advance through the Wilderness, and even after lines of
circumvallation were drawn at Petersburg, General Lee was
constantly and consistently aggressive. No finer example of this
trait is known to military history than that given at
Chancellorsville, where, with the swiftness of a practiced
fencer, General Lee passed from the attitude of the assailed to
that of the assailant, ere his antagonist had time to realize
the changed conditions. To find Lee in line of battle parallel
to his lines of communication was the first surprise which
disconcerted the Federal commander; but even then he never
dreamed of the prescient boldness that was to amuse Sedgwick
with Early's handful, hold his own front against Hooker's main
force, with barely eleven thousand men, while Jackson, with two-
thirds of the Confederate troops, was sent across the front and
well to the right and rear of an army of ninety-two thousand
muskets. ‘Bold to rashness,’ says an eminent British critic,
‘but redeemed from rashness by the knowledge of his