[18] The troops carried eight days’ supplies: three days’ cooked rations with bread and groceries in the haversacks; five days’ bread and groceries in the knapsacks; five days’ “beef on the hoof.” The total weight carried by each man, including sixty rounds of ammunition, was 45 pounds. The reserve ammunition was carried principally by pack mules, and only a small number of waggons crossed the Rappahannock. Four pontoon bridges were laid by the engineers. One bridge took three-quarters of an hour to lay; the other three, one and a half hour to lay, and an hour to take up. Each bridge was from 100 to 140 yards long. O.R., vol. xxv, pp. 215, 216.
[19] Balloons, which had been first used in the Peninsular campaign, were not much dreaded by the Confederates. “The experience of twenty months’ warfare has taught them how little formidable such engines of war are.” Special Correspondent of the Times at Fredericksburg, January 1, 1863.
[20] O.R., vol. xxv, p. 306.
[21] O.R., vol. xxv, p. 764.
[22] Memoirs of the Confederate War. Heros von Boreke.
[23] O.R., vol. xxv, p. 324.
[24] O.R., vol. xxv, pp. 323, 336.
[25] Ibid., p. 326. The telegraph, however, appears to have worked badly, and dispatches took several hours to pass from Falmouth to Chancellorsville.
[26] Ibid., p. 327.
[27] The following letter (O.R., vol. xxv, p. 337) is interesting as showing the state of mind into which the commanders of detached forces are liable to be thrown by the absence of information:—