erating Jackson's numbers, was already marching north
to the railhead at New Market, where he would be nearer his friends
if Jackson swooped down. Detraining at Staunton the Confederates
picketed the whole neighborhood to stop news getting out before
they made their dash against Milroy. On the seventh they moved
off. The cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson
had been a professor for so many years, had just joined to gain
some experience of the real thing, and as they stepped out in their
smart uniforms, with all the exactness of parade-ground drill,
they formed a marked contrast to the gaunt soldiers of the Valley,
half fed, half clad, but wholly eager for the fray.

[Illustration: CIVIL WAR: VIRGINA CAMPAIGNS, 1862]

That night Milroy got together all the men he could collect at
McDowell, a little village just beyond the Valley and on the road to
Gauley Bridge in West Virginia. He sent posthaste for reinforcements.
But Fremont's men were divided too far west, fearing nothing from
the Valley, while Banks's were thinking of a concentration too
far north.

In the afternoon of the eighth, Milroy attacked Jackson with great
determination and much skill. But after a stern encounter, in which
the outnumbered Federals fought very well indeed, the Confederates
won a decisive victory. The numbers actually engaged--twenty-five
hundred Federals against four thousand Confederates--were even
smaller than at Kernstown. But this time the Confederates won the
tactical victory on the spot as well as the strategic victory all
over the Valley; and the news cheered Richmond at what, as we have
seen already, was its very darkest hour. The night of the battle
Jackson sent out strong working parties to destroy all bridges and
culverts and to block all roads by which Fremont could reach the
Valley. In some places bowlders were rolled down from the hills.
In one the trees were felled athwart the path for a mile. A week
later Jackson was back in the Valley at Lebanon Springs, while
Fremont was blocked off from Banks, who was now distractedly groping
for safety and news.

The following day, the famous sixteenth, we regain touch with Lee,
who, as mentioned already, then wrote to Jackson about attacking
Banks in order to threaten Washington. This dire day at Richmond,
the day McClellan reached White House, was also the one appointed by
the Southern Government as a day of intercession for God's blessing
on the Southern arms.