Apart from its brilliant incidents which cannot be here related in detail Jackson's Valley campaign had thus far completely accomplished its strategic purpose. It had detained Fremont and Schenck with 15,000 men in the mountains when McClellan needed them before Richmond. It had kept Banks busy and finally had driven him out of the Valley and into a position from which he could render no assistance to the Federal armies anywhere. Finally it had so greatly alarmed the authorities at Washington that they completely diverted McDowell's 40,000 men from McClellan's reinforcement, sending the major part of that force upon the fruitless errand of destroying Jackson and employing the rest of it in the direct defense of Washington. All this was precisely what Robert E. Lee had planned and intended, and it was perfectly accomplished. If larger space is here given to an account of this campaign than the size and direct importance of its battles would seem to justify, it is because of the tremendous strategic consequences of the operations involved. Jackson's activity made possible not only Lee's superb campaign of dislodgment against McClellan, but all the stupendous campaigning that followed, including the overthrow of Pope at Manassas, the invasion of Maryland, the battle of Antietam, the Fredericksburg battle and the later Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. The story of all that will follow in later chapters. In the meanwhile, it is pleasant to record here one step forward in civilization which was made during this campaign and the author of which, Dr. Hunter McGuire, deserves remembrance for his humanity. Until that time, and indeed for long afterwards, surgeons in charge of hospitals full of wounded men, upon falling into the enemy's hands, were treated as prisoners of war. After every battle, therefore, the surgeons of a retiring army, in charge of wounded men from both sides, must make a hard choice. They must either abandon their patients--many of whom were in desperate need of immediate surgical attention, or they must submit themselves to the rigors and sufferings of a military imprisonment, precisely as if they had been taken in battle. As a result of this peculiar barbarism of war the wounded--by the flight of their surgeons--were often left unattended at the critical moment that meant to them the difference between life and death. Many precious lives were needlessly sacrificed to this barbaric military practice.