Yet it was not on Stuart that fell, next to Lee, the honours of the campaign.  Brilliant as was the handling of the cavalry, impenetrable the screen it formed, and ample the information it procured, the breakdown of the Federal horse made the task comparatively simple.  Against adversaries whose chargers were so leg-weary that they could hardly raise a trot it was easy to be bold.  One of Stuart’s brigadiers would have probably done the work as well as Stuart himself.  But the handling of the Valley army, from the time it left Jefferson on the 25th until Longstreet reached Gainesville on the 29th, demanded higher qualities than vigilance and activity.  Throughout the operations Jackson’s endurance was the wonder of his staff.  He hardly slept.  He was untiring in reconnaissance, in examination of the country and in observation of the enemy, and no detail of the march escaped his personal scrutiny.  Fet his muscles were much less hardly used than his brain.  The intellectual problem was more difficult than the physical.  To march his army fifty-six miles in two days was far simpler than to maintain it on Pope’s flank until Longstreet came into line.  The direction of his marches, the position of his bivouacs, the distribution of his three divisions, were the outcome of long premeditation.  On the night of the 25th he disappeared into the darkness on the road to Salem leaving the Federals under the conviction that he was making for the Valley.  On the 26th he moved on Bristoe Station, rather than on Manassas Junction, foreseeing that he might be interrupted from the south-west in his destruction of the stores.  On the 27th he postponed his departure till night had fallen, moving in three columns, of which the column marching on Centreville, whither he desired that the enemy should follow, was the last to move.  Concentrating at Sudley Springs on the 28th, he placed himself in the best position to hold Pope fast, to combine with Longstreet, or to escape by Aldie Gap; and on the 29th the ground he had selected for battle enabled him to hold out against superior numbers.

Neither strategically nor tactically did he make a single mistake.  His attack on King’s division at Groveton, on the evening of the 28th, was purely frontal, and his troops lost heavily.  But he believed King to be the flank-guard of a larger force, and under such circumstances turning movements were over-hazardous.  The woods, too, prevented the deployment of his artillery; and the attack, in its wider aspect, was eminently successful, for the aim was not to defeat King, but to bring Pope back to a position where Lee could crush him.  On the 29th his dispositions were admirable.  The battle is a fine example of defensive tactics.  The position, to use a familiar illustration, “fitted the troops like a glove.”  It was of such strength that, while the front was adequately manned, ample reserves remained in rear.  The left, the most dangerous flank, was secured by Bull Run, and massed