desperate position they had assumed, the wonderful success with which they had extemporized manufactures and munitions of war, and kept themselves in communication with the world in spite of a magnificent blockade; the elasticity with which they had risen from defeat, and the courage they had shown in threatening again and again the capital of the North, and even its interiour. It will be recollected that such a eulogy of the Confederates was publicly pronounced by Dr. Bellows, one of the most popular preachers of New York. He concluded: "Well is Gen. McClellan reported to have said (privately), as he watched their obstinate fighting at Antietam, and saw them retiring in perfect order in the midst of the most frightful carnage, What terrible neighbours these would be! We must conquer them, or they will conquer us!""

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These testimonies to Confederate heroism are not idly repeated here. Each year of the war had some characteristic by which it is easily remembered; and that of 1862 may be taken as the period of the greatest lustre of the Confederate arms. Whatever its sequel, what is testified of it here remains, cannot be recalled from the memory of the world, and constitutes a secure monument of history, which no after-thought of envy, no modification of opinions on the part of an enemy ultimately successful, can possibly destroy or diminish.

CHAPTER VII.

General Lee's perilous situation in North Virginia.—His alarming letter to the War Office. The happy fortune of McClellan's removal.-The Battle of Fredericksburg.-Gen. Lee's great mistake in not renewing the attack.-His own confession of errour.-He detaches nearly a third of his army to cover the south side of Richmond. He writes a severe letter to the Government.-The enemy's fifth grand attempt on Richmond.-Gen. Lee in a desperate extremity.-The Battles of Chancellorsville.-Three victories for the Confederates.-The masterpiece of Gen. Lee's military life.

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AFTER the battle of Sharpsburg, Gen. Lee did not indicate an immediate purpose to retire from the Potomac, but remained in the neighbourhood of Winchester, anxiously waiting for the development of McClellan's designs. There was serious reason apprehend that the enemy would again press him to battle. But the extreme moral timidity of McClellan again gave opportunities to the Confederates; and while with an army already triple that of Lee, he was yet entreating and importuning the government at Washington for reinforcements, the latter was recruiting his strength so terribly diminished by the hardships of the Gordonsville and Maryland campaign, and making necessary preparations for the renewal of operations. In not pressing Lee after his retirement into Virginia, McClellan made the great mistake of his military career. Of the reality and extent of his opportunity at this time, we have in evidence a letter of Gen. Lee himself. In the first days of November, 1862, he wrote to the War Department that he had not half men enough to resist McClellan's advance with his mighty army, and that he would have to resort to manoeuvring in preference to risking his army in battle. He added that threefourths of the cavalry horses were sick with sore-tongue, and their hoofs were falling off; he complained that his soldiers were not fed and clad as they should be; and he expressed the greatest anxiety as to any movement of McClellan threatening battle.

But most happily for the Confederates, the uncertainty of McClellan's designs terminated in his removal from command, and

the appointment of Gen. Burnside to succeed him; event which gave occasion to a new meditation and plan of campaign, and secured for Gen. Lee the delay which he so much needed. It was a deliverance from an alarming crisis. Gen. Lee had at first supposed that Burnside intended to embark his army for the south. side of James River, to operate probably in eastern North Carolina; but in the latter part of November, the enemy showed plainly another design, and the Confederate scouts reported large masses of infantry advancing on Fredericksburg. On the 18th November, a portion of Longstreet's corps was marched thither; and Gen. Lee wrote to Richmond: "Before the enemy's trains can leave Fredericksburg" (i.e. for Richmond) "this whole army will be in position." The assurance was faithfully and fully kept, and Burnside found his alert antagonist in full force on the banks of the Rappahannock.

The battle of Fredericksburg, on the 13th December, 1862, was one of the most easily and cheaply won Confederate victories of the war. It was a striking illustration of the advantage of fighting in a strong position-an advantage too little regarded by the Confederates during the war; for although victories in open fields obtained for the South a certain prestige, it was at the woful price of the flower of her people, for which there was but little compensation in the loss of life in the enemy's ranks, recruited as they were from the dregs of his own society, and the mercenary markets of the whole world. At Fredericksburg, the Confederate position was all that could be desired by Gen. Lee. His army was drawn up along the heights, which, retiring in a semicircle from the river, embraced within their arms a plain six miles in length, and from two to three in depth. This semicircle of hills terminated at Massaponax River, about five miles below Fredericksburg. The right

