DIFFICULTY OF AN ATTACK.


An attack of Lee's position in front, even had Burnside's experience not
demonstrated its folly, seemed to promise great loss of life without
corresponding success.

To turn his right flank required the moving of pontoon trains and
artillery over the worst of roads for at least twenty miles, through a
country cut up by a multitude of streams running across the route to be
taken, and emptying into either the Potomac or Rappahannock; all
requiring more or less bridging.

Lee's spy system was excellent. It has been claimed in Southern reports,
that his staff had deciphered our signal code by watching a station at
Stafford. And Butterfield admits this in one of his despatches of May 3.
He would speedily ascertain any such movement, and could create
formidable intrenchments on one side the river, as fast as we could
build or repair roads on which to move down, upon the other. Moreover,
there was a thousand feet of stream to bridge at the first available
place below Skenker's Neck.

There remained nothing to do but to turn Lee's left flank; and this
could only be accomplished by stratagem, for Lee had strengthened every
part of the river by which Hooker could attempt a passage.

But this problem was, despite its difficulties, still possible of
solution; and Hooker set himself to work to elucidate it.