most
of all."

Careful as he was to keep the enemy in the dark, he was exceedingly
particular when he visited his distant posts on the Potomac that his
presence should be unobserved. Had it become known to the Federal
generals that the commander at Harper's Ferry had reconnoitred a
certain point of passage, a clue might have been given to his
designs. The Confederate officers, therefore, in charge of these
posts, were told that Colonel Jackson did not wish them to recognise
him. He rode out accompanied by a single staff officer, and the men
were seldom aware that the brigadier had been through their camps.

Never was a commander who fell so far short of the popular idea of a
dashing leader. This quiet gentleman, who came and went unnoticed,
who had nothing to say, and was so anxious to avoid observation, was
a type of soldier unfamiliar to the volunteers. He was duty
personified and nothing more.

But at the same time the troops instinctively felt that this absence
of ostentation meant hard work. They began to realise the magnitude
of the obligations they had assumed. Soldiering was evidently
something more than a series of brilliant spectacles and social
gatherings. Here was a man in earnest, who looked upon war as a
serious business, who was completely oblivious to what people said or
thought; and his example was not without effect. The conventions came
to nothing; and when the companies were organised in battalions, and
some of the deposed officers were reappointed to command, the men
went willingly to work. Their previous knowledge, even of drill, was
of the scantiest. Officers and men had to begin as recruits, and
Jackson was not the man to cut short essential preliminaries. Seven
hours' drill daily was a heavy tax upon enthusiasm; but it was
severely enforced, and the garrison of the frontier post soon learned
the elements of manoeuvre. Discipline was a lesson more difficult
than drill. The military code, in all its rigour, could not be at
once applied to a body of high-spirited and inexperienced civilians.
Undue severity might have produced the very worst results. The
observance, therefore, of those regulations which were not in
themselves essential to efficiency or health was not insisted on.
Lapses in military etiquette were suffered to pass unnoticed; no
attempt was made to draw a hard and fast line between officers and
men; and many things which in a regular army would be considered
grossly irregular wer