consideration for others, no matter how humble their rank, were irresistible.  On duty, indeed, his staff officers fared badly.  Tireless himself, regardless of all personal comforts, he seemed to think that others were fashioned in the same mould.  After a weary day’s marching or fighting, it was no unusual thing for him to send them for a ride of thirty or forty miles through the night.  And he gave the order with no more thought than if he were sending them with a message to the next tent.  But off duty he was simply a personal friend, bent on making all things pleasant.  “Never,” says Dr. Hunter McGuire, “can I forget his kindness and gentleness to me when I was in great sorrow and trouble.  He came to my tent and spent hours with me, comforting me in his simple, kindly, Christian way, showing a depth of friendship and affection which can never be forgotten.  There is no measuring the intensity with which the very soul of Jackson burned in battle.  Out of it he was very gentle.  Indeed, as I look back on the two years that I was daily, indeed hourly, with him, his gentleness as a man, his tenderness to those in trouble or affliction—­the tenderness indeed of a woman—­impress me more than his wonderful prowess as a warrior.”

It was with his generals and colonels that there was sometimes a lack of sympathy.  Many of these were older than himself.  Ewell and Whiting were his seniors in point of service, and there can be little doubt that it was sometimes a little hard to receive peremptory orders from a younger man.  Jackson’s secrecy was often irritating.  Men who were over-sensitive thought it implied a want of confidence.  Those overburdened with dignity objected to being treated like the private soldiers; and those over-conscious of superior wisdom were injured because their advice was not asked.  Before the march to Richmond there was much discontent.  General Whiting, on reaching Staunton with his division, rode at once to Port Republic to report.  “The distance,” says General Imboden, “was twenty miles, and Whiting returned after midnight.  He was in a towering passion, and declared that Jackson had treated him outrageously.  I asked, ’How is that possible, General?—­he is very polite to everyone.’

“’Oh, hang him! he was polite enough.  But he didn’t say one word about his plans.  I finally asked him for orders, telling him what troops I had.  He simply told me to go back to Staunton, and he would send me orders to-morrow.  I haven’t the slightest idea what they will be.  I believe he has no more sense than my horse.’"* (* Battles and Leaders page 297.)

The orders, when they came, simply directed him to take his troops by railway to Gordonsville, through which they had passed two days before, and gave no reason whatever for the movement.

General Whiting was not the only Confederate officer who was mystified.  When the troops left the Valley not a single soul in the army, save Jackson alone, knew the object of their march.  He had even gone out of his way to blind his most trusted subordinates.