rotesque. That anticipations and expressions so confident should have
been met with a "commentary of events" so damaging, was sufficient,
had the occasion not been so tragic, to cause laughter in the gravest
of human beings.

Lee's intent was now unmistakable. Instead of falling back from the
Rappahannock to some line of defence nearer Richmond, where the force
under Longstreet, at Suffolk, might have rejoined him, with other
reenforcements, he had plainly resolved, with the forty or fifty
thousand men of his command, to meet General Hooker in open battle,
and leave the event to Providence. A design so bold would seem to
indicate in Lee a quality which at that time he was not thought to
possess--the willingness to risk decisive defeat by military movements
depending for their success upon good fortune alone. Such seemed now
the only _deus ex machina_ that could extricate the Southern army from
disaster; and a crushing defeat at that time would have had terrible
results. There was no other force, save the small body under
Longstreet and a few local troops, to protect Richmond. Had Lee been
disabled and afterward pressed by General Hooker, it is impossible to
see that any thing but the fall of the Confederate capital could have
been the result.

From these speculations and comments we pass to the narrative of
actual events. General Hooker had abandoned the strong position in
advance of Chancellorsville, and retired to the fastnesses around
that place, to receive the Southern attack. His further proceedings
indicated that he anticipated an assault from Lee. The Federal troops
had no sooner regained the thicket from which they had advanced in
the morning, than they were ordered to erect elaborate works for the
protection of infantry and artillery. This was promptly begun, and by
the next morning heavy defences had sprung up as if by magic. Trees
had been felled, and the trunks interwoven so as to present a
formidable obstacle to the Southern attack. In front of these works
the forest had been levelled, and the fallen trunks were left lying
where they fell, forming thus an _abatis_ sufficient to seriously
delay an assaulting force, which would thus be, at every step of
the necessarily slow advance, under fire. On the roads piercing the
thicket in the direction of the Confederates, cannon were posted, to
rake the approaches to the Federal position. Having thus made his
preparations to receive Lee's attack, General Hooker aw