I've news, too, that two thousand men have come up.

We shall now have nine thousand with which to withstand the attack, and I don't believe they can drive us away.

Oh, why isn't Pope himself here with his whole army?
Then we could wipe Jackson off the face of the earth!" But Pope was not there.

The commander of a huge force, the man of boastful words who was to do such great things, the man who sent such grandiloquent dispatches from "Headquarters in the Saddle," to the anxious Lincoln at Washington, had strung his numerous forces along in detachments, just as the others had done before him, and the booming of Jackson's cannon attacking the Northern vanguard with his whole army could not reach ears so far away.
The fire now became heavy along the whole Union front.

All the batteries on both sides were coming into action, and the earth trembled with the rolling crash.