USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry, Chancellorsville : a paper read at the officers' reunion in Boston, May 11, 1880 > Part 2
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Anderson's division, in all about ten thousand men, under Mahone, Wright, and Posey, who had been despatched from the vicinity of Fredericksburg as soon as Lee had had warn- ing of the Union movements across the Rapidan, and who had passed Wednesday night near Chancellorsville, but, con- sidering the position unfavorable in the midst of the dense woods, had fallen back on Thursday, pushed by Meade's skirmishers, to the junction of the Mine and plank roads, where they intrenched. Slocum says his two corps reached Chancellorsville at 2 P.M. of Thursday (my diary speaks of our going into bivouac about 4 P.M.) ; and therefore he had in hand fully thirty-six thousand men, with whom, under the letter of his instructions, as well as in obedience to their spirit, he ought to have pressed Anderson, and gained Banks Ford before Thursday night. Pleasanton, who was in the advance, says he urged Slocum to do this immediately ; but the latter assumed that he was only expected to concen- trate at Chancellorsville. In the light of the next day's events, it is extremely unfortunate that he did not take the course thus alleged to have been advised by Pleasanton .* But Hooker had no criticisms, and only hearty approval to offer Slocum for the conduct of his movements; and the opportunity for making up this lack of enterprise was yet available Friday, when Hooker was in charge of operations. Couch had arrived at Chancellorsville at ten o'clock Thurs- day night, and Sickles with the Third Corps was close by.
In all, nearly seventy thousand men were in Hooker's hand; and although the enemy was strongly re-enforced on Friday morning by two other brigades of Anderson, by Mc- Law's division, and the three divisions of A. P. Hill, D. H. Hill, and Trimble of Jackson's corps, making his numbers about forty thousand, yet the progress of affairs when Friday's advance began showed that with no very persistent
* It is not always easy to tell how many of General Pleasanton's suggestions concerning the proper conduct of a battle were made upon the actual ground, and how many were after-thoughts in hours of preparation of testimony to be offered to the Congressional Committee. Some of his later claims with regard to the battle are flatly contradicted by subordinate officers whose means of knowing the facts seem to be superior to his.
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effort the desired ford could be attained. That determina- tion seemed in Hooker's mind, as he gave instructions for Friday's advance. Meade was to take the left column, moving by the river road to a place betwixt two creeks known as Mott's and Colin's Runs, about two miles from Banks Ford and four miles from the Chancellorsville House. The Twelfth Corps, on the right, was to advance three miles from the Chancellorsville House, with the head of the column resting near one of the rude meeting-houses of that poor and scantily populated country, called Tabernacle Church; while the Eleventh Corps was to follow the Twelfth.
The movements were begun with great zeal, and it was this advance of the Twelfth Corps in which the Second was taking part, in the account just given.
Sykes's division of Meade soon struck Anderson's pickets and met with stubborn resistance, though decided headway was gained and the enemy's works developed. Knipe's bri- gade of Slocum also exchanged shots with the enemy and came within sight of his rifle-pits, although Sykes was so considerably in advance that the enemy was between him and the Twelfth Corps. All was going capitally. Our Sec- ond Brigade was preparing to deploy on Knipe's flank, Meade's supports were coming up to Sykes, when an aid from General Hooker, Captain Paine, rode hastily up with an order for Slocum to withdraw to the Chancellorsville House. The latter was astounded, and declined to take a verbal command for such an ignominious step; and in truth Captain Paine was equally chagrined at having to give it, and had mildly remonstrated with Hooker concerning its in- expediency.
But a strange transformation of temper had come over Hooker. He who, when leading a division or a corps, was wont to listen to no admonitions of caution in assailing a foe when he found him, and had dealt out unstinted condem- nation of the commanders-in-chief who were ever ready to repress the ardor of victory, now that he had attained to
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supreme authority, counted it a serious risk to expose his army to the attack of an enemy of half its numbers, appre- hensive, as he alleges, that he could not throw his troops forward through the narrow passes of the woods with suffi- cient rapidity to prevent their being overwhelmed. In truth, the universal opinion, then as now, of all officers conversant with the state of affairs was that a paralysis of judgment had fallen upon Hooker; and the failure of the campaign, till that time holding out the most brilliant promise of success, was plainly foreshadowed, as will appear from acquaintance with the ground and conditions to which the contest was to be restricted.
