Chapter IX: The Disasters of the North (2)

"Stonewall" Jackson's most famous campaign happened at this juncture, and to save Washington, Lincoln and Stanton placed themselves, or were placed, in the trying position of actually directing movements of troops. There were to the south and south-west of Washington, besides the troops under McDowell's command, two Northern forces respectively commanded by Generals Banks and Frémont. These two men were among the chief examples of those "political generals," the use of whom in this early and necessarily blundering stage of the war has been the subject of much comment. Banks was certainly a politician, a self-made man, who had worked in a factory and who had risen to be at one time Speaker of the House. He was now a general because as a powerful man in the patriotic State of Massachusetts he brought with him many men, and these were ready to obey him. On the other hand, he on several occasions showed good judgment both in military matters and in the questions of civil administration which came under him; his heart was in his duty; and, though he held high commands almost to the end of the war, want of competence was never imputed to him till the failure of a very difficult enterprise on which he was despatched in 1864. He was now in the lower valley of the Shenandoah, keeping a watch over a much smaller force under Jackson higher up the valley. Frémont was in some sense a soldier, but after his record in Missouri he should never have been employed. His new appointment was one of Lincoln's greatest mistakes, and it was a mistake of a characteristic kind. It will easily be understood that there were real political reasons for not leaving this popular champion of freedom unused and unrecognized. These reasons should not have, and probably would not have, prevailed. But Lincoln's personal reluctance to resist all entreaties on behalf of his own forerunner and his own rival was great; and then Frémont came to Lincoln and proposed to him a knight-errant's adventure to succour the oppressed Unionists of Tennessee by an expedition through West Virginia. So he was now to proceed there, but was kept for the present in the mountains near the Shenandoah valley. The way in which the forces under McDowell, Banks and Frémont were scattered on various errands was unscientific; what could be done by Jackson, in correspondence with Lee, was certainly unforeseen. At the beginning of May, Jackson, who earlier in the spring had achieved some minor successes in the Shenandoah valley and had raided West Virginia, began a series of movements of which the brilliant skill and daring are recorded in Colonel Henderson's famous book. With a small force, surrounded by other forces, each of which, if concentrated, should have outnumbered him, he caught each in turn at a disadvantage, inflicted on them several damaging blows, and put the startled President and Secretary of War in fear for the safety of Washington. There seemed to be no one available who could immediately be charged with the supreme command of these three Northern forces, unless McDowell could have been spared from where he was; so Lincoln with Stanton's help took upon himself to ensure the co-operation of their three commanders by orders from Washington. His self-reliance had now begun to reach its full stature, his military good sense in comparison with McClellan's was proving greater than he had supposed, and he had probably not discovered its limitations. Presumably his plans now were, like an amateur's, too complicated, and it is not worth while to discuss them. But he was trying to cope with newly revealed military genius, and, so far as can be told, he was only prevented from crushing the adventurous Jackson by a piece of flat disobedience on the part of Frémont. Frémont, having thus appropriately punished Lincoln, was removed, this time finally, from command. Jackson, having successfully kept McDowell from McClellan, had before the end of June escaped safe southward. McClellan was nearing Richmond. Lee, by this time, had been set free from Jefferson Davis' office and had taken over the command of Joseph Johnston's army. Lincoln must have learnt a great deal, and he fully realised that the forces not under McClellan in the East should be under some single commander. Pope, an experienced soldier, had succeeded well in the West; he was no longer necessary there, and there was no adverse criticism upon him. He was in all respects a proper choice, and he was now summoned to take command of what was to be called the army of Virginia. A few days later, upon the advice, as it seems, of Scott, Halleck himself was called from the West. His old command was left to Grant and he himself was made General-in-Chief and continued at Washington to the end of the war as an adviser of the Government. All the progress in the West had been made under Halleck's supervision, and his despatches had given an exaggerated impression of his own achievement at Corinth. He had not seen active service before the war, but he had a great name as an accomplished military writer; in after years he was well known as a writer on international law. He is not thought to have justified his appointment by showing sound judgment about war, and Lincoln upon some later emergency told him in his direct way that his military knowledge was useless if he could not give a definite decision in doubtful circumstances. But whether Halleck's abilities were great or small, Lincoln continued to use them, because he found him "wholly for the service," without personal favour or prejudice.

