As soon as the trains were safely back, we drew off, marched back to the Blackwater, and thence en route for Richmond and Fredericksburg. Before we reached the former place a telegram came announcing the great battle and victory of Chancellorsville.
Passing through Richmond, I called to report to Secretary of War Seddon, who referred to affairs in Mississippi, stating that the department was trying to collect an army at Jackson, under General Joseph E. Johnston, sufficient to push Grant away from his circling lines about Vicksburg. He spoke of the difficulty of feeding as well as collecting an army of that magnitude in Mississippi, and asked my views.
The Union army under General Rosecrans was then facing the Confederate army under General Bragg in Tennessee, at Murfreesboro’ and Shelbyville.
I thought that General Grant had better facilities for collecting supplies and reinforcements on his new lines, and suggested that the only prospect of relieving Vicksburg that occurred to me was to send General Johnston and his troops about Jackson to reinforce General Bragg’s army; at the same time the two divisions of my command, then marching to join General Lee, to the same point; that the commands moving on converging lines could have rapid transit and be thrown in overwhelming numbers on Rosecrans before he could have help, break up his army, and march for Cincinnati and the Ohio River; that Grant’s was the only army that could be drawn to meet this move, and that the move must, therefore, relieve Vicksburg.
It was manifest before the war was accepted that the only way to equalize the contest was by skilful use of our interior lines, and this was so impressed by two years’ experience that it seemed time to force it upon the Richmond authorities. But foreign intervention was the ruling idea with the President, and he preferred that as the easiest solution of all problems.
The only objection offered by the Secretary was that Grant was such an obstinate fellow that he could only be induced to quit Vicksburg by terribly hard knocks.
On the contrary, I claimed that he was a soldier, and would obey the calls of his government, but was not lightly to be driven from his purpose.
My march was continued, and we joined General Lee at Fredericksburg, where I found him in sadness, notwithstanding that he was contemplating his great achievement and brilliant victory of Chancellorsville, for he had met with great loss as well as great gains. The battle had cost heavily of his army, but his grief was over the severe wounding of his great lieutenant, General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, the head of the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia; cut off, too, at a moment so much needed to finish his work in the battle so handsomely begun. With a brave heart, however, General Lee was getting his ranks together, and putting them in condition for other useful work.
At the time of the battle of Chancellorsville the Army of the Potomac, according to its return of a few days before, consisted of officers and men actually available for line of battle, 113,838, with 404 pieces of artillery.[120] The return of casualties showed the enormous loss of 17,287. Returns of the Army of Northern Virginia for March, 1863, showed an effective aggregate of 59,681;[121] batteries in action, about 160 guns. To this may possibly be added one thousand of troops returning during April in time for the battle. The casualties reported by the medical director numbered 10,281, but reports of the commanders showed over 12,000, not including artillery or cavalry, or slightly wounded and missing, which would probably add another thousand.
Chancellorsville is usually accepted as General Lee’s most brilliant achievement, and, considered as an independent affair, it was certainly grand. As I had no part in its active conduct, it is only apropos to this writing to consider the plan of battle as projected some four months previous,—i.e., to stand behind our intrenched lines and await the return of my troops from Suffolk.