General Hooker:

"So far as we can make out here, the enemy have Milroy surrounded
at Winchester and Tyler at Martinsburg. If they could hold out a
few days, could you help them? _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?_"

"A. Lincoln."( 2)

Hooker did not cross the river and attack the rear of Lee's army,
nor did he "_fret_" Lee's army, nor "_break_" it, however "_slim_"
"_the animal_" must have been, and hence Milroy was sacrificed,
and the rich towns, cities, and districts of Maryland and Pennsylvania
were overrun by a hungry and devastating foe; but Gettysburg came;
the Union hosts there being successfully led by another commander
--Meade!

George Gordon Meade came to the command of the Army of the Potomac
under the most trying circumstances. The situation of that army
and the country was critical. He had been distinguished as a
brigade, division, and corps commander under McClellan, Burnside,
and Hooker; in brief, he had won laurels on many fields, especially
at Fredericksburg, where he broke through the enemy's right and
reached his reserves, yet he never had held an independent command.
He was of Revolutionary stock (Pennsylvania), though born in Cadiz,
Spain, December 31, 1815, where his parents then resided, his father
being a merchant and shipowner there. He was graduated at West
Point; was a modest, truthful, industrious, studious man, with the
instincts of a soldier. He was wounded at New Market, or Glendale,
in the Peninsula campaign (1862). He was commanding in person,
and ambitious to succeed, prudent, yet obstinate, and when aroused
showed a fierce temper; yet he was, in general, just. On the third
day after he assumed command of the army its advance corps opened
the battle of Gettysburg. What great soldier ever before took an
army and moved it into battle against a formidable adversary in so
short a time? It must also be remembered that the troops composing
his army were not used to material success. They had never been
led to a decisive victory. Some of them had been defeated at Bull
Run; some of them on the Peninsula; some of them at the Second Bull
Run; some of them were in the drawn battle of Antietam; some of
them had suffered repulse at Fredericksburg, and defeat at
Chancellorsville, and the army in general had experienced more