At the farther side of an open field, half a mile in the rear of Chancellorsville, I came upon a few tents (three or four) pitched, around which, mostly dismounted, were a large number of staff-officers. General Meade was also present, and perhaps other generals. General Hooker was lying down I think in a soldier’s tent by himself. Raising himself a little as I entered, he said: “Couch, I turn the command of the army over to you. You will withdraw it and place it in the position designated on this map,” as he pointed to a line traced on a field-sketch. This was perhaps three-quarters of an hour after his hurt. He seemed rather dull, but possessed of his mental faculties. I do not think that one of those officers outside of the tent knew what orders I was to receive, for on stepping out, which I did immediately on getting my instructions, I met Meade close by, looking inquiringly as if he expected that finally he would receive the order for which he had waited all that long morning, “to go in.” Colonel N. H. Davis broke out: “We shall have some fighting now.” These incidents are mentioned to show the temper of that knot of officers. No time was to be lost, as only Hancock’s division now held Lee’s army. Dispatching Major John B. Burt with orders for the front to retire, I rode back to the thicket, accompanied by Meade, and was soon joined by Sickles, and after a little while by Hooker, but he did not interfere with my dispositions. Hancock had a close shave to withdraw in safety, his line being three-fourths of a mile long, with an exultant enemy as close in as they dared, or wished, or chose to be, firing and watching. But everything was brought off, except five hundred men of the Second Corps who, through the negligence of a lieutenant charged by Hancock with the responsibility of retiring the force at Mott’s Run, were taken prisoners. However, under the circumstances, the division was retired in better shape than one could have anticipated. General Sickles assisted in getting men to draw off the guns of the Maine battery before spoken of. General Meade wished me to hold the strip of thicket in rear of Chancellorsville, some six hundred yards in front of our new line of defense. My reply was: “I shall not leave men in this thicket to be shelled out by Lee’s artillery. Its possession won’t give us any strength. Yonder [pointing to the rear] is the line where the fighting is to be done.” Hooker heard the conversation, but made no remarks. Considerable bodies of troops of different corps that lay in the brush to the right were brought within the lines, and the battle of Chancellorsville was ended. My pocket diary, May 3d, has the following: “Sickles opened at about 5 A.M. Orders sent by me at 10 for the front to retire; at 12 M. in my new position”; the latter sentence meaning that at that hour my corps was in position on the new or second line of defense.
SECOND LINE OF UNION DEFENSE AT THE JUNCTION OF THE ROADS TO ELY’S AND UNITED STATES FORDS. FROM A WAR-TIME SKETCH.
As to the charge that the battle was lost because the general was intoxicated, I have always stated that he probably abstained from the use of ardent spirits when it would have been far better for him to have continued in his usual habit in that respect. The shock from being violently thrown to the ground, together with the physical exhaustion resulting from loss of sleep and the anxiety of mind incident to the last six days of the campaign, would tell on any man. The enemy did not press us on the second line, Lee simply varying the monotony of watching us by an occasional cannonade from the left, a part of his army having been sent to Salem Church to resist Sedgwick. Sedgwick had difficulty in maintaining his ground, but held his own by hard fighting until after midnight, May 4th–5th, when he recrossed at Banks’s Ford.
Some of the most anomalous occurrences of the war took place in this campaign. On the night of May 2d the commanding general, with 80,000 men in his wing of the army, directed Sedgwick, with 22,000, to march to his relief. While that officer was doing this on the 3d, and when it would be expected that every effort would be made by the right wing to do its part, only one-half of it was fought (or rather half-fought, for its ammunition was not replenished), and then the whole wing was withdrawn to a place where it could not be hurt, leaving Sedgwick to take care of himself.
