Lee, on the other hand had good reason to be satisfied with the results of his work. With one man to his enemy's three he had so brilliantly maneuvered as to strike his foe at each point with a superior force; he had, by virtue of superior genius alone inflicted disaster upon an army vastly greater than his own in numbers, and possessed of commanding strategic positions; he had beaten that army in a succession of battles, and driven it into hurried and uncertain retreat; he had saved Richmond and again made himself master of the military situation. His army needed rest after its arduous work, and to give it rest he lay still for some weeks. But in the meanwhile he did not lose sight of that supreme purpose which had inspired him from the beginning of his career as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. That purpose was to transfer the seat of war northward, to press the enemy, to protect Richmond by putting Washington on its defense. There were special reasons for the adoption of this policy now. Operations at the West had been disastrous and discouraging to the Confederates. Their armies had been driven out of Kentucky and Tennessee. The fall of Island Number Ten and Memphis a little later in the northern reaches of the Mississippi and Farragut's capture of New Orleans at its southern end had left the Southerners only a small hold upon the great river at Vicksburg, Port Hudson and the space between. Grant was insistently hammering at Vicksburg, with every prospect of soon capturing that key to the river and completely cutting the Confederacy in twain. But if Lee could capture Washington or compel its evacuation by pushing himself into its rear and perhaps seizing upon Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, the disasters at the West would count for nothing in the reckoning. Europe at least would accept the successful invasion of the North and the conquest of its capital as events decisive of the war in behalf of the South; and European intervention was still the one thing most dreaded at the North and most ardently hoped for at the South.