Strongly does Napoleon inveigh against operations which entail the division of an army into two columns unable to communicate; and especially does he reprobate the strategy which places the point of junction under the very beard of a concentrated enemy.  Both of these maxims Lee violated.  The last because he knew Pope, the first because he knew Jackson.  It is rare indeed that such strategy succeeds.  When all has depended on a swift and unhesitating advance, generals renowned for their ardent courage have wavered and turned aside.  Hasdrubal, divided from Hannibal by many miles and a Consular army, fell back to the Metaurus, and Rome was saved.  Two thousand years later, Prince Frederick Charles, divided by a few marches and two Austrian army corps from the Crown Prince, lingered so long upon the leer that the supremacy of Prussia trembled in the balance.  But the character of the Virginian soldier was of loftier type.  It has been remarked that after Jackson’s death Lee never again attempted those great turning movements which had achieved his most brilliant victories.  Never again did he divide his army to unite it again on the field of battle.  The reason is not far to seek.  There was now no general in the Confederate army to whom he dared confide the charge of the detached wing, and in possessing one such general he had been more fortunate than Napoleon.* (* It is noteworthy that Moltke once, at Koniggratz, carried out the operation referred to; Wellington twice, at Vittoria and Toulouse; Napoleon, although he several times attempted it, and, against inferior numbers, never, except at Ulm, with complete success.)

CHAPTER 2.18.  HARPER’S FERRY.

September 1862.

The Confederate operations in Virginia during the spring and summer of 1862 had been successful beyond expectation and almost beyond precedent.  Within six months two great armies had been defeated; McClellan had been driven from the Peninsula, and Pope from the Rappahannock.  The villages of Virginia no longer swarmed with foreign bayonets.  The hostile camps had vanished from her inland counties.  Richmond was free from menace; and in the Valley of the Shenandoah the harvest was gathered in without let or hindrance.  Except at Winchester and Martinsburg, where the garrisons, alarmed by the news of Pope’s defeat, were already preparing to withdraw; in the vicinity of Norfolk, and at Fortress Monroe, the invaders had no foothold within the boundaries of the State they had just now overrun; and their demoralised masses, lying exhausted behind the fortifications of Washington and Alexandria, were in no condition to resume the offensive.  The North had opened the campaign in the early spring with the confident hope of capturing the rebel capital; before the summer was over it was questionable whether it would be able to save its own.  Had the rival armies been equally matched in numbers and equipment this result would have hardly been remarkable.