In the twinkle of an eye, the Southern lines were
reformed and ceased retiring. Cheers rose; staggering
volleys followed; Jackson's whole line advanced
with wild shouts, and drove the Federal line back.
Before he stopped the advance, Jackson had forced
back Hooker more than half a mile; had resumed the
position from which he was driven in the morning;
then he stood grim and defiant, ready to renew the
struggle. The great assault of McClellan had been
completely repulsed; the battle of Sharpsburg was
decided.

This was the grand conflict of the day, and on the
left centred the main interest—but once or twice
affairs were critical on the right and centre.

Jackson had just repulsed his opponent, when an
accident occurred which nearly resulted in Gen. Lee's
destruction.

In the centre was Rodes' brigade, and,—during the
momentary absence of that officer,—through a misconception
of orders the brigade was withdrawn. No
sooner had this occurred than the Federal forces
rushed forward; there was nothing to meet them; in
an instant Gen. Lee's centre would have been pierced
and his army cut in two.

Then, what they wanted in numbers, the Southerners
made up by reckless courage. Gen. D. H. Hill
galloped thither, and hastily collected about two hundred
men, whom he led gallantly forward. Miller's
battery hastened up, unlimbered, and opened a furious
fire. Col. Cooke, with about three hundred men of
his regiment, faced the masses rushing on, “standing
boldly in line,” says Gen. Lee, “without a catridge.”

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

Then a curious spectacle was presented to the soldiers
of both armies. Lieut. Gen. Hill was seen leading
against the enemy a force of two hundred men,
cheering them them on in person. Lieut. Gen. Longstreet
was seen on foot, loading and firing a piece of
artillery.

The Federal division of Gen. Richardson, imposed
upon by this bold front, came to a halt and remained
stationery until Lee had filled the gap.

So, the centre was saved.

On the right, there was also a moment of extreme
peril. Let us briefly relate how things stood there and
what was done.

Nearly east of Sharpsburg, was a bridge over the
Antietam. On the heights above this bridge rested
the right of Lee; opposite, across the stream, were
drawn up the fifteen thousand men of Burnside, with
Porter at his back.

This force was held in reserve, for “eventualities”
came soon after sunrise, when Hooker could not advance.

Then McClellan argued and acted like a good soldier.
That stubborn stand on the left must mean that
Lee had massed his main force there, leaving the right
wing weak. Burnside was thereupon ordered, at eight
o'clock, to pass the bridge, and immediately assail the
Southern right.

At half-past eight he had not moved; not at nine.
McClellan sent new orders and more urgent ones, for
the combat on his right was going against him, and a
diversion was absolutely necessary. Still Burnside

[figure description] Page 139.[end figure description]

did not move—at ten he was still there; at twelve he
had not passed the Antietam.

Meanwhile, Lee had acted. He had thrown Walker
and McLaws from the right, to Jackson's relief—
leaving only the two thousand five hundred men of
Gen. Jones opposite Burnside.

That officer finally advanced across the bridge about
noon, and “moved with such extreme caution and
slowness” toward Lee's right, that he did not attack
the crest where it rested until three o'clock.

Then he stormed the crest and planted his artillery
upon it; but the delay had ruined everything. Just
as the crest was carried, A. P. Hill arrived from Harper's
Ferry with two thousand men.* Adding these
to the two thousand five hundred of Jones, driven
back from the crest, with this force of four thousand
five hundred he attacked Burnside in turn, driving
back to the bridge his fifteen thousand troops, and
terminating the day upon the right of the field as
Jackson had terminated it upon the left.

It was at this moment that McClellan, seeing Burnside
driven back, sent him word, it is said:

“Hold your ground! If you cannot, then the bridge
to the last man! Always the bridge! If the bridge
is lost, all is lost!”

The defeat of Burnside was so decisive, that the
moment was indeed full of peril. But night came to
stop an advance.

“It was now nearly dark,” says Gen. Lee, “and the
enemy had massed a number of batteries to sweep the

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

approaches to the Antietam, on the opposite side of
which the corps of Gen. Porter, which had not been
engaged now appeared to dispute our advance. Under
these circumstances, it was deemed injudicious to push
our advantage further.”

Night descended—the thunder ceased—the great
pall of darkness fell over the bloody field, covered
with the dying and the dead.

McClellan was repulsed—thus victory belonged to
Lee.

Such was Sharpsburg, one of the most desperate and
sanguinary struggles of the war. We have endeavored
to describe it with the impartiality of truth
itself—and no statement has been made which the
record will not vouch for.

As to the numbers, the statements rest upon the
words of Lee and Jackson; and it is not probable that
the world will doubt them.

That with a force so small Lee could repulse an
army so large as his opponent's, is due to two simple
facts:

I. The troops were manoeuvered with a foresight
and promptness which characterize only the greatest
generals of history.

II. The men were the veterans of the old Army of
Northern Virginia; were officered by Jackson, Longstreet,
and Hill; and fought as the three hundred of
Leonidas fought at Thermopylae—ready to die, but
not to surrender.

