A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee

by John Esten Cooke

The subsequent order to General Sedgwick to march up from Fredericksburg and assail Lee's right was judicious, and really saved the army from a great disaster. Lee was about to follow up the discouraged forces of General Hooker as they fell back toward the river; and, as the Southern army was flushed with victory, the surrender of the great body might have ensued. This possible result was prevented by the flank movement of General Sedgwick, and some gratitude for assistance so important from his able lieutenant would have seemed natural and graceful in General Hooker. This view of the subject does not seem, however, to have been taken by the Federal commander. He subsequently charged the defeat of Chancellorsville upon General Sedgwick, who he declared had "failed in a prompt compliance with his orders."[1] The facts do not bear out this charge, as the reader has seen. General Sedgwick received the order toward midnight on Saturday, and, at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, had passed over that stubborn "stone wall" which, in the battle of the preceding December, General Hooker's column had not even been able to reach; had stormed Marye's Hill, which General Hooker had described, in vindication of his own failure to carry the position, as "masonry," "a fortification," and "a mountain of rock;" and had marched thereafter so promptly as to force Lee, in his own defence, to arrest the second advance upon the Federal main body, and divert a considerable force to meet the attack on his flank.

[Footnote 1: General Hooker in Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, Part I., page 130. This great collection is a valuable repository of historic details, and contains the explanation of many interesting questions.]

After the repulse of General Sedgwick, and his retreat across the Rappahannock, General Hooker seems to have been completely discouraged, and hastened to put the river between himself and Lee. His losses in the battles of Saturday and Sunday had amounted to seventeen thousand one hundred and ninety-seven killed and wounded and missing, fourteen pieces of artillery, and twenty thousand stand of arms. The Confederate loss was ten thousand two hundred and eighty-one. Contrary to the ordinary course of things the assailing force had lost a less number of men than that assailed.

The foregoing reflections, which necessarily involve a criticism of General Hooker, arise naturally from a review of the events of the campaign, and seem justified by the circumstances. There can be no inducement for the present writer to underrate the military ability of the Federal commander, as that want of ability rather detracts from than adds to the merit of General Lee in defeating him. It may be said, indeed, that without these errors and shortcomings of General Hooker, Lee, humanly speaking, must have been either defeated or forced to retire upon Richmond.

After giving full weight, however, to all the advantages derived from the extraordinary Federal oversights and mistakes, General Lee's merit in this campaign was greater, perhaps, than in any other during his entire career. Had he left behind him no other record than this, it alone would have been sufficient to have conferred upon him the first glories of arms, and handed his name down to posterity as that of one of the greatest soldiers of history. It is difficult to discover a single error committed by him, in the whole series of movements, from the moment when General Sedgwick crossed at Fredericksburg, to the time of General Hooker's retreat beyond the Rappahannock. It may appear that there was unnecessary delay in permitting Tuesday to pass without a final advance upon General Hooker, in his second line of intrenchments; but, no doubt, many circumstances induced Lee to defer this attack—the fatigue of his troops, consequent upon the fighting of the four preceding days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday; the necessity of reforming his battalions for the final blow; and the anticipation that General Hooker, who still had at his command a force of more than one hundred thousand men, would not so promptly relinquish his campaign, and retire.

With the exception of this error, if it be such, Lee had made no single false step in the whole of his movements. The campaign was round, perfect, and complete—such as a student of the art of war might pore over, and analyze as an instance of the greatest principles of military science "clothed in act." The most striking features of Lee's movements were their rapidity and audacity. It had been the fashion with some persons to speak of Lee as slow and cautious in his operations, and this criticism had not been completely silenced even in the winter of 1862, when his failure to crush General Burnside afforded his detractors another opportunity of repeating the old charge. After the Chancellorsville campaign these fault-finders were silenced—no one could be found to listen to them. The whole Southern movement completely contradicted their theory. At the first intelligence of the advance of General Hooker's main body across the upper Rappahannock, Lee rode rapidly in that direction, and ordered his troops at the fords of the river to fall back to Chancellorsville. He then returned, and, finding that General Sedgwick had crossed at Fredericksburg, held a prompt consultation with Jackson, when it was decided at once to concentrate the main body of the army in front of General Hooker's column. At the word, Jackson moved; Lee followed. On the 1st of May, the enemy were pressed back upon Chancellorsville; on the 2d, his right was crushed, and his army thrown into confusion; on the 3d, he was driven from Chancellorsville, and, but for the flank movement of General Sedgwick, which Lee was not in sufficient force to prevent, General Hooker would, upon that same day, Sunday, have in all probability suffered a decisive defeat.

In the course of four days Lee had thus advanced, and checked, and then attacked and repulsed with heavy slaughter, an army thrice as large as his own. On the last day of April he had been nearly enveloped by a host of about one hundred and twenty thousand men. On the 3d day of May their main body was in disorderly retreat; and at daylight on the morning of the 6th there was not a Federal soldier, with the exception of the prisoners taken, on the southern bank of the Rappahannock.

During all these critical scenes, when the fate of the Confederate capital, and possibly of the Southern cause, hung suspended in the balance, General Lee preserved, as thousands of persons can testify, the most admirable serenity and composure, without that jubilant confidence displayed by General Hooker in his address to the troops, and the exclamations to his officers. Lee was equally free from gloom or any species of depression. His spirits seemed to rise under the pressure upon him, and at times he was almost gay. When one of General Jackson's aides hastened into his tent near Fredericksburg, and with great animation informed him that the enemy were crossing the river, in heavy force in his front, he seemed to be amused by that circumstance, and said, smiling: "Well, I heard firing, and I was beginning to think it was time some of you lazy young fellows were coming to tell me what it was all about. Say to General Jackson that he knows just as well what to do with the enemy as I do."

The commander-in-chief who could find time at such a moment to indulge in badinage, must have possessed excellent nerve; and this composure, mingled with a certain buoyant hopefulness, as of one sure of the event, remained with Lee throughout the whole great wrestle with General Hooker. He retained to the end his simple and quiet manner, divested of every thing like excitement. In the consultation with Jackson, on the night of the 1st of May, when the crisis was so critical, his demeanor indicated no anxiety; and when, as we have said, the news came of Jackson's wound, he said simply, "Sit down here, by me, captain, and tell me all about the fight last evening"—adding, "Ah! captain, any victory is dearly bought which deprives us of the services of General Jackson even for a short time. Don't talk about it—thank God, it is no worse!" The turns of expression here are those of a person who permits nothing to disturb his serenity, and indulges his gentler and tenderer feelings even in the hot atmosphere of a great conflict. The picture presented is surely an interesting and beautiful one. The human being who uttered the good-natured criticism at the expense of the "lazy young fellows," and who greeted the news of Jackson's misfortune with a sigh as tender as that of a woman, was the soldier who had "seized the masses of his force with the grasp of a Titan, and swung them into position as a giant might fling a mighty stone." To General Hooker's threat to crush him, he had responded by crushing General Hooker; nearly surrounded by the huge cordon of the Federal army, he had cut the cordon and emerged in safety. General Hooker with his one hundred thousand men had retreated to the north bank of the Rappahannock, and, on the south bank, Lee with his thirty thousand remained erect, threatening, and triumphant.

We have not presented in these pages the orders of Lee, on various occasions, as these papers are for the most part of an "official" character, and not of great interest to the general reader. We shall, however, occasionally present these documents, and here lay before the reader the orders of both General Hooker and General Lee, after the battle of Chancellorsville, giving precedence to the former. The order of the Federal commander was as follows: