broken here, and that the last incident of the struggle threw a shadow on the succession of fields he had won. But at least the final retreat of the enemy was assured; the Confederate capital was visibly saved; and although Lee had not ascended to the climax of success he had designed, and destroyed McClellan, he had accomplished a great and admirable work with an army, the greater portion of which was raw troops, which was badly officered, and which had bungled the best combinations of the commander. Gen. Lee has since declared that "under ordinary circumstances" the Federal force which menaced Richmond should have been destroyed; but his army was not as mobile as he expected; there was an evident disarray throughout it; some of the division commanders were utterly incompetent; the scene of operations was a country of numerous intricate roads, of marshy streams, and of forests; and the wonder and admiration is that the Confederate commander accomplished what he did under circumstances so exceptional and injurious.

In his official report, Gen. Lee wrote: "Regret that more was not accomplished, gives way to gratitude to the Sovereign Ruler of the universe for the results achieved. The siege of Richmond was raised; and the object of a campaign, which had been prosecuted, after months of preparation, at an enormous expenditure of men and money, completely frustrated. More than 10,000 prisoners, including officers of rank, 52 pieces of artillery, and upwards of 35,000 stand of small-arms, were captured. The stores and supplies of every description which fell into our hands were great in amount and value, but small in comparison with those destroyed by the enemy. His losses in battle exceeded our own, as attested by the thousands of dead and wounded left on every field; while his subsequent inaction shows in what condition the survivors reached the protection to which they fled."

CHAPTER VI.

General Lee the favourite of the populace.-He moves out to the line of the Rappahannock.-Cedar Run.-Bold and daring enterprise of General Lee, in detaching Jackson to the enemy's rear.-A peculiarity of his campaigns.-How he disregarded the maxims of military science.-The battles of Second Manassas.-Gen. Lee marches for the fords of the Potomac.-His address at Frederick, Maryland. -Jackson detached again.-McClellan finds an important paper.-The Thermopyle of "South Mountain Pass.”—Battle of Sharpsburg.-Gen. Lee obtains a victory, but is unable to press it.-He retires to Virginia.-An authentic statement of Gen. Lee's reasons for the Maryland campaign.-His constant and characteristic idea of defending Richmond by operations at a distance from it.-Con. gratulations to his troops.-Moral results of the campaign of 1862.-Testimonies to Southern heroism.

GEN. LEE had fought what was now the greatest battle of the war, in sight of Richmond; he had effected the deliverance of more than one hundred thousand people within sound of his guns; he became the favourite of the populace, and was cheered in the streets of the capital. But his great historical fame and the best display of his abilities was to commence when he withdrew from Richmond, moved out to the line of the Rappahannock, and for two years carried his arms along the Blue Ridge and the Potomac, and extended the blaze of war to the very foreground of Washington.

The failure of McClellan to take Richmond was a great disappointment to the North, but, like all its disappointments, was followed by energetic measures for the prosecution of the war. On the 11th July, by order of President Lincoln, Gen. Halleck was appointed General-in-Chief of the whole land forces of the United States. Gen. Burnside, with a large portion of his army, was recalled from North Carolina, and dispatched to the James River to reinforce Gen. McClellan, and plans were considered for another advance on Richmond, under the guidance of Gen. Pope, who had been appointed to the command of the forces in the vicinity of Washington, and in the Shenandoah Valley.

But while these movements were in progress, Gen. Lee had

detached Jackson to check Pope in his supposed advance on Gordonsville, which he effectually did by the battle of Cedar Run; and in a few weeks, the Confederate commander removed from James River, and massed his army between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, directly on the flank of the new Grand Army which Pope had assembled. In his expectation, however, of a decisive battle here, he was disappointed. Gen. Pope had no intention of renewing a trial of strength with the Confederates after his experience at Cedar Run; and with a prudence which ill assorted with his insolent address to his troops, promising them that they should see nothing but the "backs of rebels," he fell back promptly to the north bank of the Rappahannock, and, crowning every hill with his batteries, prepared to dispute the passage of the river.

In this situation Gen. Lee conceived a bold and daring enter prise, which appears never to have entered even the imagination. of the enemy. In the morning of the 24th August, he sent for a courier, and after asking Gen. Chilton, his Adjutant-General, if he was sure the man could be relied upon, he said to that officer: "General, make it a positive order to Gen. Jackson to march through Thoroughfare Gap, and attack the enemy in the rear, while I bring up the rest of the army; " and then turning to the courier, remarked: "Young man, if you are not well mounted, my Inspector-General will see that you are." The order was swiftly conveyed, and by night Jackson had taken up his hard and perilous march in the direction indicated.

