The brilliant victories gained by Lee inspired the Confederate authorities and leaders with a greatly exaggerated hope of the ultimate success of the rebellion.  It was during the summer of 1863 that the Confederate armies reached, perhaps, their highest numerical strength and greatest degree of efficiency.  Both the long dreamed of possibility of achieving Southern independence and the newly flushed military ardor of officers and men, elated by what seemed to them an unbroken record of successes on the Virginia battle-fields moved General Lee to the bold hazard of a second invasion of the North.  Early in June, Hooker gave it as his opinion that Lee intended to move against Washington, and asked whether in that case he should attack the Confederate rear.  To this Lincoln answered on the fifth of that month: 

“In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it.  If he should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight in intrenchments and have you at disadvantage, and so, man for man, worst you at that point, while his main force would in some way be getting an advantage of you northward.  In one word, I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”

Five days later, Hooker, having become convinced that a large part of Lee’s army was in motion toward the Shenandoah valley, proposed the daring plan of a quick and direct march to capture Richmond.  But the President immediately telegraphed him a convincing objection: 

“If left to me, I would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee’s moving north of it.  If you had Richmond invested to-day, you would not be able to take it in twenty days; meanwhile, your communications, and with them your army, would be ruined.  I think Lee’s army, and not Richmond, is your true objective point.  If he comes toward the upper Potomac, follow on his flank and on his inside track, shortening your lines while he lengthens his.  Fight him, too, when opportunity offers.  If he stays where he is, fret him and fret him.”

The movement northward of Lee’s army, effectually masked for some days by frequent cavalry skirmishes, now became evident to the Washington authorities.  On June 14, Lincoln telegraphed Hooker: 

“So far as we can make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded at Winchester, and Tyler at Martinsburg If they could hold out a few days, could you help them?  If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere.  Could you not break him?”