as a subaltern in Mexico; and still fewer close acquaintances had
seen his sterling qualities at Lexington, where, for ten years,
he had been a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. But
these few were the only ones who were not surprised when this
recluse of peace suddenly became a very thunderbolt of
war--Puritan in soul, Cavalier in daring: a Cromwell come to life
again.

Harper's Ferry was a strategic point in northern Virginia. It was
the gate to the Shenandoah Valley as well as the point where the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crossed the Potomac some sixty miles
northwest of Washington. Harper's Ferry was known by name to
North and South through John Brown's raid two years before. It
was now coveted by Virginia for its Arsenal as well as for its
command of road, rail, and water routes. The plan to raid it was
arranged at Richmond on the sixteenth of April. But when the
raiders reached it on the eighteenth they found it abandoned and
its Arsenal in flames. The machine shops, however, were saved, as
well as the metal parts of twenty thousand stand of arms. Then
the Virginia militiamen and volunteers streamed in, to the number
of over four thousand. They were a mere conglomeration of
semi-independent units, mostly composed of raw recruits under
officers who themselves knew next to nothing. As usual with such
fledgling troops there was no end to the fuss and feathers among
the members of the busybody staffs, who were numerous enough to
manage an army but clumsy enough to spoil a platoon. It was said,
and not without good reason, that there was as much gold lace at
Harper's Ferry, when the sun was shining, as at a grand review in
Paris.