Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/271

Rh to close it with a stopper, at Strasburg, and so end the war. They had not yet learned that Jackson was not to be caught by any combination of movements they could bring about, for while it was true that he only had about 15,000 men to meet the 60,000 that were concentrating toward his rear, he knew the strategic advantages that the great flank-protecting bulwarks of the mountains placed at his disposal farther up the Valley, and had no doubt of his ability to reach these, avail himself of their impregnable protection of his flanks, and at the same time divide the strategic forces of his enemy and enable him to meet them on his own grounds with superior tactic strength. While demonstrating in front of Harper's Ferry, Jackson was definitely informed on the morning of Friday, May 30th, that Fremont was marching his 15,000 men down the South Branch valley to Moorefield and had there turned toward Strasburg, and that his advance had reached 10 miles east of Moorefield, where he halted the 29th to rest his army, and on the 30th had moved to the western foot of the Shenandoah mountain, to within some 20 miles of Strasburg, and that McDowell's advance was already crossing the Blue ridge and not far from Front Royal. Thus advised of the strategic situation, Jackson, on the morning of the 30th, ordered all his troops back to Winchester except Winder's brigade, the First Maryland, and a body of cavalry which he left to continue threatening Harper's Ferry. After dinner at the home of Major Hawks, his chief commissary in Charlestown, he took the railway train which he had captured at Winchester, and with most of his staff rode back to that town, reaching it late in the afternoon of the 30th, where he received intelligence that McDowell's advance had that morning reached Front Royal and surprised the Twelfth Georgia, which had been left there to guard the captured stores and the bridges across the Shenandoah, and that he was now in force at that town, within 12 miles of Strasburg by the direct road leading past the northern end of the Massanutton mountains. Fremont had reached Wardensville, 20 miles from Strasburg, and had telegraphed Lincoln that he would enter that place by 5 p. m. of Saturday, May 31st. The main body of Jackson's army had marched 25 miles on the 30th and encamped in the vicinity of Winchester, 20 miles from Strasburg; Winder's brigade had spent most of the