Brave Confederate soldiers who were at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, and Chantilly, bear witness that the blood Pope’s men shed in those battles ran red.  But dazed, tired, lacking confidence, and at last on short rations, and faced or flanked by Lee’s whole army, while but part of McClellan’s was at hand, they fought either to fall or to retreat again.

No one witnessing it can ever forget the consternation which prevailed in the fortifications about Washington the night after the battle of Chantilly.  The writer’s own troop, manning Fort Ward, a few miles out from Alexandria, stood to its heavy guns every moment of that dismal night, gazing frontwards for a foe.  The name “Stonewall Jackson” was on each lip.  At the break of dawn, when to weary soldiers trees and fences easily look “pokerish,” brave artillerists swore that they could see the dreaded warrior charging down yonder hill heading a division, and in almost agonizing tones begged leave to “load for action.”

Lee probably made a mistake in entering Maryland after the battle of Chantilly, and his report implies that he would not at this time have done so for merely military reasons.  But, having crossed the Potomac, he did well to fight at Sharpsburg (Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862) before recrossing.  This was well, because it was bold.  Moreover, by bruising the Federals there he delayed them, getting ample time for ensconcing his army on the Rappahannock front for the winter.

Also for the battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) Lee deserves no special praise.  Doubtless his unerring engineer eye picked the fighting-line, and his already great prestige inspired his brave army.  But that was all.  The pluck of his officers and men and Burnside’s incapacity did the rest.

Never did a general carry to battle a better plan of battle than Fighting Joe Hooker’s at Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), and rarely has one marched from a battle that had proved for his own side a more lamentable fiasco.  Taking the offensive with vast advantage in numbers, he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust the other behind Lee’s left, between the Confederate army and Richmond.  But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a more deft and daring gamester than himself.  Early divining his purpose, Lee, leaving a small part of his force to engage Hooker’s left, with the rest vigorously assumed the counter-offensive, sending Jackson, as usual, around Hooker’s extreme right.  Both movements completely succeeded.

Now appeared the folly of promoting a general to the headship of a great army simply because of his fighting-quality and his success with a division or a corps.  Attacked in front and routed on his flank, Hooker did exactly what all who knew him would have taken oath that he would never do.  Instead of going straight ahead with vengeance and bidding his far left do the same, he ordered and executed a retreat to his old position north of the Rappahannock.