Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 19.djvu/154

 148 Southern Historical Society Papers.

After his march to Cumberland and Romney in the winter of i86i-'62, when many of his men were frost-bitten, and some perished from the intense cold, he had scarcely rested his weary legions when he begun his famous Valley Campaign of 1862, which won for his men the soubriquet of "Jackson's Foot Cavalry," and for himself world-wide fame.

When General Banks, supposing that Jackson was in full retreat up the Valley, started a column across the mountains to strike Johns- ton's army, which was then falling back from Manassas, Jackson sud- denly turned, marched thirty miles that afternoon and eighteen early the next morning, and struck a blow at Kernstown which, while he suf- fered the only defeat that he ever sustained, recalled the column which was moving on Johnston's flank, and disconcerted McClellan's whole plan of campaign.

Pursuit was utterly futile until he took refuge in Swift Run Gap, whence he emerged to make some of the most rapid marches on record, as he defeated Milroy at McDowell, flanked Banks at Front Royal, cut his column at Middletown, routed him at Winchester, and pushed him pell-mell across the Potomac. He was about to cross the river in pursuit when, learning that Shields and Fremont (in re- sponse to that famous order of Mr. Lincoln's) were hastening to form a juncture in his rear at Strasburg, he marched sixty miles in a day and a half (one of his brigades marched fifty-two miles in one day), held Fremont back with one hand and Shields with the other, until all of his troops and trains had passed the point of danger, and moved quietly up the Valley, pursued by three armies, until at Cross Keys and at Port Republic he suffered himself to be " caught," and showed beyond all controversy that the man who caught " Stonewall Jackson" " had indeed caught a Tartar."

One of his biographers well puts it: "In thirty-two days he had marched nearly four hundred miles, skirmishing almost daily; fought five battles; defeated three armies, two of whom were completely routed; captured about twenty pieces of artillery, some four thousand prisoners, and immense quantities of stores of all kinds, and had done all this with a loss of less than one thousand men in killed, wounded, and missing."

The march from the Valley to " Seven Days Around Richmond," and that to Pope's rear at Manassas; the march to the capture of Harper's Ferry, and thence to Sharpsburg (Antietam); the move from the Valley to first Fredericksburg, and that to Hooker's rear at Chancellorsville, were all famous for their rapidity. It is related of Bedford Forest" the Wizard of the Saddle," the " Stonewall Jack-