Taken altogether, that fight on the left was one of
the most astonishing of any war—for four thousand
stood for hours against thirty or forty thousand, and

[figure description] Page 141.[end figure description]

more than once drove them back in disorder. Hill's
repulse of Burnside, four to one, on the right, was glorious—
but Burnside died easy. Jackson's repulse of
Hooker, ten to one, was grand—for Hooker died hard.
That combat indeed brought back the old ages of
mythology. This Titan stood erect, strong and defiant,
if not unscathed, when the whole magazine of thunderbolts
had been exhausted upon him.

On the next day, Gen. Lee remained in line of
battle, awaiting another attack; but none was made.
The Federal loss “and disorganization,” says Gen.
McClellan, prevented it on that day.

On the morning of the next, Lee had recrossed the
Potomac, to supply his army with rations and ammunition.
His opponent attempted to follow, and was
driven into the river.

So the Maryland campaign ended.

In October, Gen. Halleck telegraphed to McClellan:

“Cross the Potomac, and give battle to the enemy,
or drive him south.”

McClellan crossed, and at Warrenton was “relieved
from the command of the Army of the Potomac.”

Hapless McClellan! It was harsh. Lee would
have annihilated the “whipped army” of the Potomac
retreating to Malvern Hill “like a parcel of sheep.”*
McClellan's cool generalship saved it. Lee would
have gone to Pennsylvania, and advanced to Philadelphia—
McClellan organized Pope's remnants, advanced,
and fought, and drove his adversary from

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

Maryland. Lee would have recrossed in October—
McClellan stopped him, and by advancing into Virginia
forced his great foe to fall back Richmonward. And
after all these services, the axe fell.

“Off with his head! So much for Buckingham!”

Gen. McClellan received the fatal order while conversing,
in his tent, near Warrenton, with Gen. Burnside.
His countenance did not change, and in a voice
as calm as a May morning, he said, handing the paper
to his companion:

“Well, Burnside, you are to command the army.”

Never was a more singular freak of destiny. The
officer who had failed to cross the Antietam and drive
back Hill's four thousand five hundred, with his fifteen
thousand, at Sharpsburg, was now to cross the Rappahannock
and drive back the Army of Northern Virginia,
under Lee.

Of that appointment one might have said:—“It
will not and it cannot come to good.” But the fiat
had gone forth.

McClellan set out for New Jersey. Burnside commenced
his march toward—Fredericksburg.

p508-144 VI. FREDERICKSBURG.

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

In December, 1862, the Army of Northern Virginia
was holding the heights south of Fredericksburg.

At three o'clock in the morning, on the 11th of that
month, the troops were waked from slumber by a single
gun, which sent its warning voice across the
gloom.

Then this first discharge was followed by another,
and the men sprung to arms; the camps buzzed; line
of battle was formed—all along the crest, from
Marye's Hill down to Hamilton's Crossing, the army
stood ready.

The moment had come; for those two cannon,
suddenly thundering in the cold night-watches, were
signal guns. Through their bronze mouths, Lee said
to his men:

“Get ready! The enemy are crossing!”

Soon, from the direction of Fredericksburg, came
the quick rattle of musketry. Something of interest
was evidently going on there. Gen. Lee was soon in
the saddle, and couriers, passing at a swift gallop, like
phantoms through the darkness, brought him intelligence
from the front.

In fact, Gen. Burnside was making, at last, his great

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

advance to storm the heights on the Virginia side of
of the Rappahannock. Knowing well the mettle of
his great opponent, Lee—honestly distrusting his ability
to command so large an army*—utterly opposed
to a decisive trial of strength at this time and place—
Burnside had yet been pushed forward by his Government;
ordered to strike; and on the morning of this
day of December, 1862, he was obeying.

All the night of the 10th, pontoons were being hauled
down to the stream, at Fredericksburg and below; at
three o'clock in the morning, as we have seen, the signal
guns of Lee announced that the boats were being
lashed together to cross over the army.

At the town, took place the main effort to impede
the movement. The river street was lined with Barksdale's
Mississippians, and no sooner had they heard
the rattle of timbers and the hum of busy workmen,
through the dense fog on the stream, than every man
was on the alert. The Federal pontoneers worked
like beavers in the gloom, knowing the peril they were
exposed to—and soon their expectations were realized.
A sudden storm of bullets hissed through the mist; the
foremost workmen fell dead or mortally wounded, and
the rest recoiled before the unseen enemy.

Time after time the effort was renewed, but always
the fire of the Mississippians drove back the boatbuilders.
One, two, three, four, five, six hours passed
with no better success—when, in a rage, doubtless, at
this ill-fortune, Gen. Burnside, at ten o'clock, opened

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

on the town with one hundred and forty-seven pieces
of artillery.

Then, as though driven from the field by this tremendous
cannonade, the fog rose, drifted off, and disappeared.
From an eminence, jutting out from the
crest of hills on which his army was drawn up, Gen.
Lee looked in silence at the curious and tragic spectacle.

On the hills beyond the river were seen long rows of
Federal cannon, grim and sullen, or spouting smoke
and flame. Every instant came the quick, red glare,
the bellowing roar, and the burst of shell above the
devoted town.

Fredericksburg was being bombarded—racked right
and left with a cross-fire of shot and shell. This hurricane
of death swept through the streets, incessant, remorseless,
never relaxing in its fury. Houses crashed
down; the church steeples shook and tottered, as shot
tore them; women and children ran for life, pursued
by bursting shell; flames rose, and a great cloud of lurid
smoke drifted away, mingling itself with the snowy
cannon smoke on the Stafford hills.

When, at noon, the cannonade ceased, the town was
on fire in many places, and long after night the red
flames of burning mansions contended with the darkness,
rendering wilder and more weird the sombre
scene of destruction. At intervals only, a single gun
roared sullenly from the northern hills, like a wild
beast growling over his prey.

Soon after the beginning of the cannonade, another
attempt was made to throw the pontoons over, but it
failed again. Barksdale had not retreated; amid

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

crashing chimneys and houses thundering down, his men still
stood—and every effort of the Federal troops to lay
their bridges was defeated. It was only in the afternoon
that a brave officer of the Northern army threw
across three regiments in barges. These advanced;
assailed Barksdale furiously; drove him from the
place; then the pontoon bridge was rapidly laid, and
the head of Burnside's column was at once thrown
over.

The cruel bombardment did not effect that—it
effected absolutely nothing. It was the three regiments
in barges, which a third lieutenant, without a
beard on his face, would have sent across twelve hours
before.

Lee, wrapped in his old gray riding cape, looked on,
as we have said, from the spot now called “Lee's Hill,”
near the telegraph road, and beside him stood Longstreet,
stout, heavily bearded, and calm, like his commander.
It was hard to realize, looking at these unmoved
faces, that the Virginian and the Carolinian were
witnessing the destruction of one of the oldest and most
hospitable of Virginian cities.

If any one doubts the extent of that destruction, let
him go thither, as the present writer did, the other day,
and look at the long rows of ruins, the ghost-like chimneys,
the blackened walls, and the river facade of the
houses riddled with cannon balls. In one small house
I counted fifty. And the fact is not surprising. In
two hours, Gen. Burnside had fired seven thousand
three hundred and fifty rounds upon the town.

So, on that night of December the 11th, Fredericksburg
was torn to pieces—the shattered church spires

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

shone in the light of roaring flames—the random guns
from the “Chatham” hill bellowed sombre and triumphant
over all.

Throughout the night, and all day on the 12th, Gen.
Burnside was crossing. It was a very striking spectaele,
viewed from the summit of Lee's Hill—where
Gen. Lee, as before, stood, looking on in silence. Opposite
the pontoon bridge were seen the heavy and
dark masses of the Federal infantry, about to cross.
The great columns undulated as they moved down
from the hills, like gigantic serpents, with glittering
bayonets and gun-barrels for scales. Above them banners
waved—through the clear December air came
the notes of the drum and bugle; you could even hear
the rumble of the artillery—those bronze war-dogs, in
whose mouths the thunder slumbered. All day, as we
have said, the Federal forces were crossing, with little
opposition.

On the night of the 12th, the army was over, and it
was evident that on the next day Gen. Bnrnside would
deliver battle, by advancing to storm the position occupied
by Lee.

What was that position, and what the character of
the ground upon which was fought this bloody action?
Let us look at it. Battles are mazes, without some
knowledge of the localities. Let us take our stand on
the eminence called Lee's Hill, which juts out from
the crest, commanding a full view of all. Beneath us
stretches a plain extending to the Rappahannock. Beyond
the plain the roofs and spires of Fredericksburg
are seen, not a mile away. On the northern shores of
the river, rise lofty hills, crowned with white mansions.

[figure description] Page 148.[end figure description]

In front of these mansions, flags are seen to flutter—
they indicate the head-quarters of some Federal general.
Along the hills dusky objects dot the crest—they are
cannon. Through the gorges you see dark and motionless
masses—they are Federal infantry, waiting for the
order to advance.

That officer on horseback yonder, slowly pacing
along the hills, is perhaps Gen. Burnside, reconnoitering.
Those specks upon the river banks are pickets.
Behind the hill yonder, something stands which you
cannot make out—it is a pontoon train ready to move.

Let us look now at the southern shore. To the right
and left of us stretches the wooded crest upon which
Gen. Lee has drawn up his line of battle. On the left,
extending from his centre to the river above, is Longstreet's
line, embattled, ready, and bristling yonder on
the summit of Marye's Hill, with grim-looking cannon.
There the Irish brigade is going to charge with magnificent
élan, and strew the fatal field in front of that
stone wall, at the foot of the hill, with their bodies.
On the right is Jackson, holding the wooded crest to
the point at Hamilton's Crossing, where it sinks into
the plain. At every opening in his line you see the
muzzles of cannon; on the hill above the crossing,
which the men are going to call “Dead Horse Hill,”
he has massed his batteries, to rake the field before
him when the enemy rush forward there, as it is evident
they will. Still further, on the right, in the great
plain reaching to the Massaponnax, Stuart is visible
with his guns—not with his cavalry. He has reconnoitered
the whole ground; found the fields intersected
by deep ditches, with long rows of cedars lining them,

[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

and cavalry cannot operate there. The horsemen accordingly
are drawn up in the woods, on the flank—
Stuart is going to mass thirty pieces of artillery in that
field, and open a furious fire on the Federal left as they
charge the slopes of “Dead Horse Hill.”

