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the battles of Cross Keyes and Port Republic, the march of Jackson to unite with the Army of Virginia, we did not participate; therefore I leave them with no other allusion.
On the thirty-first of May, the enemy at Bunker Hill, Martinsburg, and Charlestown was apprised that Fremont from the west and McDowell from the east were closing in upon his rear.
In one week after our fight at Winchester, Jackson, with his whole army, turned southward in flight.
The effect of our retreat upon the country was startling.
In Massachusetts the people were aroused by a proclamation.
Hardly had “the thousand camp-fires” begun to glow around “the thousand carriages upon the banks of the Potomac,” at eleven o'clock at night of the twenty-fifth of May, when Governor Andrew at Boston penned the last words of a proclamation, calling upon Massachusetts to rise once more for the rescue and defence of the capital.
The whole active militia of Massachusetts was summoned to report on Boston Common “to-morrow,” from thence to “oppose with fiery zeal and courageous patriotism the march of the foe.”
1 The next day the public was again excited by an appeal2 from Major R. Morris Copeland, Banks's adjutant-general, who happened to be in Boston
1 This was dated the twenty-fifth of May, Sunday, 11 P. M.
2 This appeal came out in the “Boston daily Advertiser,” of which C. F. Dunbar was then editor, on the 26th of May, 1862. As soon as it came to his notice, Banks, in a telegram to Dunbar, offered up Copeland as a propitiatory sacrifice, as follows :--
See Statement of R. M. Copeland, p. 17.
James R. Osgood and Company, 1883.
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