Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 2.djvu/86

76 Jackson's movement had accomplished Lee's object in ordering it. It deranged and temporarily broke up McClellan's campaign on Richmond. It was plain that no grand strategy could be carried out with such an erratic, eccentric, unaccountable, uncontrollable character as Stonewall interfering, intercepting, and meddling all the time.

While Jackson was at Charlestown, Harry Gilmor, the most daring of scouts, operating in Hardy county west of the Alleghanies, reported to him that Fremont with a large army was moving rapidly south, with the evident intention of cutting him off at Strasburg. Scouts from east of the Blue Ridge kept him fully advised of the movements of Shields, who was hurrying by forced marches to Front Royal. Front Royal is about twelve miles from Strasburg. Through this gap between Fremont and Shields, Jackson was to make his escape. He had five thousand prisoners and three thousand captured wagons, making a column ten miles long. He pushed his spoils ahead, and when he reached Strasburg Fremont was three miles to his right and Shields twelve miles to his left at Front Royal. In fact, Shields' cavalry was on the road parallel to the pike and only three miles distant. Jackson hurried Charles Winder and the Stonewall brigade up to meet Fremont. Winder sent orders to Colonel Johnson that if charged by cavalry he must take to the fences on the sides of the pike. The Maryland rear guard covered that critical movement and were the last to cross the burning bridges. Clear of his flanking enemies, with all of them behind him, Jackson stretched himself up the valley in a seventy-mile race, Fremont closing in behind, and Shields pushing up the Luray, or Page valley on the east, parallel to Jackson's line of march. If the two Federal armies could out-march Jackson and throw themselves across the Confederate retreat, Jackson must be ground up between Fremont with forty thousand men and Shields with eight thousand. Fre-