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together and in re-forming their line.

Hill's division, com

manded by General Heth, has received a timely reinforcement by the arrival of two brigades which had been left at the Furnace in the morning. But Jackson is no longer there to direct; his army corps is without a recognized chief.

As we have stated elsewhere, there were four grades of general officers in the Confederate army: Lec, general, was commanderin-chief; Longstreet and Jackson, lieutenant-generals, had each an army corps; the divisions were commanded by major-generals, while the brigades were under the lead of brigadier-generals. On the morning of the 2d of May, Jackson had but one division commander with him, A. P. Hill, and both of them having been wounded in the evening, there were only brigadier-generals left in his corps. Rodes was entitled to the command by right of seniority, but this brave officer having neither the authoritative rank nor the required reputation to fill Jackson's place at this critical moment, the chief of staff of the Second corps, with Rodes' consent, summoned Stuart to come and take command. It was reasonably supposed that this popular name would inspire the soldiers with confidence for the battle to be fought on the following day. Stuart, following Jackson's instructions, had taken a portion of Lee's brigade, which was thenceforth useless on the Turnpike Road, to reconnoitre Ely's Ford and try to take possession of this pass, which might chance to lie on one of the enemy's lines of retreat. He had just given orders to attack the encampment of Averell's cavalry, which was quietly located on the banks of the river, when he was informed of the heavy task imposed upon him in such an unlooked-for manner. On reaching the field of battle he sent word to Jackson, asking him if he could give him any instructions. The illustrious sufferer, feeling too weak for such a mental effort, replied that he relied entirely upon his judgment. Stuart made at once all his arrangements for resuming the attack at daybreak by advancing his right more and more, so as to get nearer Lee and to assist him before Chancellorsville. He has been criticised for not having followed the plan attributed to Jackson by pushing all his forces to the left, so as to take possession of the roads leading from Chancellorsville to the fords of the Rapidan, near the Bullock house. Undoubtedly, if this

manœuvre had been entirely successful, Hooker, taken between two fires and shut up within the clearings of Chancellorsville by an enemy posted in the woods all around him, might have seen his army paralyzed, and possibly thrown into disorder; but although forty thousand men may whip seventy thousand, they cannot surround them: it was not to be expected that all the corps assembled in the forest could be so easily conquered as the Eleventh had been. By dint of striking with the same instrument, it might finally have been worn out and broken to pieces; and Stuart was the less able to adopt so dangerous a plan, with troops already decimated, inasmuch as this plan was directly at variance with what had been agreed upon between Jackson and Lee.

The latter had, on his part, faithfully carried out that portion of the task which he had reserved for himself. As soon as the distant echo of Jackson's cannon had announced to him the commencement of the attack against the right wing of Federals, he had made strenuous efforts to occupy their left. Anderson's division had been engaged since four o'clock with Sickles' troops near the Furnace in one direction, and with Williamson's brigade* of Slocum's corps near the Plank Road in the other. He had therefore only McLaws' troops, which were posted to the right and left of the turnpike, at his disposal. By his orders the latter made vigorous demonstrations against the positions occupied by Slocum's and Couch's right until dark, at first with artillery, then by drawing sufficiently near so as to fire volleys of musketry, but without intending a serious attack. The sound of the battle which Jackson was delivering had, in drawing nearer, proved to Lee that the manœuvre of his lieutenant had been crowned with success, but he had received no direct news from the Second corps. At last, shortly before daylight, Captain Wilbourne arrived near a cluster of pine trees at the foot of which Lee was sleeping. After listening to his recital with considerable emotion, Lee arose, saying, "The enemy shall be closely pressed this morning, as Jackson requests;" and he immediately gave orders for a general attack. Stuart was confirmed in his command of the left wing, and the measures he had adopted were fully approved.

*This was Williams' division of Slocum's corps.-Ed.

THE

CHAPTER II.

CHANCELLORSVILLE.

HE importance and multiplicity of the operations we have to describe have obliged us to divide the narrative of the campaign on the Rapidan into two chapters; but in order not to interrupt the thread of the story, we will resume it, without any preamble, at the point where it was dropped at the moment when the bloody struggle inaugurated by Jackson against the Federal right wing near Dowdall's Tavern was brought to an end.

