If the troops were volunteers, weak in discipline and prone to straggling, they none the less bore themselves with conspicuous gallantry.  Their native characteristics came prominently to the front.  Patient under hardships, vigorous in attack, and stubborn in defence, they showed themselves worthy of their commander.  Their enthusiastic patriotism was not without effect on their bearing before the enemy.  Every private in the ranks believed that he was fighting in the sacred cause of liberty, and the spirit which nerved the resolution of the Confederate soldier was the same which inspired the resistance of their revolutionary forefathers.  His hatred of the Yankee, as he contemptuously styled the Northerner, was even more bitter than the wrath which Washington’s soldiers felt towards England; and it was intensified by the fact that his detested foeman had not only dared to invade the South, but had proclaimed his intention, in no uncertain tones, of dealing with the Sovereign States exactly as he pleased.

But it was something more than native courage and enthusiastic patriotism which inspired the barefooted heroes of Winchester.  It would be difficult to prove that in other parts of the theatre of war the Confederate troops were inferior to those that held the Valley.  Yet they were certainly less successful, and in very many instances they had failed to put forth the same resolute energy as the men who followed Jackson.

But it is hardly possible to discuss the spirit of an army apart from that of its commander.  If, in strategy wholly, and in tactics in great part, success emanates from a single brain, the morale of the troops is not less dependent on the influence of one man.  “Better an army of stags,” runs the old proverb, “led by a lion, than an army of lions led by a stag.”

Their leader’s character had already made a sensible impression on the Valley soldiers.  Jackson was as untheatrical as Wellington.  He was hardly to be distinguished, even by his dress, from the private in the ranks.  Soon after his arrival at Richmond he called on Mrs. Pendleton, the wife of the reverend captain of the Rockbridge battery.  The negro servant left him standing in the hall, thinking that this quiet soldier, clad in a faded and sunburnt uniform, need not be treated with further ceremony.* (* Memoirs of W.N.  Pendleton, D.D., Brigadier-General, C.S.A. page 201.) Headquarters in camp were an ordinary bell-tent, or a room in the nearest cottage, and they were often without guard or sentry.  In bivouac the general rolled himself in his blankets, and lay down under a tree or in a fence corner.  He could sleep anywhere, in the saddle, under fire, or in church; and he could compel sleep to come to him when and where he pleased.  He cared as little for good quarters as a mountain hunter, and he was as abstemious as a Red Indian on the war-path.  He lived as plainly as the men, and often shared their rations.  The majority of