Vicksburg, whose defences were then considered impregnable, but the Secretary of War was aware that the resistance of this place was limited to the extent of its provisions, and that famine would win the day within a few weeks.

It was therefore largely in the interest of the Confederate government to strike a decisive blow on the battlefield: it possessed an instrument in its armies as perfect as could possibly be desired, while the difficulties in the interior, as well as military considerations, made it then a duty on its part to risk everything to end the war by a final victory.

Moreover, the political situation of her adversaries afforded to the South the only chance for accomplishing the object she had pursued from the day she had assumed the position of a sovereign power. This object, the independence of the slave States, simple in appearance, was not so in reality. We have shown elsewhere that the political and social institution of slavery could not be maintained except on condition of its being respected beyond the boundaries of its own domain. Its advocates, after having long controlled the Union, had drawn back from the moment that the central executive power slipped from their hands. But as to this fundamental institution of the new Confederacy, the vicinity of a great hostile power comprising all the free States, the real master of the continent and spreading rapidly over the vast territories open to colonization, would have been still more fatal than the maintenance of the Union as it was in 1861. In order that a slaveholding community may expand and prosper it must have nothing to fear from its neighbors: if independence was the object of the Confederacy, supremacy was therefore the indispensable means to guarantee it. If the soldiers who were lavish of their blood on the battlefields thought that they were only fighting to repel an invasion from the North, the sagacious men who directed their movements knew full well that a purely defensive policy would not suffice. After having abandoned the Union, might they not prevent its reconstruction to their injury? There was nothing chimerical in this hope: its realization depended on the fate of battles. One secession might bring on another. Many interests, both political and commercial, were bound to divide the Western States, the Central and Eastern States, as soon as

the governing principle, the national bond which had hitherto kept them united, was repudiated. This new crisis seemed to be approaching. The parties which in 1861 had set aside their quarrels in order to defend the Constitution were again in open conflict. Those in favor of peace, whose number had rapidly increased, no longer concealed their hopes, and scarcely disguised their sympathies for the South. In the large cities popular discontent, muttering in secret, only asked to make common cause with those who, arms in hand, were fighting the lawful government. The sequel proved that formidable insurrections were ready to break out: they would have incited new seceeding movements, dragging along the timid and the wavering, paralyzing the action of the government, and breaking the Union into a thousand fragments. The latter disappearing with the authority that represented it, the Confederacy, strongly constituted, founded on the common interest of all its members, would become the dominating power by the side of States greatly divided, it may be torn to pieces by a new civil war, among which it could select allies, or rather protégés, without fear of rivals.

In order to make the Federal edifice, already so terribly shaken, thus to crumble, a single great victory was perhaps sufficient; but this victory had to be achieved on the enemy's territory: a defensive success was not enough to accomplish the object, nor was it expedient to wait until the North had given up the game through sheer exhaustion. By invading the free States the Confederate armies would not only afford some relief to the populations of the South, which had been sorely tried for the last two years; they would show to Europe that the moment had arrived for reaching out a friendly hand to a power capable of maintaining its independence by such efforts. To Lee's army was awarded the great and perilous honor of performing this task. Pemberton had been shut up in Vicksburg with the remnants of his army since the 18th of May. Bragg's only care at Tullahoma was to free himself, without troubling himself about gaining the distant shores of the Ohio unless powerfully reinforced.

It is true that Longstreet had proposed to Lee to go and reinforce Bragg with his army corps, in order to undertake, by way