McClellan was slowly but steadily nearing Richmond. From June 26 to July 2 there took place a series of engagements between Lee and McClellan, or rather the commanders under him, known as the Seven Days' Battles. The fortunes of the fighting varied greatly, but the upshot is that, though the corps on McClellan's left won a strong position not far from Richmond, the sudden approach of Jackson's forces upon McClellan's right flank, which began on the 26th, placed him in what appears to have been, as he himself thought it, a situation of great danger. Lee is said to have "read McClellan like an open book," playing upon his caution, which made him, while his subordinates fought, more anxious to secure their retreat than to seize upon any advantage they gained. But Lee's reading deceived him in one respect. He had counted upon McClellan's retreating, but thought he would retreat under difficulties right down the Peninsula to his original base and be thoroughly cut up on the way. But on July 2 McClellan with great skill withdrew his whole army to Harrison's Landing far up the James estuary, having effected with the Navy a complete transference of his base. Here his army lay in a position of security; they might yet threaten Richmond, and McClellan's soldiers still believed in him. But the South was led by a great commander and had now learned to give him unbounded confidence; there was some excuse for a panic in Wall Street, and every reason for dejection in the North.

On the third of the Seven Days, McClellan, much moved by the sight of dead and wounded comrades, sent a gloomy telegram to the Secretary of War, appealing with excessive eloquence for more men. "I only wish to say to the President," he remarked in it, "that I think he is wrong in regarding me as ungenerous when I said that my force was too weak." He concluded: "If I save the army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you nor to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Stanton still expressed the extraordinary hope that Richmond would fall in a day or two. He had lately committed the folly of suspending enlistment, an act which, though of course there is an explanation of it, must rank as the one first-rate blunder of Lincoln's Administration. He was now negotiating through the astute Seward for offers from the State Governors of a levy of 300,000 men to follow up McClellan's success. Lincoln, as was his way, feared the worst. He seems at one moment to have had fears for McClellan's sanity. But he telegraphed, himself, an answer to him, which affords as fair an example as can be given of his characteristic manner. "Save your army at all events. Will send reinforcements as fast as we can. Of course they cannot reach you to-day or to-morrow, or next day. I have not said you were ungenerous for saying you needed reinforcements. I thought you were ungenerous in assuming that I did not send them as fast as I could. I feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as keenly as you feel it yourself. If you have had a drawn battle or repulse, it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in Washington. We protected Washington and the enemy concentrated on you. Had we stripped Washington, he would have been upon us before the troops could have gotten to you. Less than a week ago you notified us reinforcements were leaving Richmond to come in front of us. It is the nature of the case, and neither you nor the Government are to blame. Please tell me at once the present condition and aspect of things."

Demands for an impossible number of reinforcements continued. Lincoln explained to McClellan a few days later that they were impossible, and added: "If in your frequent mention of responsibility you have the impression that I blame you for not doing more than you can, please be relieved of such an impression. I only beg that, in like manner, you will not ask impossibilities of me." Much argument upon Lincoln's next important act may be saved by the simple observations that the problem in regard to the defence of Washington was real, that McClellan's propensity to ask for the impossible was also real, and that Lincoln's patient and loyal attitude to him was real too.

Five days after his arrival at Harrison's Landing, McClellan wrote Lincoln a long letter. It was a treatise upon Lincoln's political duties. It was written as "on the brink of eternity." He was not then in fact in any danger, and possibly he had composed it seven days before as his political testament; and apprehensions, free from personal fear, excuse, without quite redeeming, its inappropriateness. The President is before all things not to abandon the cause. But the cause should be fought for upon Christian principles. Christian principles exclude warfare on private property. More especially do they exclude measures for emancipating slaves. And if the President gives way to radical views on slavery, he will get no soldiers. Then follows a mandate to the President to appoint a Commander-in-Chief, not necessarily the writer. Such a summary does injustice to a certain elevation of tone in the letter, but that elevation is itself slightly strained. McClellan, whatever his private opinions, had not meddled with politics before he left Washington. The question why in this military crisis he should have written what a Democratic politician might have composed as a party manifesto must later have caused Lincoln some thought, but it apparently did not enter into the decision he next took. He arrived himself at Harrison's Landing next day. McClellan handed him the letter. Lincoln read it, and said that he was obliged to him. McClellan sent a copy to his wife as "a very important record."

