Rapidan.

Meade then advanced and took up position between the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, which was nearly the same ground he held before his retreat.

This campaign may be regarded from two points of view, and from each is susceptible of a different critique. Considered as a movement to meet Lee's advance, it was perfectly successful, and its conduct highly creditable. Lee's line of manœuvre was, it is true, exterior to that of Meade, and as it was necessary for him to pursue circuitous routes in order to effect his turning movements, this imposed on the former considerably greater marching. Yet he had a clear object in view, whereas his antagonist was necessarily delayed by ignorance of his opponent's real design. The very success of Lee's plan depended on being pushed impetuously. Nevertheless, he delayed at Madison Courthouse, which thwarted the success of his first flank movement; and he delayed again at Warrenton, which baulked that of his second. But even in view of these halts, which General Lee partly explains on the ground that they were necessary in order to supply the troops, the operations of the 14th were not conducted with much vigor. Ewell allowed himself to be detained by the rear-guard, at Auburn, from early in the morning till noon; and from Greenwich he took a blind track across the fields, which he found very difficult, and which gave him much delay, thus preventing his junction with Hill at Bristoe until too late. Nor was Hill's march made with much more expedition; for notwithstanding that his route to Bristoe was but four miles longer than that of Warren, and that the latter was delayed for several hours by his rencounter with Ewell at Auburn, he reached the decisive point as soon as Hill. Warren's conduct throughout these operations was excellent, and a model of the execution of the duties of a rear-guard.

But if, on the other hand, we look upon General Meade's line of duty as calling essentially for offensive action, his course in this retrograde movement is open to another order of criticism.

It is due to observe that General Meade not only did not wish to avoid battle, but he was really anxious to precipitate decisive action, provided, always, he could fight on advantageous terms. Yet he appears to have, overpassed several excellent openings for a bold initiative. It would have been interesting to see the result of a determination that, overleaping a too pedantic view of the nature and uses of lines of communication, would have tried the experiment of holding the army in a favorable position and allowed Lee to continue his turning movements. There is little doubt that if Meade had held fast either at Culpepper or at Warrenton, Lee would not have ventured beyond those points, for his opponent would then have been on his communications, to whose endangered safety he would have presently been recalled. Lee's conduct throughout shows how diffident he was in regard to this point-feeling his way, and afraid to move until he had first started Meade, which was the very way of defeating the object he had in view, if he really wished to interpose between the Army of the Potomac and Washington—a purpose which, under the circumstances, was only to be accomplished by the utmost audacity of movement.

There is another opportunity of which General Meade might have availed himself, and which I shall point out. When, on the 12th, the Second, Fifth, and Sixth corps had been sent back across the Rappahannock under a false lead, these corps were in position, by a move to the right, to fall upon the rear of Lee's column in crossing at Sulphur Springs. This would have been a bold move, and would have been as effective as a retrograde movement in relieving French on the north bank of the Rappahannock. But it would have been somewhat hazardous; for Lee might have disputed, with a part of his force, the passage of the Estham fork of the Rappahannock, and moved with the rest to overwhelm the Third Corps at Freeman's Ford. It is quite likely that General Meade, who was exceedingly anxious to bring on a battle, would have made some of the moves indicated, had he received prompter intelligence of his opponent's movements.

But he was excessively ill-informed by his cavalry, and in each case learned the enemy's position only when it had already become too late to act upon it.

The line of manoeuvre adopted by General Lee in this campaign was the same as that used by him in the previous summer against Pope's army. But the result was very different and this arose from two causes. Lee had now neither a lieutenant capable of making such a flank march as that of Jackson on Manassas, nor such an opponent as Pope; for, if Meade's action was not brilliant, he at least did not lose his head. As a whole, the campaign added no laurels to either army; yet it was none the less attended with much toil and suffering-sleepless nights and severe marches and manifold trying exposures. But this is a part of the history of the army, of which those who did not bear the heat and burden of the day can never know much.

