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probably not more than three or three and a half corps on the right were engaged in the fight.
Hooker's defeat at
Chancellorsville had not been so great a disaster as that of
Burnside at
Fredericksburg; and while his influence was greatly impaired, his usefulness did not immediately cease.
The President and the
Secretary of War still had faith in him. The average opinion of his qualities has been tersely expressed by one of his critics, who wrote: “As an inferior he planned badly and fought well; as a chief he planned well and fought badly.”
The course of war soon changed, so that he was obliged to follow rather than permitted to lead the developments of a new campaign.
The brilliant victories gained by
Lee inspired the
Confederate authorities and leaders with a greatly exaggerated hope of the ultimate success of the rebellion.
It was during the summer of 1863 that the Confederate armies reached, perhaps, their highest numerical strength and greatest degree of efficiency.
Both the long dreamed of possibility of achieving Southern independence, and the newly flushed military ardor of officers and men, elated by what seemed to them an unbroken record of successes on the
Virginia battlefields, moved
General Lee to the bold hazard of a second invasion of the
North.
Early in June,
Hooker gave it as his opinion that
Lee intended to move against
Washington, and asked whether in that case he should attack the
Confederate rear.
To this
Lincoln answered on the fifth of that month:
In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock, I would by no means cross to the south of it. If he should leave a rear force at Fredericksburg, tempting you to fall upon it, it would fight in intrenchments and have you at disadvantage, and so, man for man, worst you at that point, while his main