Hooker's position was a critical one, and he was about being compelled to fight a decisive battle under very different circumstances from those which he had expected. He was, so to speak, blocked up on the plateau of Chancellorsville, closely pressed at the west by Jackson, who had made a portion of his line of defence give way, while at the east and south Lee closed the outlets of the forest against him. As yet, only a small portion of his army had been under fire; the rest was still fresh and full of ardor. Reynolds had crossed the Rappahannock at United States Ford, with the seventeen thousand men of the First corps, during the afternoon, and notwithstanding the fatigue of these men, who had just made a march of nearly twenty-four miles at a single stretch, with eight days' provisions in their knapsacks and haversacks, their arrival compensated largely for the losses which the army had sustained. The Federal line formed an angle the centre of which lay above Chancellorsville, while the two flanks rested, one at Ely's Ford on the Rapidan, and the other below United States Ford on the Rappahannock. The remnants of Howard's corps formed the extreme left along the River Road, in the positions which Meade had occupied on the 1st and 2d of May, and where this

disorganized body of troops could again form without being exposed to another attack. On his right was Couch with the Second corps, with the exception of Hays' brigade,* Hancock's division in the front line; French's first brigade in reserve in the fields around Chancellorsville. Slocum, strongly posted behind some abatis, defended the little valley where Mott's Run takes its rise, his left resting on the turnpike, his centre on each side of the Plank Road, his right having fallen back on the hill of Fairview. Fronting Stuart was the Third corps, occupying the heights on which the efforts of the Confederates had been checked during the night. Its line of battle had been speedily formed again by Sickles, and its skirmishers were in possession of the greater portion of the wood. A powerful array of artillery was also ready to sweep once more the road on which the assailants had already sustained such fearful losses. These heights, which rise west of Lewis' Creek, are bounded at the south by the bare hillock of Hazel Grove, which is isolated and surrounded on every side by ravines. Birney, who had started from Hazel Grove to make the night-attack upon Jackson, had remained master of this position, as well as of the whole of that portion of the wood situated south of the road and west of Lewis' Creek; Whipple was in reserve behind him on the slopes of Fairview; Berry's division and Hays' brigade, more in the rear, were deployed perpendicularly to the road in the woods which extend northward along one of the small tributaries of Lewis' Creek. Thus, Sickles' right was not brought into action, but it occupied low ground and was covered on every side. On the other hand, the elevated position he occupied on the left completely concealed from the enemy the plateau of Chancellorsville, upon which the army-trains, its reserves, and a part of its artillery were still huddled together; the latter formed a kind of fortress flanking the batteries posted at Fairview, and thereby enabled the Federals to prevent the junction of the two wings of the enemy's army.

In the ravine of Lewis' Creek the road had been freed of the broken wagons which obstructed it, and several bridges over the stream established easy communications with the rest of the army. In order to fill up the unoccupied space to the right of Berry,

*Hays' brigade was the second of French's division.-ED.

into which Jackson had intended to push his left, Meade, facing about in order of battle and traversing the Bullock clearing, had passed over from the left to the right of the army-lines about one o'clock in the morning. Humphreys was deployed to the right of Berry. Griffin, then Sykes, prolonged the line on each side. of the road from Dowdall's Tavern to the Bullock farm. Reynolds, having reached this last-mentioned house during the night, had continued his march and deployed his worn-out troops along Ely's Ford Road; he formed the extreme right, and assisted Averell's brigade, which, as we will show hereafter, had lingered in the rear of the army.

Hooker had thus seventy-five thousand men, without counting the Eleventh corps, posted between the two wings of the enemy's army, which, in the aggregate, could not place more than fortyfour thousand combatants in the field. In this situation it was sufficient for him to make a vigorous effort on the morning of the 3d in order to separate these two wings definitely, and inflict an irreparable blow upon either one or the other. Everything pointed in that direction. The experience of the previous day showed how dangerous was the purely defensive system he had adopted; the position of Chancellorsville, at the junction of the three roads occupied by the enemy at the east, south, and west, was an excellent one for attacking that enemy upon one of these lines, and to serve as the pivot to a great movement directed either against Lee or Stuart; but it was a bad one for resisting an assault from them, because they could concentrate all their forces against this narrow plateau and crush its defenders, whose number must be limited by its very dimensions. It was much more easy for Hooker to take the offensive under these conditions, because in twenty-four hours he could be reinforced by the twenty-two thousand men of Sedgwick's corps. After having reduced the left wing by successively detaching from it the Third corps, and then the First, it was natural to make the Sixth follow the same route, so as to bring the whole army together. The display of forces that Lee had just made proved conclusively that Sedgwick's demonstration below Fredericksburg had kept but a very small number of combatants on that side. As a diversion, therefore, it had no longer any object; but it was also certain that Sedg

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