Part 1

, p. 41), evinces the greatest apprehension that the movement of the army was aimed at Washington City, and the demonstrations higher up the Potomac were intended to distract attention from the real design. Was it not more important that the chief officer of all the armies should know that Lee's sick and disabled soldiers were to be moved to Winchester, as the general depot of the army, and that all recruits, returning or coming for the first time to the army were to rendezvous at Winchester, than to learn from the last paragraph of the copy sent him that Lee's troops were to habitually carry in their regimental wagons axes to cut wood, etc.? The second paragraph seemed plainly to indicate that Lee's purpose was what he afterwards declared in his report to have been his plan--to establish his base of operations by way of the valley of Virginia and invade or threaten Pennsylvania, not Washington, after taking Harper's Ferry. (_Official Records_, Series 1, Vol. XIX.