The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct, Volume 2 (of 2) / A Narrative and Critical History

by George Cary Eggleston

A skilled military critic on the Northern side has characterized them as the best soldiers on earth. The phrase is not an extravagant one, as every close student of the Confederate war must clearly see, and their spirit meant more to the enlightened mind of Lee than a hundred guns and a score of infantry divisions could have signified.

There was still another fact to be taken into account. Under the mistaken system of short-term enlistments which had been adopted at the North, more than thirty thousand of Hooker's best and most seasoned soldiers were about this time going home. Enlistments at the North had well-nigh ceased under the discouragement of repeated failure, while at the South the conscription law—extended as to age—had resulted in putting pretty nearly every able-bodied white man in all that region into the army. The Army of Northern Virginia was being rapidly swelled in numbers, while the Army of the Potomac was losing many of its best fighting regiments and brigades. The Army of Northern Virginia was flushed by recent and conspicuous victory; the Army of the Potomac was sadly disheartened by a defeat which, in view of its vast superiority in numbers, it could in no wise account for or understand. The Army of Northern Virginia had unbounded confidence in itself and limitless belief in its commander; the Army of the Potomac had no longer any reason to trust itself, and it had utterly lost confidence in the general who had so badly handled it as to subject it to humiliating defeat where it had justly expected to achieve victory quick, certain and decisive.

Moved by these considerations Lee at once planned a new invasion of the region north of the Potomac. The enemy confronting him was still superior in numbers, equipment and everything else except spirit and fighting quality and its general. It would not do for Lee to move northward, leaving that army in his rear with full opportunity to destroy his communications, rush upon Richmond and possess the Confederate capital. He must so maneuver as to compel Hooker to fall back upon Washington, precisely as he had done in McClellan's case the year before.

Again he successfully played upon the excessive concern felt at the North for the safety of Washington. Having brought Longstreet with two strong divisions from the south side of the James river for his reinforcement, and having brought up every battery and battalion that could be spared from any other position, Lee played again the game he had played against McClellan. While still strongly and securely holding his position at Fredericksburg, he began detaching forces in a way to threaten Washington with an attack in the rear, and to compel Hooker to retire upon the national capital for its defense.

First he sent Stuart with his splendid cavalry to Culpeper Court House. Then, a little later, he sent Ewell's and Longstreet's corps to the same point, retaining only A. P. Hill's corps to hold the works at Fredericksburg. Should Hooker deem this an opportunity and seek to seize it, it would require fully three days at the very least for him to lay pontoon bridges and push a column across the river for purposes of assault. In the event of such a demonstration two days would amply suffice Lee to bring his two detached corps back to the works at Fredericksburg, there to defend them irresistibly. Hooker was much too discreet a general not to see this, and so he undertook no crossing of the river.

Lee was thus left in complete control of the military situation. The transfer of two of his army corps to Culpeper was a threat to Washington and Washington promptly responded—as Lee intended that it should do—by calling upon Hooker for the retirement of his army for the defense of the National capital.

Hooker ordered all his cavalry, under Pleasanton, to move against and assail the Confederate horsemen under Stuart at or near Culpeper. The two forces met at Brandy Station, where for the first time in the history of the Confederate War a strictly cavalry contest of great proportions ensued. The Confederates had distinctly the better of it. They repelled the assault, with losses about equal on either side, and left the Federals with no further information as to the Confederate movement than they had had before the action. As the acquisition of such information was precisely all that Pleasanton had fought to secure, it must be reckoned that he had failed in his purpose. But he had at any rate proved that the Federal cavalry men had at last learned how to ride their horses, an art in which they had proved themselves distinctly inferior to the Confederates in all previous conflicts between horsemen of the two sides.

On the thirteenth of June Ewell's corps was in the Valley of the Shenandoah marching northward; Hill was still holding the entrenchments at Fredericksburg, while Longstreet was in a position near Culpeper, from which he could reinforce either at will.

Hooker had by this time recovered the sanity which he had so completely lost during the campaign of Chancellorsville and he at once asked permission of Washington to push the whole of his vastly superior force in between the separated fragments of Lee's army and destroy them in detail. This was obviously the right thing to do, but Halleck was still in supreme control at Washington, and Hooker, by his phenomenal failure at Chancellorsville, had justly lost Halleck's confidence. Moreover Lee knew all about this situation, and, knowing Halleck quite as well as he knew Hooker, he was reckoning upon that general's character.

Halleck forbade Hooker to make the bold move he proposed, precisely as Lee had expected him to do, and Lee was thus left free to direct the course of the campaign as he pleased.