Thus the Confederate position is powerful enough,
giving many advantages. But the enemy have some,
too. On the banks of the river yonder are steep bluffs,
under which they can find shelter from the shot and
shell; in the numerous ditches, lined with cedars, they
will have the best possible rifle-pits from which to fire
upon the cannoneers of Stuart. If the Southern lines
advance too far into the plain the dusky objects youder,
on the heights across the river, which are “thirty-pound
Parrotts,” will sweep the whole field, tearing
men, horses, and guns to pieces with their iron thunderbolts.

As long, however, as Lee holds his position upon the
heights, there can be small doubt of the result, Humanly
speaking, he cannot be driven from the ground.
His fifty thousand muskets can hold it forever. Thrice
Burnside's force can make no impression, and the proof
is that one-third of Lee's is going to repulse him without
difficulty.

The situation must have looked ugly to the Federal
commander, but he did not seem to realize its full significance.
He must have seen that to advance across
that fatal plain would cost him rivers of blood; that
Lee's position here was twice as strong as that at Sharpsburg,
and his army twice as numerous as then—and yet,
in spite of all, in the very teeth of fate, Gen. Burnside
seemed determined to risk all; to advance across that

[figure description] Page 150.[end figure description]

plain, and to butt, bull-like, against this fortress, bristling
with bayonets and cannon. How to attack and
fight a successful battle there would have puzzled
Napoleon. It is difficult to say what that great master
of the art of war would have done upon the occasion;
but it may be declared with absolute certainty that he
would not have done what Gen. Burnside did. Somewhere—
either on the right or the left—the Emperor
would have massed his battalions, and launched half
his force at Lee, with the fury of an avalanche which
bursts through every obstacle. Instead of adopting
this, the only plan which promised success, Gen. Burnside
ordered assaults to be made on the right and left
with single divisions. These two divisions it was
hoped, would be able to break through the veteran
corps of Longstreet and Jackson!

Does any reader say that this statement is absurd?
The truth is of record. In that great “open sesame”
to all hidden things, “The Report on the Conduct of
the War,” the facts are recorded. Gen. Burnside
himself convicts himself of fatal ignorance of the
ground—of a terrible misapprehension of the obstacles
in his path.

The proof is given.

“The enemy,” said Gen. Burnside,* “had cut a
road along in the rear of the line of heights where we
made our attack.... I obtained from a colored
man, from the other side of the town, information
in regard to this new road which proved to be correct.
I wanted to obtain possession of that new road, and

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

that was my reason for making an attack on the extreme
left.... Then I purposed to make a direct
attack on their front, and drive them out of their
works.”

That is to say, that the little “Mine Road” running
in rear of Gen. Lee's right wing, presented itself to
General Burnside's imagination, after talking with the
“colored man,” as a great military highway, cut by
his opponent, connecting his wings, and constituting
the key of his position. To gain possession of that
mere bridle path appeared to him a matter of the first
importance, and a division was sent to drive Jackson
from in front of it!

Proof—the order of Gen. Burnside, December 13,
5.55 a. m., to General Franklin, on his left.* “Send
out at once a division at least.. to seize, if possible,
the heights near Captain Hamilton's.”

Fatal Order No. 1!—The “heights near Captain
Hamilton's” were the hills upon which Jackson was
drawn up with his triple line of bayonets, and his artillery
waiting to do the terrible work it did do.

In the same manner Lee's left, at Marye's Hill, was
to be assailed, and driven back—by a division.

Proof—the same order, announcing Burnside's directions
to Gen. Sumner on his right. “He (Burnside)
has ordered another column, of a division or
more, to be moved from Gen. Sumner's command
up the Plank Road to its intersection with the Telegraph
Road, where they will divide, with the object
of seizing the heights on both of those roads.”

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

Fatal Order No. 2!—The “Plank Road” led straight
into the muzzles of Longstreet's cannon, on Marye's
Hill—“the heights” in question. The point of “intersection
with the Telegraph Road” was the locality
of that sombre, fatal, terrible stone wall, lined with
Southern marksmen, in front of which the divisions of
French, Hancock, and Humphreys, charged so splendidly,
and were torn to pieces by the concentrated fire
of small arms and artillery hurled upon them within
point blank range, as they uselessly rushed to their
death.

“Holding these heights, with the heights near Captain
Hamilton's,” adds General Burnside's order, “will,
I hope, compel the enemy to evacuate the whole ridge
between these points.” If not, then, as he says in his
testimony, “I proposed to make a direct attack on
their front, and drive them out of their works.”

