Early’s task in the Valley throughout this summer and autumn was to preserve a threatening attitude toward blue territory on the other side of the Potomac, to hinder and harass Federal use of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and to render the Northern Capital so continuously anxious that it might at any time choose to weaken Grant in order to add to its own defences. In addition he had presently Sheridan to contend with, Sheridan strengthened by Hunter, returned now from the Kanawha Valley to the main battle-grounds. Sheridan’s task in the Valley was to give body to the Northern reasoning as to the uses, at this stage of the game, of that section. With war rapidly concentrating as it now was, the Northern Government saw the Valley no more as a battle-ground, nor as of especial use to the blue colour on the chessboard. But it was of use to the grey, especially that rich portion of it called the Shenandoah Valley. Moreover it was grey; scourge it well and you scourged a grey province. Make it untenable, a desert, and the loss would be felt where it was meant to be felt. Sheridan, with Hunter to aid, devastated as thoroughly as if his name had been Attila. McCausland made a cavalry raid into Pennsylvania and, in reprisal for Hunter’s burnings, burned the town of Chambersburg. It did not stop the burnings across the river; they went on through the length and breadth of the Valley of Virginia. Over the mountains, in Northern Virginia, in the rolling counties of Fauquier and Loudoun, was “Mosby’s Confederacy,” where the most daring of all grey partisan leaders “operated in the enemy’s lines.” Mosby did what lay in man to do to help the lower Valley. He “worried and harassed” Sheridan by day and by night. But the burning and lifting went on. When late autumn came, with winter before it, a great region lay bare, and over it wandered a vision of drawn faces of women and a cry of small children. Sheridan in person did not come until the first week in August. Late in July Early fought the Army of West Virginia, Crook and Averell, at Winchester—fought and won. Here the Golden Brigade did good service, and here the “Fighting Sixty-fifth” won mention again, and here Steve Dagg definitely determined to renounce the Confederate service.