Lay down the Axe; fling by the spade:
Leave in its track the toiling plough;
The rifle and the bayonet blade
For arms like yours were fitter now;
And let the hands that ply the pen
Quit the light task, and learn to wield
The horseman's crooked brand, and rein
The charger on the battlefield.
Thus trumpeted William Cullen Bryant in "Our Country's Call," while
the most powerful American editor of the time of the Civil War, Horace
Greeley, raised his standard at the head of the _New York Tribune's_
editorial page early in 1861 with the words "On to Richmond." The
region between Washington and Richmond, and much of the adjacent
country stretching southward beyond James River and northward into
Pennsylvania, will always be historic because of the momentous
movements, sanguinary conflicts and wonderful strategy of the great
American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. We have described the
environment of Chesapeake Bay, and now proceed to a consideration of
this noted region west of the bay, where the tide of battle repeatedly
ebbed and flowed. The first northern invasion of the Virginia
Peninsula and the abortive siege of Richmond in the summer of 1862
were followed by McClellan's retreat, Pope's defeat and the southern
invasion of Maryland, which was checked at Antietam in the autumn. The
northern attacks at Fredericksburg in December and at Chancellorsville
in the spring of 1863 were followed by the invasion of Pennsylvania,
checked at Gettysburg, the "high-water mark" of the rebellion; and
Grant's march down through "the Wilderness" in 1864, followed by his
gradual advances south of the James, forced the evacuation of
Richmond, and Lee's final surrender at Appomattox in 1865.