e into consideration when planning his operations. It
would appear from the map that while he was at Romney, 12,000
Federals might have moved out from Williamsport and Harper's Ferry
and have cut him off from Winchester. This danger had to be kept in
view. But the enemy had made no preparations for crossing the
Potomac; the river was a difficult obstacle; and Banks was not the
man to run risks.* (* "Any attempt," Banks reported to McClellan, "to
intercept the enemy would have been unsuccessful...It would have
resulted in almost certain failure to cut him off, and have brought
an exhausted force into his presence to fight him in his stronghold
at Winchester. In any case, it promised no positive prospect of
success, nor did it exclude large chances of disaster."
(O.R. volume 5 page 694.)

At the same time, while Jackson was in all probability perfectly
aware of the difficulties which Banks refused to face, and counted on
that commander's hesitation, it must be admitted that his manoeuvres
had been daring, and that the mere thought of the enemy's superior
numbers would have tied down a general of inferior ability to the
passive defence of Winchester. Moreover, the results attained were
out of all proportion to the trifling loss which had been incurred.
An important recruiting-ground had been secured. The development of
Union sentiment, which, since the occupation of Romney by the
Federals, had been gradually increasing along the Upper Potomac,
would be checked by the presence of Southern troops. A base for
further operations against the Federal detachments in West Virginia
had been established, and a fertile region opened to the operations
of the Confederate commissaries. These strategic advantages, however,
were by no means appreciated by the people of Virginia. The
sufferings of the troops appealed more forcibly to their imagination
than the prospective benefit to be derived by the Confederacy.
Jackson's secrecy, as absolute as that of the grave, had an ill
effect. Unable to comprehend his combinations, even his own officers
ascribed his manoeuvres to a restless craving for personal
distinction; while civilian wiseacres, with their ears full of the
exaggerated stories of Loring's stragglers, saw in the relentless
energy with which he had pressed the march on Romney not only the
evidence of a callous indifference to suffering, but the symptoms of
a diseased mind. They refused to consider that the general had shared
the