division of his corps, to which Lee replied, "If this army is further weakened, we must retire to the line of the Annas', and trust to a battle near Richmond for the defence of the capitol. * * * Unless therefore, a retrograde movement becomes necessary, I deem it advantageous to keep the enemy at a distance, and trust to striking him on his line of advance."
On April 27th General Lee writing Mr. Davis and thanking him for the steps taken to reinforce the cavalry and increase the army supplies, says, that he had written General Longstreet to expedite his operations in North Carolina, as he might be obliged to call him back at any moment.
On the 29th Mr. Davis addressing the Secretary of War and transmitting a dispatch from General Lee says, "The demand which was looked for has come and requires prompt attention. This (alluding to Lee's dispatch) of course involves rapid and immediate movement of troops and supplies, to enable General Lee to meet the enemy and sustain himself in whatever position it may be necessary to assume." When Longstreet was ordered to move he delayed doing so, on the ground that to move at once would lose the supplies and the transportation he had gathered. When the battle of Chancellorsville came off he was still south of Richmond.
One is tempted to ask why General Lee did not use more energetic measures in dealing with the administration, and with his subordinates. But General Lee was always the opposite of being aggressive in his attitude to the Government, and forbearing to those under him. For Mr. Davis, personally, he entertained the most profound respect, and their relations were always most cordial. To him as the nominal Commander-in-Chief he seems to have always accorded a gracious deference. In the matter of army supplies, he stated his wants to the heads of departments in plain terms, but there was not sufficient energy in the departments to make these wishes effective. Had he been a Napoleon instead of a Lee, the Star of Destiny for the South may have changed its course. But as he was fighting for Constitutional liberty, the subordination of the military to civic authority was with him supreme.
