simply ceased to exist.

At one o'clock in the morning of this same day Johnston received
a telegram at Winchester, from Richmond, warning him that
McDowell was advancing on Bull Run, with the evident intention of
seizing Manassas Junction, which would cut the Confederate rail
communication with the Shenandoah Valley and so prevent all
chance 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