At 12 o’clock on the night of the 4th–5th General Hooker assembled his corps commanders in council. Meade, Sickles, Howard, Reynolds, and myself were present; General Slocum, on account of the long distance from his post, did not arrive until after the meeting was broken up. Hooker stated that his instructions compelled him to cover Washington, not to jeopardize the army, etc. It was seen by the most casual observer that he had made up his mind to retreat. We were left by ourselves to consult, upon which Sickles made an elaborate argument, sustaining the views of the commanding general. Meade was in favor of fighting, stating that he doubted if we could get off our guns. Howard was in favor of fighting, qualifying his views by the remark that our present situation was due to the bad conduct of his corps, or words to that effect. Reynolds, who was lying on the ground very much fatigued, was in favor of an advance. I had similar views to those of Meade as to getting off the guns, but said I “would favor an advance if I could designate the point of attack.” Upon collecting the suffrages, Meade, Reynolds, and Howard voted squarely for an advance, Sickles and myself squarely no; upon which Hooker informed the council that he should take upon himself the responsibility of retiring the army to the other side of the river. As I stepped out of the tent Reynolds, just behind me, broke out, “What was the use of calling us together at this time of night when he intended to retreat anyhow?”
On the morning of May 5th, corps commanders were ordered to cut roads, where it was necessary, leading from their positions to the United States Ford. During the afternoon there was a very heavy rainfall. In the meantime Hooker had in person crossed the river, but, as he gave orders for the various corps to march at such and such times during the night, I am not aware that any of his corps generals knew of his departure. Near midnight I got a note from Meade informing me that General Hooker was on the other side of the river, which had risen over the bridges, and that communication was cut off from him. I immediately rode over to Hooker’s headquarters and found that I was in command of the army, if it had any commander. General Hunt, of the artillery, had brought the information as to the condition of the bridges, and from the reports there seemed to be danger of losing them entirely. After a short conference with Meade I told him that the recrossing would be suspended, and that “we would stay where we were and fight it out,” returning to my tent with the intention of enjoying what I had not had since the night of the 30th ultimo—a good sleep; but at 2 A.M., communication having been reëstablished, I received a sharp message from Hooker, to order the recrossing of the army as he had directed, and everything was safely transferred to the north bank of the Rappahannock.
In looking for the causes of the loss of Chancellorsville, the primary ones were that Hooker expected Lee to fall back without risking battle. Finding himself mistaken he assumed the defensive, and was outgeneraled and became demoralized by the superior tactical boldness of the enemy.
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1 Reprinted with permission from the “Philadelphia Times.”—EDITORS.
2 This idea originated with General Butterfield, who not only instituted the badges, but devised them in detail. As organized by Hooker the First Corps was commanded by Reynolds; the Second by Couch; the Third by Sickles; the Fifth by Meade; the Sixth by Sedgwick; the Eleventh by Howard; the Twelfth by Slocum, and the cavalry corps by Stoneman. In each corps the badge of the First Division was red; of the Second Division, white; of the Third Division, blue. After the battle of Chickamauga (Sept. 19th and 20th, 1863), the Eleventh and Twelfth corps were sent west, and on April 4th, 1864, they were consolidated to form the new Twentieth Corps, which retained the star of the Twelfth for a badge. The old Twentieth lost its designation Sept. 28th, 1863.—EDITORS.
3 General Hooker sent for me on the night of the 27th to ride over to his headquarters, where he explained to me, as next in rank, his plan of campaign. He informed me that, under certain contingencies, the right wing would be placed at my command. Although anticipat
ing the narrative, I may say I think it was a signal misfortune to our arms that he did not delay joining that wing until the morning of May 1st, when he would have found Banks’s Ford in our possession.—D.N.C.
4 The 5th Maine battery, Capt. G. F. Leppien, belonged to the First Corps. Captain Leppien and Lieutenants G. T. Stevens and A. B. Twitchell were wounded, Capt. Leppien mortally. Lieut. E. Kirby was the proper commander of Battery I, 1st U.S. Artillery, Second Corps. The 5th Maine lost 6 men killed and 19 wounded; 43 horses were disabled, and the guns were hauled off by hand.—EDITORS.
CHAPTER 2
STONEWALL JACKSON’S LAST BATTLE.
The Rev. James Power Smith, Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General, C.S.A.
At daybreak on the morning of the 29th of April, 1863, sleeping in our tents at corps headquarters, near Hamilton’s Crossing, we were aroused by Major Samuel Hale, of Early’s staff, with the stirring news that Federal troops were crossing the Rappahannock on pontoons under cover of a heavy fog. General Jackson had spent the night at Mr. Yerby’s hospitable mansion near by, where Mrs. Jackson [his second wife] had brought her infant child for the father to see. He was at once informed of the news, and promptly issued to his division commanders orders to prepare for action. At his direction I rode a mile across the fields to army headquarters, and finding General Robert E. Lee still slumbering quietly, at the suggestion of Colonel Venable, whom I found stirring, I entered the general’s tent and awoke him. Turning his feet out of his cot he sat upon its side as I gave him the tidings from the front. Expressing no surprise, he playfully said: “Well, I thought I heard firing, and was beginning to think it was time some of you young fellows were coming to tell me what it was all about. Tell your good general that I am sure he knows what to do. I will meet him at the front very soon.”
