on the evening of the 13th, having in three days marched seventy
miles.

The position of the Southern army now exposed it to very serious
danger, and at first sight seemed to indicate a deficiency of
soldiership in the general commanding it. In face of an enemy whose
force was at least equal to his own,[Footnote: General Hooker stated
his "effective" at this time to have been diminished to eighty
thousand infantry.] Lee had extended his line until it stretched over
a distance of about one hundred miles. When Ewell came in sight of
Winchester, Hill was still opposite Fredericksburg, and Longstreet
half-way between the two in Culpepper. Between the middle and rear
corps was interposed the Rapidan River, and between the middle and
advanced corps the Blue Ridge Mountains. General Hooker's army was on
the north bank of the Rappahannock, well in hand, and comparatively
massed, and the situation of Lee's army seemed excellent for the
success of a sudden blow at it.

It seems that the propriety of attacking the Southern army while
thus _in transitu_, suggested itself both to General Hooker and to
President Lincoln, but they differed as to the point and object of the
attack. In anticipation of Lee's movement, General Hooker had written
to the President, probably suggesting a counter-movement across the
Rappahannock, somewhere near Fredericksburg, to threaten Richmond, and
thus check Lee's advance. This, however. President Lincoln refused to
sanction.

"In case you find Lee coming to the north of the Rappahannock,"
President Lincoln wrote to General Hooker, "I would by no means cross
to the south of it. I would not take any risk of being entangled upon
the river, _like an ox jumped half over a fence, and liable to be torn
by dogs, front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick
the other_"

Five days afterward the President wrote: "I think Lee's army, and not
Richmond, is your true objective point. If he comes toward the Upper
Potomac, fight him when opportunity offers. If he stays where he is,
_fret him and fret him_."

When intelligence now reached Washington that the head of Lee's column
was approaching the Upper Potomac, while the rear was south of the
Rappahannock, the President wrote to General Hooker: "_If the head of
Lee's army is at Martinsburg, and the tail of it on the plank road_
between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the _animal must be very
slim somewhere--could you not break him?_"

Ge