in a litter. This information I immediately reported to General Hooker, when he directed me to withdraw my command from that position and go into camp on the north side of the Bappahannoek River. It was 4 A. M. of the 3d of May when I moved from Hazel Grove. Sickles, with the two divisions of the Third Corps, reached Hazel Grove from the Furnace Between half-past nine and ten on the night of the 2d of May. Some of his troops had fighting in the woods before I left, but I am unable to say what was its character.
On the morning of the 3d of May (Sunday) General Stuart was in command of Jackson’s forces, Jackson and A. P. Hill having been wounded, as reported by the prisoner taken the night before. Stuart prepared, with his usual impetuosity, to renew the attack early that morning, and by one of those unfortunate occurrences so prevalent during the war, he caught the Third Corps in motion to take up a new position, connecting with the Twelfth Corps at Fairview, and facing to the west. This withdrawal enabled Stuart to take the position at Hazel Grove from which Jackson had been repulsed the evening before. He saw its advantages at once, and, placing some thirty pieces of artillery there, he enfiladed the Twelfth Corps at Fairview and Chaneellorsville, and punished the Third Corps severely. The Third Corps was fighting throughout the day under great disadvantages. To add to the embarrassments of the army, General Hooker that morning was disabled by a concussion, and the army was virtually without a head, the different corps commanders fighting their commands on the defensive. Such extraordinary conditions forced the Army of the Potomac to fall back from Chan-cellorsville and Fairview, and form a new line of battle to the north and some distance from Chan-cellorsville. This line presented a front to the enemy that could not be enfiladed or turned. Desultory fighting, especially with artillery, was kept up on the 4th of May; but Hooker’s battle ended on the 3d, after the army had gained its new position.
It is useless to speculate what General Hooker would have done if he had not been disabled. Up to the evening of the 2d of May the enemy had suffered severely, while the Army of the Potomac had comparatively but few killed and wounded;
and aim them so that the shot would hit the ground half-way between the guns and the woods. I also stated that I would give the order to fire. Just then a handsome young lieutenant of the 4th U. S. Artillery,
Frank B. Crosby (son of a distinguished lawyer of New York City), who was killed the next day, galloped up and said, “General, I have a battery of six guns ; where shall I go ? what shall I do?” I told him to place his battery in line on the right of Martin’s battery, and gave him the same instructions I had given Martin as to how I wanted him to serve his guns. These 2 batteries gave me 12 guns, and to obtain more I then charged 3 squadrons of the 17 th Pennsylvania Cavalry on the stragglers of the Eleventh Corps to clear the ground, and with the assistance of the rest of the regiment succeeded in placing 10 more pieces of artillery in line. The line was then ready for Stonewall Jack-son’s onset. It was dusk when his men swarmed out of the woods for a quarter of a mile in our front (our rear ten minutes before).
They came on in line five and six deep, with but one flag—a Union flag dropped by the Eleventh Corps.
I suspected deception and was ready for it. They called out not to shoot, they were friends; at the same time they gave us a volley from at least five thousand muskets. As soon as I saw the flash I gave the command to fire, and the whole line of artillery was discharged at once. It fairly swept them from the earth; before they could recover themselves the line of artillery had been loaded and was ready for a second attack. After the second discharge, suspecting that they might play the trick of having their men lie down, draw the fire of the artillery, then jump up and charge before the pieces could be reloaded, I poured in the canister for about twenty minutes, and the affair was over.
When the Eleventh Corps was routed, the situation was this : The nearest infantry to me was the right of the Twelfth Corps, over a mile off, and engaged by the forces under General Lee, who was trying to prevent them from impeding the movements of General Jackson. The two divisions of the Third Corps were nearly a mile to the west, at the Furnace. Had Jackson captured the position at Hazel Grove, these two divisions would have been cut off from the army. He would have seen
REPULSE OF JACKSON’S MEN AT HAZEL GROVE, BY ARTILLERY UNDER GENERAL PLEASONTON.
is to say, if the muzzle of a gun is three feet from the ground and it is discharged so that the shot will strike the ground at a distance of one hundred yards, it will glance from the earth at the same angle at which it struck it, and in another one hundred yards will be three feet from the ground. I knew my first volley must be a crushing one, or Jackson, with his superior numbers, would charge across the short distance which separated us and capture the artillery before the guns could be reloaded.
After the fight at Hazel Grove I sent into the woods and captured a number of Jackson’s men. I asked them to what command they belonged. One of them said to General A. P. Hill’s corps, and added, “ That was a pretty trick you played us this evening. ” I asked to what he referred. He replied, “By withdrawing your infantry, and catching us on your guns,”—thus showing that the flight of the Eleventh Corps was looked upon as a ruse. To my question, if they had suffered much, he said that they had been badly cut up ; that General Jackson had been badly wounded; also General A. P. Hill, and their chief of artillery. I asked how he knew General Jackson had been wounded. He stated that he saw him when he was carried off the field
General Hooker and his staff getting what troops he could to prevent the routed Eleventh Corps from demoralizing the rest of the army, and the fatal position which that portion of the army occupied rendered it an easy task to have crushed it. Neither the Second Corps nor the Twelfth Corps was in position to have defended itself against an attack by Jackson from Hazel Grove.
For half an hour General Jackson had the Army of the Potomac at his mercy. That he halted to re-form his troops in the woods, instead of forging ahead into the clearing, where he could re-form his troops more rapidly, and where he could have seen that he was master of the situation, turned out to be one of those fatalities by which the most brilliant prospects are sacrificed. When he advanced upon the artillery at Hazel Grove Jackson had another opportunity to win, if his infantry had been properly handled. The fire of his infantry was so high it did no harm; they should have been ordered to fire so low as to disable the cannoneers at the guns. Had his infantry fire been as effective as that of our artillery, Jackson would have carried the position. The artillery fire was effective because I applied to it that principle of dynamics in which the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection,—that
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