JACKSON ROUTS HOWARD'S CORPS.

ridges occupied by his batteries, whence he opened on our left, upon our wagons in the cleared space around the Chancellorsville house, next morning.

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Sunset found him thus far advanced, holding the road over which the Rebels were originally marching; his division formed in square, with his artillery in the center; Barlow's brigade of the 5th corps, which had

up with him; but Whipple's division of the 3d and one of the 12th corps, which were to have covered his left, being invisibly distant.

The 3d (Sickles's) corps, having arrived by a hard march from below advanced to support his right, being Fredericksburg, had been mainly posted in reserve near our center, while Hooker, about daybreak, rode along his right, which he apprehended was too far extended, or not strongly posted, and which he found no wise prepared by earthworks and batteries for a flank attack; but he was assured by Slocum and Howard that they were equal to any emergency.

Thus our army stood still, when, at 8 A. M., Birney, commanding Sickles's 1st division, which had been thrown well forward toward our right, between the 12th and the 11th corps, reported a continuous movement of Rebel forces along his front toward our right; whereupon, Sickles, at his own suggestion, was ordered by Hooker to push forward Birney's division, followed by another, to look into the

matter.

Soon, panic-stricken fugitives from the 11th, now almost directly in Birney's rear, brought tidings of a great disaster. The Rebel movement to our right, along our front-which had been either culpably disregarded by Howard, or interpreted as a retreat of the Rebel army on Richmondhad culminated, a little before 6 P. M., in a grand burst of Stonewall Jackson, with 25,000 men, on the exposed flank of that corps. Emerging suddenly from the thick woods which enveloped that flank, and charging it from three sides, as it were, the Rebels caught some of our men preparing their suppers, with arms stacked, and gave them no time to recover. In a moment, the 1st division, Gen. Devens, was overwhelmed; its commander being among the the wounded, and one-third of his force, including every General and Colonel, either disabled or captured. Driven back in wild rout down the Chancellorsville road upon the position of Gen. Schurz, it was found that his division had already retreat

Birney, at 10 A. M., directed Clark's rifled battery to open on the Confederate wayfarers, which he did with great effect, throwing their column into disorder, and compelling it to abandon the road. The movement being evidently continued, however, on some road a little farther off, Sickles, at 1 P. M., directed Birney to charge the passing column; and he did so; bridging with rails a petty | ed-perhaps fled is the apter word— creek in his front, passing over his division and two batteries, and striking the rear of the Rebel column with such force that he captured and brought off 500 prisoners.

and an attempt made to rally and form here proved abortive; the 17th Connecticut, which bore a resolute part in the effort, had its Lt.-Col. killed and its Colonel severely woundSaturday, May 2.

ed. Back upon Steinwehr's division | Keenan, 8th Pennsylvania, he said, rolled the rabble rout, in spite of Howard's frantic exertions; and, although a semblance of organization and consistency was here maintained, the great majority of the corps poured down to Chancellorsville and beyond, spreading the infection of their panic, and threatening to stampede the entire army.

DEATH OF STONEWALL JACKSON.

fantry support worth naming for his batteries; and his few remaining troopers, being green recruits, were not adapted to such an emergency; yet these for a time were all the support he had.

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In front of these batteries, fell Stonewall Jackson, mortally wounded-by the fire of his own men, they say; " but it was dark, in dense woods, and men were falling all around him from our canister and grape; so that it is not impossible that he was among them. Prisoners taken by Pleasanton soon afterward told him that Jackson was mortally wounded, and mentioned other high officers as, like him, stricken down by our fire; adding that their forces were "badly cut up," and, "as to the men, they were disorganized." Still, it seems probable that Jackson fell by a fire from his own infantry, delivered in accordance with his orders.

