CHAPTER VII.
IMMEDIATELY after the Rappahannock campaign, General Lee, desiring if possible "to inflict father injury upon the enemy" before the season for active operations passed, and believing that the best way to relieve Virginia was to threaten the North, decided to enter Maryland. He took the step fully aware that his army was poorly prepared for invasion. He knew, as he says, "that his army was feeble in transportation, the troops poorly supplied with clothing, and thousands of them destitute of shoes, still he rightly felt that seasoned as his men were by active service, and filled with enthusiasm and confidence as they were by their successes, he could rely on them for much self-denial and arduous campaigning. Moreover, the prospect "of shifting the burden of military occupation from Confederate to Federal soil," and of keeping the Federals out of Southern territory, at least until winter prohibited their re-entering, was alluring. Accordingly, he ordered the divisions of D. H. Hill and McLaws and Hampton s cavalry, which had been left to protect Richmond, to join him. These forces reported to the commander-in-chief near Chantilly on the 2d of September. Between the 4th and the 7th, the entire Confederate army crossed the Potomac at the fords
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