[144] Washington was the shrewdly chosen means of again diverting that force.
When this had had its intended effect, Jackson, with his whole command, now raised to about twenty-five thousand men, was ordered to march rapidly and secretly in the direction of Richmond. He set out from the vicinity of Port Republic (where he had remained since the termination of the Valley campaign) on the 17th of June, and moving by way of Gordonsville and the line of the Virginia Central Railroad, pushed his advance so vigorously that on the 25th he struck Ashland, on the Fredericksburg Railroad, twelve miles from Richmond. With such skill did Jackson manage his march, that not General McClellan, nor yet Banks, nor Fremont, nor McDowell, knew aught of it;1 and when, on the 25th, Jackson had reached Ashland, and was within striking distance of the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan, absorbed in his proposed operations on the Richmond side of the Chickahominy, was that very day advancing his pickets on the Williamsburg road, preparatory to a general forward movement in that direction. Jackson had now reached a point where the other Confederate columns could begin the parts assigned to them.
Lee's plan contemplated that so soon as Jackson, by his manoeuvres on the north bank of the Chickahominy, should have uncovered the passage of the stream at Meadow and Mechanicsville bridges, the divisions on the south bank should cross and join Jackson's column, when the whole army should sweep down the north side of the Chickahominy, towards the York River, laying hold of McClellan's communications with White House.2
The only interference with this plan was caused by a day's delay in Jackson's movement whereby it occurred that
