V.

EXIT POPE.

At Centreville, Pope united with the corps of Franklin and Sumner, and he remained there during the whole of the 31st. But Lee had not yet given up the pursuit. Leaving Longstreet on the battle-field, he sent Jackson by a detour on Pope's right, to strike the Little River turnpike, and by that route to Fairfax Courthouse, to intercept, if possible, Pope's retreat to Washington. Jackson's march was much retarded by a heavy storm that commenced the day before and still continued. Pope, meantime, fell back to positions covering Fairfax Courthouse and Germantown; and on the evening of the 1st of September, Jackson struck his right posted at Ox Hill, near Germantown. He immediately engaged the Union force with Hill's and Ewell's divisions in the midst of a cold and drenching rain. The attack fell upon Reno, Hooker, a part of McDowell, and Kearney. A firm front was maintained till Stevens' division of Reno's corps, owing to the exhaustion of its ammunition, and the death of its general, was forced back in disorder. To repair this break, Kearney, with the promptitude that marked him, sent forward Birney's brigade of his own division; and presently, all aglow with zeal, brought up a battery which he placed in position. But there still remained a gap on Birney's right, caused by the retirement of Stevens' division. This Birney pointed out to Kearney, and that gallant soldier, dashing forward to reconnoitre the ground, unwittingly rode into the enemy's lines and was killed. In his death, the army lost the living ideal of a soldier-a preux chevalier, in whom there were mixed the qualities of chivalry and gallantry as strong as ever beat beneath the mailed coat of an olden knight. Like Desaix, whom Napoleon characterized as "the man most worthy to

be his lieutenant," Kearney died opposing a heroic breast to disaster.

On the following day, September 2d, the army was, by order of General Halleck, drawn back within the lines of Washington, and Lee, abandoning direct pursuit, began to turn his eyes towards the north of the Potomac.

Within the fortifications of Washington the army now rested from the labors, fatigues, and privations of this trying campaign, in which, from the Rapidan to the front of the capital, it had fought and retreated, and retreated and fought. It had passed through an experience calculated to dislocate the structure of most armies; and if it reached the lines of Washington in any military order whatsoever, it was because the individual patriotism of the rank and file supplied a bond of cohesion when the bond of military discipline failed. Of the losses in killed and wounded during this campaign, no official record is found; but the Confederate commander claims the capture of nine thousand prisoners, thirty pieces of artillery, and upwards of twenty thousand stands of arms in the engagement on the plains of Manassas alone. Untold thousands had straggled from their commands during the retreat.

As for Pope, it is hardly possible to feel for him less than pity, in spite of the bombastic pretensions with which he set out. The record already given does not justify the assertion that he was not obeyed by his subordinates; but it cannot be denied that the estimate of his character held by the officers under his command was not of a kind to elicit that hearty and zealous co-operation needed for the effective conduct of great military operations. He had the misfortune to be of all men the most disbelieved. General Pope took the first opportunity on his return to Washington to vacate the command; the Army of Virginia passed out of existence, and its corps, united with the Army of the Potomac, fell back into the arms of McClellan.

VI.

THE MARYLAND CAMPAIGN.

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1862.

I.

MANŒUVRES PREVIOUS TO ANTIETAM.

WHEN Lee put his columns in motion from Richmond, it was with no intent of entering upon a campaign of invasion across the great river that formed the dividing line between the warring powers. But who can foretell the results that may spring from the simplest act in that complex interplay of cause and effect we name war? A secondary operation, having in view merely to hold Pope in check, had effected not only its primal aim, but the infinitely more important result of dislodging the Army of the Potomac from the Peninsula. Thus relieved of all care touching Richmond, Lee was free to assume a real offensive for the purpose not merely of checking but of crushing Pope. The success of the campaign had been remarkable. From the front of Richmond the theatre of operations had been transferred to the front of Washington; the Union armies had been reduced to a humiliating defensive, and the rich harvests of the Shenandoah Valley and Northern Virginia were the prize of the victors. To crown and consolidate these conquests, Lee now determined to cross the frontier into Maryland.

The prospective advantages of such a transfer of the theatre of war to the north of the Potomac seemed strongly to invite it; for, in addition to the telling blows Lee might

hope to inflict in the demoralized condition of the Union army, and the prestige that the enterprise would lend the Confederate cause abroad, it was judged that the presence of the hostile force would detain McClellan on the frontier long enough to render an invasion of Virginia during the approaching winter difficult, if not impracticable.*

Yet, if the enterprise had promised only such military gain, it is doubtful whether the Richmond government would have undertaken a project involving the renunciation of the proved advantages of their proper defensive; but it seemed, in addition, to hold out certain ulterior inducements, which were none the less alluring for being somewhat vague. The theory of the invasion assumed that the presence of the Confederate army in Maryland would induce an immediate rising among the citizens of that State for what General Lee calls "the recovery of their liberties." If it did not prompt an armed insurrection, it was, at least, expected that the people of Maryland would assume such an attitude as would seriously embarrass the Government and necessitate the retention of a great part of its military force for the purpose of preventing anticipated risings. By this means it was believed that it would be difficult for the Union authorities to apply a concentrated effort to the expulsion of the invading force.+

Without the prospect of some such incidental and ulterior advantages as these, the enterprise would hardly have been undertaken; for, not only was it perilous in itself, but the Confederate army was not properly equipped for invasion: it lacked much of the material of war and was feeble in transportation, while the troops were so wretchedly clothed and

Lee: Report of the Maryland Campaign, in Reports of the Army of Northern Virginia, vol. i., p. 27.

General Lee's statement on this head is somewhat vague; but it can hardly mean any thing else than what is indicated above: "The condition of Maryland encouraged the belief that the presence of our army, however inferior to that of the enemy, would induce the Washington Government to retain all its available force to provide against contingencies which its course towards the people of that State gave it reason to apprehend.”—Ibid.

shod that little else could be claimed for them than what Tilly boasted of his followers-that they were an army of "ragged soldiers and bright muskets."*

Plausible though this anticipation of a secessionist uprising in Maryland seemed, it rested on a false basis and was not more emphatically belied by experience than it was condemned by sound reasoning before the fact. Nevertheless, misled by this illusion, Lee turned the heads of his columns away from the direction of Washington, which he never seems to have dreamed of assailing directly, and put them in motion towards Leesburg. Between the 4th and 7th of September the whole Confederate army crossed the Potomac by the fords near that place, and encamped in the vicinity of Frederick, where the standard of revolt was formally raised, and the people of Maryland invited by proclamation of General Lee to join the Confederate force. But it soon became manifest that the expectation of practical assistance from the Marylanders was destined to grievous disappointment; and the ragged and shoeless soldiers who entered the State chanting the song in which Maryland was made passionately to invoke Southern aid against Northern despotism found, instead of the rapturous reception they had anticipated, cold indifference or ill-concealed hostility. Of the citizens of Maryland a large number (and notably the population of the western counties) were really loyal, a considerable number indifferent, and a smaller number bitterly secessionist. But to permit the secessionists to move at all, it was necessary that Lee should first of all demonstrate his ability to remain in the State by overthrowing the powerful Union force that was moving to meet him; while the lukewarm, whom the romance of the invasion might have allured, were repelled by the wretchedness, the rags, and the shocking filth of the "army of liberation."

** Thousands of the troops," says Lee, were destitute of shoes."-Reports of the Army of Northern Virginia, vol. i., p. 27. "Never," says General Jones, who commanded Jackson's old "Stonewall" division, "had the army been so dirty, ragged, and ill provided for, as on this march."-Ibid., vol. ii., p. 221.