Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/430

396 superior numbers might possibly force him back to the trenches around Richmond.

Lee's plan of campaign, as he detailed it to Col. A. L. Long, of his staff, in his tent in the rear of Fredericksburg, was to maneuver Hooker from his almost unreachable stronghold between the Rappahannock and the Potomac, and bring him to battle at Chambersburg in Pennsylvania, in the Great valley, or at York or Gettysburg in the Piedmont region of the same State, thus transferring the destructive agencies of war to northern soil, where he could readily subsist his army on the country; and by a decisive victory cause the evacuation of Washington and compel the Federal government to withdraw Grant from the siege of Vicksburg. This was, doubtless, the identical campaign that Jackson had in view, and which he probably had discussed with Lee during the preceding winter, when he ordered the preparation of a detailed map extending from the Rappahannock to the Susquehanna.

Lee's army at this time consisted of Stuart's cavalry corps, of about 6,000 men; the artillery corps, under Pendleton, with some 200 guns, and his veteran infantry, in all about 60,000 men, whom he had ready to march northward by the close of May. On the 3d of June he directed his right, under Longstreet, to move toward Culpeper, marching across the whole length of the scene of his recent victories at Salem church and Chancellorsville; followed by Ewell, who with eager interest scanned the field of victory as he rode across it at the head of Jackson's old troops. With his usual heroic audacity, Lee left his smallest corps, that under A. P. Hill, at Fredericksburg, to restrain Hooker from any "on to Richmond" he might rashly attempt to make.

By the 8th Lee had concentrated the commands of Stuart, Longstreet and Ewell in front of Culpeper Court House, with his advance pickets on the Rappahannock. On that day Stuart had a grand cavalry review on the broad and then unobstructed open around Brandy Station, which was witnessed by most of the principal officers of the infantry corps in the vicinity and by Lee in person. That night the Federal cavalry forced the passage of the Rappahannock, and on the morning of the 9th fell upon Stuart's encampment, when a furious, and at times hand-to-hand, engagement followed, which lasted