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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“ [310] enemy as long as possible without losing the army. We have damaged him heavily, and I think the army entitled to the gratitude of the country.” And Halleck replied: “My dear General, you have done nobly.” But the Northern public was in no humour to join in the congratulation, or to be amused by such stuff in official dispatches. A terrible situation was before their eyes. The Confederates had won the crowning victory of the campaign in Virginia; they would certainly attempt a new adventure; and so greatly had they risen in the opinion of their enemies, that no project was thought too extravagant, or enterprise too daring, for the troops of Lee and Jackson.

The change in the fortunes of the Confederacy had been rapid, decisive, and brilliant. The armies of Gens. McClellan and Pope had now been brought back to the point from which they set out on the campaigns of the spring and summer. The objects of those campaigns had been frustrated, and the designs of the enemy on the coast of North Carolina, and in Western Virginia, thwarted by the withdrawal of the main body of his forces from those regions. Northeastern Virginia was freed from the presence of Federal soldiers up to the entrenchments of Washington, and as Lee's army marched towards Leesburg, information was received that the troops which had occupied Winchester had retired to Harper's Ferry and Martinsburg.

The war was thus transferred from the interiour to the frontier; the supplies of rich and productive districts were made accessible to our armies; our forces were advancing upon the lines of the Potomac with increased numbers, improved organization, and the prestige of victory; and the Northern public, which, a little more than two months ago, was expecting the fall of Richmond and the surrender of the Confederate cause, now trembled for Pennsylvania and Ohio, and contemplated the probability of the Confederate occupation of Washington city.

A large majority of the Southern people had long been in favour of transferring the war to the enemy's country at the earliest practicable moment. Their own experiences of the rigour of the war made them naturally anxious to visit its hardships and penalties upon the Northern people in their own homes; it was declared that it was necessary to give the enemy some other realization of the war than that of an immense money job, in which many profited; and military science was adduced to explain that the offensive was the proper character to give to every war, and that the ulterior design to take it should be the end of all the actions of the belligerents.

On the 3d September, Gen. Lee's army moved towards Leesburg, and it was soon understood that he designed crossing the Upper Potomac, and transferring hostilities to the soil of Maryland. But in this first experiment of Confederate invasion, it must be remarked that Gen. Lee's designs