had safely escaped him, McClellan sent three brigades across the Potomac in pursuit, and these captured four Confederate guns, placed on the bluffs above the ford, which were not sufficiently guarded; but Jackson with A. P. Hill, speedily punished this temerity and drove the Federals back, across the Potomac.

With the great river between them, the army of the Potomac and the army of Northern Virginia now rested and recuperated during the bracing autumn days that characterize the great Appalachian valley. McClellan called for reinforcements, declaring that his ranks were being weakened by straggling and desertion, while Lee called upon his government for shoes and clothes for his well-nigh half-clad army. In a letter to his wife, General Lee wrote:

My hands are improving slowly; with my right hand I am able to dress and undress myself, which is a great comfort. My left is becoming of some assistance, too, though it is still swollen and sometimes painful. The bandages have been removed. I am now able to sign my name. It has been six weeks to-day since I was injured, and I have at last discarded the sling.

From his headquarters in the vicinity of Winchester, on the 2d of October, Lee issued an address to his soldiers, in which he said:

In reviewing the achievements of the army during the present campaign, the commanding 'general cannot withhold the expression of his admiration of the indomitable courage displayed in battle and its cheerful endurance of privation and hardship on the march. Since your great victories around Richmond, you have defeated the enemy at Cedar Mountain, expelled him from the Rappahannock, and after a conflict of three days, utterly repulsed him on the plains of Manassas, and forced him to take shelter within the fortifications around his capital. Without halting for repose, you crossed the Potomac, stormed the heights of Harper's Ferry, made prisoners of more than 11,000 men, and captured upward of seventy-five pieces of artillery, all their small-arms and other munitions of war. While one corps of the army was thus engaged, the other insured its success by arresting at Boonsboro the combined armies of the enemy, advancing under their favorite general to the relief of their beleaguered comrades. On the field of Sharpsburg, with less than one-third his numbers, you resisted from daylight until dark the whole army of the enemy, and repulsed every attack along his entire front of more than four miles in extent. The whole of the following day you stood prepared to renew the conflict on the same ground, and retired next morning without molestation across the Potomac. Two attempts subsequently made by the enemy to follow you across the river have resulted in his complete discomfiture and being driven back with loss.

Achievements such as these demanded much valor and patriotism. History records few examples of greater fortitude and endurance

than this army has exhibited, and I am commissioned by the President to thank you in the name of the Confederate States for the undying fame you have won for their arms.

Much as you have done, much more remains to be accomplished. The enemy again threatens with invasion, and to your tried valor and patriotism the country looks with confidence for deliverance and safety. Your past exploits give assurance that this confidence is not misplaced.

Ꮤ

CHAPTER XXI.

THE FREDERICKSBURG CAMPAIGN.

HILE recuperating his army in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, General Lee, a few days after the battle of Sharpsburg, urged the Confederate authorities to send General Loring, with the army of the Kanawha, northward, through Morgantown, into western Pennsylvania, to break the Federal lines of communication between the east and the west and to disconcert any plans that McClellan might be forming for a new campaign into Virginia, as he desired not only to gain time for collecting together the fragments of his army, but for the people of Virginia, especially those of the fertile valley of the Shenandoah, to gather the harvest of Indian corn which was now ripe and ready for cutting and shocking. On the 25th of September he suggested to President Davis that the best move his army could make would be to advance upon Hagerstown and fall upon McClellan from that direction, saying: "I would not hesitate to make it, even with our diminished numbers, did the army show its former temper and disposition." He had every reason to believe that in a very short time his veteran army had recovered that "temper and disposition."

Lee had hoped that McClellan would cross the Potomac and offer battle in the lower Shenandoah valley; but that over-cautious commander was in no haste to try a third issue with the bold Confederate leader. To engage McClellan's attention and gather a supply of fresh horses from the farmers of Pennsylvania, Lee, on the 10th of October, dispatched the raid-loving Stuart, with 1,800 horsemen, across the Potomac at Williamsport, and thence along the western side of the Cumberland valley, to Chambersburg, where he halted on the morning of the Iith. Thence sweeping to the eastward, across the South mountain, he returned through the Piedmont region, and by noon of the 12th again crossed the Potomac into Virginia, after a rapid and extensive ride, not only with a fresh supply of much-needed horses, but with full information as to what was going on in and around McClellan's

This

army, of which he had made a complete circuit. bold and memorable ride so irritated the Federal government that it peremptorily ordered McClellan to choose a line of attack and move against Lee in Virginia.

