Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/253

Rh McDowell untenable, evacuated that place early in the night, after lighting his camp-fires and making a show of remaining there, and fell back during the night in the direction of Franklin.

On the morning of the 9th, Jackson sent a laconic dispatch to General Cooper, the adjutant-general of the Confederate States at Richmond, saying, "God blessed our arms with victory at McDowell yesterday;" then mounting his horse at dawn, he rode in the keen and frosty air to the summit of the mountain, there to learn from officers he had sent in advance to reconnoiter that his enemy had fled. He at once took possession of McDowell and proceeded to close up and ration his men preparatory to a pursuit. Following the road to Monterey for a few miles from McDowell, Schenck turned to the northeast, by the road to Franklin, resting his wearied men for a short time when his rear guard reached the junction of the two roads on the morning of the 9th, but moving on before Jackson could close up on his rear. A retreat is easily managed in a narrow valley and through a wooded country like that which Schenck was traversing, so he was able to make Jackson's pursuit on the 10th a slow one; but the latter managed to press the Federal rear, and on the 11th came very near to it in the vicinity of Franklin, although impeded by the smoke and flames from the forests that hemmed in the road, which his crafty foe had set on fire.

During the march on the 110th, Jackson sent Captain Hotchkiss, of the engineers, to ride rapidly back to the Valley and there take a cavalry company which had been left on guard, and blockade the North river and the Dry river gaps of the Shenandoah mountain, by either of which Fremont might cross from the South Branch valley and join Banks in the Shenandoah valley, at or near Harrisonburg, Jackson's positive orders being that these roads must be blockaded by daylight of the 11th. The execution of this order required a ride of over 60 miles during the afternoon and night of the 10th, but the order was executed, and when Lincoln telegraphed to Fremont to make the move Jackson had said to his engineer he should make (although he did not think he would), the reply was, that the road was blockaded and he could not do it.

Having advanced to within two miles of Franklin and