Already they were distinguished.  In the hottest of the fight they had won the respect that soldiers so readily accord to valour; yet it is not on these stubborn fighters, not on their companion, less popular, but hardly less capable, that the eye of imagination rests.  Were some great painter, gifted with the sense of historic fitness, to place on his canvas the council in the Virginia homestead, two figures only would occupy the foreground:  the one weary with travel, white with the dust of many leagues, and bearing on his frayed habiliments the traces of rough bivouacs and mountain roads; the other, tall, straight, and stately; still, for all his fifty years, remarkable for his personal beauty, and endowed with all the simple dignity of a noble character and commanding intellect.  In that humble chamber, where the only refreshment the Commander-in-Chief could offer was a glass of milk, Lee and Jackson met for the first time since the war had begun.  Lee’s hours of triumph had yet to come.  The South was aware that he was sage in council; he had yet to prove his mettle in the field.  But there was at least one Virginia soldier who knew his worth.  With the prescient sympathy of a kindred spirit Jackson had divined his daring and his genius, and although he held always to his own opinions, he had no will but that of his great commander.  With how absolute a trust his devotion was repaid one of the brightest pages in the history of Virginia tells us; a year crowded with victories bears witness to the strength begotten of their mutual confidence.  So long as Lee and Jackson led her armies hope shone on the standards of the South.  Great was the constancy of her people; wonderful the fortitude of her soldiers; but on the shoulders of her twin heroes rested the burden of the tremendous struggle.

To his four major-generals Lee explained his plan of attack, and then, retiring to his office, left them to arrange the details.  It will be sufficient for the present to state that Jackson’s troops were to encamp on the night of the 25th east of Ashland, fifteen miles north of Richmond, between the village and the Virginia Central Railway.  The day following the interview, the 24th, he returned to his command, rejoining the column at Beaver Dam Station.

June 24.

His advanced guard were now within forty miles of Richmond, and, so far from McDowell being on his heels, that general was still north of Fredericksburg.  No reinforcements could reach McClellan for several days; the Confederates were concentrated round Richmond in full strength; and Lee’s strategy had been entirely successful.  Moreover, with such skill had Jackson’s march been made that the Federal generals were absolutely ignorant of his whereabouts.  McClellan indeed seems to have had some vague suspicion of his approach; but Lincoln, McDowell, Banks, Fremont, together with the whole of the Northern people and the Northern press, believed that he was still west