General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate Army of Northern Virginia entered the final stage of a protracted season of campaigning as it marched toward Maryland during the first week of September 1862. General Joseph E. Johnston’s disabling wound at the battle of Fair Oaks had brought Lee to command of the army on June 1, 1862, and within a month he had seized the initiative from Major General George B. McClellan, driving the Union’s Army of the Potomac away from Richmond in the Seven Days' Battles. With his capital safe, Lee marched northward in late August and won a stunning victory over Major General John Pope’s Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Manassas or Bull Run. These two Confederate victories had cleared Virginia of any major Union military presence, and Lee sought to build on his success by taking the war across the Potomac River into the United States. Lee’s bold maneuvering ended when he retreated from Maryland following the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862, closing a three-month period that should be viewed as a single huge operation that reoriented the war from the outskirts of Richmond to the Potomac frontier and marked Lee’s spectacular debut as a field commander.
In taking his army across the Potomac River in early September, Lee had in mind strategic, logistical, and political factors. He believed that the soldiers of McClellan and Pope “lay weakened and demoralized” in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., and he sought to maintain aggressive momentum rather than assume a defensive position and allow the Federals to muster their superior strength to mount another offensive. If he remained in Virginia, Lee would be forced to react to Union movements, whereas in Maryland or Pennsylvania he would hold the initiative. Lee believed he could easily flank the enemy by crossing the Potomac upriver from Washington and marching the Army of Northern Virginia through Maryland. A short thrust into Union territory would not be enough; a protracted stay would be the key to Confederate success. Lee hoped to keep his army on United States soil through much of the autumn, not with the intention of capturing and holding territory but with an eye toward accomplishing several goals before returning to Virginia as winter approached.
The most important of those goals focused on logistics. Facing critical shortages of food, Lee knew that a movement into the untouched agricultural regions of Maryland and Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley held significant promise. If positioned northwest of Washington, Lee could force the Federals to remain between him and their capital, thus liberating war-exhausted northern and north-central Virginia, as well as the Shenandoah Valley, from the presence of the contending armies. Southern farms that had suffered from the presence of scores of thousands of troops could recover, crops could be harvested safely, and civilians could enjoy a respite from the stress of constant uncertainty about their persons and property. Meanwhile, Lee’s army would gather vital food, fodder, and other supplies from Maryland and perhaps from southern Pennsylvania. This double-sided logistical bonus, by itself, would be sufficient to render the Maryland campaign a success.
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