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Longstreet's Corps.
Hill's Corps was left to watch Hooker and follow as soon as he should retire.
A daring commencement of a campaign!
Hill, with less than twenty thousand troops, was between Hooker and Richmond, sixty miles away, while Lee, with the other two corps, was at Culpeper Court House, some thirty miles distant in another direction.
Mr. Lincoln and Halleck would not let Hooker attack Hill, as General Lee supposed, because it was “perilous to allow Lee to move on the Potomac while your army is attacking an intrenched position on the other side of the Rappahannock,” wrote Halleck.
“If left to me,” said Mr. Lincoln, “I would not go south of the Rappahannock upon Lee's moving north of it. Lee's army, not Richmond, is your true objective point.
Fight him when opportunity offers; if he stays where he is, fret him and fret him.”
Hill would have retarded Hooker's progress, falling back toward the defenses of Richmond, while Lee would have taken Washington before Hooker could have countermarched and interposed; or he could have placed his troops in Richmond from Culpeper by railroad in time to support Hill.
“No,” reiterated the Union President to Hooker, “I would not take any risk of being entangled upon the river like an ox jumped half over the fence and liable to be torn by dogs front and rear without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.”
Lee's two infantry and his cavalry corps were concentrated around Culpeper by the 7th of June.
Hooker knew Stuart was at Culpeper and thought he meant mischief, so determined to break him up, if possible, by sending all of his cavalry against him, stiffened by three thousand infantry.
General Lee reports that on the 9th of June the cavalry under General Stuart was attacked by a large force of Federal cavalry, supported by infantry, which crossed the Rappahannock at Beverly's and Kelly's Fords.
After a severe engagement from early in the morning until late in the afternoon, “the enemy was compelled to recross the river with heavy loss, leaving about five hundred prisoners, three pieces of artillery, and several colors in our hands.”
On the other hand, Hooker dispatched
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