Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/254

240 What policy should be pursued by the Confederate government after two years of defensive warfare and three campaigns in which all the power of the United States had been vainly exerted to reach the Confederate capital or to break into the centers of the Confederate territory? This was the question to be considered in view of the management of the war which had been made up to that time upon the States. With the single exception of the strongly organized and definite efforts to capture Richmond, the entire scope of the conflict revealed only scattered expeditions of various sizes by land and sea, producing no decided result, yet causing a measureless amount of suffering. Over a million Federal soldiers were dispersed over the borders, around the coasts, and along the rivers of the South, but there was only one Army having one definite aim. Except the army of the Potomac, the other vast forces of the United States were operating in large and small detachments. One lone aim to take Richmond enchained the attention of the Administration at Washington.

Upon due reflection it was determined by General Lee on the field, and President Davis at the capital, not to attack Hooker on the heights of Fredericksburg, nor to wait on the administration at Washington to plan a new line of advance against Richmond, but to draw the Federal armies from Virginia by boldly marching the army of Northern Virginia northward. Accordingly Lee prepared his army at once for this movement. It was reorganized into three corps: Longstreet's, the First; Ewell's, the Second; A. P. Hill's, the Third; and Stuart commanding the cavalry. With this organization Lee crossed the Potomac in June, advanced into Pennsylvania, and at Gettysburg on July 1st encountered a part of the army of the Potomac under Meade, who had superseded Hooker. The first day's fighting ended in