University of Virginia Library

7. VII.
CHANCELLORSVILLE.

One day in the winter of 1862, Gen. Stuart was talking
at “Camp No-Camp,” his head-quarters, near Fredericksburg,
with a member of his staff.

“Where will the next battle be fought, General?”
the staff officer asked.

“Near Chancellorsville,” was the reply of Stuart.

And that answer was not guesswork. It was calculation.
It was based upon the soundest of all military
maxims: “Expect your enemy to do what he ought
to do.”

War moves as the stars do in their orbits—by law,
not by chance. Certain points in a country are strategic
as others are not. There was a first battle of
Manassas in July, 1861, and a second on the same
ground in August, 1862. There was a first battle of
Cold Harbor in June, 1862, and a second there in
June, 1864. There was a first battle of The Wilderness
in May, 1863, and a second there in May, 1864.
If ever there is another revolution, and Virginia is
again invaded, there will be a third battle of Manassas,
of Cold Harbor, and of The Wilderness. The terrain is
not chosen—it chooses. Armies do not advance to fight
at certain spots of the earth; they are dragged there.

When Gen. Stuart said that Gen. Hooker would

fight at Chancellorsville, he gave the Federal commander
credit for military acumen. With Lee at
Fredericksburg, Chancellorville was the key position.
To hold it was to force the Confederate commander to
come out and fight on ground chosen by his adversary,
or to retreat. On the last day of April, Gen. Hooker
held it; in the first days of May the two armies grappled
there.

We have seen the ill-fortune which befell Gen.
Burnside at Fredericksburg—a reverse from which
that officer did not rise. He made one more attempt
to cross the Rappahannock at a ford above the town,
but his army stuck in the mud. It was already demoralized.
“The soldier no longer thinks it an honor to
belong to the Army of the Potomac,” wrote a Federal
correspondent. When two of the Northern Generals
received Burnside's order, one said to the other:

“What do you think of it?”

“It don't seem to have the ring,” was the answer.

“No, the bell is broken,” replied the first.

Here is a sketch of the army making its last advance:

“At every turn a wagon or caisson could be seen,
sticking fast in the mud. In every gully batteries, caissons,
supply wagons, ambulances, and pontoons were
mired; horses and mules up to their bellies in mud;
soldiers on the march sinking to their knees at almost
every step. It was impossible to draw an empty
wagon through the dreadful mud. The whole army
was stuck fast.”

In fact the “bell was broken,” and Gen. Burnside
was held responsible. His head fell, and Gen. Joseph
Hooker reigned in his stead.

The plan of campaign adopted by the new General
was excellent. It was to turn Lee's left flank, attack
from that direction, and force him to fight in open
field, or fall back upon Richmond. While waiting for
the roads to dry sufficiently to admit of the movement
of infantry and artillery, a cavalry expedition was
resolved upon, whose aim was to cut the Central Railroad,
and, if possible, traverse the whole State of North
Carolina.

The expedition started about the middle of March,
aiming to pass through Culpeper toward Orange. It
was commanded by Gen. Averill, an officer of ability,
and the force consisted of six regiments of cavalry and
a battery. The number was estimated by Gen. Stuart
at “three thousand in the saddle.”

On the 17th of March, Averill crossed at Kelley's
Ford, and was met there by Stuart, with eight hundred
men of Fitz Lee, the latter commanding. An obstinate
combat followed, which lasted from morning
until evening. An eye-witness compared Fitz Lee's
little force to a small bull-dog jumping at the throat of
a big mastiff—ever shaken off by his powerful adversary,
but ever returning to the struggle, until the
larger animal's strength was worn out. Such was the
actual result. At sunset Averill recrossed the Rappahannock,
and gave up his expedition. He had left
“the roads strewed with dead men and horses.” Stuart
telegraphed to Gen. Lee; but side by side with the
dead Federalists were some of the bravest men of the
Southern cavalry. Pelham fell here leading a charge
—the exact death he would have chosen. That alone
was worth the expedition.

The first move of Gen. Hooker had thus “come to
grief,” but greater events were on the march. By diligent
attention, he had thoroughly reorganized his
army, checked desertion, broken bad officers, promoted
good ones, re-equipped the whole force, and made of
the machine broken to pieces at Fredericksburg, a powerful
and complete war-engine, which promised to
crush everything in its path.

This force consisted of seven army corps, numbering
in all, say Federal official reports, one hundred and
twenty thousand infantry and artillery, twelve thousand
cavalry, and more than four hundred guns; with this,
it was hoped by the authorities at Washington that
Gen. Hooker would be able to overwhelm his opponent,
Gen. Lee.

Lee had remained at Fredericksburg, with small
bodies posted opposite the upper fords, in the vicinity
of Chancellorsville. In April, only a portion of his
army was present—Longstreet had been sent on an
expedition to Suffolk, on the south side of James River,
and had no part in the great combats of the wilderness.
Lee's force on the Rappahannock was thus dangerously
small. It amounted in all to about forty-thousand
infantry, and seven thousand cavalry and artillery.[1]

           

Anderson and McLaws	13,000
Jackson (Hill, Rodes, Trimble)	21,000
Early (Fredericksburg)	6,000
	40,000
Cavalry and artillery	7,000
	47,000”

— MS. of Col. Walter H. Taylor, A. A. G. of the Army.

The opposing armies thus numbered respectively
one hundred and thirty-two thousand, and forty-seven
thousand of all arms of the service; that is, nearly
three to one.

The plan of Gen. Hooker, as we have said, was
admirable. Three of his army corps, under Gen.
Sedgwick, were to make a feint of crossing at Fredericksburg,
while with the other three the commanding
General, in person, would cross the upper Rappahannock
into Culpeper, advance to the Rapidan, pass over
that river, and push on to Chancellorsville. Then the
last of his army corps—Couch's Second Corps—
would cross at United States Ford, thus uncovered;
Sedgwick would return to the north bank at Fredericksburg,
march up the river, and pass again to the
south bank at United States Ford—thus Hooker's
whole army would be massed near Chancellorsville,
directly upon the flank of his adversary.

And this was not all. While the infantry thus
advanced to the great grapple of decisive battle, the
cavalry was to co-operate. Ten thousand horsemen,
under Stoneman, were to pass through Culpeper, cross
the Rapidan, near Raccoon Ford, push on for Gordonsville,
destroy the Central and Fredericksburg
Railroads in the rear of Lee; and, by thus cutting off
communication with Richmond, prevent Longstreet's
coming up, and starve the Southern army. If bayonets
and cannon did not do the work, want of bread and
meat would, and Lee would certainly be checkmated
or destroyed. “Man proposes—God disposes.”

In the last days of April, Gen. Hooker began to
move. Never had a more imposing army shaken the

earth of the western World with its tread. From the
forests of the Rappahannock emerged what seemed
endless columns of troops, bristling with bayonets; banners
waved, bugles sounded, the wheels of four hundred
pieces of artillery, and the hoofs of twelve thousand
horses, startled the bleak fields of Culpeper, just
emerging from the snows of winter. Hooker crossed
the Rappahannock at Kelley's ford on canvass pontoons,
drove Stuart's small cavalry force before him,
as the whirlwind sweeps the dry leaves, and pushed on
steadily to the Rapidan, which his column waded
through, all night, by the glare of bonfires—the water
up to the men's shoulders.

Pari passu, the great cavalry column had moved
across Culpeper. With ten thousand horsemen, Gen.
Stoneman made straight for Gordonsville, opposed only
by a few hundred men, under William H. F. Lee, for
the stout cavalier Stuart had other work before him.
He was hanging on the front and flanks of Hooker,
harassing, impeding, watching him, and sending courier
after courier with intelligence to Gen. Lee, at Fredericksburg.
Thus Stoneman had in front of him only
a handful of opponents—a fly easy to brush away, it
would seem. And, in truth, young Gen. Lee had to
fight and fall back. He could do no more against
Stoneman's ten thousand, and the great invading column
of blue horsemen hastened on, penetrating into
the very heart of Virginia, south of the Rapidan.

On Thursday, then, the last day of April, this was
the situation: Hooker approaching Chancellorsville,
with four infantry corps—for Couch had crossed at
United States Ford—his great force of cavalry driving

forward, like a sword's point, into the heart of the
State; Sedgwick threatening at Fredericksburg with
three more corps of infantry; Lee waiting, with his
forty thousand, for the enemy to fully develope their
intentions.

Stuart, falling back, and fighting step by step, day
and night, through the “Wilderness,” had at once
divined the plan of Hooker. He had predicted truly.
The tenor of every dispatch which he sent to Lee was,
“They are massing, and mean to fight near Chancellorsville.”

So, on this night of Thursday, everything went admirably
for Gen. Hooker. He swam with the stream.
Never was commander more joyous. He could not
conceal from his officers the delight which he experienced.
He was radient, and victory hovered in the
air for him.

“The rebel army,” he exclaimed to those around
him, “is now the legitimate property of the Army of
the Potomac! They may as well pack up their haversacks,
and make for Richmond!—and I shall be after
them!”

To his troops, he said in a general order:

“The enemy must either ingloriously fly, or come out
from behind his defences, and give us battle on our
own ground, where certain destruction awaits him!”