III.

MINE RUN.

Judging from the experience of such military operations as had been attempted during previous years at the season now reached, it might have been inferred that the army could do nothing better than go into winter-quarters and await the coming spring before entering upon a new campaign. But General Meade felt that the condition of the public mind would hardly brook delay; and being himself very eager for action, he anxiously watched a favorable opportunity to deliver battle. Such an opportunity he thought he saw towards the end of November; and he then planned an operation known as the "Mine Run move"-an operation which deserved better success than it met.

It was ascertained that Lee, while resting the right of his

army on the Rapidan near Morton's Ford, had left the lower fords of the river at Ely's, Culpepper Mine, Germanna and Jacobs' mills uncovered, and depended for the defence of that flank upon a line of intrenchments which he had constructed perpendicular to the river and extending along the left bank of a small tributary of the Rapidan named Mine Run, which flows almost at right angles with the former stream, and empties into it at Morton's Ford. Relying for the security of his right upon that line, Lee had placed his force in cantonments covering a wide extent of country; so that while Ewell's corps held position from Morton's Ford to Orange Courthouse, Hill's corps was distributed from south of that point along the railroad to near Charlottesville, with an interval of several miles between the two corps.

This wide separation of his opponent's forces gave Meade the hope that, by crossing the Rapidan at the lower fords, turning the Confederate right, and advancing quickly towards Orange Courthouse by the plank and turnpike roads that connect that place with Fredericksburg, he might be able to interpose between the two hostile bodies under Ewell and Hill, and destroy them in detail.

This plan, different from the kind of operations ordinarily attempted in Virginia, was well suited to the circumstances. It was based upon a precise mathematical calculation of the elements of time and space, of the kind for which Napoleon was so famous, and depended absolutely for its success on a rigorous execution of all the foreordained movements in the foreordained time and way. Thus planning, Meade attempted the bold coup d'essaye of cutting entirely loose from his base of supplies, and, providing his troops with ten days' rations, he left his trains on the north side of the Rapidan, relying on the meditated success to open up new lines of communication.

The movement was begun at dawn of the 26th of November, and the order of march was as follows. The Fifth Corps, followed by the First Corps, was to cross the Rapidan at Culpepper Mine Ford and proceed to Parker's Store, on the

plankroad to Orange Courthouse. The Second Corps was to cross at Germanna Ford, and proceed out on the turnpike (which runs parallel with the plankroad) to Robertson's Tavern. To this point also the Third Corps, crossing at Jacobs' Mill Ford, and followed by the Sixth Corps, was to march by other routes, and there make a junction with the Second Corps. With the left thus at Parker's Store and the right at Robertson's Tavern, the army would be in close communication on parallel roads, and by advancing westward towards Orange Courthouse would turn the line of the Mine Run defences, which it was known did not extend as far south as to cross the turnpike and plankroads. As the distance of the several corps from their encampments to the assigned points of concentration was under twenty miles, General Meade reasonably assumed that marching early on the 26th, each corps-commander would be able to make the march inside of thirty-four hours, or, at most, by noon of the 27th. It remains to relate how this well-devised and meritorious plan was baulked by circumstances that, though seemingly trivial to those uninstructed in war, are yet the very elements that in a large degree assure success or entail failure.

The first of these delays was occasioned by the tardiness of movement of the Third Corps under General French, which having a greater distance to march than the other corps, yet did not reach its assigned point for the crossing of the Rapidan until three hours after the other corps had arrived. This caused a delay to the whole army of the time named; for, not knowing what he should encounter on the other side, General Meade was unwilling to allow the other corps to cross until the Third was up. A second obstacle was the result of an unpardonable blunder on the part of the engineers in underestimating the width of the Rapidan, so that the ponton-bridges it was designed to throw across that stream were too short, and trestle-work and temporary means had to be provided to increase their length. In addition, another cause of delay resulted from the very precipitous