A Life Of General Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke

Author:John Esten Cooke [Cooke, John Esten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Military
ISBN: 9781443428934
Google: CM6bAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2014-06-10T01:14:24+00:00

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29 General Doubleday: Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War.

30 The officer who carried the order is our authority for this statement.

Chapter XVI

The Two Armies in Position

The morning of the second of July had arrived, and the two armies were in presence of each other and ready for battle. The question was, which of the great adversaries would make the attack.

General Meade was as averse to assuming the offensive as his opponent. Lee’s statement on this subject has been given, but is here repeated: “It had not been intended to fight a general battle,” he wrote, “at such a distance from our base, unless attacked by the enemy.” General Meade said before the war committee afterward, “It was my desire to fight a defensive rather than an offensive battle,” and he adds the obvious explanation, that he was “satisfied his chances of success were greater in a defensive battle than an offensive one.” There was this great advantage, however, on the Federal side, that the troops were on their own soil, with their communications uninterrupted, and could wait, while General Lee was in hostile territory, a considerable distance from his base of supplies, and must, for that reason, either attack his adversary or retreat.

He decided to attack. To this decision he seems to have been impelled, in large measure, by the extraordinary spirit of his troops, whose demeanor in the subsequent struggle was said by a Federal officer to resemble that of men “drunk on champagne.” General Longstreet described the army at this moment as able, from the singular afflatus which bore it up, to undertake “anything,” and this sanguine spirit was the natural result of a nearly unbroken series of victories. At Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and in the preliminary struggle of Gettysburg, they had driven the enemy before them in disorder, and, on the night succeeding this last victory, both officers and men spoke of the coming battle “as a certainty, and the universal feeling in the army was one of profound contempt for an enemy whom they had beaten so constantly, and under so many disadvantages.” [31] Contempt of an adversary is dangerous, and pride goes before a fall. The truth of these pithy adages was now about to be shown.

General Lee, it is said, shared the general confidence of his troops, and was carried away by it. He says in his report “Finding ourselves unexpectedly confronted by the Federal army, it became a matter of difficulty to withdraw through the mountain with our large trains; at the same time, the country was unfavorable for collecting supplies while in the presence of the enemy’s main body, as he was enabled to restrain our foraging parties by occupying the passes of the mountains with regular and local troops. A battle thus became in a measure unavoidable.” But, even after the battle, when the Southern army was much weaker, it was found possible, without much difficulty, to “withdraw through the mountains” with the trains. A stronger motive

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