Now Jeb Stuart’s only fault was that he too dearly loved a raid. He applied to Lee for permission to take three brigades, thread the Bull Run Mountains, attain the enemy’s rear, pass between his main body and Washington and so cross into Maryland, joining the army somewhere north of the Potomac. Now Lee’s only fault was an occasional too gracious complaisance, a too moderate estimate of his own judgment, a willingness to try for what they were worth the suggestions of subordinates. With entire justice he loved and trusted Stuart and admired his great abilities. He permitted the deflection of the cavalry—only the cavalry must keep him cognizant of every move of the enemy. If Hooker finally crossed the Potomac, he must know it at once, and at once Stuart must fall in upon the right of the grey army of invasion.
Ewell at Sharpsburg broke camp at dawn of the twenty-second. Followed a week of, on the whole, tranquil progress. “Old Dick’s” marches were masterly done. Reveille sounded at dawn. An hour later the troops were on the road. Unhurrying and undelayed, they made each day a good march and bivouacked with the setting sun.
How fair seemed the rich Pennsylvania countryside! The Valley of Virginia had worn that aspect before the war. It, too, had had yellow wheat-fields and orchards and turning mill wheels. It, too, had had good brick country-houses and great barns and peaceful towns and roads that were mended when they were worn. It, too, had had fences and walls and care. It had had cattle in lush meadows. “Land of Goshen!” said Ewell’s soldiers. “To think we were like this once!”
“Well, we will be again.”
“Listen to old Cheerfulness! And yet I reckon he’s right, I reckon he’s right, I reckon he’s right!”
“Of course he’s right! I couldn’t be low-spirited if I tried. Hallelujah!”
The Second Corps did not try. No more did the First nor the Third. The Army of Northern Virginia was in good spirits. Behind it lay some weeks of rest and recuperation; behind that the victory of the Wilderness. Worn and inadequate enough as it was, yet this army’s equipment was better to-day than it had been. It had the spoils of great battle-fields. Artillery was notably bettered; cavalry was fit and fine; infantry a seasoned veteran who thought of a time without war as of some remote golden age. The Army of Northern Virginia was now organized as it had not been organized before for efficiency. It numbered between sixty and seventy thousand men. It had able major- and lieutenant-generals and a very great commanding general. It was veteran, eager for action, confident, with victories behind it. There was something lifted in the spirit of the men. Behind them, across the Potomac, lay a devastated land,—their land, their home, their mother country! Before them lay a battle, a great battle, the greatest battle yet, perhaps! Win it—win it! and see a great rainbow of promise, glorious and bright, arch itself over the land beyond the river, the land darkened, devastated, and beloved!... Before them, as they marched, marched a vision of dead leaders: Shiloh and Albert Sidney Johnston—Port Republic and Ashby—Chancellorsville and Stonewall Jackson—of many dead leaders, and of a many and a many dead comrades. The vision did not hurt; it helped. It did not weaken their hearts; it strengthened them.
The Stonewall Brigade found itself in good heart and upon the road to Greencastle. It was a sunny June day and a sunny June road with oxheart cherry trees at intervals. Corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, companies—one and all had orders, calm and complete, not to plunder. “The Commanding General,” ran Lee’s general order, “earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.” To the credit of a poorly clad army, out of a land famished and fordone, be it said that the orders were obeyed. The army was in an enemy’s land, a land of plenty, but the noncombatant farming-people of that land suffered but little in purse or property and not at all in person. “I was told,” writes a good grey artilleryman, “by the inhabitants that they suffered less from our troops than from their own, and that if compelled to have either they preferred having the ‘rebels’ camped upon their land. I saw no plundering whatever, except that once or twice I did see branches laden with fruit broken from cherry trees. Of course it goes without saying that the quartermasters, especially of artillery battalions, were confessedly, and of malice aforethought, horse-thieves!”
The Sixty-fifth Virginia admired the Cumberland Valley. “It looks for all the world like the picture of Beulah land in a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ I got as a prize for learning the most Bible verses!”—“This landscape makes me want to cry. It looks so—so—so damn peaceful.”—“That’s so! They don’t have to glean no battle-fields. They’re busy reaping wheat.”—“Cherries! Those cherries are as big as winesaps. I’m going to have cherry pie to-night,—
“Can she make a cherry pie,