General T. J. Jackson, Winchester, VA: Our news indicates that a movement is being made to cut off General Loring’s command. Order him back to Winchester immediately. J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of War By his own description, Jackson was astonished by what he read. He had just cleared, with considerable pain and suffering, all Union armies from three large Virginia counties, destroyed a hundred miles of railroad track, and had suffered only thirty-five casualties doing it.30 The tone of the message must have struck him as strange, too—as though addressing an underling who did not need to
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