he was
acting under pressure against his own best judgment. His army knew
or felt all this; and he knew they knew or felt it. The Federals,
for all their glorious courage, felt, when the two fronts met at
Fredericksburg, that they were no more than sacrificial pawns in
the grim game of war. After much useless slaughter they reeled
back beaten. But they could and did retire in safety, skillfully
"staffed" by their leaders and close to their unconquerable sea.

Lee could make no counterstroke. The Confederate Government had
not dared to let him occupy the far better position on the line
of the North Anna, from which a vigorous counterstroke might have
almost annihilated a beaten attacker, who would have been exposed
on both flanks, beyond the sure protection of the sea. Thus fear of
an outcry against "abandoning" the country between Fredericksburg
and the North Anna caused the Southern politicians to lose their
chance at home. But without a decisive victory they could not hope
for foreign intervention. So losing their chance at home made them
lose it abroad as well.

Burnside was dazed by his defeat and the appalling loss of life
in vain. But after five weeks of most discouraging inaction he
tried to surprise Lee by crossing the Rappahannock several miles
higher up. On the twentieth and twenty-first of that miserable
January the Federal army ploughed its dreary way through sloughs
of gluey mud under torrents of chilling rain. Then, when the pace
had slackened to a funereal crawl, and the absurdly little chance of
surprising Lee had vanished altogether, this despairing "Mud March"
came to its wretched end. Four days later Burnside was superseded by
one of his own subordinates, General Joseph Hooker, known to all
ranks as "Fighting Joe Hooker."

Fredericksburg, the spell of relaxing winter quarters beside the
fatal Rappahannock, and then the fatal "Mud March," combined to
lower Federal morale. Yet the mass of the men, being composed of
fine human material, quickly recovered under "Fighting Joe Hooker,"
who knew what discipline meant. Numbers and discipline tell. But
disciplined numbers were not the only or even the greatest menace
to the South. For here, as farther west, the Confederate Government
was beginning to be foolish just as the Federal Government showed
signs of growing wise. Lincoln and Stanton were giving Joe Hooker a
fairly free hand just when Davis and Seddon (his makeshift minister
of war) were using Co