MAJOR-GENERAL R. E. COLSTON, C.'S. A.
parties of prisoners, concentrating under guards, wounded men by the roadside and under the trees at Talley’s and Chancellor’s, I had reached an open field on the right, a mile west of Chancellorsville, when, in the dusky twilight, I saw horsemen near an old cabin in the field. Turning toward them, I found Rodes and his staff engaged in gathering the broken and scattered troops that had swept the two miles of battle-field. “General Jackson is just ahead on the road, Captain,” said Rodes; “.tell him I will be here at this cabin if I am wanted.” I had not gone a hundred yards before I heard firing, a shot or two, and then a company volley upon the right of the road, and another upon the left. A few moments farther on I met Captain Murray Taylor, an aide of A. P. Hill’s, with tidings that Jackson and Hill were wounded, and some around them killed, by the fire of their own men. Spurring my horse into a sweeping gallop, I soon passed the Confederate line of battle, and, some three or four rods on its front, found the general’s horse beside a pine sapling on the left, and a rod beyond a little party of men caring for a wounded officer. The story of the sad event is briefly told, and, in essentials, very much as it came to me from the lips of the wounded general himself, and in everything confirmed and completed by those who were eye-witnesses and near companions.
When Jackson had reached the point where his line now crossed the turnpike, scarcely a mile west of Chancellorsville, and not half a mile from a line of Federal troops, he had found his front line unfit for the farther and vigorous advance he desired, by reason of the irregular character of the fighting, now right, now left, and because of the dense thickets, through which it was impossible to preserve alignment. Division commanders found it more and more difficult as the twilight deepened to hold their broken brigades in hand. Regretting the necessity of relieving the troops in front, General Jackson had ordered A. P. Hill’s division, his third
THE NEW CHANCELLOR HOUSE.
attacked the Eleventh Corps from the left (west) hy the Plank road, which passes in front of the Chancellor House. The crossroad in the foreground leads northward to Ely’s Ford, a crossing of the Rapidan, and United States Ford, a crossing of the Rappahannock.
This picture is from a photograph taken at a reunion of Union and Confederate officers and soldiers in May. 1884. The original house was set on fire by Confederate shells on Sunday, May 3d, shortly after Hooker was injured while standing on the porch. The picture faces south. Jackson
the same hopeless panic. By the quiet Wilderness Church in the vale, leaving wounded and dead everywhere, by Melzi Chancellor’s, on into the deep thicket again, the Confederate lines press forward, —now broken and all disaligned by the density of bush that tears the clothes away; now halting to load and deliver a volley upon some regiment or fragment of the enemy that will not move as fast as others. Thus the attack upon Hooker’s flank was a grand success, beyond the most sanguine expectation.
The writer of this narrative, an aide-de-camp of Jackson’s, was ordered to remain at the point where the advance began, to be a center of communication between the general and the cavalry on the flanks, and to deliver orders to detachments of artillery still moving up from the rear. A fine black charger, with elegant trappings, deserted by his owner and found tied to a tree, became mine only for that short and eventful nightfall; and about 8 p. M., in the twilight, thus comfortably mounted, I gathered my couriers about me and went forward to find General Jackson. The storm of battle had swept far on to the east and become more and more faint to the ear, until silence came with night over the fields and woods. As I rode along that old turnpike, passing scattered fragments of Confederates looking for their regiments,
ing until heard at the headquarters of Hooker at Chancellorsville—the wild “ rebel yell ” of the long Confederate lines.
Never was assault delivered with grander enthusiasm. Fresh from the long winter’s waiting, and confident from the preparation of the spring, the troops were in fine condition and in high spirits. The boys were all back from home or sick leave. “ Old Jack ” was there upon the road in their midst; there could be no mistake and no failure. And there were Rodes and A. P. Hill. Had they not seen and cheered, as long and as loud as they were permitted, the gay-hearted Stuart and the long-bearded Fitz Lee on his fiery charger? Was not Crutchfield’s array of brass and iron “ dogs of war ” at hand, with Poague and Palmer, and all the rest, ready to bark loud and deep with half a chance ?
Alas! for Howard and his unformed lines, and his brigades with guns stacked, and officers at dinner or asleep under the trees, and butchers deep in the blood of beeves ! Scattered through field and forest, his men were preparing their evening meal. A little show of earthwork facing the south was quickly taken by us in reverse from the west. Flying battalions are not flying buttresses for an army’s stability. Across Talley’s fields the rout begins. Over at Hawkins’s hill, on the north of the road, Carl Schurz makes a stand, soon to be driven into
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BRIGADIER-GENERAL E. T. NICHOLL8, C. S. A.
Reaching the Orange Plank road, General Jaek-son himself rode with Fitz Lee to reeonnoiter the position of Howard, and then sent the Stonewall brigade of Virginia troops, under Brigadier-General Paxton, to hold the point where the Germanna Plank road obliquely enters the Orange road. Leading the main column of his force farther on the Brock road to the old turnpike, the head of the column turned sharply eastward toward Chancellorsville. About a mile bad been passed, when he halted and began the disposition of his forces to attack Howard. Rodes’s division, at the head of the column, was thrown into line of battle, with Colston’s forming the second line and A. P. Hill’s the third, while the artillery under Colonel Stapleton Crutchfield moved in column on the road, or was parked in a field on the right. The well-trained skirmishers of Rodes’s division, under Major Eugene Blackford, were thrown to the front. It must have been between 5 and 6 o’clock in the evening, Saturday, May 2d, when these dispositions were completed. Upon his stout-built, long-paced little sorrel, General Jackson sat, with visor low over his eyes and lips compressed, and with his watch in his hand. Upon his right sat General Robert E. Rodes, the very picture of a soldier, and every inch all that he appeared. Upon the right of Rodes sat Major Blackford.
“Are you ready, General Rodes ? ” said Jackson.
“ Yes, sir! ” said Rodes, impatient for the advance.
“You can go forward then,” said Jackson.
A nod from Rodes was order enough for Blackford, and then suddenly the woods rang with the bugle call, and back came the responses from bugles on the right and left, and the long line of skirmishers, through the wild thicket of undergrowth, sprang eagerly to their work, followed promptly by the quick steps of the line of battle. For a moment all the troops seemed buried in the depths of the gloomy forest, and then suddenly the echoes waked and swept the country for miles, never fail-