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But it was about Manassas Junction thirty miles south-west of Washington and barring the road to Richmond that all interest centred during the first campaign. Here was posted the main army of the Confederacy, 20,000 volunteers under General Beauregard, the Manassas Gap Railway forming an easy means of communication with the Army of the Shenandoah.
Be the cause what it might that morning, the soldiers probably did not regret it, as it gave them opportunity to see the lovely valley of the Shenandoah exposed to their view for the last time, as the fog gradually lifted before the rays of the rising sun. The Shenandoah, like a silver thread broken by intervening foliage, lay at their feet.
The first German settler who came to Virginia was one Jacob Stover, who went there from Pennsylvania, and obtained a grant of five thousand acres of land on the Shenandoah. Stover was very shrewd, and does not at all justify the character we have ascribed to his race: there is a story that casts a suspicion on his proper Teutonism.
My father was a thrifty planter and stockman, owned a few slaves, and as early as I can remember fed cattle every winter for the eastern markets. Grandfather Anthony, who died before I was born, was a Scotchman who had emigrated to the Old Dominion at an early day, and acquired several large tracts of land on an affluent of the Shenandoah.
The greater part of the men evaded the obligation to send their servants back to Richmond by despatching them to friends who had estates in the Shenandoah Valley, with letters asking them to keep the men for them until the troop happened to come into their neighborhood. At six o'clock in the morning the troop mounted and rode to Bath, thirty miles away.
On the 18th the combined forces of Wright and Hunter marched through Snicker's Gap, and in the afternoon Crook, who, having brought up his own division, found himself in command of Hunter's troops, sent Thoburn across the Shenandoah below Snicker's Ferry to seize and hold the ferry for the passage of the army; but when Thoburn had gained the north bank Early fell upon him with three divisions and drove him back across the river with heavy loss.
Crook was posted on the left of the Nineteenth Corps and east of the Valley pike, with Thoburn's division advanced to a round hill, which commanded the junction of Cedar Creek and the Shenandoah River, while Torbert retained both Merritt and Custer on the right of the Sixth Corps, and at the same time covered with Powell the roads toward Front Royal.
This decisive victory closed hostilities in the Shenandoah Valley. The prisoners and artillery were sent back to Winchester next morning, under a guard of 1,500 men, commanded by Colonel J. H. Thompson, of the First New Hampshire.
McClellan to the Peninsula. Virginia Weather and the People. General Augur's Advance to the Rappahannock. Lieutenant Decker's Bravery and Death. Night Charge on Falmouth Heights. Fredericksburg Surrenders. How Citizens regard us. Guarding a Train to Thoroughfare Gap. Fight and Captures at Flipper's Orchard. Shenandoah Valley. The Fifth New York Cavalry, First Ira Harris' Guard.
And assuredly no region on the frontier was more favored than the famous Shenandoah Valley. Little question that conditions were less idyllic in other places. Missionaries who preached the Great Awakening in western Pennsylvania and in the Southern back country were often enough appalled by evidence of ignorance and low morals.
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