Just how far could you push both officers and common soldiers in pursuit of military goals? What the Confederates had done was no ordinary march. Jackson had forced his men to walk more than one hundred miles through a succession of brutal winter storms, high winds, ice, mud, and temperatures that stayed well below freezing. In spite of repeated protests from his officers, conditions that worsened as they marched, and troops with frozen, bleeding, bare feet, he held fast to his objective.
