For twenty-four hours the panic in Washington was complete. The
Government clerks were rushed into the trenches and hastily armed.
Early threw one shell into the city, which crashed through a house, his
cavalry dashed into the corporate limits and took a prisoner and later
burned the house of Blair, a member of the Cabinet.
The Sixth Corps arrived from Petersburg; a thousand men were killed and
wounded in the skirmishing of two days, but the Capital escaped by the
skin of its teeth.
Grant laconically remarked:
"If Early had been one day earlier he would have entered the Capital."
While he had not actually taken Washington, Lee's strategy was a
masterly stroke. He had cleared the Shenandoah Valley, which was his
granary, and enabled the farmers to reap their crops. He had showed the
world that his army was still so terrible a weapon that with it he could
hold Grant at bay, drive his enemy from the Valley, invade two Northern
States, burn their cities and destroy their railroads, and throw his
shells into Washington.
A wave of incredulous sickening despair swept the North. If this could
be done after three and a half years of blood and tears and two
billions of dollars spent, where could the end be?
Early had done in Washington what neither McDowell, McClellan, Pope,
Burnside, Hooker, Meade nor Grant had yet succeeded in doing for
Richmond--thrown shells into the city and taken a prisoner from its very
streets.
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