At dawn they looked and saw the piles of the slain wrapped in white shrouds of snow. The shivering, ragged, gray figures, thinly clad, swept down the hill, stripped the dead and shook the frost from the warm clothes.
Burnsides fell before the genius of Lee and Hooker was put in his place.
Fighting Joe Hooker they called him. At Chancellorsville a few months later he led his reorganized army across the same river and threw it on Lee with supreme confidence in the results. He led an army of one hundred and thirty thousand men in seven grand divisions backed by four hundred and forty-eight great guns.
Lee, still on the hills behind Fredericksburg, had sixty-two thousand men and one hundred and seventy guns. He had sent Longstreet's corps into Tennessee.
Hooker threw the flower of his army across the river seven miles above Fredericksburg to flank Lee and strike him from the rear while the remainder of his army crossed in front and between the two he would crush the Confederate army as an eggshell.
But the unexpected happened. Lee was not only a stark fighter. He was a supreme master of the art of war. He understood Hooker's move from the moment it began. His gray army had already slipped out of his trenches and were feeling their way through the tangled vines and underbrush with sure, ominous tread. In this wilderness Hooker's four hundred guns would be as useless as his own hundred and seventy. It would be a hand-to-hand fight in the tangled brush. The gray veteran was a dead shot and he was creeping through his own native woods. On this beautiful May morning, Lee, Jackson, and Stuart met in conference before the battle opened. The plan was chosen. Lee would open the battle and hold Hooker at close range. Jackson would "retreat." Out of sight, he would turn, march swiftly ten miles around their right wing and smash it before sundown.
At five o'clock in the afternoon while Lee held Hooker's front, Jackson's corps crept into position in Hooker's rear. The shrill note of a bugle rang from the woods and the yelling gray lines of death swept down on their unsuspecting foe. Without support the shattered right wing was crushed, crumpled and rolled back in confusion.
At eight o'clock Jackson, pressing forward in the twilight, was mortally wounded by his own men and Stuart took his command. The gay, young cavalier placed himself at the head of Jackson's corps and charged Hooker's disorganized army. Waving his black plumed hat above his handsome, bearded face, he chanted with boyish gaiety an improvised battle song:
"Old Joe Hooker,
Won't you come out o' the Wilderness?"
His men swept the field and as Hooker's army retreated Lee rode to the front to congratulate Stuart. At sight of his magnificent figure wreathed in smoke his soldiers went wild. Above the roar of battle rang their cheers: