You notice he said behind the Virginians. In other words, let them do some fighting.
To know that necessarily entails taking substantial interpretive liberties with the contextual meanings of language used at an event from which you are 140 years removed. The simple fact that such a contingency-oriented interpretation, in all its bizarre renderings, did not emerge until very recently is reason in itself to scrape it away upon the devices of Mr. Ockham.