he oldest families, and the
humblest of the sons of toil; boys whom it was impossible to keep at
school, and men whose white beards hung below their cross-belts;
youths who had been reared in luxury, and rough hunters from their
lonely cabins. They were a mountain people, nurtured in a wholesome
climate, bred to manly sports, and hardened by the free life of the
field and forest. To social distinctions they gave little heed. They
were united for a common purpose; they had taken arms to defend
Virginia and to maintain her rights; and their patriotism was proved
by the sacrifice of all personal consideration and individual
interest. Nor is the purity of their motives to be questioned. They
had implicit faith in the righteousness of their cause. Slave-owners
were few in the Valley, and the farms were tilled mainly by free
labour. The abolition of negro servitude would have affected but
little the population west of the Blue Ridge. But, nevertheless, west
of the Blue Ridge the doctrine of State Rights was as firmly rooted
as in the Carolinas, the idea that a State could be coerced into
remaining within the Union as fiercely repudiated; and the men of the
Valley faced the gathering hosts of the North in the same spirit that
they would have faced the hosts of a foreign foe.

In the first weeks of June the military situation became more
threatening. The Union armies were taking shape. The levies of
volunteers seemed sufficiently trained to render reconquest
practicable, and the great wave of invasion had already mounted the
horizon. A force of 25,000 men, based on the Ohio, threatened
North-west Virginia. There had been collisions on the Atlantic
seaboard, where the Federals held Fortress Monroe, a strong citadel
within eighty miles of Richmond, and Richmond had become the capital
of the Confederacy. There had been fighting in Missouri, and the
partisans of the South in that State had already been badly worsted.
The vast power of the North was making itself felt on land, and on
the sea had asserted an ascendency which it never lost. The blue
waters of the Gulf of Mexico were patrolled by a fleet with which the
Confederates had no means of coping. From the sea-wall of Charleston,
the great Atlantic port of the South, the masts of the blockading
squadron were visible in the offing; and beyond the mouths of the
Mississippi, closing the approaches to New Orleans, the long black
hulls steamed slowly to and fro.

But it was about