The name Chancellorsville is derived from the single house or villa of the Chancellor family, situated on the plank road leading from Orange County to Fredericksburg. It was a large brick mansion, with tall portico columns extending up to the second story, and with ample accommodations for the many travellers who in the olden days made it their tavern. The clearing of a score of acres around the house constitutes the most extensive of the rare breaks in the dense forest of the " Wilderness," which stretches from Stafford Heights south-westward toward Orange Court House, -a wilderness wherein are a few stately groves, but mainly made up of stunted black-jack oak and pine, or of the young shoots which spring up luxuriantly after the woodman's axe, thick-set, and a fit lair for the small game which those of us who recall the "disturbance of mental equilibrium" which the sight of a rabbit used to beget in sundry of our associated regiments will remember to have been often started up along our lines, and whose appearance in unwonted numbers gave to the Eleventh Corps on Saturday afternoon the first warning of Jackson's impetuous attack. Through these thickets, four or five roads constitute the sole practicable passage for trains. There are few positions for artillery ; and the lines of in- fantry, able to peer but a few rods through the curtain of shrubbery before them, can do little but to patiently await the. assault, unable to make adequate provision for the concen-
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tration of masses which the enemy may choose to bring upon any portion of their works. The advantages of the ground were thus entirely with the party assuming the offensive. But five or six miles on toward Fredericksburg the clearings are comparatively numerous, and free opportunity is afforded for the use of all arms. Thus, by being put upon the de- fensive in this tangled wood, we yielded at once the pre- eminence given us by our numbers, while granting our antagonist the privilege of administering his blows in the dark, and moreover, by failing to occupy Banks Ford, our army was cut in two, and Lee, if he could by feints keep one of Hooker's wings inactive before an inferior force, might proceed to defeat the other wing at his leisure.
On Friday morning, Meade was within a mile of the point occupied on the next Monday by Sedgwick, moving from Fredericksburg, who then took possession of Banks Ford, which he eventually made his line of retreat. To have simply held our ground on Friday, and worked by the left toward the river, would have been to put Lee betwixt our fire and that of Sedgwick, and to have completed more effect- ually that which General Warren says Sedgwick had done on Monday, until he was confronted by the mass of Lee's army (we meanwhile looking on as inactive spectators),- " whipped the rebels to pieces."
On Saturday morning. the Union Army was in the lines which had been accidentally chosen by tired troops on Thurs- day, bivouacking where it was most convenient to drop.
These lines may be roughly compared in shape to a bow, whose arrow, the plank road, ran by the Chancellorsville House toward Lee's lines. On the left of this road, facing the enemy, was Hancock's division of the Second Corps. On the right of the road was the Twelfth Corps, Geary's division being about half a mile south-west of the house, forming Slo- cum's left, and Williams in continuation resting his right in the woods not far from Hazel Grove, a mile and a half west of the house." Bending to the rear in prolongation of Slo-
* Hazel Grave wis one of the low fatde bills for artillery, and, in Confederate possession ou Sunday, served as a most important point for entlading our lines.
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cum's line was, at first, Howard's corps, crossing the pike (which at this point runs westward from Chancellorsville) and extending as far as a small creek called Hunting Run, which afforded no natural protection for its flank; but Hooker, considering the position between Slocum and the pike to be one of the most vital parts of the line, put Birney's division in here, and placed Sickles' other two divisions behind it in reserve.
Saturday was occupied in completing breastworks, and was for the most part quiet, save an occasional skirmishing fire at different points along our front, which did not affect us. The Third Wisconsin and Twenty-seventh Indiana were somewhat in advance of the brigade, in works near the clear- ing's edge, for the purpose of having a cross-fire covering certain exposed angles of our lines. Unhappily, those advanced works of solid logs served to provide the enemy with a secure place of cross-fire upon our troops on Sunday morning.
