The activity and vigilance of Stuart, afterward so distinguished as commander of cavalry in the Army of Virginia, and the skill and daring of Jackson, soon by greater deeds to become immortal, checked, punished, and embarrassed the enemy in his threatened advances, and his movements became so devoid of a definite purpose that one was at a loss to divine the object of his campaign, unless it was to detain General Johnston with his forces in the Valley of the Shenandoah, while General McDowell, profiting by the feint, should make the real attack upon General Beauregard's army at Manassas. However that may be, the evidence finally became conclusive that the enemy under General McDowell was moving to attack the army under General Beauregard. The contingency had therefore arisen for that junction which was necessary to enable us to resist the vastly superior numbers of our assailant; for, though the most strenuous and not wholly unsuccessful exertions had been made to reënforce both the Armies of the Shenandoah and of the Potomac, they yet remained far smaller than those of the enemy confronting them, and made a junction of our forces indispensable whenever the real point of attack should be ascertained. For this movement we had the advantage of an interior line, so that, if the enemy should discover it after it commenced, he could not counteract it by adopting the same tactics. The success of this policy, it will readily be perceived, depended upon the time of execution, for, though from different causes, failure would equally result if done too soon or too late. The determination as to which army should be reënforced from the other, and the exact time of the transfer, must have been a difficult problem, as both the generals appear to have been unable to solve it (each asking reënforcements from the other).
On the 9th of July General Johnston wrote an official letter, from which I make the following extracts:
"Headquarters, Winchester, July 9, 1861.
"General: ... Similar information from other sources gives me the impression that the reënforcements arriving at Martinsburg amount to seven or eight thousand. I have estimated the enemy's force hitherto, you may remember, at eighteen thousand. Additional artillery has also been received. They were greatly superior to us in that arm before.
"The object of reënforcing General Patterson must be an advance upon this place. Fighting here against great odds seems to me more prudent than retreat.
"I have not asked for reënforcements, because I supposed that the War Department, informed of the state of affairs everywhere, could best judge where the troops at its disposal are most required....
"Most respectfully, your obedient servant,
(Signed) "Joseph E. Johnston,
"Brigadier-General, etc."
"If it is proposed to strengthen us against the attack I suggest as soon to be made, it seems to me that General Beauregard might with great expedition furnish five or six thousand men for a few days.
J. E. J."
As soon as I became satisfied that Manassas was the objective point of the enemy's movement, I wrote to General Johnston, urging him to make preparations for a junction with General Beauregard, and to his objections, and the difficulties he presented, replied at great length, endeavoring to convince him that the troops he described as embarrassing a hasty march might be withdrawn in advance of the more effective portion of his command. Writing with entire confidence, I kept no copy of my letters, and, when subsequent events caused the wish to refer to them, I requested General Johnston to send me copies of them. He replied that his tent had been blown down, and his papers had been scattered. His letters to me, which would show the general purport of mine to him, have shared the fate which during or soon after the close of the war befell most of the correspondence I had preserved, and his retained copies, if still in his possession, do not appear to have been deemed of sufficient importance to be inserted in his published "Narrative."
On the 17th of July, 1861, the following telegram was sent by the Adjutant-General:
"Richmond, July 17, 1861.
"To General J. E. Johnston, Winchester, Virginia.
"General Beauregard is attacked. To strike the enemy a decisive blow, a junction of all your effective force will be needed. If practicable, make the movement, sending your sick and baggage to Culpepper Court-House, either by railroad or by Warrenton. In all the arrangements exercise your discretion.
(Signed) "S. Cooper,
"Adjutant and Inspector-General."
The confidence reposed in General Johnston, sufficiently evinced by the important command intrusted to him, was more than equal to the expectation that he would do all that was practicable to execute the order for a junction, as well as to secure his sick and baggage. For the execution of the one great purpose, that he would allow no minor question to interfere with that which was of vital importance, and for which he was informed all his "effective force" would "be needed."
The order referred to was the telegram inserted above, in which the sending the sick to Culpepper Court-House might have been after or before the effective force had moved to the execution of the main and only positive part of the order. All the arrangements were left to the discretion of the General. It seems strange that any one has construed this expression as meaning that the movement for a junction was left to the discretion of that officer, and that the forming of a junction—the imperious necessity—should have been termed in the order "all the arrangement," instead of referring that word to its proper connection, the route and mode of transportation. The General had no margin on which to institute a comparison as to the importance of his remaining in the Valley, according to his previous assignment, or going where he was ordered by competent authority.
It gives me pleasure to state that, from all the accounts received at the time, the plans of General Johnston, for masking his withdrawal to form a junction with General Beauregard, were conducted with marked skill, and, though all of his troops did not arrive as soon as expected and needed, he has satisfactorily shown that the failure was not due to any defect in his arrangements for their transportation.
The great question of uniting the two armies had been decided at Richmond. The time and place depended on the enemy, and, when it was seen that the real attack was to be against the position at Manassas, the order was sent to General Johnston to move to that point. His letters of the 12th and 15th instant expressed his doubts about his power to retire from before the superior force of General Patterson, therefore the word "practicable" was in this connection the equivalent of possible. That it was, at the time, so understood by General Johnston, is shown by his reply to the telegram.