of Kentucky, the campaign of invasion which was to decide the fate of the war. But this campaign could not have produced the same results as that of which Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the mines of Pennsylvania were the immediate objective points. Indeed, on that side the Army of Northern Virginia had but a few days' march to accomplish in order to cross the Potomac it knew all its fords. Taught by experience, it could renew the campaign of the preceding year under better auspices. If, as was the case after the two battles of Manassas, the capture of Washington itself should seem above its power, it need not run against the fortifications of the capital in order to succeed. It could either occupy the large cities of Pennsylvania, cut the Northern States almost in two and paralyze them, or by delivering Baltimore from Federal rule isolate the capital of the Union and force Mr. Lincoln and his government to abandon it in disgrace or allow himself to be blockaded within its walls. Above all, it could by threatening either of these operations drive the Army of the Potomac from the formidable positions it occupied along the Rappahannock, and either draw it away from the fortifications of Washington, its base of operations and its refuge in case of defeat, or oblige it to resume the offensive under the most unfavorable circumstances. Between the armies which invaded the Confederacy in every direction Lee could thus choose his adversary in order to strike him a decisive blow. If this blow should not suffice to end the war, if the Army of Northern Virginia should even be compelled to recross the Potomac, it would have succeeded in breaking up the plans of the hostile generals, turned the tide of war during the mild season, and thus made a gain of one year. It was better to attempt this invasion, notwithstanding all its risks, than to continue making the heaviest sacrifices for such victories as that of Chancellorsville-a fruitless victory, for if it had reduced the ranks of both parties in the same proportion, the Federals alone could have been able to fill up the voids, while summer, by opening all the roads to Richmond, would probably have obliged Lee to leave Fredericksburg for the defence of the capital.

In the mean while, several officers-including the commanderin-chief of the Army of Northern Virginia, according to some

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accounts were busy in calculating the losses that an aggressive campaign might inflict upon this army, whose ranks it was so difficult to fill through the process of recruiting. They would have preferred that the army had confined itself to the task of repulsing the Federals, of keeping them away from Richmond, in using its strength in fruitless efforts, rather than compromise, in such a venture, all the advantages they had gained with so much trouble during the last two years. Some politicians also feared-without cause, in our opinion-that an invasion, even a successful one at the outset, so far from shaking the determination of their adversaries, might be the means of putting an end to party struggles in the North and unite all men once more in defence of the Federal power. One of the most enlightened among them, Vice-President Stephens, on being informed that the campaign we are about to describe had opened, wrote to Mr. Davis on the 12th of June, proposing to go to Washington with words of peace before the Confederate soldiers had crossed the Potomac. But the confidence and zeal of the latter put an end to all hesitation on the part of their leaders: public opinion, excited almost to frenzy by success, imperatively demanded that the seat of war should be transferred to the soil of the free States. "If the general wants provisions, let him go and look for them in Pennsylvania," said the chief of the bureau of subsistence, it is reported, in reply to a demand for rations addressed to that department by General Lee. In a purely military point of view this step was perhaps imprudent; but in the situation of the two adversaries, policy, being for once in perfect accord with the popular sentiment, counselled the attempt.

CHAPTER II.

BRANDY STATION.

N the 3d of June, 1863, Lee put his army in motion. The future of America was about to be decided for ever. This army bore but little resemblance to the brave but undisciplined troops that had defended the Manassas plains two years before. It had even become, through its organization and discipline, its experience in fighting and marching, much superior to what it was the preceding year, when its chieftain led it into Maryland for the first time. The extreme confidence that animated it, as we have observed, imparted to it immense strength on the field of battle, but it also inspired it with an imprudent contempt for its adversaries. From the day following the battle of Chancellorsville the government and the generals had applied themselves to the task of reinforcing and reorganizing it. The return of the three divisions that had been besieging Suffolk, the forwarding of new regiments which had been withdrawn from points of least importance for defence, and, finally, the arrival of a large number of recruits, had during the latter part of May carried its effective force to eighty thousand men, 68,352 of whom were infantry. The latter had been divided into three army corps, each comprising three divisions. Up to this time the nine divisions of the Army of Northern Virginia had been partitioned between Longstreet and Jackson, to whom Lee allowed great freedom of action over the whole extent of the battlefield where each happened to be in command. Being deprived of the services of him who, of his two lieutenants, was most accustomed to exercise independent command, and obliged thenceforth to give more personal attention to the management of battles, Lee felt that it was necessary to reduce the size of his army corps in order to render them more manageable. Longstreet retained the