In this exciting month's campaign, Jackson made great captures of stores and prisoners; but this was not its chief result; without gain. ing a single tactical victory he had yet achieved a great strategic victory, for by skillfully maneuvering 15,000 men he succeeded in neutralizing a force of 60,000 It is perhaps not too much to say that he saved Richmond; for when McClellan, in expectation that McDowell might still be allowed to come and join him, threw forward his right wing under Porter to Hanover Court House on the 26th of May, the echoes of his cannon bore to those in Richmond who knew the situation of the two Union armies, the knell of the capital of the Confederacy.
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when he did move, it was toward Manassas, and not Richmond, and Ricketts' division did not leave Front Royal for Manassas until the 17th of June, when Shields followed him into Piedmont Virginia.
The object of his delay in the Valley being accomplished, Jackson left it on the night of the 17th of June, ordering his cavalry to continue its demonstrations down the Valley; and by rail and march, the ‘ride-and-tie’ way, as it was called, he reached the vicinity of Richmond on the 26th day of June, and was in line of battle and ready to fall on McClellan's rear and participate in the bloody engagement of Gaines' Mill on the 27th, and become a potent factor in winning the victory of that great day of the Seven Days of battle around Richmond.
Swinton, the Federal historian of the army of the Potomac, in writing of Jackson's Valley campaign, says:
Atlanta, Ga. 1899.
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