t and urged the right solution in the official way.
Stonewall Jackson, still a junior general, was in full accord with
Lee, as we know from the confidential interview (at the end of
October, '61) between him and his divisional commander, General G.
W. Smith, who made it public many years later. The gist of Jackson's
argument was this: "McClellan won't come out this year with his
army of recruits. We ought to invade now, not wait to be invaded
later on. If Davis would concentrate every man who can be spared
from all other points and let us invade before winter sets in,
then McClellan's recruits couldn't stand against us in the field.
Let us cross the upper Potomac, occupy Baltimore, and, holding
Maryland, cut the communications of Washington, force the Federal
Government out of it, beat McClellan if he attacks, destroy industrial
plants liable to be turned to warlike ends, cut the big commercial
lines of communication, close the coal mines, seize the neck of
land between Pittsburg and Lake Erie, live on the country by
requisition, and show the North what it would cost to conquer the
South." On asking Smith if he agreed, Smith answered: "I will tell
you a secret; for I am sure it won't be divulged. These views were
rejected by the Government during the conference at Fairfax Court
House at the beginning of the month." Jackson thereupon shook Smith's
hand, saying, "I am sorry, very sorry," and, mounting Little Sorrel
without another word, rode sadly away.

Jefferson Davis probably, and some of his Cabinet possibly, understood
what Lee, "Joe" Johnston, Beauregard, Smith, and Jackson so strongly
urged. But they feared the outcry that would assuredly be raised by
people in districts denuded of troops for the grand concentration
elsewhere. So they remained passive when they should have been active,
and, trying to strengthen each separate part, fatally weakened the
whole.

Meanwhile the North was collecting the different elements of warlike
force and changing its Secretary of War. Cameron was superseded
by Stanton on the fifteenth of January. Twelve days later Lincoln
issued the first of those military orders which, as we have just
seen, he afterwards told Grant that the impatience of the loyal
North compelled him to issue, though he knew some were certainly, and
all were possibly, wrong. This first order was one of the certainly
wrong. McClellan's unready masses were to begin an unlimited mud
march through the early spring r