ithin the camps that could be seen from the housetops of
Richmond and from the hills round Fredericksburg. Far away to the
north, beyond the Potomac, beneath the shadow of the Capitol at
Washington, was the mainspring of the invader's strength. The
multitudes of armed men that overran Virginia were no more the
inanimate pieces of the chess-board. The power which controlled them
was the Northern President. It was at Lincoln that Lee was about to
strike, at Lincoln and the Northern people, and an effective blow at
the point which people and President deemed vital might arrest the
progress of their armies as surely as if the Confederates had been
reinforced by a hundred thousand men.

May 16.

On May 16 Lee wrote to Jackson: "Whatever movement you make against
Banks, do it speedily, and if successful drive him back towards the
Potomac, and create the impression, as far as possible, that you
design threatening that line." For this purpose, in addition to Ewell
and Johnson's forces, the Army of the Valley was to be reinforced by
two brigades, Branch's and Mahone's, of which the former had already
reached Gordonsville.

In this letter the idea of playing on the fears of Lincoln for the
safety of his capital first sees the light, and it is undoubtedly to
be attributed to the brain of Lee. That the same idea had been
uppermost in Jackson's mind during the whole course of the campaign
is proved not only by the evidence of his chief of the staff, but by
his correspondence with headquarters. "If Banks is defeated," he had
written on April 5, "it may directly retard McClellan's movements."
It is true that nowhere in his correspondence is the idea of menacing
Washington directly mentioned, nor is there the slightest evidence
that he suggested it to Lee. But in his letters to his superiors he
confines himself strictly to the immediate subject, and on no single
occasion does he indulge in speculation on possible results. In the
ability of the Commander-in-Chief he had the most implicit
confidence. "Lee," he said, "is the only man I know whom I would
follow blindfold," and he was doubtless assured that the
embarrassments of the Federal Government were as apparent to Lee as
to himself. That the same idea should have suggested itself
independently to both is hardly strange. Both looked further than the
enemy's camps; both studied the situation in its broadest bearings;
both understood the importance of introducing a disturbing elemen