McClellan fell before the genius of Lee, and Pope was put in his place.
They met at Second Manassas. The new general ended his brief campaign ina disaster so complete, so appalling that it struck terror to the heartof the Nation. Lee had crushed him with an ease so amazing that Lincolnwas compelled to recall McClellan to supreme command. When the toll ofthe Blood Feud was again reckoned twenty-five thousand more of our braveboys lay dead or wounded beneath the blazing sun of the South.
The Confederate Government now believed its army invincible, led by Lee.
In spite of poor equipment, with the men half clad and half barefooted,Lee was ordered to invade Maryland. It was a political move, undertakenwithout the approval of the Commander.
As the gray lines swept Northward to cross the Potomac into Maryland,Lincoln was jubilant. To Hay, his young secretary, he whispered:
"We\'ve got them now, boy. We\'ve got them! The war must speedily end. Leecan never get into Maryland with fifty thousand effective men. The riverwill be behind them. I\'ll have McClellan on him with a hundred thousandwell-shod, well-fed, well-armed soldiers and the finest equipment ofartillery that ever thundered into battle.
"McClellan\'s on his mettle. His army will fight like tigers to show theirfaith in him. They were all against me when I removed him. Now they\'llshow me something. Mark my words."Luck was with McClellan. By an accident Lee\'s plan of campaign hadfallen into his hands. Yet it was too late to forestall his first masterstroke. In the face of a hostile army of twice his numbers Lee dividedhis forces, threw Jackson\'s corps on Harper\'s Ferry, captured the town,Arsenal and Rifle Works, twelve thousand five hundred prisoners and vaststores of war material. Among the booty taken were new blue uniformswith which Jackson promptly clothed his men.
Lee met McClellan at Antietam and waited for Jackson to arrive fromHarper\'s Ferry.
When McClellan\'s artillery opened in the gray dawn, more than sixteenthousand of Lee\'s footsore men had fallen along the line of march unableto reach the battlefield. The union Commander was massing eighty-seventhousand men behind his flaming batteries. Lee could count on butthirty-seven thousand. He gave McClellan battle with his little armyhemmed in on one side by Antietam Creek and on the other by the sweepingPotomac.
The President in Washington received the news of the positions of thearmies and their chances of success with exultation. As the sun rosea glowing dull red ball of fire breaking through the smoke of theartillery, Hooker\'s division swept into action and drove the first lineof Lee\'s men into the woods. Here they rallied and began to mow down thecharging masses with deadly aim. For two hours the sullen fight raged inthe woods without yielding an inch on either side. Hooker fell wounded.
He called for aid. Mansfield answered and fell dead as he deployed hismen. Sedgwick\'s Corps charged and were caught in a trap between twoConfederate brigades concealed and massed to meet them. Sedgwick waswounded and his command barely saved from annihilation.
While this struggle raged on the union right, the center saw a bloodiertragedy. French and Richardson charged the Confederate position. Asunken road crossed the field over which they marched. For four tragichours the men in gray held this sunken road until it was piled withtheir bodies. When the final charge of massed blue took it, they foundto their amazement that but three hundred living men had been holding itfor an hour against the assaults of five thousand. So perfect was thefaith of those gray soldiers in Robert E. Lee they died as if it werethe order of the day. It was simply fate. Their Commander could make nomistake.
Burnsides swung his reinforced division around the woods and pushed upthe heights against Sharpsburg to cut Lee\'s only line of retreat. Heforced the thin, gray lines before him through the streets of thevillage. On its outer edge he suddenly confronted a mass of men clad intheir own blue uniform.
How had these men gotten here?
He was not long in doubt. The blue line suddenly flashed a red wavesquarely in their faces. It was Jackson\'s Corps from Harper\'s Ferry intheir new uniforms. The shock threw the union men into confusion, adesperate charge drove them out of Sharpsburg, and Lee\'s army camped onthe field with the dead.
For fourteen hours five hundred guns and a hundred thousand musketsthundered and hissed their message of blood. When night fell more thantwenty thousand of our noblest men lay dead and wounded on the field.