There were those of his officers, doubtless, who listened
thoughtfully, rather than with enthusiasm, to
these juvenile ebullitions. At Cold Harbor, Manassas,
Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg, they had felt the
sword's point of the silent cavalier, in the grey cape,
commanding the Southern army. That obstinately cool

personage was still at Fredericksburg, had not issued
any orders in reference to “packing haversacks;”
seemed resolved to stand stubbornly, instead of “flying
ingloriously;” and did not yet appear to regard his
good old army as “the legitimate property of the Army
of the Potomac.” In fact, his movements were astonishingly
opposed to such an idea. The Telegraph
Road, southward from Fredericksburg, was an excellent
highway of retreat; but Lee seemed to be ignorant
of its existence; Stoneman's ten thousand were
streaming on to cut his communications, but he appeared
wholly unaware of the fact. Hooker was closing
in upon him, with that enormous cordon, but the
eyes of the old lion, thus caught in the battue, were
never clearer or more serene. Did he despise his
adversary? Did he reflect that to wrap a cord around
a sword-blade is as dangerous to the cord as to the
sword? There is a grand “reciprocity” in war.

“General,” an officer said to Hoke, that brave
North Carolinian, at Cold Harbor, “the Yankees are
very near you, yonder!”

“Not nearer,” replied Hoke, “than I am to them!”

That Lee regarded the situation at Chancellorsville
much as Hoke did that at Cold Harbor, is proved by
the fact that his first step was to lessen the distance
between himself and his adversary. He did not retreat;
he went to offer Hooker battle in the Wilderness.

Let us look at this ground where “certain destruction
awaited” the leader of the Confederates. Hooker
had halted in the Wilderness, not far from Chancellorsville,—a
curious spot in a curious country. Virginia

has no locality stranger than that sombre “Wilderness.”
There all is wild, desolate, and lugubrious.
Thicket, undergrowth and jungle stretch for miles,
impenetrable and untouched. Narrow roads wind on
forever between melancholy masses of stunted and
gnarled oak, and the hiss of the moccasin in the ooze
is echoed by the weird cry of the whipporwill, lost in
the shadowy depths of the wood. Little sunlight shines
there. The face of nature is dreary and sad. It was
so before the battle; it is not more cheerful to-day,
when, as you ride along, you see fragments of shell,
rotting knapsacks, rusty gun-barrels, bleached bones,
and grinning skulls.

Into this jungle Gen. Hooker penetrated. It was
the wolf in his den, ready to tear any one who approached.
A battle there seemed impossible. Neither
side could see its antagonist. Artillery could not move;
cavalry could not operate; the very infantry had to
flatten their bodies to glide between the stunted trunks.
That an army of one hundred and twenty thousand
men should have chosen that spot to fight forty thousand;
and not only chosen it, but made it a hundred
times more impenetrable by felling trees, erecting
breastworks, disposing artillery, en masse, to sweep
every road and bridle path which led to Chancellorsville,—this
fact seemed incredible.

What did Gen. Hooker mean by, “I will be after
them,”—that is, the Confederate army? He did not
seem to be “after them,” thus dead-locked in the Chancellorsville
thicket. The sudden roar of artillery from
the side of Fredericksburg, reverberating grimly in the

tangled depths of the thickets, seemed to indicate that
the Confederates were “after” him!

That sullen thunder began on Friday afternoon, the
day after the arrival of the Federal army at Chancellorsville.
Up to that moment Gen. Hooker's plans had
been admirable, and were executed with the skill and
promptness which compel the eagles of victory to perch
upon the standards of an army. The whole programme,
conceived by Hooker in his tent, had been translated
into action by his excellent Lieutenants. Stoneman
was near the Central Railroad; Sedgwick was threatening
to cross at Fredericksburg, and holding Lee there.
Hooker was rooted at Chancellorsville, in an absolute
fortress, and two of his army corps had pushed forward
on the road to Fredericksburg to meet Lee, if he
advanced.

There was the place to fight, not in the jungle; and
every consideration of military science demanded that
Hooker should mass and deliver battle there. The
country was open, rolling,—a great plateau whereon
troops of all arms could be manoeuvred. The spot
held on Friday afternoon was well out on the road to
Fredericksburg, and virtually commanded Banks's ford,
by which Gen. Sedgwick could cross the river, and
thus make the whole army a unit. One march during
Friday night would have effected that; on the morning
of Saturday, Gen. Hooker's one hundred and twenty
thousand men and four hundred guns would have been
drawn up on that commanding position, before half of
Lee's force could have arrived.

We are not criticising Gen. Hooker for the pleasure
of criticising him. Look at the map. A beardless

cadet would have stayed there, hurried up Sedgwick,
massed the army, and fought where numbers could be
manoeuvred and made to tell. Hooker ordered the
two corps to fall back to Chancellorsville; gave no
reasons when his officers remonstrated; he had decided
to fight in the jungle.

From the moment when the plateau was abandoned,
everything was changed. Good fortune deserted Gen.
Hooker, or rather, he repulsed it. He threw away the
pearl, and the mailed hand of Lee caught it as it fell.

