ction
were both for the worst. He at once ordered McDowell to move 20,000
troops into the Shenandoah Valley, and instructed Fremont also to move
his force rapidly into the valley, with the design that the two should
thus catch Jackson in what Mr. Lincoln described as a "trap."[20]
McDowell was dismayed at such an order. He saw, what every man having
any military knowledge at once recognized with entire certainty, and
what every military writer has since corroborated, that the movement of
Jackson had no value except as a diversion, that it threatened no
serious danger, and that to call off McDowell's corps from marching to
join McClellan in order to send it against Jackson was to do exactly
that thing which the Confederates desired to have done, though they
could hardly have been sanguine enough to expect it. It was swallowing a
bait so plain that it might almost be said to be labeled. For a general
to come under the suspicion of not seeing through such a ruse was
humiliating. In vain McDowell explained, protested, and entreated with
the utmost vehemence and insistence. When Mr. Lincoln had made up his
mind, no man could change it, and here, as ill fortune would have it,
he had made it up. So, with a heavy heart, the reluctant McDowell set
forth on his foolish errand, and Fremont likewise came upon his,--though
it is true that he was better employed thus than in doing nothing,--and
Jackson, highly pleased, and calculating his time to a nicety, on May 31
slipped rapidly between the two Union generals,--the closing jaws of Mr.
Lincoln's "trap,"--and left them to close upon nothing.[21] Then he led
his pursuers a fruitless chase towards the head of the valley,
continuing to neutralize a force many times larger than his own, and
which could and ought to have been at this very time doing fatal work
against the Confederacy. Presumably he had saved Richmond, and therewith
also, not impossibly, the chief army of the South. The chagrin of the
Union commanders, who had in vain explained the situation with entire
accuracy, taxes the imagination.

There is no use in denying a truth which can be proved. The blunder of
Mr. Lincoln is not only undeniable, but it is inexcusable. Possibly for
a few hours he feared that Washington was threatened. He telegraphed to
McClellan May 25, at two o'clock P.M., that he thought the movement down
the valley a "general and concerted one," inconsistent with "the purpose
of a very desperate defense of