nerals Milroy and Schenck
increases my anxiety for the safety of the position I occupy....
That he has returned there can be no doubt.... From all the
information I can gather--and I do not wish to excite alarm
unnecessarily--I am compelled to believe that he meditates attack
here. I regard it as certain that he will move north as far as New
Market, a position which ... enables him also to cooperate with
General Ewell, who is still at Swift Run Gap.... Once at New Market
they are within twenty-five miles of Strasburg.... I have forborne
until the last moment to make this representation, well knowing how
injurious to the public service unfounded alarms become...."

The general signed and sent his letter. Standing for a moment, in the
cool of the evening, at the door of headquarters, he looked toward the
east where the first stars were shining. Fourteen miles over there was
his strongest outpost, the village of Front Royal occupied by Colonel
Kenly with a thousand men and two guns. The general could not see the
place; it lay between the Massanuttons and the Blue Ridge, but it was in
his mind. He spoke to an aide. "To-morrow I think I will recall Kenly
and send him down the pike to develop the force of the enemy."

The small town of Strasburg pulsed with flaring lights and with the
manifold sounds of the encamped army. Sutlers showed their wares, guard
details went by, cavalrymen clanked their spurs through the streets,
laughter and talk rang through the place. A company of strolling
players had come down from the North, making its way from Washington to
Harper's Ferry, held by three thousand Federals; from Harper's Ferry to
Winchester, held by fifteen hundred; and from Winchester to Strasburg.
The actors had a canvas booth, where by guttering candles and to the
sound of squeaking fiddles they gave their lurid play of the night, and
they played to a crowded house. Elsewhere there was gambling, elsewhere
praying, elsewhere braggarts spoke of Ajax exploits, elsewhere there was
moaning and tossing in the hospitals, elsewhere some private, raised
above the heads of his fellows, read aloud the Northern papers.
_McClellan has one hundred and twelve thousand men. Yesterday his
advance reached the White House on the Pamunkey. McDowell has forty
thousand men, and at last advice was but a few marches from the
treasonable capital. Our gunboats are hurrying up the James. Presumably
at the very hour this goes to pr