: either to endeavor to
catch Jackson, and for this object to withhold what was needed by and
had been promised to McClellan for his campaign against Richmond; or,
leaving Jackson to escape with impunity, to pursue with steadiness that
plan which it was Jackson's important and perfectly understood errand to
interrupt. It is almost incredible that he chose wrong. The statement of
the dilemma involved the decision. Yet he took the little purpose and
let the great one go. Nor even thus did he gain this lesser purpose. He
had been warned by McDowell that Jackson could not be caught, and he was
not. Yet even had this been otherwise, the Northerners would have got
little more than the shell while losing the kernel. Probably Richmond,
and possibly the Southern army, fell out of the President's hand while
he tried without success to close it upon Jackson and 15,000 men.
The result of this civilian strategy was that McClellan, with his
projects shattered, was left with his right wing and rear dangerously
exposed. Jackson remained for a while a mysterious _bete noire_, about
whose force, whereabouts, and intentions many disturbing rumors flew
abroad; at last, on June 26, he settled these doubts in his usual sharp
and conclusive way by assailing the exposed right wing and threatening
the rear of the Union army, thus achieving "the brilliant conclusion of
the operations which [he] had so successfully conducted in the Valley of
Virginia.
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