Page images
PDF
EPUB

JACKSON CROSSES THE SHENANDOAH.

[blocks in formation]

From Front Royal, Shields pushed on to Port Republic, with the view of getting in front of General Jackson, while General Fremont was close upon him in his rear. Thus caught between two forces, the irresistible strength of one of which he had already tested, and having reason to dread a collision with the other, if not from its superiority of power, from his own inferiority of position, since he was obliged to cross the river in face of it, Jackson seemed in imminent danger. Fortune, however, smiled on the enterprising leader who was ever ready to catch at its favors.

263

son had anticipated this movement by posting on the other side, during the night, a much larger force of artillery, so that on the dawn of next day, General Carroll was surprised to find June that the bridge was not, as he had 9. supposed, controlled by himself, but by the enemy. He now strove to burn it, but was foiled in the repeated attempts. he made; his troops being constantly forced back by the heavy cannonade of the enemy's powerful guns. Jackson now threw across his army, with the cavalry in advance, which cleared the way by an impetuous charge. General Carroll, though reinforced by Tyler's brigade, sent forward to his aid by General Shields, was still inferior in number to the enemy, and was obliged to yield to their pressure. Jackson thus succeeded in crossing the river with his whole force, and in driving back the Union troops some three or four miles, where they finally held their ground af ter a struggle of five hours, "our boys," adds a chronicler, "fighting every foot of the way," though one or two of the regiments were scattered in disorder and took to the mountains. The loss of the Union troops was 55 killed, 374 wounded, and 524 missing.

General Shields' advance, consisting of a brigade, under the command of Colonel Carroll,* had reached Port Republic on the 8th of June, where, finding some few of the enemy, he after a brisk skirmish drove them out. Carroll, however, with imprudent confidence, trusting either to the effect of an attack from Fremont, or to his own strength, determined to hold the bridge which crossed the Shenandoah. He accordingly refused to have it burned, and posted his artillery with the view of command- to be one of the most active and capable ing its passage. The energetic Jack-leaders in either army. Though he may

• His brigade, the fourth, consisted of the Eightyfourth Pennsylvania, Eleventh Pennsylvania, Seventh Indiana, and First Virginia, four regiments, though its effective force was estimated to be only 1,600 strong.

General Jackson was now beyond immediate danger from his pursuers. His enterprising pursuit of Banks, and his subsequent skilful retreat, proved him

have been balked by the vigilance of General Banks of the full accomplishment of his purpose in pursuing him,

he had succeeded by his repeated blows in so paralyzing his little force that it was incapable, when the excitement of the chase was over, of further movement.

at Contreras, Churubusco, and Chapultepec won for him rapid promotion, and toward the close of the Mexican war he was brevetted a major. He was subsequently in command at Fort Hamilton, but in 1852 resigned his rank in the army. At the commencement of the civil war, Jackson is reputed to have hesitated as to which side he would join. His perplexity was owing to the fact that though he himself was a Virginian, his marriage with a Northern woman had created ties with the North which he was reluctant to sever. His fatherin-law, a clergyman, is said to have vis

In his retreat Jackson succeeded in accomplishing all he could have desired, and more than he could have expected. Though beset on either flank by the large forces his enemy with their abounding resources had brought to bear against him, he had so skilfully conducted the repeated battles with his antagonists, that although they boasted of victory, he enjoyed its fruits. Jackson brought back with him all the prisoners, amount-ited and urged him to remain loyal to ing to over 3,000, whom he had taken from General Banks, and his full train of wagons loaded with the spoils of his raid through the valley of the Shenandoah!"sore," he declared, "I must go with Thomas Jefferson Jackson, whose skill and enterprise made him so formidable an enemy, was born in Virginia, in 1825. Having graduated at West Point in 1846, he served in the following year in Mexico as an artillery officer under Magruder. His gallantry

the United States. They spent several hours in prayer together; but after a struggle which Jackson confessed to be

Virginia," and entered the service of the Southern Confederacy, of which he proved himself to be one of the most alert and able officers, having wellearned, by his stubborn resistance to the progress of our armies, his title of "Stonewall."

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed]
« PreviousContinue »