While we were waiting through Saturday for something to happen, Jackson was making an audacious march for nearly fifteen miles around our front, to assail Howard's flank in the rear. With him were twenty-five thousand men, in the order of D. H. Hill (now Rodes), Trimble (now Colston), and A. P. Hill, the latter to be our opponent of Sunday morn- ing. The condition of secrecy, which alone ought to have made this flank movement possible, was not secured. Birney saw Jackson's column at eight o'clock, and it was reported to Hooker. Infantry, artillery, ambulances, and baggage- wagons were observed from the high ground where a country road from Welford's Furnace, two miles south, intersects the plank road at Birney's position. Sickles says this column was watched for three hours. Its' starting-point had been from that Tabernacle Church which was within Slocum's grasp on Friday morning ; while the heavy firing on our front on Friday afternoon was upon Colonel Hawley's picket line near that same Welford's Furnace, by which Jackson's columins were moving. The explanation made at head-quar-
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ters of this movement of the Confederates was that Lee was retreating toward Gordonsville, and an exultant telegram to that effect was sent to Washington.
Captain Charles F. Morse of our regiment, who was upon General Slocum's staff, says that "the scouts sent out by General Slocum reported the movement of a large force of the enemy to the right. This was announced to Hooker. I took the message to him, giving in some detail the number of regiments and. batteries which had passed a certain point. He waved me off in his grand manner, and said he knew all about it ; that Lee was in full retreat toward Richmond, and that he should strike him presently, and gobble up his wagon train."
. At noon, Sickles received permission to assail this column, and straightway pushed Birney over the intervening swampy ground to Welford's, where two regiments of Berdan's Sharp- shooters surrounded and captured Best's Twenty-third Geor- gia, the Confederate rear-guard, who were lodged in the Welford buildings. At two o'clock, our people had learned from the prisoners that Jackson's was a flanking and not a retreating movement; but nobody in authority appears to have believed or taken in the significance of this informa- tion, Sickles' attack upon his rear seeming to be thought sufficient to stay Jackson's progress, whatever its aim. To make the attack more effective, Sickles called for re-enforce- ments ; and Whipple of the Third Corps and Williams' divi- sion were ordered upon his left, and Barlow's brigade of the Eleventh Corps upon his right.
It was about five o'clock when we left our works with the men's knapsacks (happily the officers' baggage was over the. river, where it had been since the march began) guarded by small detachments from each regiment and by the Thir- teenth New Jersey. The camp rumor was that Sickles had cut the enemy's retreating wagon train in two, and we were to finish the business; but Williams says he was to cross the unfinished bed of the Orange Railroad, and thence, sweeping around to the left, co-operate with Geary in attack-
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ing the flank of Lee, if they should find him. Geary pushed forward, but met with resistance, and was withdrawn. Will- iams was not far from the railroad bed, the Second Regiment having moved perhaps three-quarters of a mile across a field to a woody hillside, where we lay while Colonel Brown's Confederate twelve-pounders were firing over our heads at Birney, whom he intensely. annoyed. This battery was being silenced, Sickles was swinging around to the right, Williams was ready for his advance, when a crash of mus- ketry in our rear, seeming to be in the very works we had just left, was followed by orders to return. As we emerged into the open ground, some horsemen were rushing franti- cally about, evidently affected by the panic whose far-off din was in our ears, and in their hurry our column was thrown into a momentary confusion, which was speedily righted by the presence of mind of both officers and men (for our old soldiers seldom lost their self-possession in such emergen- cies) ; and with a little "double quicking" the tangle was straightened, and we were halted in line, face toward the firing, which, however, was too far in our front to reach us with its bullets.
The noise yonder toward the region of the plank road, of mighty roar of battle and Confederate yells, with a too infre- quent echo of hurrahs, was quite enough to make us ner- vous in conjecture of some grave disaster to the army; and the sight of riderless horses, of wagons and ambulances driven furiously, and of countless fugitives, often hatless and gunless, all streaming over the hill-slope behind us, with occasional tale of grief and shame from some participant in the stampede, whose courage was yet full of fight, did not add to our assurance. But amid this dismay for the common cause there was room for abundant lament for personal loss; for the worldly possessions of our rank and file in the shape of knapsacks with their contents of blankets and overcoats, not to mention valuables of tender home association, were clearly involved in the general capture of our recent lines, and, through the long night that followed, their lack added to our misery.
