Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/390



HILE recuperating his army in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, General Lee, a few days after the battle of Sharpsburg, urged the Confederate authorities to send General Loring, with the army of the Kanawha, northward, through Morgantown, into western Pennsylvania, to break the Federal lines of communication between the east and the west and to disconcert any plans that McClellan might be forming for a new campaign into Virginia, as he desired not only to gain time for collecting together the fragments of his army, but for the people of Virginia, especially those of the fertile valley of the Shenandoah, to gather the harvest of Indian corn which was now ripe and ready for cutting and shocking. On the 25th of September he suggested to President Davis that the best move his army could make would be to advance upon Hagerstown and fall upon McClellan from that direction, saying: "I would not hesitate to make it, even with our diminished numbers, did the army show its former temper and disposition." He had every reason to believe that in a very short time his veteran army had recovered that "temper and disposition."

Lee had hoped that McClellan would cross the Potomac and offer battle in the lower Shenandoah valley; but that over-cautious commander was in no haste to try a third issue with the bold Confederate leader. To engage McClellan's attention and gather a supply of fresh horses from the farmers of Pennsylvania, Lee, on the 10th of October, dispatched the raid-loving Stuart, with 1,800 horsemen, across the Potomac at Williamsport, and thence along the western side of the Cumberland valley, to Chambersburg, where he halted on the morning of the 11th. Thence sweeping to the eastward, across the South mountain, he returned through the Piedmont region, and by noon of the 12th again crossed the Potomac into Virginia, after a rapid and extensive ride, not only with a fresh supply of much-needed horses, but with full information as to what was going on in and around McClellan's