migratory birds going south, but the
days were yet mild and still, wrapped in a balm of pale sunshine, a
faint, purplish, Indian summer haze. The 2d Corps was hale and soberly
happy.

It was the chaplain's season. There occurred in the Army of Northern
Virginia a religious revival, a far-spread and lasting deepening of
feeling. For many nights in many forest glades there were "meetings"
with prayer and singing. "Old Hundred" floated through the air. From
tents and huts of boughs came the soldiers. They sat upon the earth,
thick carpeted now with the faded leaves, or upon gnarled, out-cropping
roots of oak and beech. Above shone the moon; there was a touch of frost
in the air. The chaplain had some improvised pulpit; a great fire, or
perhaps a torch fastened to a bough, gave light whereby to read the
Book. The sound of the voice, the sound of the singing, blended with the
voice of the Opequon rushing--all rushing toward the great Sea.

"Come, humble sinner, in whose breast
A thousand thoughts revolve--"

It made a low thunder, so many soldiers' voices. Always, on these
nights, in some glade or meadow, with some regiment or other, there was
found the commander of the 2d Corps. Beneath the cathedral roof of the
forest, or beneath the stars in the open, sat Stonewall Jackson,
worshipping the God of Battles. Undoubtedly he was really and deeply
happy. His place is on the Judean hills, with Joab and David and Abner.
Late in this November there came to him another joy. In North Carolina,
where his wife had gone, a child was born to him, his only child, a
daughter.

In the first half of October had occurred Jeb Stuart's brilliant
Monocacy raid, two days and a half within McClellan's lines. On the
twenty-sixth McClellan began the passage of the Potomac. He crossed near
Berlin, and Lee, assured now that the theatre of war would be east of
the Blue Ridge, dispatched Longstreet with the 1st Corps to Culpeper. On
the seventh of November McClellan was removed from the command of the
Army of the Potomac. It was given over to Burnside, and he took the
Fredericksburg route to Richmond.

The Army of the Potomac numbered one hundred and twenty-five thousand
men and officers and three hundred and twenty guns. At Washington were
in addition eighty thousand men, and up and down the Potomac twenty
thousand more. The Army of Northern Virginia in all, 1st and 2d Corps,
had seventy-two thousand men and offic