The rebels were fighting us with English guns and war material, furnished by blockade runners; while English Shenandoahs and Alabamas, manned by British seamen, under the Confederate flag, burned our merchant vessels and swept our commercial marine from the ocean.

The French Government was equally hostile to us, and there was hardly a kingdom in Europe which did not sympathize with the South, allied as they were by their feudal customs to the deplorable system of Southern slavery.
Russia alone favored our cause, and stood ready, if need be, to assist us with her fleet; probably more from antagonism to England and France, than from any other motive.

The agents of the Confederate Government stated in their official despatches that if General Lee could establish his army firmly on Northern soil England would at once acknowledge the independence of the South; in which case ample loans could not only be obtained on Southern securities, but a foreign alliance might be formed, and perhaps a fleet furnished to re-open the Southern ports.
While thus elated by hopes of foreign intervention, the Confederate spies and sympathizers who thronged the North greatly encouraged the Davis Government by their glowing accounts of the disaffection there, in consequence of the heavy taxation, rendered necessary by the war, and by the unpopularity of the draft, which would soon have to be enforced as a defensive measure.

They overrated the influence of the _Copperhead_ or anti-war party, and prophesied that a rebel invasion would be followed by outbreaks in the principal cities, which would paralyze every effort to reinforce the Federal forces in the field.
These reasons would have been quite sufficient of themselves to induce Lee to make the movement, but he himself gives an additional one.

He hoped by this advance to draw Hooker out, where he could strike him a decisive blow, and thus ensure the permanent triumph of the Confederacy.