his corps across the river the previous day, received orders to harass the movement; he captured some prisoners whose tale indicated that Jackson was bent on fight, not on retreat. This certainly should have been strongly suspected from a study of the characters and past generalship of Jackson and Lee. Still Hooker would not be convinced. At 4.10 P. M. he sent word to Sedgwick: "We know that the enemy is fleeing, trying to save his trains. Two of Sickles's divisions are among them." 1 It was equally impossible to make Howard see the truth. Carl Schurz, who commanded a division in his corps, urged upon him that the facts pointed unmistakably to an attack from the west upon their right and rear, and advised earnestly that they execute a change of front in order to be ready for it. But Howard would issue no such command, although Schurz on his own responsibility did change in accordance with his judgment the position of two of his regiments. The Eleventh Corps had been further weakened by the detachment on an order from headquarters of a brigade to the support of Sickles.

At three o'clock in the afternoon, after a march of fifteen miles, Jackson reached the place for which he had set out. He was west of the Union army, on the side of it directly opposite the position occupied by General Lee. Losing no time in forming his troops in battle array, he was ready soon after five and gave the order to advance.

The Eleventh Corps lay quietly in position, unsuspecting danger. The opinion at headquarters and of their own commander controlled the other officers, with a few exceptions, and pervaded also the soldiers. Some of the men were getting supper ready, others were eating or resting, some were playing cards. The warning came from the wild rush of deer and rabbits driven from their lairs by the quick march of the Confederates through the Wilderness. Twenty-six thousand 2

1 O. R., vol. xxv. part ii. p. 363.

2 As I have computed it, the number of infantry. The artillery and cavalry must have made his force nearly if not quite 30,000.

1

of Jackson's men, "the best infantry in existence, as tough, hardy, and full of spirit as they are ill-fed, ill-clothed, and illlooking," surprised less than half their number. The officers and men of the Eleventh Corps in the main did well. But, asks Colonel Dodge, "what can be expected of new troops, taken by surprise and attacked in front, flank, and rear at once?" 2 After a brief resistance they ran.

It was a dearly bought victory for the Confederates. Jackson, busy in the endeavor to re-form his troops who had fallen into confusion from the charge through the thick and tangled wood, and eager to discover the intentions of Hooker, rode with his escort forward beyond his line of battle. Fired upon by the Federal troops, they turned about, and as they rode back in the obscurity of the night, were mistaken for Union horsemen and shot at by their own soldiers, Jackson receiving a mortal wound. The disability of the general undoubtedly prevented his victory from being more complete. Sickles was in jeopardy, but the night was clear and the moon nearly full, and he fought his way back, reoccupying his breastworks.

Hooker, despondent at the rout of the Eleventh Corps, was in mind and nerve unfit for the exercise of his great responsibility. The story of Sunday the 3d of May is that of an incompetent commander in a state of nervous collapse confronted by an able and alert general. Early in the morning Jackson's corps, yelling fiercely and crying "Remember Jackson," made the attack, seconded by the troops under Lee's immediate command. The Union soldiers resisted bravely. The efforts of officers and men were praiseworthy, but there was no head, and nothing was effective that emanated from headquarters. Thirty to thirty-five thousand fresh troops, near at hand and eager to fight, were not called into action. The parting injunction of Lincoln to Hooker on

1 T. A. Dodge, The Campaign of Chancellorsville, p. 92.

2 Ibid., p. 93.

3 Reynolds's corps, which crossed the river May 2, a portion of the 5th Corps, and Barlow's brigade of the 11th Corps make up this number.

his visit to the Army of the Potomac in April,1 “In your next battle put in all your men," 2 had gone unheeded.

Shortly after nine o'clock in the morning Hooker was knocked down and rendered senseless by a cannon ball striking a pillar of the veranda of Chancellor House, against which he was leaning; but at that time the battle was practically lost. "By 10 A. M.” said Lee in his report, "we were in full possession of the field." 3

4

On the evening of May 2, after the rout of Howard, Hooker sent word to Sedgwick to march toward Chancellorsville and be "in our vicinity at daylight. You will probably fall upon the rear of the forces commanded by General Lee,” the despatch continued, "and between us we will use him up." The commander had given Sedgwick an impossible undertaking. He was three miles below Fredericksburg on the south side of the river, and between him and Lee lay Early, with over 9000 men occupying places strongly fortified. He received the order at eleven at night, moved promptly, skirmishing as he advanced, and at daylight was in possession of Fredericksburg. To gain the road desired, he must take Marye's Heights, whence the Confederates the previous December had overwhelmed with slaughter Burnside's troops. Two storming columns were formed, flanked by the line of battle, and, advancing on the double quick under a destructive fire, carried the works on the heights, capturing guns and many prisoners.5 Sedgwick then marched towards Hooker; but ere this Hooker's battle of May 3 was over, with the result that he had been driven back from his position at Chancellorsville. Lee learned with much regret of the capture of Fredericksburg and Marye's Heights, and sent a

1 The President reached Falmouth April 5, and remained there until the 10th. Nat. Intelligencer.

2 Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 120.

