AFTER REINFORCEMENTS

AFTER REINFORCEMENTS

He then told me to go Charlestown, where I would find a railroad train ready at the station, with the engine fired up; to detach all the cars but one; to take that and proceed without delay to Winchester, where his quartermaster, Major Harmon, would furnish me with transportation to Staunton, and that I could leave my horse in charge of the assistant quartermaster at Charlestown, to be sent with the troops that evening. Thus instructed, I stood not on the order of my going, but went at once; and, although I rode rapidly, I had hardly reached the railroad station at Charlestown before Jackson himself came galloping up with his assistant adjutant, the gallant and accomplished “Sandy” Pendleton, who was subsequently killed in battle at Fisher's Hill; the general having suddenly come to the conclusion after I had left him at Halltown to go by rail to Winchester in advance of his army, which, meanwhile, having been ordered back, was making one of those wonderful marches through the mud and rain that had already won for it the sobriquet of “Jackson's foot cavalry.

” As soon as we took our places in the car, putting his arm on the back of the seat before him as a rest for his head, he fell into a sleep which lasted all the way to Winchester with but one interruption - that was near Summit Point, when, seeing a horseman galloping across the fields towards us, whom I made out with my glass to be a Confederate cavalryman, I awakened him that he might order the train to stop, as I supposed the approaching horseman to be a messenger with information. My supposition was correct, for it was a courier with a dispatch, who, as he reined up the side of the car and handed the paper into its window, informed us of the defeat of Colonel Connor, of the Twelfth Georgia, at Front Royal, showing that McDowell's advance was already within twelve miles of Strasburg, while Jackson's was upwards of forty miles north of it, Strasburg being eighteen miles south of Winchester on the line of Jackson's retreat, and the important point towards which both the Federals and Confederates were now converging. The general, having glanced at the dispatch, tore it up, and dropping the fragments on the floor of the car, said to the conductor: “Go on, sir, if you please,” and resumed his slumbers. 

 The source: Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. VII. Richmond, Virginia, January, 1879. No. 1.