"My bad old man," as General Lee playfully called him, was forty-eight
years of age when he made the brilliant Valley campaign of the summer of
1864, which was halted only by the superior forces of Sheridan. A West
Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican War, Early became, after the
death of Jackson, one of Lee's most efficient subordinates. He was alert,
aggressive, resourceful. His very eccentricities, perhaps, made him all
the more successful as a commander of troops in the field. "Old Jube's"
caustic wit and austere ways made him a terror to stragglers, and who
shall say that his fluent, forcible profanity did not endear him to men
who were accustomed to like roughness of speech?
[Illustration: THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON IN 1863