superstitious postponement arrived before nightfall on Saturday. A
dispatch from Lincoln to McClellan, dated at four o'clock that
afternoon, said: "In consequence of General Banks's critical position, I
have been compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you.
The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are
trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General McDowell's
in their rear." The brief words conveyed momentous intelligence. It is
necessary to admit that Mr. Lincoln was making his one grand blunder,
for which there is not even the scant salvation of possible doubt. All
that can be said in palliation is, that he was governed, or at least
strongly impelled, by the urgent advice of the secretary of war, whose
hasty telegrams to the governors of several States show that he was
terror-stricken and had lost his head. Mr. Blaine truly says that
McDowell, thus suddenly dispatched by Mr. Lincoln upon a "fruitless
chase," "was doing precisely what the President of the Confederate
States would have ordered, had he been able to issue the orders of the
President of the United States." There is no way to mitigate the painful
truth of this statement, made by a civilian, but amply sustained by the
military authorities on both sides.[16]

The condition was this. The retention of McDowell's corps before
Washington published the anxiety of the administration. The Confederate
advantage lay in keeping that anxiety alive and continuing to neutralize
that large body of troops. Strategists far less able than the Southern
generals could not have missed so obvious a point, neither could they
have missed the equally obvious means at their disposal for achieving
these purposes. At the upper end of the valley of the Shenandoah
Stonewall Jackson had an army, raised by recent accretions to nearly or
quite 15,000 men. The Northern generals erelong learned to prognosticate
Jackson's movements by the simple rule that at the time when he was