scope and verge" for the employment of all their faculties. Conscientious study will not perhaps make them great, but it will make them respectable; and when the responsibility of command comes, they will not disgrace their flag, injure their cause, nor murder their men.

45

CHAPTER V.

THE VALLEY CAMPAIGN.

Ar length the expected order to march came, and we moved south to Gordonsville. In one of his letters to Madame du Deffand, Horace Walpole writes of the English spring as "coming in with its accustomed severity," and such was our experience of a Virginian spring; or rather, it may be said that winter returned with renewed energy, and we had for several days snow, sleet, rain, and all possible abominations in the way of weather. Arrived at Gordonsville, whence the army had departed for the Peninsula, we met orders to join Jackson in the Valley, and marched thither by Swift Run Gap"--the local name for mountain passes. Swift Run, an affluent of the Rapidan, has its source in this gap. The orders mentioned were the last received from General Joseph E. Johnston, from whom subsequent events separated me until the close of the war; and occasion is thus furnished for the expression of opinion of his character and

services.

In the full vigour of mature manhood, erect, alert,

quick, and decisive of speech, General Johnston was the beau ideal of a soldier. Without the least proneness to blandishments, he gained and held the affection and confidence of his men. Brave and impetuous in action, he had been often wounded, and no officer of the general staff of the old United. States army had seen so much actual service with troops. During the Mexican war he was permitted to take command of a voltigeur regiment, and rendered brilliant service. In 1854 he resigned from the Engineers to accept the lieutenant-colonelcy of a cavalry regiment. When the civil war became certain, a Virginian by birth, he left the position of Quartermaster-General of the United States, and offered his sword to the Confederacy. To the East, as his great namesake Albert Sidney to the West, he was "the rose and fair expectancy" of our cause; and his timely march from Patterson's front in the Valley to assist Beauregard at Manassas, confirmed public opinion of his capacity. Yet he cannot be

said to have proved a fortunate commander. Leaving out of view Bentonville and the closing scenes in North Carolina, which were rather the spasmodic efforts of despair than regular military movements, General Johnston's "offensive" must be limited to Seven Pines or Fair Oaks. Here his plan was well considered and singularly favoured of fortune. Some two corps of M'Clellan's army were posted on the south-west or Richmond side of the Chickahominy, and a sudden rise of that stream swept away bridges and overflowed the adjacent lowlands, cutting off these corps from their supports. They ought to

have been crushed, but Johnston fell, severely wounded; upon which confusion ensued, and no results of importance were obtained. Official reports fail, most unwisely, to fix the responsibility of the failure, and I do not desire to add to the gossip prevailing then and since.

From his own account of the war we can gather that Johnston regrets he did not fight on the Oostenaula, after Polk had joined him. It appears that in a council two of his three corps commanders, Polk, Hardee, and Hood, were opposed to fighting there; but to call a council at all was a weakness not to be expected of a general of Johnston's ability and selfreliant nature.

I have written of him as a master of logistics, and his skill in handling troops was great. As a retreat, the precision and coolness of his movements during the Georgia campaign would have enhanced the reputation of Moreau; but it never seems to have occurred to him to assume the offensive during the many turning movements of his flanks-movements involving time and distance. Dispassionate reflection would have brought him to the conclusion that Lee was even more overweighted in Virginia than he in Georgia; that his Government had given him every available man, only leaving small garrisons at Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, and Mobile; that Forrest's command in Mississippi, operating on Sherman's communications, was virtually doing his work, while it was idle to expect assistance from the transMississippi region. Certainly no more egregious blunder was possible than that of relieving him from

If he intended to

command in front of Atlanta. fight there, he was entitled to execute his plan. Had he abandoned Atlanta without a struggle, his removal would have met the approval of the army and public-an approval which, under the circumstances of its action, the Richmond Government failed to receive.

I am persuaded that General Johnston's mind was so jaundiced by the unfortunate disagreement with President Davis, to which allusion has been made in an earlier part of these reminiscences, as to seriously cloud his judgment and impair his usefulness. He sincerely believed himself the Esau of the Government, grudgingly fed on bitter herbs, while a favoured Jacob enjoyed the flesh-pots. Having known him intimately for many years, having served under his command and studied his methods, I feel confident that his great abilities under happier conditions would have distinctly modified, if not changed, the current of events. Destiny willed that Davis and Johnston should be brought into collision, and the breach, once made, was never repaired. Each misjudged

the other to the end.

Ewell's division reached the western base of Swift Run Gap on a lovely spring evening, April 30, 1862, and in crossing the Blue Ridge seemed to have left winter and its rigours behind. Jackson, whom we moved to join, had suddenly that morning marched toward M'Dowell, some eighty miles west, where, after uniting with a force under General Edward Johnson, he defeated the Federal general Milroy. Some days later he as suddenly returned. Mean