Tents pitched, and the dust of travel from a journey of a thousand miles washed off, the ‘boys’ of the 1st Wisconsin regiment stretched their weary limbs on the fragrant clover of Pennsylvania, and, like American soldiers everywhere, discussed with earnestness and warmth the causes, progress, and prospects of the war.  Our own position was not a little interesting.  The strength of Patterson’s division was not precisely known, but troops were arriving daily, and it was supposed to consist of about twenty thousand men.  As was well understood, it was intended to menace Harper’s Ferry, a strong natural, military and strategic position, then held by the rebels.  A severe struggle was anticipated if the Ferry were attacked, and many were the pictures drawn of bloody scenes and terrible carnage.  But the writer, doubting the assumed strength of the rebels at that point, freely expressed the opinion that there would be no fight there, but that the rebels would evacuate the post.  And before his regiment left Chambersburg, this prediction was verified.  The rebels, alarmed at the prospect which loomed up before them of a strong column of Federal troops, burned the Armory and Arsenal, and fled.  And here we may find a key to the whole of the rebel manoeuvring—­they were weak, and unable to cope with Patterson, and they knew it.  Upon no other hypothesis can we account for their evacuating so strong and so important a point as Harper’s Ferry.

Up to this time it had been a foregone conclusion with the army, as well as with the American people, that Patterson was to occupy Harper’s Ferry.  No other course of action was for a moment thought of.  Even so late as the 30th of June, when the different brigades were called together, preparatory to crossing the Potomac, very many were sanguine that Harper’s Ferry was to be made the base of operations, and did not give up that opinion till they found themselves en route for Williamsport.  But the strong strategic position was neglected for more than a month; and finally, on the very day when Johnston poured his fresh legions upon the bloody field of Bull Run, and forced the Federals to fall back, Patterson, with his back to the foe, entered Harper’s Ferry, with his three months’ men, whose term of enlistment was expiring, by the very road by which Johnston had left it in June.

This neglect of Patterson to occupy the strongest point in his field of operations puts the stamp of imbecility upon him at the commencement of his campaign.  The rebels expected him to occupy that point, as, even so late as the time of his crossing the Potomac, the force which disputed his onward march into the valley of Virginia was not so great as that held at Charleston to dispute his march from Harper’s Ferry in case he entered the valley there.  Patterson himself confessed his mistake, by retiring to the Ferry in July, for the avowed reason that his three months’ men must soon go home, and he must be in such a position