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What had occurred, of whose full purport it was not for the subordinates of the army to learn till long after, is now a thoroughly discussed matter of history. While we were. hugging the ground in the woods which covered us from the shells of Brown's Confederate guns, Jackson, with all of his force but the handful who were amusing us with their pre- tence of an attack, was far away toward the river upon the point of striking Howard's flank. The Eleventh Corps men, an isolated body with no immediate connection with the rest of the army on right or left, were cooking their supper in tranquil innocence of danger when the storm fell upon and licked them up, as the whirlwind drives the dust and leaves before it. A few brigades tried to face the blast, but in vain. Ambulances, artillery, commissary cattle, and terrified in- fantry fled as fast as the jam would permit, down the pike toward the mansion, and thence across the fields. Portions of Berry's division of the Third Corps helped to form some resistance to the impetuosity of the torrent, and to serve as a rallying point for that portion of the defeated corps which still had coherence of organization. Huntington, the chief of artillery of Whipple's division, rallied three six-gun batteries, and set them in the line of the enemy's advance near the road. But approaching darkness and the great disorder into which their rush after the fugitives had thrown the Confederate lines were the most effective of the checks to their pursuit, which would soon have brought them to Hooker's head-quarters.
By dusk, which was nigh, Slocum's chief of artillery, Cap- tain Best, had thirty-four guns, double-shotted with canister, pouring awful fire down toward the enemy. The Confeder- ates who tried to face it have told how the roadway, which a little while before was full of men, was immediately swept of every living thing. Stonewall Jackson, wounded in the twilight by some of his own soldiers, was being borne down the pike upon a stretcher. but had to be dropped by the roadside, while his bearers lay flat upon the ground, if per- chance the fury would pass overhead. Captain Wilkins, of
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Williams' staff, who had just been made prisoner, chanced to be within the course of the artillery, and bore witness to its effect in staying the Confederate advance. When the fight- ing was fairly done, A. P. Hill's division, now commanded by Heth (Hill being wounded), was within a mile of Chan- cellorsville, having driven Howard upwards of a mile, and occupied a portion of the Twelfth Corps' works, not far from the point which the Second Regiment had vacated. It was well for us .that Jackson had fallen; for he would have pushed on in the bright moonlight, and there were no designated positions for the troops about head-quarters.
In the re-distribution of forces, compelled by this after- noon's havoc, the formation of the lines of Saturday night in our vicinity was as follows: The Second was placed in the edge of a grove of oaks, three-quarters of a mile in front and in sight of the mansion house, and at a right angle with the works of the day before. Betwixt us and the house was Fairview Cemetery, of whose existence as a burial-ground we had little suspicion. On its slope were Best's cannons. As we looked out before us in the bright moonlight, we could see only a valley of impenetrable woods. The Third Wisconsin was upon our right, extending its flank nearly up to the old works. The Twenty-seventh Indi- ana was upon our left, the Thirteenth New Jersey and the One Hundred and Seventh New York (so far as the latter regiment could be collected from its wanderings) in a second line in our rear. Two regiments of Knipe's brigade were upon Ruger's right, the Third Maryland and the One Hun- dred and Twenty-third New York. Still further, in pro- longation of our division line, was Berry of Sickles' corps, the Eleventh Massachusetts of Berry's second line finding it necessary at daybreak to take the place of the Third Maryland, whose ranks, according to authentic accounts, disappeared without ceremony as soon as the enemy was heard approaching. Upon the other flank of our brigade were the divisions of Birney and Whipple, but pushed out in advance as far as Hazel Grove, near the place occupied
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by us in the afternoon while we were being shelled by Brown. Geary's division was at right angles with our bri- gade's left, with something of an interval at the angle.
The recollections of that anxious night are likely to be long vivid with those who lay behind the improvised defences of such rails and fallen trees as could be hurriedly gathered together. Until midnight, Best's guns, a hundred yards in our rear, were plunging shells over our heads into the works held by the enemy ; and, when these had become silent, we were aroused from such light slumber as we could snatch in the cold night air by an outbreak of firing in our immediate front, in which we expected momentarily to be called upon to take part.