Lincoln had come in order to learn the views of McClellan and all his corps commanders. They differed a good deal on important points, but a majority of them were naturally anxious to stay and fight there. Lincoln was left in some anxiety as to how the health of the troops would stand the climate of the coming months if they had to wait long where they were. He was also disturbed by McClellan's vagueness about the number of his men, for he now returned as present for duty a number which far exceeded that which some of his recent telegrams had given and yet fell short of the number sent him by an amount which no reasonable estimate of killed, wounded, and sick could explain. This added to Lincoln's doubt on the main question presented to him. McClellan believed that he could take Richmond, but he demanded for this very large reinforcements. Some part of them were already being collected, but the rest could by no means be given him without leaving Washington with far fewer troops to defend it than McClellan or anybody else had hitherto thought necessary.

On July 24, the day after his arrival at Washington, Halleck was sent to consult with McClellan and his generals. The record of their consultations sufficiently shows the intricacy of the problem to be decided. The question of the health of the climate in August weighed much with Halleck, but the most striking feature of their conversation was the fluctuation of McClellan's own opinion upon each important point--at one moment he even gave Halleck the impression that he wished under all the circumstances to withdraw and to join Pope. When Halleck returned to Washington McClellan telegraphed in passionate anxiety to be left in the Peninsula and reinforced. On the other hand, some of the officers of highest rank with him wrote strongly urging withdrawal. This latter was the course on which Lincoln and Halleck decided. In the circumstances it was certainly the simplest course to concentrate all available forces in an attack upon the enemy from the direction of Washington which would keep that capital covered all the while. It was in any case no hasty and no indefensible decision, nor is there any justification for the frequent assertion that some malignant influence brought it about. It is one of the steps taken by Lincoln which have been the most often lamented. But if McClellan had had all he demanded to take Richmond and had made good his promise, what would Lee have done? Lee's own answer to a similar question later was, "We would swap queens"; that is, he would have taken Washington. If so the Confederacy would not have fallen, but in all probability the North would have collapsed, and European Powers would at the least have recognised the Confederacy.

Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then have acted. But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long tale of hesitation, can be quickly told. It would be easy to represent them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the guidance of McClellan. But in the true perspective of the war, the point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North of the policy by which it won the war. McClellan, even if he had taken Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise of finally reducing the Confederacy. It is evident to-day that the right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern country were being eaten into from the west. This policy, it has been seen, was present to Lincoln's mind from an early day; the temptation to depart from it was now once for all rejected. On the other hand, the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next nine months, had no lasting influence. Jefferson Davis might perhaps have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him. He did not--perhaps could not--do this. But he concentrated his greatest resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real danger did not lie.

