The project of a direct reënforcement to Johnston, from Lee’s army, was speedily abandoned, and the more practicable plan of reënforcing Bragg was also dismissed. Nothing whatever was to be expected from a victory by Bragg over Rosecrans, unless it could be made a decisive victory, ensuring either the destruction of the Federal army, or the complete abandonment of its advanced line in Tennessee, for which it had paid such heavy toll. Such a result, necessitating the reënforcement of Rosecrans from Grant, meanwhile, after the victory had been won, troops being sent to Johnston from Bragg, was indeed brilliant to contemplate. Or there was another prospect equally agreeable. When Rosecrans had been defeated troops might be sent to capture Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi, which, cutting off Grant’s supplies from the North, as did Port Hudson from the South, would compel the Federal army at Vicksburg to fight for its subsistence, and under most discouraging circumstances. In addition to these prospects, there was also the choice of a movement for the complete redemption of Kentucky and Tennessee.
These brilliant designs of a visionary and vaporing strategy, abundant in the Confederacy during the war, and now ostentatiously paraded by the cheap wisdom of retrospection, lacked, however, the essential feature of practicability. To have reënforced Bragg sufficiently from Lee’s army, to have enabled him to undertake the offensive, with any prospect of the complete success necessary, would have weakened the army in Virginia to such an extent, as to seriously endanger Richmond. Even though Bragg were thus sufficiently reënforced to defeat a numerous army, led by an able commander, and occupying a position of great strength, a full month would have been required to accomplish the results indicated. Waiving all consideration of the incertitude of battle, and assuming that success would attend every movement of the Confederate army, what reasonable calculation would enable Bragg to have gotten his forces in readiness, and marched them either into Kentucky to Fort Pillow, or to Jackson, in time to have saved Vicksburg? But, apart from the folly of so weakening Lee, as to endanger Richmond (which would have been immediately assailed by Hooker, with his command of ninety thousand men, in coöperation with the forces at Suffolk, Fortress Monroe, and Winchester—an aggregate of more than forty thousand more), to undertake operations so doubtful and hazardous, was the consideration of the promising inducements for an offensive campaign in the East.
President Davis and General Lee were concurrent in their convictions of the wisdom of a campaign which should drive the enemy from Virginia, locate the army in an abundant and hostile country, and compensate for any disasters which might be sustained in the West, by an overwhelming defeat in the enemy’s country of his main army, which at once covered his capital and the approaches to his large cities.
This bold and brilliant conception was equally justified by the situation, and consistent with that able military policy which was throughout characteristic of the Confederate authorities, and based upon the only theory on which a weak power can be successfully defended against invasion.
The strategic theory which dictated the invasion of Pennsylvania was that of the “defensive, with offensive returns,” made forever famous by its triumphant practice by Frederick the Great—the favorite theory of Napoleon—not less signally illustrated by Jackson’s Valley campaign, and grandly executed by Lee in his irresistible onset upon Pope.
Twitted by the newspapers for their infatuation with the defensive attitude, and condemned by the voice of the public, for the maintenance of a policy which continually subjected the soil of the South to the devastations of the enemy, the Confederate authorities, neither in the invasion of Maryland, in 1862, nor in the invasion of Pennsylvania, yielded merely to public clamor. In both instances President Davis and General Lee were governed by the sound military considerations, which in each case justified the assumption of the offensive. Nothing is more universally conceded than the ultimate subjection of a people who permit themselves to be forced always on the defensive. On the other hand, no blows have been so telling in warfare, as those delivered by an antagonist who, lately on the defensive, at the opportune moment, when the foe is stunned by defeat, assumes a skillful and vigorous offensive.
It was now the third year of the war, and for more than twelve months no considerable success had rewarded the enormous sacrifices and expenditures of the North. The fluctuating sentiment, characteristic of that section, had settled down into a feeling of indifference and distrust, beyond which there was but one step to the abandonment of the war as a hopeless experiment. The evident apprehension, by the Federal Government, of an invasion of Pennsylvania, attended by a ruinous defeat of Hooker’s army, a result which both sides considered probable, plainly demonstrated, that the virtual termination of the war would be the reward of a successful assumption of the offensive by the Confederates.
A more favorable conjuncture, for a final trial with its old antagonist, could not have been desired by the Army of Northern Virginia. The invincible veterans of Longstreet, oftener victors than the Tenth Legion of Cæsar, had rejoined their companions, who boasted the additional honors of Chancellorsville. Reënforcements from other quarters were added,[61] and the Army of Northern Virginia, a compact and puissant force, seventy thousand strong, which had never yet known defeat, instinctively expected the order for advance into the enemy’s country. Never was the morale of the army so high, never had it such confidence in its own prowess, and in the resources of its great commander, and never was intrusted to its valor a mission so grateful to its desires, as that tendered by President Davis, “to force the enemy to fight for their own capital and homes.”
Under Lee were trusted lieutenants, whose fame, like that of their followers, was world-wide, and whose laurels were a part of the unnumbered triumphs of the matchless valor of that noble army. Longstreet, the Lannes of the South, was again at the head of his trained corps—the assembled chivalry of the South, in whose exploits every State of the Confederacy claimed a glory peculiarly its own. The bronzed veterans of Jackson, who had shared the glory of their immortal leader from Manassas to Chancellorsville, now followed Ewell, the maimed hero, whom Jackson had named as his successor. Under Hill, the youngest of the corps commanders, were men worthy of a leader who, in twelve months, had filled the successive grades from Colonel to Lieutenant General. The cavalry was still intrusted to Stuart, that bold, able chief, and “rarely gallant and noble gentleman, well supporting by his character the tradition that royal blood flowed in his veins.” With such leaders, and with thoroughly tried and efficient subordinate officers, improved transportation, equipment and clothing, and with numbers approaching nearer an equality with the Federal army, than at any other period, the Army of Northern Virginia no more doubted, than did its commander and the Government, that it was at the outset of a campaign brilliant and decisive beyond parallel in its history.
About the middle of May, General Lee visited Richmond, when the general features of the campaign were determined. The movement from the camps near Fredericksburg and the Rapidan, commenced early in June. The incipient feature of General Lee’s plan was a flank movement, while still confronted by the army of the enemy—perhaps the most delicate and difficult problem in war—by which, leaving the south bank of the Rappahannock, he sought to draw the Federal army away from its position. To meet the contingency of a movement by the enemy in the direction of Richmond, A. P. Hill, with his corps d’armée, was left near Fredericksburg. That skillful officer ably executed his instructions, checking the Federal demonstrations near his lines, and concealing the absence of the main body of the army until the advance was well under way. General Stuart fully performed his important part of covering the movements of the infantry, by seizing the mountain passes, and detaining the advance of the enemy, in the execution of which he fought several fierce cavalry engagements, winning them all with inferior forces. The army was marched through an abundant country, not desolated by war, and affording good roads. Important incidents of the advance were the capture of Winchester, Berryville, and Martinsburg, by the forces of Ewell, with their garrisons, aggregating seven thousand men, and considerable material of war.