ance of immediate
concentration at Bull Run. Johnston saw that the hour had come.
It could not have come before, as Lee and the rest had foreseen;
because an earlier concentration at Bull Run would have drawn the
two superior Federal forces together on the selfsame spot. There
was still some risk about giving Patterson the slip. True, his
three-month special-constable array was semi-mutinous already; and
its term of service had only a few more days to run. True, also,
that the men had cause for grievance. They were all without pay,
and some of them were reported as being still "without pants." But,
despite such drawbacks, a resolute attack by Patterson's fourteen
thousand could have at least held fast Johnston's eleven thousand,
who were mostly little better off in military ways. Patterson,
however, suffered from distracting orders, and that was his undoing.
Johnston, admirably screened by Stuart, drew quietly away, leaving
his sick at Winchester and raising the spirits of his whole command
by telling them that Beauregard was in danger and that they were
to "make a forced march to save the country."

Straining every nerve they stepped out gallantly and covered mile
after mile till they reached the Shenandoah, forded it, and crossed
the Blue Ridge at Ashby's Gap. But lack of training and march discipline
told increasingly against them. "The discouragement of that day's
march," said Johnston, "is indescribable. Frequent and unreasonable
delays caused so slow a rate of marching as to make me despair of
joining General Beauregard in time to aid him." Even the First
Brigade, with all the advantages of leading the march and of having
learnt the rudiments of drill and discipline, was exhausted by a
day's work that it could have romped through later on. Jackson
himself stood guard alone till dawn while all his soldiers slept.

As Jackson's men marched down to take the train at Piedmont, Stuart
gayly trotted past, having left Patterson still in ignorance that
Johnston's force had gone. By four in the afternoon of the nineteenth
Jackson was detraining at Manassas. But, as we shall presently
see, it was nearly two whole days before the last of Johnston's
brigades arrived, just in time for the crisis of the battle. When
Johnston had joined Beauregard their united effective total was
thirty thousand men. There had been a wastage of three thousand.
McDowell also had no more than thirty thousand effectives present
on the twenty-fir