109. CIX.
THE ADVERSARIES.
The advance of Averill was the prelude of the coming campaign.
General Hooker, known as “Fighting Joe Hooker,” had
supreseded General Burnside in command of the Federal army,
and every thing pointed to a determined and vigorous renewal of
hostilities at the earliest moment which the season permitted.
What was the comparative strength of the opposing columns
facing each other on the shores of the Rappahannock in the
month of April? Here are the facts—I place them upon record
for the historian:
The Federal army, according to the printed statement subsequently
of Major-General Peck, U. S. A., numbered one hundred
and fifty-nine thousand three hundred men. General Lee's force
did not quite reach thirty-five thousand. The bulk of Longstreet's
corps had been sent to Suffolk, on the south side of
James River, for subsistence. All that was left was Jackson's
corps, and about ten thousand troops from Longstreet's.
When the April sun began to dry the roads and render the
movement of trains and artillery practicable, General Hooker
confronted General Lee at Fredericksburg, with a force more
than four times greater than that of his adversary.
Such were the conditions under which the great collision, in
the first days of May, was about to take place. The enormous
disproportion between the opposing forces, you may possibly
declare, good reader, must be established by something better
than the statement of an obscure officer of the C. S. Army. Be
it so. Let my words go only for what they are worth now, when
the theory is obstinately and persistently urged by ten thousand
journals, of a certain class, that we of the South were overcome,
not by numbers, but by superior generalship in the Federal leaders—superior
fighting in the Federal troops. The day will come
when every secret will be brought to light; when the torch of
truth shall illuminate every hidden recess of this misty epoch,
and defy the power that tries to extinguish it. When that day
comes, the South will have full justice done to her; her victories
over enormous odds will be traced to their true origin—a nerve
and courage which only numbers could overwhelm. Then the
world will understand the meaning of the words—“It was impossible
for us to conquer—we have struggled!”