Lee skillfully withdrew his army across the Potomac. Safe in Virginia herallied his shattered forces while he sent Stuart once more in a daringride around McClellan\'s army.
Again McClellan fell before the genius of Lee. Burnsides was put in hisplace.
They met at Fredericksburg. Burnsides, the courtly, polished gentleman,crossed the Rappahannock River and charged the hills on which Lee\'sgrim, gray men had entrenched. His magnificent army marched into a deathtrap. Lee\'s batteries had been trained to rake the field from threedirections.
Five times the union hosts charged these crescent hills and five timesthey were rolled back in waves of blood. A fierce freezing wind sprangup from the North. The desperate union Commander thought still to turndefeat into victory and ordered the sixth charge.
The men in blue pulled down their caps and charged once more into thejaws of death. The lines as they advanced snatched up the frozen bodiesof their comrades, carried them to the front, stacked the corpses intolong piles for bulwarks, dropped low and fought behind them. In vain.
The gray hills roared and blazed, roared and blazed with increasingfury. Darkness came at last and drew a mantle of mercy over the scene.
The men in blue planted the frozen bodies of their dead along the outerline as dummy sentinels and crept through the shadows across the rivershattered, broken, crushed. They left their wounded. Through the longhours of the freezing night the pitiful cries came to the boys in grayon the wings of the fierce North winds. They crawled out into thedarkness here and there and held a canteen to the lips of a dying foe.
At dawn they looked and saw the piles of the slain wrapped in whiteshrouds of snow. The shivering, ragged, gray figures, thinly clad, sweptdown the hill, stripped the dead and shook the frost from the warmclothes.
Burnsides fell before the genius of Lee and Hooker was put in his place.
Fighting Joe Hooker they called him. At Chancellorsville a few monthslater he led his reorganized army across the same river and threw iton Lee with supreme confidence in the results. He led an army of onehundred and thirty thousand men in seven grand divisions backed by fourhundred and forty-eight great guns.
Lee, still on the hills behind Fredericksburg, had sixty-two thousandmen and one hundred and seventy guns. He had sent Longstreet\'s corpsinto Tennessee.
Hooker threw the flower of his army across the river seven miles aboveFredericksburg to flank Lee and strike him from the rear while theremainder of his army crossed in front and between the two he wouldcrush the Confederate army as an eggshell.
But the unexpected happened. Lee was not only a stark fighter. He was asupreme master of the art of war. He understood Hooker\'s move from themoment it began. His gray army had already slipped out of his trenchesand were feeling their way through the tangled vines and underbrush withsure, ominous tread. In this wilderness Hooker\'s four hundred guns wouldbe as useless as his own hundred and seventy. It would be a hand-to-handfight in the tangled brush. The gray veteran was a dead shot and he wascreeping through his own native woods. On this beautiful May morning,Lee, Jackson, and Stuart met in conference before the battle opened.
The plan was chosen. Lee would open the battle and hold Hooker at closerange. Jackson would "retreat." Out of sight, he would turn, marchswiftly ten miles around their right wing and smash it before sundown.
At five o\'clock in the afternoon while Lee held Hooker\'s front,Jackson\'s corps crept into position in Hooker\'s rear. The shrill note ofa bugle rang from the woods and the yelling gray lines of death sweptdown on their unsuspecting foe. Without support the shattered right wingwas crushed, crumpled and rolled back in confusion.
At eight o\'clock Jackson, pressing forward in the twilight, was mortallywounded by his own men and Stuart took his command. The gay, youngcavalier placed himself at the head of Jackson\'s corps and chargedHooker\'s disorganized army. Waving his black plumed hat above hishandsome, bearded face, he chanted with boyish gaiety an improvisedbattle song:
  "Old Joe Hooker,  Won\'t you come out o\' the Wilderness?"His men swept the field and as Hooker\'s army retreated Lee rode tothe front to congratulate Stuart. At sight of his magnificent figurewreathed in smoke his soldiers went wild. Above the roar of battle ran............