3 O. R., vol. xxv. part i. p. 800.

4 Ibid., part ii. p. 365.

5 Marye's Heights was not occupied by so large a force nor so stubbornly defended as when Burnside met there his crushing defeat.

portion of his force to meet Sedgwick's corps. They joined battle at Salem Church, and the Confederates got the better of it. The next day, May 4, leaving Jackson's corps to hold Hooker in check, Lee late in the afternoon fell with 25,000 men upon Sedgwick's 20,000, who resisted the attack until nightfall. Sedgwick, considering that he was hemmed in by the enemy, took advantage of the permission contained in one of the conflicting despatches that crossed between him and his commander, and withdrew that night to the north bank of the Rappahannock. All that day Hooker had done nothing to relieve Sedgwick, although only 22,000 Confederates confronted his 80,000. After a council of war he decided to recross the river, and by the morning of May 6 this movement was accomplished safely and without molestation. The loss of the Union army in the Chancellorsville campaign was 17,287; that of the Confederates, 12,463.1 While Jackson lay suffering from his wounds, pneumonia set in, and eight days after his signal victory over Howard, he died. The Confederates had better lost the battle than

1 My authorities for this account are the reports of Lee, Stuart, Halleck, Warren, Couch, Sickles, Meade, Sedgwick, Howard, Schurz, Devens, O. R., vol. xxv. part i.; the Union and Confederate correspondence, ibid., part ii.; T. A. Dodge's Chancellorsville; A. C. Hamlin's ibid.; Doubleday's ibid.; testimonies of Hooker, Butterfield, Warren, Sickles, Hancock, Devens, C. W., 1865, vol. i.; articles of Couch, Howard, Smith, Jackson, Colston, Benjamin, Hooker's comments on Chancellorsville, Century War Book, vol. iii.; Dabney's Jackson; Life of Jackson by his wife; Fitzhugh Lee's Lee; Taylor's ibid.; Long's ibid.; Hist. of the 2d Army Corps, Walker; Walker's Hancock; Nicolay and Hay, vol. vii. chap. iv.; Swinton, Army of the Potomac.

The report gained currency that Hooker's mental collapse was due to intoxication. This is gainsaid by the testimony of Pleasanton, C. W., 1865, vol. i. p. 31; by Couch in his article, Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 170. "The story is positively contradicted by all of the officers who were with Hooker during the battle." — Nicolay and Hay, vol. iii. p. 108 note. I have heard the same denial from two officers. The truth seems to be that Hooker was accustomed to drink a large amount of whiskey daily without being prevented from attending to his round of duties, but when he started on this campaign, or at all events on the day that he reached Chancellorsville, from motives which do him honor, he stopped drinking entirely.

this commander of genius. Nothing will as well round the conception of him which we have already acquired from following his successful career as the testimony of the ablest and noblest representative of the Southern cause. On hearing that he was wounded Lee wrote to him: "Could I have directed events, I should have chosen for the good of the country to be disabled in your stead." After the war he declared, "Had I Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg, I would have won a great victory."

"2

With the fervent abolitionist poet, we of the North may "let a tear fall on Stonewall's bier." 3 He was the leader and the type of the very religious Scotch-Irish of the South, who, as we found out to our cost, were redoubtable fighters. They will never again meet us in civil strife; indeed in the war with Spain of 1898 the descendants of those who with sublime devotion had followed Stonewall Jackson responded to the common country's call.

Who may pretend to explain the incongruity of man? Both the conscientious Jackson and Barère, the man without a conscience, believed in waging war like barbarians. During the wars of the Revolution the Frenchman proposed to the Convention that no English or Hanoverian prisoners be taken. "I always thought," declared Jackson, that "we ought to meet the Federal invaders on the outer verge of just right and defence, and raise at once the black flag, viz., ‘No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides.' It would in the end have proved true humanity and mercy. The Bible is full of such wars, and it is the only policy that would bring the North to its senses." 5

1 O. R., vol. xxv. part ii. p. 769.

2 Life of Lee, Fitzhugh Lee, p. 281. Longstreet wrote of Jackson's death: "The shock was a very severe one to men and officers, but the full extent of our loss was not felt until the remains of the beloved general had been sent home. The dark clouds of the future then began to lower above the Confederates." - Century War Book, vol. iii. p. 245.

3 Barbara Frietchie.

4 La Révolution, Taine, tome iii. pp. 248, 250.

Life of Jackson, by his wife, p. 310.