Pope had now set vigorously to work collecting and pulling together his forces, which had previously been scattered under different commanders in the north of Virginia. He was guilty of a General Order which shocked people by its boastfulness, insulted the Eastern soldiers by a comparison with their Western comrades, and threatened harsh and most unjust treatment of the civil population of Virginia. But upon the whole he created confidence, for he was an officer well trained in his profession as well as an energetic man. The problem was now to effect as quickly as possible the union of Pope's troops and McClellan's in an overwhelming force. Pope was anxious to keep McClellan unmolested while he embarked his men. So, to occupy the enemy, he pushed boldly into Virginia; he pushed too far, placed himself in great danger from the lightning movements which Lee now habitually employed Jackson to execute, but extricated himself with much promptitude, though with some considerable losses. McClellan had not been deprived of command; he was in the curious and annoying position of having to transfer troops to Pope till, for a moment, not a man remained under him, but the process of embarking and transferring them gave full scope for energy and skill. McClellan, as it appeared to Lincoln, performed his task very slowly. This was not the judgment of impatience, for McClellan caused the delay by repeated and perverse disobedience to Halleck's orders. But the day drew near when 150,000 men might be concentrated under Pope against Lee's 55,000. The stroke which Lee now struck after earnest consultation with Jackson has been said to have been "perhaps the most daring in the history of warfare." He divided his army almost under the enemy's eyes and sent Jackson by a circuitous route to cut Pope's communications with Washington. Then followed an intricate tactical game, in which each side was bewildered as to the movements of the other. Pope became exasperated and abandoned his prudence. He turned on his enemy when he should and could have withdrawn to a safe position and waited. On August 29 and 30, in the ominous neighbourhood of the Bull Run and of Manassas, he sustained a heavy defeat. Then he abandoned hope before he need have done so, and, alleging that his men were demoralised, begged to be withdrawn within the defences of Washington, where he arrived on September 3, and, as was inevitable in the condition of his army, was relieved of his command. McClellan, in Lincoln's opinion, had now been guilty of the offence which that generous mind would find it hardest to forgive. He had not bestirred himself to get his men to Pope. In Lincoln's belief at the time he had wished Pope to fail. McClellan, who reached Washington at the crisis of Pope's difficulties, was consulted, and said to Lincoln that Pope must be left to get out of his scrape as best he could. It was perhaps only an awkward phrase, but it did not soften Lincoln.

Washington was now too strongly held to be attacked, but Lee determined to invade Maryland. At least this would keep Virginia safe during harvest time. It might win him many recruits in Maryland. It would frighten the North, all the more because a Confederate force further west was at that same time invading Kentucky; it might accomplish there was no saying how much. This much, one may gather from the "Life of Lord John Russell," any great victory of the South on Northern soil would probably have accomplished: the Confederacy would have been recognised, as Jefferson Davis longed for it to be, by European Powers. Lincoln now acted in total disregard of his Cabinet and of all Washington, and in equal disregard of any false notions of dignity. By word of mouth he directed McClellan to take command of all the troops at Washington. His opinion of McClellan had not altered, but, as he said to his private secretaries, if McClellan could not fight himself, he excelled in making others ready to fight. No other step could have succeeded so quickly in restoring order and confidence to the Army. Few or no instructions were given to McClellan. He was simply allowed the freest possible hand, and was watched with keen solicitude as to how he would rise to his opportunity.

Lee, in his advance, expected his opponent to be slow. He actually again divided his small army, leaving Jackson with a part of it behind for a while to capture, as he did, the Northern fort at Harper's Ferry. A Northern private picked up a packet of cigars dropped by some Southern officer with a piece of paper round it. The paper was a copy of an order of Lee's which revealed to McClellan the opportunity now given him of crushing Lee in detail. But he did not rouse himself. He was somewhat hampered by lack of cavalry, and his greatest quality in the field was his care not to give chances to the enemy. His want of energy allowed Lee time to discover what, had happened and fall back a little towards Harper's Ferry. Yet Lee dared, without having yet reunited his forces, to stop at a point where McClellan must be tempted to give him battle, and where, if he could only stand against McClellan, Jackson would be in a position to deliver a deadly counter-stroke. Lee knew that for the South the chance of rapid success was worth any risk. McClellan, however, moved so slowly that Jackson was able to join Lee before the battle. The Northern army came up with them near the north bank of the Potomac on the Antietam Creek, a small tributary of that river, about sixty miles north-east of Washington. There, on September 17, 1862, McClellan ordered an attack, to which he did not attempt to give his personal direction. His corps commanders led assaults on Lee's position at different times and in so disconnected a manner that each was repulsed singly. But on the following morning Lee found himself in a situation which determined him to retreat.

