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“ [583] beats McClellan in his untruthful bulletins.” I cannot find that Lincoln ever answered this question.

Aye, my comrades, the battle of Chancellorsville is over. “When written history shall truly record the struggle which ended thus, every leaf may be dripping with the tears of grief and woe, but not a page will be stained with a stigma of shame.” It will show nowhere such an example of the steady handling of a small force against a great one, upon plans based upon a profound and accurate judgment of the facts. Risks were assumed apparently desperate, with cool self-reliance and confidence in the army, that never faltered under all dangers and discouragements until all had been accomplished which, under the circumstances, could reasonably be expected. The laurel at Chancellorsville is entwined with the cypress. Brigadier-General Paxton fell while leading his brigade with conspicuous courage in the assault of the 3d. Generals A. P. Hill, Nicholls, McGowan, Heth, Hoke and Pender were wounded, to which must be added many gallant officers and privates, while many more are now “but a handful of dust in the land of their choice. A name in song and story, and Fame to shout with her trumpet voice — Dead — dead on the field of glory.”

Chancellorsville is inseparably connected in its glory and gloom with Stonewall Jackson. General Lee officially writes: “I do not propose to speak here of the character of this illustrious man, since removed from the scene of his eminent usefulness by the hand of an inscrutable but all-wise Providence. I nevertheless desire to pay the tribute of my admiration to the matchless energy and skill that marked this last act of his life, forming, as it did, a worthy conclusion of that long series of splendid achievements which won for him the lasting gratitude and love of his country.” In my reading of history, Jackson's purely military genius resembled more closely Caesar's and Napoleon's. Like the latter, his success must be attributed to the rapid audacity of his movements, and to his masterly control of the confidence and will of his men. He had the daring, temper and fiery spirit of Caesar in battle. Caesar fell at the base of Pompey's statue, which had been restored by his magnanimity, pierced by twenty-three wounds at the hands of those he had done most for. Jackson fell at the hands of those who would have cheerfully joined their comrades upon many a valley, plain and mountain slope in the dismal, silent biouvacs, if his life could have been spared. Like the little child at the Chandler house, where Jackson breathed his last, who “wished that God would let her die in his stead, for then only her ”


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