Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/87

Rh if he did not think an invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania would accomplish the same results, to which he replied he did not see that it would, and the movement would be too hazarous, "and the campaign in thoroughly Union States would require more time and greater preparation than one through Tennessee and Kentucky." The account proceeds,, "I soon discovered that he (Lee) had determined he would make some forward movement, and I finally assented that the Pennsylvania campaign might be brought to a successful issue if he could make it offensive in strategy, but defensive in tactics. This point was urged with great persistency," &c. These interviews, as reported by General Longstreet 'himself, are referred to because they reflect at the very outset his mental attitude, and indicate an unwillingness to enter upon the Maryland-Pennsylvania campaign before it began. They also reveal an aggressive attitude on the part of Longstreet towards Lee, which was unsuspected until this announcement.

After the battle of Chancellorsville, the two armies lay confronting each other on the banks of the Rappahannock: General Hooker's correspondence at that time shows that notwithstanding his recent disastrous repulse, he was meditating another advance, and this seems to have been General Lee's expectation.

Hooker, however, was handicapped by instructions from Washington. The administration seemed unwilling to commit itself to the hazard of another forward move, and when Hooker inquired of headquarters whether it would be within the "spirit of his instructions" to throw his army South of the river, it met with that well known response from Mr. Lincoln, "I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river, like an ox, jumped half over a fence, and likely to be torn by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to go one way, or kick the other." Animated by the views contained in the letter to Mr. Seddon, and assured of the return of Longstreet's two divisions, General Lee took the initiative, and on the 3d of June, just a month after the battle of Chancellorsville, the movement began. McLaws' divisions of Longstreet's corps, which had remained with the army, was quietly withdrawn from the front at Fredericksburg, and put on the march to Culpeper Court House, where Hood's