the
guns rang out and the deserter fell forward pierced by balls. Death was
instantaneous. Although the crime was mortal, the scene was painfully
sad.

CHAPTER VIII

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a
battle won.
--WELLINGTON.

I did not serve long as the adjutant of the 47th regiment. In March,
1863, Company I of the 40th regiment, having from one cause or another
lost all its officers, unanimously desired that I should become their
captain, and this desire was approved by Colonel Brockenbrough, who
commanded that regiment, as well as by General Heth, who commanded the
brigade. I was loath to sever connection from the regiment to which I
had been attached since the beginning of the war, but I accepted the new
position, because it was in the line of promotion, and the men of the
company were from my native county and well known to me; moreover, I
would still be in the same brigade with my old comrades of the 47th. My
captain's commission was dated April 30, and was signed by James A.
Seddon, Secretary of War.

When the spring had come General Joseph Hooker, the successor of
unfortunate Burnside, having crossed the Rappahannock river, took up a
strong position at Chancellorsville, with an army numerically twice as
strong as the available Confederate forces, and declared by him to be
"the finest army on the planet." At the same time a powerful detachment
under General Sedgwick crossed the river below Fredericksburg and made
demonstrations of attack upon the Confederate lines. Never was General
Lee confronted by a more perilous situation, and never did his military
genius more brilliantly appear.

In war so much depends upon the commander, that I advance the confident
opinion that if the Confederates had been under the charge of Hooker and
Sedgwick, and Lee and Jackson had had command of the Federal soldiers
above and below Fredericksburg, the Confederate army would have been
destroyed; and the Army of the Potomac would have walked straight into
Richmond. That army would indeed have been "the finest on the planet,"
if the skill and the courage of its commander had equaled its numbers,
its aggressive power, and its opulent equipment.

Hooker had a grand opportunity, but ingloriously failed to use it. He
had conceived a good plan of action, and he successfully executed its
initial movement; but when the decisive hour arrived