The experiences of the Federal army in the Great valley, both in Virginia and in Maryland, did not give them confidence in undertaking a new campaign, in that already famous region where "the strength of the hills" had hitherto proven an efficient ally of the Confederates; so McClellan determined to draw Lee from the valley, by crossing to the east of the Blue ridge and then following along its eastern foot, and see what military results could be secured in the Piedmont region, which had hitherto only been tried at Cedar run. Crossing the Potomac October 23d, he successively occupied, with detachments, the gaps of the Blue ridge, making demonstrations across the same toward the Shenandoah, thus guarding his flanks as his army marched southward.

Lee was not slow to comprehend the plans of his opponent, which involved a new "on to Richmond." He immediately sent Longstreet to place his newly-constituted First corps athwart the front of McClellan's advance. Crossing the Blue ridge at Chester gap, he placed his command in the vicinity of Culpeper Court House, where he arrived November 6th, the very day that McClellan's advance arrived at Warrenton, in the vicinity of the road by which Longstreet's corps had passed just before. Jackson, with the Second corps of the army of Northern Virginia (also recently organized, but not announced as such until he crossed the Blue ridge, a few days later, and his army ceased to be, officially, that of the Valley district), was left in the Shenandoah valley, to remain, as long as he could prudently do so, as a protection to that great Confederate granary, and as a menace to McClellan's right, as he would hesitate to push far into Virginia so long as that ever-ready fighter and unconquerable leader remained in the lower valley, to him the land of victory, to McClellan that of defeat and disaster.

With his usual boldness, Lee did not hesitate to post the two wings of his army 60 miles apart, as the crow flies, well satisfied that with Longstreet's ability as a stubborn fighter when once in position, he could resist a front attack from McClellan and trust to Jackson to descend

the mountains in ample time to fall on the enemy's flank and join in the fray, knowing also that the Federal authorities would hesitate to push forward the army of the Potomac and leave Jackson so near the gateway to the Federal capital. Could Lee have followed his own desires, he would have ordered Jackson to descend upon McClellan's flank while he moved to attack his front with Longstreet; but reasons of state required him to guard the approaches to the Confederate capital, and compelled him to stand upon the defensive.

McClellan now occupied Pope's former position, behind the Rappahannock, with fully 125,000 men; 80,000 held the defenses of Washington, and 22,000 watched the portals of the Shenandoah valley in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry. Lee had less than 72,000 in the two corps of the army of Northern Virginia and in his cavalry corps, under Stuart, to again meet this great army of the Potomac.

Not satisfied with the tardy movements of McClellan, Lincoln supplanted him in command, at Warrenton, with Burnside, who at once hastened to execute an "on to Richmond," by way of Fredericksburg, thinking that by taking advantage of a shorter line of movement he could reach his objective without being intercepted by Lee; but when, on the 15th, he pressed his advance toward Fredericksburg, the alert Stuart promptly reported his movement to Lee, and the latter, with equal promptness, foresaw his plan of campaign and hurried Longstreet forward from Culpeper and placed him at Fredericksburg, across Burnside's track, in a strong position on the south bank of the Rappahannock, before Burnside's pontoons arrived on the Stafford heights, on the northern bank of that river, thus frustrating the Federal plan of campaign.

Jackson, who had been busy in the valley breaking up the line of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad and keeping the Federal authorities uneasy as to his whereabouts, promptly obeyed Lee's order to follow after Longstreet, but by ways farther to the westward. By making demonstrations at Chester and Thornton gaps, of the Blue ridge, he mystified those watching his movements by marching up the valley to New Market, thence taking the great highway leading across the Massanutton, the south fork of the Shenandoah, the Blue ridge at Fisher's gap and by Madison Court House, to the vicinity of