Horace Greeley, The American Conflict: A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-65: its Causes, Incidents, and Results: Intended to exhibit especially its moral and political phases with the drift and progress of American opinion respecting human slavery from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. Volume II.

[362] save that lost at daylight, sufficiently proves that the ground we conceded was lost by reason of misfortune or bad generalship, not by lack of valor or endurance in our soldiers.

Gen. Hooker recovered his consciousness and resumed command by noon; but the fighting on this front was now nearly over: Lee's attention being forcibly drawn to Sedgwick, who was operating on his rear, where Hooker had expected him to strike heavily at an early hour this morning.

Sedgwick, whose operations had hitherto been intended only to distract attention from the movement on our right, had been directed¹ by Hooker to cross at Fredericksburg, and advance forthwith on the road to Chancellorsville, demolishing any force that might attempt to bar his progress, until he should fall upon Lee's rear, simultaneously with an attack by Hooker on his front, and thus crush him between them. How hazardous such attempts at concerted attack on a great army from opposite and distant points are, was not now to be first learned.

The order found Sedgwick already across the river, but at a point two or three miles below the city. Gen. Warren, who was sent by Hooker, after the stampede of the 11th corps, to urge Sedgwick to evince all possible alacrity, found him, at 3 A. M. of the eventful Sunday, just getting his corps in motion, and explained to him Hooker's critical position and the necessity for prompt action in this quarter. The night was clear; there was a full moon; and it would not have been impossible to march a corps from Sedgwick's pontoons to Chancellorsville between midnight and 6 A. M., had there been nothing in his way. But there was a serious obstacle — to wit, Lee's army; some portion of which was in Sedgwick's immediate front, and opened a straggling fire on the heads of his columns so soon as he commenced his march; and at daylight he was just entering Fredericksburg, instead of approaching Chancellorsville. By this time, Gibbon had laid a pontoon, and was crossing into the city, raising Sedgwick's force to nearly 30,000 men. Meanwhile, the Rebel troops in this quarter had been concentrating on Marye's hill, where they had several guns in position; while a canal covering their left, with the bridges all taken up, increased the difficulty of carrying the hill by assault.

One attempt to clear the enemy's rifle-pits at the foot of the hill was repulsed; and it was nearly 11 A. M.,