STONEWALL JACKSON’S CAP.
Major Jed. Hotchkiss, who owns the “old gray cap,” writes that Jackson wore it through the Valley, Seven Days, and Second Manassas campaigns. At Frederick City, in the Antietam campaign, he bought a soft hat for his general, who, at Fredericksburg, gave him the cap as a souvenir.—EDITORS.
It was Sedgwick who had crossed, and, marching along the river front to impress us with his numbers, was now intrenching his line on the river road, under cover of Federal batteries on the north bank.
LEE AND JACKSON IN COUNCIL ON THE NIGHT OF MAY 1.
All day long we lay in the old lines of the action of December preceding, watching the operation of the enemy. Nor did we move through the next day, the 30th of April. During the forenoon of the 29th General Lee had been informed by General J.E.B. Stuart of the movement in force by General Hooker across the Rappahannock upon Chancellorsville; and during the night of Thursday, April 30th, General Jackson withdrew his corps, leaving Early and his division with Barksdale’s brigade to hold the old lines from Hamilton’s Crossing along the rear of Fredericksburg.
By the light of a brilliant moon, at midnight, that passed into an early dawn of dense mist, the troops were moved, by the Old Mine road, out of sight of the enemy, and about 11 A.M. of Friday, May 1st, they reached Anderson’s position, confronting Hooker’s advance from Chancellorsville, near the Tabernacle Church on the Plank road. To meet the whole Army of the Potomac, under Hooker, General Lee had of all arms about 60,000 men. General Longstreet, with part of his corps, was absent below Petersburg. General Lee had two divisions of Longstreet’s corps, Anderson’s and McLaws’s, and Jackson’s corps, consisting of four divisions, A. P. Hill’s, D. H. Hill’s, commanded by Rodes, Trimble’s, commanded by Colston, and Early’s; and about 170 pieces of field-artillery. The divisions of Anderson and McLaws had been sent from Fredericksburg to meet Hooker’s advance from Chancellorsville; Anderson on Wednesday, and McLaws (except Barksdale’s brigade, left with Early) on Thursday. At the Tabernacle Church, about four miles east of Chancellorsville, the opposing forces met and brisk skirmishing began. On Friday, Jackson, reaching Anderson’s position, took command of the Confederate advance, and urged on his skirmish line under Brigadier-General Ramseur with great vigor. How the muskets rattled along a front of a mile or two, across the unfenced fields, and through the woodlands! What spirit was imparted to the line, and what cheers rolled along its length, when Jackson, and then Lee himself, appeared riding abreast of the line along the Plank road! Slowly but steadily the line advanced, until at night-fall all Federal pickets and skirmishers were driven back upon the body of Hooker’s force at Chancellorsville.
Here we reached a point, a mile and a half from Hooker’s lines, where a road turns down to the left toward the old Catherine Furnace; and here at the fork of the roads General Lee and General Jackson spent the night, resting on the pine straw, curtained only by the close shadow of the pine forest. A little after night-fall I was sent by General Lee upon an errand to General A. P. Hill, on the old stone turnpike a mile or two north; and returning some time later with information of matters on our right, I found General Jackson retired to rest, and General Lee sleeping at the foot of a tree, covered with his army cloak. As I aroused the sleeper, he slowly sat up on the ground and said, “Ah, Captain, you have returned, have you? Come here and tell me what you have learned on the right.” Laying his hand on me he drew me down by his side, and, passing his arm around my shoulder, drew me near to him in a fatherly way that told of his warm and kindly heart. When I had related such information as I had secured for him, he thanked me for accomplishing his commission, and then said he regretted that the young men about General Jackson had not relieved him of annoyance, by finding a battery of the enemy which had harassed our advance, adding that the young men of that day were not equal to what they were when he was a young man. Seeing immediately that he was jesting and disposed to rally me, as he often did young officers, I broke away from the hold on me which he tried to retain, and, as he laughed heartily through the stillness of the night, I went off to make a bed of my saddle-blanket, and, with my head in my saddle, near my horse’s feet, was soon wrapped in the heavy slumber of a wearied soldier.