The Confederate commander had discovered everything
now, and his resolution was formed in a moment.
Sedgwick's attack on Fredericksburg was seen to be a
mere feint. The real assault was on the Confederate
left from above; and, leaving only about six thousand
men at Fredericksburg, Lee advanced to give battle to
Hooker.

Jackson, commanding the advance force, had already
moved up, reaching Tabernacle Church, a few miles
from Chancellorsville, on Friday. There he struck up
against the two corps which had advanced to the plateau,
and attacked them, but effected little. Still, it
was in consequence of this attack from the head of
Lee's column that Hooker recalled his troops, and
concentrated his whole force in the Wilderness.

At night Lee arrived. A counsel of war was held.
Jackson had seen at a glance that a front attack upon
Hooker was an impossibility in his impregnable position,
and the result of the consultation was the great
movement against the Federal right.

The movement, we say,—not a movement. Whoever
has heard of the battle of Chancellorsville has

heard of that gigantic blow which the hand of Jackson
struck just before the mighty arm was paralyzed. The
last exhibition of his military genius, it was, perhaps,
the greatest and most glorious. So heavy and mortal
was the stroke which he delivered, that the noise of it
echoed throughout the world.

At dawn Jackson was moving to accomplish his
design, with about half Lee's force—twenty-one
thousand men; with the remnant Lee would make demonstrations
on the enemy's front and left, while the
great plan was struck at his right.

From this moment until Sunday, the chief interest
of the battle of Chancellorsville concentrates upon
Jackson.

A word is necessary to explain clearly Hooker's
position. He was drawn up near Chancellorsville,
protected by heavy earthworks, resembling the two
sides of a square. One side—the right wing—
fronted south; the other side—the left wing—fronted
nearly east, covering the Old Turnpike and Plank
Road, running from Fredericksburg westward. This
order of battle was evidently formed on the supposition
that, coming from Fredericksburg, Lee would
either attack his left or his front; it was not supposed
possible that the Confederate commander, with his
small army, would venture a movement so audacious
as an assault against his opponent's right and rear.

And yet that was precisely the move determined upon.
It was hazardous; it was more than hazardous—
reckless. But forty thousand men opposed to one
hundred and twenty thousand, are obliged to be reckless.
For the rest there was one element of the

problem which counted for much. The attacking
column was led by Jackson.

One of the military maxims of this soldier was,
“mystery is the secret of success.” The movement
now to be made was defeated, if discovered; from the
moment when Gen. Hooker divined the scheme, all
was lost. Not the day only—the army also. Lee was
dividing his small force in face of overwhelming numbers;
that fact known, he was gone, or ought to have
been.

Jackson's aim was thus to deceive the enemy completely—to
elude his vigilance, and fall like a thunderbolt
from a clear sky, when it is least expected. He
had to pass through the woods across the entire
Federal front, attain their right flank unawares, and
overwhelm it before it could make any resistance.

He set out at dawn, moving obliquely from the
Plank Road, and gaining ground toward the South.
On his right flank and in front moved Stuart with Fitz
Lee's cavalry, masking the movement, and driving off
Federal scouting parties. Along the narrow country
road, lost in the dense forest, the infantry tramped on
steadily and in silence.

At the “Furnace,” a mile or two from Hooker's
front, the movement seemed discovered. An attack
was made on the rear of the column, and a whole regiment
captured. Jackson ordered a portion of his
artillery to take position, and open fire. This was
done. Then he moved on, as if nothing had taken
place.

But what ought to have been a very fatal circumstance
had happened. Gen. Hooker had seen him;

cavalry, infantry, artillery, all were seen; how then
the success of the surprise?

We cannot answer that question.

When Gen. Hooker was testifying before the War
Committee afterwards, he said that the had discovered
Jackson's intended assault on his right, and had provided
against it; it had succeeded because his orders
were disobeyed.[2] But pen and ink are terrible
things! On Saturday afternoon, just when Jackson
was about to strike the mortal blow at his right, Gen.
Hooker wrote Sedgwick:

“We know the enemy is flying, trying to save his
trains”![3]

The fact appears to be that Gen. Hooker was completely
deceived. The road near the Furnace bends
southward, and Jackson's movement did resemble a
retreat. It was the recoil of the arm when about to
strike. Lee's great Lieutenant advanced without
pausing, attained the Brock Road, running from
Spottsylvania Court-House to the Rapidan, struck into
it, and reached the Orange Plank Road two or three
miles west of Chancellorsville. There, accompanied
by Fitz Lee, Jackson rode up on a hill, and saw the
enemy's line just in front. He was not yet far
enough.

“Tell my column to cross that road,” he said to an
aid, pointing to the Plank Road. His object was to
gain the Old Turnpike beyond, from which he would

be able to descend straight upon the flank and rear of
the enemy.

