ederate States.

Great Britain was behind this Napoleonic adventure. Outwitted by the
President in the affair of the _Trent_, the British Government was eager
for the chance to strike the Republic.

To cap the climax of disasters Lee was preparing to invade the North
with his victorious army. The announcement struck terror to the Northern
cities and produced a condition among them little short of panic.

The move would be the height of audacity and yet Lee had good reasons
for believing its success possible and probable. His grey veterans were
still ragged and poorly shod. With Southern ports blockaded and no
manufacturing this was inevitable, but they had proven in two years'
test of fire Lee's proud boast:

"There never were such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and
do anything if properly led."

This opinion was confirmed to the President by Charles Francis Adams, a
veteran of his own Army of the Potomac, whom he summoned to the White
House for a conference.

"I do not believe," said Adams gravely, "that any more formidable or
better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that
which Lee is now leading toward the North. It is essentially an army of
fighters--men who individually, or in the mass, can be depended on for
any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accomplish. They will
blanch at no danger. Lee knows this from experience and they have full
confidence in him."

He could not hope to enter Pennsylvania with more than sixty-five
thousand men, but his plan was reasonable. With such an army he had
hurled McClellan's hundred and ten thousand soldiers back from the gates
of Richmond and scattered them to the winds. With a less number he had
all but annihilated Pope's men and flung them back into Washington a
disorganized rabble. With thirty-seven thousand grey soldiers he had
repelled in a welter of blood McClellan's eighty-six thousand at
Antietam and retired at his leisure. With seventy thousand men he had
crushed Burnside's host of one hundred and thirteen thousand at
Fredericksburg. With sixty thousand he had just struck Hooker's grand
army of a hundred and thirty thousand men and four hundred and
thirty-eight guns, rolled it up as a scroll and thrown it across the
Rappahannock in blinding, bewildering defeat.

From every prisoner taken at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville he knew
the Northern army was discouraged and heartsick. That he could march his
ragged men