line of communications.  Issuing from that strait cleft between the mountains Ashby’s squadrons might at any time sweep down upon his trains of waggons, his hospitals, and his magazines; and should Jackson be reinforced, Ashby might be supported by infantry and guns, and both Strasburg and Winchester be endangered.  It was not within Banks’ power to watch the defile.  “His cavalry,” he reported, “was weak in numbers and spirit, much exhausted with night and day work.”  Good cavalry, he declared, would help incalculably, and he admitted that in this arm he was greatly inferior to the enemy.

Nor was he more happy as to the Alleghanies on his right.  Fremont was meditating an advance on Lewisburg, Staunton, and the Virginia and Tennessee Railway with 25,000 men.* (* See ante.) One column was to start from Gauley Bridge, in the Kanawha Valley; the other from the South Branch of the Potomac.  Milroy’s brigade, from Cheat Mountain, had therefore occupied Monterey, and Schenck’s brigade had marched from Romney to Moorefield.  But Moorefield was thirty miles west of Woodstock, and between them rose a succession of rugged ridges, within whose deep valleys the Confederate horsemen might find paths by which to reach to Banks’ rear.

It was essential, then, that his communications should be strongly guarded, and as he advanced up the Valley his force had diminished at every march.  According to his own report he had, on April 6, 16,700 men fit for duty.  Of these 4100 were detached along the road from Woodstock to Harper’s Ferry.  His effective strength for battle was thus reduced to 12,600, or, including the troops escorting convoys and the garrison of Strasburg, to 14,500 men, with 40 pieces of artillery.* (* O.R. volume 12 part 3 page 50.)

Such were the considerations that influenced the Federal commander.  Had he occupied New Market, as McClellan had desired, he would have secured the Luray road, have opened the South Fork Valley to his scouts, and have overcome half the difficulties presented by the Massanuttons.  A vigorous advance would have turned the attention of the Confederates from his communications to their own; and to drive Jackson from the Valley was the best method of protecting the trains and the magazines.  But Banks was not inclined to beard the lion in his den, and on April 16 Jackson had been unmolested for more than three weeks.  Ashby’s troopers were the only men who had even seen the enemy.  Daily that indefatigable soldier had called to arms the Federal outposts.  “Our stay at Edenburg,” says Gordon, “was a continuous season of artillery brawling and picket stalking.  The creek that