Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

This campaign had moreover delivered into his hands more than one thousand prisoners and all the war-material of the enemy, and had only cost him a few hundred men. His plan had been well conceived, vigorously executed, and a complete success had crowned this first essay in strategy. He had the good fortune to have a rather meagre army to manage, although superior in number to that of the enemy: its smallness enabled it to subsist in a very poor country, and he had the rare merit of leading inexperienced troops successfully through marches and countermarches. We have seen, however, that these troops, in consequence of their having halted too soon for rest, came near losing him all the fruits of the campaign.

The possession of West Virginia could have no important bearing upon the war, because that country, having neither watercourses nor railways, was inaccessible to large armies; but Mc-Clellan's successes had a great moral effect; they stimulated the ardor of the North, while contributing at the same time to create certain illusions in regard to the speedy termination of the war.

During this short campaign, Patterson, whom we have left in Maryland in front of the Shenandoah Valley, had resumed the offensive, in pursuance of instructions from Scott, and had thus detained the forces which the Confederates might have detached from Johnston's corps stationed at Winchester, to send them to Garnett's assistance.

The best portion of his forces, as we have already stated, having been ordered to Washington towards the middle of June, he was compelled to evacuate Harper's Ferry and recross the Potomac. But he was speedily rejoined by several newly-formed regiments, with the promise of additional reinforcements, which would increase his army to a total of 20,000 men. Although these troops were badly organized, poorly disciplined, and entirely inexperienced, their numerical superiority over the forces opposed to them enabled Patterson to retake possession of the important line of railway he had abandoned a short time before, together with the positions of Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg. On the 2d of July he forded the Potomac at Williamsport, and, eight kilometres beyond that point, on the borders of the stream of Falling Waters, his advance-guard met a brigade