Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/176

172 and in the battle fought on the following day, June 9, Shields shared the same fate.

This closed Jackson's Valley campaign of '62, in which according to Major Dabney, his biographer and chief of staff, "within forty days he had marched 400 miles, fought four pitched battles, defeating four separate armies, with numerous combats and skirmishes, sent to the rear 3,500 prisoners, killed and wounded a still larger number of the enemy and defeated or neutralized forces three times as numerous as his own upon his proper theater of war, besides the corps of McDowell, which was rendered inactive at Fredericksburg by fear of his prowess;" in addition to which he had at the same time thwarted the plans of McClellan at Richmond and made those of Lee there practicable; all of which was done at a loss of not more than 1,500 men and with an army of only as many thousand. So it was no wonder that I found him in fine spirits when, on my return from Richmond, just after the battle of Port Republic, I rejoined him at his bivouac in Brown's Gap, on the Blue Ridge, from which, on the 12th of June, we descended before dawn to the plains of Mount Meridian on the Middle Fork of the Shenandoah, having our headquarters near Wier's Cave.

On Friday, June 13, the day after we came down from Brown's Gap, in expressing to me his pleasure at the success of my mission for more troops, he took occasion to remark that he would be glad if I would return to Richmond and make a formal application to the government to increase his command to 40,000 men, in order that he might carry into effect the movement he had mentioned to me at Halltown. "By that means," said he, "Richmond can be relieved and the campaign transferred to Pennsylvania." In the course of the conversation I asked him what he would have done if Shields and Fremont had united