We were marching out the plank-road as they brought this body in. Passing out of the clearing, the woods and undergrowth each side the road was so dense that we could not see into it a half-dozen steps. We had gone possibly a quarter of a mile when we were overtaken by a staff-officer, who in whispers ordered us to turn back, regardless of orders from the front, and get back to the Chancellorsville House as rapidly as possible, and to do so absolutely noiselessly; that a heavy force of rebels were in the woods on both sides of us, and we were in great danger of being cut to pieces and captured. We obeyed, and he rapidly worked his way to the front of the brigade and succeeded very quickly in getting us all safely out. We formed line near the Chancellorsville House and were resting on our arms when I noticed another brigade going down that same road from which we had just been so hurriedly gotten out. The circumstance was so strange that I inquired what brigade it was, and learned that it was Colonel (afterwards Governor) James A. Beaver's brigade of Hancock's division of our corps. They had been gone but a short time when the rebels opened upon them from both sides of the road, and they were very roughly handled. Colonel Beaver was soon brought back, supposed mortally wounded. I saw him as he was brought to the rear. It was said he was shot through the body. Afterwards, whilst he was governor, I mentioned the circumstance to him, and asked how he succeeded in fighting off the last enemy at that time. He said he then fully believed his wound was mortal. The bullet had struck him nearly midway of his body and appeared to have passed through and out of his back, and he was bleeding freely. He was brought to the hospital, where the corps surgeon—his own family physician at home—found him, and with an expression of countenance indicating the gravest fear proceeded to examine his wound. Suddenly, with a sigh of relief, he exclaimed: "Colonel, you are all right; the ball has struck a rib and followed it around and out." It was one of the hundreds of remarkable freaks performed by those ugly minie-balls during the war. Why that brigade should have been allowed to march into that ambuscade, from which we had so narrowly escaped, I could not understand. It was one of the early faux pas of that unfortunate comedy, rather tragedy of errors,—battle.
In view of the events of the next two days, it will be interesting to recall the somewhat windy order published to the army by General Hooker on the morning of the 1st of May, the date of the first day's battle, on which the events narrated in the last chapter occurred. This is the order:
Head-quarters Army of the Potomac,
Camp near Falmouth, Va., April 30, 1863.
It is with heartfelt satisfaction the commanding general announces to the army that the operations of the last three days have determined that our enemy must either ingloriously fly or come out from behind his defences and give us battle on our own ground, when certain destruction awaits him.
By command of Major-General Hooker.
S. Williams,
Asst. Adjt.-Gen'l.
My recollection recalls a phrase in this order reading something like this: "We have got the enemy where God Almighty can't save him, and he must either ingloriously," etc. I have been surprised not to find it in the records, and my memory is not alone in this respect, for a lieutenant-colonel of Portland, Me., in his account of this battle alludes to Hooker's blasphemous order.
The purpose of this order was to encourage the men and inspire them with the enthusiasm of forthcoming victory. But when we consider that the portion of the army operating around Chancellorsville was at that very moment apparently as thoroughly caged up in a wilderness of almost impenetrable undergrowth, which made it impossible to move troops, and into which one could not see a dozen feet, as though they were actually behind iron bars, it will be seen how little ground there was for encouragement. I can think of no better comparison of the situation than to liken it to a fleet of ships enveloped in a dense fog endeavoring to operate against another having the advantage of the open.
It will be remembered that when this movement commenced the Army of the Potomac numbered from one hundred and twenty thousand to one hundred and thirty thousand men, about double the opposing rebel force. Hooker divided this army, taking with him four corps, numbering probably seventy thousand men, to operate from Chancellorsville towards Fredericksburg, and leaving three corps, about fifty thousand men, under Sedgwick, to move upon the latter place from below. The purpose was to get Lee's army between these two forces and crush him. All historians of this battle agree that up to a certain point Hooker's strategy was most admirable. General Pleasanton, who commanded our cavalry forces in that action, says that up to a certain point the movement on Chancellorsville was one of the most brilliant in the annals of war. He put that point at the close of Thursday, April 30. He had made a full reconnoissance of all that country and had informed General Hooker of the nature of the ground, that for a depth of from four to five miles it was all unbroken tanglewood of the densest undergrowth, in which it was impossible to manœuvre an army or to know anything of the movements of the enemy; that beyond this wilderness the country was open and well adapted to military movements, and he had taken occasion to urge upon him the importance of moving forward at once, so as to meet the enemy in open ground, but his information and advice, he tells us, fell upon leaden ears.
Lee had, up to this time, no information of the movement upon Chancellorsville, having been wholly occupied with Sedgwick at Fredericksburg. The former was therefore a complete surprise to him. The "golden moment," according to Pleasanton, to move forward and carry the battle out into the open, where the army could have been handled and would have had a chance, was on that day, as instantly the movement was disclosed, the enemy, being familiar with every foot of the country, would detach a sufficient force to operate in the open, and along the edge of the wilderness could keep us practically bottled up there and beat us in detail; and that is precisely what seems to have been done. The inexplicable question is, Why did fighting "Joe Hooker," with seventy thousand as good troops as ever fired a gun, sit down in the middle of that tanglewood forest and allow Lee to make a monkey of him while Sedgwick was doing such magnificent work below?