from Washington.  Hooker, on first learning that Lee had crossed the Rappahannock, entertained the thought of himself going south of it and attacking Richmond.  Lincoln dissuaded him, since he might be “entangled upon the river, like an ox jumped half over a fence”; he could not take Richmond for weeks, and his communications might be cut; besides, Lincoln added, his true objective point throughout was Lee’s army and not Richmond.  Hooker’s later movements, in conformity with what he could gather of Lee’s movements, were prudent and skilful.  He rejected a later suggestion of Lincoln’s that he should strike quickly at the most assailable point in Lee’s lengthening line of communications, and he was wise, for Lee could live on the country he was traversing, and Hooker now aimed at covering Philadelphia or Baltimore and Washington, according to the direction which Lee might take, watching all the while for the moment to strike.  He found himself hampered in some details by probably injudicious orders of his superior, Halleck, and became irritable and querulous; Lincoln had to exercise his simple arts to keep him to his duty and to soothe him, and was for the moment successful.  Suddenly on June 27, with a battle in near prospect, Hooker sent in his resignation; probably he meant it, but there was no time to debate the matter.  Probably he had lost confidence in himself, as he did before at Chancellorsville.  Lincoln evidently judged that his state of mind made it wise to accept this resignation.  He promptly appointed in Hooker’s place one of his subordinates, General George Meade, a lean, tall, studious, somewhat sharp-tongued man, not brilliant or popular or the choice that the army would have expected, but with a record in previous campaigns which made him seem to Lincoln trustworthy, as he was.  A subordinate command in which he could really distinguish himself was later found for Hooker, who now took leave of his army in words of marked generosity towards Meade.  All this while there was great excitement in the North.  Urgent demands had been raised for the recall of McClellan, a course of which, Lincoln justly observed, no one could measure the inconvenience so well as he.

Lee was now feeling his way, somewhat in the dark as to his enemy’s movements, because he had despatched most of his cavalry upon raiding expeditions towards the important industrial centre of Harrisburg.  Meade continued on a parallel course to him, with his army spread out to guard against any movements of Lee’s to the eastward.  Each commander would have preferred to fight the other upon the defensive.  Suddenly on July 1, three days after Meade had taken command, a chance collision took place north of the town of Gettysburg between the advance guards of the two armies.  It developed into a general engagement, of which the result must partly depend on the speed with which each commander could bring up the remainder of his army.  On the first day Lee achieved a