Rapidly reaching the desired point, Jackson hastened
to form order of battle. He placed Rodes in front,
Colston, commanding Trimble's division, behind the
first line, and A. P. Hill's division in reserve. The
enemy had not discovered him. The twenty-one thousand
men had moved as though shod with the “shoes
of silence.” At about five in the evening the line
swept forward through the thicket, with a sudden
storm of cheers, which shook the forest. They were
soon upon the enemy—surprised, demoralized, unnerved
from the first by this sudden and terrible onslaught.
Before the tornado, nothing stood. Rodes
stormed the works in front of him, passed over them,
drove the entire Eleventh corps, who were cooking
their suppers, from their frying-pans and coffee-pots,[4]
and pursued them with yells down the road, and
through the thicket, toward Chancellorsville. Colston
had rushed in behind, passing over the works with
Rodes; the enemy had been dashed to pieces by these
two divisions, and were struck with panic—the Dutch
soldiers yelling—artillery smashing against trees, and
overturning as it went off at a gallop—the whole corps
fleeing wildly before the avenging Nemesis upon their
heels.

“Throw your men into the breach!” exclaimed
Gen. Hooker, galloping up, and addressing an officer,

“receive the enemy on your bayonets—don't fire a
shot, they can't see you!”

But the injunction was too late to prevent the
reverse. The entire corps holding the right wing of
the Federal army was doubled up and crushed back—
a huddled mass of fugitives—on their centre, near
Chancellorsville. So great a blow had Jackson struck,
from that quarter whence it was so little expected.

The effect of it is described by Northern writers who
were present. Little blood had been shed, but Gen.
Hooker had better have lost ten thousand men. His
own countrymen say that this sudden overthrow of the
11th Corps shook the nerve of the army—that it had a
fatal effect upon the morale of all. If this be untrue,
no explanation remains of the astounding success of
Stuart's attack on the next morning. Not a man had
reinforced the original column of Jackson, and it drove
before it the whole right wing of Gen. Hooker's army
—his force numbering ninety-eight thousand men.[5]

Is further proof needed of the effect of that great
blow? Take the statement of a Northern writer:

“During the night [of Saturday, after Jackson's
attack,] the engineers had traced out a new line, three-quarters
of a mile to the rear of Chancellorsville,
towards the river, and covering the roads to United
States and Ely's Fords.”

Gen. Hooker had been driven already. To this
“new line” he retreated at eleven next day.[6]

Night fell as Jackson continued to press the Federal
right wing on Chancellorsville. He approached now
the end of his great life. Death's skeleton finger was
stretched out to touch him in mid-career; but the
lamp so soon to be extinguished burned with a light
more dazzling than ever before. Jackson's original
attack was daring; his scheme now had in it something
superb, and worthy the last hours of a great
leader. It was nothing else than to extend his left,
sweep across the roads which led to the Rappahannock,
and cut off Hooker's entire army.

With about twenty thousand men, he was going to
place himself in the path of nearly one hundred thousand,
and say, “Surrender, or you are dead!”

He never did so. His last hour was near. He had
ordered his lines to be dressed for the final advance—
Rodes and Colston to yield the front, giving place to
Hill's fresh troops—and now rode down the turnpike
towards Chancellorsville, less than a mile distant. It
was a strange locality, a strange scene, and a strange
night. Upon the dusky thickets skirting the road, the
moon, wading through clouds, threw a misty and sombre
light. The woods were full of moving figures,
which resembled phantoms; the whippoorwills cried
from the undergrowth; not a gun was heard; and
from Chancellorsville came only a confused hum and
murmur.

Jackson, with his staff, rode forward to reconnoitre,

and stopped in the road listening. Then suddenly a
gun was fired in the thicket—and at that sound the
troops clutched and leveled their weapons. Jackson
turned to ride back; but had scarcely done so when a
volley was fired upon him by his own men from the
right. He turned to gallop into the thicket on the
left, and then came the fatal stroke The men there
had been ordered to guard against Federal calvary, and
they took Jackson's party for cavalry. Kneeling on
the right knee, they fired upon him at less than thirty
paces: wounded him mortally, and his horse wheeling
round, darted violently under a bough, which struck
him in the face, tore his cap off, and nearly dragged
him from the saddle. But he caught the bridle with
the bleeding fingers through which a bullet had torn;
guided the animal into the road, and there fell into
the arms of one of his staff officers, who laid him upon
the earth. The firing had ceased as suddenly as it
had begun, but it had been fatal to many. Some were
dead, some wounded, some carried by their frightened
horses into the enemy's lines—one officer was shot dead,
his horse ran off, and the corpse, with the feet still in
the stirrups, was dragged to Chancellorsville. The
dead “went fast” there!

Jackson was borne to the rear, in the midst of a veritable
hurricane of shell and canister which the enemy
directed upon the road from their epaulements in front
of Chancellorsville. On his way to the rear, Gen.
Pender met him, and expressed the apprehension that
he would be compelled to fall back from his position.
Jackson's eye flashed.

