CH. V] BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE 219 The Union soldiers resisted bravely. Officers and men made praiseworthy efforts, but there was no guiding head; nothing was effective that emanated from headquarters. Thirty to thirty-five thousand fresh troops, near at hand and eager to fight, were not called into action. Lincoln's parting injunction to Hooker on his visit to the Army of the Potomac in April, "In your next battle put in all your men" had gone unheeded. 1 Shortly after 9 o'clock in the morning, Hooker was knocked senseless by a cannon-ball striking a pillar of the Chancellor House veranda against which he was leaning;1 but at that time the battle was practically lost. "By 10 A.M.," said Lee in his report, "we were in full possession of the field.” us. The rest of the Battle of Chancellorsville need not detain At midnight of May 4, Hooker assembled his accessible corps commanders to consider the question whether he should withdraw the army to the north side of the river. Couch and Sickles voted for its withdrawal. Meade, Reynolds and Howard favored an advance which would bring on another battle. Then Hooker said he should take upon himself the responsibility of recrossing the river.2 This movement was accomplished safely and without molestation. The loss of the Union Army in the Chancellorsville campaign was 16,792; that of the Confederate. 12,764.3 Hooker throughout was free from the influence of alcohol. Accustomed as he was to the use of whiskey, he had entirely stopped drinking probably at the outset of this campaign or, at all events, not later than the day when he reached Chancellorsville. His defeat was due to lack of 4 1 Hooker recovered and directed the retreat of his army. 2 Couch, B. & L., III, 171. 4 IV, 264 n.; General Meade, I, 365. 8 T. L. Livermore, 98. 220 BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE [1863 ability and nerve. Meade's account of him at this time explains the whole episode. "General Hooker has disappointed all his friends by failing to show his fighting qualities at the pinch," Meade wrote to his wife on May 8. "He was more cautious and took to digging quicker than even McClellan, thus proving that a man may talk very big when he has no responsibility, but that it is quite a different thing, acting when you are responsible and talking when others are. Who would have believed a few days ago that Hooker would withdraw his army, in opposition to the opinion of a majority of his corps commanders? ... Poor Hooker himself, after he had determined to withdraw, said to me, in the most desponding manner, that he was ready to turn over to me the Army of the Potomac; that he had enough of it and almost wished he had never been born." 1 But when all is said Chancellorsville remains a brilliant victory for Lee. To have overcome with his hungry illclad troops an army double their number and abundantly supplied could only be the work of one who mastered men by his intellectual and moral greatness. Sound reasoning, ceaseless vigilance and unusual self-sacrifice were conspicuous on the Confederate side; not on the Union. Jackson, on the night before his flanking march, lay down to sleep at the foot of a pine tree and was covered by his adjutant with the cape of his overcoat; but when the adjutant fell asleep the general arose, spread the cape over him and slept without covering, awakening chilled and with a cold. Then declining a family breakfast that was being prepared for him, he gave his whole attention to pushing forward his troops.2 Howard, on the eve of a "ridiculous and 1 General Meade, I, 372, 373. CH. V] BATTLE OF CHANCELLORSVILLE 221 stupid surprise," although only in his thirty-third year, could not forego his noonday nap. While calmly awaiting the result of Jackson's flank movement and on the alert for any chance, Lee wrote a remarkable letter to Davis, from which may be seen his appreciation of the risk that he was taking and his resource in the event of failure. "If I had with me all my command," he wrote, "and could keep it supplied with provisions and forage, I should feel easy, but, as far as I can judge, the advantage of numbers and position is greatly in favor of the enemy. While Jackson was crushing the right of the Union Army, "Hooker with his two aides, sat on the veranda of the Chancellor House, enjoying the summer evening" 3; his first warning of the actual disaster was the flight of disordered fugitives from his Eleventh Corps.* The news from the battle-field received by the War Department and the President was meagre and unsatisfactory. Welles wrote in his Diary on May 4, "I this afternoon met the President at the War Department. He said he had a feverish anxiety to get facts; was constantly up and down, for nothing reliable came from the front. There is an impression which is very general that our Army has been successful, but that there has been great slaughter, and that still fiercer and more terrible fights are impending." 5 When the President received the telegram announcing the withdrawal of the army to the north side of the Rappahannock, he cried out, "My God! My God! What 2 O. R., XXV, Pt. II, 765. 1 Hamlin, 50. 'J. Bigelow Jr., 301. * Authorities: O. R., XXV, Pts. I, II; W. R. Livermore, I; J. Bigelow Jr.; General Meade, I; Hamlin; B. & L., III; C. W., 1865, I; Welles's Diary, I; Schurz, Reminiscences, II; Alexander; IV; Dabney; Lieut.-Col. Henderson; Fitzhugh Lee; Pennypacker; Bache; Smith, Milt. Hist. Soc., V. 5 Welles's Diary, I, 291. 222 EFFECT OF CHANCELLORSVILLE [1863 will the country say! What will the country say!" 1 On the same day [May 6] Sumner came from the "extremely dejected" President to Welles's office and "raising both hands, exclaimed 'Lost, lost, all is lost!'" 2 Owing to the censorship of the telegraph by the War Department, the news of the disaster at Chancellorsville reached the North slowly. When its full extent became known, discouragement ruled. Many men who were earnest in support of the war now gave up all hope that the South could be conquered. Nothing demonstrates more painfully the sense of failure of the North to find a successful general than the serious and apparently well-considered suggestion of the Chicago Tribune that Abraham Lincoln take the field as the actual commander of the Army of the Potomac. We sincerely believe, the writer of this article concluded, that "Old Abe" can lead our armies to victory. "If he does not, who will?" 3 Nevertheless, the gloom and sickness at heart so apparent after the first and second Bull Run, the defeat of McClellan before Richmond and the battle of Fredericksburg, are not discernible after Chancellorsville in nearly the same degree. It is true that the newspapers were now become a less accurate reflection of public sentiment than in the earlier stages of the war. A great deal of editorial writing was being done unmistakably for the purpose of keeping up the readers' hope; but even after the evidence of the newspapers is corrected by the recollections of contemporaries as printed or as existing only in tradition, it is impossible to escape the inference that the depression was different in kind and in measure from that which had prevailed on other occasions. Business, which had begun to improve ́in the autumn of 1862, was now decidedly brisk. An era 1 Noah Brooks, 58. 2 Welles's Diary, I, 293. 3 3 May 23. CH. V] EFFECT OF CHANCELLORSVILLE 223 of money-making had opened, manifesting itself in wild speculation on the stock exchanges, in the multiplication of legitimate transactions and in the savings of the people finding an investment in government bonds. A belief is also noticeable that the war had helped trade and manufactures. The Government was a large purchaser of material; one activity was breeding another; men honestly,' and in some cases dishonestly, were gaining profits, although the State was in distress. When the news of the defeat at Chancellorsville reached New York, gold rose in price temporarily, but railroad stocks, at first unsettled, soon resumed their active advance, while government bonds remained steady and the subscription of the public to the five-twenties still went on. That men had ceased to enlist was an indication not alone of the people's weariness of the war, but also of the many opportunities of lucrative employment offered by the improvement in business. The war, so far as getting privates into the army was concerned, had become a trade. Men were induced to shoulder the musket by bounties from the national government, States, towns and city wards. |