Lee made bold plans and his brave men carried them out. Stuart, who had taken Stonewall Jackson’s command, led his men to battle, singing “Old Joe Hooker, won’t you come out of the wilderness.”
At last the battle of Chancellorsville was won and Hooker was forced back to his old camp at Fredericksburg.
Chancellorsville was Lee’s greatest battle, but its glory was clouded by Jackson’s death. General Lee wrote to his wife, May 11, 1863:
“You will see we have to mourn the loss of the good and great Jackson. * * * I know not how to replace him, but God’s will be done.”
In this battle Lee had only fifty-three thousand men, one-third as many men as Hooker.
In June, 1863, Lee again crossed the Potomac and met an army under General Meade at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania.
Lee had two reasons for this move. One was to get food for his men and horses; and the other to draw the Northern army away from its strong forts around Washington city. He gave strict orders to his men not to steal and rob. This is a part of his order:
“The commanding general thinks that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than to commit outrages on the innocent and defenceless. * * * It must be remembered that we make war only upon _armed men_.”
This order, with its noble Christ-like spirit, will remain the “undying glory of Lee”; for all his property had been taken by the Federals. His wife and daughters were homeless, yet he did not fail to return good for evil.
When Lee started into Maryland, he sent Jeb Stuart on ahead to guard the right flank of his army. By some mishap, he crossed the Potomac too far to the east, and soon found that the whole Federal army was between him and General Lee. By hard fighting and riding he at last joined Lee at Gettysburg, but not until after the fight had begun. Lee was thus without his “eyes and ears,” as we have called General Stuart, and could not tell just where the foe was. Neither Lee nor Meade had planned to fight at Gettysburg, but they fell upon each other pretty much like two men groping in the dark.
For the first two days (July 1, 2) Lee’s men drove back the enemy. On the third day, at 1 o’clock P. M., Lee began to fight with one hundred and fifty big guns. For two hours the air was alive with shells. Then, out of the woods swept the Confederate battle line, over a mile long, under General Pickett. A thrill of wonder ran along the Federal lines as that grand column of fifteen thousand men marched, with ragged clothes, but bright guns and red battle-flags flying, up the slope of Cemetery Ridge. Down upon them came shot and shell from guns on the heights above and round them.