“You must hold your ground, Gen. Pender!” he
exclaimed, “you must hold your ground, sir!”

That was the last order of Stonewall Jackson on the
field. Ten days afterwards he was dead.

Among his last words had been, “A. P. Hill, prepare
for action!”

That is to say, his last thought upon earth was his
great design that night in the Wilderness woods.
Hill's fresh men were to make the great movement
aiming to cut off Hooker from the river; and in his
dying hours Jackson murmured:

“If I had not been wounded, or had had one more
hour of daylight, I would have cut off the enemy
from the road to United States Ford—we would have
had them entirely surrounded would have been obliged
to surrender or cut their way out—they had no other
alternative!”

But the great arm was paralyzed, the fiery brain
chilled, and Hill, second in command, had also been
wounded, nearly at the same moment with Jackson.
The scheme was thus abandoned, and one of the most
wonderful tableaus in military history lost—that of
twenty-thousand “cutting off” one hundred thousand.

Jackson had thus disappeared. The corps which he
had led to victory was without a head. Who was to
grasp the baton of the great Marshal of Lee, as it fell
from the bleeding hand? Lying faint and pale on his
litter, Jackson's thoughts turned to Stuart, who had
gone with his cavalry to attack a Federal camp on the
road to Ely's ford. Stuart was just about to open his
assault when a message reached him. He came back
at full gallop through the darkness, and Hill, wounded,

turned over the command of the corps to him. Jackson
was some miles in the rear now, at Wilderness
Tavern, and Stuart—prevented by the exigences of
the hour from going to him—sent to ask his plans and
dispositions.

“Go back to Gen. Stuart,” murmured Jackson,
“and tell him to act upon his own judgment and do
what he thinks best; I have implicit confidence in
him.”

Stuart then took command in person, marshaled his
lines, and made every preparation for a renewal of the
assault at dawn. The infantry, long used to the quiet
and slow-moving figure of Stonewall Jackson, in his
old dingy uniform, were now startled by the appearance
of the young cavalier, with his floating plume and vivacious
movements, galloping to and fro, with his drawn
sabre gleaming in the moonlight. Whatever they may
have thought of him as an infantry leader, they knew
that there was fight in him, and all prepared for a hard
struggle.

Before daylight Stuart was ready. It was not necessary
to await an express order from Lee. There was
one thing, and one thing only to do—to attack at
dawn.

All the evening, during Jackson's attack, Lee had
thundered against the enemy's front, as a diversion.
The intelligence of his great Lieutenant's complete
success, and of his fall, came at the same moment.
Lee's grief was poignant, and he murmured, “I have
lost my right arm!”

The messenger, bringing the information, added that
Jackson had intended to “press the enemy on Sunday.”

At these words, Gen. Lee rose from the straw on which
he was lying, wrapped in his blanket, under a breadth
of canvass, and exclaimed, with glowing cheeks:

“These people shall be pressed to-day.”

It was then past midnight. At dawn, Stuart advanced
to the assault; the forces of Anderson and
McLaws at the same moment attacking the enemy's
front.

Stuart's assault with infantry had in it the rush and
impetus of his cavalry charge. Leading his line in
person, with drawn sabre and floating plume, he resembled,
said one who saw him, the dead Henry of Navarre,
plunging amid the smoke of Ivry. But even in this
moment of decisive struggle, when the two great armies
had grappled in that mortal wrestle, the spirit of wild
gayety, which fired Stuart's blood in action, only flamed
out more superbly. At the head of the great corps of
Jackson, and leading the decisive charge in a pitched
battle against triple lines of breastworks, bristling with
infantry and cannon, Stuart's sonorous voice was heard
singing, “Old Joe Hooker, will you come out of the
Wilderness!”

There was another sound which had in it something
more tragic and menacing, as it vibrated above the
thunder of the guns. That was the shout of ten thousand
voices, as the lines rushed together:

“Remember Jackson!”

Driven headlong, as it were, by that burning thought
of their great leader lying faint and bleeding, not far
from them, the men resembled furies. Nothing stopped
them. The Federal artillery ploughed gaps through
them—they closed up and continued to rush forward.

The colours were struck down; as they fell, quick
hands seized them, and again they floated and were
borne on. Whole regiments fired away their last
rounds of cartridges; but they stood and met death,
falling where they faced the enemy, or continued to
advance as before. This is not the statement of a
Southern writer only.

“From the large brick house which gives the name to
this vicinity,” says a writer of the North, “the enemy
could be seen sweeping slowly but confidently, determinedly,
and surely, through the clearings which extended
in front. Nothing could excite more admiration
for the qualities of the veteran soldier, than the manner
in which the enemy swept out, as they moved steadily
onward, the forces which were opposed to them. We
say it reluctantly, and for the first time, that the enemy
have shown the finest qualities, and we acknowledge,
on this occasion, their superiority in the open field to
our own men. They delivered their fire with precision,
and were apparently inflexible and immovable under
the storm of bullets and shell which they were constantly
receiving. Coming to a piece of timber, which
was occupied by a division of our own men, half the
number were detailed to clear the woods. It seemed
certain that here they would be repulsed, but they
marched right through the wood, driving our own soldiers
out, who delivered their fire and fell back, halted
again, fired and fell back as before, seeming to concede
to the enemy, as a matter of course, the superiority
which they evidently felt themselves. Our own men
fought well. There was no lack of courage, but an
evident feeling that they were destined to be beaten,

and the only thing for them to do was to fire and
retreat.”

Stuart pressed straight on. At the same time the
force under Gen. Lee in person, on the right, was
thrown vigorously against the Federal front. In the
lugubrious thickets all the thunders seemed unloosed.
The moment had come when, breast to breast, the antagonists
were to grapple in the death struggle.

Stuart decided the event speedily by one of those
conceptions which show the possession of military
genius. There were many in the Southern army who
said that he was “only a cavalry officer.” After this
morning, he could claim to be “an artillery officer,”
too. On the right of his line was a hill, which his
quick eye had soon discovered; and this was plainly
the key of the position. Stuart massed there about
thirty pieces of artillery, and opened all at once a
heavy fire upon the Federal centre.

That fire decided the event. Before that hurricane
striking their centre, the Federal line began to waver
and lose heart. Gen. Slocum sent word to Gen. Hooker
that his front was being swept away—he must be reinforced.

“I cannot make soldiers or ammunition!” was the
sullen reply of Hooker, who, stationed at the Chancellorsville
House, witnessed the battle.

Soon afterwards, a cannon ball struck a pillar of the
porch upon which he stood; it crashed down, and Gen.
Hooker was stunned, and temporarily disabled. He
was borne off, and had hardly disappeared when his
lines gave way.

Then followed a spectacle in which the horrors of

war seemed to culminate. The forest was on fire—the
Chancellorsville House on fire. From the forest rose
quick tongues of flame—from the windows of the
houses spouted dense columns of smoke, swept away by
the wind. In the depths of those thickets, dead bodies
were being consumed, and wounded men were being
burned to death. Fire, smoke, blood, uproar—triumphant
cheers and dying groans were mingled. In front
were the Confederates pressing on with shouts of “Remember
Jackson!”—retreating rapidly towards the
river, were the defeated forces of Gen. Hooker. Anderson
and McLaws had connected now with Stuart's
right—and at ten o'clock Chancellorsville was in Lee's
possession.

The enemy had disappeared. They had fallen back
rapidly to a second line in rear. Here heavy earth-works,
with arms stretching out towards the two rivers,
had been thrown up, to protect the army from another
assault. To a pass so desperate had the Federal General
come! With his one hundred thousand men, he
was retreating before Lee's thirty or forty thousand,
who pushed him to the wall.

And yet a singular dispatch was sent by him, on the
afternoon of the same day, to Sedgwick:

“I have driven the enemy, and all that is wanted is
for you to come up and complete Lee's destruction.”[7]

To a cool observer, it would have seemed that Lee
was about to complete Hooker's. His right and left
wings were now united; he presented to the enemy an
unoroken front, along the Old Turnpike, facing north

ward—and the signal for a renewal of the assault
trembled on Lee's lips. It was not uttered. News
came which checked it. Gen. Sedgwick, with his
twenty-two thousand men, had crossed the river at
Fredericksburg; assaulted Marye's hill, which was
held by artillery, and a few regiments; carried the
heights in spite of desperate resistance from the Confederates,
who fought, hand to hand, over their guns,
for the crest—then, driving the six thousand men of
Early and Barksdale before him, Gen. Sedgwick
pushed westward over the Plank Road towards Chancellorsville.

Hooker charged all his woes on the delay of Sedgwick—that
of course. Yet the blow was well struck,
and quickly struck. “It was about eleven o'clock in
the morning when he carried the heights,” said Sedgwick;
and those heights were Marye's hill, which
Hooker himself, on the 13th December, 1862, had not
been able to carry at all. At that time he described
them as a “fortification,” “masonry,” a “mountain of
rock”—all that was impregnable. The stone wall at
the foot of them was an insurmountable obstacle, he
said, which no artillery could make “a breach” in—no
infantry could storm. His own attack, Gen. Hooker
informed the War Committee, had been resolute and
stubborn, but the place was impregnable. Now, when
Sedgwick, that good soldier, took an hour to storm it,
he “failed in a prompt compliance with my orders,”
and “in my judgment, Gen. Sedgwick did not obey
the spirit of my order.”[8]

At least he stormed the famous heights; drove the
Confederates before him; advanced straight on Chancellorsville;
and at the moment when Lee was about
to crush Hooker, or drive him into the river, the news
came that Sedgwick was near Salem, a few miles from
him, advancing rapidly to attack his flank and rear.