Some time after midnight I was awakened by the chill of the early morning hours, and, turning over, caught a glimpse of a little flame on the slope above me, and sitting up to see what it meant, I saw, bending over a scant fire of twigs, two men seated on old cracker boxes and warming their hands over the little fire. I had but to rub my eyes and collect my wits to recognize the figures of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Who can tell the story of that quiet council of war between two sleeping armies? Nothing remains on record to tell of plans discussed, and dangers weighed, and a great purpose formed, but the story of the great day so soon to follow.
It was broad daylight, and the thick beams of yellow sunlight came through the pine branches, when some one touched me rudely with his foot, saying: “Get up, Smith, the general wants you!” As I leaped to my feet the rhythmic click of the canteens of marching infantry caught my ear. Already in motion! What could it mean? In a moment I was mounted and at the side of the general, who sat on his horse by the roadside, as the long line of our troops cheerily, but in silence as directed, poured down the Furnace road. His cap was pulled low over his eyes, and, looking up from under the visor, with lips compressed, indicating the firm purpose within, he nodded to me, and in brief and rapid utterance, without a superfluous word, as though all were distinctly formed in his mind and beyond question, he gave me orders for our wagon and ambulance trains. From the open fields in our rear, at the head of the Catharpin road, all trains were to be moved upon that road to Todd’s Tavern, and thence west by interior roads, so that our troops would be between them and the enemy at Chancellorsville. My orders having been delivered and the trains set in motion, I returned to the site of our night’s bivouac, to find that General Jackson and his staff had followed the marching column.
Slow and tedious is the advance of a mounted officer who has to pass, in narrow wood roads through dense thickets, the packed column of marching infantry, to be recognized all along the line and good-natur
edly chaffed by many a gay-spirited fellow: “Say, here’s one of Old Jack’s little boys, let him by, boys!” in the most patronizing tone. “Have a good breakfast this morning, sonny?” “Better hurry up, or you’ll catch it for getting behind.” “Tell Old Jack we’re all a-comin’.” “Don’t let him begin the fuss till we get thar!” And so on, until about 3 P.M., after a ride of ten miles of tortuous road, I found the general, seated on a stump by the Brock road, writing this dispatch, which, through the courtesy of the Virginia State Library, is here given in fac-simile. [See this page.]
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL THOMAS JONATHAN JACKSON, C.S.A. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN WINCHESTER, VA., IN 1862.
The place here mentioned as Chancellor’s was also known as Dowdall’s Tavern. It was the farm of the Rev. Melzi Chancellor, two miles west of Chancellorsville, and the Federal force found here and at Talley’s, a mile farther west, was the Eleventh Corps, under General Howard. General Fitz Lee, with cavalry scouts, had advanced until he had view of the position of Howard’s corps, and found them unsuspicious of attack.
Reaching the Orange Plank road, General Jackson himself rode with Fitz Lee to reconnoiter the position of Howard, and then sent the Stonewall brigade of Virginia troops, under Brigadier-General Paxton, to hold the point where the Germanna Plank road obliquely enters the Orange road. Leading the main column of his force farther on the Brock road to the old turnpike, the head of the column turned sharply eastward toward Chancellorsville. About a mile had been passed, when he halted and began the disposition of his forces to attack Howard. Rodes’s division, at the head of the column, was thrown into line of battle, with Colston’s forming the second line and A. P. Hill’s the third, while the artillery under Colonel Stapleton Crutchfield moved in column on the road, or was parked in a field on the right. The well-trained skirmishers of Rodes’s division, under Major Eugene Blackford, were thrown to the front. It must have been between 5 and 6 o’clock in the evening, Saturday, May 2d, when these dispositions were completed. Upon his stout-built, long-paced little sorrel, General Jackson sat, with visor low over his eyes and lips compressed, and with his watch in his hand. Upon his right sat General Robert E. Rodes, the very picture of a soldier, and every inch all that he appeared. Upon the right of Rodes sat Major Blackford.
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