For Lee, by this time aware
of the real situation, hesitated not a moment in the measures to be
taken to meet the attack of his powerful enemy.
IX.
LEE'S INFORMATION AND MOVEMENTS.
Let us now turn to Lee, and see what he has been doing while Hooker thus
discovered check.
Pollard says: "Lee calmly watched this" (Sedgwick's) "movement, as well
as the one higher up the river under Hooker, until he had penetrated the
enemy's design, and seen the necessity of making a rapid division of his
own forces, to confront him on two different fields, and risking the
result of fighting him in detail."
Lossing states Lee's object as twofold: to retain Banks's Ford, so as to
divide Hooker's army, and to keep his right wing in the Wilderness.
Let us listen to Lee himself. In his report he says he was convinced on
Thursday, as Sedgwick continued inactive, that the main attack would be
made on his flank and rear. "The strength of the force which had
crossed, and its apparent indisposition to attack, indicated that the
principal effort of the enemy would be made in some other quarter."
He states that on April 14 he was informed that Federal cavalry was
concentrating on the upper Rappahannock.
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