"I infer that Lee and Jackson will not attack Sedgwick at Fredericksburg. They will go for Hooker. They will strike where the enemy is strongest. It's their way, isn't it?"
"Right, of course, Harry. We'll be marching against Hooker long before the dawn."
Dalton's prediction came true earlier than he had expected. Jackson marched at midnight from his position on the Massaponnax Hills to join the small command of Anderson, which alone faced Hooker. He was as silent as ever, the figure bent forward a little and the brow knitted with thought. Close behind him came his staff, Harry and Dalton knee to knee. They had known as soon as Jackson mounted his horse and turned his head southwestward that they were marching toward the Wilderness and against Hooker. Sedgwick at Fredericksburg might do as he pleased.
Harry and Dalton were glad. They were quite sure now that Lee and Jackson had formed their plan, and, as they had formed it, it must be good. It was a long ride under the moon and stars. There was but little talk along the lines. The noises were those of marching feet and not of men's voices. All the troops felt the mystery and solemnity of the night and the deep import of their unknown mission.
The dawn found them still marching, but that dawn was again heavy with the fogs and mists that rose from the broad river. The three Northern balloons could see nothing. The signalmen were of no avail. The clouds of vapor rolled over the ruins of Fredericksburg and along the hills south of the river. Neither Sedgwick and his men nor any of the Union officers on the other shore knew that Jackson had gone, leaving only a rear guard behind. Before the fog had cleared away Jackson with his fighting generals had joined Anderson and they were forming a powerful line of battle near Chancellorsville and facing Hooker.
Harry now heard much of this name Chancellorsville, destined to become so famous, and he said it over and over again to himself. And yet it was not a town, nor even a village. Here stood a large house, with the usual pillared porticoes, built long since by the Chancellor family and inhabited by them in their generation, but now turned into a country inn. Yet it had importance. Roads ran from it in various directions and in territories very unlike, including the strange and weird region known as the Wilderness.
Hooker had come through the Wilderness with his main force, and was now forming a line of battle in front of it in the open country, when for some reason never fully known he fell back on Chancellorsville and began to concentrate his army in the edge of the Wilderness.
Harry, riding with Dalton and some others to inspect the enemy's front through their glasses, saw this gloomy forest, destined to such a terrible fame not alone from the coming battle, but from others as great. Nature could have chosen no more fitting spot for the mighty sacrifice to save the Union, because here everything is dark, solemn and desolate.
For twenty miles one way and fifteen the other the Wilderness stretched its somber expanse. The ancient forest had been cut away long since and the thin, light soil had produced a sea of scrub and thickets in its place, in which most of the houses were the huts of charcoal burners. The undergrowth and jungle were often impenetrable, save by some lone hunter or wild animal. The gnarled and knotted oaks were distorted and the bushes, even in the flush of a May morning, were black and ugly. At evening it was indescribably desolate, and save when the armies came there was no sound but the lone cry of the whip-poor-will, one of the saddest of all notes.
It was upon this forest that Harry looked, and he wondered, as many officers much older and much higher in rank than he wondered, that Hooker, with forces so much superior, should draw back into its shades. And many of the Union generals, too, had protested in vain against Hooker's orders. They knew, as the Confederate generals knew, that Hooker was a brave man, and they never understood it then or afterwards.