Such was the programme of operations adopted by
Gen. Burnside. It cannot be said to be mis-stated,
for it is given on the authority of his general order,
and his own testimony. He proposed to assault the
two powerful positions at Marye's Hill and Hamilton's
Crossing, with a division at a time, and it will be seen
that it was done. Gen. Meade, commanding the assaulting
force at Hamilton's, says he had in all only
ten thousand men engaged. In reserve, looking on,
were the forty-five or fifty thousand men of Franklin.
*

From the moment when Gen. Sumner,

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

commanding the two corps of the Right Grand Division, and
Gen. Franklin, commanding the two corps of the
Left Grand Division, received that order to attack in
driblets, they must have felt that all was over. This
Gibraltar was going to be pelted with popguns, when
a battering ram, and a heavy one, was needed. Why
this frightful blunder? The explanation is not difficult.
Gen. Burnside had estimated his own powers
with singular justice. What his government regarded
as unfounded self-depreciation was really modest, good
sense. He was painfully unequal to the arduous work
which the authorities had thrust upon him. He did
his best, but that best was bad indeed. The annals of
war contain no blunder greater than that attack at
Fredericksburg.

But it is time to terminate this tedious preface—
tedious, but necessary. For the rest, it diminishes the
lustre of the Southern triumph—this exposition of the
military deficiencies of the Federal commander. The
troops did their part, and did it well. They fought
with admirable dash and courage, until they found
what a cul-de-sac they had been thrust into; then they
sullenly refused to charge again, tired of a farce so
bloody.

But it was not a farce; it was a tragedy. Of that
the reader shall judge.

At midnight of the 12th December, this, then, was
the position of the adversaries. Lee was on the wooded
heights with Longstreet commanding his left, Jackson
his right—waiting. Burnside was on the plain upon
the river's bank, and in the town—Sumner commanding
his right, Franklin his left, Hooker his centre, in

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

reserve, beyond the river. From the gray lines perdus
in the woods of the west no sound came. From the
blue multitude rose a hum, a buzz, a murmur, harsh
and threatening. Arms clashed, horses neighed, artillery
rumbled—above all rang, from time to time,
the metallic vibrations of the bugle.

The force of Burnside was somewhat more than
one hundred thousand muskets.* Lee numbered about
fifty thousand bayonets in all. The odds were thus
two to one about.

Of the morale of the Northern army, the present
writer knows nothing. The ragged veterans of Lee
were joyful. Never had the old army of Northern
Virginia been in better trim for an obstinate, dashing
fight. The troops were all bone and muscle—
every eye laughed—victory seemed to hover in the
air above them, and salute them in advance. All
day they had laughed and jested; they were now at
midnight sleeping on their arms, awaiting, without
care, that dawn which would unchain the thunder.

At the first dim intimation of the coming day,
seen through the fog which wrapped all the landscape,
the woods began to buzz. Every man clutched
his gun. Then cheers were heard resounding in the
underwood along the slope near Hamilon's Crossing.
Lee was passing in front of the lines accompanied
by Jackson and Stuart.

These three men were, par excellence, the viri

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

illustroe of the Southern army. There were others whose
figures will live forever on canvas, in marble, and
cut deep in human hearts—Johnston, Beauregard,
Longstreet, Hill, Hood, and a hundred more. But
those three rose tallest and most distinct from the
smoke of the Virginia battles—Lee, Jackson, and
Stuart. They owed that prominence not only to
their soldiership, but to the personal and mental individuality
which characterized them.

Look at them for a moment, as they ride along
the lines, and you will see that they are types.

Lee is the model cavalier of the great Anglo-Norman
race. His figure is tall and erect; his seat in
the saddle perfect. His uniform is plain but neat;
his equipment beyond criticism. Stately, thorough-bred,
graceful in every movement, there is something
in his glance, in the very carriage of his person,
that is illustrious and imposing. He has the
army-leader look. There is not the remotest particle
of ostentation, much less of arrogance, in his
bearing. This man was a gentleman, you can see,
before he was a soldier.

Jackson's is a figure altogether different. He has
cast aside to-day, by mere accident, his old dingy uniform,
to put on a fine dress-coat, which Stuart has
given him—an overcoat of quite surpassing elegance—
and a new cap, which dazzles the eye with its braid.
But he cannot hide the individuality of “Stonewall
Jackson.” His seat in the saddle is ungraceful; he
rides with his knees drawn up; his chin is in the air,
and he looks out from beneath his fine new cap as he
did from beneath his old dingy one, thrown aside. It

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

is scarcely an army-leader that you look at—rather a
shy and absent-minded student, drawn forth from the
pious meditations of his study by the bruit of war, and
listening with a sort of bewildered glance to all this
clash of arms. Awkward, unimposing, silent, there is
in this figure not the least hint of the man of Port
Republic, Cold Harbour, and Sharpsburg—never has
the flawless diamond of supreme military genius presented
itself to men so thoroughly “in the rough,” un-cut
and unburnished. To know its quality, you must
strike against it. Not the heaviest sledge-hammer of
war can splinter it.

Last of the illustrious trio is Stuart, the ideal cavalry
commander of all imagination—young, laughing, joyous,
superb, with rattling sabre, brilliant sash, floating
plume—devoted, fearless, ever hoping; and ready day
or night, in sunshine or in storm, to carry out the plans
of Lee—to fight with infantry, artillery, or cavalry,
and conquer, or “die trying.” In his dazzling glance
you read the character of this man, who laughs at
peril and dares it to do its worst—the incarnation, in
the new Revolution, of the dead Rupert of England.

In 1864, Lee was maimed, indeed. At Chancellorsville
he had lost his right arm. At Yellow Tavern he
had lost his left.

