previous next
[62] Washington, and rendered our further progress impossible.

It is certain that the Federal Government and generals did not regard the capture of Washington by us as practicable, like the non-combatant authors of the criticisms to which I refer. The fact that the army at Harper's Ferry was left idle there instead of being brought to Washington, is conclusive on that point. I have never doubted the correctness of my course on that occasion. Had I done so, the results of the invasions made subsequently by disciplined and much more numerous armies, properly equipped and provided, and commanded by the best soldiers who appeared in that war, would have reassured me. The first of these expeditions was after General Lee's victory over Pope, and those of Majors-General Jackson and Ewell over Fremont, Banks, and Shields, in 1862; the second, when the way was supposed to have been opened by the effect of General Lee's victory at Chancellorsville, in 1863.

The armies defeated on those occasions were four times as numerous as that repulsed on the 21st of July, 1861, and their losses much greater in proportion to numbers; yet the spirit of the Northern people was so roused by these invasions of their country, that their armies, previously defeated on our soil, met ours on their own at Sharpsburg and Gettysburg so strong in numbers and in courage as to send back the war into Virginia from each of those battle-fields. The failure of those invasions, directed by Lee, aided by Longstreet and Jackson, with troops inured to marches and manoeuvres as well as to battle, and attempted under the most favorable circumstances of

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
R. B. Lee (3)
T. J. Jackson (2)
Shields (1)
Pope (1)
J. Longstreet (1)
Fremont (1)
B. S. Ewell (1)
Banks (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
1863 AD (1)
1862 AD (1)
July 21st, 1861 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: