A glance at the map, with a view to locating the places to which reference has been made by name, will make clear the importance of the work in which the 84th was engaged thus early in its career.
It will also make plain that all of danger to Washington did not lie across the Long Bridge.
Length of consideration is not needed to incline to the opinion that Jackson in Maryland and Pennsylvania, in the early days of '62, would have produced a feeling throughout the North not calculated to lessen the weight of the conflict.
Operations by other troops in the eastern part of Virginia would have been impossible had Jackson overcome the forces in the Valley. Against him Shields' Division played an effective part.
It was Shields' Division, and not the "other fellows," that Jackson's men least desired to meet.
At the time of McClellan's Peninsula campaign, the people did not understand the situation about Winchester and other points in the Valley, and have not cared to learn it since.
It was well for Pennsylvania, it was well for the Union, that the fiat against Shields had not gone forth before June of '62. He was the first to strike Jackson with defeat, and no one did it afterward.
This noble Division of Shields' marched promptly and fought well, and therein they had, and have, their compensation, without being sung in lines of rhyme, or spoken in the pages of story.
On the 21st of June, Samuel M. Bowman, late Major 4th Illinois Cavalry, was commissioned, and on the 25th mustered, Colonel of the 84th.