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.

The pursuit of Lee was resumed by a flank movement of the Federal army, crossing the Potomac at Berlin, and moving down the Loudon Valley. The cavalry were pushed into several passes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but despite all efforts of the Federal forces, Gen. Lee succeeded in once more establishing his men on the Rapidan, while the enemy took position on the Rappahannock, and thus terminated the campaign Meade, by the final battle of Gettysburg, had saved the North; but he had yet left unfulfilled the task which his countrymen had allotted to him, of cutting off and destroying the Army of Northern Virginia.

Gettysburg may be taken as the grand climacteric of the Southern Confederacy. It was the customary phrase of John M. Daniel, editor of the Richmond Examiner, that on the 3d July, on the heights of Gettysburg, the Confederates were “within a stone's throw of peace.” The expression is not extravagant, when we reflect what would have been the moral effect of defeating Meade's army, and uncovering New York, Philadelphia, and Washington; when, too, the fate of Vicksburg was not decided, and the vitals of the Confederacy were untouched.

It was in anticipation and in assurance of a victory so decisive that the Confederates had prepared their first distinct proposition of peace. The proper history of “peace negotiations” commences a few days before Gettysburg. When Lee crossed the Pennsylvania line, a mission was prepared in Richmond and entrusted to Vice-President Stephens, who was ordered to proceed to Washington with the following letter, intended to mask his real intentions. This letter, apart from its use as a decoy to the real diplomatic matter in hand, has a certain independent interest: