The subsequent operations of the opposing armies indicated clearly that the Southern forces were still in excellent fighting condition; and the movements of Lee, during the advance of General McClellan toward Warrenton, were highly honorable to his military ability.  With a force much smaller than that of his adversary, he greatly embarrassed and impeded the Federal advance; confronted them on the Upper Rappahannock, completely checking their forward movement in that direction; and, when they moved rapidly to Fredericksburg, crossed the Rapidan promptly, reappearing in their front on the range of hills opposite that city.  The battle which followed compensated for the failure of the Maryland campaign and the drawn battle of Sharpsburg.  General Burnside had attacked, and sustained decisive defeat.  The stormy year, so filled with great events and arduous encounters, had thus wound up with a pitched battle, in which the enemy suffered a bloody repulse; and the best commentary on the decisive character of this last struggle of the year, was the fault found with General Lee for not destroying his adversary.

In less than six months Lee had thus fought four great pitched battles—­all victories to his arms, with the exception of Sharpsburg, which was neither a victory nor a defeat.  The result was thus highly encouraging to the South; and, had the Army of Northern Virginia had its ranks filled up, as the ranks of the Northern armies were, the events of the year 1862 would have laid the foundation of assured success.  An inquiry into the causes of failure in this particular is not necessary to the subject of the volume before the reader.  It is only necessary to state the fact that the Army of Northern Virginia, defending what all conceded to be the territory on which the decisive struggle must take place, was never sufficiently numerous to follow up the victories achieved by it.  At the battles of the Chickahominy the army numbered at most about seventy-five thousand; at the second Manassas, about fifty thousand; at Sharpsburg, less than forty thousand; and at Fredericksburg, about fifty thousand.  In the following year, it will be seen that these latter numbers were at first but little exceeded, and, as the months passed on, that they dwindled more and more, until, in April, 1865, the whole force in line of battle at Petersburg was scarcely more than thirty thousand men.

Such had been the number of the troops under command of Lee in 1862.  The reader has been informed of the number of the Federal force opposed to him.  This was one hundred and fifty thousand on the Chickahominy, of whom one hundred and fifteen thousand were effective; about one hundred thousand, it would seem, under General Pope, at the second battle of Manassas; eighty-seven thousand actually engaged at the battle of Sharpsburg; and at Fredericksburg from one hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty thousand.

These numbers are stated on the authority of Federal officers or historians, and Lee’s force on the authority of his own reports, or of gentlemen of high character, in a situation to speak with accuracy.  Of the truth of the statements the writer of these pages can have no doubt; and, if the fighting powers of the Northern and Southern troops be estimated as equal, the fair conclusion must be arrived at that Lee surpassed his adversaries in generalship.