Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/228



N the spring of 1862 the Federal and Confederate armies in northeastern Virginia held nearly the same relative positions as in the early autumn of 1861.

The former had, February 7th, again occupied the line of the South branch of the Potomac, which Jackson, by order, had abandoned, and Gen. Edward Johnson, after his victory of December 13, 1861, on Alleghany mountain, had fallen back to Shenandoah mountain; but the Confederate army of Northern Virginia still had its center, in command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, on the field of its victory at Manassas, while its right rested at Fredericksburg, in command of General Holmes, and Jackson held its left in the lower Shenandoah valley. Practically its pickets patrolled the Potomac from Chesapeake bay up to within the mountains. Not satisfied with a condition of military affairs that still held north of the Potomac the great army—on its rolls, March 1, 1862, 222,000 men—that McClellan had, during more than half a year, been collecting and organizing, President Lincoln ordered that an advance of the whole army of the Potomac, except such a force as was necessary to defend Washington, should be made, on or before the 22d of February, to drive back the opposing Confederates and press on to the capture of Richmond.

This movement was actually begun. Banks marched from Frederick City, Md., toward Harper's Ferry, to attack and drive back Jackson. McClellan advanced his great army, from the intrenched camps around Washington, to attack Johnston at Centreville and Manassas, but when, after floundering through the spring mud of mid-land Virginia, he reached his objective, he found that Johnston, his able and wily opponent, had anticipated his coming, and, abandoning his intrenched camps and advanced positions at Leesburg and elsewhere, along and near the Potomac, had put his forces behind the Rappahannock. Jackson, preferring fighting to retreating, Rh