“Headquarters, First Corps, May 1, 1863.
“Major-General Sedgwick,—I think the proper view to take of affairs is this: If they have not detached more than A. P. Hill’s division from our front, they have been keeping up appearances, showing weakness, with a view of delaying Hooker, and tempting us to make an attack on their fortified position, and hoping to destroy us and strike for our depôt over our bridges. We ought therefore, in my judgment, to know something of what has transpired on our right.
“JOHN F. REYNOLDS, Major-General.”
[28] Dispatch of Chief of the Staff to Hooker, dated 4 p.m., May 1. O.R., vol. xxv, p. 326.
Chapter XXIV
CHANCELLORSVILLE (continued)
At a council of war held during the night at Chancellorville House, the Federal generals were by no means unanimous as to the operations of the morrow. Some of the generals advised an early assault. Others favoured a strictly defensive attitude. Hooker himself wished to contract his lines so as to strengthen them; but as the officers commanding on the right were confident of the strength of their intrenchments, it was at length determined that the army should await attack in its present position.
Three miles down the plank road, under a grove of oak and pine, Lee and Jackson, while their wearied soldiers slept around them, planned for the fourth and the last time the overthrow of the great army with which Lincoln still hoped to capture Richmond. At this council there was no difference of opinion. If Hooker had not retreated before the morning—and Jackson thought it possible he was already demoralised—he was to be attacked. The situation admitted of no other course. It was undoubtedly a hazardous operation for an inferior force to assault an intrenched position; but the Federal army was divided, the right wing involved in a difficult and unexplored country, with which the Confederate generals and staff were more or less familiar, and an opportunity so favourable might never recur. “Fortune,” says Napoleon, “is a woman, who must be wooed while she is in the mood. If her favours are rejected, she does not offer them again.” The only question was where the attack should be delivered. Lee himself had reconnoitred the enemy’s left. It was very utrong, resting on the Rappahannock, and covered by a stream called Mineral Spring Run. Two of Jackson’s staff officers had reconnoitred the front, and had pronounced it impregnable, except at a fearful sacrifice of life. But while the generals were debating, Stuart rode in with the reports of his cavalry officers, and the weak point of the position was at once revealed. General Fitzhugh Lee, to whose skill and activity the victory of Chancellorsville was in great part due, had discovered that the Federal right, on the plank road, was completely in the air; that is, it was protected by no natural obstacle, and the breastworks faced south, and south only. It was evident that attack from the west or north-west was not anticipated, and Lee at once seized upon the chance of effecting a surprise.
Yet the difficulties of the proposed operation were very great. To transfer a turning column to a point from which the Federal right might be effectively outflanked necessitated a long march by the narrow and intricate roadways of the Wilderness, and a division of the Confederate army into two parts, between which communication would be most precarious. To take advantage of the opportunity the first rule of war must be violated. But as it has already been said, the rules of war only point out the dangers which are incurred by breaking them; and, in this case, before an enemy on the defensive from whom the separation might be concealed until it is too late for him to intervene, the risks of dispersion were much reduced. The chief danger lay in this, that the two wings, each left to its own resources, might fail to act in combination, just as within the past twenty-four hours Hooker and Sedgwick had failed. But Lee knew that in Jackson he possessed a lieutenant whose resolution was invincible, and that the turning column, if entrusted to his charge, would be pushed forward without stop or stay until it had either joined hands with the main body, or had been annihilated.
Moreover, the battle of Fredericksburg had taught both armies that the elaborate constructions of the engineer are not the only or the most useful resources of fortification. Hooker had ordered his position to be intrenched in the hope that Lee and Jackson, following Burnside’s example, would dash their divisions into fragments against them and thus become an easy prey. Lee, with a broader appreciation of the true tactical bearing of ditch and parapet, determined to employ them as a shelter for his own force until Jackson’s movement was completed, and the time had come for a general advance. Orders were at once sent to General McLaws to cover his front, extending across the pike and the plank roads, with a line of breastworks; and long before daylight the soldiers of his division, with the scanty means at their disposal, were busy as beavers amongst the timber.