* Dr. Dabney, the biographer of Stonewall Jackson, writing in 1863, says: “Onehalf of the prisoners of war, registered by the victorious armies of the South, have been foreign mercenaries. Mr. Smith O'Brien, warning his race against the unhallowed enterprise, declares that the Moloch of Yankee ambition has already sacrificed 200,000 Irishmen to it. And still, as the flaming sword of the South mows down these hireling invaders, fresh hordes throng the shores. Last, our country has to wage this strife only on these cruel terms, that the blood of her chivalrous sons shall be matched against the sordid streams of this cloaca populorum. In the words of Lord Lindsay, at Flodden Field, we must play our 'Rose Nobles of gold, against crooked sixpences.""

of the Confederate army, extending nearly as far as the Massaponax, comprised the cavalry and horse artillery under Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, posted on the only ground at all suitable for that arm of the service. On his left was Gen. Jackson's corps, of which Early's division formed the right, and A. P. Hill's the left; the divisions of Taliaferro and D. H. Hill being in reserve. The left wing of the army, under Gen. Longstreet, comprised the division of Hood on the right, next to it that of Pickett, then those of McLaws, Ransom and Anderson. The artillery was massed together, and not dispersed among the divisions, and was so posted as to sweep the front of the position. It may be remarked that this was Gen. Lee's favourite disposition of his artillery in battle, and in this instance it was much favoured by the semicircular formation of the hills.

The battle was at first declared against the Confederate right by a heavy attack upon Jackson, which was repulsed, and finally ceased about noon. By this time fresh divisions had crossed the river at Fredericksburg, and the mass of Burnside's army was brought to the desperate attack of Marye's Height, held by McLaws' division and the Washington artillery. Here, during the whole afternoon, attack after attack was repeated with a desperation never before exhibited by the enemy, and with appalling recklessness of human life. "It is hardly to be supposed," says a Northern writer, "that Gen. Burnside had contemplated the bloody sequence to which he was committing himself when first he ordered a division to assail the heights of Fredericksburg; but having failed in the first assault, and then in the second and third, there grew up in his mind something which those around him saw to be akin to desperation. Riding down from his headquarters to the bank of the Rappahannock, he walked restlessly up and down, and gazing over at the heights across the river, exclaimed vehemently, 'That crest must be carried to-night.' Already, however, everything had been thrown in, saving Hooker, and he was now ordered over the river." But all was in vain. Hooker's attack shared the fate of its predecessors; the men rushed forward, then wavered, a third of their number fell, and the remainder fled. During the entire afternoon the struggle continued. The simile, so commonly used in descriptions of battles, of waves breaking upon a rock-bound coast, was never more just in its conception than in the frantic battle in which the Federal divisions were shattered upon the heights assailed,

and were hurled back, one after the other, on the crimson tide of death.

Night closed on a field on which lay more than ten thousand Federals killed or wounded. Gen. Lee dispatched to Richmond: "Our loss during the operations since the movements of the enemy began, amounts to about 1800 killed and wounded." It was a great victory; but the Confederate public expected from it something more than éclat, and had reason to hope that there would be inflicted upon the enemy not only defeat, but destruction. It was thus that the inconsequence of Burnside's safe retreat across the river was a great disappointment, attended for the first time with some popular censure of Gen. Lee. The only reply to such censure was a very candid explanation, in which Gen. Lee confessed he had been surprised as to the extent of the enemy's disaster and his design of retreat. In an official report he says: "The attack on the 13th had been so easily repulsed, and by so small a part of our army, that it was not supposed the enemy would limit his effort to one attempt, which, in view of the magnitude of his preparations, and the extent of his force, seemed to be comparatively insignificant. Believing, therefore, that he would attack us, it was not deemed expedient to lose the advantages of our position, and expose the troops to the fire of his inaccessible batteries beyond the river, by advancing against him. But we were necessarily ignorant of the extent to which he had suffered, and only became aware of it when, on the morning of the 16th, it was discovered that he had availed himself of the darkness of night, and the prev. alence of a violent storm of wind and rain, to recross the river."

With the Confederate victory of Fredericksburg quiet fell upon the lines of the Rappahannock; but on other theatres of the war there was not that cessation of interest that might have been expected in the harshest months of winter. The authorities at Richmond were soon disturbed by reported movements of the enemy in other directions, apparently against the city and its southern communications; and the consequence of these alarms and anxieties, in which Gen. Lee fully shared, was, that about one-third of his army had to be detached to cover the south side of the capital. In the month of February, 1863, the greater portion of Longstreet's command was sent to confront the army corps of Hooker, supposed to have been sent to the Peninsula, and to watch the movements