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His loss was the greatest yet sustained by either party in the fall of a single man; though Sidney Johnston had probably military talents of a higher order. But Jackson's power over his men was unequaled; and it was justified by the soundness of his judgment as well as the intrepidity of his character. Contrary to the vulgar notion, his attacks were all well considered, and based on a careful calculation of forces; and he showed as high qualities in refusing to squander his men toward the close of the fray at Antietam, and again at Fredericksburg, as he did in his most brilliant charges. Accident seemed to favor him at times, especially in his later Valley campaign; but then, accident is apt to favor a commander who is never asleep when there is anything to be gained or hoped from being awake, and who, if required, can march his men forty miles per

36 “The Life of Stonewall Jackson, by a Vir-horse; Col. Crutchfield, Chief of Artillery, was ginian," gives the following account of his fall:

"Gen. Jackson ordered Gen. Hill to advance with his division, reserving his fire unless cavalry approached from the direction of the enemy; and then, with that burning and intense enthusiasm for conflict which lay under his calm exterior, hastened forward to the line of skirmishers who were hotly engaged in front. Such was his ardor, at this critical moment, and his anxiety to penetrate the movements of the enemy, doubly screened as they were by the dense forest and gathering darkness, that he rode ahead of his skirmishers, and exposed himself to a close and dangerous fire from the enemy's sharp-shooters, posted in the timber.

"So great was the danger which he thus ran, that one of his staff said: 'General, don't you think this is the wrong place for you?' He replied quickly: 'The danger is all over; the enemy is routed. Go back, and tell A. P. Hill to press right on!' Soon after giving this order, Gen. Jackson turned, and, accompanied by his staff and escort, rode back at a trot, on his wellknown Old Sorrel,' toward his own men. Unhappily, in the darkness-it was now 9 or 10 o'clock at night-the little body of horsemen was mistaken for Federal cavalry charging, and the regiments on the right and left of the road fired a sudden volley into them with the most lamentable results. Capt. Boswell, of Gen. Jackson's staff, was killed, and borne into our lines by his

wounded; and two couriers were killed. Gen. Jackson received one ball in his left arm, two inches below the shoulder joint, shattering the bone and severing the chief artery; a second passed through the same arm, between the elbow and wrist, making its exit through the palm of the hand; a third ball entered the palm of his right hand, about the middle, and, passing through, broke two of the bones.

"He fell from his horse, and was caught by Capt. Wormly, to whom he said, 'All my wounds

are by my own men.'

"The firing was responded to by the enemy, who made a sudden advance; and, the Confederates falling back, their foes actually charged over Jackson's body. He was not discovered, howturn, he was rescued. Ready hands placed him ever; and, the Federals being driven back in upon a litter, and he was borne to the rear, amid a heavy fire from the enemy. One of the litterbearers was shot down, and the General fell from the shoulders of the men, receiving a and injuring the side severely. The enemy's severe contusion, adding to the injury of the arm, fire of artillery on the point was terrible. Gen. Jackson was left for five minutes until the fire

slackened, then placed in an ambulance and carried to the field hospital at Wilderness Run."

He died, eight days afterward, at Guineas' Station, five miles from the place of his fall, and his remains rest at Lexington, Va., his home.

reason of Howard's sudden disaster; and his subordinates were paralyzed by their ignorance of this region of woods and dense thickets, in which they could rarely determine whether they were confronting a regiment or a division, and in which, with 60,000 men at hand, they were never able to put in half that number so as to render them of any service.

day. It is doubtful if all the advan- not merely concealed its inferiority tages, including prestige, which the in numbers, but rendered it immateRebels gained around Chancellors-rial; while Hooker had lost heart, by ville, were not dearly purchased by the loss of Thomas Jonathan Jackson. Pleasanton, no longer annoyed, proceeded with his work, getting batteries arranged, with caissons, &c., from the débris left behind by the stampeded corps, until he had forty guns in position, and three roads built across an adjacent marsh; so that, with the support of Sickles's infantry, he deemed his position tenable against the entire Rebel army. Sickles, who was again in communication with Hooker, advanced Birney's division at midnight, Hobart Ward's brigade in front, charging down the plank road, driving back the Rebels, and recovering a part of the ground lost by Howard; bringing away several of our abandoned guns and caissons. And now, reporting in person to Hooker, he was ordered to fall back on Chancellorsville-the collapse of the 11th corps having rendered our force inadequate, as was judged, for the defense of so extended a front. This order would seem to have been unfortunate. At daylight," Sickles commenced the movement-Birney in the rear-and was of course closely followed by the enemy, whose infantry filled the woods; but our men retired slowly and steadily, by successive formations, and left nothing to the enemy but one dismounted gun, a shattered caisson, and our dead.

