neral Hooker did not seem to be able to determine upon a decisive
course of action, in spite of the tempting opening presented to him by
Lee. It would seem that nothing could have been plainer than the good
policy of an attack upon Hill at Fredericksburg, which would certainly
have checked Lee's movement by recalling Longstreet from Culpepper,
and Ewell from the Valley. But this bold operation did not appear to
commend itself to the Federal authorities. Instead of reenforcing the
corps sent across at Fredericksburg and attacking Hill, General Hooker
withdrew the corps, on the 13th, to the north bank of the river, got
his forces together, and began to fall back toward Manassas, and even
remained in ignorance, it seems, of all connected with his adversary's
movements. Even as late as the 17th of June, his chief-of-staff,
General Butterfield, wrote to one of his officers; "Try and hunt up
somebody from Pennsylvania who knows something, and has a cool enough
head to judge what is the actual state of affairs there with regard to
the enemy. _My impression is, that Lee's movement on the Upper Potomac
is a cover for a cavalry-raid on the south side of the river.... We
cannot go boggling around until we know what we are going after._"

Such was the first result of Lee's daring movement to transfer
military operations to the region north of the Potomac. A Northern
historian has discerned in his plan of campaign an amount of boldness
which "seemed to imply a great contempt for his opponent." This
is perhaps a somewhat exaggerated statement of the case. Without
"boldness" a commander is but half a soldier, and it may be declared
that a certain amount of that quality is absolutely essential to
successful military operations. But the question is, Did Lee expose
himself, by these movements of his army, to probable disaster, if his
adversary--equal to the occasion--struck at his flank? A failure of
the campaign of invasion would probably have resulted from such an
attack either upon Hill at Fredericksburg, or upon Longstreet in
Culpepper, inasmuch as Ewell's column, in that event, must have fallen
back. But a _defeat_ of the combined forces of Hill and Longstreet,
who were within supporting distance of each other, was not an event
which General Hooker could count upon with any degree of certainty.
The two corps numbered nearly fifty thousand men--that is to say,
two-thirds of the Southern army; General Hooker's whole force was
but abou