nfederate forces as puppets to be pulled about
by Cabinet strings from Richmond. Here again (as later on at
Chattanooga) Longstreet was sent away on a useless errand just
when he was needed most by Lee. Good soldier though he was in many
ways he was no such man as Stonewall Jackson; and, in this one
year, he failed his seniors thrice.

It is true enough that the April situation of 1863 might well shake
governmental nerves; for Richmond was being menaced from three
points--north, southeast, and south: Fredericksburg due north,
Suffolk southeast, Newbern south. Newbern in North Carolina was
a long way off. But its possession by an active enemy threatened
the rail connection from Richmond south to Wilmington, Charleston,
and Savannah, the only three Atlantic ports through which the South
could get supplies from overseas. Suffolk was nearer. It covered
the landward side of Norfolk, which, with Fortress Monroe, might
become the base of a new Peninsula Campaign. But Fredericksburg
was nearest; nearest to Richmond, nearest to Washington, nearest
to the main Southern force; and not only nearest but strongest, in
every way strongest and most to be feared. "Fighting Joe Hooker" was
there, with a hundred and thirty thousand men, already stirring for
the spring campaign that was to wipe out memories of Fredericksburg,
make short work of Lee, and end the war at Richmond.

Yet Longstreet cheerfully marched off, pleased with his new command,
to see what he could do to soothe the Government by winning laurels
for himself at Suffolk. On the seventeenth, just two weeks before
the supreme test came on Lee's weakened army at Chancellorsville,
Longstreet reported to Seddon that Suffolk would cost three thousand
men, if taken by assault, or three days' heavy firing if subdued by
bombardment. Shrinking from such expenditure of life or ammunition,
Davis, Seddon, and Longstreet fell back on a siege, which, preventing
all junction with Lee, might well have cost the ruin of their cause.

Lee and Jackson then prepared to make the best of a bad business
along the Rappahannock, and to snatch victory once more, if possible,
from the very jaws of death. The prospect was grimmer than before.
Hooker was a better fighter than McClellan and wiser than Burnside
or Pope. Moreover, after two years of war, the Union Government
had at last found out that civilian detectives knew less about
armies than expert staff officers know, and that cavalry which
was