This text is part of:
“
[245]
with towering passion and triumph, galloping amidst the foremost of his pursuers and urging them upon the enemy.”
With all the baggage that we had saved from Strasburg, and with all that we had added at Winchester, leaving behind us the sick, the dying, the dead, and many prisoners, we moved rapidly northward for Williamsport to cross the Potomac.
As we gained the hill north of the town, I turned to look back upon the ridge of which I have spoken as almost surrounding Winchester.
The entire crest for three parts of this vast circumference was covered with the enemy.
Now, for the first time, I saw General Banks, making a feeble effort to arrest the troops, and uttering some words about promised reinforcements.
Turning his eyes backward, I think there was no doubt in his own mind that the enemy had “developed” his force to him, -thus reversing the necessity with which General Banks had met my most urgent appeals on the night of the 23d of May.1 General Banks had made no provision for a retreat, evidently believing that with his inferior force he should comply with his telegram to the War Department, sent the day before, and return to Strasburg.2 Why, encumbered as we were with baggage and wagons and all the material that hours before should have been sent away, we were not destroyed, must be answered by those who claim that on this occasion Jackson exhibited the highest order of military talent.
The pursuit was feeble in the extreme.
Jackson followed us to Bunker Hill, thirteen miles, but finding that he could
1 “I must develop the force of the enemy.”
2 Such a telegram was in the hands of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and an explanation asked of a witness who was attempting to show that Banks knew before he left Strasburg the number of Jackson's forces. When Banks in his official report said he did know the number, he forgot this telegram.
James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.