King, the third
division, had ten thousand, near Catlett's Station. At Ashby's Gap was
Geary with two thousand; at Thoroughfare, Bayard with two thousand.

Over a hundred miles away, southeast, tree-embowered upon her seven
hills, lay Richmond, and at her eastern gates, on the marshy
Chickahominy were gathered one hundred and forty thousand men, blue
clad, led by McClellan. Bronzed, soldierly, chivalrous, an able if
over-cautious general, he waited, irresolute, and at last postponed his
battle. He would tarry for McDowell who, obeying orders from Washington,
had turned aside to encounter and crush a sometime professor of natural
philosophy with a gift for travelling like a meteor, for confusing like
a Jack-o'-lantern, and for striking the bull's-eye of the moment like a
silver bullet or a William Tell arrow. Between Richmond and the many and
heavy blue lines, with their siege train, lay thinner lines of
grey--sixty-five thousand men under the stars and bars. They, too,
watched the turning aside of McDowell, watched Shields, Ord, King, and
Fremont from the west, trappers hot on the path of the man with the old
forage cap, and the sabre tucked under his arm! All Virginia watched,
holding her breath.

Out of Virginia, before Corinth in Tennessee, and at Cumberland Gap, Armies
of the Ohio, of the Mississippi, of the West--one hundred and ten thousand
in blue, eighty thousand in grey, Halleck and Beauregard--listened for news
from Virginia. "Has Richmond fallen?" "No. McClellan is cautious. Lee and
Johnston are between him and the city. He will not attack until he is
further strengthened by McDowell." "Where is McDowell?" "He was moving
south from Fredericksburg. His outposts almost touched those of McClellan.
But now he has been sent across the Blue Ridge to the Valley, there to put
a period to the activities of Stonewall Jackson. That done, he will turn
and join McClellan. The two will enfold Lee and Jackson--the Anaconda
Scheme--and crush every bone in their bodies. Richmond will fall and the
war end."

Tennessee watched and north Alabama. In Arkansas, on the White River
were twelve thousand men in blue, and, arrayed against them, six
thousand, white men and Indians, clad in grey. Far, far away, outer
edges of the war, they, too, looked toward the east and wondered how it
went in Virginia. Grey and blue, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico,
Arizona--at lonely railway or telegraph stations, at river landings,
wherever, in