Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 3.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[454] Hooker's army, he had only two plans of campaign to follow if he assumed the offensive: either to turn his right wing in order to forestall him at Manassas and before Washington, or to push forward toward Maryland by the valley of the Shenandoah, masking his movement behind the Blue Ridge. The first plan, which had proved successful the preceding year against Pope, was too hazardous to be tried again a second time in the face of an adversary taught by experience. Lee adopted the second, which left the enemy in a state of uncertainty for a longer space of time and enabled him to outvie the latter in speed.

This movement was not without danger, for it consisted in turning the right wing of the Federals; and in order to accomplish this the latter had to be detained before Fredericksburg by a large display of troops while Lee's heads of column reached the banks of the Shenandoah. His army was thus stretched along a line which throughout its entire length exposed its flank to the attacks of the enemy. The utmost secrecy could alone ward off the danger of these attacks.

The forest of the Wilderness had resumed its wonted stillness, disturbed only by the footsteps of Confederate scouts; the grass had covered the corpses and the debris of every kind which lay scattered among the woods; the Federal trenches, the torn and shattered trees, and the vestiges of fires, alone recalled to mind the conflict of the 3d of May. Precisely one month to a day had elapsed since this battle when Longstreet's First division, under McLaws, penetrated this henceforth historical Wilderness. Another division followed it closely; the Third, under Hood, was already on the banks of the Rapidan, and the whole army corps, crossing this river, reached the neighborhood of Culpeper Courthouse on the evening of the 7th.

A portion of Ewells corps had started in the same direction on the 4th; the remainder moved forward on the morning of the 5th: Hill's corps, therefore, was the only one left to occupy the positions from Taylor's Hill to Hamilton's Crossing in which the army had passed the winter, and it had to be deployed along this line in order to conceal the departure of two-thirds of the army. The vigilance of the outposts had, in fact, prevented Hooker's spies from reporting this departure to him: no one had been able