Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/218

198 valley, in July; Loring, under Lee, had accomplished nothing in the same valley and in that of the Greenbrier in August and September, and the commands of Floyd and Wise along the Kanawha turnpike, even with the assistance of Lee and Loring, had barely sufficed to keep the enemy in check.

When Jackson took command in the Valley the advance of General Rosecrans, who commanded the Federal forces in West Virginia, had recaptured Romney, 40 miles west of Winchester, and held it with a force of 5,000 men, thus controlling the important valley of the South branch of the Potomac. Bath, the county seat of Morgan, situated north of Winchester, was also occupied, as was the Maryland side of the Potomac across the entire front of the Shenandoah valley and beyond on either side. The Confederate forces along the Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike, and the turnpike leading into that from the Warm Springs, had fallen back to the crest of Alleghany mountain, while that on the Kanawha road had retired to Lewisburg, a few miles west of that range. The Baltimore & Ohio railroad was open from the eastward to Harper's Ferry and from the westward to Hancock, for the use of the Federal army, a gap 40 miles long being the only portion broken and controlled by the Confederates, and even this was filled on the Maryland side by the Chesapeake & Ohio canal, furnishing water communication from Cumberland to Georgetown and Washington.

Studying the field intrusted to him and the strategic opportunities presented for driving the enemy from the mountain region to the westward, Jackson asked that his old brigade might be sent him from Manassas, and that all the troops holding the passes of Alleghany mountain to the southwest, some 15,000 or 16,000 in number, be ordered to report to him. The government, not then knowing the man, declined to comply fully with his request, but promptly sent him his old brigade, and one of