ADVANCE TO WINCHESTER. a strange aspect of dilapidation and destruction, in striking contrast with its former prosperity. Half burned, and plundered by its rebel occupants, its houses, stripped of their furniture, were mostly deserted by the inhabitants. Having secured the neighboring heights, a strong force on the 28th occupied Charlestown on the advance towards Winchester. This was the scene of the trial and hanging of the famous abolitionist insurgent, John Brown, whose ghost, if it walks the earth, tormented with a thirst for vengeance, would be satisfied to linger over the ruined region of his unhappy exploits. As the troops passed by the jail in which he had been confined, and the place of his execution, they sang the Hallelujah chorus of the John Brown song, in which the resolution of the old hero was embodied in the cause of the Union: "John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave, His soul is marching on!" Martinsburg was occupied on the 3d of March and Smithfield on the 6th. The enemy in the direction of Winchester were evidently falling back, and it was expected that a stand would be made at that place by the Confederate General Jackson. While General Banks was pushing his occupation of the country in this quarter, Col. Geary rendered important service on the left flank of the army by his operations in Loudoun County. Crossing the Potomac in an inclement season at Harper's Ferry, on the 1st of March he advanced with his command, the 28th Pennsylvania regiment and about 300 Michigan cavalry, around the mountains, and occupied Lovettsville, ten miles below on the river, driving before him a body of Mississippians stationed at that town, who were annoying the railway trains passing on the opposite side by throwing shells from their camp. The enemy still, however, remained in the vicinity, threatening the Union troops, but the dispositions for battle were so well made by Colonel Geary that the 325 foe presently retired to Hillsborough. Another demonstration of the enemy at Waterford, threatening the trains on the river below, was defeated by a prompt pursuit, which ended on the 8th in the occupation of Leesburg, which was hastily evacuated by the rebel troops under General Hill. Colonel Geary took possession of Fort Johnson, martial law was declared in the town, and a Provost Marshal appointed. Sixty-seven prisoners, over a hundred horses, and a considerable quantity of stores were captured. While at Leesburg Colonel Geary visited the battle ground at Ball's Bluff, in the vicinity, and decently interred the bodies of the Union soldiers fallen in the engagement, the earth which may have covered them having been washed awaya sorry spectacle which had been suffered to remain in sight of the inhabitants. On the 12th of March, the advance of the Union forces under Generals Hamilton and Williams occupied Winchester without a struggle, General Jackson having completed the evacuation of the town the previous day. He had, it was supposed, withdrawn his command to Strasburg, a station about fifteen miles distant to the south on the Manassas railway. The fortifications at Winchester, reported as of so formidable a character, were found to be slight and hastily constructed. In the retreat of the Confederates, Colonel Ashby with his cavalry had been the last to leave the town, and after their departure this force still lingered in the county, waiting an opportunity, which was pressently found, of attacking the Union forces. The brigade of General Shields was now quartered at Winchester, where General Banks also established his headhearters. Among the incidents of the occupation of Winchester was the publication by an Indiana regiment of a daily newspaper, entitled The Army Bulletin, while another regiment at Leesburg issued a similar journal, called The Advance Guard. As the troops passed through Berryville on their way to the same evening to Manassas, whence the last of the Confederate army had departed in the morning. Nearly everything of value had been removed, and such tents and supplies as could not readily town, they found one side of the village newspaper, The Conservator, in form, with secession articles, when a few printers from a Minnesota regiment, turning their hand to the work, set up the other side, with strong Union sentiments of be transported, with the workshops and course, and issued the number in this temporary buildings of wood, were in motley dress.** A company of players, flames. Nothing remained but the refuse "Joseph Seaton's Theatrical Corps," which of the great camp and the lines of rude had followed General Banks's division huts in which the soldiers had sheltered for weeks, opened their performances in themselves during the winter. The dethe town. The churches were also open- nuded earth-works, stripped of their de ed and were well attended by the sol- fenders, though skillfully placed, to the diers. General Banks made every effort eye of the experienced soldier, presented to protect private property. to the civilian a meagre and disappointing outline of the much exaggerated military works of Manassas. The bare and uninteresting region, which had derived all its importance from the presence of the rebel host, now suddenly abandoned by its living occupants, and filled with the smoke and ill savor of the nauseous conflagration, presented a melancholy spectacle, the very "abomination of desolation." In the neighborhood around lay the putrifying carcasses of horses. It needed only the proof, immediately forthcoming, of the heartless inhumanity of a portion of the Confederate soldiery in the treatment of the Union dead left on the battle of Bull Run, to add a crowning horror to the scene. Whilst this unresisted advance into the valley of the Shenandoah was going on, a similar retreat of the rebels