afternoon, said:  “In consequence of General Banks’s critical position, I have been compelled to suspend General McDowell’s movements to join you.  The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper’s Ferry, and we are trying to throw General Fremont’s force and part of General McDowell’s in their rear.”  The brief words conveyed momentous intelligence.  It is necessary to admit that Mr. Lincoln was making his one grand blunder, for which there is not even the scant salvation of possible doubt.  All that can be said in palliation is, that he was governed, or at least strongly impelled, by the urgent advice of the secretary of war, whose hasty telegrams to the governors of several States show that he was terror-stricken and had lost his head.  Mr. Blaine truly says that McDowell, thus suddenly dispatched by Mr. Lincoln upon a “fruitless chase,” “was doing precisely what the President of the Confederate States would have ordered, had he been able to issue the orders of the President of the United States.”  There is no way to mitigate the painful truth of this statement, made by a civilian, but amply sustained by the military authorities on both sides.[16]

The condition was this.  The retention of McDowell’s corps before Washington published the anxiety of the administration.  The Confederate advantage lay in keeping that anxiety alive and continuing to neutralize that large body of troops.  Strategists far less able than the Southern generals could not have missed so obvious a point, neither could they have missed the equally obvious means at their disposal for achieving these purposes.  At the upper end of the valley of the Shenandoah Stonewall Jackson had an army, raised by recent accretions to nearly or quite 15,000 men.  The Northern generals erelong learned to prognosticate Jackson’s movements by the simple rule that at the time when he was least expected, and at the place where he was least wanted, he was sure to turn up.[17] The suddenness and speed with which he could move a body of troops seemed marvelous to ordinary men.  His business now was to make a vigorous dashing foray down the valley.  To the westward, Fremont lay in the mountains, with an army which checked no enemy and for the existence of which in that place no reasonable explanation could be given.  In front was Banks, with a force lately reduced to about 5,000 men.  May 14, Banks prudently fell back and took position in Strasburg.[18] Suddenly, on May 23, Jackson appeared at Front Royal; on the next day he attacked Banks at Winchester, and of course defeated him; on the 25th Banks made a rapid retreat to the Potomac, and Jackson made an equally rapid pursuit to Halltown, within two miles of Harper’s Ferry.  The news of this startling foray threw the civilians of Washington into a genuine panic, by which Mr. Lincoln was, at least for a few hours, not altogether unaffected.[19] Yet, though startled and alarmed, he showed the excellent quality of promptitude in decision and action; and