Robert Stiles, Four years under Marse Robert

[228] story goes, someone was congratulating Lee upon having “a mediocre man like Meade” as his opponent, suggesting that he would have an easy time with him. But Lee interrupted the speaker, saying with emphasis that General Meade was the most dangerous man who had as yet been opposed to him; that he was not only a soldier of intelligence and ability, but that he was also a conscientious, careful, thorough and painstaking man; that he would make no such mistake in his (Lee's) front as some of his predecessors had made, and that if he made any mistake in Meade's front he would be certain to take advantage of it.

It is noteworthy how exactly this estimate was fulfilled and confirmed, not only at Gettysburg, but in the campaign of the succeeding autumn upon Virginia soil, in which Meade showed himself to be able and cautious, wary and lithe; incomparably superior to Pope or Burnside, or even Hooker. In October, at Bristoe Station, when we were attempting to outflank him, as we had done Pope, he not only escaped by giving such attention to his “lines of retreat” as the latter had boasted he would not give, but he actually inflicted upon us a decided defeat, accentuated by the almost unparalleled capture of five pieces of artillery; and that, when his force engaged was inferior to ours. In November, at the tete-de-pontt at Rappahannock Bridge, he wrote for us what Colonel Taylor calls “the saddest chapter in the history of this army,” by snapping up two brigades, of twelve or fifteen hundred men, and four pieces of artillery, which had been exposed, by an arrangement of his lines more nearly questionable perhaps than any other General Lee was ever known to make. In December, at Mine Run, while he failed in his main design of turning our flank and forcing us to abandon our fortified line on the Rapidan, and so pushing us back on Hanover Junction, and while he got decidedly the worst of the fighting, yet he succeeded in getting away without the overwhelming defeat we hoped to have inflicted upon him; and, upon the whole, no preceding Federal commander of the Army of the Potomac had made anything like as good a showing in an equal number of moves against their great Confederate opponent.