daring maneuver to be setting this trap
when Sedgwick had enough men to storm the heights of Fredericksburg,
when Stoneman was on the line of communication with the south,
and when Hooker himself, with superior numbers, was gaining Lee's
rear. But Lee had Jackson as his lieutenant, not Longstreet, as
he was to have at Gettysburg.

Hooker's movements were rapid, well arranged, and admirably executed
up to the evening of the first of May, when, finding those of the
enemy very puzzling among the dense woods, he chose the worst of
three alternatives. The first and best, an immediate counter-attack,
would have kept up his army's morale and, if well executed, revealed
his own greater strength. The second, a continued advance till he
reached clearer ground, might have succeeded or not. The third
and worst was to stand on his defense, a plan which, however sound
in other places, was fatal here, because it not only depressed
the spirits of his army but gave two men of genius the initiative
against him in a country where they were at home and he was not.
The absence of ten thousand cavalry baffled his efforts to get
trustworthy information on the ground, while the dense woods baffled
his balloons from above. On the second of May he still thought
the initiative was his, that the Confederates were retreating,
and that his own jaws were closing on them instead of theirs on
him.

Meanwhile, owing to miscalculations of the space that had to be
held in force, his right was not only thrown forward too far but
presented a flank in the air. This was the flank round which Stonewall
Jackson maneuvered with such consummate skill that it was taken on
three sides and rolled up in fatal confusion. Its commander, the
very capable General O. O. Howard, who perceived the mistake he
could not correct, tried hard to stay the rout. But, as his whole
reserve had been withdrawn by Hooker to join an attack elsewhere,
his lines simply melted away.

The three days' battle that followed (ending on the fifth of May)
was bravely fought by the bewildered Federals. Yet all in vain.
Hooker was caught like a bull in a net; and the more he struggled
the worse it became. At 6 P.M. on the second the cunning trap was
sprung when a single Confederate bugle rang out. Instantly other
bugles repeated the call at regular intervals through miles of
forest. Then, high and clear on the silent air of that calm May
evening, the rebel yell rose like the baying of innumera