with them and fondled them, and they were equally pleased.  I have no doubt it was a great recreation to him.  He seemed to be living over last winter again, and talked a great deal about the hope of getting back to spend this winter with us, in the old room, which I told him I was keeping for you and him.  He certainly has had adulation enough to spoil him, but it seems not to affect or harm him at all.  He is the same humble, dependent Christian, desiring to give God all the glory, looking to Him alone for a blessing, and not thinking of himself.”

So it was with no presage that this was the last time he would look upon the scenes he loved that Jackson moved southward by the Valley turnpike.  Past Kernstown his columns swept, past Middletown and Strasburg, and all the well-remembered fields of former triumphs; until the peaks of the Massanuttons threw their shadows across the highway, and the mighty bulk of the noble mountains, draped in the gold and crimson of the autumn, once more re-echoed to the tramp of his swift-footed veterans.  Turning east at New Market, he struck upwards by the familiar road; and then, descending the narrow pass, he forded the Shenandoah, and crossing the Luray valley vanished in the forests of the Blue Ridge.  Through the dark pines of Fisher’s Gap he led his soldiers down to the Virginia plains, and the rivers and the mountains knew him no more until their dead returned to them.

On the 26th the Second Army Corps was at Madison Court House.

November 27.

The next day it was concentrated at Orange Court House, six-and-thirty miles from Fredericksburg.  In eight days, two being given to rest, the troops had marched one hundred and twenty miles, and with scarce a straggler, for the stern measures which had been taken to put discipline on a firmer basis, and to make the regimental officers do their duty, had already produced a salutary effect.

On Jackson’s arrival at Orange Court House he found the situation unchanged.  Burnside, notwithstanding that heavy snow-storms and sharp frosts betokened the approach of winter, the season of impassable roads and swollen rivers, was still encamped near Falmouth.  The difficulty of establishing a new base of supplies at Aquia Creek, and some delay on the part of the Washington authorities in furnishing him with a pontoon train, had kept him idle; but he had not relinquished his design of marching upon Richmond.  His quiescence, however, together with the wishes of the President, had induced General Lee to change his plans.  The Army of Northern Virginia, 78,500 strong, although, in order to induce the Federals to attack, it was not yet closely concentrated, was ready to oppose in full force the passage of the Rappahannock, and all thought of retiring to the North Anna had been abandoned.

November 29.