ern troops, and finally gave way. General Sedgwick retreated rapidly but in good order to Banks's Ford, where a pontoon had been fortunately laid, and this enabled him to cross his men. The passage was effected under cover of darkness, the Southern cannon firing upon the retreating column; and, with this, ended the movement of General Sedgwick.

On Tuesday morning Lee returned with his men toward Chancellorsville, and during the whole day was busily engaged in preparation for a decisive attack upon General Hooker on the next morning.

When, however, the Southern sharp-shooters felt their way, at daylight, toward the Federal position, it was found that the works were entirely deserted.

General Hooker had recrossed the river, spreading pineboughs on the pontoon bridge to muffle the sound of his artillery-wheels.

So the great advance ended.

VII.

LEE'S GENERALSHIP AND PERSONAL DEMEANOR DURING THE CAMPAIGN.

THE movements of the two armies in the Chancellorsville campaign, as it is generally styled, have been so fully described in the foregoing pages, that little comment upon them is here necessary. The main feature which attracts attention, in surveying the whole series of operations, is the boldness, amounting to apparent recklessness, of Lee; and,

first, the excellent generalship, and then the extraordinary tissue of military errors, of General Hooker.

Up to the 1st of May, when he emerged from the Chancellorsville thicket, every thing had succeeded with the Federal commander, and deserved to succeed. He had successfully brought over his great force, which he himself described as the "finest army on the planet," and occupied strong ground east of Chancellorsville, on the road to Fredericksburg. General Sedgwick was absent at the latter place with a strong detachment of the army, but the main body covered Banks's Ford, but twelve miles from the city, and by the afternoon of this day the whole army might have been concentrated. Then the fate of Lee would seem to have been decided. He had not only a very small army, but that army was scattered, and liable to be cut off in detail. General Sedgwick menaced his right at Fredericksburg-General Hooker was in front of his left near Chancellorsville—and to crush one of these wings before the other could come to its assistance seemed a work of no very great difficulty. General Hooker appears, however, to have distrusted his ability to effect this result, and, finding that General Lee was advancing with his main body to attack him, retired, from his strong position in the open country, to the dense thicket around Chancellorsville. That this was a grave military error there can be no doubt, as, by this retrograde movement, General Hooker not only discouraged his troops, who had been elated by his confident and inspiring general orders, but lost the great advantage of the open country, where his large force could be successfully manœuvred.

Lee took instant advantage of this fault in his adversary,

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and boldly pressed the force retiring into the Wilderness, where, on the night of the 1st of May, General Hooker was shut up with his army. This unforeseen result presented the adversaries now in an entirely new light. The Federal army, which had been promised by its commander a speedy march upon Richmond in pursuit of Lee, had, instead of advancing, made a backward movement; and Lee, who it had been supposed would retreat, was now following and offering them battle.

The daring resolution of Lee, to divide his army and attack the Federal right, followed. It would seem unjust to General Hooker greatly to blame him for the success of that blow, which could not have been reasonably anticipated. In determining upon this, one of the most extraordinary movements of the war, General Lee proceeded in defiance of military rules, and was only justified in his course by the desperate character of the situation of affairs. It was impossible to make any impression upon General Hooker's front or left, owing to the elaborate defences in both quarters; it was, therefore, necessary either to retire, or attack in a different direction. As a retreat, however, upon Richmond would have surrendered to the enemy a large and fertile tract of country, it was desirable, if possible, to avoid that alternative; and the attack on the Federal right followed. The results of this were truly extraordinary. The force routed and driven back in disorder by General Jackson was but a single corps, and that corps, it is said, not a legitimate part of the old Army of the Potomac; but the disorder seems to have communicated itself to the whole army, and to have especially discouraged General Hooker. In describing the scene in question, we refrained

from dwelling upon the full extent of the confusion into which the Federal forces were thrown: some sentences, taken from Northern accounts, may lead to a better understanding of the result. After Jackson's assault, a Northern historian says: "The open plain around Chancellorsville presented such a spectacle as a simoom sweeping over the desert might make. Through the dusk of nightfall a rushing whirlwind of men and artillery and wagons swept down the road, past headquarters, and on toward the fords of the Rappahannock; and it was in vain that the staff opposed their persons and drawn sabres to the panic-stricken fugitives." Another writer, an eye-witness, says the spectacle presented was that of "solid columns of infantry retreating at double-quick; a dense mass of beings flying; hundreds of cavalry-horses, left riderless at the first discharge from the rebels, dashing frantically about in all directions; scores of batteries flying from the field; battery-wagons, ambulances, horses, men, cannon, caissons, all jumbled and tumbled together in one inextricable massthe stampede universal, the disgrace general.”

After all, however, it was but one corps of the Federal army which had been thus thrown into disorder, and General Hooker had no valid grounds for distrusting his ability to defeat Lee in a more decisive action. There are many reasons for coming to the conclusion that he did from that moment distrust his powers. He had courageously hastened to the assailed point, ordering the men to "throw themselves into the breach," and receive Jackson's troops "on the bayonet;" but, after this display of soldierly resolution, General Hooker appears to have lost some of that nerve which should never desert a soldier, and on the same night

sent engineers to trace out a new line of defences in his rear, to which, it seems, he already contemplated the probability of being forced to retire. Why he came to take this depressed view of the situation of affairs, it is difficult to say. One of General Sedgwick's corps reached him on this night, and his force at Chancellorsville still amounted to between ninety and one hundred thousand men, about thrice that of Lee. No decisive trial of strength had yet taken place between the two armies; and yet the larger force was constructing defences in rear to protect them from the smallera circumstance not tending, it would seem, to greatly encourage the troops whose commander was thus providing for a safe retreat.

The subsequent order to General Sedgwick to march up from Fredericksburg and assail Lee's right was judicious, and really saved the army from a great disaster. Lee was about to follow up the discouraged forces of General Hooker as they fell back toward the river; and, as the Southern army was flushed with victory, the surrender of the great body might have ensued. This possible result was prevented by the flank movement of General Sedgwick, and some gratitude for assistance so important from his able lieutenant would have seemed natural and graceful in General Hooker. This view of the subject does not seem, however, to have been taken by the Federal commander. He subsequently charged the defeat of Chancellorsville upon General Sedgwick, who he declared had "failed in a prompt compliance with his orders." The facts do not bear out

* General Hooker in Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part I., page 130. This great collection is a valuable repository of historic details, and contains the explanation of many interesting questions.