To that end Lee boldly risked a division of his force as he afterwards did on several occasions in presence of an enemy who already outnumbered him.
On the thirteenth of July he detached Jackson, with his own and Ewell's commands, to operate against Pope in northern Virginia, himself holding Richmond with the rather scant remainder of his army.
Jackson moved at once to Orange Court House, confronting Pope. This movement threatened Washington only in a rather remote way and not very seriously, but it had the desired effect. A part of McClellan's force was at once withdrawn from the position at Harrison's Landing and sent by water to the national capital as a reserve and reinforcement for Pope in case that general should be beaten in the field.
Promptly—near the end of July—Lee sent A. P. Hill's corps to Jackson, and, thus strengthened, Jackson pushed his column across the Rapidan river and encountered a part of Pope's forces at Cedar Mountain on the ninth of August. The action was not a decisive one, but it served Lee's purpose of compelling the early and complete withdrawal of McClellan from his threatening position below Richmond.
Two days after the battle at Cedar Mountain Jackson retired to the south bank of the river to await the reinforcements which Lee was sending to him as rapidly as McClellan's withdrawal rendered it measurably prudent for him to deplete the army defending Richmond.
By August 14, Lee had transferred practically all of his army from Richmond to the line of the Rapidan, leaving only a meager garrison at the Confederate capital. On that day he joined the army and assumed direct personal command.
Pope was a good and active officer, unfortunately given to vainglorious boasting. He dated his orders "Headquarters in the saddle, Army in the field," and set forth in them the assertion that he had so far seen only the backs of the rebels. He announced his policy in the phrase, "bayonets to the front, spades to the rear." In brief, he jauntily and with ridiculous boastings, undertook to meet one of the finest fighting forces that had ever been organized in the world, commanded by the most brilliant and the ablest general of the South. He thus prepared for himself a peculiar humiliation in the event of defeat, stripping himself in advance of all excuses and all pleas in abatement of failure, and in advance minimizing the glory of victory should he succeed in overcoming Lee.
There was no more ridiculous spectacle seen from beginning to end of the war than this. It invited all the wits of the newspapers to facile jestings, and when Pope's failure was complete, one of them said, in reference to his "headquarters in the saddle" phrase, that he had "placed his headquarters where his hind-quarters ought to have been."
Nevertheless, General John Pope was a very able and a very enterprising officer, as he had demonstrated at the West. He knew how to handle an army effectively, and he had an army of great effectiveness under his command, with seasoned and battle-trained reinforcements coming to him every hour from McClellan's splendidly behaving force. He boldly challenged Lee's advance and baffled it for a time. He had all that could be imagined of equipment and of limitless supplies. Had he been even in a measurable degree the commanding military genius that he confidently believed himself to be, he must have hammered Lee's forces into confusion at the first encounter and driven the great Confederate back to his half-hopeless task of defending Richmond behind a barrier of earthworks. The result of the encounter was quite other than this, as we shall see.
Having at last brought up a force slightly superior to Pope's, Lee's plan was to attack as quickly as possible and before Pope should be strengthened by the heavy columns of reinforcements that were hurrying to his support from McClellan's army and from every other quarter whence reinforcements could be drawn. But before Lee's dispositions for attack could be completed, Pope penetrated his design and fell back to the stronger line of the Rappahannock.