The cheers rose, rung in the woods, and accompanied
the three commanders as they rode on to the right,
along the railroad, to the old Richmond stage road.
This led straight toward the river, striking the river
road running parallel with the stream, near the Federal
left.

Franklin was already moving. Stuart conducted

[figure description] Page 157.[end figure description]

Gen. Lee to the intersection of the roads, close on the
enemy, and pointed out the dusky figures in the fog:
they were Federal sharpshooters. As the group sat
their horses, motionless, the depths of the fog began
to stir. Black specks advanced on the humid field,
and bullets whistled. Then the dark lines of the enemy
were seen as they slowly and steadily advanced.

Stuart called to Pelham, his chief of artillery, and
gave him an order. Pelham disappeared at a gallop;
soon the roll of artillery was heard: a Napoleon gun
advanced at a rapid gallop through the fog; and Pelham
opened fire from the intersection of the roads upon
the enemy's left as they came on.

“Meade advanced across the plain,” says a Federal
writer,* “but had not proceeded far before he was
compelled to stop and silence a battery that Stuart had
posted on the Port Royal road, and which had a flank
fire on his left.

This battery was one Napoleon—captured at Seven
Pines, and used so well at Cold Harbour. Pelham's
fire was so rapid and incessant that it checked Meade's
whole division. Five thousand men halted until that
hornet could be brushed away.

To silence the galling fire, General Meade brought
up two or three batteries, posted them in Pelham's
front, at point blank range, and opened on him a furious
fire of shot and shell, to which was added the cross
fire of some thirty-pound Parrotts on the hills beyond
the river. The storm of projectiles thus hurled at the
one Napoleon was enough to move the nerve of a

[figure description] Page 158.[end figure description]

veteran. It did not touch Pelham's, though he was literally
a “beardless boy.” He continued the fire, in the
midst of dead and dying men of the gun detachment,
and staid until his last round had been fired, and a
peremptory order came for him to move.

Lee had witnessed the hard combat from the hill
above.

“It is glorious to see such courage in one so
young!” he exclaimed; and in his brief report of
the battle, he spoke of the young man as the “gallant
Pelham,” knighting him thus upon the field.

This minute mention of a simple accident will be
pardoned in the writer of these lines. Pelham was
his friend, and is dead—if heroes ever die.

Stuart tried to support Pelham with another gun,
but it was smashed to pieces; then Gen. Meade rushed
forward. It was nine or ten o'clock; the fog had
lifted; the plain was all alive with serried lines of infantry;
and with the thunder of artillery, the rattle of
small arms, and the cheers of onset, the Federal forces
dashed up headlong to the wooded slope where Jackson
waited, grim and silent, to receive their attack.

They had come within a few hundred yards; the
Confederate skirmishers ran in, as though a wind had
swept them back; Meade gallantly rushed on, when suddenly
from the crest a volcano flamed. It was Jackson's
artillery, held in leash until then. Now, all at once, it
opened. The crest spouted smoke and flame; a detonation
tore the air, and the Federal lines gave back,
with huge gaps in them, made by the frightful fire of
shell and cannister. In spite of this bloody reception,
however, the ranks were quickly reformed; the lines

[figure description] Page 159.[end figure description]

were dressed with admirable coolness; and, though the
artillery upon the crest roared on, doing bloody work,
the men rushed headlong at the heights.

There a stubborn, bitter, desperate combat took
place—the Confederates not moving. But a fatal accident
came suddenly to the enemy's assistance. Hill
had left a gap between two of his brigades—the Federal
forces pierced it—the line fell back; in a few moments
Jackson's first line was driven, and the Federal
troops rushed up, and gained the crest.

That charge was as gallant as any in the war, and
it deserved to be supported. The support did not
come. Five thousand men had dashed into the lion's
mouth—the teeth were about to close upon them—
fifty thousand in the plain beneath were looking on as
mere spectators of this grapple of life and death.
Gen. Burnside's order had been carried out. Franklin
had sent the “division” to “seize the heights near Capt.
Hamilton's;” they had been seized by that brave rush,
and that was all. In thirty minutes Meade's division
was driven from the hill—the earth was littered with
his dead—the survivors were flying down the slope,
pursued by merciless volleys, leaving blood upon every
dry leaf, dead bodies in every ravine.

Gregg's brigade had met them on the crest, as they
rushed up—had checked them without difficulty—
there never had been any hope for them. That was
only Jackson's second line; his third did not take the
trouble to move.

Meade had lost forty men out of every hundred;
the rest were flying, and carrying dismay into the
ranks of their comrades.

[figure description] Page 160.[end figure description]

Both armies saw this repulse—terrible, bloody,
mortal. From a hill, near the centre of his line, Gen.
Lee looked on with a glow in his cheeks, and a martial
light in the clear, commanding eyes, which had witnessed
in their time so many scenes of carnage. As
Gen. Meade's lines were now seen flying, pursued by
Jackson's men, Lee gazed at them in silence; then, in
that deep voice, which never lost its grave and measured
accent, he murmured:

“It is well this is so terrible; we would grow too
fond of it!”

So terminated the assault upon Jackson. The fatal
charge upon Longstreet, holding Marye's Hill, was
now to follow.