on a grander scale was taking place at Manassas. The heavy artillery was leisurely removed, the railway leading south being worked to its utmost capacity in transporting men and munitions, and all was so adroitly performed that on the approach of the grand Union army there was not a gun left to be captured, or hardly a straggler to be taken prisoner. Generals Stuart, Gustavus W. Smith, and the other Confederate officers performed their work well. On Sunday evening, the 9th of March, the last of the rebel force abandoned Centreville, retreating in perfect order, leaving the formidable line of fortifications on the ridge entirely empty save a few wooden painted logs which had been placed in the embrasures, a cheap defence of the Confederacy against the boasted artillery of McClellan. The famous stone bridge over Bull Run, and another over Cob Run were destroyed in the retreat. Following upon the retiring enemy, the advance of the Union army under General McDowell, portions of which had been for several days making gradual approaches, on Monday arrived at Centreville, and finding the place deserted, a reconnoitering party of Colonel Averill's Pennsylvania cavalry pushed on the • Correspondence New York Times, General Banks's Di vision, March 14, 1862. A correspondent, the well-known traveller, Bayard Taylor, who visited Manassas immediately upon the entrance of the Union army, has given a description of what he saw-a curious medley more than once presented on similar occasions during the war. "A hideous scene!" he describes it. "The main buildings, some of which appear to have been workshops, are heaps of ashes. A sickening stench of burning wool and corn, and nobody knows what other substances, fills the air. The track is littered with a mass of heterogeneous articles-old under-shirts, and packages of corn-starch, writing-desks, bowie-knives, tin candle-moulds, Indiaof peanuts, love-letters, quilts, lard, rubber blankets, cartridge-boxes, bags DISAPPOINTMENT AT MANASSAS. horseshoes, with boxes and packages of every description, but all more or less smashed. Squads of soldiers are turning over these disgusting piles, in the hope of finding booty worth taking. Here comes a man with twenty-four packages of tobacco, tied together with a rope; here another with a great tinkettle full of peanuts; a third, brandishing a bowie-knife in each hand; while by far the greater portion are employed in searching trunks for dagurreotypes and love-letters. I have never before in my life beheld such a mess,—with the exception of a Chinese pawnbroker's shop in Shanghae." 327 equipments, going forth a hundred and fifty thousand strong, with the life of the nation hanging on the result, to be thus balked of its prey, and stand a gigantic, useless machine, utterly unprofitable, on a blasted plain, from which it had expected to pluck victory and peace, was indeed a sorry sight for the country. To add to the disappointment, the prodigal calculations which had been made of the vast numbers of the enemy, on examination, shrank to a comparatively small estimate. Diminished by various casualties and accidents, and by the expiration of their term of enlistment, the army of General Johnston, which had been loosely counted by hundreds of thousands, was now supposed not to have exceeded of late forty or fifty thousand, or seventy-five thousand at any time. It needed all the lavish eulogy of the untried McClellan, already a noticeable phenomenon of the times, in the army and through the newspapers, and his own encouraging rhetoric, to cover the embarrassing position. Great was the surprise and indignation expressed at this lame result of the first great movement of the Grand Army of the Potomac. The rebels, who for eight months had held their position before Washington, threatening the capital with all that it represents of national dignity and stability, had indeed disappeared; but not ingloriously, for they had certainly succeeded in outwitting or keeping at a respectful distance, for an In another order, issued on the 11th incredible time, the power of the North, by President Lincoln, it was announced on the line where its wealth and resour- that " Major-General McClellan having ces were the greatest, and of entailing personally taken the field at the head of an enormous amount of debt in prepara- the army of the Potomac, until othertions which had thus far been productive wise ordered, he is relieved from the of little advantage. The successful re- command of the other military departtreat of the enemy, in fact, under the ments, he retaining command of the circumstances, was a Confederate vic- army of the Potomac." The same ortory. It was to choose their own lines der assigned General Halleck to his new of defence, and battle-ground, if need department of the Mississippi, and orbe; to prolong the war with safety to dered, also, that the country west of the themselves always their best policy department of the Potomac and east of and weary and, if possible, exhaust the the department of the Mississippi, be a nation opposed to them, by imposing the military department, to be called the necessity of new and incalculable expen- Mountain Department, and that the same ditures. If nothing could be done to-be commanded by Major-General Freward the destruction of the rebel army while it was close at hand and convenient of approach, what, it was felt, could be expected in the way of its overthrow in the broken and defensible regions into which it had retired? A grand army, with its splendid pomp and enormous mont; that all the commanders of departments, after the receipt of this order by them respectively, report severally and directly to the Secretary of War, and that prompt, full and frequent reports will be expected of all and each of them." The conduct of the war was |