The great victory.
Owing to an omission in printing some remarks in yesterday's
Dispatch upon the last important victory of Southern arms, we were made to say the battle was fought on
Saturday. The main fight after the heroic
Jackson had gotten behind the enemy begun on Saturday.
According to
General Lee the enemy was on that day, under the combined attack of
Jackson in the rear and
Longstreet in front, driven to within one mile of
Chancellorsville, probably a distance of four miles. The contest was renewed on Sunday morning, and the enemy "was dislodged from all his positions around
Chancellorsville, and driven back to wards the
Rappahannock," over which he was retreating when
General Lee wrote his dispatch — at what hour on Sunday the paper itself does not show.
Ere this goes to press we may have further particulars of this triumph, inferior in importance to none of the very many which have crowned the arms of the Southern Confederacy.
With only the brief message of
Gen. Lee to inform us everybody knows the victory is great.
That distinguished military leader, whose modesty is equal to his merits, and one of whose prominent traits is his conscientiousness, would never say ‘"We have again to thank Almighty God for a great victory,"’ until the triumph was of a character to make the announcement most scrupulously and religiously true to the letter.
This great combat, so glorious for Southern valor, contending, as it was, with the odds of numbers and superior appliances and enginery of war, must, of course, have a name.
It is either to take that of "
Chancellorsville" or "
Wilderness." The latter would not be inappropriate.
It was "out of the
Wilderness" that
Jackson drove the
Yankees: equally merciful beasts of prey and plunder choose the
Wilderness for a hiding place from which to descend upon the flocks and herds.
To seek them there and end their depredations is the part of the sagacious, practiced, and brave hunter.
Jackson is just such a hunter of the hordes which are infesting the homes, the garners, and fields of the
South.
He crashed upon them in the
Wilderness, killing and wounding and pursuing them.
Thus "
Jackson drove the
Yankees out of the
Wilderness."
