CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRES OF RICHMOND
To meet three great armies converging on Richmond along the James under
McClellan, from the North under McDowell, and the West by the Shenandoah
Valley, the South had barely fifty-eight thousand men commanded by
Joseph E. Johnston and eighteen thousand under Stonewall Jackson.
The Southern people were still suffering from the delusion of Bull Run
and had not had time to adjust themselves to the amazing defeats
suffered at Fort Henry and Fort Donaldson, to say nothing of the
stunning victory of the _Monitor_ in Hampton Roads, which had opened the
James to the gates of the Confederate Capital.
Jackson was ordered into the Shenandoah Valley to execute the apparently
impossible task of holding in check the armies of Fremont, Milroy, Banks
and Shields, and at the same time prevent the force of forty thousand
men under McDowell from reaching McClellan. The combined forces of the
Federal armies opposed thus to Jackson were eight times greater than his
command. And yet, by a series of rapid and terrifying movements which
gained for his little army the title of "foot cavalry," he succeeded in
defeating, in quick succession, each army in detail.
McDowell was despatched in haste to join Fremont and crush Jackson. And
while his army was rushing into the Shenandoah Valley, Jackson withdrew
and quietly joined the army before Richmond which moved to meet
McClellan.
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