rust his powers. He had courageously hastened
to the assailed point, ordering the men to "throw themselves into the
breach," and receive Jackson's troops "on the bayonet;" but, after
this display of soldierly resolution, General Hooker appears to have
lost some of that nerve which should never desert a soldier, and on
the same night sent engineers to trace out a new line of defences in
his rear, to which, it seems, he already contemplated the probability
of being forced to retire. Why he came to take this depressed view
of the situation of affairs, it is difficult to say. One of General
Sedgwick's corps reached him on this night, and his force at
Chancellorsville still amounted to between ninety and one hundred
thousand men, about thrice that of Lee. No decisive trial of strength
had yet taken place between the two armies; and yet the larger force
was constructing defences in rear to protect them from the smaller--a
circumstance not tending, it would seem, to greatly encourage the
troops whose commander was thus providing for a safe retreat.

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