Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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[373] were such strains of exultation heard in New York and Washington since the first field of Manassas. The common conversation was that the Confederates were between two fires; that Hooker had them just where he wanted them; that they could not retreat; that they would be annihilated; that “the rebellion” was nearly at an end.

Gen. Lee was certainly now in the most trying situation of the war. He was out-numbered by an enemy, whose force, compared with his own, was — as we have the precise statement of Gen. Lee himself — as ten to three; and he was threatened by two attacks, the inferiour of which-that of Sedgwick at Fredericksburg — was equal in numbers to his whole army. Despite desertions and the difficulties of the recruiting service, the strength of the Federal army operating in Northern Virginia had been kept up to about 150,000 men. Gen. Lee had less than 50,000 men. He had been compelled to detach nearly a third of the army with which he had fought at Fredericksburg to confront demonstrations of the enemy on the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina; and Longstreet had been sent to command the department which included Richmond and its vicinity, together with the State of North Carolina, placed under the immediate supervision of Gen. D. H. Hill.

There was nothing more remarkable about the great Confederate commander than his cheerful self-possession, his calm, antique courage in the most trying and terrible circumstances of life. There was no expression of uneasiness on his part; no sign of dismay in the calm, grand face; and the quiet and collected orders which he gave, alone indicated a movement almost unexampled in its daring to crush the enemy whose numbers had enveloped him. He watched the movement of Sedgwick at Fredericksburg, as well as the one higher up the river under Hooker, until lie had penetrated the enemy's design, and seen the necessity of making a rapid division of his own forces to confront him on two different fields.

On the 29th of April, Gen. Lee drew back his army in the direction of Chancellorsville, leaving Early's division to guard Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg. At Chancellorsville he learned from Gen. Anderson, who, with two brigades-Posey's and Mahone's-had been guarding the upper fords of the river, that the main body of the Federal army was advancing from that direction, and threatened his left rear. A force nearly one hundred thousand strong was on what had formerly been the left rear of the Confederates and was now tile front. Taking from the account the forces left at Fredericksburg, Lee was out-numbered nearly three to one. His army consisted of Jackson's three divisions and two of Longstreet's former corps-McLaw's and Anderson's. He had in his rear Sedgwick's force, which equalled in strength his whole army; and it appeared, indeed, that lie would be crushed, or forced to retreat with both flanks exposed along the Richmond rail, which was already at the mercy of Stoneman's cavalry