The ground has been briefly referred to; let us
look at it again. Marye's Hill is west of Fredericksburg,
about half a mile distant. Over its
abrupt crest runs the Plank Road to Chancellorsville.
At its foot comes in from the South the Telegraph
Road, skirted here by a low stone wall; and in front
of this wall is an open field, and a small stream. The
point of “intersection of the Plank Road with the
Telegraph Road” was, by Gen. Burnside's order, to be
the point of attack for Sumner. Now, this point was
the stone wall bristling with infantry, within two hundred
yards of the heights crowned with artillery.
Above the wall rose a hedge of bayonets; on the hill
grinned the bronze mouths of Longstreet's cannon.

To charge that position was desperation or madness.
And it was charged.

No sooner had the thunders of the assault upon

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

Jackson sunk to silence, than the storm began in front of
Longstreet—sudden, frightful, horrible beyond words.

There are events of the war which the historian
shrinks from with a sort of a shudder. The odour of
death arises from them; they smell of the charnel.
That assault upon Marye's Heights was one of those
terrible episodes, and God forbid that the present
writer should take satisfaction in painting the bloody
picture. It was a revel of death that the sun witnessed
that day—the spectacle of men rushing madly against
musketry and cannon, which hurled them back, and
tore them to pieces at every step. Sumner obeyed his
fatal order, and charged in column of brigades, and in
ten minutes they were nearly annihilated. He charged
again with mad courage—for this officer had the blood
of the soldier—and was met as before. Not a man
reached that fatal, terrible wall. From its summit the
long volleys struck the troops in the face, and from the
heights above round shot and shell finished the bloody
work. When that thunder had ceased, what the eye
saw was a great field covered at every step with
corpses; within twenty-five yards of the wall, the
bravest had thrown up their hands, and lay dead in
that attitude.

The assault upon Longstreet had been repulsed like
the assault on Jackson.

Then the madness of despair is said to have seized
upon Gen. Burnside. He had not witnessed the battle,
remaining at his head-quarters, the “Phillips House,”
a mile or more from the river; but he now mounted his
horse, rode down to the banks, dismounted, walked

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

hurriedly up and down, and, gazing at the ominous
heights, which Sumner had just charged, exclaimed:

“That crest must be carried to-night!”

Hooker had been held in reserve on the north bank.
He was now ordered to cross and attack. He rode
over, looked at the ground, returned at full gallop to
Gen. Burnside, and remonstrated.

He was right then; he was not right afterwards in
“making out a case,” and as strong a one as possible,
against his commander. Gen. Hooker enjoys the disagreeable
reputation of having always sought to strike
the fallen—to administer the coup de grace to his
unfortunate comrades when they were staggering under
“official” displeasure. Ferocious against McClellan,
after his failure at Cold Harbour, he was savage
upon Burnside when defeat had overshadowed him at
Fredericksburg. Marye's Hill was an ugly obstacle—
Gen. Hooker made it hideous. The stone wall was a
barrier. General Hooker made a fortress of it.

Marye's Hill, he says, was “a mountain of rock.” It
was only an ordinary eminence, with artillery to defend
it.

The stone wall was “five or six hundred yards” long,
with “rifle-pits all along”—“not simply a stone wall,
but a support wall,” with “earth between the rifle-pits
and the wall;” “to batter down that wall was like
battering down the masonry of a fortification;” and
“thirty thousand men were massed behind this wall!”

So says Gen. Hooker. Let the reader some day get
out of the cars at Fredericksburg, and go and look at
this terrible “fortification.” It is a poor little ordinary
Virginia stone fence, about eighteen inches thick. It

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

is there to speak for itself—just as is was, still blackened
by the fires kindled on that cold December day
of 1862.

The “thirty thousand men,” too, were the product
of Gen. Hooker's imagination. The force which held
that wall was Cobb's brigade, to which were added,
during the action, Kershaw's brigade, and two regiments
of Gen. Cooke's—in all, seventeen hundred
men. It was this force simply,* not thirty thousand
men, which was “massed behind that wall of five or
six hundred yards.”

The animus of Gen. Hooker is all in one sentence of
his report: “Finding that I had lost as many men as
my orders required me to lose, I suspended the attack.”
Unhappy Gen. Burnside! you were struck while down
by your remorseless lieutenant, who was burning to
show his superior military genius—at Chancellorsville!

Receiving the order to attack again the fatal heights,
Hooker remonstrated, as has been seen, declaring, with
justice, that the attack was desperate. Gen. Burnside
insisted—a vertigo appeared to have seized upon him.
Hooker obeyed, sullenly marshalled his troops, and
prepared for the assault, by opening with his artillery
upon the dangerous stone wall. His object, he says,
was to make “a hole” in it for the entrance of the assaulting
column; and the statement is so curious that
it can only be explained upon the theory that Gen.
Hooker never saw the wall of which he spoke.

The artillery fire continued until nearly sunset, when
everything was ready for the second assault. The men

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

had thrown away their knapsacks, and their guns were
unloaded. It was necessary for them to depend entirely
upon the bayonet, “for there was no time there
to load and fire,” says Gen. Hooker. The column of
assault was thus formed, the word was given, and the
troops dashed forward with hurrahs to storm the wall
and the heights.