The detachment of Jackson with twenty thousand men, so as to have the whole army of Pope interposed between it and its friends, was a hazardous measure, and was in fact contrary to the maxims of the military art, as it put Lee to the risk of being beaten in detail. But there is a higher generalship than that of formal maxims, which quickly and rightly estimates the mind and temper of an adversary, and founds its plan of action on these conditions, rather than on fixed rules of military science, and often in defiance of them; and of this supreme and fine order of generalship, we shall find many instances in the career of Lee. We have already seen a display of it in the battles around Richmond, when, to obtain a great victory, he exposed an advantage to McClellan, which he calculated his mind and temper were incapable of seiz

ing; and we now find him repeating the same experiment with Pope, and using, as a great General always does, knowledge of the character of his opponent as a condition of his enterprises. This peculiarity, indeed, runs through the whole of Gen. Lee's campaigns, and is most interesting in its suggestions; it exhibits what at first view seems a curious inexplicable union of great prudence on some occasions, with the most daring enterprise on others; and it offers to the military inquirer a fine study of those instances in which genius surmounts the rules of war, constructs theories on moral as well as material grounds, and wins victories in spite of the maxims of science.

Had Pope been a Lee, the order which detached Jackson to the rear, would indeed have been putting the Confederate army in the jaws of death. As it was, the movement took him by the surprise which Lee had calculated, and when he heard that Jackson was in his rear at Manassas, he was so utterly unable to take into his ima gination a thing so opposed to his military commonplaces, so little sensible of the extent of the enterprise, that he at first supposed it was only an incursion of cavalry upon his supplies.

When at last Pope's army faced towards Washington, Lee and Longstreet at once started on the circuitous march through Thoroughfare Gap, to join Jackson. When they came up with him, along the line of the Manassas Gap Railroad, he had already fought the battle of Groveton; and on the 29th August, he sustained the shock of Pope's attack, with no assistance from Longstreet, beyond a few brigades sent to his support in the evening. The great battle occurred on the 30th August.

The enemy had been reinforced, but from the experience of the two preceding days, appeared to have lost much of his confidence, and to hesitate in manoeuvres for attack. For a considerable time the action was fought principally with artillery. Then followed an advance in three lines of the Federal infantry, which was repulsed with great loss by the concentrated fire of some batteries posted on a commanding position. It was now evening, and Gen. Lee perceiving that there was confusion in the enemy's lines, ordered a general advance. Jackson on the left, and Longstreet on the right, pushed forward. The advance was never checked; the result was, the enemy was driven back in confusion over the old battle ground of Bull Run; a large number of prisoners were captured-7,000

paroled on the field of battle-and the remains of Pope's army, during the night of the 30th, crossed Bull Run stream, and took refuge behind the field-works at Centreville, where Sumner's and Franklin's corps, which had arrived from Alexandria and the lines around Washington, were drawn up.

The next morning, the enemy was discovered in the strong position at Centreville, and Gen. Lee's army was put in motion towards the Little River turnpike, to turn his right. Upon reaching Ox Hill, on the 1st September, Gen. Lee again discovered the enemy in his front, on the heights of Germantown; and about 5 P.M. a spirited attack was made by the Federals upon the front and right of Lee's columns, with a view of apparently covering the withdrawal of their trains on the Centreville road, and masking their retreat. The position of the Confederates was maintained with but slight loss on both sides. Maj.-Gen. Kearney was left by the enemy dead on the field. During the night the enemy fell back to Fairfax Court-house, and abandoned his position at Centreville. The next day, about noon, he evacuated Fairfax Court-house, taking the roads to Alexandria and Washington.

So far, the summer campaign in Virginia had been a succession of Confederate victories. Gen. Lee had already obtained an extraordinary reputation for moderation in his statements of success, and when he telegraphed to Richmond that he had obtained, on the plains of Manassas, "a signal victory," the popular joy was assured. The results were large and brilliant. Virginia was now cleared of invading armies, and there was no appearance of an enemy within ber borders, save at the fortified posts along the coast, where they were protected by their overwhelming naval forces, at Alexandria, and at Harper's Ferry, and Martinsburg, in the Valley. A circuit of wonderful victories illuminated the fortunes of the Confederacy; an aggregate force of the enemy, much exceeding 200,000 men, had been defeated; an immense spoil had been gathered; and in a few weeks the war had been carried from the gates of Richmond to the foreground of the enemy's capital.

But Gen. Lee was not a man to repose on laurels, when there were others yet to be won. On the 3d September his army was on the march for the fords of the Potomac! He had quickly resolved to turn aside from Washington, cross the Potomac, and pursue his advantage by invading the country of the enemy in return,