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Updated: June 28, 2025
From Rude's Hill across the Massanuttons and from Swift Run Gap to Charlottesville they had been simply comrades and fellow Virginians. They were from adjoining counties, where the one had practised law and the other had driven a stage. There were differences in breeding, education, and employment; but around these, recognized by both, stretched the enormous plane of humanity.
So he was hesitating while the days were passing and Jackson growing stronger. "I suppose the nature of the country helps us a lot," said Harry as he looked up at the Massanuttons, following Sherburne's pointing saber. "It does, and we need help," said Sherburne. "Even as it is they would have been pushing upon us if it hadn't been for the cavalry and the artillery.
The long line of horsemen rode on southward, leaving behind them Winchester, the little city that had been beloved of Jackson, and approached the Massanuttons, the bold range that for a while divided the valley into two parts.
This was the seventeenth. Two days later the Army of the Valley, moving down the Valley pike in a beautiful confidence that it was hurling itself against Banks at Strasburg, swerved to the east about New Market, with a suddenness that made it dizzy. Straight across its path now ran the strange and bold wall of the Massanuttons, architectural freak of Nature's, planted midway of the smiling Valley.
Stanton that with supplies and forage he could "stampede the enemy to Richmond," was unable to stir a foot to assist his colleague. Once again Jackson had turned to account the strategic possibilities of the Massanuttons and the Shenandoah; and, to increase General Shields' embarrassment, the weather had broken. Heavy and incessant rain-storms submerged the Virginia roads.
The valley was twenty miles wide before they came to the Massanuttons, but after the division the western extension for some distance was not more than four miles across, and it was here that they were going.
That to the east is the narrower and less open; the Blue Ridge is nowhere more than ten miles distant from the Massanuttons, and the space between them, the Luray or the South Fork Valley, through which a single road leads northward, is clothed by continuous forest.
Only a single road by which troops could pass crossed the Massanuttons, and that road was held by the cavalry of Ashby. "If Banks comes one way and he proves too strong for us we can cross over to the other," said Sherburne. "If he divides his force, marching into both valleys, we may beat one part of his army, then pass the mountain and beat the other." Sherburne had divined aright.
He had left that town once more to the enemy and was still drawing back toward the wider division of the valley west of the Massanuttons. The great mind was working very fast now. The men themselves saw that warlike genius incarnate rode on the back of Little Sorrel. Jackson was slipping through the ring, carrying with him every prisoner and captured wagon.
"Would ask to have it off if I was facing a firing party, and in the present circumstances don't like it at all! Did you happen to meet any of my couriers?" "Yes, general. One at the foot of the Massanuttons, one in Elk Run Valley." "Got to send them. Got to ask what to do. By God, out on the plains with fifty dragoons I'd know!
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