A few words only are necessary to convey the result.
From the wall and the hill came the merciless fusillade
once more; the dark masses staggered, then gave way,
then retreated swiftly, leaving the ground encumbered
with their dead. The charge had lasted “fifteen minutes;”
and of four thousand men who went forward to
the assault, the bodies of seventeen hundred and sixty
were left upon the field.

As Hooker fell back, a threatening roar came from
the Confederate right, near Hamilton's crossing; and
that sound announced the inception of one of the most
daring enterprises ever conceived by the master mind
of Jackson. To this let us now give a few words.

Repulsing Meade without difficulty in the morning,
Jackson had remained in position upon his wooded
crest, waiting all day for a second attack. As the
hours passed on, and the enemy only used their artillery,
it became obvious that no further assault upon
him would be made that day; and that could only
result from the fact that their troops were demoralized.
What to do? That question never puzzled Jackson
long. With the intuition of genius, he understood the
whole truth. On the left as on the right—at Marye's
as at Hamilton's—the enemy were repulsed and

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

staggering. The thing was now to drive him into the river
at the point of the bayonet.

Those who saw Jackson then will never forget his
face. His eyes glared, his cheeks glowed, his lips were
shut like a vice. In the hurried movements of the
man, ordinarily so calm, and in the strident accents of
his voice, no less than in his face, could be read the
secret of an immense excitement and a fixed and unalterable
resolution.

The present writer saw him, and wondered at that
unwonted emotion, knowing not what was coming.
Near the crossing, one of his staff, well known to me,
came at a gallop.

“Are you going to Gen. Stuart?” he said, hurriedly.

“Yes.”

“Well, tell him that Gen. Jackson is going to advance
and attack the enemy precisely at sunset—he
wishes Gen. Stuart to advance his artillery and fire as
rapidly as possible, taking care not to injure the troops
as they attack.”

A glance over the shoulder showed that no time was
to be lost. The sun was poised like a red-hot shield
upon the Massaponnax woods. In ten minutes Gen.
Stuart had Jackson's order.

“Good!” he exclaimed, and in a few moments his
guns began to advance, firing furiously at every pause.
Thirty peices under Pelham made the great field a
sheet of flame in the dusk, and step by step Stuart
threw forward his artillery, in face of a destructive
fire, until he was near the Port Royal wood, from
which Meade had advanced in the morning. But no
sound came from Jackson. Stuart was roaring on still,

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

when a courier came up from one of his generals, asking
the news.

“Tell the General I have advanced,” he said, “but
Jackson has not, and that I am going on crowding 'em
with artillery.”

As night fell he was right upon the enemy's masses—
where was Jackson, and why had he not advanced?
That question remains unanswered. Jackson said because
the enemy began to fire upon him when he
moved, with all their batteries. The army said because
an order miscarried; a general lagged; an hour
was lost. One thing only is certain—that that
grand assault was never made.

What result would have followed it? That is a
difficult question; and it is hazardous in military affairs
to speculate upon events which never took place.

“From what I knew,” says Gen. Franklin, “of our
want of success upon the right, and the demoralized
condition of the troops upon the right and centre, as
represented to me by their commanders, I confess that
I believe the order to recross was a very proper one.”

Jackson is said to have adhered to his attack with
the bayonet: to have urged, in council of war, that the
Confederates should strip naked to the waist, make a
night assault, and “drive them into the river.” He
alone seems to have felt, as by intuition, that the
morale of the Federal army was broken.

And yet Gen. Burnside resolved upon another attempt.
Crushed in all but his courage, he ordered the
Ninth Corps to be marshaled in column of regiments
for an assault on Marye's Hill, led by himself in person,
and it was only when his corps commanders besought

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

him not to slaughter the troops uselessly, that he
yielded.

But the army was not withdrawn. All day Sunday
and Monday—two whole days after the battle—the
troops remained drawn up in the great plain, under
the muzzles of Gen. Lee's guns. The indecision of the
Federal commander resembled resolution. He seemed
determined to attack again. The bands played, the
banners rippled, the bugles sounded, the lines were
marshaled; then, on Tuesday morning, after a drenching
storm in the night, the multitude had disappeared
like the phantasmagoria of a dream.

Burnside had recrossed the river, and the campaign
had ended.

A town in ruins and still smoking; walls torn with
cannon balls; houses near the stone fence—you can
see them still—riddled like sieves with musket bullets;
dead bodies every where; new-made graves on every
side; broken artillery carriages; abandoned flags;
women without shelter; children without food; dirt,
desolation, blood, and mourning—that was what remained
when the Federal army left the south bank of
the Rappahannock.

Gen. Burnside had fought one of the bloodiest and
most useless battles of history.

p508-169 VII. CHANCELLORSVILLE.

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

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.*

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.

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

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;

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

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.* 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”!†

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

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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,*
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,

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

“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.*

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, threequarters
of a mile to the rear of Chancellorsville,
towards the river, and covering the roads to United
States and Ely's Fords.”

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

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

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,

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

“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,

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

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.”

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

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.”*

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

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

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.”*

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