When the army once more encamped within sight of the city it was received as it deserved. Lee and Jackson were the special objects of admiration. All recognised the strategic skill which had wrought the overthrow of McClellan’s host; and the hard marches and sudden blows of the campaign on the Shenandoah, crowned by the swift transfer of the Valley army from the Blue Ridge to the Chickahominy, took fast hold of the popular imagination. The mystery in which Jackson’s operations were involved, the dread he inspired in the enemy, his reticence, his piety, his contempt of comfort, his fiery energy, his fearlessness, and his simplicity aroused the interest and enthusiasm of the whole community. Whether Lee or his lieutenant was the more averse to posing before the crowd it is difficult to say. Both succeeded in escaping all public manifestation of popular favour; both went about their business with an absolute absence of ostentation, and if the handsome features of the Commander-in-Chief were familiar to the majority of the citizens, few recognised in the plainly dressed soldier, riding alone through Richmond, the great leader of the Valley, with whose praises not the South only, but the whole civilised world, was already ringing.
[1] General Reynolds.
[2] Lee’s Report, O.R., vol. xi, part i, pp. 493, 494.
[3] This detachment, about 3,500 strong, consisted of the outposts that had been established north and north-east of Beaver Dam Creek on June 27, of the garrison of the White House, and of troops recently disembarked.
[4] Strange to say, while the Confederates possessed no maps whatever, McClellan was well supplied in this respect. “Two or three weeks before this,” says General Averell (Battles and Leaders, vol. ii, p. 431), “three officers of the 3rd Pennsylvania Cavalry, and others, penetrated the region between the Chickahominy and the James, taking bearings and making notes. Their fragmentary sketches, when put together, made a map which exhibited all the roadways, fields, forests, bridges, the streams, and houses, so that our commander knew the country to be traversed far better than any Confederate commander.”
[5] Jackson had with him a gang of negroes who, under the superintendence of Captain Mason, a railroad contractor of long experience, performed the duties which in regular armies appertain to the corps of engineers. They had already done useful service in the Valley.
[6] O.R., vol. xi, part i, pp. 556, 557.
[7] “Jackson himself,” writes Dr. McGuire, “accompanied by three or four members of his staff, of whom I was one, followed the cavalry across the Swamp. The ford was miry and deep, and impracticable for either artillery or infantry.”
[8] O.R., vol. xi, part i, pp. 810, 811.
[9] General Heintzleman, commanding the Federal 3rd Corps, reports that he had placed a force at Brackett’s Ford (O.R., vol. xi, part ii, p. 100). General Slocum (6th Corps) sent infantry and a 12-pounder howitzer (O.R., volume xi, part ii, p. 435) to the same point; and Seeley’s battery of the 3rd Corps was also engaged here (O.R., vol. xi, part ii, p. 106). The force at White Oak Bridge was constituted as follows:—