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[122] Harman lieutenant-colonel, and Colonel Baylor major, and I venture to say no regiment in either army was better officered, as the fame it won in the “Stonewall” brigade will prove. The presence of a master mind was visible in the changed condition of the camp. Perfect order reigned everywhere. Instruction in the details of military duties occupied Jackson's whole time. He urged the officers to call upon him for information about even the minutest details of duty, often remarking that it was no discredit to a civilian to be ignorant of military matters. He was a rigid disciplinarian, and yet as gentle and kind as a woman. He was the easiest man in our army to get along with pleasantly so long as one did his duty, but as inexorable as fate in exacting the performance of it; yet he would overlook serious faults if he saw they were the result of ignorance, and would instruct the offender in a kindly way. He was as courteous to the humblest private who sought an interview for any purpose as to the highest officer in his command. He despised superciliousness and self-assertion, and nothing angered him so quickly as to see an officer wound the feelings of those under him by irony or sarcasm. When Jackson found we were without artillery horses, he went into no red-tape correspondence with the circumlocution offices in Richmond, but ordered his quartermaster, Major John A. Harman, to proceed with men to the Quaker settlements in the rich county of Loudoun, famous for its good horses, and buy or impress as many as we needed. Harman executed his orders with such energy and dispatch that he won Jackson's confidence, and remained his chief quartermaster till the day of Jackson's death. By Jackson's orders I took possession of the bridge across the Potomac at Point of Rocks, twelve miles below Harper's Ferry, and fortified the Virginia end of the bridge, as we expected a visit any night from General B. F. Butler, who was at the Relay House on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad. It was my habit to keep awake all night to be ready for emergencies, and to sleep in the day-time, making daily reports, night and morning, to Jackson. One Sunday afternoon, a little over a week after we occupied this post, I was aroused from my nap by one of my men, who said there were two men in blue uniforms (we had not yet adopted the gray) riding about our camp, and looking so closely at everything that he believed they were spies. I went out to see who they were, and found Jackson and one of his staff. As I approached them, he put his finger on his lips and shook his head as a signal for silence. In a low tone he said he preferred it should not be known he had come there. He approved of all I had done, and soon galloped away. I afterward suspected that the visit was simply to familiarize himself with the line of the canal and railroad from Point of Rocks to Harper's Ferry preparatory to a sharp bit of strategy which he practiced a few days later. From the very beginning of the war the Confederacy was greatly in need of rolling-stock for the railroads. We were particularly short of locomotives, and were without the shops to build them. Jackson, appreciating this, hit upon a plan to obtain a good supply from the Baltimore and Ohio road. Its line was double-tracked, at least from Point of Rocks to Martinsburg, a distance of 25 or 30 miles. We had not interfered with the running
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