" }
{ { Colquitt's " }
Jackson's 2d Corps. {
{ { Colston's " }
{ Trimble's { Jones's " } 6,000
{ division. { Nichols's " }
{ { Paxton's " }
{
{ { Gordon's " }
{ Early's { Hays's " } 7,400
{ division. { Smith's " }
{ { Hoke's " }
Stuart's Cavalry { Fitz Hugh Lee's brigade . . 1,800
division { W. H. F. Lee's " … 900
Artillery, 170 pieces … . … . 5,000
———
Total … … … 58,100
Hotchkiss and Allan state that there may have been three to five thousand more men in line at the time of Hooker's attack.
As will be noticed from the table, only part of Longstreet's corps was present. The main body had been sent, about Feb. 1, under command of its chief, to operate in the region between Petersburg and Suffolk, where our forces under Peck were making a demonstration. This detail reduced Lee's army by nearly one-quarter.
During the winter, Lee's forces had been distributed as follows:—
The old battle-ground of Dec. 13 was occupied by the First Corps; while Jackson with his Second Corps held Hamilton's Crossing, and extended his lines down to Port Royal. Stuart's cavalry division prolonged the left to Beverly Ford on the upper Rappahannock, and scoured the country as far as the Pamunkey region. Hampton's brigade of cavalry had been sent to the rear to recruit, and Fitz Lee's had taken its place at Culpeper, from which point it extended so as to touch Lee's left flank at Banks's Ford. The brigade of W. H. F. Lee was on the Confederate right. Stuart retained command of the entire force, but had his headquarters at Culpeper.
The supplies of the army were received by the Fredericksburg and Richmond Railroad from the capital, and from the depots on the Virginia Central. Lee had been assiduous in re-organizing his forces, in collecting an abundance of supplies, in checking desertions, and in procuring re-enforcements. And the vigor with which the conscription was pushed swelled his strength so materially that in three months Jackson's corps alone shows an increase from a force of twenty-five thousand up to thirty-three thousand men "for duty." The staff of the army was created a separate organization. The cavalry had already been successfully consolidated. And now the artillery was embodied in a special organization under Gen. Pendleton, and an engineer regiment put on foot.
The morale of the Army of Northern Virginia could not be finer. The forced retreat of McClellan from before Richmond; the driving of Pope from his vaunted positions in its front; the Maryland campaign with its deliberate withdrawal from an army of twice its strength; finally the bloody check to Burnside—had furnished a succession of triumphs which would lend any troops self-confidence and high courage. But, in addition to all this, the average of the men of this army were older and more hardened soldiers than those of the Army of the Potomac. The early conscription acts of the Confederacy had made it difficult for men once inured to the steady bearing and rough life of the soldier, and to the hard fare of camp-life, to withdraw from the ranks.
In Hooker's testimony before the Committee on the Conduct of the War occurs this tribute to the Confederate infantry: "Our artillery had always been superior to that of the rebels, as was also our infantry, except in discipline; and that, for reasons not necessary to mention, never did equal Lee's army. With a rank and file vastly inferior to our own, intellectually and physically, that army has, by discipline alone, acquired a character for steadiness and efficiency, unsurpassed, in my judgment, in ancient or modern times. We have not been able to rival it, nor has there been any near approximation to it in the other rebel armies."
The cavalry force was small, but energetic and enterprising to a degree as yet by no means equalled by our own. The artillery was neither as good, nor as well equipped or served, as ours, but was commanded with intelligence, and able to give a good account of itself.
V. DIFFICULTY OF AN ATTACK.
An attack of Lee's position in front, even had Burnside's experience not demonstrated its folly, seemed to promise great loss of life without corresponding success.
To turn his right flank required the moving of pontoon trains and artillery over the worst of roads for at least twenty miles, through a country cut up by a multitude of streams running across the route to be taken, and emptying into either the Potomac or Rappahannock; all requiring more or less bridging.
Lee's spy system was excellent. It has been claimed in Southern reports, that his staff had deciphered our signal code by watching a station at Stafford. And Butterfield admits this in one of his despatches of May 3. He would speedily ascertain any such movement, and could create formidable intrenchments on one side the river, as fast as we could build or repair roads on which to move down, upon the other. Moreover, there was a thousand feet of stream to bridge at the first available place below Skenker's Neck.
There remained nothing to do but to turn Lee's left flank; and this could only be accomplished by stratagem, for Lee had strengthened every part of the river by which Hooker could attempt a passage.
But this problem was, despite its difficulties, still possible of solution; and Hooker set himself to work to elucidate it.
So soon as he had matured his plan, which he elaborated with the greatest care, but kept perfectly secret from every one until the movements themselves developed it, although making use of the knowledge and skill of all his generals both before and during its initiation, he speedily prepared for its vigorous execution. In May, the term of service of some twenty-two thousand nine-months and two-years men would expire. These men he must seek to utilize in the campaign.
The first intimation of a forward movement received by the army at large, apart from the Cavalry Corps, had been a circular of April 13, notifying commanding officers to have their troops supplied with eight days' rations, and a hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition, sixty to be carried by the soldiers, and the balance on the pack-mules.
After the battle of Fredericksburg, the army had returned to substantially the same positions and quarters occupied before; and here the men had housed themselves for the winter. The Mud March had broken up these cantonments; but after a few days' absence the several regiments returned to their old camps, and the same huts had generally been re-occupied by the same men. But when Fighting Joe Hooker's orders to march were issued, no one dreamed of any thing but victory; and the Army of the Potomac burned its ships. Nothing was left standing but the mud walls from which the shelter-tent roofs had been stripped, and an occasional chimney. Many of the men (though contrary to orders) set fire to what was left, and the animus non revertendi was as universal as the full confidence that now there lay before the Army of the Potomac a certain road, whatever might bar the path, to the long-wished-for goal of Richmond.
VI. THE PROPOSED CAVALRY RAID.
Hooker proposed to open his flank attack by cutting Lee's communications. Accordingly, on April 12, Gen. Stoneman, commanding the Cavalry Corps, received orders to march at seven A.M. next day, with his whole force except one brigade. He was to ascend the Rappahannock, keeping well out of view, and masking his movement with numerous small detachments—alleging a chase of Jones's guerillas in the Shenandoah valley, as his objective. The river was to be crossed west of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. At Culpeper he was to destroy or disperse Fitz Lee's brigade of some two thousand cavalry, and at Gordonsville the infantry provost-guard; thence to