e been visited upon Lee.
The instructions which he received, however, were not positive, but
contingent on events. If possible, he was to cut the railway, in
order to delay the reinforcements which Pope was expecting from
Alexandria; and then, should the enemy permit, he was to hold fast
east of the Bull Run Mountains until Lee came up. But he was to be
guided in everything by his own discretion. He was free to accept
battle or refuse it, to attack or to defend, to select his own line
of retreat, to move to any quarter of the compass that he pleased.
For three days, from the morning of August 26 to the morning of
August 29, he had complete control of the strategic situation; on his
movements were dependent the movements of the main army; the bringing
the enemy to bay and the choice of the field of battle were both in
his hands. And during those three days he was cut off from Lee and
Longstreet. The mountains, with their narrow passes, lay between;
and, surrounded by three times his number, he was abandoned entirely
to his own resources.

Throughout the operations he had been in unusually high spirits. The
peril and responsibility seemed to act as an elixir, and he threw off
much of his constraint. But as the day broke on August 29 he looked
long and earnestly in the direction of Thoroughfare Gap, and when a
messenger from Stuart brought the intelligence that Longstreet was
through the pass, he drew a long breath and uttered a sigh of
relief.* (* Letter from Dr. Hunter McGuire.) The period of suspense
was over, but even on that unyielding heart the weight of anxiety had
pressed with fearful force. For three days he had only received news
of the main army at long and uncertain intervals. For two of these
days his information of the enemy's movements was very small. While
he was marching to Bristoe Station, Pope, for all he knew, might have
been marching against Longstreet with his whole force. When he
attacked King on the 28th the Federals, in what strength he knew not,
still held Thoroughfare Gap; when he formed for action on the 29th he
was still ignorant of what had happened to the main body, and it was
on the bare chance that Longstreet would force the passage that he
accepted battle with far superior numbers.

It is not difficult to imagine how a general like Ney, placed in
Jackson's situation, would have trimmed and hesitated: how in his
march to Manassas, when he had crossed the mountains and left the Gap
behind