An orderly trotted up. Jackson did acknowledge his existence. "Telegram for you, sir," the soldier said, and handed him the sheet.
Jackson rapidly read through it. "A brigade of volunteer infantry on its way up here, eh?" he said. That would better than double his force. He liked what he'd seen of the volunteer regiments in Richmond before leaving for the action: they had a solid leavening of men in their late thirties and early forties, War of Secession veterans, to help show the younger men what soldiering was about. "That's good. That's very good."
Then, abruptly, he stared through the orderly-not with intentional rudeness, as he had with the plump man, but because his mind was for the moment elsewhere. Still clutching the telegram, he went back to the two-story brick house that served him as headquarters- and also as home for his family.
His son Jonathan was outside, playing with a dog. At fifteen, Jonathan was just too young to go to war, and wild with frustration because of it. "What's up, sir?" he called. Jackson did not answer him. Jackson hardly heard him. Jonathan shrugged and threw the stick again; he'd seen his father like that many times before. The general went inside.
Several young officers in the parlor sprang to stiff attention. They were not studying the map spread over the table there: they had been chatting with his pretty daughter, Julia, who was-where did the time go? — heading toward nineteen. Under his gaze, the officers soon found urgent reasons to go elsewhere. "Father!" Julia said reproachfully: she enjoyed the attention.
She got no more answer than had her brother, and flounced off in some dudgeon. Jackson never noticed. He studied the map for a while, traced a railroad line with his finger, and finally grunted in satisfaction. His wife had come into the parlor to sec why Julia had left so abruptly. He walked past Anna without seeing her, either.
Only when he got to the telegraphy office did he recover the power of speech. "Send a wire at once to Rectorstown," he told the operator before whom he stood. "The troops en route hither must disembark from their trains there, on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains." He continued with a detailed stream of orders, which the telegrapher wrote down. At last, he finished: " 'The utmost celerity must be employed, to reach point named by time required.' Now read that back to me, young man, if you'd be so kind."
"Yes, sir," the telegrapher said, and did.
Jackson nodded his thanks and left. The headquarters of Colonel Skidmore Harris, who had been in command in the northern Shenan-doah Valley till Jackson arrived, were next door. Harris was a stringy, middle-aged Georgian who had commanded a regiment in Long-street's corps during the war. Without preamble, Jackson told him, "Colonel, I have taken away from this army the brigade of volunteer troops bound this way from Richmond."
Harris' pipe sent up smoke signals. "I'm sure you have good reason for doing that, sir," he said, his tone suggesting Longstreet would hear about it in a red-hot minute if anything went wrong.
"I do." Jackson went over to the map Harris had nailed up to a wall and did some explaining. When he was through, he asked, "Is everything now perfectly clear to you, Colonel?"
"Yes, sir." Harris puffed on the pipe. "If the Yankees don't take the bait, though — "
"Then the bait will take them," Jackson said. "We shall advance at first light tomorrow, Colonel. Prepare your troops for it. I desire divine services to be held in each regiment this evening, that the men may assure themselves the Almighty favors our just cause. Have you any questions on what is required of you?"
"No, sir." In meditative tones, Colonel Harris went on, "Now we get to see how the new loose-order tactics work out in action."
"Yes." Jackson was curious about that himself. Firing lines with men standing elbow to elbow and blazing away at their foes had taken gruesome casualties from the rifled muzzle-loaders of the War of Secession. Against breech-loaders, which fired so much faster, and against improved artillery, they looked to be suicidal. On paper, the system the Confederate Army had developed to replace close-order drill in the face of the enemy looked good. Jackson knew wars were not fought on paper. Had they been, General McClellan would have been the greatest commander of all time. "Dawn tomorrow," the General In Chief reminded Skidmore Harris. He left before the colonel could reply.
That evening, as the soldiers prayed with their chaplains, Jackson prayed with his family. " Lord," he declared on bended knee, " into Thy hands I commend myself absolutely, trusting that Thou grantest victory to those who find favor in Thine eyes. Thy will be done." He murmured a favorite hymn: " Show pity, Lord. Oh, Lord, forgive!"
He slept in his uniform, as had been his habit during the War of Secession. Anna woke him at half-past three. "Gracias, senora," he said. His wife smiled in the darkness. He put on the oversized boots he favored, jammed on his slouch hat, and went off to war without another word.
Long columns of men in new butternut uniforms and old-fashioned gray ones were already on the move north before the sun crawled over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Winchester was about twenty miles from Front Royal, the Yankee lines a few miles south of the town they'd taken. If not for those lines, he could have been in Winchester before sundown. He hoped to be there by then despite them.
One advantage of the early start was getting as far as possible before the full muggy heat of the day developed. Even on horseback, Jackson felt it. Sweat cut rills through the dust on the faces of the marching men. Dust hung in the air, too. It made gray uniforms look brown, but also let the Yankees, if they were alert, know his forces were advancing on them.
The men rested for ten minutes every hour, their weapons stacked. Otherwise, they marched. Field guns and their ammunition limbers rattled along between infantry companies. At a little past twelve, the soldiers paused to eat salt pork and corn bread and to fill their canteens from the small streams near which they rested. After precisely an hour, they headed north again.
Just after they'd moved out, a messenger galloped up to Jackson from Front Royal and pressed a telegram into his hand. He read it, permitted himself a rare smile, and then rode over to Colonel Skid-more Harris. "The volunteers, Colonel, arc threatening Winchester from the east, by way of both Ashby's Gap and Snicker's Gap," he said. "They report considerable and increasing resistance in their front, which means the U.S. commander in Winchester has surely pulled men from in front of us in order to contest their advance. Having done that, he will find some difficulty in also contesting ours."
Colonel Harris tilted back his head and blew a large, excellent smoke ring. "I'd say that's about right, sir. They don't have all that many more men than this army does-not enough to turn two ways at once and take on two forces our size."
Had Jackson been in Winchester with a force not greatly inferior to the one attacking him, he would not have retreated in the first place. But that was water over the dam now. "Onward," he said.
U.S. forces had dug a line of firing pits about half a mile south of Kernstown, a few miles below Winchester. Jackson smiled again, this time savagely. In the War of Secession, the Yankees had thrown him back from Kernstown. He'd waited more than nineteen years to pay them back, but the hour was at hand.
Their guns opened on his troops at a range of better than a mile and a half. His artillery swung off the roads and went into battery in the fields to reply. At the same time, his infantry deployed from column into line, moving with the drilled smoothness that showed how many times the regulars had bored themselves carrying out the manoeuvre on the practice field.
The line wasn't much thicker than a skirmish line had been during the War of Secession. To a veteran of that war, it looked gossamer thin-until one noticed how many rounds the men were firing as they advanced, and how thick the black-powder smoke swirled around them. A division of soldiers in the earlier war would have shown no more firepower than this light brigade.