THIRD CORPS. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL A. P. HILL. 1st division, Major-general R. H. Anderson. 1st brigade, Mahone, 6th, 12th, 16th, 41st, 61st Va. 2d 3d 4th 5th Wright, 3d, 22d, 48th, 2d Batt. Ga. Posey, 12th, 16th, 19th, 48th Miss. Wilcox, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th Ala. Artillery battalion, Lieutenant-colonel Cutts, 3 batteries. 2d division, Major-general Pender. 1st brigade, McGowan (Perrin), 1st, 12th, 13th, 14th S. C., Orr's Rifles. 2d 66 3d 4th 66 Thomas, 14th, 35th, 45th, 49th Ga. Lane, 7th, 18th, 28th, 33d, 37th N. C. Artillery battalion, Major Poague, 4 batteries. 3d division, Major-general H. Heth. 1st brigade, Archer, 1st, 7th, 14th Tenn., 5th, 13th Batt. Ala. Pettigrew, 11th, 26th, 47th, 52d N. C. 2d 66 3d 4th Brockenbrough, 40th, 47th, 55th, 22d Batt. Va. Artillery battalion, Lieutenant-colonel Garnett, 4 batteries. Corps artillery, Major McIntosh, McIntosh's and Pegram's battalions, 9 batteries. CAVALRY DIVISION. MAJOR-GENERAL J. E. B. STUART. 1st brigade, Robertson, 4th, 5th, 59th, 63d N. C. 2d W. Hampton, 1st N. C., 1st, 2d S. C., Cobb's, Davis', and Phillips' Legions. Fitzhugh Lee, 1st, 2d, 3d, 4th, 5th Va. W. H. F. Lee, 9th, 10th, 13th, 15th Va., 2d N. C. Jenkins, 14th, 16th, 17th, 26th, 34th Batt. Va. Horse artillery, 7 batteries. Independent brigade, Imboden. NOTES. NOTE A, PAge 2. More than sixteen years after Hooker's appointment, and only a few months before that brave soldier's death, the public was made acquainted with the confidential letter that the President addressed to him in transmitting his order of assignment as commander of the Army of the Potomac. The paternal tone of this letter, mingled with a vein of humor, and the practical good sense which it breathes throughout, portray so admirably the character of Mr. Lincoln that we deem it proper to insert its full text: MAJOR-GENERAL HOOKER: EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., January 26, 1863. GENERAL: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command, Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it. And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories. Yours, very truly, A. LINCOLN. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. WE will not here give all the documents from which we have already borrowed the elements of our history, and which are enumerated at the end of the first and second volumes. But as we progress in this work and years pass away documents become more numerous and complete. The Federal reports, the statements of the contributors to the newspapers, are better written, clearer, and more circumstantial; every one has made some advance in his military education, both in the North and in the South. The military operations, while being condensed, so to speak, are also more easily related: war, being made in a more methodical manner, lends itself better to a narration of the events. In short, the ardent passions which animated the combatants having, thank God! been calmed before the principal actors of the great drama have passed away, its history has become for them an inexhaustible subject of courteous controversy, of which the great public of the United States is to-day the arbitrator. This controversy is pursued sometimes in the periodicals exclusively devoted to one of the two armies, as the Army and Navy Journal in the North and the Southern Historical Society's Papers in the South. It is remarkable that sometimes in the very same journal, such as the Weekly Times of Philadelphia, the most interesting light is thrown by both sides upon the facts which we have undertaken to relate. Besides, it is not limited to the discussion of facts between officers of the opposing armies, for it is more lively perhaps between those who fought under the same flag, and who bandy with each other the responsibility of the defeats which have been successively experienced by each of the two parties. Before commencing the narration of the decisive battle of Gettysburg we provoked on the causes of Lee's defeat a discussion of this kind, which has been to us of great help; it has been published in the Southern Historical Society's Papers, thanks to the kindness of the editor, the Rev. J. Wm. Jones, who solicited on this point the opinion of some of the principal officers of the Confederate army. The special works of Hotchkiss and Allan on Chancellorsville, of Bates on Gettysburg-the one written from the Southern standpoint. the other from the Northern-as well as the maps published by the former and that of Bachelder of Gettysburg, have been for us invaluable guides. But the most useful documents for such a work are those which emanate from the actors themselves, and which are written at the first moment, when facts are too recent to allow any glossing of the truth. Unfortunately, the printed reports of Lee and his subordinates stop after the battle of Chancellorsville. However, the Rev. J. Wm. Jones has published a great number of them, furnished by the authors and their families, and has thus made up for this blank. On the other side we owe to the kindness of Colonel Meade, the general's son, the use of all the military papers of his father, which he kindly permitted us to have copied. In this voluminous collection, which contains the reports of his subordinates, the directions that he gave them, and his telegraph despatches, one finds the most lifelike description of all the incidents of the struggle and the motives which inspired each movement, and finds fortuitous or voluntary errors, which, on being later accredited, have covered the faults of the one and unjustly condemned the others. We have largely borrowed, for the same campaigns, from the following works: "Four Years with General Lee," by General Taylor; "Personal Reminiscences of General Lee," by the Rev. J. Wm. Jones; "Life of General Lee," by J. Esten Cooke; "Pickett and his Men," by W. Harrison; and for that of Vicksburg a narration of the siege by a resident has furnished us with some curious details. Let us quote, in short, among our authors, the most illustrious of all, General Sherman, to whom we owe, under the form of "Memoirs," the pages the most original, brilliant, and instructive which have ever been written on the war. General Sherman, who has never been ambitious for any political post nor solicited the votes of any political party, has had the rare courage to say frankly in these Memoirs what he thought of the officers who served near or under him. Judgments without any reticence, thus expressed by the commander of an army, clash with many feelings of self-love, and sometimes wound legitimate susceptibilities and excite some manifestations of anger; but they have, in the eyes of the historian, an incomparable value. ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS TO VOLS. I. AND II. SINCE the publication of the preceding volumes we have received a large number of documents from America, either recently printed or in manuscript, and their examination has enabled us to detect some inaccuracies of detail in those volumes: some of them have even thrown a new light upon events which we have narrated. Recognizing it as the first duty of an historian to dispel as promptly and as far as he can the clouds of error which so readily gather about and obscure the truth, we shall not wait for a second edition (supposing that one be issued) to point out to our readers the principal errors into which scanty or inaccurate information may have led us. We herewith append these corrections, indicating the volume and page to which each note refers. VOLUME I. · PAGE 35. Although victorious at the battle of San Pascual, the Americans were still obliged to repel the attacks of their adversaries for two days. Fortunately for them, the naval division of Commodore Stockton was waiting for them at San Diego, and a detachment of marines and soldiers, sent by the latter, brought them a relief of which they stood greatly in need. After resting for a fortnight at San Diego, Kearney's small band, reinforced by more than four hundred and fifty men, resumed its march under the supreme command of Stockton. On the 8th of January, 1847, the Americans dispersed the enemy's forces that had rallied against them at Rio San Gabriel, and beat them again the next day before Los Angelos. After a violent quarrel with Stockton, who disputed the command with him, Kearney continued his march, overtook a Mormon battalion on the 21st, which had arrived from the North, and finally occupied Upper California, in conjunction with Lieutenant-colonel Fremont. |