He did. At first the men did not know him, then there mounted a wild excitement. Suppressed with difficulty during the actual evolutions, it burst into flower when the ranks were broken. The sun was setting in a flood of gold; there hung a fairy light over the green fields and the Opequon and the vivid woods. The place rang to the frolic shouting. It had the most delighted sound. "Stonewall! Stonewall Jackson! Stonewall! Stonewall! Old Jack! Old Jack! Old Jack!"
Old Jack touched his beautiful hat of a lieutenant-general. Little Sorrel beneath him moved with a jerk of the head and a distended nostril. The men noticed that, too. "He don't know him either! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Ain't life worth while? Ain't it grand?—Stonewall! Stonewall!"
On went the gold October, passing at last in a rain and drift of leaves into a russet November. The curls of wood smoke showed plainer down the glades, the crows were cawing, the migratory birds going south, but the days were yet mild and still, wrapped in a balm of pale sunshine, a faint, purplish, Indian summer haze. The 2d Corps was hale and soberly happy.
It was the chaplain's season. There occurred in the Army of Northern Virginia a religious revival, a far-spread and lasting deepening of feeling. For many nights in many forest glades there were "meetings" with prayer and singing. "Old Hundred" floated through the air. From tents and huts of boughs came the soldiers. They sat upon the earth, thick carpeted now with the faded leaves, or upon gnarled, out-cropping roots of oak and beech. Above shone the moon; there was a touch of frost in the air. The chaplain had some improvised pulpit; a great fire, or perhaps a torch fastened to a bough, gave light whereby to read the Book. The sound of the voice, the sound of the singing, blended with the voice of the Opequon rushing—all rushing toward the great Sea.
| "Come, humble sinner, in whose breast A thousand thoughts revolve—" |
It made a low thunder, so many soldiers' voices. Always, on these nights, in some glade or meadow, with some regiment or other, there was found the commander of the 2d Corps. Beneath the cathedral roof of the forest, or beneath the stars in the open, sat Stonewall Jackson, worshipping the God of Battles. Undoubtedly he was really and deeply happy. His place is on the Judean hills, with Joab and David and Abner. Late in this November there came to him another joy. In North Carolina, where his wife had gone, a child was born to him, his only child, a daughter.
In the first half of October had occurred Jeb Stuart's brilliant Monocacy raid, two days and a half within McClellan's lines. On the twenty-sixth McClellan began the passage of the Potomac. He crossed near Berlin, and Lee, assured now that the theatre of war would be east of the Blue Ridge, dispatched Longstreet with the 1st Corps to Culpeper. On the seventh of November McClellan was removed from the command of the Army of the Potomac. It was given over to Burnside, and he took the Fredericksburg route to Richmond.
The Army of the Potomac numbered one hundred and twenty-five thousand men and officers and three hundred and twenty guns. At Washington were in addition eighty thousand men, and up and down the Potomac twenty thousand more. The Army of Northern Virginia in all, 1st and 2d Corps, had seventy-two thousand men and officers and two hundred and seventy-five guns. Lee called Stonewall Jackson to join Longstreet at Fredericksburg.
On the twenty-second the 1st Corps quitted, amid smiles and tears, many a "God keep you!" and much cheering, Winchester the beloved. Out swung the long column upon the Valley pike. Advance and main and rear, horse and foot and guns, Stonewall Jackson and his twenty-five thousand took the old road. The men were happy. "Old road, old road, old road, howdy do! How's your health, old lady? Haven't you missed us? Haven't you missed us? We've missed you!"
It was Indian summer, violet, dream-like. By now there had been burning and harrowing in the Valley; war had laid his mailed hand upon the region. It was not yet the straining clutch of later days, but it was bad enough. The Indian summer wrapped with a soft touch of mourning purple much of desolation, much of untilled earth, and charred roof-tree, and broken walls. The air was soft and gentle, lying balmy and warm on the road and ragged fields, and the haze so hid the distances that the column thought not so much of how the land was scarred as of the memories that thronged on either side of the Valley pike. "Kernstown! The field of Kernstown. There's Fulkerson's wall. About five hundred years ago!"