General Oliver O. Howard.
General John Sedgwick.
R.D. Servoss, N.Y.
Jackson’s Attack on Howard, May 1st, 1863.
Nor was this the worst. Hooker’s right wing, under Howard, was weakly posted. On the 2d of May Stonewall Jackson, who cherished the theory that one man in an enemy’s rear is worth ten in his front, making a detour of fifteen miles, got upon Howard’s right unobserved, and rolled it up. The surprise was as complete as it was inexcusable. Arms were stacked and the men getting supper. Suddenly some startled deer came bounding into camp, gray-coats swarming from the woods hard behind. Almost at the first charge the whole corps broke and flee! But the victory cost the Confederates dear; Jackson was fatally wounded, probably by his own men.
All the next day the Union army fought on the defensive. Hooker was stunned in the course of it by a cannon-ball stroke upon the house-pillar against which he was leaning, and the army was left without a commanding mind. Sedgwick, who was to come up from below Fredericksburg and take Lee in the rear, found it impossible to do this in time, having to fight his way forward with great loss. When he drew near, Lee was enough at leisure to attend to him. Forty thousand troops, aching for the fray, were left idle while Lee was hammering away against the portion of the Union line commanded by Sickles. Ammunition gave out, and charge after charge had to be repulsed with the bayonet.
Sickles’s brave men at last yielded. The Confederate attack of May 4th was nearly all directed against Sedgwick, whose noble corps narrowly escaped capture. That night the whole army fell back to nearly its old position north of the Rappahannock. Except that at Fredericksburg it was the most disgraceful fiasco on either side during the war. It cost 17,000 men, and accomplished less than nothing. The South was elated. It proposed again to invade the North and this time dictate terms of peace.
Early in June Lee’s jubilant army, strengthened to 100,000, with 15,000 cavalry and 280 guns, started on its second grand Northern Campaign. It marched down the Shenandoah Valley, crossed the Potomac on the 25th, and headed for Chambersburg, Penn. The Army of the Potomac marched parallel with it, on the east side of the Blue Ridge, and crossed the Potomac a day later. Hooker suddenly resigned, and Meade was put in command.