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General John Pope was summoned from the West to take command of the new "Army of Virginia," composed of the divisions of Fremont, Banks and McDowell, and the detached portion of McClellan's men. All eyes were now centred on the new Commander. The West had only seen success Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Pea Ridge, Shiloh, and Island No. 10.
We succeeded in partially reforming the regiments, but it was manifest that they would not stand, and I directed Colonel Corcoran to move along the ridge to the rear, near the position where we had first formed the brigade. General McDowell was there in person, and need all possible efforts to reassure the men.
The skulkers were loud-mouthed in their denunciations of General McDowell. Hundreds of them, who had in all probability not been near enough to the front during the whole retreat to know anything that was going on there, declared that they had seen him waving that mystic white hat as a signal to the rebels; and all knew that it was through his treachery that the army had been destroyed.
McClellan's supporters, and such strategians as Blair and Seward, assert that McClellan's plan was ruined by not sending McDowell to Gloucester; that then the whole rebel army would have been caught in a trap. That silly plan to go to the Peninsula is defended in a still more silly way.
Meantime Miles has been relieved from command, and McDowell has ordered Blenker's Brigade to take position a mile or more in advance of Centreville, toward Bull Run, on both sides of the Warrenton Pike, to protect the retreat, now being made, in "a few collected bodies," but mainly in great disorder owing partly to the baggage-wagons choking the road, along which both venturesome civilians and fagged-out troops are retreating upon Centreville.
" He called me up over the telephone, and when I told him to be quiet, that you were still asleep, I think he must have sworn it sounded like it, but I couldn't hear distinctly and then he fairly roared at me to wake you up and tell you that you didn't half deserve such a lovely little sister as I am. Wasn't that nice, Derry?" "You you're talking about McDowell?"
A runner had been sent to McDowell with the news, and another to Camp Sandy, where was Colonel Pelham, the district commander, giving details of the attempted assassination of the young staff officer, and warning all to arrest 'Tonio on sight.
He could report indifferently to McDowell, forget Miss Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace of Shan Tung's eyes. John Keith, he repeated, would be officially dead, and being dead, the law would have no further interest in him. He prodded himself on with this thought as he fumbled his way through darkness down into town.
"God bless you, Conniston," he whispered, and turned slowly away and into the south. Ahead of him was eight hundred miles of wilderness eight hundred miles between him and the little town on the Saskatchewan where McDowell commanded Division of the Royal Mounted. The thought of distance did not appall him.
Many of the generals with whom Jackson became intimately connected, either as friends or enemies, are named in Scott's dispatches. Magruder, Hooker, McDowell, and Ambrose Hill belonged to his own regiment. McClellan, Beauregard, and Gustavus Smith served on the same staff as Lee. Joseph E. Johnston, twice severely wounded, was everywhere conspicuous for dashing gallantry.
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