Day after day passed, bringing no definite information.  There were reports of severe cavalry fighting in Virginia, but the position of the main body of Lee’s army was still practically unknown to the people at large.  On the 22d, a leading journal said, “The public must, with patience, await events in Virginia, and remain in ignorance until some decisive point is reached;” and on the 24th, the head-lines of the press read, in effect, “Not much of importance from Pennsylvania yesterday.”  The intense excitement caused by the invasion was subsiding.  People could not exist at the first fever-heat.  It was generally believed that Hooker’s army had brought Lee to a halt, and that the two commanders were manoeuvring for positions.  The fact was that the Confederates had an abundance of congenial occupation in sending southward to their impoverished commissary department the immense booty they were gathering among the rich farms and towns of Pennsylvania.  Hooker was seeking, by the aid of his cavalry force and scouts, to penetrate his opponent’s plans, meanwhile hesitating whether to fall on the rebel communications in their rear, or to follow northward.

Lee and his great army, flushed with recent victories, were not all that Hooker had to contend with, but there was a man in Washington, whose incapacity and ill-will threatened even more fatal difficulties.  Gen. Halleck, Commander-in-Chief, hung on the Union leader like the “Old Man of the Sea.”  He misled the noble President, who, as a civilian. was ignorant of military affairs, paralyzed tens of thousands of troops by keeping them where they could be of no practical use, and by giving them orders of which General Hooker was not informed.  The Comte de Paris writes, “Lee’s projects could not have been more efficiently subserved,” and the disastrous defeat of General Milroy confirms these words.  It was a repetition of the old story of General Miles of the preceding year, with the difference that Milroy was a gallant, loyal man, who did all that a skilful officer could accomplish to avert the results of his superior’s blundering and negligence.

Hooker was goaded into resigning, and of the army of the Potomac the gifted French author again writes, “Everything seemed to conspire against it, even the government, whose last hope it was;” adding later:  “Out of the 97,000 men thus divided (at Washington, Frederick, Fortress Monroe, and neighboring points) there were 40,000, perfectly useless where they were stationed, that might have been added to the army of the Potomac before the 1st of July.  Thus reinforced, the Union general could have been certain of conquering his adversary, and even of inflicting upon him an irreparable disaster.”

The fortunes of the North were indeed trembling in the balance.  We had to cope with the ablest general of the South and his great army, with the peace (?) faction that threatened bloody arguments in the loyal States, and with General Halleck.