Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/328



HE conditions and the scene of conflict in Virginia now changed. McClellan, whining like a well-whipped schoolboy, and in so doing damaging his military reputation, begged for reinforcements and for permission, when reinforced, to make another attempt on Richmond. But the Federal government, alarmed at the result of its gigantic effort to capture Richmond, now feared, and justly, that Lee's victorious army might take up the line of march to menace its own capital; so, instead of reinforcing McClellan and permitting him to try again an "on to Richmond," it ordered him back to the line of the Potomac and to the front of Washington.

When it was learned that the ubiquitous Jackson was really engaged in the contest with McClellan at Richmond, the army that had been waiting for him in the valley, finding none to oppose it, ventured to cross the Blue ridge at Chester gap, and encamp in the lovely coves of Piedmont Virginia, just under and amid the spurs of the grand mountains in the vicinity of Sperryville; where, on the 26th day of June, with the roar of booming cannon, the echoes of which were heard as far away as Gordonsville, was organized from the armies of Fremont, Banks and McDowell, the "army of Virginia," under Maj.-Gen. John Pope. Its three corps, of now well-rested veterans, were prepared for another campaign—to essay another "on to Richmond" from another direction. The 13,000 men under Burnside, in North Carolina, were hastened to the Potomac end of the Richmond, Potomac & Fredericksburg railroad at Aquia creek, to guard the left of the new movement; and preparations were hastened to bring back the great host still on the James with McClellan, and add that to the new army of Virginia.

Excellent highways led from the Rappahannock region, where Pope was encamped, to Gordonsville and Culpeper,