ps the most efficient
fighting-machine which had appeared upon the battlefield since the
Ironsides of Oliver Cromwell.

Pope was destined to make Jackson's acquaintance speedily--and rather
unceremoniously, for Jackson was ill-mannered enough, instead of passing
in his card at Pope's front door, as etiquette required, to present it
at the kitchen-gate. Before Pope was aware, his enterprising opponent,
whose war motto was that one man behind your enemy is worth ten in his
front, had gone around through Thoroughfare Gap to Manassas Junction and
planted himself (August 26, 1862) square across the only railroad that
ran between Pope's army and Washington. Pope should have volted and
struck Jackson like lightning before the rest of Lee's army could come
up; but two considerations made him slow. One was that Longstreet's wing
of Lee's army was now rather close in his front, and the other,
mortification at turning back after having started southward with such a
blare of trumpets.

Brave Confederate soldiers who were at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run,
and Chantilly, bear witness that the blood Pope's men shed in those
battles ran red. But dazed, tired, lacking confidence, and at last on
short rations, and faced or flanked by Lee's whole army, while but part
of McClellan's was at hand, they fought either to fall or to
retreat again.

No one witnessing it can ever forget the consternation which prevailed
in the fortifications about Washington the night after the battle of
Chantilly. The writer's own troop, manning Fort Ward, a few miles out
from Alexandria, stood to its heavy guns every moment of that dismal
night, gazing frontwards for a foe. The name "Stonewall Jackson" was on
each lip. At the break of dawn, when to weary soldiers trees and fences
easily look "pokerish," brave artillerists swore that they could see the
dreaded warrior charging down yonder hill heading a division, and in
almost agonizing tones begged leave to "load for action."

Lee probably made a mistake in entering Maryland after the battle of
Chantilly, and his report implies that he would not at this time have
done so for merely military reasons. But, having crossed the Potomac, he
did well to fight at Sharpsburg (Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862) before
recrossing. This was well, because it was bold. Moreover, by bruising
the Federals there he delayed them, getting ample time for ensconcing
his army on the Rappahannock front for the winter.

Also for the ba