marched under a full summer moon, the people running out of doors,
wild with joy at his daring. At sunrise he reached the Chickahominy,
only to find it flooded, full of timber, and spanned by nothing
better than a broken bridge. But, using the materials of a warehouse
to make a footway, the troopers crossed in single file, leading
their chargers, which swam. Waving his hand to the Federals, who had
just arrived too late, Stuart pushed on the remaining thirty-five
miles to Richmond, rounding the Federal flank within range of Federal
gunboats on the James.

This magnificent raid not only procured in three days information
that McClellan's civilian detectives could not have procured in
three years but raised Confederate morale and depressed the Federals
correspondingly. Moreover, it drove the first nail into McClellan's
coffin. For in October, just after another Stuart raid, the following
curious incident occurred on board the _Martha Washington_ when
Lincoln was returning from an Alexandria review which had cheered
him up considerably, coming, as it did, after Lee had failed in
Maryland. By way of answering the very pertinent question--"Mr.
President, how about McClellan?"--Lincoln simply drew a ring on
the deck, quietly adding: "When I was a boy we used to play a game
called 'Three times round and out.' Stuart has been round McClellan
twice. The third time McClellan will be out."

Stuart rode ahead of his troopers, straight to Lee, who immediately
wrote to Jackson suggesting that the Army of the Valley, while
keeping the Federals alarmed to the last about an attack on the
line of the Potomac, might secretly slip away and join a combined
attack on McClellan. Jackson, who had of course foreseen this, was
ready with every blind known to the art of war. Even his staff
and generals knew nothing of their destination. The first move was
so secret that the enemy never suspected anything till it was too
late, while friends thought there was to be another surprise in
the Valley. The second move led various people to suspect a march
on Washington--no bad news to leak out; and nothing but misleading
items did leak out. The Army of the Valley moved within a charmed
circle of cavalry which prevented any one from going forward, ahead
of the advance, and swept before it all stragglers through whom
the news might leak out by the rear. On the twenty-third of June,
only eight days after Stuart had reported his raid to Lee, Jackson
atte