In early March of 1863 the great humanitarian and amateur general Abraham Lincoln could look past the 13,000 federal dead and wounded on the frozen slopes outside of Fredricksburg, Virginia (above) and still observe that, “If the same battle were to be fought over again, every day, through a week of days, with the same relative results, the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, while the Army of the Potomac would still be a mighty host.” Lincoln was right, and Confederate General Robert Edward Lee knew it.
The tactical genius Robert E. Lee. would admit that after his victory at Fredricksburg “I was much depressed. We had really accomplished nothing...we had not gained a foot of ground, and I knew the enemy could easily replace the men he had lost..” Lee's right hand man, the brilliant and eccentric General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, had told Lee before Fredricksburg, “I am opposed to fighting here. We will whip the enemy, but gain no fruits of victory.” And the battle had proved Stonewall correct.
And after Lee's “masterpiece” at Chancellorsville in early May of 1863, dealing 18,000 casualties to the Federals, Lee would admit he was even , “... was more depressed...” - because Chancellorsville had cost Lee 13,000 of his own men dead and wounded (above) - and cost him Jackson, shot by his own men in confusion. And that was why, after these two successive frustrations, Lee was so determined to invade the north.
The situation facing Lee (above) has been explained by Ethan S. Rafuse, of the United States Army Staff College. “ At the heart of the matter,” wrote Rafuse, “was Northern superiority in men and material.” It left Lee with just two choices, according to Rafuse, “Take the initiative by leading his army north or remain on the defensive....” And the latter choice, Lee knew, could end in only one way - a siege of Richmond followed by surrender. But, Lee told his civilian masters, “An invasion of the enemy’s country breaks up all of his preconceived plans...” And his casualties in Pennsylvania, said Lee, would be “no greater than...from the series of battles I would have been compelled to fight...in Virginia.” In short, Lee's invasion of 1863 was not a search for victory. It was a way of continuing to avoid defeat.
But the core of Robert E. Lee's generalship was always aggression. Within days of throwing the Federals back from Fredricksburg, he had ordered 35 year old Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (above), the chief topographical engineer for the Army of Northern Virginia....
...to secretly prepare a new map of the Shenandoah and Cumberland Valleys, from Virginia (above), extending as far north as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Hotchkiss' magnificent work measured in full 7 ½ feet long by 3 feet wide, with roads in red and streams in blue, and would prove accurate through out the coming campaign. In mid-March Lee wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, “I think it all important that we should assume the aggressive by the first of May, when we may expect General Hooker’s army to be weakened by the expiration of the term of service of many of his regiments...”
In May of 1863, 5,000 Federal veterans were discharged, their 2 year enlistments at an end. Another 10,000 were to be discharged at the beginning of June. Replacements could not keep up with those losses, so by mid-June, the Army of the Potomac numbered somewhere between 83,000 and 95,000 effective soldiers. This reduction would be transitory, as Lee well knew. But for the first time since the start of the war, the Federal numerical advantage was just 10 to 20,000 men. Lee knew he would never face better odds.
Confederate Secretary of War, James Seddon, and President Jefferson Davis, wanted to capitalize on the success at Chancellorsville by sending a third of Lee's Army to either the Carolina or the Georgia coasts (above), where the Federal capture of ports threatened to cut the Confederacy off from Europe....
For Lee, this made it a case of use his men or lose his men. By invading Pennsylvania, Lee argued, "I believe greater relief would in this way be afforded to the armies in middle Tennessee and on the Carolina coast than by any other method.” Faced with his opposition to dismembering the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's civilian masters were forced to back down.
On 10 May, 1863, in preparation for the invasion, Lee ordered the two corps of the ANV to became three corps, of approximately 22.000 men each. Lieutenant General James (Old Pete) Longstreet (above) retained command of the First Corps.
Newly promoted Lt. General Richard (Old Bald Head) Ewell (above) took over the Second Corps, including Jackson's old division.
And new Lt. General Ambrose Powell (A.P.) Hill (above) assumed command of the Third Corps.
The 6,400 men in the Cavalry Corps under General James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart (above) raised Lee effective strength to about 75,000 officers and men.
The Army of Northern Virginia was as close to a national army as the Confederacy ever had. Most of its men came from Virginia and North Carolina, but it contained regiments from every state in the Confederacy. This was both a strength and a weakness. As wastage and casualties thinned their ranks, new recruits were fed into the veteran regiments, maintaining and extending unit experience. In the north, new recruits were formed into new regiments, which meant part of the Army of the Potomac was always at the bottom of the learning curve.
But it also meant Lee's soldiers were usually ill supplied and underfed, many lacking even shoes. The South's collapsing transportation system meant individual states could not get supplies to their regiments in the field, even if they could obtain them. Increasingly, the burden of feeding the ANV fell on Virginia and the Carolinas. And increasingly they had little to give. The depots of the Federal Army of the Potomac had become an attractive supply source. By invading Pennsylvania, Lee could cut out the middle man and get his supplies directly from the source.
The only thing that held this rebel army together as a cohesive force was “Massur Lee”. He was more than their mounted commander. As a Georgia regiment passed Lee on the road to Pennsylvania, one private told his fellows, “Boys, there are ten thousand men sitting on that one horse.” Soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia would kill and die for their regimental flag, and for General Lee.
A private soldier in Lee's army earned $11 a month. He was, on average, 24 years old, and single, a small farmer or an unskilled laborer. The vast majority had volunteered during the first two years of the war, all most half either owned or someone in their extended family owned slaves. And increasingly the support and supply for the ANV was operated by conscripted slaves, driving supply and ambulance wagons. No Confederate officer ever gave a slave a musket, but the war was forcing changes on the slave culture.
In April of 1862 The Confederate Congress passed the first “conscription” act in American history, even before the north did. This supposedly drafted all able bodied unmarried white males between 18 and 35 years of age. The same law also extended by 2 years the service of volunteers already in the army. But Southern conscription never really worked. Besides being run by and for the states - who did not let many of the conscripted men leave their jurisdiction - wealthy men could buy their way out of the system, and most of the 82,000 low and middle class men drafted, deserted within weeks. And desertion would always remain a serious problem for all Confederate armies. On 19 August of 1862 “Stonewall” Jackson executed 5 of his own men for desertion, the first recorded in the ANV - but far from the last.
The first units to shift away from Fredricksburg, on 3 June, 1863, were members of A.P .Hill's Corps, on the A.N.V.'s right flank. First they pulled back toward Culpepper Courthouse, Virginia, for resupply and reorganization. Everything depended on doing little fighting until the army got north of the Potomac River, and into Pennsylvania. And first on the "To Do" list was to capture the crossroads of Winchester, Virginia, as quickly and cheaply as possible. Once that was achieved, the invasion of the north became possible.
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