of the four preceding days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday; the
necessity of reforming his battalions for the final blow; and the
anticipation that General Hooker, who still had at his command a
force of more than one hundred thousand men, would not so promptly
relinquish his campaign, and retire.

With the exception of this error, if it be such, Lee had made no
single false step in the whole of his movements. The campaign was
round, perfect, and complete--such as a student of the art of war
might pore over, and analyze as an instance of the greatest principles
of military science "clothed in act." The most striking features of
Lee's movements were their rapidity and audacity. It had been the
fashion with some persons to speak of Lee as slow and cautious in his
operations, and this criticism had not been completely silenced even
in the winter of 1862, when his failure to crush General Burnside
afforded his detractors another opportunity of repeating the old
charge. After the Chancellorsville campaign these fault-finders were
silenced--no one could be found to listen to them. The whole
Southern movement completely contradicted their theory. At the first
intelligence of the advance of General Hooker's main body across the
upper Rappahannock, Lee rode rapidly in that direction, and ordered
his troops at the fords of the river to fall back to Chancellorsville.
He then returned, and, finding that General Sedgwick had crossed at
Fredericksburg, held a prompt consultation with Jackson, when it was
decided at once to concentrate the main body of the army in front of
General Hooker's column. At the word, Jackson moved; Lee followed. On
the 1st of May, the enemy were pressed back upon Chancellorsville; on
the 2d, his right was crushed, and his army thrown into confusion; on
the 3d, he was driven from Chancellorsville, and, but for the flank
movement of General Sedgwick, which Lee was not in sufficient force to
prevent, General Hooker would, upon that same day, Sunday, have in all
probability suffered a decisive defeat.

In the course of four days Lee had thus advanced, and checked, and
then attacked and repulsed with heavy slaughter, an army thrice
as large as his own. On the last day of April he had been nearly
enveloped by a host of about one hundred and twenty thousand men. On
the 3d day of May their main body was in disorderly retreat; and at
daylight on the morning of the 6th there was not a Federal soldier,
with th