At daylight, the Rebels pushed forward heavy columns on their chosen points of attack, infesting our whole front with sharp-shooters, and keeping each of our corps which they had determined not to attack in constant expectation of a charge in force. But their main effort was made from the west, by direct advance on Chancellorsville down the plank road on the ground wherefrom Howard had been hurled. Never did men charge with more desperate determination, more utter recklessness of their own lives, than did that morning the Rebels, now led by J. E. B. Stuart (A. P. Hill having been disabled soon after Jackson was, in front of Pleasanton's batteries), dashing themselves upon Sickles's corps; whose forty guns, ably fought, tore through their close ranks with frightful carnage. Those guns were supported by Berry's and Birney's divisions of their own corps; the remaining division (Whipple's) supporting Berry's, as Williams's (of Slocum's corps) supported Birney's. Charging up to the mouths of our cannon, the Rebels were mowed down by hundreds; but fresh regiments constantly succeeded those which had been shattered; until Sickles, finding 37 Sunday, May 3.

Lee's army was nearly all now concentrated in Hooker's front, and on his left flank, elated with its easy rout of the 11th corps and its general success; covered by woods, which

HOOKER STUNNED-SICKLES DRIVEN.

his cartridges running low, sent word to Hooker that he could not hold his ground without assistance.

Major Tremaine, who bore this message, found the General stunned and senseless. A cannon-ball had just now struck a pillar of the Chancellorsville house, against which he was leaning, and hurled him to the floor. He was supposed by his staff to be dead or dying; so Tremaine could get no response to Sickles's message; and, after sending once more to headquarters in vain, Sickles -his artillery being now out of ammunition-was obliged to recede to his second line of defenses, expecting to be sharply followed, and to be compelled to hold his ground with the bayonet. But the enemy's formation had been so completely pulverized by our guns, and their losses had been so fearful, that half an hour elapsed before they renewed their attack. Had a corps been promptly sent to his assistance, Sickles believes that victory was his own.

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that French and Hancock, with two divisions of Couch's corps,had charged the left of the Rebel attacking force, then threatening Meade's front, and forced it back. But this scarcely abated the pressure on Sickles, who was freshly assailed in his new position, and-being still nearly destitute of ammunition-was again compelled to recoil, after repelling, mainly with the bayonet, five fierce charges, and capturing eight flags. Under Couch's orders, our army was generally withdrawn a mile northward, or toward the Rappahannock, leaving the wreck of the Chancellorsville house to the enemy, whose guns had by this time reduced it to a heap of ruins.

Sickles testified, when before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, that only his and a part of the 12th (Slocum's) corps were engaged when he first sent to Hooker for help; and that, with 10,000 of the 30,000 then unengaged, he could have won a decided victory. As it was, the fact that he lost no prisonThe precious hour passed, while ers, while he took several hundred, our army was without a head. Gen. and that nearly 4,000 of his 18,000 Couch was next in rank, and might men were that day disabled, includhave assumed active command during two of his three division coming Hooker's insensibility, but hesi-manders (Berry and Whipple) killed, tated to do so. Nothing had been and Gen. Mott, of the New Jersey done to relieve Sickles's corps of the brigade, wounded, without the loss weight of all Jackson's force, save of a gun on his repeated retreats,

38 Sickles, in his testimony, says:

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Gen. Hancock, commanding a division of the 2d corps, thus describes, in his testimony, the retirement of our army from Chancellorsville:

"At the conclusion of the battle of Sunday, Capt. Seeley's battery, which was the last that fired a shot in the battle of Chancellorsville, had 45 "My position was on the other side of the horses killed, and in the neighborhood of 40 men Chancellor house; and I had a fair view of this killed and wounded; but, being a soldier of great battle, although my troops were facing and fightpride and ambition, and not wishing to leave any ing the other way. The first lines referred to of his material in the hands of the enemy, he finally melted away, and the whole front apwithdrew so entirely at his leisure that he car-peared to pass out. First the 3d corps went ried off all the harness from his dead horses, loading his cannoniers with it; he even took a part of a set of harness on his own arm, and so moved to the rear. I think this is as significant a fact as I can state to you, indicating the inability of the enemy to follow up."

out; then the 12th corps, after fighting a long time; and there was nothing left on that part of the line but my own division--that is, on that extreme point of the line on the side of the Chancellor house toward the enemy. I was directed to hold that position until a change of