The occasion was a movement of Birney's division from its position far out to the left, across our front, for the pur- pose of recapturing some artillery material left betwixt the lines in the afternoon by Whipple. When silence settled down upon this affair, the doleful notes of the whippoor- wills took up the strain of depressing sounds ; and now and then a frightened or wounded horse broke in with a neigh of agony. There was short respite of sleep even for the few who crept out under the darkness, and brought back a blanket or two taken from dead men or from some of our own abandoned knapsacks.
Besides the very slender breastworks we were able to throw up, we were slightly protected by resting below the crown of the wooded hill upon which we were stationed; although, when the shock of battle came, that portion of the regiment nearest the color company, at least, had little to shield them from the enemy's fire except the standing trees. The Twenty-seventh Indiana on our left seemed better pro- tected. Colonel Colgrove had added a mixed company to his command, for fragments of two strange regiments wander- ing about without a head had reported to him for orders ; and, finding two abandoned guns, he had put them under charge of a stray artillery lieutenant, supplying their gunners from his own regiment. All of his command appeared to be cov-
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ered with a fair intrenchment, rapidly constructed during the night.
The Confederate troops to whom was assigned the attack upon Williams and Berry were of A. P. Hill's division, now under command of Heth. They consisted of Lane's North Carolina brigade, McGowan's South Carolina brigade (the First, Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Infantry, and Orr's Rifles), and Archer's brigade of Alabama and Tennes- see men, each brigade composed of five regiments. They were placed in the above order, from our right to left.
Sunday had barely dawned, when heavy firing at our right announced Heth's assault upon Revere's brigade of Berry, which, in the course of an hour, melted away under the fierce fire, although the second line, containing the Eleventh Mas- sachusetts, held its own much longer and in a manner to call out the high praise of those who watched its conduct. Then, out upon our left, came the crash of Archer's attack, and we felt that our time was coming ; nor was the nature of that time reassuring when we saw the red legs of Collis's One Hundred and Fourteenth Pennsylvania Zouaves flying pell- mell toward us as soon as the enemy struck them. It was a blow of Archer and a run of Collis, save himself who could.
The exposed situation of Birney and Whipple in their ad- vanced post in the wilderness had been observed by Hooker, and at daybreak their withdrawal was ordered.
Graham's brigade of six Pennsylvania regiments, one of which was the above-mentioned Zouaves, was covering this change of position, when Archer smote it with galling fire, against which it made but short stand, and then fell hastily back betwixt Geary and Williams. However it may have been with the better part of that brigade, some of its regi- ments behaved discreditably, judging from what may be read between the lines of the General's report and from what our own corps saw and felt.
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Slocum's chief of artillery, Captain Best, reports that "an open field in that direction occupied by a brigade of troops . and a battery was seemingly taken by a small force of the
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enemy, and the battery turned upon us with fearful effect, blowing up one of our caissons, killing Captain Hampton of one of our batteries, and enfilading General Geary's line." Graham does not acknowledge loss of any cannon, but says Huntington's battery was hotly engaged and lost a caisson and some material. (In fact, he lost two guns wedged in among the trees or overturned in a gulley.) The Confed- erate Archer reports that he captured four guns at this point. Osborn, the Third Corps chief of artillery, reports no loss of cannon. Whose, then, were the guns which so opportunely for Archer, so unhappily for us, were made avail- able to sweep down our lines ? The truth, as well as an army, sometimes gets entangled in thickets.
Sweeping impetuously down in the wake of Graham's retreat, the elated Confederates struck the Twenty-seventh Indiana with its conglomerate of allies. Would they stand ? was the flash through our minds in that moment of dread suspense. A question gloriously answered by Colgrove, who, with frantic encouragement, now rushed to his infantry parapets, now to the mound where his two pieces of artillery were bellowing their furious defiance, and, as if transfusing his own utter fearlessness of exposure into all of his "boys," as he familiarly spoke of them, kept a sheet of fire blazing into the woods, before which, at a distance of seventy yards, Archer recoiled in confusion. Again, the Confederate bri- gade rushed to the assault, and again they met Colgrove's storm of bullets and canister, until they were fain to hurry out of his reach and regain their breath.
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