outed. Nearly the whole command was captured--the remnant
barely escaping--and, the way having thus been cleared, General Meade
threw his army across into Culpepper.

General Lee retired before him with a heavy heart and a deep
melancholy, which, in spite of his great control over himself, was
visible in his countenance. The infantry-fighting of the campaign had
begun, and ended in disaster for him. In the thirty days he had lost
at least two thousand men, and was back again in his old camps, having
achieved absolutely nothing.

V.

THE ADVANCE TO MINE RUN.

November of the bloody year 1863 had come; and it seemed not
unreasonable to anticipate that a twelvemonth, marked by such
incessant fighting at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Salem
Church, Winchester, Gettysburg, Front Royal, Bristoe, and along the
Rappahannock, would now terminate in peace, permitting the
combatants on both sides, worn out by their arduous work, to go into
winter-quarters, and recuperate their energies for the operations of
the ensuing spring.

But General Meade had otherwise determined. He had resolved to try
a last advance, in spite of the inclement weather; and Lee's
anticipations of a season of rest and refreshment for his troops,
undisturbed by hostile demonstrations on the part of the enemy, were
destined speedily to be disappointed. The Southern army had gone
regularly into winter-quarters, south of the Rapidan, and the men were
felicitating themselves upon the prospect of an uninterrupted season
of leisure and enjoyment in their rude cabins, built in sheltered
nooks, or under their breadths of canvas raised upon logs, and fitted
with rough but comfortable chimneys, built of notched pine-saplings,
when suddenly intelligence was brought by scouts that the Federal army
was in motion. The fact reversed all their hopes of rest, and song,
and laughter, by the good log-fires. The musket was taken from its
place on the rude walls, the cartridge-box assumed, and the army was
once more ready for battle--as gay, hopeful, and resolved, as in the
first days of spring.

General Meade had, indeed, resolved that the year should not end
without another blow at his adversary, and the brief campaign, known
as the "Advance to Mine Run," followed. It was the least favorable
of all seasons for active operations; but the Federal commander is
vindicated from the charge of bad soldiership by two circumstances
which very properly had great weigh