When to those results is added the strategical effect of the campaign, it can hardly be denied that the success he achieved was out of all proportion to Jackson’s strength.  Few generals have done so much with means so small.  Not only were the Valley troops comparatively few in numbers, but they were volunteers, and volunteers of a type that was altogether novel.  Even in the War of the Revolution many of the regimental officers, and indeed many of the soldiers, were men who had served in the Indian and French wars under the English flag.  But there were not more than half a dozen regular officers in the whole Army of the Valley.  Except Jackson himself, and his chief of artillery, not one of the staff had more than a year’s service.  Twelve months previous several of the brigadiers had been civilians.  The regimental officers were as green as the men; and although military offences were few, the bonds of discipline were slight.  When the march to M’Dowell was begun, which was to end five weeks later at Port Republic, a considerable number of the so-called “effectives” had only been drilled for a few hours.  The cavalry on parade was little better than a mob; on the line of march they kept or left the ranks as the humour took them.  It is true that the Federals were hardly more efficient.  But Jackson’s operations were essentially offensive, and offensive operations, as was shown at Bull Run, are ill-suited to raw troops.  Attack cannot be carried to a triumphant issue unless every fraction of the force co-operates with those on either hand; and co-operation is hardly to be expected from inexperienced officers.  Moreover, offensive operations, especially when a small force is manoeuvring against the fraction of a larger, depend for success on order, rapidity, and endurance; and it is in these qualities, as a rule, that raw troops are particularly deficient.  Yet Jackson, like Napoleon at Ulm, might have boasted with truth that he had “destroyed the enemy merely by marches,” and his men accomplished feats of which the hardiest veterans might well be proud.

From April 29 to June 5, that is, in thirty-eight days, they marched four hundred miles, fought three battles and numerous combats, and were victorious in all.  Several of the marches exceeded twenty-five miles a day; and in retreat, from the Potomac to Port Republic, the army made one hundred and four miles between the morning of May 30 and the night of June 5, that is, fifteen miles daily without a rest day intervening.  This record, if we take into consideration the infamous roads, is remarkable; and it well may be asked by what means these half-trained troops were enabled to accomplish such a feat?* (* “Campaigning in France,” says General Sheridan, who was with the Prussian Headquarter Staff in 1870, “that is, the marching, camping, and subsisting of an army, is an easy matter, very unlike anything we had in the War of the Rebellion.  To repeat:  the country is rich, beautiful, and densely populated, subsistence abundant, and the roads all macadamised highways; thus the conditions are altogether different from those existing with us...I can but leave to conjecture how the Germans would have got along on bottomless roads—­often none at all—­through the swamps and quicksands of Northern Virginia.”—­Memoirs. volume 2 page 450.)