The catastrophe came when Lee's army grew
insufficient to man his defensive line along this entire length, and
Grant, finding the weakened places, eventually broke through it,
compelling the Confederate general and army to evacuate and abandon both
cities and seek safety in flight.
The central military drama, the first two distinctive acts of which are
outlined above, had during this long period a running accompaniment of
constant under-plot and shifting and exciting episodes. The Shenandoah
River, rising northwest of Richmond, but flowing in a general northeast
course to join the Potomac at Harper's Ferry, gives its name to a valley
twenty to thirty miles wide, highly fertile and cultivated, and having
throughout its length a fine turnpike, which in ante-railroad days was
an active commercial highway between North and South. Bordered on the
west by the rugged Alleghany Mountains, and on the east by the single
outlying range called the Blue Ridge, it formed a protected military
lane or avenue, having vital relation to the strategy of campaigns on
the open Atlantic slopes of central Virginia. The Shenandoah valley had
thus played a not unimportant part in almost every military operation of
the war, from the first battle of Bull Run to the final defense of
Richmond.
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