Chancellorsyille,
but this time under a new commander, General ‘Fighting Joe’
Hooker having succeeded
Burnside.
Ah! who of the
Crenshaw Battery does not remember
Chancellorsville?
Who can forget the incessant fighting of the 1st, 2d, and 3d of May, when we struck the enemy first in front, and then in rear, in the race down the plank road behind
Rodes' Division after the ‘Flying Dutchmen,’ of
Howard's Eleventh Corps, when
Jackson made his celebrated flank movement.
（
Howard's Corps was composed of Germans.) They were ‘easy marks.’
But on the 3d, when we had to cut a road through the woods to prevent annihilation before we could get in position, it was not so ‘easy,’ and as far as the eye could reach when we debouched from the road there was nothing to be seen but lines of battle.
The
Crenshaw Battery went into position near the centre of the battalion, and soon one of the hottest artillery fights of the war was on, while infantry engaged infantry on either side.
After several hours' fighting our artillery
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actually drove the enemy from their guns—there was no charging (in our front) to capture them by infantry; we captured them—a thing that did not occur on any other field during the war. The
Crenshaw Battery was awarded two of the captured guns.
Hooker defeated, another idol shattered by
Lee, we were destined to meet a new commander of the army of the Potomac when we came up again with our old-time enemy.
General Meade had succeeded
Hooker.
With a rest from fighting from the 3d of May until the 1st of July, we headed for the
Potomac for the second time.
Once over that stream, what a refreshing sight from the devastated fields of
Virginia to the green fields of
Maryland and
Pennsylvania, for we were en route to