As a military success the battle of Antietam demanded to be followed up. Reinforcements had now come to McClellan, and Lincoln telegraphed, "Please do not let him get off without being hurt." Lee was between the broad Potomac and a Northern army fully twice as large as his own, with other large forces near. McClellan's subordinates urged him to renew the attack and drive Lee into the river. But Lee was allowed to cross the river, and McClellan lay camped on the Antietam battlefield for a fortnight. He may have been dissatisfied with the condition of his army and its supplies. Some of his men wanted new boots; many of Lee's were limping barefoot. He certainly, as often before, exaggerated the strength of his enemy. Lee recrossed the Potomac little damaged. Lincoln, occupied in those days over the most momentous act of his political life, watched McClellan eagerly, and came to the Antietam to see things for himself. He came back in the full belief that McClellan would move at once. Once more undeceived, he pressed him with letters and telegrams from himself and Halleck. He was convinced that McClellan, if he tried, could cut off Lee from Richmond. Hearing of the fatigue of McClellan's horses, he telegraphed about the middle of October, "Will you pardon me for asking what your horses have done since the battle of Antietam that tires anything." This was unkind; McClellan indeed should have seen about cavalry in the days when he was organising in Washington, but at this moment the Southern horse had just raided right round his lines and got safe back, and his own much inferior cavalry was probably worn out with vain pursuit of them. On the same day Lincoln wrote more kindly, "My dear Sir, you remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Change positions with the enemy, and think you not, he would break your communications with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours." And after a brief analysis of the situation, which seems conclusive, he ends: "I say 'try'; if we never try we shall never succeed. . . . If we cannot beat him now when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him." His patience was nearing a limit which he had already fixed in his own mind. On October 28, more than five weeks after the battle, McClellan began to cross the Potomac, and took a week in the process. On November 5, McClellan was removed from his command, and General Burnside appointed in his place.

Lincoln had longed for the clear victory that he thought McClellan would win; he gloomily foreboded that he might not find a better man to put in his place; he felt sadly how he would be accused, as he has been ever since, of displacing McClellan because he was a Democrat. "In considering military merit," he wrote privately, "the world has abundant evidence that I disregard politics." A friend, a Republican general, wrote to him a week or so after McClellan had been removed to urge that all the generals ought to be men in thorough sympathy with the Administration. He received a crushing reply (to be followed in a day or two by a friendly invitation) indignantly proving that Democrats served as well in the field as Republicans. But in regard to McClellan himself we now know that a grave suspicion had entered Lincoln's mind. He might, perhaps, in the fear of finding no one better, have tolerated his "over-cautiousness"; he did not care what line an officer who did his duty might in civil life take politically; but he would not take the risk of entrusting the war further to a general who let his politics govern his strategy, and who, as he put it simply, "did not want to hurt the enemy." This, he had begun to believe, was the cause of McClellan's lack of energy. He resolved to treat McClellan's conduct now, in fighting Lee or in letting him escape South, as the test of whether his own suspicion about him was justified or not. Lee did get clear away, and Lincoln dismissed McClellan in the full belief, right or wrong, that he was not sorry for Lee's escape.

It is not known exactly what further evidence Lincoln then had for his belief, but information which seems to have come later made him think afterwards that he had been right. The following story was told him by the Governor of Vermont, whose brother, a certain General Smith, served under McClellan and was long his intimate friend. Lincoln believed the story; so may we. The Mayor of New York, a shifty demagogue named Fernando Wood, had visited McClellan in the Peninsula with a proposal that he should become the Democratic candidate for the Presidency, and with a view to this should pledge himself to certain Democratic politicians to conduct the war in a way that should conciliate the South, which to Lincoln's mind meant an "inefficient" way. McClellan, after some days of unusual reserve, told Smith of this and showed him a letter which he had drafted giving the desired pledge. On Smith's earnest remonstrance that this "looked like treason," he did not send the letter then. But Wood came again after the battle of Antietam, and this time McClellan sent a letter in the same sense. This he afterwards confessed to Smith, showing him a copy of the letter. Smith and other generals asked, after this, to be relieved from service under him. If, as can hardly be doubted, McClellan did this, there can be no serious excuse for him, and no serious question that Lincoln was right when he concluded it was unsafe to employ him. McClellan, according to all evidence except his own letters, was a nice man, and was not likely to harbour a thought of what to him seemed treason; it is honourable to him that he wished later to serve under Grant but was refused by him. But, to one of his views, the political situation before and after Antietam was alarming, and it is certain that to his inconclusive mind and character an attitude of half loyalty would be easy. He may not have wished that Lee should escape, but he had no ardent desire that he should not. Right or wrong, such was the ground of Lincoln's independent and conscientiously deliberate decision.

