Cautious, rapid and tireless as ever, Jackson advanced into Culpeper county; and on the 9th of August gave the gong-sounder his first lesson on the field of Cedar Mountain. Throwing a portion of his force under Early on the enemy's flank and bringing Ewell and, later, Winder against his front, Jackson forced him from his position after a bloody fight, which the advance of A. P. Hill turned into a complete victory.
Cedar Mountain was a sharp and well-contested fight; but the Confederates inflicted a loss five times their own, held the field, and captured a number of prisoners and guns. General Winder led his troops gallantly to the charge, but just at the moment of collision he was struck and mortally wounded by a shell. And the unstained spirit of the gallant son of Maryland winged its flight, ere the shouts of victory could cheer it on its way!
The Washington government at once ordered the remains of McClellan's army to General Pope; and massing with them Burnside's army at Fredericksburg and the vicinity, strained every nerve to aid his successful advance.
But here we may digress for the moment, to take a bird's-eye view of matters of grave moment passing in distant quarters of the Confederacy.
While victory had perched upon Confederate banners in Virginia, a heavy cloud was gathering over the West; threatening to burst and sweep ruin and destruction over the whole trans-Alleghany region. Not dispirited by the reverses in Virginia, the northern government remitted nothing of its designs upon the West, but rather pushed them toward more rapid completion. These designs were to hold the State of Kentucky by the army under Buell, wrest from the South the possession of Tennessee and Alabama—as a base for attack upon Georgia and cutting through to the seaboard; and to push the army under Grant down through Mississippi to the Gulf. These movements would not only weaken the Confederacy, by diverting so many men, ill to be spared, to watch the various columns; but would, moreover, wrest from it the great grain-producing and cattle-grazing sections from which the armies were mainly fed. Simultaneously with these a heavy force was to be massed under McClernand in Ohio, to sweep down the Mississippi; while the weak show of Confederate force in the states west of the river was to be crushed before it could make head.
Such was the Federal programme; well conceived and backed by every appliance of means, men and material. To meet it we had but a small numerical force to defend an extensive and varied tract; and at the Capital grave fears began to prevail that the overpowering numbers and points of attack would crush the little armies we could muster there.
Nor was the feeling of the people rendered more easy by their confidence in the general to whom the defense of this invaluable section was entrusted. General Braxton Bragg—however causeless and unjust their dictum may have been—had never been popular with the southern masses. They regarded him as a bloodthirsty martinet, and listened too credulously to all silly stories of his weakness and severity that were current, in the army and out. Influenced rather by prejudice than by any real knowledge of the man, they believed him vain, arrogant and weak; denying him credit for whatever real administrative ability that he possessed. The painful result of his command was later emphasized by the pessimists, to justify their incredulity as to his executive powers.
Besides, many people believed that General Bragg was a pet—if not a creature of Mr. Davis; and that he was thrust into a position that others deserved far more, when he succeeded Beauregard in command of the army of the West.
The latter officer had, after the evacuation of Corinth, been compelled to retire by ill health; and Bragg was soon sent to take his place, with the understanding in the minds of the people that Kentucky was to be the theater of active operations, and that a programme of aggression—rather than of defense—was to be carried out, as suggested by Beauregard.
General Bragg entered upon his command with a show of great vigor—falling into General Beauregard's views that a diversion toward Ohio, threatening Cincinnati, would leave the main army free to march upon Louisville before re-enforcements could reach Buell. With this view General Kirby Smith, with all the troops that could be spared—ill clad, badly equipped, and with no commissariat—was pushed forward toward the Ohio. On the 29th of August—while our victorious cannon were still echoing over the field of the second Manassas—he met and defeated the enemy at Richmond; pressed on to Lexington, and thence to a point in easy reach of Cincinnati—at that moment not only the great granary and storehouse of the Federal armies of the West, but their depot and arsenal as well; her wharves crowded with transports, quartermasters' steamers and unfinished gunboats, and her warehouses bursting with commissary and ordnance stores.