The considerations here stated were the main inducements for that great movement northward which followed the battle of Chancellorsville.  The army and country were enthusiastic; the Government rather followed than led; and, throughout the month of May, Lee was busily engaged in organizing and equipping his forces for the decisive advance.  Experience had now dictated many alterations and improvements in the army.  It was divided into three corps d’armee, each consisting of three divisions, and commanded by an officer with the rank of lieutenant-general.  Longstreet remained at the head of his former corps, Ewell succeeded Jackson in command of “Jackson’s old corps,” and A.P.  Hill was assigned to a third corps made up of portions of the two others.  The infantry was thus rearranged in a manner to increase greatly its efficiency, and the artillery arm was entirely reorganized.  The old system of assigning one or more batteries or battalions to each division or corps was done away with, and the artillery of the army was made a distinct command, and placed under General W.N.  Pendleton, a brave and energetic officer, who was thenceforward Lee’s “chief of artillery.”  The last arm, the cavalry, was also increased in efficiency; and, on the last day of May, General Lee had the satisfaction of finding himself in command of a well-equipped and admirably-officered army of sixty-eight thousand three hundred and fifty-two bayonets, and nearly ten thousand cavalry and artillery—­in all, about eighty thousand men.  Never before had the Southern army had present for duty, as fighting men, so large a number, except just before the battles on the Chickahominy.  There was, however, this great difference between the army then and at this time:  in those first months of 1862, it was made up largely of raw troops who had never heard the discharge of a musket in their lives:  while now, in May, 1863 the bulk of the army consisted of Lee’s veterans, men who had followed him through the fire of Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and could be counted on to effect any thing not absolutely beyond human power.  General Longstreet, conversing after the war with a gentleman of the North, declared as much.  The army at that time, he said, was in a condition to undertake any thing.

X.

LEE’S PLANS AND OBJECTS.

The great game of chess was now about to commence, and, taking an illustration from that game, General Lee is reported to have said that he believed he would “swap queens,” that is, advance and attempt to capture the city of Washington, leaving General Hooker at liberty, if he chose so to do, to seize in turn upon Richmond.  What the result of so singular a manoeuvre would have been, it is impossible to say; it would certainly have proved one of the strangest incidents of a war fruitful in varied and shifting events.