solved never to risk an engagement unless under conditions which
according to the text-books should assure victory. Ideal conditions of
this sort were not likely to occur often in real war, especially when
waged against such an antagonist as Robert Lee.

McClellan remained in front of the Confederate positions throughout the
winter and early spring. In reply to urgent appeals from Washington he
declared the position of the enemy to be impregnable, and grossly
exaggerated his numbers. When at last, at the beginning of March, he was
induced to move forward, he found that the enemy had slipped away,
leaving behind, as if in mockery, a large number of dummy wooden guns
which had helped to impress McClellan with the hopelessness of assailing
his adversaries.

The wooden guns, however little damage they could do to the Federal
army, did a good deal of damage to the reputation of the Federal
commander. Lincoln, though pressed to replace him, refused to do so,
having no one obviously better to put in his room, and knowing that the
outcry against him was partly political--for McClellan was a Democrat.
The general now undertook the execution of a plan of his own for the
reduction of Richmond. Leaving McDowell on the Potomac, he transported
the greater part of his force by water and effected a landing on the
peninsula of Yorktown, where some eighty years before Cornwallis had
surrendered to Washington and Rochambeau.

The plan was not a bad one, but the general showed the same lack of
enterprise which had made possible the escape of Johnstone. It is
probable that if he had struck at once at the force opposed to him, he
could have destroyed it and marched to Richmond almost unopposed.

Instead of striking at a vulnerable point he sat down in a methodical
fashion to besiege Yorktown. While he was waiting for the reinforcements
he had demanded, the garrison got away as Johnstone had done from before
Manassas, and an attempt to push forward resulted in the defeat of his
lieutenant, Hooker, at Williamsburg.

McDowell, who was at Fredericksburg, was ordered to join and reinforce
McClellan, but the junction was never made, for at the moment Jackson
took the field and effected one of the most brilliant exploits of the
war. The Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley were much more numerous
than the force which Jackson had at his disposal, but they were
scattered at various points, and by a series of incalculably rapid
movements the Sou