truly it was hard fortune that his decision and his action were both for the worst.  He at once ordered McDowell to move 20,000 troops into the Shenandoah Valley, and instructed Fremont also to move his force rapidly into the valley, with the design that the two should thus catch Jackson in what Mr. Lincoln described as a “trap."[20] McDowell was dismayed at such an order.  He saw, what every man having any military knowledge at once recognized with entire certainty, and what every military writer has since corroborated, that the movement of Jackson had no value except as a diversion, that it threatened no serious danger, and that to call off McDowell’s corps from marching to join McClellan in order to send it against Jackson was to do exactly that thing which the Confederates desired to have done, though they could hardly have been sanguine enough to expect it.  It was swallowing a bait so plain that it might almost be said to be labeled.  For a general to come under the suspicion of not seeing through such a ruse was humiliating.  In vain McDowell explained, protested, and entreated with the utmost vehemence and insistence.  When Mr. Lincoln had made up his mind, no man could change it, and here, as ill fortune would have it, he had made it up.  So, with a heavy heart, the reluctant McDowell set forth on his foolish errand, and Fremont likewise came upon his,—­though it is true that he was better employed thus than in doing nothing,—­and Jackson, highly pleased, and calculating his time to a nicety, on May 31 slipped rapidly between the two Union generals,—­the closing jaws of Mr. Lincoln’s “trap,”—­and left them to close upon nothing.[21] Then he led his pursuers a fruitless chase towards the head of the valley, continuing to neutralize a force many times larger than his own, and which could and ought to have been at this very time doing fatal work against the Confederacy.  Presumably he had saved Richmond, and therewith also, not impossibly, the chief army of the South.  The chagrin of the Union commanders, who had in vain explained the situation with entire accuracy, taxes the imagination.

There is no use in denying a truth which can be proved.  The blunder of Mr. Lincoln is not only undeniable, but it is inexcusable.  Possibly for a few hours he feared that Washington was threatened.  He telegraphed to McClellan May 25, at two o’clock P.M., that he thought the movement down the valley a “general and concerted one,” inconsistent with “the purpose of a very desperate defense of Richmond;” and added, “I think the time is near when you must either attack Richmond, or give up the job and come to the defense of Washington.”  How reasonable this view was at the moment is of little consequence, for within a few hours afterward the character of Jackson’s enterprise as a mere foray became too palpable to be mistaken.  Nevertheless, after the President was relieved from such fear for the capital as he might excusably have felt for a very brief period, his cool judgment seemed for once in