Operations in the Valley.
On getting to Richmond by the roundabout way I had to go, it was a great gratification to find that the authorities there immediately upon the receipt of my dispatch, had telegraphed to North Carolina for additional troops and that General Lawton with several thousand men, was already en route to reinforce Jackson in the Valley, his advance passing by rail through Richmond the day after my arrival there. In the meantime Jackson with his little army of 15,000 men, was making good his promise to send forward the prisoners, captured property, etc., and at the same time not only to baffle the converging armies that were seeking to surround him, but also to beat them in detail. The masterly movements by which these results were accomplished have been so fully and faithfully described by others, and especially, by Colonel Allan, in his admirable paper on "Jackson's Valley Campaign," published in the Philadelphia Weekly Times of November 30, 1878, that I shall not attempt to detail them here, contenting myself with a mere outline of their more salient features to preserve the continuity of my narrative.
Leaving Winchester on Saturday morning, May 31, he made a forced march that day with the main body of his troops as far as Strasburg, his line, including prisoners, a large park of artillery and 1,500 wagons, being nearly twelve miles long. At Strasburg he went into camp to rest his men, who, since the previous afternoon, had come fifty miles, and also to wait for Winder, who had been left behind with the Stonewall Brigade to cover the retreat and recall the Second Virginia Regiment, which had been sent to Loudown Heights, and which, by the way, marched that Saturday evening from across Shenandoah to a point beyond Newtown, making more than thirty-five, miles without rations, over muddy roads, amidst a succession of showers that drenched its members to the skin. Jackson's position was now directly between that of the two hostile armies which had been sent to "crush or capture" him; Fremont, with a force numerically equal to his own, being but five miles to the
