The watchman and southron. [volume] (Sumter, S.C.) 1881-1930, 1894-06-06
XIV.

Lucoo tu1uSS udO "uCu 7 W VIII Nv
decision.
CHAPTER XIV.
We follow Jackson up and down the
valley because his movements are
threads of our story, and he must be
driven away to introduce new charac-
tiers. Shields had scarcely ceased pur-
suit when a Federal army under Banks
was sent into the valley. No 4 sup
posed Jackson had recovered from his
defeat when he suddenly moved an army
of IL, 900 men down to New Market,
crossed the Shenandoah river and the
mountain range to the east and was in
the Luray valley before an alarm was
raised. There was a Federal force sta
toned at Front Royal, and he was NOV
ing to attack it.
An army in the march is a monster
serpent on the move. Far in advance
are cavalry scouts. Then follows a body
Of troopers. After that comes the adj
vance guard of Infantry. Then artil-
lery, more infantry, more artillery, and
finally the wagon train. The highway
is packed with a living, moving mass
for miles and miles. Infantry and cav
airy overflow into the adjacent fields on
the right and left. Where there is a
bend in the road they cut across it.
Horses fall lame or sick and are aban-
doned. Wagons break down and are
unloaded and set on fire. Guns and
caissons get mixed or upset in the
bitches, and a hundred men lend their
aid. Sore footed men stagger and limp
and finally throw themselves down and
declare they can go no farther. Here
and there a musket is accidentally dis
charged. followed by a shrek and a
fall, and half an hour later the victim
fills a grave by the roadside. The mass
advances a quarter Of a mile and halts.
Another quarter cf a mile and another
halt. Only in the case of a single regi-
ment is there freedom to step out and
march at the rate of three or four miles
an hour.
The trail of a marching army, even
in a country of friends, is a trailof ruin
and desolation. Every soldier is an en-
CINE Of destruction. He has a feeling
that he must desolate and destroy.
Trees are felled and fences pulled down
to repair the roads, gardens are de-
spoiled, crops are trampled under foot,
fruit trees denuded of their branches,
stacks and barns fred by accident or
design. It is as if a fierce cyclone had
passed over the country, followed by a
plague.
So Jackson's army swept forward to
Front Royal. His command outnum-
pered the Federal force four to one. and
his presence was not suspected until his
artillery began to thunder. The Fed
eral commander soon discovered the sit
uation, but he did not retreat without
a fight. He gathered his handful OF
men, posted them to cover the town.
and for an hour they held Jackson at
bay. 1t was only when they We're al
most surrounded that they gave way
and sought shelter in the passes of the
mountain. Jackson paused only long
enough to burn such Federal stores as
he could not handily carry away and
then swept down the Luray. bent to the
left, and next Gay was before Wlnches-
ter. He attacked and recaptured the
town and drove every Federal to the
Potomac and across it before he halted
again.
Then the Federal government grasped
the situation. and three different armies
were dispatched to close in or Jackson
and destroy him. The battles of Cross
Keys and Port Republic followed, and
Jackson fell back to Join Lee and take
part in the battle which was to sweep
Mcclellan from the peninsula. The
Shenandoah and the Lurav We're now III
possession of the Federals, to be held
till the close of the war, but only with
desperate fighting at intervals.
And now the gallant Custer, with his
command, reached the Shenandoah with
the army of occupation-a young man,
fresh from West Point, on whom the
volunteer officers locked with distrust,
but only waiting to prove his worth.
Custer belonged to Michigan. His first
command was the First, Fifth. Sixth
and Seventh cavalry regiments of that
state, known as the Michigan cavalry
brigade. While his fame was national,
while his sad death years after the war
in that terrible massacre touched the
heart of every American, it is in Michi-
oan more than anywhere else that his