The result again did not reward him. His choice of Burnside was a mistake. There were corps commanders under McClellan who had earned special confidence, but they were all rather old. General Burnside, who was the senior among the rest, had lately succeeded in operations in connection with the Navy on the North Carolina coast, whereby certain harbours were permanently closed to the South. He had since served under McClellan at the Antietam, but had not earned much credit. He was a loyal friend to McClellan and very modest about his own capacity. Perhaps both these things prejudiced Lincoln in his favour. He continued in active service till nearly the end of the war, when a failure led to his retirement; and he was always popular and respected. At this juncture he failed disastrously. On December 11 and 12, 1862, Lee's army lay strongly posted on the south of the Rappahannock. Burnside, in spite, as it appears, of express warnings from Lincoln, attacked Lee at precisely the point, near the town of Fredericksburg, where his position was really impregnable. The defeat of the Northern army was bloody and overwhelming. Burnside's army became all but mutinous; his corps commanders, especially General Hooker, were loud in complaint. He was tempted to persist, in spite of all protests, in some further effort of rashness. Lincoln endeavoured to restrain him. Halleck, whom Lincoln begged to give a definite military opinion, upholding or overriding Burnside's, had nothing more useful to offer than his own resignation. After discussions and recriminations among all officers concerned, Burnside offered his resignation. Lincoln was by no means disposed to remove a general upon a first failure or to side with his subordinates against him, and refused to accept it. Burnside then offered the impossible alternative of the dismissal of all his corps commanders for disaffection to him, and on January 25, 1863, his resignation was accepted.

There was much discussion in the Cabinet as to the choice of his successor. It was thought unwise to give the Eastern army a commander from the West again. At Chase's instance [Transcriber's note: insistance?] the senior corps commander who was not too old, General Hooker, sometimes called "Fighting Joe Hooker," was appointed. He received a letter, often quoted as the letter of a man much altered from the Lincoln who had been groping a year earlier after the right way of treating McClellan: "I have placed you," wrote Lincoln, "at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe that you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honourable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I gave you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories."

"He talks to me like a father," exclaimed Hooker, enchanted with a rebuke such as this. He was a fine, frank, soldierly fellow, with a noble figure, with "a grand fighting head," fresh complexion and bright blue eyes. He was a good organiser; he put a stop to the constant desertions; he felt the need of improving the Northern cavalry; and he groaned at the spirit with which McClellan had infected his army, a curious collective inertness among men who individually were daring. He seems to have been highly strung; the very little wine that he drank perceptibly affected him; he gave it up altogether in his campaigns. And he cannot have been very clever, for the handsomest beating that Lee could give him left him unaware that Lee was a general. In the end of April he crossed the Rappahannock and the Rapidan, which still divided the two armies, and in the first week of May, 1863, a brief campaign, full of stirring incident, came to a close with the three days' battle of Chancellorsville, in which Hooker, hurt and dazed with pain, lost control and presence of mind, and, with heavy loss, drew back across the Rappahannock. The South had won another amazing victory; but "Stonewall" Jackson, at the age of thirty-nine, had fallen in the battle.

Abroad, this crowning disaster to the North seemed to presage the full triumph of the Confederacy; and it was a gloomy time enough for Lincoln and his Ministers. A second and more serious invasion by Lee was impending, and the lingering progress of events in the West, of which the story must soon be resumed, caused protracted and deepening anxiety. But the tide turned soon. Moreover, Lincoln's military perplexities, which have demanded our detailed attention during these particular campaigns, were very nearly at an end. We have here to turn back to the political problem of his Presidency, for the bloody and inconclusive battle upon the Antietam, more than seven months before, had led strangely to political consequences which were great and memorable.