The Civil War Through the Camera - Henry W. Elson

While this engagement was at its height General Hooker, leaning against a pillar of the Chancellor house, was felled to the ground, and for a moment it was thought he was killed. The pillar had been shattered by a cannon-ball. Hooker soon revived under the doctor’s care and with great force of will he mounted his horse and showed himself to his anxious troops. He then withdrew his army to a stronger position, well guarded with artillery. The Confederates did not attempt to assail it. The third day’s struggle at Chancellorsville was finished by noon, except in Lee’s rear, where Sedgwick fought all day, without success, to reach the main body of Hooker’s army. The Federals suffered very serious losses during this day’s contest. Even then it was believed that the advantage rested with the larger Army of the Potomac and that the Federals had an opportunity to win. Thirty-seven thousand Union troops, the First, and three-quarters of the Fifth Corps, had been entirely out of the fight on that day. Five thousand men of the Eleventh Corps, who were eager to retrieve their misfortune, were also inactive.

When night came, and the shades of darkness hid the sights of suffering on the battlefield, the Federal army was resting in a huge curve, the left wing on the Rappahannock and the right on the Rapidan. In this way the fords across the rivers which led to safety were in control of the Army of the Potomac. Lee moved his corps close to the bivouacs of the army in blue. But, behind the Confederate battle-line, there was a new factor in the struggle in the person of Sedgwick, with the remnants of his gallant corps, which had numbered nearly twenty-two thousand when they started for the front, but now were depleted by their terrific charge upon Marye’s Heights and the subsequent hard and desperate struggle with Early in the afternoon.

Lee was between two fires—Hooker in front and Sedgwick in the rear, both of whose forces were too strong to be attacked simultaneously. Again the daring leader of the Confederate legions did the unexpected, and divided his army in the presence of the foe, though he was without the aid of his great lieutenant, “Stonewall” Jackson.

During the night Lee made his preparations, and when dawn appeared in the eastern skies the movement began. Sedgwick, weak and battered by his contact with Early on the preceding afternoon, resisted bravely, but to no avail, and the Confederates closed in upon him on three sides, leaving the way to Banks’s Ford on the Rappahannock open to escape. Slowly the Federals retreated and, as night descended, rested upon the river bank. After dark the return to the northern side was begun by Sedgwick’s men, and the Chancellorsville campaign was practically ended.

The long, deep trenches full of Federal and Confederate dead told the awful story of Chancellorsville. If we gaze into these trenches, which by human impulse we are led to do, after the roar and din of the carnage is still, the scene greeting the eye will never be forgotten. Side by side, the heroes in torn and bloody uniforms, their only shrouds, were gently laid.

The Union loss in killed and wounded was a little over seventeen thousand, and it cost the South thirteen thousand men to gain this victory on the banks of the Rappahannock. The loss to both armies in officers was very heavy.

The two armies were weary and more than decimated. It appeared that both were glad at the prospect of a cessation of hostilities. On the night of May 5th, in a severe storm, Hooker conveyed his corps safely across the river and settled the men again in their cantonments of the preceding winter at Falmouth. The Confederates returned to their old encampment at Fredericksburg.