thousand men behind the Rappahannock! The armies
were too widely separated, McClellan's location notoriously unhealthy.
Impossible to furnish reinforcements to the tune asked for, Washington
might, at any moment, be in peril. It was understood that Stonewall
Jackson had left Richmond on the thirteenth, marching toward
Gordonsville.

The James River might be somewhat unhealthy for strangers that summer,
and Stonewall Jackson had marched toward Gordonsville. The desire at the
moment most at the heart of General Robert Edward Lee was that General
McClellan should be recalled. Therefore he guarded Richmond with
something less than sixty thousand men, and he made rumours to spread of
gunboats building, and he sent Major-General T. J. Jackson northward
with twelve thousand men.

In this July month there was an effect of suspense. The fortress was
taking muster, telling its strength, soldering its flag to the staff and
the staff to the keep. The besiegers were gathering; the world was
watching, expectant of the grimmer struggle. There came a roar and clang
from the outer walls, from the Mississippi above Vicksburg, from the
Georgian coast, from Murfreesboro in Tennessee, from Arkansas, from
Morgan's raids in Kentucky. There was fire and sound enough, but the
battles that were to tell were looked for on Virginia soil. Hot and
still were the July days, hot and still was the air, and charged with a
certain sentiment. Thunderbolts were forging; all concerned knew that,
and very subtly life and death and the blue sky and the green leaves
came freshlier across the senses. Jackson, arriving at Gordonsville the
nineteenth of July, found Pope before him with forty-seven thousand men.
He asked for reinforcements and Lee, detaching yet another twelve
thousand from the army at Richmond, sent him A. P. Hill and the Light
Division. Hill arrived on the second of August, splendid fighter, in his
hunting shirt, with his red beard! That evening in Jackson's quarters,
some one showed him a captured copy of Pope's Orders, numbers 12 and 75.
He read, crumpled the papers and tossed them aside, then turned to
Jackson sitting sucking a lemon. "Well, general, here's a new candidate
for your attention!"

Jackson looked up. "Yes, sir. By God's blessing he shall have it." He
sucked on, studying a map of the country between Slaughter Mountain and
Manassas which Hotchkiss had made him. In a letter to his wife from
Richmond he had spoken of "fever and de