It is hard to read the unprinted pages of the Book
of Fate. All military speculation goes for what it is
worth, only. But, to a fair critic, it would seem that
the presence of Sedgwick, there and then, saved
Hooker from “destruction,” and deserved something
very different from denunciation.

Thus Lee was compelled to forego for the moment
his attack. Wilcox's brigade, at Banks's Ford, threw
itself in Sedgwick's front, and Lee detached a division
to reinforce it. Thus Hooker, for the time, could
draw his breath and get ready—Sedgwick had saved
him.

Monday dawned, and found the armies in a curious
position. Hooker forced back on the Rappahannock;
Lee about to attack him; Sedgwick advancing to attack
Lee; Early again holding the Fredericksburg heights
in Sedgwick's rear.

Thus Sedgwick was posted between Lee and Early;
Lee between Sedgwick and Hooker. What would
follow?

Before Monday night that question was decided. At
six in the evening, Lee threw himself upon Sedgwick
at Salem heights, closed in in stubborn battle with that
resolute opponent; forced him back; and at nightfall
drove him across the river at Banks's Ford, where a
pontoon had been laid to assist his retreat. Short

work had thus been made of the twenty-two thousand.
They were routed, flying—over their heads, as they
hurried across the river, burst the Southern shell, and
the hiss of bullets hastened them. On Tuesday, Lee
returned towards Chancellorsville, to finish Hooker.

That commander seemed now completely demoralized.
Sedgwick defeated, he determined to recross the
Rappahannock, and abandon the whole campaign.
And yet that determination was strange. His force
still more than doubled that of his adversary. Lee's
loss had been ten thousand, leaving him in all thirty
thousand. Hooker's loss had been seventeen thousand,
leaving him in all one hundred and three thousand.
With Sedgwick brought over the river on Tuesday, as
he might have been, Gen. Hooker was still able to confront
thirty thousand men with one hundred thousand.

Those were the respective numbers of the two
armies on Tuesday, the 5th of May—about three to
one. It is true that the thirty thousand were flushed
with victory, and the one hundred thousand demoralized
with defeat. The cavalry, which were hardly engaged,
are omitted in these estimates.

His own countrymen declared that Gen. Hooker
was the most hopeless individual in the whole army.
He seemed painfully to lack the mens oequa in arduis,
that first of all military traits. He was going to retreat.

Retreat? He who had foretold the “certain destruction”
of his adversary, unless he “ingloriously
fled!” Who had said that the Army of Northern
Virginia “might as well pack up their knapsacks”—
that they were “now on the legitimate property of the

Army of the Potomac?” Who had coolly described
Lee's army as made up of a “rank and file vastly inferior
to our own intellectually and physically!”[9]
This officer retreat, when he had still three to one!
When only thirty thousand men confronted one hundred
thousand, “intellectually and physically” superior
to them! The thing was incredible.

Yet so it was. To the remonstrances of his brave
officers, Gen. Hooker replied by erecting a great crescent-shaped
earthwork, three miles long, from river to
river, in the bend, and by laying his pontoons, on which
pine boughs were strewed to prevent the rumble of
artillery wheels.

This was done on Tuesday night. When Lee advanced
on Wednesday morning to administer the coup
de grace, his adversary had disappeared. He had left
behind him fourteen pieces of artillery, twenty thousand
stand of arms, his dead and his wounded.

On the next day Gen. Hooker issued a general order
to the troops, in which he said:

“The Major-General commanding tenders to his
army his congratulations on its achievements of the
last seven days.... The events of the last week
may well cause the heart of every officer and soldier
of the army to swell with pride. We have added new
laurels to our former renown.”

Does the reader imagine that we have made a slight
mistake and quoted Gen. Lee's order instead of Gen.
Hooker's? No—Gen. Hooker wrote that! Such was
the battle of Chancellorsville. It is only necessary to
add that the cavalry expedition under Gen. Stoneman

effected almost nothing; and his horsemen, pursued
and harrassed by Gen. W. H. F. Lee, hastened back
and recrossed the Rappahannock.

The great struggle was thus over. The large army
of Gen. Hooker had retreated beyond the Rappahannock,

demoralized and shattered. Victory hovered
above the Confederates in the tangled thickets of the
Wilderness. But alas! the greatest of the Southern
soldiers had fallen.

Jackson was dying—soon he was dead. When the
wave of death swept over that great standard-bearer,
and carried him away, the red flag began to sink in
the stormy waters. Inch by inch it went under—at
Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, and Petersburg. At Appomattox
Court House it disappeared beneath the
waves.

That was spared the great soul, who had never seen
it droop.

When he fell on that moonlight night in the Wilderness,
it was floating still!