Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/459



READING to follow Lee and unable to resist importunate orders from Washington for an advance, Meade, after Lee returned to Virginia, recrossed the South mountain and then followed McClellan's route of the previous autumn, across the Potomac into Piedmont Virginia, guarding the passes of the Blue ridge, as he advanced, against attacks from Lee in the Valley. Lee, on the alert, anticipated this movement, and, on the 24th of July, placed his army across Meade's thin line of advance, in front of Culpeper Court House. The necessities at other points put a stop to military operations for a time in Virginia. Portions of Meade's army were called to New York city, to suppress riots and enforce the drafts to recruit the Federal armies. Lee was embarrassed by the calls for soldiers for other fields, after the fall of Vicksburg, which not only cut the Confederacy in twain, but opened to Federal gunboats and steamboats, for the transportation of troops and supplies, the thousands of miles of navigable waters in the Mississippi basin.

With the Trans-Mississippi portion of the Confederacy isolated, there only remained in the control of the Confederacy central and southern portions of the Atlantic highlands—the Appalachians and their slopes. The combined land power and sea power of the Federal government completely surrounded and enclosed the remnant of territory now left in the control of the Confederate government. Only through the port of Wilmington was there an outlet to the outer world, and only through that single port could supplies come from abroad to eke out the scanty stores of the Confederacy. The executive was besieged by calls for the defense of vital points, threatened from all directions. Rosecrans was advancing into the Great valley in east Tennessee. The fate of Charleston was but a question of a short time. Environed by such gloomy surroundings and threatenings, Lee