swept before it campfollowers and stragglers.  At night, every road which approached the bivouacs was strongly picketed, and the troops were prevented from communicating with the country people.  The men were forbidden to ask the names of the villages through which they passed; and it was ordered that to all questions they should make the one answer:  “I don’t know.”  “This was just as much license as the men wanted,” says an eye-witness, “and they forthwith knew nothing of the past, present, or future.”  An amusing incident, it is said, grew out of this order.  One of General Hood’s* (* Whiting’s division.) Texans left the ranks on the march, and was climbing a fence to go to a cherry-tree near at hand, when Jackson rode by and saw him.

“Where are you going?” asked the general.

“I don’t know,” replied the soldier.

“To what command do you belong?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what State are you from?”

“I don’t know.”

“What is the meaning of all this?” asked Jackson of another.

“Well,” was the reply, “Old Stonewall and General Hood gave orders yesterday that we were not to know anything until after the next fight.”

Jackson laughed and rode on.* (* Cooke page 205.)

The men themselves, intelligent as they were, were unable to penetrate their general’s design.  When they reached Charlottesville it was reported in the ranks that the next march would be northwards, to check a movement of Banks across the Blue Ridge.  At Gordonsville it was supposed that they would move on Washington.

“I recollect,” says one of the Valley soldiers, “that the pastor of the Presbyterian church there, with whom Jackson spent the night, told me, as a profound secret, not to be breathed to mortal man, that we would move at daybreak on Culpeper Court House to intercept a column of the enemy coming across the mountains.  He said there could be no mistake about this, for he had it from General Jackson himself.  We did move at daybreak, but instead of moving on Culpeper Court House we marched in the opposite direction.  At Hanover Junction we expected to head towards Fredericksburg to meet McDowell, and the whole movement was so secretly conducted that the troops were uncertain of their destination until the evening of June 26, when they heard A.P.  Hill’s guns at Mechanicsville, and made the woods vibrate with their shouts of anticipated victory."* (* Communicated by the Reverend J.W.  Jones, D.D.)

At Gordonsville a rumour, which proved to be false, arrested the march of the army for a whole day.  On the 21st the leading division arrived at Frederickshall, fifty miles from Richmond, and there halted for the Sunday.  They had already marched fifty miles, and the main body, although the railway had been of much service, was still distant.  There was not sufficient rolling stock available to transport all the infantry simultaneously, and, in any case, the cavalry, artillery, and waggons must have proceeded by road.  The trains, therefore, moving backwards and forwards along the line, and taking up the rear brigades in succession, forwarded them in a couple of hours a whole day’s march.  Beyond Frederickshall the line had been destroyed by the enemy’s cavalry.