Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/429



LOSING up the ranks of his victorious but decimated army, the veterans of which he could not replace, Lee did all in his power to follow up the victory of Chancellorsville by an aggressive movement on the army of the Potomac. But for his meagerly supplied commissariat he would, earlier in the spring of 1863, have moved upon Milroy at Winchester, in the lower Shenandoah valley, confident that by so doing he could draw Hooker from the northern neck of Virginia into the more open country, where he could find opportunity for striking him an effective blow. He had urged this view upon President Davis before the campaign of Chancellorsville, and had asked that troops might be drawn from the more Southern States to reinforce his army, confident that his plan of campaign would furnish more relief to the Confederacy than could be gained by holding scattered forces to defend distant positions.

Longstreet rejoined Lee in May at Fredericksburg, with the portion of his troops that had been wintering near Suffolk, south of the James, where supplies were more abundant and easy of access. The general commanding then proceeded to reorganize his army, by dividing it into three corps—the First under Longstreet, the Second under Ewell (who having lost a leg at Second Manassas, had just returned from hospital), and the Third under A. P. Hill—and worked untiringly to get his army into condition for a forward movement, constantly urging the Confederate government to add to his numbers in Virginia, and to those of Johnston and Pemberton in Mississippi, so that these two armies might be strong enough to strike efficient and simultaneous blows on the great Federal armies that opposed them, leaving local defenses to the local soldiery. His pleadings were unheeded, but he continued resolutely to prepare for another campaign, apprehensive lest Hooker's vastly